ANALYSIS/OPINION:
I haven’t read Dr. Henry Kissinger’s latest book, “On China.” But as someone who for most of his adult life has lived in China’s shadow, thinking about and exchanging ideas with students of that civilization, I was interested. But now I leave evaluating the work to scholars, as some have already begun to do.
That has come about because I heard the good doctor recently laying out a strategy for “accommodation” with China. One could excuse the cacophony of bromides — many fallacious — Dr. Kissinger trotted out in a recent wide-ranging NPR interview. Time was short, the interlocutor unskilled, and the subject matter vast. But here is the crux of what he had to say:
“Through thousands of years of Chinese history, I know no example where outside pressures about the domestic structure of China produced domestic changes in, in China.”
This is stupefying, a misconception so wrong it puts into question any analysis Dr. Kissinger might otherwise make. In fact, although obviously a most original civilization, China nevertheless — like all other societies — has been affected, often in revolutionary fashion, by outside forces. Space prohibits even an outline of such convoluted episodes. But let me cite three chronologically dispersed examples:
• In the first century A.D., Indian Buddhism entered China. It not only upended Chinese metaphysics but introduced such everyday artifacts as bridges, tea and the chair.
• As a result of a humiliating defeat by the British in the First Opium War (1839-42), Taiping, a heterogeneous Christian sect, led two decades of bloody revolt. Before it was subdued — by China’s “alien” imperial rulers, the Manchu, with the help of foreign military — state levies shifted from land to trade and military power from central armies to regional warlords. Slavery, polygamy and foot-binding were banned if not eliminated. Most importantly, the Taiping reaction to foreign intervention ended China’s isolation.
• In 1949, after decades of Japanese invasion, the Chinese communists established a unified government modeled on the Soviet Union, to be massively aided for almost two decades by Moscow. While conventional wisdom now holds that the Chinese communists have shed all but the rhetorical trappings of Marxism-Leninism, the economy remains largely in government hands, a complete break with China’s centuries of market economics. (That concept, ironically, was passed to Europeans as laissez-faire by late-16th-century European Jesuits in Beijing!)
Dr. Kissinger’s formulation is no blooper.
It underpins his proposed strategy for dealing with Beijings growing power. It equates to his 1970s call for “detente” in the Cold War. That was to be an acceptance of Soviet power in exchange for a hoped-for extended period of relaxed tension. That strategy proved precarious until Moscow imploded in 1990 — in no small part as a result of the more confrontational tactics adopted by President Reagan.
Historical analogies are misleading and often dangerous, but can be marginally useful. China today does constitute a somewhat similar problem. While no sane person in the West and Japan advocates military engagement, not to recognize that American interests are jeopardized by an increasingly powerful, hostile China is to ignore reality.
Ignoring reality, indeed, has been until now Washington’s modus operandi:
• The U.S. has made great efforts to bring China into the highest world councils, with Beijing responding by courting pariah regimes that threaten peace and stability.
• Washington has pursued free trade and investment with China, while Beijing responds with unfair trade practices, protection for state corporations and markets and financial manipulation.
• Washington has sought open exchange of military information and provided security for an expanding China trade, but Beijing rejects transparency and secretly pursues a rapid military buildup against an unidentified enemy.
These American policies have strengthened the power and influence of a highly vulnerable Chinese regime, one facing great economic ambiguities and unpredictable political challenges.
Washington is now re-examining how to restrain what could well be a formidable new aggressive power. It must not repeat the long prelude to World War II, when East Asia storm signals were largely ignored — then too involving a burgeoning commercial relationship with a rising Asian power, Japan.
Avoiding a repeat of mistakes requires extensive, intensive and knowledgeable debate about Beijing’s capacities and goals — and Americas abilities to meet them.
Dr. Kissinger contributes little to this gargantuan undertaking.
• Sol Sanders, veteran foreign correspondent and analyst, writes weekly on the convergence of politics, business and economics. He can be reached at sol.sanders@cox.net. He also blogs at https://yeoldecrabb.wordpress.com.
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