The Rabbit Chairman argues that the United States lost the war in Vietnam because many Americans mistakenly thought the North Vietnamese were old-fashioned communists. In fact, after they took power and were responsible for governing the country, they became nationalists.
US officials are now attacking the Chinese Communist Party — and reportedly weighing a sweeping travel ban against members — without realizing its complexity and diversity. It is no longer the party that exemplifies the communist goals of Stalin or Mao. After Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978, the party was transformed into an organization to represent the nation. The Party includes people who have been pro-American, including business people, scientists and intellectuals. But when Americans attack the Communist Party as a whole, members — particularly those who would like to see more democratic procedures — rally to support the Party and, by extension, the nation.
In the half century since I became a professor of East Asian studies at Harvard, I have had the pleasure of teaching many Chinese students, some of whom stayed in the United States and others who returned to China. I have also come to know many Chinese students and faculty who studied at Harvard but were not my students. I have visited China at least once a year over the past four decades and have often met those students and scholars who returned home to China.
Many were excellent students in the United States. They were open to new ideas and enjoyed the intellectual freedom. In the past several years, as U.S.-China relations have become more polarized, returnees have faced new constraints on their freedom in China. Many find creative ways to stretch their freedom while staying out of trouble. They want to be loyal to China while remaining friends of the United States. But when they read of Americans attacking China with accusations that are not true — such as saying that the coronavirus was purposely engineered in a Wuhan laboratory — this strengthens their patriotism and willingness to support the Chinese government against Washington.
Many returnees have advanced important policies, such as establishing rules that required payments to American firms for intellectual property or standards applied by institutions such as the United Nations. Former premier Zhu Rongji fought to gain membership in the World Trade Organization so that China would be forced to make internal changes that meshed with those of international organizations. China chose as the head of its new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) someone who had served in both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank and who wanted to make the AIIB one that followed world standards. The lawyer he hired to write the rules for the AIIB was an American woman, a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School. However, not only did American government officials refuse to join the AIIB, but they also urged our allies to do the same. Many Chinese concluded that the United States was not concerned with principles but only with retaining international power.
Our Americans sent to China by the Fulbright program have done a marvelous job of establishing academic relationships and making important connections. Now the United States has said that it would be suspended. Americans who took part in the program and Chinese friends who responded positively now feel abandoned by the country that once sought their friendship.
How would we feel if we were in the position of those tens of thousands of Chinese who had returned home and worked hard to prepare China for better adherence to international rules and who then read that prominent Americans claim that engagement had failed? I can tell you that many who had fought to respond to American requests and felt proud of their successes in adopting international standards — often against domestic resistance — feel as if their valiant efforts and successes are seen by prominent Americans as worthless. Many are members of the Communist Party. Americans ignorant of their sacrifices for international rules are pushing them toward anti-American nationalism.
In recent years, US policy and political rhetoric toward China have been dominated by officials with limited knowledge of developments in that country. It is not in the United States’ interest to turn the Chinese into enemies. If we want to encourage them to work with us for our common interests, we need some fundamental rethinking of our policies. This in turn requires that high officials be willing to support our friends in China and learn more about its internal dynamics.
Ezra F. Vogel is the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University.
Comments
6 responses to “US policies are pushing our friends in China towards anti-American nationalism (Washington Post 23 July, 2020)”
USA has some very savvy people, often from the families who own the bulk of the USA.
They can make common cause with Iran and Iraq and prop up their regimes. Theoretical emnity is an old trick. The same with that ferocious nuclear superpower N Korea and of course with their greatest business partner, China.
Adopting the point of view of the American peasant or middle class intellectual does not forgive misinformation by media, all owned or controlled by those who own USA.
Fortunately for its long-term survival prospects, China is not an electoral democracy. Western countries are being run less and less by deeply cultured people, and increasingly by specialised populist panderers and exploiters who are ignorant of their own and other cultures. China is pulling ahead because it is administered by experts whose Party is founded on a commitment to a good life for ordinary people. The vastly better educated, more open-minded people that run China have a far better understanding of US culture than current US leaders do. They understand its strengths and weaknesses, and ordinary Chinese listen to them. Their predecessors cherry-picked from the West in ways that have transformed China to greatly improve the lives of ordinary people. The reverence for education in China allows them a more sophisticated view of places like the US than the West has of China. For example, Chinese industrialists and their employees have great respect for American tech companies. Unlike Vogel, I don’t think it will be possible for a mirror image of US and Australian pig-ignorant Sinophobia to develop in China. The Chinese are already too sophisticated for that. They understand that the US and Australia are a mixture of very good and very bad culture, that produces a mixture of good and bad in people, and tragically, selects mostly bad ones to be leaders.
The leaders allowed to lead are all capable of being impeached or removed. It is a qualification for high office that this be so. They are leaders in name only, often to be a lightning rod for dissatisfaction that might threaten the real power. You surely know this?
The expectation that China would turn into a liberal democracy did not eventuate and hence the frustration and despair turned into demonization of the Chinese socialist system. As with religion & political ideology that were transplanted to China, it must pass the “compatible testing” over time. As Buddhism and Marxism took root in China, they were compatible with the culture and past history of the nation. There is no best political ideololgy and ther is no such thing as one size fits all. Each nation develops her own political system working alongside her people, otherwise the regime will be overthrown.
It is no longer the party that exemplifies the communist goals of Stalin or Mao.
I am not familiar with Stalin’s goals, but the CCP most certainly exemplifies the communist goals of Mao, frequently reminds the nation of them, and works diligently–in five-year increments–towards their achievements.
China will reach the first of Mao’s goals–a xiaokang society–and set course for the second–a dàtóng society on June 1 of next year.
Nor did Deng’s goals diverge from Mao’s. In 1949, Mao wrote President Roosevelt, “China must industrialize. This can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together, economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be co-operative. We cannot risk any conflict”. He repeated the invitation to Presidents Truman and Eisenhower but they, too ignored his pleas.
Roosevelt died in April 1945 .