Recently Juan Cole shared on his Informed Comment site an essay by Conn M. Hallinan about Biden’s foreign policy concerning China. The correct thesis of the essay was that the Biden administration’s top goal in diplomacy should be avoiding war with China, but Hallinan made made points that I thought misleading or ill-informed. This is a reaction to that article.
Hallinan claims that a cold war with China would be impossible to win. This assertion is highly debatable, but a cold war with China would be very destructive and is highly undesirable, so I see no point in nit-picking this claim, as I’m in agreement the main point that we ought to be trying to avoid a cold war with China. China is fully integrated into the world economy, and could play a positive role in trade and exchanges to help avert a climate catastrophe and promote the sort of economic development that would reduce global poverty, and American diplomacy ought to be structured toward achieving that sort of result.
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| A human rights festival in Taipei, June 4th of 2019 |
Hallinan claims that the Trump administration created a toxic atmosphere by targeting the Chinese Community Party (CCP) as the worldwide enemy of the United States. This is a one-sided half-truth. The Chinese Communist Party bears much of the responsibility for any deterioration in relations with the United States. And, while the CCP is not really a “worldwide enemy” of the USA, under the current leadership of Xi Jinping, China has been behaving as a belligerent adversary, perhaps a step or two below that of an actual “enemy” in several cases. And, yes, the Trump administration used rhetoric that was hostile and toxic, and so that lack of diplomatic acumen was a disastrous part of the Trump Administration’s mishandling of our nation’s relationship with China.
Hallinan claims that Mike Pompeo “essentially called for regime change” in China (he is getting that idea from Chas Freeman), and I would call that accusation unfair. Hallinan offers readers a link to his source for making this claim, where any reader can see what Pompeo actually said, which was: “We must also engage and empower the Chinese people — a dynamic, freedom-loving people who are completely distinct from the Chinese Communist Party.” So, while Pompeo was saying our opposition to the current incarnation of the CCP must be tough, he was distinguishing this from our attitude towards the Chinese people, and pointing out that the Chinese people cannot and should not be blamed for whatever horrors the CCP commits. That doesn’t seem like a suggestion that there should be a “fight to the death” with the CCP, but that is how Hallinan (mis)characterizes Pompeo’s actual statement. To be fair to Hallinan, he seems to draw much of his understanding of the situation with China from the opinions of Chas Freeman, who has also accused Pompeo of calling for “regime change” in China. Freeman is one of the most intelligent and well-informed former diplomats who knows and understands China, and his basic premise is that our goal with China must be to make it feel secure and unthreatened, and I agree with that. With our shared premise about the importance of America taking a non-threatening approach to China, it would indeed be disastrous if American diplomats or the president did call for regime change in China, but I am not aware that this was something that the Trump administration ever did, although no doubt that administration was crazy enough to have done so. The leadership in China, however, has became extraordinarily paranoid, and leadership in the Chinese diplomatic corps may well have perceived that the USA wanted and was seeking regime change in China, whether or not that fear had any grounding in fact.
This brings up the question of whether the USA should try to deal with existing ruling powers in nations, or work to change those ruling powers. Would it be better for the USA if the Chinese Communist Party was suddenly rejected by a coalition of dissatisfied party leaders and People’s Liberation Army generals who ordered some sort of new regime, or is it more desirable for the USA if the CCP evolves into a more benevolent party that respects human rights and ceases to threaten murderous violence against the citizens and regimes of American client states and protectorates in Asia? The CCP has done a fairly effective job of brainwashing the Chinese population into a state where many Chinese hold an ugly nationalism with a sort of Han ethnicity chauvinism and militaristic jingoism that would be extremely dangerous if China suddenly became a democracy. I also know enough about Chinese history to fear any sort of political or military chaos in China such as it experienced in the 1920s to 1949, or at the end of the Ming Dynasty, or the ends of the other dynasties. I am in favor helping the CCP evolve to a point where it respects human rights and is committed to the United Nations’ ideals of peace, and I see no plausible and desirable alternative to that.
The CCP is a vast organization with millions of members, and I know that it has in its ranks many idealistic and caring people who enthusiastically want to improve their country and maintain friendly relations with all peoples (I have several dear friends who are active members of the Chinese Communist Party), and no doubt there are many nationalistic Chinese in the CCP who stupidly fantasize of world domination and winning a victory in a war with the USA. America has its counterparts to these types. The Chinese CCP has done some very horrible things in the past few decades (cultural genocide against ethnic minorities in Xinjiang and Tibet, violating international law in the Spratley Islands, threatening war with Taiwan, initiating wars of border expansion against Vietnam and India, supporting the attempt of North Korea to conquer South Korea and consistently lying to the Chinese people about the nature of the Korean conflict, murderous crack-downs on non-violent protesters, violating its treaty promises to the UK in Hong Kong, etc.) and done a few good things as well (successfully reduced poverty, built a massive infrastructure to improve the lives of common Chinese citizens, etc.). I don’t see value in arguing over how the CCP’s bad behavior compares to American atrocities, except to note that both sides have plenty to be ashamed of (among American atrocities: bombing neutral Cambodia during the war with North Vietnam, “strategic bombing”—otherwise known as the indiscriminate killing of civilians—in North Vietnam, invading and occupying Iraq, sponsoring murderous terrorists fighting legitimate governments, sponsoring violent and bloody overthrowing of democratically elected governments, supporting brutal governments that treated their citizenry in ways that were worse than what China has done internally since the 1980s, etc.). The USA and China both have plenty of blood on their hands, and the Democrats and Republicans of our country have done much evil, which can be compared to the evil done by the CCP. The Chinese government may freely criticize America’s misbehavior, and I welcome their criticism, because the fact that an actor is imperfect has no logical bearing on the merit of their arguments against the errors of others. The American government likewise may criticize China’s flaws, and should do so, provided such criticisms don’t make matters worse.
The problem is, under Xi Jinping, the CCP has been doing a lot more misbehaving, and so the tone of criticism has naturally been getting stronger. The rift between the governments in Washington and Beijing should not be entirely blamed on the general stupidity and incompetence of President Trump’s diplomacy. China’s behavior would have caused some degree of distancing between the two governments even under a competent and wise administration in Washington.
Hallinan points out that people in China and the United States have lower opinions of each other’s countries. He links to an article showing that in America only 26% have a favorable view of China, whereas 66% view it negatively. Is such a massive shift in public opinion plausibly the result of Trump’s racist and antagonistic anti-Chinese rhetoric, or might actual behaviors of the Chinese government or Chinese people had something to do with it? Look at the poll Hallinan’s source referred to, and you find that the things that Americans identify as the three most significant problems for the U.S. in its relationship with China are: 1) China’s impact on the global environment; 2) Cyberattacks from China; and 3) China’s policies on human rights. I don’t recall any of these three things being emphasized by Trump. Trump’s main concerns seemed to be the USA's trade deficits with China or loss of U.S. jobs to China, and those are identified as “problems” by 5 percentage points to 12 percentage points fewer Americans than the three top problems I’ve mentioned. Also, the growth in strong negative feelings against China are a global phenomena, not merely an American phenomenon. Polling by the same Pew Charitable Trust that gave us the evidence that Americans distrust China and see its government as a problem tell us that unfavorable views of China are held by 81% of Australians, 86% of Japanese, 73% of Spaniards, 75% of South Koreans, 85% of French, 73% of Canadians, and so forth. Since only 66% of Americans have an unfavorable view of China, it hardly makes sense to argue that Trump had much to do with making Americans more distrustful or hostile towards China. On the contrary, Americans seem less hostile toward China compared with the views of citizens in other developed countries.
And what of the views of Chinese towards America? In China, the CCP controls the media narrative, and aside form a small minority of technically-savvy Chinese who can use VPN to look at media outside the CCP’s firewall isolating Chinese people from free exchange of facts and opinion on the internet, most people in China only know what the CCP lets them know. So, if Chinese opinion toward foreigners and foreign nations is getting more hostile, and the Chinese sense of self is becoming more nationalistic or belligerently chauvinistic, that probably has something to do with the way the CCP is presenting the world to the population they rule.
Hallinan offers a paragraph that is quite accurate and good, and provides readers with the best point in his essay:
Most Chinese think the U.S. is determined to isolate their country, surround it with hostile allies, and prevent it from becoming a world power. Many Americans think China is an authoritarian bully that has robbed them of well-paying industrial jobs. There is a certain amount of truth in both viewpoints. The trick will be how to negotiate a way through some genuine differences.
Yes, there are genuine differences, and negotiating through those differences is what we must do. The emphasis here is on negotiating as opposed to bullying or threatening as those approaches, with their reliance on American military force, are not good options.
Hallinan has an academic background in anthropology, rather than history, so his historical statements are not always perfectly true. The century from 1839 to 1939 is (rightly, I think) presented as China’s century of humiliation, when it was mistreated by foreign powers, but Hallinan describes America as one of the colonial powers (like the UK, France, Japan, and Germany) that fought wars and seized ports from China in those years. The USA did engage in the extortionate punitive treatment of the Qing government after the Qing had supported anti-foreigner atrocities committed by the Boxers. Mark Twain wrote a brilliant satirical essay about this, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” which is my favorite anti-imperialism essay. But in general, the USA had a different sort of relationship with China compared to those other powers, and asked China to give the USA the same trading advantages it gave to any other foreign power. The USA did not attack China or seize ports as the other imperial powers did. The relationship was also colored by the fact that many Chinese lived in the United States, and there was a long and close relationship between some American merchant capitalists from New England and some Chinese tycoons of Guangzhou. America really did have a “special” relationship with China that was significantly different from the relations of the other imperialist powers. The CCP may have tried to erase this fact from the way it tells historical narratives to its populace, and Hallinan may only care about what Chinese believe about history, rather than historical facts, since it is perceptions of history rather than actual history that is most likely to condition how people and governments behave.
Hallinan asserts that “the Chinese have never forgotten those dark years” and I think he is only right in the literal sense the those years weren’t erased from history books. The Chinese intellectual classes of the 1920s and 1930s had a variety of opinions about the diplomacy and conflict between the Qing Court and the Western Powers and Japan. The Nationalist Party that occupied and brutalized the people of Taiwan certainly downplayed the century of humiliation, and the CCP used to present a historical narrative about the century of humiliation that fit that era into a standard Marxist history about capitalist powers seeking to expand markets and grab resources, placing China’s position as one similar to that of Africa, India, or Latin America. It has only been in the past two or three decades that the historical narratives about the century of humiliation have been associated with a strong nationalist sense of resentment and hostility toward the USA and European powers. That is to say, the Chinese were always angry about foreign powers pushing them around, and the weakness and inability of the Qing and Republican governments to successfully face the bullying and aggression of Japanese and European powers made many Chinese extremely xenophobic. However, until this century, the rhetoric of the Chinese Marxists who complained about foreign dominance in China used to fit into a framework that did not suggest that the Chinese people were particularly aggrieved or disadvantaged compared to other peoples of less developed nations. International worker solidarity and class consciousness was favored, and explanatory models fit into a Marxist universalism that (correctly) blamed capitalist classes in foreign lands and their allied elites in China for exploiting poor people and eroding local sovereignty as part of a universal political and economic unfolding of history. In this century, the Chinese-generated narratives have changed toward a more nationalistic and ethnocentric story emphasizing the exploitation of China and the victimization of the Chinese. I know a bit about this because I audited a course in Chinese historiography as a doctoral student in the mid-1990s, and I’ve followed with interest the way Chinese and Taiwanese historians present their history to their publics ever since. The emphasis on China’s humiliation and the need to rise and be strong to prevent any further insults to the Chinese sense of pride and worth is a fairly new thing. It was certainly not a central narrative in Chinese history in the 1970s or 1980s, but it does seem to be a major emphasis of China’s sense of its world situation in the past decade or two. That is a regrettable and dangerous change.
Hallinan claims that the Chinese have never threatened to interdict trade in the South China Sea. This is a debatable point. In 2020 the Chinese coast guard and navy have attacked and killed Vietnamese fishermen near the Parcel Islands, and in 2019 the Chinese sank a Philippines’ boat off Reed Bank and left 22 Fishermen floating in the ocean until they were picked up by a Vietnamese boat. Sinking and killing fishermen in international waters seems more serious than merely “threatening” to interdict trade. And, of course, the authorities in Beijing have threatened to interdict trade with Taiwan, which lies at the northern boundary of the South China Sea. When Hallinan then characterizes the Chinese authorities as being essentially non-belligerent and peaceful by pretending that they have never threatened to interdict trade in the South China Sea, he is doing so to set up Chinese behavior in contrast to American behavior, and he mentions the Malabar war games and the American strategy of “Air Sea Battle” since those do aim to prepare for cutting off Chinese trade through the South Chinese Sea. But he fails to consider under what circumstances the United States would try to cut off Chinese trade. The only plausible circumstances in which the USA would do that would be if China were involved in aggressive wars against Korea, Japan, or Taiwan, the three American protectorates or client states in East Asia. If China would renounce the use of force or stop claiming it had a right to invade and conquer Taiwan, and if it would stop supporting the belligerent regime in North Korea, America and other powers in Asia could stop preparing to cut off China’s sea trade. Any comment on the allegedly hostile American preparation to contain China should, in fairness, mention what China does in its military war games and diplomatic rhetoric to prepare for an attack on Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.
Hallinan is right that the West needs to be sensitive to China’s insecurities. The main point he is making is correct as far as that goes. Yet, his presentation is ignoring China’s actual violent belligerence in the South China Sea, and its threats to use violence against its East Asian neighbors, and that is an error.
I think Hallinan is largely informed by the opinions of Chas Freeman, who was one of three American translators during Nixon’s famous 1972 visit to China. Freeman is a brilliant diplomat, well-connected in China and Taiwan, who expresses many opinions about America’s foreign policy, and I agree with the vast majority of what he says. Chas Freeman is very good at expressing the Chinese view of the situation related to Taiwan (his December 17, 2020 talk “War with China over Taiwan” will give you an idea of how Freeman sees the situation). Usually when Freeman expresses opinions I disagree with, I perceive he has become so empathetically understanding of the CCP’s view (which is a good trait in a diplomat) that he has taken the Chinese view as his own (which is the source of my disagreement with him, I think). As Hallinan and Freeman see the situation, the U.S. has abrogated agreements our diplomats and leaders made with China in 1972, 1978, 1979, and 1982. China also made some assurances in those agreements, and Hallinan and Freeman emphasize how American foreign policy has violated the spirit of those agreements without saying much about how the Chinese have violated those agreements. I assume Freeman doesn’t examine those because he is interested in realpolitik and considers the only important issue is how China perceives the situation, rather than what the situation actually is or was. For example, China believes that there has been a consensus among China, the USA, and Taiwan that there is only one China and there cannot be a two states for one country solution to the problem of the “division” of China. When the KMT ruled Taiwan as a dictatorship and an occupying Chinese regime bullying the local Taiwanese population, the KMT did agree with China on that view, and it was at that time (the 1960s and 1970s) that Chas Freeman came to understand Taiwan and China, and make his friendships with elites and leadership in both countries. The KMT is no longer in power in Taiwan, and when they are in power they do not rule in a dictatorship, and so the government in Taiwan has changed, and no longer represents a Chinese government-in-exile that seeks reunification with the Chinese motherland.
Hallinan suggests that both countries should dial down the rhetoric and de-escalate their military deployments. That is actually good advice. He also suggests that Beijing should give up its claims in the South China Sea and disarm the bases it has illegally established there. That is also good advice, although there are other solutions that would not require this (for example, setting up the Spratleys and Parcel Islands in a situation like that of Andorra where multiple countries hold a form of joint-sovereignty over a region, or share mutual responsibilities for protecting a common resource). He should also suggest that China re-affirm its agreements made in 1979 and 1982 that it will not seek to reunify with Taiwan through violent force. China has broken its treaty with the UK about the treatment of institutions and the population in Hong Kong. China’s threat to violently attack and murder thousands of Taiwanese for the frivolous sake of national pride and unity, to conquer Taiwan, also conflicts with the understandings reached with the United States in 1979 and 1982.
One thing that might help the situation with Taiwan and China is for the Taiwanese government to make several suggestions for how reunification could be achieved on Taiwan’s terms. These could be creative solutions, and there ought to be several suggestions. One approach would be to suggest forms of reunion in which the two states became allies and partners in a system of equal power-sharing, where any changes in the relationship could be vetoed by either side. There could also be clauses in the reunification treaty that would allow either side to become independent from the other if there was a violation of some agreement. For example, each side might keep its own military, and if either side used its military in the other’s territory for purposes other than humanitarian relief or coordinated mutual defense, that would trigger the dissolution of the unified state. Some sort of a confederation solution might be found that finds a middle-ground between the unification of the American states into the USA (too much unification for Taiwan) and the confederation of the members of the European Union (not enough unification for China). Taiwan needs to make these sorts of suggestions and engage with China in discussions about the sort of reunification that would appeal to the Taiwanese (reunifications in which there would be no possibility of the CCP or PLA eroding the rights or democratic institutions in Taiwan as they have done in Hong Kong) in order to take from the CCP any sort of excuse for launching the terrible efforts of a violent conquest of Taiwan. A treaty of confederation between Taiwan and the PRC might begin with an idealistic preamble pointing out the advantages of nations and peoples binding their countries together close enough to make violent conflict unthinkable, but allowing local sovereignty and self-determination so that large nations cannot interfere in smaller nations, extolling the virtue of diverse approaches to the basic problems of governance and securing stability, justice, and flourishing civilizations. Humanity needs to try out many different policies and approaches and seek out methods that seem most desirable for creating flourishing and stable societies, but humanity also needs governments to surrender a certain amount of sovereignty in order to prevent inter-state warfare. A treating binding Taiwan and China together could offer the confederation as a model for potential unification of Asia, and then eventually unification of the planet. References could be made to the successes of the European Union, NATO, and various long-standing mutual defense alliances and peaceful neighborly relations among nations. If Taiwan is continuously suggesting such agreements, and China is always rejecting them, this would create a better situation than one in which Taiwan seems to only want to follow a path toward independence without any dialog with China.
The dream of Taiwan simply being a normal independent country like Japan or South Korea is not plausible because the CCP will not accept that, and neither Taiwan nor the USA can afford a war with China. The CCP’s dream of conquering Taiwan or taking over Taiwan the way it took over Hong Kong is equally impossible, because the people of Taiwan do not want it and would violently resist, and the United States cannot afford to have a client state or protectorate forcibly conquered by China. There are other solutions between those two unacceptable extremes. We do not need to wait for China to give up its claims to have a right to conquer Taiwan (the Chinese use the euphemism “reunification”), or persuade it to do so. Exploring other solutions that could be acceptable to Taiwanese, and offering such solutions to the CCP on a regular basis, would at least get the leadership of the CCP to ponder some sort of reunification that would give the Beijing government the minimum it desires (the ability to claim it has successfully reunified China and greater security of its territorial integrity) while not actually giving it any significant power to dominate or interfere in Taiwanese sovereignty. The Chinese are naturally pragmatic, and if discussion and diplomacy begins in earnest toward some sort of agreement for a confederation, the Taiwanese and Americans might have a chance of waiting out the current belligerent Xi Jinping regime and getting a more pragmatic and conciliatory successor regime after Xi to negotiate in good faith and accept some accommodation with Taiwan.
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| Protestors outside the Executive Assembly during Taipei’s Sunflower Protest Movement, 2014 |
While China continues to be belligerent and violent in its pursuit of territorial expansion in the South China Sea and dominance of Asia, it is necessary for the United States to cooperate with other Asian powers to constrain and blunt this aggression, but American diplomacy cannot merely take a role as China’s opposition or enemy in Asia. On the contrary, American diplomacy requires a break-through in which China can see its self-interest furthered through a friendly partnership with its Asian neighbors and the United States, and this requires America and its friends in Asia to offer China various alternatives to the present highly confrontational situation in East Asia, and especially across the Formosan Straits.
Another approach to China would be some sort of an entente or mutual defense alliance among the major Asian players aside from China. The USA would need to put together this agreement among Japan, Taiwan, the USA, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Indonesia, and India, with all agreeing that China has disputes with some of these nations (Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and Philippines) about sovereignty in the Spratley and Parcel Islands, about borders (with India and Vietnam, and Japan), and about sovereignty (with Taiwan). The nations would commit to an intention to see all these disputes with China resolved peacefully in ways that are acceptable to China and to all the partners. The partners would agree that violent military confrontation by China to force its way in any of these disputes would be unacceptable, and would be met by a unified defensive action. It would not be good to only agree to defend against Chinese aggression; it would be necessary for the entente agreement to recognize that these disputes create insecurity, and everyone wants to see these disputes resolved, and the only plausible resolution of these disputes is to see solutions in which both China and its neighbors peacefully find compromise and agreement.
Whatever happens in Asian international relations, two principles ought to be recognized by the United States and incorporated into its diplomatic posture. The first of these is that American values recognize the philosophical principle that all lives are of equal value, and given the equal value of human lives, the largest Asian nations of China and India, and to a lesser extent Indonesia, have something like a “natural” right to take a leadership role in the international order in Asia. This needs to be acknowledged to assure China that the USA accepts its role as a natural leader in Asia (but not “the” natural leader). The United States would thus recognize that China has a certain degree of responsibility and some degree of an inherent right to sometimes lead the diplomatic fashioning of a peaceful order in Asia. The corollary principle that must accompany this stance based on the equal value of human life is the principle that each nation has a right to independent sovereignty and freedom from unwanted interference from larger states. Thus, states with smaller populations, such as Mongolia, Timor-Leste, and Bhutan have a right to security where they are free from aggression and dominance by their larger neighbors, and whatever order of international relations emerges must protect the independence and sovereignty of smaller states. The United States also ought to emphasize that the principles of the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals that emerged from the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in 2012, the goals of the COP21 Paris Climate Conference and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction express the shared goals of all governments, and central to all these agreements are the principles that governments have a duty to improve the lives of people and protect humanity from the horrors of war. And, thus, all states should join to secure peace and stop any power from using warfare as a tool to settle disputes. This can be emphasized as a way of demonstrating that the same principles that guide American diplomacy to prevent the CCP from using military conquest to subjugate the peoples of Taiwan or take control over islands in the South China sea that actually belong to Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines also guide American diplomacy to honor China’s right to leadership and power in international relations.
What do I know about Asia? I have visited and briefly lived in China four times. I visited friends there in the summer of 1992 for not quite two weeks, studied Chinese in Xi’an in the summer of 1994 for about seven weeks, visited Shanghai for the World Fair for a bit less than two weeks in 2010, and was a short-term exchange scholar at Heilongjiang University in Harbin for nearly two months in the late spring of 2012. I have also lived in Taiwan or visited it for extended periods off an on since 1990, accumulating about four years of my life living in Taiwan. I have many friendships with Chinese from a variety of walks of life, and I remain in contact with about a dozen Chinese citizens, all of whom I dearly cherish as friends. I have been married to a woman from Taiwan for nearly 30 years, and count Taiwanese citizens among my closest and most intimate friends. I have had a scholarly interest in China since the early 1980s in my adolescence, and over the past 40 years I have read scores of scholarly and popular books and articles on many aspects of Chinese history and society. I’m not a China expert, but I’m fairly well-informed about China, and very well informed about Taiwan. My Chinese language skills are intermediate, and I’m working on building them up toward fluency.
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