Questions for the Candidates: China
Jeff Alworth
On the radio this morning, I listened to one of the most disturbing interviews I've heard in a long time, as NPR's Steve Inskeep tried to get a straight answer out of Chinese ambassador Zhou Wenzhong. Zhou didn't say anything alarming; rather it was his totally disconnected demeanor that was so unsettling. Inskeep would ask a pointed question, and Zhou would go into a talking point as if he had the ability to conjure reality right there on the spot (think Condi Rice times ten).
It was a brazen attempt to do the Jedi mind trick ("these aren't the signs of repression you're looking for"), typical of a country that has grown so big and so powerful that it doesn't even bother answering questions any more. In a few months at the Olympics, we'll be treated to a tour de force exercise of bizarro-world reality-creation--a 12-day multimedia presentation of how we can expect to be treated in the coming decades. China now has the clout to create a facsimile of modernity that conceals a barely-changed authoritarian government with a rapidly diminishing interest in appeasing its weak-willed Democratic clientele. It will be equal parts fascinating and disturbing.
National leaders, like the Senator we'll elect this year in Oregon, will be tasked with managing a wholly new foreign policy challenge. I'd like to know how Steve Novick and Jeff Merkley see the issue and what their approaches would be.
The United States has followed a policy of engagement with the Chinese, believing that trade will force the country to move steadily out of the shadows and into the full light of international participation. It contrasts our policy with countries like North Korea and Burma, where we've tried to use isolation to force countries to change. It's impossible to know what might have happened had we isolated China, but it's becoming increasingly clear that free markets have not delivered other freedoms as widely as we'd hoped throughout the country.
The United States is dependent on China in a number of ways. The Chinese hold over a trillion dollars in US dollars and have been underwriting US debt. US markets are dependent on Chinese manufacturing. And looking forward, we will be dependent on the decisions China makes with regard to the environment. The Olympics will be held in the most toxic environment in history, and that pollution isn't a localized problem--even now, as coal-fired manufacturing is only heating up, Chinese mercury already pollutes the Willamette River. Within China, economic disparity, pollution, and repression are all major issues.
Here's the problem: we need each other. Until the past few years, leaders have apparently thought that our economic and military might gave us the upper hand in the relationship. But, because of it's great value to the US, China is looking less like the tail and more like the tiger in US-Chinese relations. As a result, we seem to be learning that participation goes both ways; in the future, will China bend to the will of current international standards, or will we bend to their new standards?
So here's the questions I'd ask our Senate candidates. Is this economic relationship healthy and sustainable? Does it make the US too vulnerable to China? What would you do to change it? How would you strike a balance between engaging China on issues like the environment and trade and registering US outrage over the repression like we've seen in Tibet? How should the US manage its relationship to China as it evolves inevitably as a dominant world power?
As it stands, the US seems to have only a limited ability to influence Chinese actions. We buy their goods, we covet their markets, and we treat them like a respected member of the international community, overlooking Tibetan repression as we prepare for the Olympics. This seems destined to further marginalize US influence. So what would Merkley and Novick do with this enormously complex challenge?
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Mar 27, '08
typical of a country that has grown so big and so powerful that it doesn't even bother answering questions any more
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's typical great-power behavior. The US swaggers around this way every day and has done so for so long that Americans have come to regard it as normal and acceptable, if they think about it at all. I kind of doubt that most Americans do think about the great-power arrogance of our government. US military bases all around the world? Isn't that, uh, just "normal"? Didn't all those other countries just invite us?
China was a great power for many centuries. The first significant Western engagement with China came at a time when China was slipping quickly into the 'second tier', so the West came to regard that as normal for China. Arguably China is simply reclaiming its once-prominent place in world affairs, and arguably that is the perspective of the Chinese.
The Chinese colonial project in Tibet is fundamentally no different than the Chinese colonial project that has played out for the last 2000 years: military conquest followed by ethnic Chinese moving into "minority" areas and eventually assimilating the locals into the dominant culture. The difference is that we see the colonial project in Tibet being acted out in an age of rapid international communication.
So yes, China is again a great power, and no, it is distinctly not a democratic one. I have no easy answers to the question of how to engage China, but I kind of doubt that sound bites and ritual denunciations will do a lot.
11:26 a.m.
Mar 27, '08
I'm not generally a fan of boycotting the Olympics (and thus punishing athletes) for political purposes - but I think that France made an interesting proposal last week: boycott the opening ceremonies.
The opening ceremony is usually the opportunity for the host country to engage in serious myth-making and showing off. If the world's nations all boycotted it, the showmanship would be dramatically impacted - but the competitions would go on.
Of course, as usual, since the French are for it, the British are against it. We'll see how this plays out.
Mar 27, '08
Hi Jeff,
I heard the same interview and reacted with similar frustration and cynicism. Here's a link to the interview
I agree with Kari in his opposition to an outright boycott of the Olympics. The French idea of boycotting the opening ceremony is a good way to embarrass the Chinese without punishing the athletes, IMHO.
12:09 p.m.
Mar 27, '08
Yes, Jeff you are right on. I've been trying to raise the issue of China for some time. It is not only an issue for our Senate candidates but for all candidates, local, statewide, and legislative, because over the long run we must engage China through our educational system or we will end up engaging them through our military systems. With less than 1% of our K-12 public students studying Mandarin and very few studying abroad in China we just are not preparing our next generations for the challenges China is going to present. I've a website on this issue with lots of info, links and proposals here. Some of the letters I've written to legislators have been post on Daily Kos here. The question I put in online for all the Portland City Club debates is: During the lifetime of today's students China's economy could grow to be 2-3 times the size of the US economy. And they could have a modernized military to match their economy. What does this rise of China mean for Oregon's future? What should we be doing now? And are you satisfied that less than 1% of our public K-12 students study Mandarin?
Mar 27, '08
The U.S. has to decide if it stands for anything in the world other than the profits of multinationals. All these Bush tax breaks did nothing to invest in America. The multinationals like Intel closed their plants in the U.S. and are building like crazy in China. The U.S. looks the other way and nods while China occupies Tibet and destroys its people and culture. World opinion matters more than simple brute force. We should know that now, especially after the Bush years. As a country if we forget who we are and what we believe in, then we are impoverished beyond measure. The next president, who I hope will be Barack Obama, will make it clear that we are not a country that tortures or does covert rendition. That we are a country that keeps habeas corpus and stands with the oppressed everywhere, including when it means calling China to account. China has a huge investment in the U.S. That investment means leverage both ways.
Mar 27, '08
The US shouldn't get up on it's pedestal and announce a boycott of the olympics. What it should do is use the threat of an olympic boycott to bargain hard for real human rights in Tibet.
John
4:06 p.m.
Mar 27, '08
I wouldn't rule out a boycott, personally. The Chinese have made this play for a very specific reason: they want equal footing on the world stage with Europe, North America, Japan and other Asian leaders. But they want it on their own terms. By going to the Olympics, the US sends the implicit message of condoning Chinese action. It would be enormously embarrassing for China if the US sat it out. Sitting out the opening ceremony might be adequate, but it could look either petty or like the usual hand-slap the West gives to China before we admit all is forgiven.
On the other hand, if the media is able to do some work there, we could see benefit in cracking China open for the world to see. But I don't have a huge amount of confidence that it will be anything other than one, long photo op that we'll be complicit in attending.
Mar 27, '08
Obama get tough with China, yeah right. Once he flees Iraq with his tail between his legs everyone else around the world will just laugh at him if he makes any suggestions. Why would China listen to a word he says when he has already proven that he is too cowardly to actually protect human rights with US troops?
4:59 p.m.
Mar 27, '08
On the issue of Tibet and what an appropriate response from the US might be, I urge caution from those of us who know so little about China. We naturally want to help the Tibetans. I do. But China is the key to the 21st century. More than any one issue, like Tibet (or Dafur or Burma or trade or Taiwan or religious freedom or on and on), are at stake in any interaction. As Professor Brad DeLong, thinking about our long term national security, policy says: “Think of it this way: Consider a world that contains one country that is a true superpower. It is preeminent--economically, technologically, politically, culturally, and militarily. But it lies at the east edge of a vast ocean. And across the ocean is another country--a country with more resources in the long-run, a country that looks likely to in the end supplant the current superpower. What should the superpower's long-run national security strategy be? “I think the answer is clear: if possible, the current superpower should embrace its possible successor. It should bind it as closely as possible with ties of blood, commerce, and culture--so that should the emerging superpower come to its full strength, it will to as great an extent possible share the world view of and regard itself as part of the same civilization as its predecessor: Romans to their Greeks.” (See here at end of text and at 7 minutes 25 seconds of the you tube) Constantly trying to bully China to me seems counterproductive. One of the reasons we should be sending significant numbers of our high school and college students to study abroad in China is so that they will know what makes China work. So that they know what issues we can push China on, how far we can push them, and how. It is the big challenge of this century and so far we have done so little in Oregon.
As background on the Tibet-China issue I recommend Peter Hessler’s 1999 Atlantic article “Tibet Through Chinese Eyes” here.
Consider also that Patrick French in his recent NY Times op-ed “He May Be a God, But He’s No Politician” here concluded “The present protests, supported from overseas, will bring only more suffering. China is not a democracy, and it will not budge.”
And, writing of an Olympic boycott over Burma, James Fallows wrote here: “Because the foreign governments understand a point that some foreign editorialists miss: that China as a whole – not just its government but also the great majority of its people — would take such a boycott as a deeply hostile act. “For every one Chinese person who said: “Yes! We respect Foreign Nation X for showing our undemocratic government the importance of human rights in foreign policy!” there would be a thousand more who said this instead: “Those foreigners! They humiliated our nation during the Opium Wars. They stood by while the Japanese humiliated us 70 years ago. And now, as we are preparing to welcome them and show them what we have achieved, they are determined to spoil our great event. That is because they simply cannot stand the idea of our success. Our long drive over the last 25 years should earn us success in the world, and the bastards simply won’t give it to us. We cannot trust them, because they will never accept us.”
Mar 27, '08
I do support a boycott.
As for the athletes, how quickly could the United States throw together an alternative competition -- say, "Freedom Games" in New York City? If you don't bother with a lot of the pomp and circumstance of planned ceremonies, New York already has an excellent public transit system in place that could move visitors with no trouble, Giants Stadium (79,000 seats) could handle soccer, while Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium could do a lot of the track and field events. There's no Olympic Village, but there are a lot of colleges with student housing that will be empty in the summer to accommodate the athletes of any nation that wished to join the boycott.
It would take a lot of people working 24 hours to arrange it, but if the US were to boycott and get a couple of other nations to go along with it ... well, potentially it could snowball, particularly in the western world. Support China at the Olympics, or send your athletes to compete in an alternative competition hosted by the USA.
And yes, of course it would piss off the Chinese. That's the point of a boycott. If they can't handle it, tough. Act like a civilized country and it won't be an issue.
Carter made the right call in boycotting the Moscow Olympics in 1980, and boycotting the Beijing Olympics in light of their appalling behavior in Tibet is the right thing to do today.
Mar 27, '08
I meant to write: If you don't bother with a lot of the pomp and circumstance of planned ceremonies, it's mostly a matter of lining up housing for athletes and venues for competitions.
Mar 27, '08
several years ago there was an op piece in time magazine about china's efforts to liebenstraum. I think that economic liebenstraum is more like it and the western world has to shoulder the long term effects with polluted water and the human rights abuse. we have to as a moral imperative stand up to this and boycott.
Mar 27, '08
Jeff, I'm glad you posted this piece, as I've been thinking of the enormity of China for some time. While the Bushies have squandered U.S. political capital in the Middle East, we have China looming as the world's biggest problem for the next century. I'd like to see the Democrats, from presidential candidates on down, talking tough about China (without getting jingoistic). We can't afford to have bungling Republicans in charge if we are going to deal with China effectively.
Mar 29, '08
First of all, thanks for sharing your insightful analysis of the situation.
I don't believe a boycott will sway China in the least. A dictatorship is going to be unmoved by a symbolic show of political opinion.
It will take real, hard, determined economic action to move China. Or military. But do we really want to become embroiled in another military operation at this point?
Economic change is the only thing, I think, that will motivate China. Boycotting Chinese products would make a meaningful impact. Refusing to buy products from American companies that produce their products in China would make a difference.
Of course, this might prove impossible since nearly everything has some component (if not the entire product) that is produced in China.
Mar 29, '08
What we don't understand about China:
China was once a great nation steeped in its own cultural superiority. It still believes in that superiority, much as the United States believes in its superiority or Britain believed in her superiority. For the Han Chinese, colonializing barbarians is doing the barbarians an immense favor. You are giving them the benefit of superior culture. Consider taking Indian children off their reservations and putting them into American boarding schools. Or consider the concept of bringing democracy to the Middle East by invading Iraq. The great majority of the Chinese population believes this to be true and the Chinese government does everything in its power to sustain this belief. Even Chinese who long for "freedom" and "democracy" believe that Chinese culture is superior to any other culture in the world.
However, much of what China says is mostly for interal consumption, not external consumption. The shadow that overhangs the strong men in Peking is the total collapse of social order that happened between the end of the Qing Dynasty and the restoration of order under the Communists. This was a period of social anarchy, civil war and famine that haunts China's leaders today as the Depression haunts the older generation in the United States. For those people, security in the form of social order, is far more important that human rights. Consider the question of whether the Iraquis are better off today than they were under Saddam.
China's goal seems to be to find a way to improve the standard of living without risking a complete breakdown of order. And yes, I recognize that those in power also have the motive of wanting to remain in power. But there are powerful social forces behind them which may justify their attitude. It is possible, that if the reins of power were allowed to loosen too much, too fast, what you are seeing in Iraq is child's play. They fear that because they have seen it before.
Any policy the US makes regarding China must recognize this reality. We made the mistake of not realizing the potential for social disintegration in Iraq. We really don't want to make that mistake in China.
10:43 a.m.
Mar 29, '08
What we don't understand about China:
China was once a great nation steeped in its own cultural superiority.
I think this is an enormously valuable insight that can be extended to many, if not most, countries on the planet. National pride is the norm, not the exception, and it perversely blinds us to the national pride others might feel about their own country. As a student of South Asia, I watch the way the US deals with India and am shocked to see our leaders constantly assume that Indians see themselves the way we do--as impoverished, illiterate bumpkins just waiting for some intervention by a powerful, intelligent country.
What would the US have done differently in the past five years if leaders had assumed the same about Iraqis?
4:07 p.m.
Mar 29, '08
Anybody who thinks that this type of scenario would be just as good for the athletes knows nothing about elite athletes.
I'm not taking a position here on the Beijing Olympics. I'm just saying, you can't throw together a track/swim meet (much less all the other sports from tennis to basketball to gymnastics, etc.) and expect it to have the same meaning to the athletes who have been training for the Olympics as a goal for their whole lives.
Mar 29, '08
There will not be a boycott of the Chinese Olympics.
The Chinese hold the deed on the American economy, and the Bush administration is doing everything it can to prevent China for calling in the debt.
The corporate sponsors of this year's Olympics all have their manufacturing plants based in China -- a boycott by these corporate sponsors would mean China cutting off these companies from their manufacturing plants.
The entire "free trade will free China" movement has been lead by those who have a direct hand in benefiting financially from the opening of the Chinese economy at the expense of the Chinese people, and this movement, like trickle down economics, just has not worked.
China is like a big mean dog that looks calm and peaceful while at rest, but it likes to bite -- and we've removed the leash and muzzle.
I've got a strong feeling that this year's Olympic games will proceed very much like the Berlin games at the start of World War II: full of pomp, propaganda, and political ideology.
Mar 29, '08
... it's becoming increasingly clear that free markets have not delivered other freedoms as widely as we'd hoped throughout the country.
Hopes for more freedoms were never justified when global corporations were making deals with sweatshop operators.
several years ago there was an op piece in time magazine about china's efforts to liebenstraum
<h2>Did you mean lebensraum (room to live) or liebestraum (dream of love)?</h2>