Uncomfortable Question, China-Syria Edition
I've criticized former US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman in the past for his appearance- intentional or otherwise- at a political demonstration in Beijing in February. Basically, I felt it was inappropriate at best for a representative of the American government to insert himself in such an incident.
Yet look at what's just happened in Syria:
Tens of thousands of Syrians on Friday poured into a square that has emerged as a focus of defiance in Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city, as the French and American ambassadors stayed there for a second day in what their countries called a gesture of support for demonstrators and Syrian officials lambasted as interference.
The comparison raises troubling questions. If it was wrong for Huntsman to appear at an anti-government rally in Beijing, is it similarly wrong for Robert Ford to travel to Hama, Syria in a show of solidarity with anti-government protesters there? To raise the stakes further, what if Huntsman had flown to, say, Chongqing to lend his explicit support to an anti-government uprising there? Such a brazen act would have almost surely resulted in his immediate termination as well as the end of any 2012 electoral aspirations.
Or, perhaps, the two cases are different and should be treated differently. Syria may be an important country in its neighborhood, but it's no burgeoning power like China. Whether Assad stays or goes likely means little to US interests in the Middle East, while Washington would be very, very, very careful before endorsing any sort of regime change in China. So while the American heart might be with the demonstrators in both instances, the American brain knows that what's good for the goose isn't necessarily good for the gander, or in this case the Peking duck.
China-US Security and Foreign Policy Articles
When I'm not blogging, my current occupation is that of a graduate student in international affairs. And even though I'm on summer vacation I'd be remiss not to point out a very interesting article by Aaron L. Friedberg entitled "Hegemony with Chinese Characteristics" in the new issue of The National Interest. Friedberg's topic is one that gets at the root of international relations theory- how does China's regime type affect its relations with the outside world, specifically the United States?
I'll have more to say on Friedberg's piece later, but in the meantime here are two responses to the piece published by TNI; one by Andrew Nathan* and the other by Minxin Pei. In addition, the excellent foreign policy bloggers Daniel Larison and Greg Scoblete have discussed the pieces extensively in the past few days and their contributions are well worth reading as well.
*I was a student in Andrew Nathan's course on Chinese foreign policy at Columbia this spring and know him slightly.
Ai Weiwei, in Words
I'm working on a piece at the moment discussing the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who was recently detained by the Communist government and has not been heard from since. Ai is of a significantly higher profile than many other Chinese dissidents; he designed Beijing's iconic Bird's Nest Olympic stadium, and has been a popular presence on Twitter since joining the medium a few years ago. Ai has had several run-ins with the government in the past but has not been detained at such length and without contact with the outside world as he is now. Here is a TED video of the man, discussing his life, art, and politics, recorded a few months ago.
A Whopper from Friedman
I understand Thomas Friedman gets paid to summarize his world-view in pithy 800-word columns, and that given his focus on the Middle East you can't really expect him to have that much particular knowledge about China. But his most recent column about democracy, Liu Xiaobo, and the Chinese economy was a real head-scratcher.
Friedman starts off by arguing that China cannot realize its full potential unless it liberalizes its political system. He then states that China may face a economic and demographic crisis when the country grows old before it grows rich. Neither of these points are particularly controversial.
But then Friedman tries to connect the two issues, and writes that the key to the new service economy is unfettered social networks:
But, and here’s the rub, today’s knowledge industries are all being built on social networks that enable open collaboration, the free sharing of ideas and the formation of productive relationships — both within companies and around the globe. The logic is that all of us are smarter than one of us, and the unique feature of today’s flat world is that you can actually tap the brains and skills of all of us, or at least more people in more places. Companies and countries that enable that will thrive more than those that don’t.
Friedman's implication is that because China blocks access to social networking websites like Twitter or Facebook, social networking doesn't exist in the country. This view, of course, is absurd. China may not allow Facebook, but virtually everyone I know in that country uses 开心网, has a QQ account, and networks like crazy. Anyone who has done business in China knows that the Chinese are assiduous about following-up, exploring joint-ventures, and maximizing their benefit through cooperation. Facebook and Twitter are blocked, yes, but they aren't the only two social networking sites in the world.
But this is vintage Friedman: take a theme, in this case his thesis that the service economy will become dominant and that people around the world must compete with each other blah blah (The World is Flat, The World is Flat The World is Flat!), and beat it to death. This is the prism through which he sees all international affairs, and here he simply tries to graft it onto China's contemporary political and economic situation. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work.
UPDATE: Foreign Policy's Daniel Drezner makes additional criticisms of this Friedman column that I hadn't thought of.
Democracy, the “West”, and China
Chris commented below:
And because the West loves them. Westerners still generally believe “Western democracy” (scare quotes, because that should be plural, but everybody seems to assume the entire West -whatever that is- is a monolith) is the best of all possible systems. And so any Chinese (Iranian, Vietnamese, North Korean…) espousing values generally consistent with “Western democratic” ideals gets a lot of airplay.
This is an important distinction and I'm glad Chris brought it up. Many Westerners, particularly Americans, confuse and conflate concepts of 'democracy' and 'pro-West'. What makes many people in the US nervous about China isn't that China's an authoritarian state per se, but rather that China is beginning to challenge American hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region.
In the Bush years, democracy promotion became the ostensible theme of American foreign policy, but in reality it masked Washington's real intentions: building pro-American regimes. This hypocrisy was exposed quite blatantly in the 2005 Gaza elections, when the Bush Administration cheered for democratic elections up until the moment that Hamas won them.
How does this apply to China? Being a quasi-optimist, I'd say that over time odds are that the government will embrace some form of democracy. But as Chris points out, this democracy may not be as friendly to perceived Western interests as many Westerners might hope.
Ultimately, a realist would say that notions of democracy and autocracy are quaint compared to the overall dynamic taking place. As China grows, and it will continue to grow, it will begin to challenge US dominance in its region. The historical moment of American unipolarity is beginning to end, and in a few decades we'll see a new world where Washington will be forced to share influence with Beijing, Delhi, Brasilia, Moscow, and elsewhere.
But democracy is still worth supporting in China, if only so that people like Liu Xiaobo do not languish in prison for voicing aspirations that many of us simply take for granted.
Odds and Ends
Apologies for the relative silence as of late, but here are a few comments to whet your appetite:
- Isn't the obvious conclusion from the Obama/Scott Brown/health care debacle that the American political system is hopelessly dysfunctional? We're faced with the odd situation that a president elected in a near-landslide from a party with large majorities in both houses of Congress cannot pass a basic element of his agenda due to the dogged intransigent by the minority party, who have shown that if nothing else they possess discipline. Many have suggested doing away with the filibuster rules; I'd go a step further and junk the US Senate entirely. But no- such an idea is an anathema to a large number of Americans who believe in the divinity of a group of men who lived in an era in which powdered wigs were worn to court and black people were counted as 60 percent citizens.
- Obama's biggest problem is that he labors under the misconception that the Republicans are operating in good faith and are a worthy opposition party. They're not. They're simply a group of men and women who, facing near-extinction after last year's election results, have devoted themselves fully to blocking Obama's legislative agenda. They have no principles, and it is important to recall that next time you hear one of their leaders blathering on about big government. Any sincerity they might have had on that subject is laughable; nobody said a word about government spending when Bush was in office.
- I was going to write a blog-post about how the media is overreacting to the latest round of China-US bickering but then Christina Larson of Foreign Policy did it for me
- A word about the Dalai Lama, though. The Chinese media goes to great lengths describing the Lama as a wicked, horrible human being, a view totally at odds with his international reputation as a beatific spiritual leader. All Beijing does by vilifying the Dalai Lama- and Rebiya Kadeer for that matter- is make themselves seem ridiculous and out of touch to the rest of the world. Wouldn't it be easier to calmly let them agitate, knowing that neither side can realistically achieve any sort of independence? Or is this propaganda merely meant for domestic consumption?
China Mythbusting
James Fallows points to a recent survey by Pew in which a shocking percentage of Americans believe that China is more of an economic superpower than the US. This is of course completely false, as Fallows goes on to explain and then illustrate with a photograph of dormitory conditions at Chinese universities.
I've discussed previously that rural China is as valid- if not more so- a representation of the country as the major urban centers in the east. Why then does this misconception persist?
- China's massive population skews numbers. In gross terms, China's economy is the third largest in the world, ranking between Japan and Germany. In terms of growth per capita, though, China is by any measure a poor country. This Wikipedia page lists GDP per capita figures in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP). Countries ranked near China include Angola, Armenia, and Namibia. Nobody in America thinks of these countries as economic superpowers, do they? And yet in one sense China's economic position is more similar to them than it is to America, Japan, or Germany. There are a lot of wealthy people in China, but that's because there are a lot of people, period.
Perspectives of China- Podcast
I've spent part of this morning listening to a podcast lecture organized by Folger on the subject of foreign impressions of China. The three panelists are Rachel DeWoskin, author of Foreign Babes in Beijing and a former actress in the Chinese soap opera of the same name, Orville Schell, the distinguished China scholar and author of many books, and our man James Fallows.
The lecture is informal and funny; all three authors recount humorous stories of their experiences in the country as well as observations they've made. In particular, their account of how the world looks from the Chinese perspective is well worth listening to.
The link to the podcast is here.
(via China Digital Times)
Chocolate Bars in China
Our friend Daniel Gross continues his journey in China for Slate, this time traveling down the Yangtze River to report on progress of the Three Gorges Dam. For the most part this report avoids the inaccuracies that characterized his last one. But at the bottom of the article, in an aside, Gross wonders why he can't find chocolate in China.
Shanghaiist says that if Gross wants chocolate, he had plenty of options- from the mundane to the sublime- right in their fair city. Actually, Gross doesn't even have to go that far. Virtually every town in the country has a local shop (å°å–部) or market （超市) that sells Dove chocolate bars, which to the taste buds of this chocolate-fan aren't half bad.
Not to mention, most markets of a decent-size have chocolate ice cream bars and most towns and small cities have cake shops. I've eaten chocolate cake at birthday parties in which I was the only foreign guest.
In Kunming, even local shops sell Snickers and one or two places have Twix, Hersheys, and the like. Run-of-the-mill chocolate is available nearly everywhere, even in the countryside. While on bicycle trips chocolate bars function as energy food for mornings and early afternoons when fruit sold by the side of the road just won't cut it.
In a way I sympathize with Gross; no doubt he hasn't spent much time in China and his editors have asked him to make sweeping generalizations in line of what Slate's readers expect. But simply asking a local where to find chocolate would have sufficed, no?
Thoughts about the Present Decade- And the One Coming
Over the past week or so I've been working on a blog post summarizing the 2000s and wondering what the biggest themes, events, and trends were, both in China and beyond. When I sat down to write it I realized that there was so much to say that a simple blog post here wouldn't do it justice. Perhaps when I have more time around the end of the year I'll give it another stab.
Instead I'd like to think ahead to the 'teens, the 2010s, or whatever we might call the next decade. What sorts of things are likely to happen, both at home and abroad? I've laid out a few thoughts to get the ball rolling.
1. Within the US and the developed world there are three ideas that will gather momentum in the next ten years: acceptance of gay marriage, decriminalization of marijuana, and action on climate change. Part of this prediction is hopeful as I support all three wholeheartedly, but I do think that if the past ten years are any indication these three ideas have gone from being somewhat farfetched to at least plausible.
2. The reading of a daily newspaper will cease as we know it, and by 2020 or earlier all newspapers will be digital. In order to make this model work subscribers will pay for news content and likely other services such as social networking websites, search engines, and even some opinion journals. The next generation of web- web 3.0 if you will-will be figuring out how to pay for it all.
3. Environmental incentives will lead to an increase in high-density living in the US, following current trends in Europe and in East Asia. This will be coupled by increased support for high-speed rail and other initiatives. The golden age for the American automobile will recede even further into the past.
These are merely three- anyone care to add more, or comment on mine?