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America’s Determination to Subjugate China

The Genesis of an “Ugly” China

Chinese society’s preeminence had always been held in awe by the rest of the world until the mid-1800s, when the Qing dynasty was severely weakened by the Taiping Revolution. The two Opium Wars sealed China’s fate as the man-to-be-bullied of Asia.

Two periods in Chinese history were ruled by non-Han Chinese. The Qing dynasty was one of them, the other is the Yuan dynasty from 1271 to 1368. Thanks to Marco Polo, the world was allured by China for centuries. (I personally am not convinced that Marco Polo had really visited China; he might only have seen its fringes.) It was all hype; the Buddhist monk Faxian, on his sea-route return from India in 409, left footprints in the islands along the way. Obviously, Europeans were sold of the story because of their own parochialism. Some scholars even argued that the world’s 1^st Industrial Revolution actually started during the Song dynasty (960-1279) – inventions like gunpowder, the compass, the printing press and what-have-you.

By then, the abject poverty that was ravaging the Chinese masses was eliciting no pity. The attitude of the world towards them bordered on contempt, thanks to the images of opium-smoking and pig-tailed Chinese men.

Pig-tailed and ancient-looking, no wonder!

The Wuchang Uprising on 10 October 1911 led to the Xinhai Revolution [辛亥革命] and the abdication of Puyi (and the end of the Qing dynasty) a few months later. Unfortunately, the father of modern China, Sun Yat-sen, was too weak to unify the factions. Soon the country was plunged into warlordism. Even though Sun’s anointed successor Chiang Kai-Shek was able to turn the tide somewhat, his Kuomintang government came increasingly under attack by the Communist forces under Mao Zedong. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. Chiang and Mao did join forces intermittently to fight the Japanese. Japan surrendered in 1945, after two atom bombs were dropped by the Americans on its soil.

 

A Fake Love Affair

The US was only a marginal player in Asia before World War II. But well back in the late 1800s, it was already riding on the bandwagon to force China to open its ports to the West. Because of the pathetic conditions in China,  the US had always harboured a very patronising attitude towards the country. Pearl S Buck (1892-1973) wrote indulgently about the miseries of lives in China during the dying years of the Qing dynasty. Her writing won her a Nobel prize. Her father was a missionary; they were there to spread Christianity. Building schools and hospitals was part and parcel of their stock-in-trade to win Chinese hearts and souls. Many were of course genuine in their zeal. But Imperial America was no saviour, remember they also joined in the Eight-Nation Alliance to sack the Summer Palace and petrify China?  

Pearl S Buck's China

Who wouldn’t feel bad for these people?

During World War II, the US “volunteers” did help to fly in supplies from Burma. And after the war, General George Marshall tried to mediate between Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Zedong. But Chiang’s regime was too inept; Mao won the civil war and gave China a new dawn. It was all hostilities after that – until Richard Nixon decided to play ping-pong with China.

In the intervening years, they fought a war in Korea, and China went through Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution madness. Few Chinese outside China were proud to be identified with a poor, Communistic China. To be able to emigrate was seen as an opportunity of a lifetime.

After the Nixon visit, China did become a novelty (some say darling) for the Americans for several years. It was poor, but its history was rich. (Chiang’s wife Soong Mei-ling had already charmed many political leaders in America with her sophistication, hence their head-over-heel anxiousness to aid China during the war). Chinese women were greatly fancied. Leaders like Zhou Enlai were admired for their intellectuality and political savviness. The hardworking “blue ants” always appeared deferential. They could not be a threat to us! America was therefore happy to act paternalistically to China, thinking it would eventually embrace its form of democracy. 

How not to charm the Yankees?

China Awakened…
The world was far too much ahead of China. Setting out to transform China, Deng Xiaoping made this hard truth clear to the Chinese. Upon his assumption of helmsmanship, he lost no time in awakening China. Chinese began to roll up its sleeves and toiled away. They did not have an aspiration to be Number One in the world. Their only goal was to live a better life.

 But Bill Clinton soon saw the “threat” in no time. He knew China had awakened. He made China sweat it out when it applied to join the World Trade Organisation. But it was still not a threat to the US militarily.

A Clash of Two Cultures

Samuel Huntington wrote about the clash of civilisations in 1996. He wrote that that the different civilisations would ultimately lead to clashes. But I got the feeling he was more concerned about the great divide between Judeo-Christianity and Islam, rather than the other possibilities. (The roles of Eastern cultures and philosophies appeared to be just incidental.) We all knew the score then. Islamic radicals were threatening the very foundation of western cultures in America and Europe. Even though the concern is still valid today, it is not seen as a life-and-death struggle, largely because of the Islamic world’s lack of strength on these two fronts: Economy and Military.

But the re-emergence of China, especially during the last five years, is seen by the West as a direct challenge to its hegemony, hence the total intolerance of China’s rise. And this trend appears unstoppable. It is happening to China today, but it may happen to any non-White nation in the world – once Uncle Sam thinks you want to be its equal economically, technologically, or militarily. (As a matter of fact, this intolerance has already happened to Japan (Toshiba and the Plaza Accord), France (Alstom) and more recently, Taiwan (TSMC) and Korea (Samsung).

The values of the two cultures are diametrically opposite. In the world order, it is Zero-sum in the West, but co-existence in China’s Confucian philosophy.

During his presidency, Barack Obama spoke about the need for the US to pivot its might in the Pacific region. Whom he had in mind to target was obvious, but humanity was largely in a benign state. Thanks to China, goods and services became affordable and plentiful. People could go about their routines or venture out with few concerns or fears. The rich could have their Porsches, lesser mortals could have their Hyundais. You could travel in private jets, but I could also arrive quite comfortably on Air Asia. No big deal. There was not great drama – until Donald Trump became President.

Trump thought White Americans were different. That they had the divine right to lord over the world.

America’s Modus Operandi
Sketching a ghost

Soon Trump demanded that China unilaterally correct the huge trade deficit the US was facing. This was soon followed by the imposition of stiff tariffs in January 2018 on Chinese goods. Both countries did sit down to hold several rounds of talks, and just as the Phase One agreement was about to roll out with some degree of hope, the outbreak of COVID-19 put everything back to square one. Or worse.

Then, early in 2019, “pro-democracy” protestors emerged in Hong Kong, and for months this SAR (Special Administrative Region) of China had to suffer the indignity of being ravaged by its own friends and neighbours. Many kept pointing their fingers at China, even though China was not a party to the issue that was behind the protests in the first place. We all know who were behind these riots.

The coronavirus struck later in the year. And it was first detected in China, which added fuel to the finger-pointing frenzy. While China was able to control the spread of virus in the country, the US, largely due to its own complacency and the indiscipline and the rejection of science by many, became the epicentre of the outbreak. Millions became infected and the death toll climbed alarmingly. Hospitals were overwhelmed, and millions lost their jobs. And 2020 was the election year! The Fed had to pump in huge amounts of cash to stay the economy and put money in every American’s pocket. Soon, lockdowns, movement restrictions and border closures became the order of the day in virtually every part of the world. The world was consumed by statistics of infections and death tolls on a daily basis. The pandemic became a political issue, and China was the natural scapegoat.

Hitherto highly respected press began to run articles about genocide and forced labour in Xinjiang. All this gelled well into the worldview of many in the less discerning world that China was indeed a nation devoid of human rights for its minorities. The misconception strengthened.

Trump began to sanction Chinese enterprises and urge American businesses in China to return home to make America great again. Some responded and moved their production facilities to Southeast and South Asia. Does this really work? We shall talk more about this later.

The inauguration of Joe Biden in January 2021 did not help improve things; instead, the relationship between China and the US is in a free fall today. Biden has gone on record to say that he would not allow China to surpass America under his watch. Is China aiming to do that? Didn’t it say it just wanted to create a “xiao-kang” or moderately prosperous society [小康社会] for its people?

I don’t normally subscribe to conspiracy theories, but obviously there is a maestro behind all this. Of course, the maestro is more than a single individual; it is an anti-China cabal drawn from many parts of the world, probably loosely coordinated by the US. (Remember the huge allocation passed by the US Congress to fund anti-China stories or advocations?)

Believing in the power of hoodlums
Despite its ignominious exit from Afghanistan, the US thinks its “Coca Cola” democracy will win them the world.

The Caucasians – from America to Europe to Australia – need no selling from the US. China is a clash-of-civilisations threat to their supremacy in the world. (Only a few of the Caucasian leaders think otherwise. You can count them with your two hands:  Serbia’s, Russia’s, Greece’s, Hungary’s and maybe New Zealand’s.) And it must be stopped. And there is no way you can change this mindset in the foreseeable future. It is best that China and Chinese all over the world recognise this.

This is perfectly racist in nature. (We are all racists; the difference is only a matter of degree.) Unfortunately, what the Caucasians want is total subjugation from China.

But what is most ironic is this: We have also non-Caucasians who are also riding on this anti-China bandwagon!

The most disappointing of the lot are the anti-China Chinese in the US, Australia, Taiwan, and Singapore. Many were or are holders of senior policy positions. Others are journalists and correspondents in influential media. Some are subtle in their approach; but any discerning listener can tell you what their agendas really are. I often tune in to listen to a neighbouring country’s channel for its prime-time news every evening. If you believe what the business reporter says, China would have collapsed many times over. Ditto the channel’s correspondent in Beijing. Pathetic indeed.

The West’s brand of disinformation is downright blatant. I suppose if you keep throwing mud at a clean surface, it would in no time look dirty too. The US approach is downright disgusting. China would find that Catherine Tai or Janet Yellen or Jake Sullivan, and even President Biden himself, would appear reconciliatory after each engagement only to see that a hostile policy is dished out the next day by their administration.

Next are the leaders in the non-White world.

Unlike Germany which was prepared to do soul-searching and put the Nazi atrocities behind them and move forward, Japan has been stuck with the not-guilty mindset about their horrible deeds during World War II. Some of the past leaders have expressed remorse, but the new breed of Japanese seems to think they don’t owe their victim countries anything. And in the US-China conflict, they are happy to be the Americans’ cheerleaders. Japanese have always harboured a sense of superiority over Chinese anyway.

The most bizarre behaviour comes from India, despite the humiliation they have suffered under their British colonial masters. Early Indian leaders were strong advocates of non-aligned policies. Prime Minister Modi has instead chosen to be a member of QUAD and is happily joining the US in showing their flags in the South China Sea. You just have to shake your head each time you see Modi exhibiting his complex. Recently the Financial Times claimed that China had tested a hypersonic missile. Soon everyone was talking about this “threat”. China did not boast to anyone; as a matter of fact, they denied it. Not to be seen to be falling behind, India declared to the world a couple of days ago that they had successfully tested a 5,000 km range ballistic missile that could hit any part of China! I thought China already has some that can do 14,000km? Separated by the Himalayas, China and India are no threat to each other. It is only the McMahon line that is causing the friction. If people will keep their cool and not be emotional, the dispute is really a non-issue. After all China has concluded border agreements with 12 out of the 14 countries that neighbour it. And because of a defeat suffered in 1962, India will do anything to spite China, even at the expense of sacrificing its economic interests. Strange really. Was the 1962 defeat such a hard-to-swallow part of their pride?

The ASEAN countries, hitherto deemed unimportant, are now being heavily courted. But their leaders are wiser than the Americans’ and their allies’. You don’t irritate your neighbours! Of course, the ownership of many islands is still being disputed, but you don’t resort to arms. And you certainly cannot count on the US to fight for you.

Disrupting the supply chain…
America’s prompting to manufacturers to move out of China is unlikely to take the latter out of the global supply chain equation. Its deep entrenchment is growing by the day. There are simply too many factors that will make America’s dream impossible to realise.

India, Vietnam, and Indonesia have often been touted as the viable replacements to China’s manufacturing prowess. But those who argue for this obviously do not quite understand the complexity of supply-chains vis-à-vis a country’s cultural, religious and political complexities.

No country enjoys the type of comparative or competitive advantages China possesses – resources, infrastructure, markets, etc., not to mention the two most important of all, namely, the innate ability of the Chinese to “eat-bitter” (endure extreme hardship) and its leadership’s wisdom and strategic-ness.

India appears to have the right “qualifications” to take China’s place. Its labour base is huge; its population is young and energetic. But one just has to learn from Ratan Tata how difficult it is even for an Indian to start a world-class business in India – the caste system, the parochial political interests, just to mention two reasons. And on Indonesia, the lack of competency in English and high-tech knowledge, need for religious and cultural accommodations, and the virtual non-existence of critical supply-chain linkages, amongst others. Vietnam is a good bet, but it may turn out to be another China.

Exclusionism in technology…
Come what may, the Biden administration is going to continue to treat China as its worst adversary. It is strengthening its resolve to deny China of its access to American technology. It is restricting exchanges on intellectual, scientific, and academic exchanges with China. One immediate impact is the availability of high-end chips to China and the roll-out of 5G, which is crucial to the much-anticipated arrival of the 4^th Industrial Revolution. The blockade retards innovations, resulting in fewer new products and services that would otherwise emerge from China, which has been the cradle of this phenomenon for the past decade. Exclusionism is a two-way sword. Every clear-headed mind will tell you that this will only strengthen China’s resolve to wean themselves of their dependence on western technologies.

Wishing China to fail…
Several recent policy decisions by China made many doomsayers of China all excited. First was the last-minute abortion of the Ant IPO. Second was the clampdown on property speculation. This has resulted in huge Chinese real estate enterprises like Evergrande Group turning almost belly up. Third was the clampdown on the elitist private tuition business and the restrictions placed on children accessing computer games. Fourth was the energy squeeze on low-tech industries. The decisions are deliberate; they have been made to address some very fundamental issues which are potentially damaging to its culture and economy. To the west, they are intrusions into “free enterprises” and “personal freedom”. All a question of lenses!

If Ant had been allowed to proceed, China would become a nation of compulsive debtors! People who are hitherto not bankable will have easy access to credit. Just imagine China turning into a nation of financially saddled zombies, struggling to stay afloat? Jack Ma appeared unstoppable; fortunately, the regulators did learn something from the disaster that the P2P business had inflicted on Chinese society just a couple of years earlier. President Xi has already warned that houses are for people to stay. You can invest in the property business, but you must have the means. Greed has prompted many to borrow heavily to invest, and this obviously has to be stopped in a country that preaches socialism. Games-addiction is opium-like. Many argue that the restriction infringes on personal freedom. My answer: good to nip bad habits in the bud. As for the energy squeeze on marginal industries. High time, China!

The opportunity to play up “everything Chinese leadership does is bad” is not to be missed even with people around us, particularly in English-medium TV channels and newspapers. They literally gloat that China may not be able to survive these rounds of “upheavals”. I suspect America’s money for anti-China journalism is already making an impact in the region. There will always be hardships and pains in such measures. You can only achieve your desired goals through proactive leadership. And only China has it!

But You Can Only Cry Wolf Once…
What has happened to Nancy Pelosi’s “beautiful faces” of Hong Kong’s protesters? And the forced labour in Xinjiang’s cotton fields and mills? And yes, there are still confessions from a high-ranking police officer from Xinjiang about China’s genocide there. The CNN reporter interviewing was too lazy even to check his identity!

Former Goldman Sachs president John Thornton’s low-keyed visit to China must have put paid to a lot of the rubbish churned out by the US administration. And Biden’s 90-day intelligence team on coronavirus origins must have thrown out the real Pinocchio in the whole affair.

All this will not be possible if truth is not with you.                                                         

Buy Yourself a Good Mirror
Own backyard burring…
A good friend says he loves to watch Fox News. His reason makes me laugh: Fox News tells you how divided Americans are! How true it is. Until today, many Trump’s followers still insist the election has been stolen from them. The Blacks are being bullied; yet many chose to vent their anguish at Asians. Wearing masks and vaccination are serious personal freedom issues. Deaths figures are just for statistical interest. Downtown San Francisco is full of homelessness. Gun deaths are highest in the world. Yes, they have high school or college diplomas, but few can tell you where Malaysia or Singapore is; or add 10 and 110 without a calculator. Yes, they have the best universities and colleges in the world, but take out the non-White faculties or student cohorts, their ranking would go South immediately. They can hardly produce anything that is truly cost competitively now.

The amateurism in Biden and his team
For someone who has spent his entire life in politics, Biden certainly disappoints. Obama in his book “A Promised Land” was polite but not complimentary at all about his vice president. I suppose he was not impressed at all with Biden. I even read somewhere that Obama had privately uttered this: Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to “fxxk” things up.

This is an era where Biden can exercise statesmanship and leave great legacies behind; unfortunately, he has totally engulfed himself in parochial politics at home and hoodlum politics internationally. America is mired by internal divides. Morale is low. Its economy is in a sad state; the task of making it work is beyond Jeremy Powell and Janet Yellen now. He wants to rejuvenate its infrastructure, but who is going to foot the bill? On the international front, he wants to outdo Trump on China. But America has lost much of its weapons, save the technology blockade. You can’t fight a trade war with China if you yourself do not produce much. The Europeans are tired of America’s self-interest’ism – with Germany on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, with France on the sale of nuclear submarines to Australia, etc. Biden sent out his lightweight vice president Kamala Harris and defence secretary Llyod Austin to try to coerce the ASEAN countries to take side. But these people do not understand the oriental wisdom its leaders possess. He sought to use the “poison to fight poison” stratagem on trade negotiations with China. Catherine Tai has to show that she is more American than Americans. But can this work, since you cannot keep crying wolf all the time?

Has the world seen the true colours of Biden? I believe so. He was supposed to be the star of the recent G20 meeting in Rome. Try to spot at where he stands in the picture below. Again, no prize for the right answer.

Where is Joe?

As for his master diplomat, does he really understand diplomacy? Blinken must have felt very humiliated after his encounter with Yang Jiechi in Alaska. In the Zurich meeting with Yang, it was Jake Sullivan who represented China. And now in Rome, he refuses to shake Wang Yi’s hand. Yet, he was the one who went to the Chinese delegation’s hotel to meet Wang Yi. The Indonesians have a term for this behaviour: Kurang ajar (lack of adequate upbringing by one’s parents). Enough said.

Hi there, I am not going to shake your hand! Kurang Ajar!

Besides Blinken, you also have Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, Ambassador-designate to China Nicholas Burns, who in the physical absence of Chinese opposites love to delude themselves with their “talking from the position of strength” assertions to their home audiences.

The Green Hypocrisy
Climate change dos have also been increasingly used politically to demonise China. The COP26 conference is a case in point. Trump withdrew and Biden is re-joining all these platforms. But is he genuine? Or is it a reaction to America’s own paranoia about China?

The table below shows the cumulative carbon emissions per capita from 1850-2021. No explanation is needed. (This is notwithstanding the fact that much of the carbon burden has been outsourced to China by virtue of the latter’s “factory of the world” reality.) Of course, every country must take climate change seriously. And Biden is not the only angel in town. Cutting emission is one thing, one should also plant more trees, and this is precisely what China has been doing. China certainly does not have to feel guilty on this front. And read what John Kerry, Biden’s Climate Change czar, has written in The New York Times. Hypocrisy of the highest order indeed. 

Taiwan, the Willing Pawn in the Game…
Biden Administration’s double talk on Taiwan is most incredible. It says it upholds the one-China policy. On the other hand, it will “help” Taiwan if it comes under attack. This has emboldened Tsai Ing-wen’s blatant brushoff of China’s call for reunification. She is bent on taking Taiwan down an Independence route. The stances of both Xi and Tsai could not be clearer in their respective speeches made on this year’s 10 October celebration.

Chiang Kai-Shek fled the mainland for Taiwan in 1949 but vowed to recapture the mainland. Mao considered Taiwan a renegade province. Both sides claimed to represent China, until mainland China took its place at the United Nations. Lee Teng-hui began to sow the seed of separate nationhood for Taiwan.

Mainland China was behind Taiwan in every aspect of life well into the 2010s. The mainland Chinese and the Taiwanese were generally happy with the “1992 Consensus”. (Understandably, its existence was denied by Lee who was Taiwan’s president then.) Regardless, cross-border exchanges were a happy routine even under Tsai’s first term in office.

No more today! Tsai treats China like a sworn enemy! Thanks to the riots in Hong Kong, an about-to-lose president suddenly won the second term handsomely. This is despite the fact that everyone knows her claim of a London School of Economics PhD is tantamount to criminality.

But the China of today is a formidable nation even in the eyes of the Americans – whom Tsai is counting on to deter China. Xi’s speech carries a subtle ultimatum. I believe the reunification-by-force countdown has begun and Tsai’s fate has been sealed. A toad that is being boiled? And who is stoking the fire? No prize for the correct answers.

A toad being boiled?

Unfortunately, just like the younger generations of Hong Kongers, few Taiwanese are proud of their Chinese heritage or identity. While China has finally reined in the Hong Kongers, the horses in Taiwan have already bolted.

Many of the older thinkers and scholars there are in fact pro-unification. They take great pride in being “Chinese”. But the younger generations have little inclination to learn Chinese history. The population harbours a complex psyche. The benevolence shown by Japan during its half-century rule, as compared to the neglect inflicted by the Qing court, has “nipponized” a high percentage of native Taiwanese, many of whom have Japanese heritage. (Some 300,000 Japanese were said to have stayed behind after World War II. Lee is said to be one of those with Japanese heritage.) Chiang did bring many mainlanders over, but his White Terror had traumatised many and damaged his legacy. China was a distant cousin at best. Today many of the young in Taiwan do not know who Sun Yat-sen was. They don’t even know why they are celebrating the Double-Ten holiday!

Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party are counting on America to alienate China. China can never allow that, for its front yard will be totally patrolled by Alsatians which are all out to harm the country.

Its nine-dash line in the South China Sea is drawn precisely to prevent this from happening. In their twisted logic, the US and its allies are using it as the excuse to collectively roam the South China Sea, all in the name of upholding freedom of navigation in the area, and to deter China should it move to unify Taiwan by force.

At first, they had the Five Eyes, then the QUAD, and now the formation of AUKUS, or the Australia, UK, and US security pack. Countries have been coerced to take sides, and the South China Sea has become perhaps the most dangerous region in geopolitics today.

One outcome arising from all these challenges is the loss of trust the Chinese all over the world had not only for the Americans and its allies, but also for Caucasians in general.

Taiwan has to be reunited with China, sooner or later.

Sooner or Later?
China should not harbour any hope that the US and its blind and quasi-allies will change their attitude to them. Its spokespersons should not waste their breath trying to oppose, or condemn or insist on “corrections” form the latter and its allies. It should just continue to do what it is best at, i.e., improving the lives of its 1.4 billion people and strengthening its military might to deter the West’s re-enaction of what happened to China in the late 19^th century. Stereotyping your approach will only make China seem defensive in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Removing Taiwan from the equation will solve all the problems.

Conclusion
Xi says it is time for China and the Chinese to cast their sights at an “equal level” when speaking with others. Indeed, it is!

Some may still remember how Chinese in the 1950s were caricatured as Dr Fu Manchu – the sinister pig-tailed “Chinaman” who tried to inflict harm on the Caucasians. After that, China was tolerated as a source of cheap goods. Now that China has achieved wonders on many fronts, a new campaign has been created to made China look bad, i.e., Chinese are uncaring polluters and technology thieves.

Of course, some Chinese are still producing snake oil and shoddy consumer products. This should stop. Many also need to shake off all those old habits that they have generally been associated with.

Once the Taiwan thorn (and the fear of losing TSMC’s facilities to China) is removed, the West will have no arsenal to irritate China. And it will have to treat China differently. And this will allow all Chinese in the world to walk tall.

End