One of the galling aspects of the recent Foreign Affairs article purporting to show how “limited” are the global ambitions of the People’s Republic of China, a thesis ably rebutted in these pages by James Roth, is how much PRC conduct around the world seems to have escaped the notice of the three authors. But they also downplay the conduct that they do subsume in their analysis.
The authors begin by stressing their “careful review of what China says it wants,” the totalitarian dictatorship’s claims being of the utmost indicative importance, in their view; and then admitting, for example, that China “often bullies its neighbors.” They also tell us that even when the propaganda lies, it gives us an idea of what the Chinese government wants people to believe.
What the PRC says
What does the People’s Republic say? One thing that it says, over and over, is that the neighboring countries are the ones doing the bullying, because, as the PRC says, all these countries are sitting in Chinese territory. China is just looking out for its territorial integrity.
Thus, what the PRC says is happening—when, e.g., China’s coast guard vessels ram, sideswipe, water-cannon those of the Philippines—will not necessarily disclose the truth to us. We must also look. By looking at facts, the Foreign Affairs authors are able to detect that the PRC is lying in this instance, that it is the one doing the bullying. But because each particular egregious unprovoked altercation in the South China Sea does not immediately lead to full-scale war between the People’s Republic and whichever country it is harassing at the moment, the authors suppose that nothing very much is going on—no matter how frequent and continuous the unprovoked assaults. Of course, the aggression encounters some resistance, resistance that prevents the PRC from going even further…for the moment.
The Chinese Communist Party and its representatives say a lot of things, like that the PRC has territorial rights over almost all of the South China Sea, including waters a few miles away from the shores of other countries. But wait a minute, wait a minute, the authors rush in. You can’t use the nine-dashed-line on PRC maps of the South China Sea as evidence of any kind of expansionism! The nine-dashed or eleven-dashed line been around for quite a while!
“The origin of the so-called nine-dash line, which China uses to demarcate its claims in the South China Sea, is instructive. The nine-dash line encompasses much of the South China Sea, including waters near the coastlines of Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Although many observers believe such claims are new, the nine-dash line was originally an eleven-dash line, which was first shown on an official ROC map published in 1948. The demarcation may even predate that: historians have connected the 1948 map to an earlier ‘Map of Chinese Islands in the South China Sea,’ published in 1935 by an ROC government agency. Yet in 1957, the CCP removed the two dashes that extended into the Gulf of Tonkin, the body of water separating northern Vietnam from southern China—a move widely interpreted as a gesture to improve diplomatic ties with North Vietnam. Although China will not budge on Taiwan or other long-standing sovereign claims, it has shown a willingness to compromise on other borders.”
And…?
I gather from this passage that China uses diplomacy in addition to bullying and hortatory propaganda to achieve its aims. We may concede that Xi Jinping, like previous Chinese dictators, and his diplomats really do travel to other states and speak to other leaders and diplomats and that the other leaders and diplomats also come to the People’s Republic of China.
We may also concede that not everybody who criticizes China’s relentless harassment of its neighbors has an exhaustive knowledge of the history of these harassments and of the party-state’s ludicrous claims. But these kinds of observations do not add up to what the authors pretend they add up to. The learned excursion is diversionary. The People’s Republic is still doing all the things that it is doing, today, now, around the world, to assert and achieve and expand dominance and establish precedents for doing more and more of the same. It is still always doing as much as it can get away with. Which is not infinite but still a lot.
To which the authors say: “But this is a normal state of affairs in world politics and the issues at stake are standard components of healthy competition.”
Normal. Healthy. Perhaps in the same way that chugging cyanide with your meat and vegetables is normal and healthy.
The authors would limit what counts as CCP bullying of other countries to “just” the (many) countries in the South China Sea region with which it has boundary disputes plus Taiwan. About this last, they contend that it is a mistake to try to deter PRC aggression against the Republic of China. They say that because China’s claims to Taiwan “are ideological and historical, not purely strategic, attempting to deter is more likely to provoke.” Thank you. Thank you for pointing out that ideology and history are also relevant here. Meanwhile, China has been militarily deterred, with U.S. help, from successfully launching a full-scale invasion of the Republic of China for 75 years; since the end of the civil war. Do the authors have evidence that if the ROC had declined to defend itself and to abstain from ever responding to any the PRC’s many, many, many military rehearsals in the Taiwan Strait and overhead and almost-but-not-quite invasions (plus the bombardments Quemoy and Matsu), the PRC government would have relinquished its often repeated determination to “re-unite” with Taiwan? Is reciprocal surrender the usual response of totalitarian aggressors when their targets surrender?
The authors listen to what the propaganda says until they stop listening to it. They make a pitch for maintaining a status quo in Taiwan Strait that would not exist but for the deterrence that they say must derail maintenance of the status quo. They are babbling.
Things happen
We are always learning of new instances of pushy obnoxiousness by the CCP around the world.
The CCP orders the Thai government to drastically alter an exhibit that focuses on CCP tyranny; the Thai government obeys. The CCP beats up anti-CCP protesters in the United States and Britain. The CCP demands the right to build a gargantuan embassy in the heart of London that will double as a spy base, and seems to be getting its wish. With giant fishing vessels, the CCP invades the exclusive economic zones of South American countries to deplete the fish that locals depend on. The CCP bribes and bullies western universities into altering curricula, research, policies. The CCP massively cyberattacks countries around the world. The CCP directly intervenes in foreign elections in hopes of preventing critics of the CCP from gaining office. Gadgets and software originating in the People’s Republic of China routinely surveil the user and send user data to the People’s Republic of China. The CCP is training African dictators and would-be dictators on the basic principles of CCP-style authoritarianism. Around the world, the CCP is taking over and converting media outlets into fonts of CCP propaganda. The CCP backs terrorists and backs Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The CCP harasses and kidnaps Chinese dissidents and members of persecuted groups who are trying to make a new life for themselves overseas.
How much evidence do the authors require of the scope, multiplicity, and severity of CCP predation and of its global ambition to dominate? If they have not heard of any of these things and many more, perhaps they should attend to the news more assiduously.
At least until such time as it collapses, the Chinese party-state will dominate to the extent that it is allowed to dominate. The authors have written their article on the basis of being experts in this subject. Roth says that they “should know better.” Yes. Why don’t they? But maybe they do.
