Somehow I have convinced you in our lengthy discussions about China that I am its defender in all its actions.
I am an apologist in the sense that I oppose the view that China is necessarily an existential risk to the rest of the world and that China... or more specifically the Chinese Communist Party...is morally corrupt to the degree that preparation by the West for an inevitable war is required and perhaps even to be welcomed as the ultimate confrontation of democracy versus authoritarianism.
I think 'China Hawks' mislead themselves about China's intentions. They engage in both self-righteousness and condescension.
I am an advocate for the point of view that many of China's actions make sense from a historical perspective and that China's history is a source of imperatives.
For example, as a source of humiliation, beginning the late 1700s in the American colonies, Clipper ships crews, the expenses of which were underwritten by New England 'capitalist' entrepreneurs, stripped the Pacific Islands of walrus hides because the Chinese would accept in the tea trade only hides or silver, smuggled opium into China when the sea animals were hunted to extinction, in return for silver to be used, henceforth, to buy tea, brought back to the western hemisphere Chinese indentured coolies as ballast in the ships, since tea leaves were so light in weight, to work under horrible conditions mining guano off Chile and in developing the Western US.
But there are many aspects of China's behavior that I reject:
1. Its treatment of the Muslims in Xinjiang province, the re-education, forced labor, its family separation, forced migration.
But I also reject the aberrant behavior of the US at Guantanamo Bay, in Abu Ghraib prison, in black rendition sites in Jordon and Eqypt and Poland, in the isolation of Native American tribes on underfunded reservations, in the disenfranchisement of Puerto Rico, in the horror of conditions on the US southern border where illegal immigration is encouraged by US employers and the sheer inequality of opportunity between the US and southern countries that acts as a magnet drawing immigrants inevitably, in the gun culture that is unexplainable, in the 2 million people who are incarcerated in US prisons...most for drug or property crimes or inability to make small amounts of cash bail.
Here's a chart showing the disparity of deaths in US prisons from Covid-19...some evidence of a crime against humanity?
Gene Sharp, the author of the Pamphlet: Authorianism to Democracy, featured in the documentary film: "How to Start a Revolution" was employed by the so-called Harvard CIA...the group originally led by Henry Kissenger.
The CIA promoted the pamphlet in many countries including China's Xinjiang province. I think I recall that you scoffed at the idea that the CIA was responsible for the horror stories out of Xinjiang. I am not asserting that the stories from Xinjiang are planted, but the CIA supports dissident groups routinel and China's suspcion of CIA involvement not unfounded.
China has observed US conduct in Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Ukraine, the Philippines when the US concocted a phony war with Spain based on the sinking of the battleship Maine, taking the Islands, and then, when the Philipinos revolted against the terms of the peace treaty, suppressed with violent force the insurgents resulting in over 200,000 deaths....maybe as many as 1 million.
2. I reject China's surveillance of its citizens and its institution of internal passports that prohibit the freedom to move around the country. I reject its ruthless control by force. I reject its anti-democratic one-party authoritarian Communist Party regime.
Here is an excerpt from the New Yorker article on Xinjiang:
"Every new cell phone number had to be registered, and phones were routinely checked; authorities could harvest everything from photos to location data. Wi-Fi “sniffers” were installed to extract identifying data from computers and other devices. Chen also launched a program called Physicals for All, gathering biometric data—blood types, fingerprints, voiceprints, iris patterns—under the guise of medical care. Every Xinjiang resident between the ages of twelve and sixty-five was required to provide the state with a DNA sample."
Each one of these actions has a counterpart in US policy...all US cellphone metadata traffic is subject to access by law enforcement...sometimes requiring subpoena but more often just internal administrative approval. The US has the largest percentage of its population in a DNA database of any country.
But I also reject the surveillance state in the US as revealed by Edward Snowden and the revelations in two books which I recommend to you, if you haven't already read them: The Legacy of Ashes and Enemies by Tim Weiner.
Tim is an acquaintance by the way. We met in Montrose Park at the bench where you and I often chatted, before you and Inge returned to Sweden, when he lived, while a New York Times reporter, on 30th street.
Here is the description of the clandestine use by the NYPD of surveillance technology. It can be argued these US uses of surveillance are qualitatively different from Chinese uses. I would suggest that while there may be a difference of degree, it's not of kind.
I reject the Electoral College, the existence of voter suppression laws, the filibuster, the equation of corporations as people, the equivalence of Montana and California in the Senate.
3. I reject the belligerence of the Chinese in the South China Sea, but I also reject the fact that the US surrounds China with military outposts in Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Pakistan, Okinawa, Guam, the 7th Fleet, and nuclear weapons at the ready in ballistic submarines and multi war headed missiles in silos in North Dakota and digital communications listening post in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, the Philippines among others.
4. I reject the aggressive commercial onslaught of China as it develops its Belt and Road initiative...and its use of its commercial advantage to demand political concessions as in Australia and Sri Lanka.
I also acknowledge that this strategy was precisely employed by the US after World War II when it enabled its national companies to capture markets and dominate trade often at terms that in a more balanced transaction would not have been so disadvantageous to other countries.
I reject the use by the US of its control of the international commercial banking system to advance its political aims. While I support most of its use of the leverage of the dominance of the US dollar, the Trump administration demonstrated that power can be used for nefarious purposes.
"That predominance is now coming to an end as China does what the Soviet Union and Imperial Germany never could: rise toward economic parity with the United States.
5. I reject China's illegal acquisition of intellectual property.
but I insist that China's advantage in technology is not from theft but from investment and purposeful action rather than clandestine activities. Here is a more detailed analysis of the basis of that assertion.
6. I reject China's insistence that Taiwan remains a province of mainland China and that Hong Kong and Tibet bend to its will.
But the US has never considered returning to Mexico the southwestern states that it took by force during the 'trumped up' Mexican-American war, as the British did Hong Kong which it extracted from China on onerous terms during the Opium Wars.
And I do not support what the China Hawks advocate: that the US go to ...what would almost certainly be nuclear...war to protect Taiwan. The US did not consider such a step when Russia annexed Crimea or took over eastern Ukraine.
The point of my references to failures of US conduct is not to suggest some equivalence... it's not to argue that the US is 'as bad' as China...but it is intended to argue that like every other society, it is highly likely that China will evolve, as the US and other societies have evolved, and that there is a possibility, in spite of the small progress so far, that China... in a future of international norms and institutions... will evolve positively.
If western values and norms and forms of government are superior, then like much of the rest of the world, the Chinese will be attracted and change.
