Not Entirely

You might want to read Peter Berkowicz’s assessment of China’s “patterns and purpose” at RealClearPolitics. Although I agree with some particulars of it I don’t agree with it entirely. For example, take this passage:

It was always unreasonable to assume that Chinese Communist Party leaders — who take pride in being heirs to a great and ancient civilization, and who espouse a 20th-century ideology and political system whose cruelty and repression have left tens of millions dead — comprehend domestic politics and world affairs as do the United States and other liberal democracies.

which intermingles truth with mythology and misconception. I agree that American politicians routinely and habitually interpret the actions of leaders in other countries through the prisms of their own experiences and motivations which will inevitably be misleading. Chinese leaders aren’t American politicians. Simple as that. But it also concedes something in advance that should not color any negotiations from our point of view. The China that was so admired by the Koreans and Japanese was Tang Dynasty China. Mesopotamia and Egypt were ancient. China not so much.

Two factors must be understood. China’s culture is one based on externalized shame rather than internalized guilt. Consequently, image is extremely important. A desire for respect is a manifestation of that. And for much of the last millennium China has been dominated by foreigners, first the Mongols and then Europeans. China’s “great and ancient civilization” was largely a conscious fabrication of Song Dynasty scholars. My point here is that China has been irredentist for a very long time. Seeking respect is not recent but goes back a very long time.

I think he grossly overstates China’s Marxist foundations and China’s desire for world conquest. I don’t think they actually care about the rest of the world that much. I see a lot more nostalgia for a dubious past conjoined with the highest priority being the retention of power by the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party and their families.

Here’s his peroration:

To safeguard a free and open international order, the United States must, in the first place, secure freedom at home by honoring the nation’s founding principles and constitutional traditions. The United States must also maintain the world’s best-trained and best-equipped military. It light of the China challenge’s distinctive features, it must revitalize its alliance system by developing new groupings and coalitions to handle particular problems and by reforming international organizations so that they serve the interests of free and sovereign nation states. It must pursue opportunities to cooperate with China but based on fairness and reciprocity, while constraining and deterring China where necessary. It must cultivate a diplomatic corps that understands the American spirit and American government while appreciating the diversity and common humanity of the peoples and nations of the world. It must foster an informed and engaged public. And it must, through the many forms of diplomatic power at its disposal, champion human rights.

Here, too, I do not entirely agree. I think that the foundation of the U. S. position in the world is a strong, diverse, and prosperous economy at home. That’s what makes “the world’s best-trained and best-equipped military” possible. But we shouldn’t lose track of the reality that the U. S. is an outlier, our allies’ interests are not our own, and to “champion human rights” is less an enduring American value and more a tactic for something that is opposed to our “founding principles and constitutional traditions”: American hegemony.