January 2022
This edition of Wesleyan Way Perspectives is provided by Morton Holbrook III, J.D., adjunct professor of Political Science and a retired U.S. diplomat (foreign services officer). As a diplomat, he served in Taipei (1976-78), Beijing (1979-83 and 1996-99), Shenyang (1990-93), Tokyo (1993-96), Manila (2000-04) and Paris (2004-07). In China, he helped open the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 1979, was involved in negotiating the U.S.-China Consular Convention and drafted human rights reports. He also served as principal officer (U.S. Consul General) in Shenyang.
Read more about his distinguished career here.
Professor Holbrook is available at:
morton.holbrook@kwc.edu
What’s going on in China?
The China I saw in 1979 was a very poor country indeed. Rice, cloth, and other commodities were rationed – and the ration coupons, valid only in the area of issue, served also to control internal migration. In the countryside, Mao’s communes dominated, a potent symbol of the twin disasters of the Great Leap Forward (1958) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76); two decades after their creation, some communes still lacked electricity and running water. In the urban areas giant state enterprises, following the lead of their counterparts in the Soviet Union, focused on production not tethered to the demand for their products, and existed solely due to state subsidies. Some foreign observers at the time called Communist China a “poorfare” state.
But change was in the air. Deng Xiaoping’s policies of “reform and opening,” starting in 1979, shook China up. The communes soon disappeared, and farmers could get long-term leases for their land, though not outright ownership. In the cities, state enterprises were told to listen to market forces. Many went bankrupt, and others were told to tie production to market demand and make a profit; this was the “socialist market economy.” In fact, there is now an “anti-monopoly” law in “socialist” China to foster fair competition in the marketplace.
Internal controls were loosened. Before going to China on assignment at the new U.S. Embassy, I was told by colleagues who had served in China earlier (at the U.S. Liaison Office, set up after President Nixon’s 1972 visit), that I would never visit the home of a Chinese citizen, and, further, would not even be able to have a conversation on a street corner without being interrupted by a security agent. Yet I was the welcome guest in a Chinese home two weeks after arrival in Beijing. I also spent a good many weeks of the next four years traveling around China to provincial capitals. Besides official appointments, I made it a point to walk around, and discovered people were not just unafraid, but eager to talk with an American visitor.
In a word, China relaxed. Not only were there suddenly many more foreign diplomats and tourists, but foreign investment, banned after the split with the U.S.S.R. in the 1960s, was allowed again in China starting in 1979. Foreign trade increased. And it was a two-way street-Chinese could get passports, previously extremely hard to come by, and go abroad. In the summer of 1979, an average of only eight people a day applied at the U.S. Embassy for visas to go to the United States. Gradually at first, and then in an increasing flood, millions of ordinary Chinese could not only get passports but had the funds to go overseas to sightsee, to do business, and, eventually, to send hundreds of thousands of their children to schools in the U.S. (the favorite destination) and elsewhere.
This was a formula that worked; reform domestically and opening to the outside world. On the economy, the party essentially got out of the way and allowed private and foreign-invested enterprises to take the lead. The Chinese economy expanded at a rate never seen before in such a large country, perhaps averaging 10 percent a year for nearly three decades. Statistics aside (and the statistics were suspect), you could see progress with your own eyes: better housing, better transportation, better medical facilities, more educational opportunities. Today, virtually every large Chinese city (and there are a lot of them) has a new subway system, a new airport, a new railroad station for high-speed trains, and new interstate-quality highways connecting the entire country. The Beijing I saw in 1979 featured hundreds of thousands of bicycles and a handful of cars, mostly belonging to government bureaucrats. Beijing and other cities today are jam-packed with private automobiles.
The downside: The environment took a back seat to China’s economic development. Chinese cities were already polluted in 1979, the result of coal-powered factories located in urban areas, plus use of lumps of coal in many homes for daily cooking and heating. Many enterprises have now been relocated outside urban areas, but China has just begun to address its serious pollution concerns, particularly air quality. Its pledge to reduce carbon emissions as part of the Paris Climate Agreement is notably unambitious – no reductions promised until just before 2030, with carbon neutrality pledged for 2060. (In the U.S.-China agreement on climate change, just reached on Nov. 11, 2021, China made no concrete pledges but did make statements in favor of reducing coal production, cutting back methane emissions, and taking steps to reduce deforestation.)
Politics: under wraps: Political reform, such as separating the roles of the government and the Communist Party and allowing democratic elections at the village level featuring non-party candidates, was briefly discussed in the controlled media and attempted in the 1980s, but came to a screeching halt with the Tiananmen Massacre of June 4, 1989. The advent of the internet has allowed occasional voices of political criticism to be heard, such as the “Charter 08” manifesto (in 2008) calling for a multiparty system and constitutional restraints on the governing party. The result was the opposite: a Communist Party “Document 9” issued in 2012, rejecting “constitutionalism” and Western freedoms as simply a ruse intended to oust the Communist Party from power. For good measure, Liu Xiaobo, chief author of Charter 08 and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, was thrown into jail, where he died in 2017.
History helps the party: Prior to 1979, China went through a century and a half of turbulence, starting with the Opium War of 1840 when foreign nations, with the U.K. in the lead and including the United States, occupied major cities, facilitated by many “unequal treaties” forced on the Qing Dynasty (The last U.S.-China “unequal treaty,” providing special privileges for Americans and other foreigners in China, was not withdrawn until 1943). A major internal rebellion in the 1880s preceded the fractious end of the last dynasty in 1911. Then a Warlord period of many local conflicts was followed by occupation by Japan of much of China beginning in 1933 and lasting through World War II. Finally, there was an all-out civil war between the Communists and Nationalists forces after 1945, followed in 1950 by China’s intervention against the United States in the Korean War. Then, there was the domestic coup de grace, so to speak; Mao’s twin disasters of the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in mass famine and the decade-long Cultural Revolution.
The so-called Cultural Revolution was actually aimed at destroying Chinese culture as well as foreign influence. It featured mass and often violent public rallies, executions, and torture on a national scale; no one except Mao himself was exempt from its excesses. Probably not a family in China, going back generations, escaped the brutality of China’s recent history, and in particular the Cultural Revolution, including those of Chinese leaders such as Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping.
No wonder there was a collective sigh of relief when the iron grip of the party was relaxed in 1979, and people were allowed a measure of freedom to do what they wanted – at least economically – and no longer had to literally hold high the little red book of Chairman Mao, as in the days of the Cultural Revolution.
By contrast, China since 1979 has been basically at peace; no foreign incursions, no domestic violent political movements. Domestic peace plus rapid economic growth provided both a firm foundation and justification for continued one-party rule. Ideology played at best a minor role; Deng Xiaoping’s pragmatic policies, aimed at economic growth, looked to results, not ideological purity. In any case, China had no democratic tradition. Traditional Chinese culture was hierarchical, with the emperor at the head of state and the father ruling the family – a structure quite compatible with the top-down leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
What’s wrong with this picture? The result was by 2012, when Xi Jinping took over as the top leader, China had become the world’s second largest economy. As party leaders have noted, its policies brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, though with population exceeding 1. 3 billion, economic prosperity did not reach everyone. But despite this record of economic accomplishment, Xi Jinping has taken steps back in the direction of policies which had failed in China in earlier days, emphasizing the role of state enterprises and partly closing the door to the outside. Why? The world 2008 financial crisis affected China only marginally but was an important turning point in how China viewed the world. For some Chinese leaders, the 2008 crisis showed the superiority of China’s economic development model, in contrast to the chaos of Western nations, including both their economies and their democratic systems. For them, Western democracy and untrammeled market capitalism was a recipe for chaos.
Another factor was the growing inequality in China that for some seemed too much at odds with Communist ideology. A China where most people had been poor became a country with one of the most skewed income distributions in the world. In addition, there was expansion of centers of power outside the party in China, as private and foreign-invested enterprises and organizations exhibited a measure of independence. In fact, not only organizations but also a number of individuals not known to be party members gained prominence both inside China and abroad, such as the entrepreneur Jack Ma, film director Zhang Yimou, artist Ai Weiwei, and (just a few days ago) tennis player Peng Shuai (perhaps starting a Chinese “Me Too” movement). This was in addition to a proliferation of foreign NGOs and cultural exchange programs in China that were exposing Chinese people to the ideas of democracy and human rights.
Having created prosperity by essentially getting out of the way and letting market forces shape the economy, the party now felt endangered by its own success – it was too much out of the way. One might say that the “right” within the Communist Party, pragmatic and focused on the economy, had, by virtue of its very success, stirred up the “left,” the true believers in Communist ideology. Xi is attempting to bridge the gap, to have it both ways, by re-emphasizing state enterprises while retaining the benefits of private and foreign projects; by welcoming foreign investors while reining in foreign NGOs, which must now report to the security forces in China if they want to continue to exist. This creates a bit of a conundrum: China’s economy has grown to the extent the party has said “hands off,” and the result has been the party, under Xi, feels threatened by the forces it unleashed!
What’s next for China? Strong economic growth was and remains the key to the party’s legitimacy and the key to its continued monopoly of political power. Under Xi, however, the Party, as a backup to economic progress, has taken additional steps to dominate of all aspects of life in China – including economics and business, culture, and in particular including the media, where dissenting voices are squelched rapidly, though they may be heard briefly on occasion. China under communism has never had a free press, but Xi took control of the media to new levels, making clear that its role was to be the government and party’s cheerleader. In addition. appealing to Chinese nationalism, Xi has asserted China’s territorial claims in regard to Taiwan, the South China Sea, the East China Sea and, with border skirmishes, China’s border with India. He also cracked down on Hong Kong, essentially ending the “one country-two systems” formula. At the same time, Xi also portrays China as a responsible member of the international community, with contributions to U.N. Peacekeeping Operations and a “belt and road” initiative supposedly benefitting both China and other countries.
Cult of the personality: More problematically, Xi has also moved rapidly to consolidate his own position as paramount leader, of the same stature as Mao and Deng. This is the clear message of the party meeting just concluded in Beijing, which produced a “Resolution” essentially canonizing Xi and the slogan “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.” This party document is the first sweeping self-assessment by the party since 1981.
The earlier document, issued under Deng Xiaoping, focused on the need for economic development. It also directly criticized Mao’s “cult of the personality,” and led to a law placing term limits on government leaders as a way to guard against a future cult. These limits were adhered to by the two government leaders who directly followed Deng, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, who each served two five-year terms.
Hu was succeeded in 2012 by Xi Jinping. Xi has not only removed the “two-term” limit but has fostered his own cult of the personality. This was and remains a risky move politically. Deng, who died in 1998, remains a well-respected figure in China, the leading official who rescued China from domestic chaos. As noted, Xi has also changed the content of Deng’s policies of “reform and opening” while maintaining the slogan.
And Xi’s future? Deng’s legacy remains strong in China, but as long as Xi’s policies appear successful, Deng’s clear injunction against the cult of the personality does not appear to threaten him. Should he stumble, however, in the economy, in dealing with Covid-19, or in some other way, such as involving China in a war, his action in abolishing term limits and becoming the kind of leader Deng warned against would certainly be regarded as a strike against him.
In addition, Deng was instrumental in establishing diplomatic and generally positive relations with the United States and other advanced countries. Chinese people were accustomed to seeing their top leaders, following Deng’s example, visit the United States, and to seeing America’s top leaders, including every president from Ronald Reagan through Donald Trump, visit Beijing. These visits, and the stable relationship they implied, fulfilled another deep ambition of China’s leaders and most other Chinese people, one that also was given impetus by the “century of humiliation” after the Opium War-to be treated with respect by foreign nations. The U.S. policy of “engagement” did just what that word implies; it established very broad and friendly connections between many sectors of American and Chinese societies. That suggests that Xi must move very carefully in dealing with the United States. Despite the current media barrage in China criticizing the U.S., bad US-China relations are not a feather in Xi’s hat.
Xi currently appears to be firmly in control, though given endemic secrecy at the top level of China’s leaders, it is impossible to fathom what opposition there may be, or its strength. Is China trying to “displace” the United States as a world power, as some argue or simply to become a strong regional power in Asia – as it already is? Either way, the U.S. needs to deal with China, particularly because of China’s strong military buildup, clearly aimed at countering U.S. forces. And if Xi himself were “displaced,” China’s internal and foreign policies would not necessarily change.
In the U.S. view, there is no reason for China’s military buildup-we do not threaten China. That is not how some Chinese leaders view the United States. There actually is no good alternative to arms control negotiations with Beijing – just as the U.S. did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In addition to arms control talks, President Trump’s 2020 trade deal with Beijing, and under President Biden, the just concluded U.S.-China Glasgow Declaration on climate change are important reminders that the U.S. and China can work together to improve relations and that competition between the two countries can, and should, remain peaceful.
On a larger scale, China is not pushing “socialism with Chinese characteristics” as an alternative ideology that other countries should adopt. It does represent an alternative path for governance as well as for economic development: one-party control, and government dominance of the economy compared with democratically elected leaders and a free economy — the “Beijing” model vs. the “Washington” model. In this competition, the U.S. can and should win, hands down. American soft power, the power of its ideals and its culture, dwarfs China’s rigid model based on the party as the ministry of truth. China is trying awkwardly to promulgate domestically an ideology of Marxism (abandoned by nearly every other country that has tried it), Maoism (whose historic excesses the party itself acknowledges), and free markets (the latest Resolution states, “China must uphold and improve its basic socialist economic system [and] see that the market plays the decisive role in resources allocation…”).
In my view, based on 30 years living in China and other countries around the world, the U.S. is still seen overwhelmingly as the land of freedom and opportunity, despite its problems. This is an image we can and should continue to project abroad. In fact, we do so already almost without trying; our image precedes us. Certainly we should continue the Fulbright and other educational exchange programs that promote American values precisely because they are not ideological or political.
In China today, there is no free press, no independent judiciary, and no other organization of any kind that can put the brakes on the abuse of power by top leaders. China’s model appeals particularly to countries governed like China, by authoritarian leaders unwilling to tolerate dissent. Give China’s leaders their due; they have attained great success in economic development. But their model of governance is clearly flawed, as their own experience and their own party resolutions admit, by overreliance on all-powerful top-down leadership, leadership with no guardrails, and no clear path or time of succession.
Yet, far from suggesting a solution to avoid disasters like the Cultural Revolution, the latest Resolution praises Xi Jinping many times, clearly endorsing another “cult of the personality” of precisely the type surrounding Mao. So far, Xi has not led China down the road to chaos and violence, as Mao did. But there is no institutional force with power to act against him. In this situation, one can understand and support the latest formulation of U.S. policy; that “our relationship with China will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, adversarial when it must be.” China should not be feared, but respected and dealt with step by step, both the challenges and the areas of cooperation. To the extent China chooses to compete with the United States, I would say, to borrow from Clint Eastwood, “Make my day.”
Professor Holbrook