Excellent Book Review
The Real Empire
[The Weekly Standard] The once and future China.
by Gary Schmitt
09/01/2003, Volume 008, Issue 48
The New Chinese Empire
And What It Means for the United States
by Ross Terrill
Basic, 432 pp., $30
China's New Rulers
The Secret Files
by Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley
New York Review, 150 pp., $21.95
Chinese Military Power
Report of an Independent Task Force
Council on Foreign Relations, 104 pp.
Annual Report on The Military Power of the People's Republic of China
Department of Defense, 52 pp.
HOW TELLING IS IT that critics (and even some advocates) of the Bush administration's foreign policy routinely refer to "the American empire" and Washington's "imperial burden"--while ignoring the fact that the People's Republic of China is the sole major multicultural empire left in the world? More than a third of China's territory is populated by non-Chinese. Its three largest provinces--Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang--are home to non-Chinese civilizations. And, throughout the People's Republic, a cacophony of languages are spoken, many of which are as far from Chinese as English is. What's more, China openly expects to expand its rule to include ocean areas far beyond its coast and the strategically central island of Taiwan. The fact that Taiwan is home to a separate and democratic state doesn't seem to make the slightest bit of difference to Beijing. Whatever difficulties lie in describing America's global preeminence and the character of its foreign policy, there should be no philological impediment to calling China what it is: a large empire with even larger imperial ambitions.
There are, of course, any number of reasons for the inability to see China clearly. In part, it's because China has made remarkable economic progress since the mayhem of the Cultural Revolution, and analysts get overly focused in tracking the ups and downs of China's modernization. But this kind of political myopia is nothing new. For much of the last half of the Cold War, an amazing number of scholars and commentators had a difficult time bringing themselves to conclude that the Soviet Union was a qualitatively different animal from the states that populated the free world. Ultimately, that was because they couldn't acknowledge that the West was home to decent and just states, and the Soviet Union was, in fact, "an evil empire." If there was a problem then in seeing what was self-evident, it's hardly a surprise that it continues to be a problem today.
Looking past what is right in front of them, far too many Sinologists and foreign-policy strategists fail to take account of the essential character of the Chinese state. The result is a serious misunderstanding of how the People's Republic of China rules, how it relates to other states, and what its behavior might be in the years immediately ahead. To long-standing China-watcher and journalist Ross Terrill's credit, he reminds us in his new book, "The New Chinese Empire," what the obvious is: "Repeatedly, American and other officials, commentators, and scholars skip over the fundamentals of the authoritarian Chinese state. Often there is a plausible reason: culture is destiny, or economics is destiny, worthy analysts believe; politics will take care of itself as society evolves. . . . But, for the coming years, politics is destiny for the PRC." Let others describe the nuts and bolts of the present regime. Terrill sees his task as setting out China's governing architecture.
And China's politics is that of an imperial state: governing over Chinese and non-Chinese alike largely by fiat; seeking to extend that rule over even more people, if necessary by force; and insisting on its right to do so by a modern version of a mandate from heaven.
ACCORDING TO TERRILL, the ugly truth of Chinese history is that China has never abandoned the empire. Even after the demise of the last Chinese dynasty in 1911, China's new "republican" rulers, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek, reverted to imperial form. At the end, both tossed aside the ideal of a federal and democratic China in favor of the top-down ways of traditional China. And, of course, once Mao came to power, any hope that China would shake off this legacy died. Mao did not create a new China, let alone a "new man" as many in the West claimed. Ruling as a "neo-emperor"--issuing deadly edicts from above, surrounded by a "court" of family and political eunuchs, and receiving homage from the nation's workers, who bowed before his picture at the start and end of each work day--Mao left a legacy that amounts to nothing short of "a counterrevolution against the 1911 revolution."
As Terrill points out, the death of Mao did nothing to bring an end to the imperial-style rule. Indeed, imperialism became more necessary than ever, from the Chinese Communist party's perspective. As the economic reforms of the Deng and Jiang era took hold, and with them, the centrifugal forces the reforms were creating, the Communists needed to maintain a strong central authority to justify their rule--and revived Chinese nationalism was the cultural glue they used. The new mandate--establishing One China and its sovereign sway over the region--required, like previous mandates, an omnipotent state authority to keep heresy at bay.
To sustain its legitimacy, Terrill points out, the new Chinese empire even pretends to be the heir to the old Chinese empire--revising history books, anthropological studies, museum exhibits, and maps to support its claims for Greater China. Contrary to expectations in the West that economic reforms would eventually lead to substantial political and civic reforms, China maintains a firm, and if need be, an iron grip on the media, the Inter-net, and political, labor, and religious organizations.
The result is a strange brew of economic dynamism on the part of individual citizens, political apathy among the population as a whole, a muted civic culture, and a form of Chinese racism. Accepting a paternalistic state, China's political and economic elites have little tolerance for notions of rights-bearing, consent-giving individuals. From this, as Terrill notes, it follows that Beijing still routinely refers to Chinese-Australians or Chinese-Americans as "Overseas Chinese," as though the decision to become citizens of some other country were nothing more than an inconvenient convention. And it follows as well that Taiwan must be part of One China--regardless of the fact that the island has never for any extended period been under China's control--because what matters is race, not popular consent.
Even in the area of the economy, where China has made the most progress toward becoming a modern state, reforms have been shaped and ultimately constrained by the political system in which they operate. According to Terrill, as of 2003, "the party-state still controls the economy, . . . considerably more than any non-Communist state in East Asia." The Chinese currency is still not a free-floating currency. And "all big industry" remains "intimately linked with the banking-bureaucratic apparatus of the state," typically living off the banked household savings of Chinese citizens rather than real profits.
In such an environment, there are limits to what progress can be made. "So long as your business is below a certain size," Terrill quotes a successful businessman, "you're pretty much left alone. But when you get big enough to attract the attention of the authorities, they soon come knocking on your door with their hands out." Power and connections now dominate China's economy, where, according to Terrill, one percent of the population owns forty percent of the country's wealth. Obligations under international-trade agreements notwithstanding, China still behaves like a mercantilist state in which political calculations rule more than the market.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN that "the new Chinese empire" is a stable one. Terrill argues, as others have, that China's effort to sustain its economic growth does not rest easy with its system of governance. Toss in huge demographic, ecological, and societal problems, and one can see how the marriage of convenience between Leninism and the Chinese autocratic tradition may not be sufficient for holding the country together.
How soon this regime crisis occurs is a matter of speculation, and Terrill wisely, if somewhat disappointingly, punts on predicting how it will be resolved. By his lights, in the decades ahead, China might become a powerful fascist state, a fragmented and chaotic country of mini-states, or even a relatively stable federal democratic nation.
Of course, Washington and the rest of the world have to deal with the Chinese regime that is here now, not what it may become in the years ahead. And the question that always arises when a change in leadership has taken place, as it has over the past year in China, is whether the new leadership is open to changing the fundamental character of the present state. The short answer is we don't know, and we can't know. History is replete with leaders who, when faced with unexpected crises or opportunities, took policy turns no one could have ever predicted.
NEVERTHELESS, we do know a few things about the new Chinese leadership. As opaque as decision-making normally is within the Chinese leadership, we were given some insight into what to expect from last November's turnover in the Chinese Communist party's leadership with the publication of "China's New Rulers: The Secret Files" by Andrew Nathan and Bruce Gilley. Based on leaked, confidential dossiers prepared internally for the party leadership on each of the candidates for the Politburo's Standing Committee, Nathan and Gilley's book provides a rare and illuminating look into policy perspectives of the new set of leaders, their histories, and (to a more limited degree) how they got to be the "chosen ones." The picture that emerges is that whatever the discrete policy differences among them might be, they share one overriding concern: continuation of the Communist party as the governing body of China.
Paradoxically, this is perhaps best shown by the predictions "China's New Rulers" gets wrong. Published shortly before designated-heir Hu Jintao replaced Jiang Zemin as party general secretary (and eventually China's president), the book forecasts a new standing committee of seven, with Li Ruihuan, then a member of the Politburo's standing committee, moving up to the number two slot and becoming chairman of the standing committee of the National People's Congress. What in fact happened was nine were picked for the Politburo's standing committee, and Li Ruihuan not at all. Of the three unexpected new members, two have had strong ties to Jiang Zemin, and one seemingly close relations with both Hu and Jiang. More significantly, Li Ruihuan was known to be the candidate with the most forward-leaning reformist views, notably the belief that greater media freedom and competitive elections were necessary to force better and more accountable performance from the party in governing.
To be sure, the so-called "Fourth Generation" (following those of Mao, Deng, and Jiang) is fully aware that all is not well with the party or the country. Based on the materials analyzed by Nathan and Gilley, however, Hu Jintao is firmly in the camp of those who believe "strengthening internal party mechanisms to rectify the behavior and quality of cadres" is the correct path to take. Whatever he may become, right now Hu is not a Chinese Gorbachev.
Proof will almost certainly be on exhibit as Hu and his colleagues deal with the current crisis in Hong Kong. Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, picked the widely disliked Tung Chee-hwa to be Hong Kong's chief executive. Under normal circumstances, and owing Tung nothing, Hu might have found a reason to "retire" Tung from his post. But that is not likely to happen now. In the wake of the mass march by Hong Kong's citizens in protest against the government's effort to push through laws on subversion and treason, shelving Tung at this point would suggest that Beijing was buckling to public pressure. Whatever Hu's views about Tung, this is one message he and the rest of the Politburo are not about to send to Hong Kong or, more important, the rest of China.
Instead, the residents of Hong Kong have seen the normal purge of ministerial underlings, praise from Beijing about Tung's leadership, and warnings from central government officials to Hong Kong's democrats about the "painful historical lessons" of the Cultural Revolution when people took to the streets as well. The fact that Beijing would equate the recent peaceful march in Hong Kong with the bloody, Mao-directed rampage of the Red Guard shows just how little reform there is in Hu's "reform" agenda. Whatever Tung's ultimate fate, "stability" will remain Beijing's final word when it comes to domestic affairs.
AND WHAT ABOUT foreign affairs? Is China a "status quo" power or at least cognizant that it needs a peaceful international environment and good relations with the United States to be able to address its domestic problems?
According to Nathan and Gilley's analysis, Hu and company do not view China as a "dissatisfied power" or a country looking to challenge the United States. But this first impression is somewhat misleading. As the authors also point out, China's new leaders are convinced that America's "strategic eastward movement has accelerated" and, as such, created "a great change in our geopolitical environment." From Beijing's point of view, it is not China that is causing difficulties but, rather, the United States. Expanding NATO, throwing its weight around in the Balkans and now in Iraq, establishing bases in Central Asia in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, tightening defense ties with Japan and Australia, creating a new relationship with India and, of course, continuing to support Taiwan--all of this is seen by China's elite as part of Washington's design to keep China in check. From "the leaders' statements," it appears they believe "China and the U.S. must inevitably come into conflict" and that statements by successive administrations that American "interests are served by a stable and prosperous China" are, from their point of view, "too obviously deceptive to deserve attention."
Of course, there is some basis for China's paranoia--but not much. By any objective standard, China's security situation is remarkably good. It no longer faces a hostile nuclear-armed Soviet Union; it no longer has to worry about nearly four-dozen divisions of the Red Army sitting just across its border; it has normalized relations with South Korea; it has put the open conflicts with India and Vietnam in the past; and it has established new ties itself to the Central Asian states. And, finally, Taiwan's "Republic of China" no longer claims sovereignty over the mainland and its military can do little more than defend the island of Formosa.
The fundamental problem is that China's leaders have convinced themselves--and a large part of their population to boot--that China's identity is, as Terrill argues, tied up with a fiction of their own making: One China. If Terrill is right, this fiction cannot be readily given up since it is intimately linked to the Communist party's justification for holding onto power. No issue, he points out, so "starkly focuses" the jumble of iffy historical claims, theology of One China, and thwarted national ambitions as the mainland's claim to Taiwan.
According to Nathan and Gilley, China's new leaders apparently consider Taiwan's independence from China temporary. They "optimistically believe that the rise to power in Taiwan of the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party . . . will be a passing phenomenon." Growing economic and existing cultural ties are simply too strong for Taiwan to resist the mainland's pull. Or so they and any number of American Sinologists hope.
But Beijing is not counting exclusively on this "soft" approach to integrating Taiwan with the mainland. Behind the somewhat restrained rhetoric coming from the mainland about Taiwan these days is the continuing modernization of China's military capabilities. No other major power in the world has increased its military spending, in terms of percentage, as much as China over the past decade. And those increased capabilities are directed almost exclusively at Taiwan and deterring or defeating an American intervention on the island's behalf.
Too large to ignore, China's improved military posture is beginning to worry even America's foreign-policy establishment. In May, a Council on Foreign Relations task force, led by former Carter defense secretary Harold Brown, issued "Chinese Military Power," an assessment of China's military modernization. Buried behind the reassuring general finding that China was "at least two decades behind the United States in terms of military technology and capability" are several important warnings. The first is that China might use its new capabilities "not to invade Taiwan outright but rather to achieve political goals," such as forcing Taiwan into unification talks. Second, if Beijing thought the trend lines in cross-Strait affairs were not headed in the direction it wanted or expected, it "could decide to utilize force against Taiwan even if the balance of forces across the strait favored the United States and Taiwan." And, finally, the Chinese military is working to develop the means to impose "serious risks and costs on the U.S. military" if it should attempt to intervene in a cross-Strait conflict. The goal would be to deter Washington from the initial decision to intervene even if the United States believed it would ultimately come out on top in a prolonged campaign. In short, Washington policymakers should take little comfort in traditional war-planning assessments when it comes to China and a conflict over Taiwan.
THAT IS CERTAINLY the underlying message as well of the Pentagon's most recent report on China's military, "Annual Report on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China," issued in July. In addition to cataloguing the improvements in China's land, air, naval, and missile forces, the report brackets these findings with the general point that, although China is interested in maximizing its national power primarily by continued economic growth, this goal takes a backseat to issues of "national unity" (read: Taiwan) and "strategic configurations of power" (read: American preeminence).
To this end, China's military, driven by Jiang's frustration with the limited military options he had on hand in the mini-crises of 1996 and 1999, is hard at work devising military plans that rely on "surprise and shock," allowing, as they repeatedly say, "the inferior [force] to defeat the superior." Nor is this a case of bluff. As Nathan and Gilley report, Generals Cao Gangchaun and Guo Boxiong (the two new vice chairmen of China's ruling defense structure, the Central Military Commission) have emphasized precisely the kind of high-tech, combined arms approach to military operations that are seen as essential in any Taiwan-directed campaign. General Cao, in particular, apparently believes Taiwan "could be overwhelmed through a carefully planned and quickly executed high-tech attack from the mainland," leaving the United States with a fait accompli.
THE DANGER of course is not only that China might obtain this capability--last year's "Annual Report" listed 350 short-range ballistic missiles deployed across from Taiwan; this year's lists 450--but also that the military will convince themselves and China's leadership that it can pull such a strategy off. It's difficult to deter military planners who believe that they can overcome shortfalls in real capabilities by being cleverer than the opponents or who believe that their opponents are weak willed.
Conventional wisdom, as expressed by the report from the Council on Foreign Relations, holds that the way to avoid a crisis in the Taiwan Strait is for America to "reassure China and Taiwan" that "their worst fears will not materialize." For China, this means making sure Taiwan doesn't assert formal independence from the mainland. And for Taiwan, it means maintaining an ability to counter any use of force by China against the island.
The result would be diplomacy's version of suspended animation. But this presumes both countries will be satisfied with the "status quo" for the indeterminate future. Certainly, in the case of China, it runs counter to past threats to use force if progress isn't made on unification. As last year's party congress reiterated, "the Taiwan issue must not be allowed to stall indefinitely." If Terrill is right about the character of the present regime in Beijing, this stance on Taiwan is virtually hard-wired into the Chinese body politic.
In "China's New Rulers," Nathan and Gilley report that "since possible military action against Taiwan is a national security matter, there is no specific discussion of it in the investigation reports" that form the basis of their book. Yet, in a footnote, they point out that in a book published in 1999 by the same source that gave them the classified materials for "China's New Rulers," there are quotations from Chinese military leaders about China's ability to conduct an assualt on Taiwan. Their assessment was that they were not ready then but would be in a position to guarantee a military victory by a set deadline--a deadline "which is X'd out" in the manuscript. Interestingly, in 2000, just before Clinton left office, the Pentagon produced a report on China's military power that suggested, if current trends in China's buildup continued, the balance in the Taiwan Strait would begin to turn in 2005 in China's favor, and could well be sealed by 2010. The buildup has continued, while Taiwan's own modernization plans have stalled. In the meantime, in the Pentagon's most recent "Annual Report," those dates have disappeared. It would be worth knowing whether they did so because they no longer fall into the category of speculative judgments but have become classified intelligence facts.
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM among Sinologists and even America's own military is that Chinese talk of conflict with Taiwan is just talk. China's leaders are, at the end of the day, sober realists who understand the great gap in military capabilities between their own country and the United States. Moreover, they know, we're told, the great cost they would inflict on both China's economy and its international standing by creating a military crisis.
But such assessments assume that China is well on its way to being a normal state and its leaders are not all that different from those in Paris or Moscow. Yet, if these recent publications on China are accurate, China is hardly a normal state: It doesn't rule like one; it doesn't pick its leaders like one; and it doesn't assess its strategic affairs like one. To assume it is and ignore the obvious is a dangerous conceit.
Gary Schmitt is executive director of the Project for the New American Century.
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