China a world power?

Q. With all that you have learned from the recent reports about China's current internal problems, do you think that its world power status should be reconsidered? Can China successfully overcome these difficulties to achieve such status on the world stage? The simple answer is "yes", but it begs the question of just what "reconsidering" means, by whom and with what weight. And would it make any difference. "Reconsidering" here refers to policies by the world community toward China, whether those policies be political, economic, social, humanitarian, environmental, religious or cultural. An obvious example: should Beijing have won the bid for the 2008 summer Olympics? I understand the motive as a catalyst for reform, but I answer "no", as I do not accept China's sincerity or uniformity in this. Instead, it is a ploy and plays games -pun intended - with the rest of the world. I have the spring issue of Amnesty International's quarterly, and it includes an article on the Olympics calling for boycotts, protests, and appeals for reform. If I had any doubt before, it vanished Tuesday night (18th of March) when I heard the press conference with Wen Jiabao on C-SPAN. Frankly, it was hard to stomach. It was tedious, as he kept pausing to carefully craft his lies. Nearly everything that came out of his mouth was the stuff emitting from the south end of male-gender cattle travelling north. He was inflexible in their "one China" doctrine toward Taiwan. As for Tibet, he made it sound like China was just trying to support them and help them any way it could and the unprovoked ungrateful barbarians there violently and heinously committed atrocities against the Chinese. He called the Dalai Lama's appeals for peace lies. If that is how it really was, why has China gone to such great lengths to squelch all media coverage and videotaping of the conflicts? Why not show the whole world just how these terrorists are treating the poor innocent Chinese soldiers? Why does the cell phone footage that slipped out tell a different story? The ancients in the Genesis story (parable even if also historic) who tried to build the tower of Babel with slim for mortar found it would not hold. Well, guess what: BS doesn't make a successful mortar either. I always try to zero in on the central hub of any discussion issue and build upon it. In this case, I thought the best exposition to come close was the last part, part 7, of "China on the rise" by Paul Solmon on the Lehrer report. What he said about technical innovation applies well, I think, to other categories such as the environment, etc. "We in the west", he said, "assume that political freedom and technical innovation go hand in hand". Not a bad assumption, especially given, as Solman, pointed out, that most actual "innovation" is foreign: China's machines, replacing their labor force, are not Chinese made. Who can name a Chinese product? They are US products, etc., made in China. There is unchecked corruption, no public forum, and perhaps most scary of all, the young intellectuals are so economic oriented they are apathetic about control and repression. Fear is the paramount driving force of China's regime internally. Economic growth in some fashion will continue, forced as it is by policies oblivious to consequences, but it is married to communist oppression. In Solman's words, the "worst marriage." A second possibility trumped by optimists is that politics will develop along with economics. And there's a third possibility: economic growth will co-exist with no political reform. I wish to dig a little deeper into these scenarios. The second possibility listed just above entails that the government is reacting - not acting. Typical of its history, with embarrassing results. The government remains stubborn, but adjusts when its hand is forced. It's a slow evolution. Look at the long history of suffering the Chinese have reaped waiting on such an evolution! This could show superficial success as it has in the past. But when the forcing surpasses equilibrium, all hell breaks loose and the system goes chaotic. That's a law of nature as well as the lesson of Tienanmen Square. That leads to the third possibility. China seems very resilient. So does nature when it remains in equilibrium. The famous supreme court justice Oliver Wendel Holmes was also quite a poet, most famous for his poem "The Chambered Nautilus". But he also wrote a poem called "The Deacon's Masterpiece". In this poem, a local well-to-do deacon ordered the custom building of an exceptional horse-drawn carriage with every part designed to last indefinitely. The carriage did indeed far outlast all others with no repair problems, until one day the entire thing massively collapsed. The Chinese leaders are trying to build a deacon's masterpiece. Like an earlier such effort: "and slim and BS they had for mortar". Fear is a terribly mechanical modus operandi, and no long-term constructive evolution can be supported by it.

The closely related factors of environment and population now figure prominently. These will not go away. China's insistence on six-percent annual economic growth is myopia as long as it refuses to deal with these problems pre-eminently. Let's look at the issue of apparent Chinese political resilience from the standpoint of how these and other factors play out. I will quickly add to the list of these: inflation, unemployment, gap between the rich and the poor, corruption, lack of social services and health care. All of these were on showcased display in the Frontline documentary "China in the Red". Honestly, I found there to be a certain striking arbitrariness whenever I considered different references to cite both to make my case and to demonstrate (what petty insecurity!) that I had "done my homework". I reached the point where I felt I could poke my finger randomly at any point in any book, article or video and relate whatever my finger touched to my case. That suggests to me that I may be on track, but I will spare an overly-tedious manifesto to document it. At this point, notice that none of the issues listed occur in a vacuum - they all tie together. Here, I will use the two logs of environment and population as representative of the whole - the load on the wheelbarrow.

Environment and population are both growth vectors: they move in one direction - getting bigger. A one-wheeled wheelbarrow is an excellent metaphor for discussing equilibria (and hence stability versus collapse). If you have ever used one much, as I have, you know they are easy to keep in balance if empty or with a light load. As the weight of the load increases, you have to be more and more careful about its balance. With a light load, it can hit a bump and tilt some but you can hold it. With a heavy load, the tiniest tilt is hopeless: the whole thing goes over and you lose your load. In this case, the wheelbarrow itself stands for the resilience of the Chinese infrastructure politically, economically and socially. The logs of environment and population are already in the wheelbarrow, and since the device has been pushed along so far successfully, it is easy to assume it can be handled with those two logs in it. But those are not static logs. They gradually increase, and because the increase is gradual, the consequences are easier to ignore. But at some point their forcing - the actual term used in equilibrium science - will surpass the capacity of the system (strength of the arms holding the handles). At this point, which can't be far away, you better be on very smooth level hard flawless pavement! The load can be kept only if the balance is perfect. Intuitively, the Chinese leaders get it - that is why they are so paranoid about social stability. But they refuse to properly take the growth of the weight into account. They refuse because it comes at the expense of their power and their lack of transparency: the very ingredients of the strength of their arms. Notice that nearly all of the increase in weight is internal - the outside world largely just plays referee.

Can China successfully overcome these difficulties and secure its status as a world power? Can the boy Douzi become the girl Dieyi? They can put on a good show. No doubt we will see one this summer. A stage performance reform is not an essential reform, and China at the leadership level has long abandoned all sense of the distinction within themselves as their ancient traditions more thoroughly understand. The external will reflect the internal, and all of China pays the price. They squelch the very Buddhists and Taoists who have the wisdom that could save them. My talk of balancing the wheelbarrow, framed in the modern science terms of punctuated equilibria, will not sound strange to these ancient ears.

So now we return to the beginning: "reconsidering" China as a world power is like watching to see if the referee throws a flag. To what extent can we "reconsider" in any meaningful way? Is it our place to tell China that if you become a world power we will send you to bed with no supper? No, but neither is it our place under a phony guise of real friendship (and only watching our own wallets) to cater to China's myopia at the top level. I believe that if we in the west are scared of China becoming a world power, we don't need to do a whole lot about it: China is quite capable of messing up its own bed. I believe that our position should be one of passive force, engaged but not meddlesome, and somewhat authentically (imagine that!) a friend who is secure in giving constructive criticism without pandering to self interest. It's a hand on China's shoulder saying that we do not believe China will succeed in its world power endeavors and we will not hesitate to say why. Our policies should not continuously hand them carrots feeding their myopia. We should take a hard line on their support of Somalia, their heavy-handedness toward Tibet, their warped nationalist pride toward the Taiwan issue, etc. Bush should not say - as he did - that he will attend the games in spite of events in Tibet (of course he doesn't give a piss about what happens to Buddhists). We should tie economic carrots to reform. We should put major pressure on environmental reform - including the pressure of setting a good example. We will not be preventing them from becoming a world power. If they continued in current fashion the wheelbarrow will dump anyway. We do not oppose them. They can become a world power if they want to. We will not send them to bed with no supper. But they must learn for themselves what "wanting to" actually entails. I don't think they will. I think the wheelbarrow will dump. What this means in terms of actual events I do not presume to know. But I am ready to wager that the metaphor will prove apt.