Someone knocking at the door . . . somebody's ringing the bell.
Saturday, December 9, 2006 at 4:46AM ARTICLE: "China, Shy Giant, Shows Signs of Shedding Its False Modesty," by Joseph Kahn, New York Times, 9 December 2006.
This is important stuff, tracking nicely with my call in BFA that we need to look at China like the Brits looked at us in the beginning of the 20th century--you know, the "speak softly and carry a big stick" time of TR (actually an African saying he picked up on one of his many safaris there where he used his fire stick aplenty).
The Chinese are plenty aware of the historical comparisons, thus the study noted here:
BEIJING, Dec. 8 — China’s Communist Party has a new agenda: it is encouraging people to discuss what it means to be a major world power and has largely stopped denying that China intends to become one soon.
In the past several weeks China Central Television has broadcast a 12-part series describing the reasons nine nations rose to become great powers. The series was based on research by a team of elite Chinese historians, who also briefed the ruling Politburo about their findings.
Until recently China’s rising power remained a delicate topic, and largely unspoken, inside China. Beijing has long followed a dictum laid down by Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who died in 1997: “tao guang yang hui,” literally to hide its ambitions and disguise its claws.
The prescription was generally taken to mean that China needed to devote its energy to developing economically and should not seek to play a leadership role abroad.
President Hu Jintao set off an internal squabble two years ago when he began using the term “peaceful rise” to describe his foreign policy goals. He dropped the term in favor of the tamer-sounding “peaceful development.”
His use of “rise” risked stoking fears of a “China threat,” especially in Japan and the United States, people told about the high-level debate said. Rise implies that others must decline, at least in a relative sense, while development suggests that China’s advance can bring others along.
Yet this tradition of modesty has begun to fade, replaced by a growing confidence that China’s rise is not fleeting and that the country needs to do more to define its objectives.
I've had the privilege of meeting the scholars behind this program, and they impressed the hell out of me. Instead of being told by Europeans galore how shrink-the-Gap just wasn't something they'd be interested in, here I am talking to strategists who see it as both inevitable and understand the strategic interests shared by the U.S. and China in making it happen.
When I spent time with PLA think tankers last time, I told them they needed to come up with a new grand myth for their military and that the "revolutionary war" one was hopelessly out of date for their current and future purposes. TR had his San Juan Hill and America had its Spanish-American war as some easy, early-on expressions of "rising America" (not toooo threatening). Then TR did his stint in settling the Russo-Japanese War (getting the Nobel Peace Prize--the only sitting U.S. president ever to do so). Then there was our rescue of Europe in WWI, repeated in WWII.
America entered the 20th century with little sense of its place in the world, with a military that had little sense of its role beyond its borders. But by 1950 we were this giant astride the planet, a mindset we've retained since.
We need to bring China along on such a ride, creating careful and easy opportunities. The tsunamis should have been one (as I noted in BFA), but we did not take advantage (nor did the Chinese).
But have no doubt, the recasting of the PLA from "revolutionary war" myth to stabilizing great power military is being calculated as I write.
And I, possessing my own foreign policy now (and PNM soon in Chinese "as is," mind you), will do everything in my power to make sure it goes well.
Why?
Best deal strategically possible for the U.S. across the 21st century. Keeps us safest. Makes the Long War a predetermined win. Puts us in the best position to make the most money within the Core and in making markets throughout the Gap.
This ain't about making nice or being naive. This is about getting what we want at the best possible price while trusting the Chinese to be Chinese--and nothing else.
Put that your realist's pipe and smoke it!
