Executive Summary
- When the end of the Cold War came, many celebrated the fall of Soviet communism and the freedom it brought to tens of millions in Russia and its near-abroad and the reduction in polarized and nuclear international tensions.
- People automatically expected similar sweeping changes to occur in China without the same international pressure that sealed the fate of the Soviets.
- It seems, therefore, no wonder today that China looms as a serious superpower and the cause-and-effect relationship the West should have learned from its Soviet experiences still seems lost. There is a different result in China precisely because a different course of action has been taken.
- If the West understands why it has taken a different course and how to correct it, then it may find a path to a more cooperative if not a more democratic but stable China.
The Zeitgeist was summed up by Francis Fukayama in his 1989 article, “The End of History”, where he had declared that democracy had triumphed; it had won the war of ideas and those whose ideas had lost had no other choice but to graciously accept their loss and submit to the tide of individual liberty and human rights.
Fukayama’s narrative seemed palatable, but there was no controlling authority that guaranteed any such outcome. Globalization, such that it was – and still is – was not the end of the anarchic international system; it was only a framework by which it became in some respects more complex. Unlike the Soviet “Evil Empire”, China saw no pressure put upon it similar to that which had been applied to Moscow and its satellite states; trade was occurring, relations were open, and, import-export restrictions were loosening up despite clear indications of a military build-up and political strengthening of the Communist Party. In short, the Party had no reason whatsoever to cede power to those seeking liberty. Communists have always been realists when it comes to power, and this instance was no exception.
According to the Black Book of Communism, the communist regime of China has been responsible for the murders of approximately 70 million of its own people, placing it at the top of the list of offenders in terms of raw numbers even though it may have lagged behind others such as those of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. in terms of numbers murdered as an overall percentage of the population. [i] Given the fact that regimes with far higher percentages have been swept aside by movements of liberty, there was no indication that freedom’s march would be stopped in its tracks on a chilly June day in Beijing.
Starved into Submission
Arguably one of the key factors in bringing down the socialist mega structure of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc was the use of trade restrictions. The West eventually realized that the communist system would necessarily fail if left to its own devices and not kept on life support via the West. After the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan in 1981, one of his first tasks was to cut off that life support to the Soviet Union while maintaining some humanitarian aide much to the consternation of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others at the time. [ii] President Reagan’s policy began to work as the cracks in the Soviet armour became daily more apparent – and any deleterious effects to the U.S. economy either did not materialize or were minimal in light of history, though a more severe short term economic consequence was still certainly preferable to the alternative. Cut off from their major source of technology via trade and more often prevented from stealing it by a more aggressive U.S. counterintelligence effort, and starved also from vital goods and services and economic stimulus, the communist regime with its inability to sustain itself began to run massive debt as it tried in vain to also keep up with a major strategic modernization process that began in the West during the same time.
Divergent Paths
So why did the West not pursue the same policy toward China; a policy shown to have worked as both an economically sound policy, one that proffered the moral high ground, and one which protected the West’s vital long term strategic interests. The root of the problem, though earlier founded in a desire to entice China away from cooperation with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, lies perhaps thereafter in the collective relief, a sense of rightful celebration that the Cold War with the Soviets was won, and just a little fatigue from the decades of tension and the prospect of total nuclear annihilation. Such sentiment found expressive resolve in the blithe Fukayama opus. Unfortunately, this has meant a culture of ignorance about developing threats, as was made painfully evident on 11 September, 2001 in the U.S. and soon thereafter in Britain, Spain, and elsewhere. However, even after these events, the collective desire seemed to want nothing more than to return to life as usual, with resentment for any effort to the contrary, as evidenced by the incredible opposition to the post 9/11 mobilization by the U.S. and her allies in Afghanistan and more so in Iraq. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the resentment over any geostrategic tension was and remains palpable and has certainly affected national elections and policies.
It was in this environment that despite clearly dangerous signals from Beijing, the West refused to confront the regime on human rights, to counter its political clandestine work in the West and elsewhere, and to question its military build up. The West also fell short in doing nothing as it built up a massive export of debt to China. In technology, the West now not only imports the majority of its civilian goods from China, it imports technology of military value as well. This poses a two-pronged risk: first by putting Western militaries at the mercy of Chinese suppliers who may choose to modify the materials or technology so that they will not work properly or that it will perform other malicious behaviour – as has happened already – or would withhold shipments altogether. [iii] [iv] Second, by giving the Chinese the blueprints and well-oiled facilities to advance their technology, whereby helping them with their own military modernization program, which is also supplemented by an aggressive intelligence gathering operation exceeding Cold War levels. [v] The policy has also allowed the communist nation to use trade with the West to artificially bolster its tightly-controlled socialist economy otherwise given to failure and using that as economic and political leverage directly against the West to the point at which the West has become strategically dependent. China is also using that soft power as leverage against the West in a much more refined version of the bygone Soviet pole. This should not have happened. China has aggressively used its artificial currency status to under-price its Third World competition, devastating developing economies in Africa and Latin America. After doing this, China began approaching Africa and Latin America offering trade, loans, and other deals to acquire raw materials and other advantages, particularly anything that excludes the West. [vi]
Soft Power Becoming Hard Power
As much as a threat to the West as China is quickly becoming economically, there is no doubt that as indicated by China’s 15% annual increase in military expenditures, China has a five year plan of modernization it intends to follow. While visiting the Pentagon last November, I had the chance to speak to Col. Robert Faille, Strategic Effects Division joint staff chief, about his recommendations in dealing with China’s – as well as Russia’s – backdoor support of various sponsors of terrorism and rogue states. After a moment of thought, Col. Faille with some concern relayed the prospect of “a new Cold War” with China as well as with Russia even as the U.S. continues to not address significant shortages in manpower and resources coupled with an over-stretch of forces, increasingly low morale, and the outsourcing of strategic materials’ manufacturing to China. So in essence, the U.S. military is back again in the place it worked hard to avoid decades ago: with Russia and a much stronger China colluding against the West and her allies. This should be worrisome for any defence strategist and is the crux of the danger in the direct military sense. Also, not only are both states actively and aggressively using their clandestine services against the West– Russia’s having never let up despite shifting its energies to a greater extent behind the GRU in the 1990s and with China’s MSS and other clandestine and information warfare organs gaining momentum since before the end of the Cold War – both states are actively working together strategically around the globe and unquestionably pointing their rhetoric and their ever more competent military prowess at the West and her allies in Asia.
China is also becoming a threat in an indirect military sense. For instance, China’s government, like Russia’s, is and has been forming military partnerships with the global South. Recently an article outlined how China is both selling arms to and training the militaries of states in Africa and Latin America. [vii] China has also been caught selling automatic weapons to criminal gangs, some of which found their way onto American streets as far back as the 1990s, while others no doubt have and will be used by drug cartels and in related violent anti-democracy movements in Latin America. [viii] [ix]
When various media outlets pronounced China two years ago as a nascent superpower, it was correct; although, it may well outdo its Soviet predecessor, having learned from many of its mistakes and enjoying a period with far fewer watchful eyes. While such an empire will likely eventually increase difficulties with Russia – today Russia and China have some important issues including massive Chinese illegal immigration into the eastern Primorye region of Russia – the tone between the two has been cooperative in terms of opposing Western interests. The nascent Chinese superpower is fast growing into a monster capable of dictating a great many terms to the West; something the Soviets really were never quite capable of achieving; and Russia will by no means stand in the way of that, at least for the present.
Human Cost of Autocratic Hegemony
If the 20th Century was one dominated by the U.S. and its ideals of individual liberty, perhaps the greatest thing to show for it was the astounding spread of liberal democracies, an increase in lower- and middle class prosperity and an unprecedented amount of attention given to human rights during that time, along with the removal of significant powers whose ideas opposed that sensibility. Their removal, the subsequent liberation of millions first from the various forms of militant fascism and socialism over its course, and the historic number of new democracies worldwide made the 20th Century the freest and most prosperous in history.
The 21st Century by contrast may well be another story. If Communist China becomes the dominant power in the world and sets the tone as the U.S. largely did during the last century, the spectre for freedom and prosperity worldwide becomes a bleaker one.
In 1999, China had its Khrushchev moment, when its defence minister Chi Haotian declared that “war with the U.S. is inevitable”. Unlike the stark post-war reaction from the Kennedy administration, the media, educational institutions, and the public to Khrushchev and successive Soviet leaders, Chi’s threats and China’s subsequent actions seemingly intent on following up on them have met very little from U.S. administrations, scant to no attention from the press and education, and resultant apathy by the public. There is also less perceived or immediately threatening Chinese hostility toward Europe than Europe faced with the Warsaw Pact, so the worldwide perception of anything similar to a “Soviet threat” is certainly even further diminished.
Judging by the pace of Chinese progress, one wonders how much time the West may have left to put the genie back in the bottle. Whether or not China looms as a promise of a “thousand years of darkness” or just a century, one wonders if the current course which the West has hitherto undertaken is a wise one. [x] Communism, an ideology built essentially upon a Machiavellian worldview, is a condition by its very essence that lives in fear, and the fear is compounded on the part of those who rule of losing their perks, titles, and sense of control over others and by the intense angst that awareness of having committed atrocities brings through the fear of reprisal.
There is a reason why the words “tyrant” and “paranoid” are often found so close together in various writings, and this is important to understand when trying to comprehend the strategic implications of Chinese ideas. As many have said, “ideas have consequences”. In this sense, China is no different an animal from the Soviet Union; it is a fearful dragon, afraid of anything and everything both within and outside its borders, the quest for control its only hope. This is ultimately what motivates its rulers and will help one to better anticipate the regime’s likely next move as well as those down the road. When people wished not to be bothered with the notion of a Chinese superpower 15 years ago, those who understood what China’s leaders thought and believed correctly maintained that such power would one day become a reality if the West stood by and did nothing or worse yet, continued to feed it. That day has finally come.
The people of China and the rest of the world would do well to exploit such paranoia and develop a strategy even more realist than that currently in play in Beijing, rather than placating the regime with trade, obeisance and other concessions. In fact, what history shows and what has already been understood with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and presently with China and its microcosm in North Korea is that modest concessions require moderate ones to follow.
Cracks in the fissures?
Yet with all its strengths, a communist China still has many weaknesses, including a large number of its people who have not given up the hope for freedom. The regime’s leaders clearly know this, as do all such regimes; otherwise, they would not attempt to silence internal opposition and external information, but instead seek to challenge it in civil discourse. Also, despite appearances, the regime’s economy is still fairly rigid. Much of it is owned or directly controlled by the government leaving only a peripheral part of a few industries somewhat free and open – just enough to entice investors. However, even that enticement has begun to disappear as Hu Jintao’s regime is creating a more centrally-planned economy with roadblocks to foreign direct investment. The regime is still also greatly dependent upon foreign sources of energy and other basic materials, forcing the country to make requests or demands on other states. [xi]
To reduce the rising threat of China, it is necessary to use a multifaceted approach. This approach should include policies that weaken the CCP’s central Party-dominated framework through directly supporting those who seek freedom with good governance both in China and indirectly by supporting it elsewhere in the world. This which helps to encourage an international climate of freedom, encourage those seeking freedom inside China, and maintains Western moral authority. It is also important to reward the Chinese regime for genuinely good behaviour. We can do much by the use of various diplomatic options, such as how we negotiate matters directly, in multi-party environments, interact in various IGOs and NGOs, by strategically placing sanctions on the table – and being willing to use them when appropriate, and by enhancing our own strategic profile. We should also examine areas of trade which might be immediately against our own strategic interest, such as selling sensitive missile guidance technology to China as was begun in the 1990s by the administration of U.S. President Clinton. It also means ensuring our own strategic capabilities are not dependent on Chinese imports, loans, and goodwill in order to function. Using China to bankroll our armies or having China sell us the electronics, ammunition, machinery – as we now see with Hummer – and other vital components poses a serious threat to security.
While certainly many argue that it would be difficult to weaken the growing worldwide influence of a superpower CCP-controlled China, the reality is that it must unless actual positive democratic reform takes place. Others argue that if our policies help to destabilize China, it may not become democratic, but simply a more radical and dangerous place for the West. There is no more evidence such a turn of events would be likely, however, as there was for Russia at the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse. In fact, China’s long history as a contiguous state with fewer nuclear warheads than the Soviet Union far less dispersed within its own borders or those of its neighbours, also make a stable, peaceful democratic regime change in China more promising. While it can be expected that opportunistic independence movements will grow in Tibet and other contested regions around China’s periphery as we saw with the Soviet Union, their strategic implications and risks are far more muted.
At present, China still directly needs the West, which makes such policy a somewhat easier. However, even if at some point she does not – and at some point she may not – there will be things China wants and needs that we can make more difficult for her to obtain. For instance, the West can work with willing oil producers to restrict the sale of oil to China or at least ensure that China does not receive special favour. Even with an available seller like Iran, such restrictions elsewhere would increase the cost of oil purchased by China. The same can be done with other raw materials the regime requires. We can also undercut China’s relationship with producers, lend military and humanitarian aid to anti-status quo movements in autocratic or failed states like Sudan aligned with China or where China directly aides in local repression to suit its own purposes, and deny goods and services. Using such a strategy and balancing it with a positive interplay with China when possible can be a method for yielding greater Chinese cooperation. Many of these tools were used effectively against the Soviet Union and there is no reason why they cannot again if appropriately adapted for China.
Democracy with Chinese Characteristics
While it is true that restrictive U.S. trade policies have not seemed to work with Cuba, it is important to remember that normal trade exists between Cuba and most of the rest of the free world and that such restrictions did work with the Soviet Union when the full brunt of the West was brought to bear. It must also be remembered that the USSR was an expansive state with tens of millions living under it, which makes for a much more complex environment for autocracy to sustain itself. China’s is even more complex and precarious.
The Chinese people should be free to have the ability to select leaders outside of the rigid ideological framework of the Communist Party, which all but guarantees the authoritarian status quo. Oppressive and liberal democracies regimes are no more Chinese or non-Chinese than the laptop computer or automobile; as the Burmese political activist Aung San Suu Kyi has rightly noted, democracy is a culturally neutral human right.
There is much of concern with respect to a rising communist China, but the advantage of dealing with regimes that live on a currency of fear is that the fear their leaders possess can be utilized constructively. This should be at least part of a cogent, realistic China policy as we move into the 21st Century. The West should not itself live in fear, but it should also no longer live in denial. We would all wish for a idyllic world in the post-Soviet reality; however, as 9/11 and a host of horrific terrorist attacks over the last two decades have brought home, our vision is not shared by all. Because of this the West and its democratic allies around the world must see to it that their shared vision of human rights and security is the vision that wins the century.
[i] Stéphane Courtois, N. W.-L. (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. [ii] Tonelson, A. (2004, June 07). Ronald Reagan: Trade Realist. Retrieved from American Economic Alert: http://www.americaneconomicalert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=1134 [iii] Kite-Powell, M. (2008, November 21). Blogbat Called it: BIG DOD Hardware Cyber Attack. Retrieved from The Blogbat Weblog: http://blogbat.us/mt/archives/2008/11/blogbat_called.html [iv] Shiels, M. (2009, April 29). US cyber-security 'embarrassing'. Retrieved from BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8023793.stm [v] MacAskill, E. (2007, September 19). US intelligence chief says China is spying on cold war scale. Retrieved from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/sep/19/usa.china [vi]Hitchens, P. (2008, September 28). How China has created a new slave empire in Africa. Retrieved from The Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1063198/PETER-HITCHENS-How-China-created-new-slave-empire-Africa.html [vii] BIBLIOGRAPHY Blair, D. C. (2009 , March 10). Annual Threat Assessment of the Intelligence Community for the Senate Armed Services Committee (PDF). Retrieved from Director of National Intelligence: http://www.dni.gov/testimonies/20090310_testimony.pdf [viii] Moseley, J. (2006, February 27). Statement of the U.S. Seaports Commission Opposed to Foreign Control of U.S. Ports of Entry. Retrieved from U.S. Seaports Commission: http://www.usseaportcommission.org/Statement%20on%20Dubai/Statement%20on%20Dubai.htm [ix] La Jeunesse, William (2009, April 02). The myth of 90 Percent: only a small fraction of guns in Mexico come from U.S. Retrieved from Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/2009/04/02/myth-percent-guns-mexico-fraction-number-claimed/ [x] Reagan, R. (1964, October 27). A Time for Choosing. [xi] Scissors, D. (2009, May/June). Deng undone: The costs of halting market reform in China. Foreign Affairs , pp. 24-39.