At The American Interest Francis Fukuyama asks three questions about today’s China. The first question is what kind of a regime does China have? For most of the piece he struggles to place that question in the context of the whole sweep of China’s history finally deciding that President Xi’s objective is a revival of Mao’s totalitarianism with Chinese characteristics, a simultaneously excessive and inadequate answer. I would answer the question more simply. It’s nearly a textbook example of a fascist regime complete with irredentism and extreme nationalism, coupled with racism.
His second question is how should the United States and other Western democracies deal with Xi’s China? My answer there is simple, too. We shouldn’t deal with it at all. We should leave it completely alone, eliminate trade with it with all due haste, and take steps to encourage others to do the same.
His final question is if China were to change, what should the Chinese people hope for? IMO they should hope for a China that the rest of the world is content to leave alone rather than feeling threatened enough that eradication is the only alternative. That’s a pretty limited hope but as things look now it may be as good as it gets.
‘It’s nearly a textbook example of a fascist regime complete with irredentism and extreme nationalism, coupled with racism.’
If you know the history of the imperial regimes and their foreign and economic policies, you just described Han China from the Second Dynasty (Han) onward except for brief hiatuses of disunion and the hiccup of Maoism. They’ve always been statist and mercantilist in their economic policies, always considered themselves to be one step below Heaven, have always considered foreign devils to be inferior and worthy only of supplying tribute, always considered any territory ever ruled by Han or Sinocentric dynasties (such as the Yuan and the Qing) to belong to the Han forevermore. That’s one reason why the Koreans and the Vietnamese and other neighboring peoples distrust and hate the Han, having been ruled by them at one time or another.
It’s an unfortunate attitude of theirs, that all other peoples and nations must bow down and kowtow to them. That their policy towards others is exploitation and to achieve that end justifies the means, any means. A Japanese friend of my father’s when he was stationed there in the 1960’s once told him that Mao and Communism was simply a passing phase, that the Chinese culture would inevitably swallow up the western political fad called Marxism. He was very right.
I’m afraid that the only way to break this cultural attitude of the Middle Kingdom is to literally break it, or make it so the Han want to adopt a different culture more badly than they want to keep it. Japan managed the trick after Commodore Perry paid a visit. Not many other nations have.
Disengagement from China will not be easy, nor may it hurt the current regime. First China is a major world power, and with Russia it controls most of Eurasia. India, Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia all have some sort of economic connection with Russia/China. So, disengagement really means division of the world into two hostile blocs. Only in Cold War II, the Russian/Chinese bloc would be a more formidable opponent than the old USSR and its Central European allies.
Disengagement is real only if American companies are forced to relocate their manufacturing back to the US, NOT Viet Nam or Mexico or Canada, the US itself. This requires abandonment of free trade ideology and the establishment of a protectionist/mercantilist trade policy. This will drive up prices and wages, but free trade is intended to reduce wages and prices, and it has.
Considering the jingoistic rhetoric coming out of Washington, and China’s equally vitriolic replies, and our withdrawal from important treaties, we are drifting towards a shooting war with Russia/China, and possibly with Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea. God help if that happens.
Anyone living in large city needs to get out now.