I agree with your conclusion, that the Yanks will try to delay losing their premier place, and when China becomes larger, the Yanks will try to keep the dollar as the international standard. I'll be glad when they all get over their aggressiveness and just to try to all get rich together.
I was particularly taken by your statement "What is imperialism? The essence of imperialism is the conquest and enslavement of other peoples." I recently ran a series of queries through Deepseek on slavery, seeking a cross-temporal, cross-jurisdictional examination of slavery. These were the key takeaways:
1. Ancient China: Slavery was relatively minor in terms of workforce percentage and economic impact compared to other societies. It ranged from less than 5% to, at its highest (during the Mongol reign of the Yuan dynasty) less than 10%.
2. Ottoman Empire: Slavery was significant, particularly in domestic and military roles, but the economy relied more on free labor and the timar system. It was more extensive than in China but less so than in Rome or Britain. It ranged from 10 - 20% of the workforce.
3. Ancient Greece and Rome: Slavery was more extensive and economically critical, but still less so than in British colonies or the American South. It ranged from 20 - 40% of the workforce.
4. America (pre-Civil War): Slavery was highly extensive and economically central, forming the backbone of the Southern economy, accounting for 33% of the workforce.
5. Britain (including colonies): When colonial slavery is included, Britain's reliance on slavery was comparable to or even greater than that of the American South. The economic benefits from colonial slavery were immense and central to Britain's global power and industrialization. It ranged from 20 - 30% of the workforce.
I changed the translation from "enslavement" to "subjugation" though, to better reflect the original meaning of Mr. Shan. But yes, slavery almost disappeared after maybe 1000 BC
The Chinese really don't take enough credit for this. I don't know about you, but whenever the topic of slavery is brought up with Americans or Westerners, the response I've encountered is invariably, oh, we were wrong to do it, but then everyone then did it too, so you can't blame us for having done it then. When, actually, as it turns out, that's not true.
This is part of another excellent essay by Zhang Weiying on the topic. Essentially, Graham Allison is a dope and trapped in his own limited perception of the larger issues…
“The currently widespread "Thucydides Trap" mindset is a profoundly destructive notion that could mislead the country. We must free ourselves from this intellectual constraint. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), a conflict between the Athenian and Spartan alliances, was not the inevitable result of the rise of a new power, as Thucydides claimed. The war was not inevitable or natural. Instead, it resulted from political leaders' arrogance, resentment, and vengeance-driven attitudes and their ignorance, misjudgments, and third-party provocations. Athens’ excessive greed and unrealistic goals ultimately led to its catastrophic failure in the war.
Donald Kagan, a Yale University scholar, conducted in-depth research on the Peloponnesian War. He found that the politicians involved lacked foresight, mistakenly believing they could achieve significant gains at low costs. They relied on past experiences to craft strategies without adequately accounting for the risks of misjudgments and miscalculations, nor did they prepare contingency plans. Thus, the war's outbreak was neither inevitable nor the result of irresistible forces; it arose from specific decisions made in a particular context.
Similarly, I believe that our current and future international environment depends on our choices and actions.”
Thank you so much for providing the translation! The essay provides insight into an important tranche of Chinese elite thinking on questions of the Chinese role during its ascension towards one of the major players in the world.
A few points are worth commenting on, and I apologize a priori in taking a critical view. In part because 单伟建 provides key insights into a crucial aspect of the Chinese psyche — its cultural affinity towards introspection and lack of universalizing and exploitive instincts, one often minimized in press and academic punditry when discussing security concerns of Chinese economic ascension; I may, in my comment, unintentionally brush this point aside. I apologize also because I am skeptical of the value of what I write, despite its length.
单伟建's essay, at its root, speculates about the nature of nations' martial instincts. He contrasts empire nations like the US (UK and historical empires) with China and highlights facts that the former have not only taken colonies, but have pursued imperial and territorial expansion through war and subjugation.
On the other hand, Chinese territorial constituency came to be through 秦始皇's unification (统一) and incorporating (纳入) the territories conquered (征服) by Manchurian and Mongolian invaders by throwing off the yoke from the Qing and Yuan dynasties. Instead, Chinese history consists predominantly of protectionist nation-building and assimilating external cultural elements that preserved not only its own identity but absorbed and accommodated non-Han people into its national boundary.
He attributes the key differences not only to Han culture (汉文化), but also the historical impact of western geopolitical struggle for primacy on the western psyche: Han, inclusive and adaptive, the west, relying on power and subjugation. He uses this point to posit that, with the Chinese people's propensity for and connection to its cultural history, when it comes to Allison's Thucydides Trap, China will have little appetite for conflict.
I understand why this point of view is not only compelling but is important to make sense of the Chinese role in geopolitics as well as the current geopolitical atmosphere towards China. Speaking personally, the uncanny fixation on the threat arising solely from ideological differences between the Chinese governance model — itself hardly clear in the mind of your average 西方人 — and its western counterparts seems to provide ample evidence of paranoia inspired by the western history of power displacement through war. Allison's treatise is itself an embodiment of the so-called western thinking, and its acceptance into the mainstream elite thinking, a further justification in positing a Macbethian hysteria of might displacing might as the only way powers deal with one another. In fact, Iza Ding references and writes to dispel this concern in her essay "Goodbye, Gibbon".
On the other hand, it seems hardly a foregone conclusion that China's economic growth will stop short of overtaking the US and the Global North. However, the same generation that grew up in humiliating poverty, where a mechanical pencil from Japan was looked upon with salivating envy, suddenly found themselves poised to be the 出头鸟 of world power. How do we not become, to the rest of the world, what the Americans were to us? There is some eagerness to quell this potential unsettling concern with some cultural and historical assurances: we were great but we never plundered.
I struggle with my inclination to accept 单伟建's viewpoint, pushing back — at least as the sole explanation of the present — for the following two reasons.
First, I take issue with the fact that Chinese people are not warring people, which has also been one of your central thesis for some time. Not because I think the current generation of Chinese people are warring, but that the explanation of this phenomenon is cultural in nature. In the same vein, European history is not driven entirely by cultural forces. Let's acknowledge first that "culture (文化)" does mean something slightly different to the Chinese as it does for Anglophone readers; the Chinese colloquial 文化 incorporates, among others, ethics arising from deontology, political philosophy and social justice and not just social sensibility from moral narratives alla Walter Fischer. Even so, one can hardly disentangle philosophical and cultural development with historical contingencies and economic forces. How did the same cultural thread produce a Caesar and a Trajan but also a Cincinnatus?
Chinese culture, not monolithic to say the least, is pacific and devoid of general universalizing tendencies, but belief in the universality and manifest destiny of its culture and civilizing influences are not the only driver of war. Panhellenism, which motivated Alexander of Macedon's early campaigns against Persia and Thebes, was more orientated towards consolidating Greek identity and territories than about proselytizing Hellenistic culture and governance. Genghis Khan, similarly, began his military conquest with a desire to unify Mongol tribes and consolidate Mongolian identity, with his subsequent expansions driven by economic — not universalizing — motives. Yes, western imperialism was conducted on the horseback of the White Man's Burden, but how much of that ideology is cultural, and how much of it, a post hoc whitewashing of economic motives?
That is all to say, China's future is as much a product of its past as its present. To best position itself as a force of peace and universal justice — ideals that I recognize and also applaud in Chinese vision for itself in the future world order — China the society, governing elites, and society must not rest on the comfort of its history and culture, but also acknowledge the uncertainty from the other forces that may require of China, in its entirety, a steadfast adherence to peace and cooperation. Forces like American expansionism and nationalism and the US's social, economic and geopolitical motives. Forces like resource, especially energy, scarcity from climate change that can deepen the fracture of the world along national and ideological lines. It is unclear from this essay that there is a recognition of the real danger that economic and security interests have on the stability and peace of the US-China relations. It cites a rational actor model of US foreign stance, but entertains no serious consideration of a volatile departure from its own geopolitical order that manifest not in US isolationism but pariah aggression, unbound by norms and interests. Of course, we take comfort in the seemingly bumbling and transactional nature of the Trump performance thus far as an indication of the chaotic next four years, but what of the fallout after Trump? It seems plausible that the US domestic order is disrupted and its old political milieu shattered. I am not so confident that the subsequent consolidation maintains some geopolitical continuity in nature and behavior with the present.
Second, it is important, too, to recognize that war is not the only manifestation of power that can harm and subjugate people. Here, I am thinking about economic and soft cultural power. I will focus on economic power, since I know even less about the latter. My main concern here is not that there isn't a move towards better ESG practices in Chinese overseas projects; it seems to be improving, albeit still at a crucial cross-roads, subject to the fallout of the immediate US actions in the international economic order. My concern is that there is no popular and commercial recognition of the nuance of Chinese overseas ventures within China, and that there is a perception that 一带一路 is seen as China's gift to the Global South. This is likely because of the need for such an image within China but also because of the anglophone reporting — much of it narrow at best, untruthful at worst — of Chinese footprint on the Global South, together pushing the Chinese understanding of the Chinese impact on the world towards the very picture of unadulterated beneficence.
This view, unaccompanied by some soberness, can lead to a further disconnect between China's economic achievements overseas and the lack of positive Chinese perception from the world. This outcome, for me, can be the basis for two negative reactions: 1) a turn towards greater isolationism and 2) selective retreat from good ESG governance and derailment from global ESG standards. It is in (2) where I think the Chinese cultural character can do the most harm, not only to the image of China as a force for good, but also as a force for exploitation and corruption.
Ostensibly 单伟建's essay is not about China's economic influence. Ostensibly its thesis is focused on China's historical and cultural distance from warring culture to challenge the conclusion that war between China and the US is destiny. However, some popular responses on the Chinese sphere, like this essay, necessarily involve an affirmation of China as an equal partner and stakeholder in leading and shaping the international order, and in its pathos, this affirmation often adopts two simplistic notions of exploitation: political and economic subjugation. My sense is that little attention is paid, by ways of press coverage, official information making, or public conversations, to the various ways China's involvement in overseas infrastructure development had and continues to have adverse outcomes for the host countries that can be seen in a more general light of economic and political exploitation. Perhaps I need to read more pundits from elite circles; I will admit that. If I am right to point to this dearth of depth, I only wish for the Chinese elites in academic and political circles to drive the conversation towards greater nuance, but also towards greater humility and appreciation for the world that China will one day lead.
Chinese warships conducting military exercises with insufficient warning off the coasts of Australia and NZ smacks of aggressive future warlike behaviour
«a crucial aspect of the Chinese psyche — its cultural affinity towards introspection and lack of universalizing and exploitive instincts»
That seems a huge leap of optimism to me -- a long time ago various chinese dynasties conquered and assimilated various foreign kingdoms in the south and west, and China has been split in ferociously "warring states" for loot several times.
it is instead easy to see why chinese states have been far more often invaded than invaders: the core chinese area of the Central Plains is by far the most valuable part of East Asia and is surrounded by lower values areas like the barren and eartquake-prone mountains of Japan, the cold steppes of the north-west, the sparse prairies of the central north, the brutal deserts of the west, the cold barren peaks and plateaus of the south-east, the tropical jungles of the south.
No surprise that manchus, mongols, japanese, turkmen, tibetans, and the western powers with their oceangoing ships, have all repeatedly tried and often succeeded to invade and conquer large parts of China, their original areas are a lot less pleasant than the Central Plains.
But also in China the environment while being more pleasant and in particular more productive than that of any surrounding area it is still not entirely favorable: two continuously recurrent themes in chinese culture (that you surely know better than me) since the most ancient times are "mountains and rivers" and relatedly floods, and more generally natural disasters. The states of China have since the most ancient times drawn their "mandate of heaven" from their ability and willingness to do flood control and more generally disaster relief.
So a productive environment but also one with troubles.
«breeds a self-complacent culture»
Good point and that applies especially to the elites (and here I refer to my usual observation that since most PRC state and CPC officials are now property rentiers the future of the PRC will not be as bright as the recent past).
«Looking around the world, the only one that may challenge its hegemonic status is the rising China. This makes the United States uneasy.»
This investor seems only to consider mostly conquest and colonies as imperialism, but the USA imperialism is primarily commercial and suzerain, it is a giant "East Indies Company".
The rise of the PRC economy is *intrinsically* ("objectively") a threat to the USA business empire, because the largest economy in a trading zone dominates it, becomes its center, as China has been the center of East Asia for many thousands of years, because other economies adapt to it instead of vice-versa. Businesses in other countries want and need to trade with the biggest economy and will do whatever it takes to achieve that.
This has happened to Europe, Japan etc. w.r.t. the USA, and has happened in significant part to China-PRC too up to now. USA brands became global brands, Hollywood became the global entertainment center, NYC became the global financial center, american "english" became the global language, USA ideology became the globally dominant ideology, etc.
What the USA business executives and investors want is to ensure that China-PRC does not do the same to them as what happened to Europe etc.; it does not matter whether China-PRC government wants to do it, or wants to avoid it, or it will just happen spontaneously; as long as China-PRC becomes and remains the biggest global economy it will be its center because that is how these things work.
So the USA government and the oligarchs who "sponsor" seem to have decided that while being the center of the whole global system was very good, being the center of just "the west" as during the 1st Cold War was also good, and they seem quite rational in wanting to begin a 2nd Cold War and first isolate China-PRC in a new "second world", to dominate the theoretically non-aligned "third world", and then surround and breakup China-PRC to prevent it from being an ongoing risk.
"Opening and dividing China", The World Today, May 1992:
«Needless to say, not all these regions are like to have the same views on foreign policy questions. Coastal regions would be less willing to see relations with the United States deteriorate, or take a hard line with Honk Kong or Taiwan. Worries over strategies of "peaceful evolution" pursued by outsiders would be different if one thought of Islamic, Mongolian, or Taiwanese ideals. In sum, domestic reform in China is helping create several Chinas, with potentially different foreign policies. [...] As the Soviet empire collapses, it is time to ask far-reaching questions about the shape of the Chinese empire. Of course there are major differences between the two cases, but there are nevertheless increasing signs that as China continues its economic reforms and opens to the outside world, it will also run the risk of fragmenting.»
For more than fifty years American foreign policy has sought to prevent the emergence of other great powers"
«The now infamous draft of the Pentagon's Defense Planning Guidance (prepared under the direction of the current undersecretary of defense for policy, Paul Wolfowitz), which was leaked to The New York Times in 1992, merely stated in undiplomatic language the logic that has long informed Washington's strategy. The United States, it argued, must continue to dominate the international system and thus to "discourage" the "advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or ... even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." [...] the United States must not only impose a military protectorate over Europe and East Asia — regions composed of wealthy and technologically sophisticated states — but also safeguard Europe's and East Asia's worldwide interests, so that they need not develop military forces capable of "global power projection." [...]
If the United States adopted a national energy strategy, it could free itself from dependence on Persian Gulf oil. Nevertheless, Washington assumes responsibility for stabilizing the region because Western Europe and Japan are heavily dependent on its oil, and because soon China, owing to rapid economic growth, will be as well — and America wants to discourage those powers from developing the means to protect that resource for themselves.»
The PRC has fought wars with India, Tibet, Vietnam, Korea and a huge internal civil war where (checks notes) 40 million people died. This is since 1945. These conflicts are missing from this essay. Then today there are territorial arguments with Japan over diaoyudao, Vietnam and the Philippines over the south china sea, and of course Taiwan.
China is a land power and not a sea power. This means projection of power is limited to neighbours. But this view of china as a peaceful nation is a complete fantasy only possible in a total vaccum of critical thought.
Except it's only half-baked critical thought heavily influenced by your own bias and lack of understanding of historical proportionality.
Ultimately you are free to believe in your own half-baked critical thinking as you wish, but since it's on my site, it's my obligation to show some potential areas of research for you.
About the civil wars that you claimed to claim lives of 40 million people (not true at all, but let's just assume that's true), it only serves to prove our point rather than disapproving: https://www.china-translated.com/i/154886021/civil-wars
You bring up a great point Robert, many of China's largest conflicts have either been fought internally or as a defense against foreign invasion/subversion.
This may be an oversimplified perspective, but from my Western perspective it seems that China has also for the most part always been a large enough realm with enough resources to form it's own gravity and internal world. Hence it has little need to look outside it's own borders for conquest, focusing on trade and some flow between cultures.
The Japanese took away Taiwan from Qing Dynasty in 1895, Republic of China took them back post-WW2, according to Cairo Conference and agreed upon by Roosevelt and Churchill.
The British first “leased” HK island, in 1841 and gradually expanded their possessions.That lease expired peacefully in 1997, and China took HK back.
What about them?
Too many of the arguments people used to portray China as aggressive stem from problems caused by colonisers and invaders in the first place. This house of mirrors is fabulous.
I agree with your conclusion, that the Yanks will try to delay losing their premier place, and when China becomes larger, the Yanks will try to keep the dollar as the international standard. I'll be glad when they all get over their aggressiveness and just to try to all get rich together.
I was particularly taken by your statement "What is imperialism? The essence of imperialism is the conquest and enslavement of other peoples." I recently ran a series of queries through Deepseek on slavery, seeking a cross-temporal, cross-jurisdictional examination of slavery. These were the key takeaways:
1. Ancient China: Slavery was relatively minor in terms of workforce percentage and economic impact compared to other societies. It ranged from less than 5% to, at its highest (during the Mongol reign of the Yuan dynasty) less than 10%.
2. Ottoman Empire: Slavery was significant, particularly in domestic and military roles, but the economy relied more on free labor and the timar system. It was more extensive than in China but less so than in Rome or Britain. It ranged from 10 - 20% of the workforce.
3. Ancient Greece and Rome: Slavery was more extensive and economically critical, but still less so than in British colonies or the American South. It ranged from 20 - 40% of the workforce.
4. America (pre-Civil War): Slavery was highly extensive and economically central, forming the backbone of the Southern economy, accounting for 33% of the workforce.
5. Britain (including colonies): When colonial slavery is included, Britain's reliance on slavery was comparable to or even greater than that of the American South. The economic benefits from colonial slavery were immense and central to Britain's global power and industrialization. It ranged from 20 - 30% of the workforce.
I changed the translation from "enslavement" to "subjugation" though, to better reflect the original meaning of Mr. Shan. But yes, slavery almost disappeared after maybe 1000 BC
The Chinese really don't take enough credit for this. I don't know about you, but whenever the topic of slavery is brought up with Americans or Westerners, the response I've encountered is invariably, oh, we were wrong to do it, but then everyone then did it too, so you can't blame us for having done it then. When, actually, as it turns out, that's not true.
This is part of another excellent essay by Zhang Weiying on the topic. Essentially, Graham Allison is a dope and trapped in his own limited perception of the larger issues…
“The currently widespread "Thucydides Trap" mindset is a profoundly destructive notion that could mislead the country. We must free ourselves from this intellectual constraint. The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE), a conflict between the Athenian and Spartan alliances, was not the inevitable result of the rise of a new power, as Thucydides claimed. The war was not inevitable or natural. Instead, it resulted from political leaders' arrogance, resentment, and vengeance-driven attitudes and their ignorance, misjudgments, and third-party provocations. Athens’ excessive greed and unrealistic goals ultimately led to its catastrophic failure in the war.
Donald Kagan, a Yale University scholar, conducted in-depth research on the Peloponnesian War. He found that the politicians involved lacked foresight, mistakenly believing they could achieve significant gains at low costs. They relied on past experiences to craft strategies without adequately accounting for the risks of misjudgments and miscalculations, nor did they prepare contingency plans. Thus, the war's outbreak was neither inevitable nor the result of irresistible forces; it arose from specific decisions made in a particular context.
Similarly, I believe that our current and future international environment depends on our choices and actions.”
Zhang Weiying.
Thank you so much for providing the translation! The essay provides insight into an important tranche of Chinese elite thinking on questions of the Chinese role during its ascension towards one of the major players in the world.
A few points are worth commenting on, and I apologize a priori in taking a critical view. In part because 单伟建 provides key insights into a crucial aspect of the Chinese psyche — its cultural affinity towards introspection and lack of universalizing and exploitive instincts, one often minimized in press and academic punditry when discussing security concerns of Chinese economic ascension; I may, in my comment, unintentionally brush this point aside. I apologize also because I am skeptical of the value of what I write, despite its length.
单伟建's essay, at its root, speculates about the nature of nations' martial instincts. He contrasts empire nations like the US (UK and historical empires) with China and highlights facts that the former have not only taken colonies, but have pursued imperial and territorial expansion through war and subjugation.
On the other hand, Chinese territorial constituency came to be through 秦始皇's unification (统一) and incorporating (纳入) the territories conquered (征服) by Manchurian and Mongolian invaders by throwing off the yoke from the Qing and Yuan dynasties. Instead, Chinese history consists predominantly of protectionist nation-building and assimilating external cultural elements that preserved not only its own identity but absorbed and accommodated non-Han people into its national boundary.
He attributes the key differences not only to Han culture (汉文化), but also the historical impact of western geopolitical struggle for primacy on the western psyche: Han, inclusive and adaptive, the west, relying on power and subjugation. He uses this point to posit that, with the Chinese people's propensity for and connection to its cultural history, when it comes to Allison's Thucydides Trap, China will have little appetite for conflict.
I understand why this point of view is not only compelling but is important to make sense of the Chinese role in geopolitics as well as the current geopolitical atmosphere towards China. Speaking personally, the uncanny fixation on the threat arising solely from ideological differences between the Chinese governance model — itself hardly clear in the mind of your average 西方人 — and its western counterparts seems to provide ample evidence of paranoia inspired by the western history of power displacement through war. Allison's treatise is itself an embodiment of the so-called western thinking, and its acceptance into the mainstream elite thinking, a further justification in positing a Macbethian hysteria of might displacing might as the only way powers deal with one another. In fact, Iza Ding references and writes to dispel this concern in her essay "Goodbye, Gibbon".
On the other hand, it seems hardly a foregone conclusion that China's economic growth will stop short of overtaking the US and the Global North. However, the same generation that grew up in humiliating poverty, where a mechanical pencil from Japan was looked upon with salivating envy, suddenly found themselves poised to be the 出头鸟 of world power. How do we not become, to the rest of the world, what the Americans were to us? There is some eagerness to quell this potential unsettling concern with some cultural and historical assurances: we were great but we never plundered.
I struggle with my inclination to accept 单伟建's viewpoint, pushing back — at least as the sole explanation of the present — for the following two reasons.
First, I take issue with the fact that Chinese people are not warring people, which has also been one of your central thesis for some time. Not because I think the current generation of Chinese people are warring, but that the explanation of this phenomenon is cultural in nature. In the same vein, European history is not driven entirely by cultural forces. Let's acknowledge first that "culture (文化)" does mean something slightly different to the Chinese as it does for Anglophone readers; the Chinese colloquial 文化 incorporates, among others, ethics arising from deontology, political philosophy and social justice and not just social sensibility from moral narratives alla Walter Fischer. Even so, one can hardly disentangle philosophical and cultural development with historical contingencies and economic forces. How did the same cultural thread produce a Caesar and a Trajan but also a Cincinnatus?
Chinese culture, not monolithic to say the least, is pacific and devoid of general universalizing tendencies, but belief in the universality and manifest destiny of its culture and civilizing influences are not the only driver of war. Panhellenism, which motivated Alexander of Macedon's early campaigns against Persia and Thebes, was more orientated towards consolidating Greek identity and territories than about proselytizing Hellenistic culture and governance. Genghis Khan, similarly, began his military conquest with a desire to unify Mongol tribes and consolidate Mongolian identity, with his subsequent expansions driven by economic — not universalizing — motives. Yes, western imperialism was conducted on the horseback of the White Man's Burden, but how much of that ideology is cultural, and how much of it, a post hoc whitewashing of economic motives?
That is all to say, China's future is as much a product of its past as its present. To best position itself as a force of peace and universal justice — ideals that I recognize and also applaud in Chinese vision for itself in the future world order — China the society, governing elites, and society must not rest on the comfort of its history and culture, but also acknowledge the uncertainty from the other forces that may require of China, in its entirety, a steadfast adherence to peace and cooperation. Forces like American expansionism and nationalism and the US's social, economic and geopolitical motives. Forces like resource, especially energy, scarcity from climate change that can deepen the fracture of the world along national and ideological lines. It is unclear from this essay that there is a recognition of the real danger that economic and security interests have on the stability and peace of the US-China relations. It cites a rational actor model of US foreign stance, but entertains no serious consideration of a volatile departure from its own geopolitical order that manifest not in US isolationism but pariah aggression, unbound by norms and interests. Of course, we take comfort in the seemingly bumbling and transactional nature of the Trump performance thus far as an indication of the chaotic next four years, but what of the fallout after Trump? It seems plausible that the US domestic order is disrupted and its old political milieu shattered. I am not so confident that the subsequent consolidation maintains some geopolitical continuity in nature and behavior with the present.
Second, it is important, too, to recognize that war is not the only manifestation of power that can harm and subjugate people. Here, I am thinking about economic and soft cultural power. I will focus on economic power, since I know even less about the latter. My main concern here is not that there isn't a move towards better ESG practices in Chinese overseas projects; it seems to be improving, albeit still at a crucial cross-roads, subject to the fallout of the immediate US actions in the international economic order. My concern is that there is no popular and commercial recognition of the nuance of Chinese overseas ventures within China, and that there is a perception that 一带一路 is seen as China's gift to the Global South. This is likely because of the need for such an image within China but also because of the anglophone reporting — much of it narrow at best, untruthful at worst — of Chinese footprint on the Global South, together pushing the Chinese understanding of the Chinese impact on the world towards the very picture of unadulterated beneficence.
This view, unaccompanied by some soberness, can lead to a further disconnect between China's economic achievements overseas and the lack of positive Chinese perception from the world. This outcome, for me, can be the basis for two negative reactions: 1) a turn towards greater isolationism and 2) selective retreat from good ESG governance and derailment from global ESG standards. It is in (2) where I think the Chinese cultural character can do the most harm, not only to the image of China as a force for good, but also as a force for exploitation and corruption.
Ostensibly 单伟建's essay is not about China's economic influence. Ostensibly its thesis is focused on China's historical and cultural distance from warring culture to challenge the conclusion that war between China and the US is destiny. However, some popular responses on the Chinese sphere, like this essay, necessarily involve an affirmation of China as an equal partner and stakeholder in leading and shaping the international order, and in its pathos, this affirmation often adopts two simplistic notions of exploitation: political and economic subjugation. My sense is that little attention is paid, by ways of press coverage, official information making, or public conversations, to the various ways China's involvement in overseas infrastructure development had and continues to have adverse outcomes for the host countries that can be seen in a more general light of economic and political exploitation. Perhaps I need to read more pundits from elite circles; I will admit that. If I am right to point to this dearth of depth, I only wish for the Chinese elites in academic and political circles to drive the conversation towards greater nuance, but also towards greater humility and appreciation for the world that China will one day lead.
Chinese warships conducting military exercises with insufficient warning off the coasts of Australia and NZ smacks of aggressive future warlike behaviour
I think it's a form of protest against an Australian intrusion a week ago: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202502/1328364.shtml
«a crucial aspect of the Chinese psyche — its cultural affinity towards introspection and lack of universalizing and exploitive instincts»
That seems a huge leap of optimism to me -- a long time ago various chinese dynasties conquered and assimilated various foreign kingdoms in the south and west, and China has been split in ferociously "warring states" for loot several times.
it is instead easy to see why chinese states have been far more often invaded than invaders: the core chinese area of the Central Plains is by far the most valuable part of East Asia and is surrounded by lower values areas like the barren and eartquake-prone mountains of Japan, the cold steppes of the north-west, the sparse prairies of the central north, the brutal deserts of the west, the cold barren peaks and plateaus of the south-east, the tropical jungles of the south.
No surprise that manchus, mongols, japanese, turkmen, tibetans, and the western powers with their oceangoing ships, have all repeatedly tried and often succeeded to invade and conquer large parts of China, their original areas are a lot less pleasant than the Central Plains.
Exactly. And a pleasant environment breeds a self-complacent culture
«And a pleasant environment»
But also in China the environment while being more pleasant and in particular more productive than that of any surrounding area it is still not entirely favorable: two continuously recurrent themes in chinese culture (that you surely know better than me) since the most ancient times are "mountains and rivers" and relatedly floods, and more generally natural disasters. The states of China have since the most ancient times drawn their "mandate of heaven" from their ability and willingness to do flood control and more generally disaster relief.
So a productive environment but also one with troubles.
«breeds a self-complacent culture»
Good point and that applies especially to the elites (and here I refer to my usual observation that since most PRC state and CPC officials are now property rentiers the future of the PRC will not be as bright as the recent past).
Thank you for sharing this eye opening article Robert 🙏
«Looking around the world, the only one that may challenge its hegemonic status is the rising China. This makes the United States uneasy.»
This investor seems only to consider mostly conquest and colonies as imperialism, but the USA imperialism is primarily commercial and suzerain, it is a giant "East Indies Company".
The rise of the PRC economy is *intrinsically* ("objectively") a threat to the USA business empire, because the largest economy in a trading zone dominates it, becomes its center, as China has been the center of East Asia for many thousands of years, because other economies adapt to it instead of vice-versa. Businesses in other countries want and need to trade with the biggest economy and will do whatever it takes to achieve that.
This has happened to Europe, Japan etc. w.r.t. the USA, and has happened in significant part to China-PRC too up to now. USA brands became global brands, Hollywood became the global entertainment center, NYC became the global financial center, american "english" became the global language, USA ideology became the globally dominant ideology, etc.
What the USA business executives and investors want is to ensure that China-PRC does not do the same to them as what happened to Europe etc.; it does not matter whether China-PRC government wants to do it, or wants to avoid it, or it will just happen spontaneously; as long as China-PRC becomes and remains the biggest global economy it will be its center because that is how these things work.
So the USA government and the oligarchs who "sponsor" seem to have decided that while being the center of the whole global system was very good, being the center of just "the west" as during the 1st Cold War was also good, and they seem quite rational in wanting to begin a 2nd Cold War and first isolate China-PRC in a new "second world", to dominate the theoretically non-aligned "third world", and then surround and breakup China-PRC to prevent it from being an ongoing risk.
«isolate China-PRC in a new "second world", to dominate the theoretically non-aligned "third world", and then surround and breakup China-PRC»
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40396396
"Opening and dividing China", The World Today, May 1992:
«Needless to say, not all these regions are like to have the same views on foreign policy questions. Coastal regions would be less willing to see relations with the United States deteriorate, or take a hard line with Honk Kong or Taiwan. Worries over strategies of "peaceful evolution" pursued by outsiders would be different if one thought of Islamic, Mongolian, or Taiwanese ideals. In sum, domestic reform in China is helping create several Chinas, with potentially different foreign policies. [...] As the Soviet empire collapses, it is time to ask far-reaching questions about the shape of the Chinese empire. Of course there are major differences between the two cases, but there are nevertheless increasing signs that as China continues its economic reforms and opens to the outside world, it will also run the risk of fragmenting.»
«to prevent it from being an ongoing risk.»
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/01/a-new-grand-strategy/376471/
"A New Grandi Strategy
For more than fifty years American foreign policy has sought to prevent the emergence of other great powers"
«The now infamous draft of the Pentagon's Defense Planning Guidance (prepared under the direction of the current undersecretary of defense for policy, Paul Wolfowitz), which was leaked to The New York Times in 1992, merely stated in undiplomatic language the logic that has long informed Washington's strategy. The United States, it argued, must continue to dominate the international system and thus to "discourage" the "advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or ... even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." [...] the United States must not only impose a military protectorate over Europe and East Asia — regions composed of wealthy and technologically sophisticated states — but also safeguard Europe's and East Asia's worldwide interests, so that they need not develop military forces capable of "global power projection." [...]
If the United States adopted a national energy strategy, it could free itself from dependence on Persian Gulf oil. Nevertheless, Washington assumes responsibility for stabilizing the region because Western Europe and Japan are heavily dependent on its oil, and because soon China, owing to rapid economic growth, will be as well — and America wants to discourage those powers from developing the means to protect that resource for themselves.»
This is a brilliant essay. Timely and spot on.
Surely the true and real answer will be known in 50 years time..?
I guess 20 years will be enough of a test
The PRC has fought wars with India, Tibet, Vietnam, Korea and a huge internal civil war where (checks notes) 40 million people died. This is since 1945. These conflicts are missing from this essay. Then today there are territorial arguments with Japan over diaoyudao, Vietnam and the Philippines over the south china sea, and of course Taiwan.
China is a land power and not a sea power. This means projection of power is limited to neighbours. But this view of china as a peaceful nation is a complete fantasy only possible in a total vaccum of critical thought.
Except it's only half-baked critical thought heavily influenced by your own bias and lack of understanding of historical proportionality.
Ultimately you are free to believe in your own half-baked critical thinking as you wish, but since it's on my site, it's my obligation to show some potential areas of research for you.
About the civil wars that you claimed to claim lives of 40 million people (not true at all, but let's just assume that's true), it only serves to prove our point rather than disapproving: https://www.china-translated.com/i/154886021/civil-wars
About Vietnam and Korea: https://open.substack.com/pub/robertwoo/p/q-and-a-to-is-taiwan-only-the-first?r=1fe6hf&selection=da492952-d91f-4e2b-abf3-18a425349887&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web
About Tibet: https://open.substack.com/pub/robertwoo/p/q-and-a-to-is-taiwan-only-the-first?r=1fe6hf&selection=b44d9d9b-53f7-4877-89da-45287fdbd463&utm_campaign=post-share-selection&utm_medium=web
You bring up a great point Robert, many of China's largest conflicts have either been fought internally or as a defense against foreign invasion/subversion.
This may be an oversimplified perspective, but from my Western perspective it seems that China has also for the most part always been a large enough realm with enough resources to form it's own gravity and internal world. Hence it has little need to look outside it's own borders for conquest, focusing on trade and some flow between cultures.
Serious Question, also don't want to be too critical here but I am confused. What about Taiwan and Hong Kong? How do they fit into this picture?
The Japanese took away Taiwan from Qing Dynasty in 1895, Republic of China took them back post-WW2, according to Cairo Conference and agreed upon by Roosevelt and Churchill.
The British first “leased” HK island, in 1841 and gradually expanded their possessions.That lease expired peacefully in 1997, and China took HK back.
What about them?
Too many of the arguments people used to portray China as aggressive stem from problems caused by colonisers and invaders in the first place. This house of mirrors is fabulous.