As this note is being written, the end of the first year of war in Ukraine is upon us. It seems clear that Putin will continue the fight for as long as he can. Ukraine, the US, and NATO seem determined to continue on as well. The great unknown at this point is the role that China may choose to play. Russia is already trying to gain weapons support from Iran and North Korea. Will China, still claiming an unbounded friendship with Russia, join in with material support for Russia’s war machine? It is already aiding Russia by buying its energy products (at a discount), and presumably also providing access to sanctioned products it needs. Other countries are doing the same thing, but providing weapons to counter those Ukraine is receiving takes these alliances to a quite different level. At its simplest, we have the European Union, NATO, the G7, and the United States waging war against Russia and its allies. We also have Russia claiming to be waging war against the West with help from its allies. In effect, we have the collection of mostly democratic Western nations battling the autocrats of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Except for the current limitation of the battlefield to the plains of poor Ukraine, this situation looks like a prelude to a possible world war.
The nature of China’s ultimate participation is critical. It has made it clear that it desires to replace the US as the dominant political and economic power. It may also desire military dominance. Biden likes to talk of China and the US as being competitors, but is it more accurate to say they are enemies? Michael Pillsbury provides a compelling perspective in his book The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. Pillsbury worked in government service through several presidential administrations and interacted with Chinese officials frequently over the years. He claims the US, and he himself, totally misunderstood the Chinese and their goals for much of his service. Assisted by the acquired ability to read Chinese writings in their original language, he eventually discovered he had been fooled, along with everyone else. What he uncovered was a long-term plan to become the world’s dominant power. That was the role China thought was its destiny. And in so doing this, it would also gain revenge for a century of humiliations at the hands of the US and other world powers. A critical element of that plan was to convince the US to help China gain the necessary technology to eventually dominate the US. Pillsbury details how we were so easily deceived.
“Over time, I discovered proposals by Chinese hawks (ying pai) to the Chinese leadership to mislead and manipulate American policymakers to obtain intelligence and military, technological, and economic assistance. I learned that these hawks had been advising Chinese leaders, beginning with Mao Zedong, to avenge a century of humiliation and aspired to replace the United States as the economic, military, and political leader of the world by the year 2049 (the one hundredth anniversary of the Communist Revolution). This plan became known as ‘the Hundred-Year Marathon.’ It is a plan that has been implemented by the Communist Party leadership from the beginning of its relationship with the United States.”
Pillsbury tells us that China, with its long and unique history, developed a culture incorporating features that were foreign to Western nations. In particular, deception was of the greatest value in pursuit of success against an opponent. Scholars tried to tell policymakers this, but they chose to not listen.
“In the 1940s, an effort was funded by the U.S. government to understand the Chinese mind-set…The researchers, who included the scholars Nathan Leites, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, also analyzed the themes of popular Chinese books and films. One conclusion that emerged was that Chinese did not view strategy in the same way Americans did. Wherein Americans tended to favor direct action, those of Chinese ethnic origin were found to favor the indirect over the direct, ambiguity and deception over clarity and transparency. Another conclusion was that Chinese literature and writings on strategy prized deception.”
Nathan Leites delivered this observation.
“Chinese deception is oriented mainly toward inducing the enemy to act inexpediently and less toward protecting the integrity of one’s own plans. In other cultures, particularly Western, deception is used primarily with the intention of insuring one’s own forces can realize their maximum striking potential…the prevalent payoff of deception for the Chinese is that one does not have to use one’s own forces…”
It was more comfortable for policymakers to assume that other people desired to be just like us than to assume a fundamental difference between us and a significant national group.
“The results of the original 1940s study—that an ethnonational group viewed the world differently—proved controversial and politically incorrect, and they were never published. The sole existing copy rests quietly in the Library of Congress. It would not be until 2000 that I learned from Chinese generals that the study’s conclusions were essentially correct.”
China’s first target would be communist Russia, offering it assistance in countering its enemies. But Russia soon learned that China’s offer was intended not to benefit Russia, but to benefit China. When that strategy no longer worked, China targeted the US.
“The Chinese planned to use the Americans as they had used the Soviets—as tools for their own advancement, all the while pledging cooperation against a third rival power. This is how the Marathon was conducted throughout most of the Cold War—China using the Soviet Union’s rivalry with America to extract Soviet aid and then, when that faltered, shifting to the Americans by offering to help against the Soviets. In doing so, the Chinese were reflecting another ancient stratagem—‘kill with a borrowed sword,’ or, in other words, attack using the strength of another.”
It is usually proclaimed that Richard Nixon showed great courage and insight in his “going to China.” However, it was China, Chinese military leaders, who came to the US and set the political developments in motion.
“But many have forgotten—if they ever even knew—that the opening was not exactly initiated by Nixon or by Kissinger. During their first months in office, their focus was on improving relations with the Soviet Union. They had no desire to provoke the Soviets’ ire by dallying with China. Indeed, in many ways, it was not Nixon who went to China, but China that went to Nixon.”
“Modern China’s first foreign minister was a general. We now know, from Henry Kissinger’s memoirs, that the decision to pursue an opening with the United States came not from China’s civilian leaders, but instead from a committee of four Chinese generals.”
The Chinese convinced US political leaders that it was mainly interested in furthering its own economic progress. This deception worked wonderfully for them. Several presidents bought this pitch, and greatly aided China, both economically and militarily, perhaps none more than Ronald Reagan.
“National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 11 signed by President Reagan in 1981, permitted the Pentagon to sell advanced air, ground, naval, and missile technology to the Chinese to transform the People’s Liberation Army into a world-class fighting force. The following year, Reagan’s NSDD 12 inaugurated nuclear cooperation and development between the United States and China, to expand China’s military and civilian nuclear programs.”
“Additionally, the Reagan administration provided funding and training to newly established Chinese government-run institutes specializing in genetic engineering, automation, biotechnology, lasers, space technology, manned spaceflight, intelligent robotics, and more. Reagan eventually approved a Chinese military delegation visit to one of the crown jewels of national security, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA]…”
“The Reagan administration hoped it was countering Soviet power by giving a boost to the Chinese, and everyone—from Reagan on down—wanted to believe Beijing’s claims that China was moving toward greater liberalization.”
Even the best deceptions cannot go on forever. Spokespersons will eventually tip their hands, politicians will brag, and everyone will wish that progress will come more quickly. China’s ambitions can be found by those who listen and pay attention to what is written for Chinese consumption.
“…they see a multipolar world as merely a strategic waypoint en route to a new global hierarchy in which China is alone at the top. The Chinese term for this new order is da tong, often mistranslated by Western scholars as ‘commonwealth,’ or ‘an era of harmony.’ However, da tong is better translated as ‘an era of unipolar dominance.’ Since 2005, Chinese leaders have spoken at the United Nations and other public forums of their supposed vision of this kind of harmonious world.”
The Chinese cannot anticipate this eventuality without discussing what such “harmony” would mean to those subjected to this Chinese dominance. Pillsbury refers to the work of one author that presented a glimpse at what China seems to have in mind.
“For example, Zhao Tingyang’s The Under-Heaven System: The Philosophy of World Institution was published in 2005 and is gaining increasing currency in mainline Chinese thought today. Zhao’s ‘system’ redesigns global structures based on traditional Chinese ideals. That new world is called tianxia, which in Mandarin can be translated as ‘under-heaven,’ ‘empire,’ and ‘China.’ The China scholar William A. Callahan translates tianxia as a unified global system with China’s ‘superior’ civilization at the top. Other civilizations, such as the United States, are part of the ‘barbarian wilderness.’ As the center of the civilized world, China would have the responsibility to ‘improve’ all the nations and peoples of the world by ‘harmonizing’ them—spreading Chinese values, language, and culture so they can better fit into under-heaven. This empire ‘values order over freedom, ethics over law, and elite governance over democracy and human rights’.”
This author made it clear to Pillsbury that to sustain such a system, China would have to possess overwhelming military might such that there could be no possibility of contesting China’s mandates.
This description of China might seem to some like a plot to a low-budget, class B movie. However, there are many instances where China’s actions seem consistent with this picture. For example, the radical measures China is taking to eliminate Uyghur culture appear consistent with “harmonizing them—spreading Chinese values, language, and culture so they can better fit into under-heaven.”
Getting back to the issues arising from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, how might China proceed? It clearly wishes to dominate the US and the Western nations of Europe but is not near that state now. However, if Russia could dominate Europe militarily it would diminish the US relative to China without it having to make much of an investment. That may have seemed a possibility before the invasion, but it now seems a bit ridiculous. Given China’s desired path to dominance seems to be to trick adversaries into doing stupid things, backing off to the slow Marathon pace seems more characteristic of past behaviors. On the other hand, the nations that have sworn to defend Ukraine from Russia, have also sworn to prevent China from becoming a world domineering economic force. Perhaps the Chinese leaders now believe that the Marathon plan has been revealed and must be replaced with something more urgent and risky.
Stay Tuned…
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