China
While the end of
Northern Song and the beginning of Southern Song Dynasty is considered a high
point of Chinese innovation in science and technology, it is also where we will
discover, lay the roots of Chinese Nationalism or the idea Han cosmopolitanism.
The East Asian World Order.
The emergence of
China's population as a monocultural and monoethnic people. The concept of Han Chinese.
18 Jan. 2018: A Chinese nuclear attack submarine surfaced near Japan
northwest of the disputed Senkaku Islands and hoisted the Chinese flag this
while it is also reported that China builds up a new presence near the Doklam disputed border with India.To
better understand it is important to know about the post-1989 Chinese
patriotism and belief that a strong China reclaiming its core interests in Asia
should be compatible with a China engaging in the liberal international order
at the global level. China's New Nationalism.
In the Western
imagination, China's history has been inextricably linked to the notion of
"empire." But in fact, more than a millennium of Chinese history
passed before anything resembling an empire ever existed. The Early Chinese Empires. For centuries, six
separate states battled for military supremacy, until in 221 B.C. the Qin
dynasty defeated the last of its rivals and unified the country. But recently
also here, a myth was created out of
the mythical voyages of Zheng He. The true voyages of Zheng He.
Whereby today we have
the Hague Tribunal Decides China has "no historic rights" in the
South China Sea: An international tribunal ruled that China’s claim to historic
rights in most of the South China Sea has no legal basis, dealing a severe
setback to Beijing that the U.S. There now might be
increased diplomatic pressure on Beijing to reduce its presence in the South
China Sea.
Internally, China
must be divided into two parts: the Chinese heartland and the non-Chinese buffer regions surrounding it. There is a line
in China called the 15-inch isohyet, east of which more than 15 inches of rain
fall each year and west of which the annual rainfall is less. The vast majority
of Chinese live east and south of this line, in the region known as Han China —
the Chinese heartland. The region is home to the ethnic Han, whom the world
regards as the Chinese. It is important to understand that more than a billion
people live in this area, which is about half the size of the United States.
The Chinese heartland is divided into two parts, northern and southern, which
in turn is represented by two main dialects, Mandarin in the north and
Cantonese in the south. These dialects share a writing system but are almost
mutually incomprehensible when spoken. The Chinese heartland is defined by two
major rivers — the Yellow River in the north and the Yangtze in the South,
along with a third lesser river in the south, the Pearl. The heartland is
China’s agricultural region. However — and this is the single most important
fact about China — it has about one-third the arable land per person as the
rest of the world. This pressure has defined modern Chinese history — both in
terms of living with it and trying to move beyond it.
China
Dialects
A ring of non-Han regions surrounds this heartland — Tibet, Xinjiang province
(home of the Muslim Uighurs), Inner Mongolia and Manchuria (a historical name
given to the region north of North Korea that now consists of the Chinese
provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning).
These are the buffer
regions that historically have been under Chinese rule when China was strong
and have broken away when China was weak. Today, there is a great deal of Han
settlement in these regions, a cause of friction, but today Han China is
strong.
Globalization
and Empire: Introduction. P.1 Indian Ocean's Business as Usual. P.2 Indian Ocean From Business to
Power Broker Oceanic Powers, US/China:
Conclusion. Some US
State Department officials are now saying that the time has come to close out
the war with the jihadists and shift emphasis to containing
Chinese power projection.
Case
Study Chinese Religion: Daoism Daoist secrets of ritualized alchemy to internal Neidan meditative alchemy From Waidan Daoist secrets of ritualized alchemy to internal Neidan meditative alchemy (the making of a light body) in
China we proceed with an in depth investigation of Tantric
‘internal’ alchemy P.1, and continue to p.2: Tantric
practice in China. The
Politics of Qigong: The Taiping Rebellion, Boxer Uprising, and Falung Gong |
Before,
the Mediterranean Sea carried more trade than any other body of water, and
next it was the North Sea, and then the Atlantic. More recently then the
Indian Ocean, made England (with help of the US) win WWI, when the era of the
Pacific arrived, with today, both the United States and China major frontages
on this ocean today. Where
it took the Ming 20 years to conquer the former Yuan Empire, they also
would next proceed by charging a protected communities tax. The ships
of the 1421 voyages (no doubt in order to carry more loot) were much
bigger than before. But initially such large ships were built by what now
would be called Indonesia, not China. From Red
Turban to Ming Tax Collecting. The
Island of Seven Cities: China Beyond Zheng Hi. Asked
recently (during his
visit in England) about
his reading preferences China's
Prime Minister Wen
gestured above his head and then held his clenched hand to his heart as he
quoted Kant. He also recited a verse by the 3rd-century BC statesman Qu Yuan;
“Long did I sigh to hold back tears, saddened I am by the grief of my
people.” Research Report:
Research
Report P.4: The idea of a
China that is still inventing itself today, helps cement the one thing that
is both truest about the country and most often forgotten. China's Reinvented Historic Legacy. Case Study: When China Woke Up to the World. Empires
played a significant role in building up human knowledge about the world. Chinese and other
Empires of the World. |
These are also the regions where the historical threat to China originated. Han
China is a region full of rivers and rain. It is therefore a land of farmers
and merchants. The surrounding areas are the land of nomads and horsemen. In
the 13th century, the Mongols under Ghenghis Khan
invaded and occupied parts of Han China until the 15th century, when the Han
reasserted their authority. Following this period, Chinese strategy remained
constant: the slow and systematic assertion of control over these outer regions
in order to protect the Han from incursions by nomadic cavalry. This imperative
drove Chinese foreign policy. In spite of the imbalance of population, or
perhaps because of it, China saw itself as extremely vulnerable to military
forces moving from the north and west. Defending a massed population of farmers
against these forces was difficult. The easiest solution, the one the Chinese
chose, was to reverse the order and impose themselves on their potential
conquerors.
There was another
reason. Aside from providing buffers, these possessions provided defensible
borders. With borderlands under their control, China was strongly anchored.
Let’s consider the nature of China’s border sequentially, starting in the east
along the southern border with Vietnam and Myanmar. The border with Vietnam is
the only border readily traversable by large armies or mass commerce. In fact,
as recently as 1979, China and Vietnam fought a short border war, and there
have been points in history when China has dominated Vietnam. However, the rest
of the southern border where Yunnan province meets Laos and Myanmar is hilly
jungle, difficult to traverse, with almost no major roads. Significant movement
across this border is almost impossible. During World War II, the United States
struggled to build the Burma Road to reach Yunnan and supply Chiang Kai-shek’s
forces. The effort was so difficult it became legendary. China is secure in
this region.
Hkakabo Razi, almost 19,000 feet high, marks the border between China, Myanmar and
India. At this point, China’s southwestern frontier begins, anchored in the
Himalayas. More precisely, it is where Tibet, controlled by China, borders
India and the two Himalayan states, Nepal and Bhutan. This border runs in a
long arc past Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, ending at Pik Pobedy, a 25,000-foot
mountain marking the border with China, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. It is
possible to pass through this border region with difficulty; historically,
parts of it have been accessible as a merchant route. On the whole, however,
the Himalayas are a barrier to substantial trade and certainly to military
forces. India and China — and China and much of Central Asia — are sealed off
from each other.
The one exception is
the next section of the border, with Kazakhstan. This area is passable but has
relatively little transport. As the transport expands, this will be the main
route between China and the rest of Eurasia. It is the one land bridge from the
Chinese island that can be used. The problem is distance. The border with
Kazakhstan is almost a thousand miles from the first tier of Han Chinese
provinces, and the route passes through sparsely populated Muslim territory, a
region that has posed significant challenges to China. Importantly, the Silk
Road from China ran through Xinjiang and Kazakhstan on its way west. It was the
only way to go.
There is, finally,
the long northern border first with Mongolia and then with Russia, running to
the Pacific. This border is certainly passable. Indeed, the only successful
invasion of China took place when Mongol horsemen attacked from Mongolia,
occupying a good deal of Han China. China’s buffers — Inner Mongolia and
Manchuria — have protected Han China from other attacks. The Chinese have not
attacked northward for two reasons. First, there has historically not been much
there worth taking. Second, north-south access is difficult. Russia has two
rail lines running from the west to the Pacific — the famous Trans-Siberian
Railroad (TSR) and the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM), which connects those two
cities and ties into the TSR. Aside from that, there is no east-west ground
transportation linking Russia. There is also no north-south transportation.
What appears accessible really is not.
The area in Russia
that is most accessible from China is the region bordering the Pacific, the
area from Russia’s Vladivostok to Blagoveschensk.
This region has reasonable transport, population and advantages for both sides.
If there were ever a conflict between China and Russia, this is the area that
would be at the center of it. It is also the area, as you move southward and
away from the Pacific, that borders on the Korean Peninsula, the area of
China’s last major military conflict.
Then there is the
Pacific coast, which has numerous harbors and has historically had substantial
coastal trade. It is interesting to note that, apart from the attempt by the
Mongols to invade Japan, and a single major maritime thrust by China into the
Indian Ocean — primarily for trade and abandoned fairly quickly — China has
never been a maritime power. Prior to the 19th century, it had not faced
enemies capable of posing a naval threat and, as a result, it had little
interest in spending large sums of money on building a navy.
China, when it
controls Tibet, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, is an insulated state.
Han China has only one point of potential friction, in the southeast with
Vietnam. Other than that it is surrounded by non-Han buffer regions that it has
politically integrated into China. There is a second friction point in eastern
Manchuria, touching on Siberia and Korea. There is, finally, a single opening
into the rest of Eurasia on the Xinjiang-Kazakh border.
China’s most
vulnerable point, since the arrival of Europeans in the western Pacific in the
mid-19th century, has been its coast. Apart from European encroachments in
which commercial interests were backed up by limited force, China suffered its
most significant military encounter — and long and miserable war — after the
Japanese invaded and occupied large parts of eastern China along with Manchuria
in the 1930s. Despite the mismatch in military power and more than a dozen
years of war, Japan still could not force the Chinese government to capitulate.
The simple fact was that Han China, given its size and population density,
could not be subdued. No matter how many victories the Japanese won, they could
not decisively defeat the Chinese.
China is hard to
invade; given its size and population, it is even harder to occupy. This also
makes it hard for the Chinese to invade others — not utterly impossible, but
quite difficult. Containing a fifth of the world’s population, China can wall
itself off from the world, as it did prior to the United Kingdom’s forced entry
in the 19th century and as it did under Mao Zedong. All of this means China is
a great power, but one that has to behave very differently from other great
powers.
China’s Geopolitical
Imperatives
China has three
overriding geopolitical imperatives:
1. Maintain internal
unity in the Han Chinese regions.
2. Maintain control of the buffer regions.
3. Protect the coast from foreign encroachment.
Maintaining Internal Unity
China is more
enclosed than any other great power. The size of its population, coupled with
its secure frontiers and relative abundance of resources, allows it to develop
with minimal intercourse with the rest of the world, if it chooses. During the
Maoist period, for example, China became an insular nation, driven primarily by
internal interests and considerations, indifferent or hostile to the rest of
the world. It was secure and, except for its involvement in the Korean War and
its efforts to pacify restless buffer regions, was relatively peaceful.
Internally, however, China underwent periodic, self-generated chaos.
The weakness of
insularity for China is poverty. Given the ratio of arable land to population,
a self-enclosed China is a poor China. Its population is so poor that economic
development
driven by domestic demand, no matter how limited it might be, is impossible.
However, an isolated China is easier to manage by a central government. The
great danger in China is a rupture within the Han Chinese nation. If that
happens, if the central government weakens, the peripheral regions will spin
off, and China will then be vulnerable to foreigners taking advantage of
Chinese weakness.
For China to prosper,
it has to engage in trade, exporting silk, silver and industrial products.
Historically, land trade has not posed a problem for China. The Silk Road
allowed foreign influences to come into China and the resulting wealth created
a degree of instability. On the whole, however, it could be managed.
The dynamic of
industrialism changed both the geography of Chinese trade and its consequences.
In the mid-19th century, when Europe — led by the British —compelled the
Chinese government to give trading concessions to the British, it opened a new
chapter in Chinese history. For the first time, the Pacific coast was the
interface with the world, not Central Asia. This in turn massively destabilized
China.
As trade between
China and the world intensified, the Chinese who were engaged in trading
increased their wealth dramatically. Those in the coastal provinces of China,
the region most deeply involved in trading, became relatively wealthy while the
Chinese in the interior (not the buffer regions, which were always poor, but
the non-coastal provinces of Han China) remained poor, subsistence farmers.
The central
government was balanced between the divergent interests of coastal China and
the interior. The coastal region, particularly its newly enriched leadership,
had an interest in maintaining and intensifying relations with European powers
and with the United States and Japan. The more intense the trade, the wealthier
the coastal leadership and the greater the disparity between the regions. In
due course, foreigners allied with Chinese coastal merchants and politicians
became more powerful in the coastal regions than the central government. The
worst geopolitical nightmare of China came true. China fragmented, breaking
into regions, some increasingly under the control of foreigners, particularly
foreign commercial interests. Beijing lost control over the country. It should
be noted that this was the context in which Japan invaded China, which made
Japan’s failure to defeat China all the more extraordinary.
Mao’s goal was
threefold, Marxism aside. First, he wanted to recentralize China —
re-establishing Beijing as China’s capital and political center. Second, he
wanted to end the massive inequality between the coastal region and the rest of
China. Third, he wanted to expel the foreigners from China. In short, he wanted
to recreate a united Han China.
Mao first attempted
to trigger an uprising in the cities in 1927 but failed because the coalition
of Chinese interests and foreign powers was impossible to break. Instead he
took the Long March to the interior of China, where he raised a massive peasant
army that was both nationalist and egalitarian and, in 1948, returned to the coastal
region and expelled the foreigners. Mao re-enclosed China, recentralized it,
and accepted the inevitable result. China became equal but extraordinarily
poor.
China’s primary geopolitical issue is this: For it to
develop it must engage in international trade. If it does that, it must use its
coastal cities as an interface with the world. When that happens, the coastal
cities and the surrounding region become increasingly wealthy. The influence of
foreigners over this region increases and the interests of foreigners and the
coastal Chinese converge and begin competing with the interests of the central
government. China is constantly challenged by the problem of how to avoid this
outcome while engaging in international trade.
Controlling the Buffer Regions
Prior to Mao’s rise,
with the central government weakened and Han China engaged simultaneously in
war with Japan, civil war and regionalism, the center was not holding. While
Manchuria was under Chinese control, Outer Mongolia was under Soviet control
and extending its influence (Soviet power more than Marxist ideology) into
Inner Mongolia, and Tibet and Xinjiang were drifting away.
At the same time that
Mao was fighting the civil war, he was also laying the groundwork for taking
control of the buffer regions. Interestingly, his first moves were designed to
block Soviet interests in these regions. Mao moved to consolidate Chinese
communist control over Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, effectively leveraging the
Soviets out. Xinjiang had been under the control of a regional warlord, Yang Zengxin. Shortly after the end of the civil war, Mao moved
to force him out and take over Xinjiang. Finally, in 1950 Mao moved against
Tibet, which he secured in 1951.
The rapid-fire
consolidation of the buffer regions gave Mao what all Chinese emperors sought,
a China secure from invasion. Controlling Tibet meant that India could not move
across the Himalayas and establish a secure base of operations on the Tibetan
Plateau. There could be skirmishes in the Himalayas, but no one could push a
multidivisional force across those mountains and keep it supplied. So long as
Tibet was in Chinese hands, the Indians could live on the other side of the
moon. Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Manchuria buffered China from the Soviet
Union. Mao was more of a geopolitician than an ideologue. He did not trust the
Soviets. With the buffer states in hand, they would not invade China. The
distances, the poor transportation and the lack of resources meant that any
Soviet invasion would run into massive logistical problems well before it
reached Han China’s populated regions, and become bogged down — just as the
Japanese had.
China had
geopolitical issues with Vietnam, Pakistan and Afghanistan, neighboring states
with which it shared a border, but the real problem for China would come in
Manchuria or, more precisely, Korea. The Soviets, more than the Chinese, had
encouraged a North Korean invasion of South Korea. It is difficult to speculate
on Joseph Stalin’s thinking, but it worked out superbly for him. The United
States intervened, defeated the North Korean Army and drove to the Yalu, the
river border with China. The Chinese, seeing the well-armed and well-trained
American force surge to its borders, decided that it had to block its advance
and attacked south. What resulted was three years of brutal warfare in which
the Chinese lost about a million men. From the Soviet point of view, fighting
between China and the United States was the best thing imaginable. But from
Stratfor’s point of view, what it demonstrated was the sensitivity of the
Chinese to any encroachment on their borderlands, their buffers, which
represent the foundation of their national security.
Protecting the Coast
With the buffer
regions under control, the coast is China’s most vulnerable point, but its
vulnerability is not to invasion. Given the Japanese example, no one has the
interest or forces to try to invade mainland China, supply an army there and
hope to win. Invasion is not a meaningful threat.
The coastal threat to
China is economic, though most would not call it a threat. As we saw, the
British intrusion into China culminated in the destabilization of the country,
the virtual collapse of the central government and civil war. It was all caused
by prosperity. Mao had solved the problem by sealing the coast of China off to
any real development and liquidating the class that had collaborated with
foreign business. For Mao, xenophobia was integral to national policy. He saw
foreign presence as undermining the stability of China. He preferred
impoverished unity to chaos. He also understood that, given China’s population
and geography, it could defend itself against potential attackers without an
advanced military-industrial complex.
His successor, Deng
Xiaoping, was heir to a powerful state in control of China and the buffer
regions. He also felt under tremendous pressure politically to improve living
standards, and he undoubtedly understood that technological gaps would
eventually threaten Chinese national security. He took a historic gamble. He
knew that China’s economy could not develop on its own. China’s internal demand
for goods was too weak because the Chinese were too poor.
Deng gambled that he could open China to foreign
investment and reorient the Chinese economy away from agriculture and heavy
industry and toward export-oriented industries. By doing so he would increase
living standards, import technology and train China’s workforce. He was betting
that the effort this time would not destabilize China, create massive tensions
between the prosperous coastal provinces and the interior, foster regionalism,
or put the coastal regions under foreign control. Deng believed he could avoid
all that by maintaining a strong central government, based on a loyal army and
Communist Party apparatus. His successors have struggled to maintain that
loyalty to the state and not to foreign investors, who can make individuals
wealthy. That is the bet that is currently being played out.
China’s Geopolitics and its Current Position
From a political and
military standpoint, China has achieved its strategic goals. The buffer regions
are intact and China faces no threat in Eurasia. It sees a Western attempt to
force China out of Tibet as an attempt to undermine Chinese national security.
For China, however, Tibet is a minor irritant; China has no possible intention
of leaving Tibet, the Tibetans cannot rise up and win, and no one is about to
invade the region. Similarly, the Uighur Muslims represent an irritant in
Xinjiang and not a direct threat. The Russians have no interest in or
capability of invading China, and the Korean Peninsula does not represent a
direct threat to the Chinese, certainly not one they could not handle.
The greatest military
threat to China comes from the United States Navy. The Chinese have become
highly dependent on seaborne trade and the United States Navy is in a position
to blockade China’s ports if it wished. Should the United States do that, it
would cripple China. Therefore, China’s primary military interest is to make
such a blockade impossible.
It would take several
generations for China to build a surface navy able to compete with the U.S.
Navy. Simply training naval aviators to conduct carrier-based operations
effectively would take decades — at least until these trainees became admirals
and captains. And this does not take into account the time it would take to
build an aircraft carrier and carrier-capable aircraft and master the
intricacies of carrier operations.
For China, the
primary mission is to raise the price of a blockade so high that the Americans
would not attempt it. The means for that would be land- and submarine-based
anti-ship missiles. The strategic solution is for China to construct a missile
force sufficiently dispersed that it cannot be suppressed by the United States
and with sufficient range to engage the United States at substantial distance,
as far as the central Pacific.
This missile force
would have to be able to identify and track potential targets to be effective.
Therefore, if the Chinese are to pursue this strategy, they must also develop a
space-based maritime reconnaissance system. These are the technologies the
Chinese are focusing on. Anti-ship missiles and space-based systems, including
anti-satellite systems designed to blind the Americans, represent China’s
military counter to its only significant military threat.
China could also use
those missiles to blockade Taiwan by interdicting ships going to and from the
island. But the Chinese do not have the naval ability to land a sufficient
amphibious force and sustain it in ground combat. Nor do they have the ability
to establish air superiority over the Taiwan Strait. China might be able to
harass Taiwan but it will not invade it. Missiles, satellites and submarines
constitute China’s naval strategy.
For China, the
primary problem posed by Taiwan is naval. Taiwan is positioned in such a way
that it can readily serve as an air and naval base that could isolate maritime
movement between the South China Sea and the East China Sea, effectively
leaving the northern Chinese coast and Shanghai isolated. When you consider the
Ryukyu Islands that stretch from Taiwan to Japan and add them to this mix, a
non-naval power could blockade the northern Chinese coast if it held Taiwan.
Taiwan would not be
important to China unless it became actively hostile or allied with or occupied
by a hostile power such as the United States. If that happened, its geographical
position would pose an extremely serious problem for China. Taiwan is also an
important symbolic issue to China and a way to rally nationalism. Although
Taiwan presents no immediate threat, it does pose potential dangers that China
cannot ignore.
There is one area in
which China is being modestly expansionist — Central Asia and particularly
Kazakhstan. Traditionally a route for trading silk, Kazakhstan is now an area
that can produce energy, badly needed by China’s industry. The Chinese have
been active in developing commercial relations with Kazakhstan and in
developing roads into Kazakhstan. These roads are opening a trading route that
allows oil to flow in one direction and industrial goods in another.
In doing this, the
Chinese are challenging Russia’s sphere of influence in the former Soviet
Union. The Russians have been prepared to tolerate increased Chinese economic
activity in the region while being wary of China’s turning into a political
power. Kazakhstan has been European Russia’s historical buffer state against
Chinese expansion and it has been under Russian domination. This region must be
watched carefully. If Russia begins to feel that China is becoming too
assertive in this region, it could respond militarily to Chinese economic power.
Chinese-Russian
relations have historically been complex. Before World War II, the Soviets
attempted to manipulate Chinese politics. After World War II, relations between
the Soviet Union and China were never as good as some thought, and sometimes
these relations became directly hostile, as in 1968, when Russian and Chinese
troops fought a battle along the Ussuri River. The Russians have historically
feared a Chinese move into their Pacific maritime provinces. The Chinese have
feared a Russian move into Manchuria and beyond.
Neither of these
things happened because the logistical challenges involved were enormous and
neither had an appetite for the risk of fighting the other. We would think that
this caution will prevail under current circumstances. However, growing Chinese
influence in Kazakhstan is not a minor matter for the Russians, who may choose
to contest China there. If they do, and it becomes a serious matter, the
secondary pressure point for both sides would be in the Pacific region,
complicated by proximity to Korea.
But these are only
theoretical possibilities. The threat of an American blockade on China’s coast,
of using Taiwan to isolate northern China, of conflict over Kazakhstan — all
are possibilities that the Chinese must take into account as they plan for the
worst. In fact, the United States does not have an interest in blockading China
and the Chinese and Russians are not going to escalate competition over
Kazakhstan.
China does not have a military-based geopolitical
problem. It is in its traditional strong position, physically secure as it
holds its buffer regions. It has achieved it three strategic imperatives. What
is most vulnerable at this point is its first imperative: the unity of Han
China. That is not threatened militarily. Rather, the threat to it is economic.
Economic Dimensions of Chinese Geopolitics
The problem of China,
rooted in geopolitics, is economic and it presents itself in two ways. The
first is simple. China has an export-oriented economy. It is in a position of
dependency. No matter how large its currency reserves or how advanced its
technology or how cheap its labor force, China depends on the willingness and
ability of other countries to import its goods — as well as the ability to
physically ship them. Any disruption of this flow has a direct effect on the
Chinese economy.
The primary reason
other countries buy Chinese goods is price. They are cheaper because of wage
differentials. Should China lose that advantage to other nations or for other
reasons, its ability to export would decline. Today, for example, as energy
prices rise, the cost of production rises and the relative importance of the
wage differential decreases. At a certain point, as China’s trading partners
see it, the value of Chinese imports relative to the political cost of closing
down their factories will shift.
And all of this is
outside of China’s control. China cannot control the world price of oil. It can
cut into its cash reserves to subsidize those prices for manufacturers but that
would essentially be transferring money back to consuming nations. It can
control rising wages by imposing price controls, but that would cause internal
instability. The center of gravity of China is that it has become the
industrial workshop of the world and, as such, it is totally dependent on the
world to keep buying its goods rather than someone else’s goods.
There are other
issues for China, ranging from a dysfunctional financial system to farmland
being taken out of production for factories. These are all significant and add
to the story. But in geopolitics we look for the center of gravity, and for
China the center of gravity is that the more effective it becomes at exporting,
the more of a hostage it becomes to its customers. Some observers have warned
that China might take its money out of American banks. Unlikely, but assume it
did. What would China do without the United States as a customer?
China has placed
itself in a position where it has to keep its customers happy. It struggles
against this reality daily, but the fact is that the rest of the world is far
less dependent on China’s exports than China is dependent on the rest of the
world.
Which brings us to
the second, even more serious part of China’s economic problem. The first
geopolitical imperative of China is to ensure the unity of Han China. The third
is to protect the coast. Deng’s bet was that he could open the coast without
disrupting the unity of Han China. As in the 19th century, the
coastal region has become wealthy. The interior has remained extraordinarily
poor. The coastal region is deeply enmeshed in the global economy. The interior
is not. Beijing is once again balancing between the coast and the interior.
The interests of the
coastal region and the interests of importers and investors are closely tied to
each other. Beijing’s interest is in maintaining internal stability. As
pressures grow, it will seek to increase its control of the political and
economic life of the coast. The interest of the interior is to have money
transferred to it from the coast. The interest of the coast is to hold on to
its money. Beijing will try to satisfy both, without letting China break apart
and without resorting to Mao’s draconian measures. But the worse the
international economic situation becomes the less demand there will be for
Chinese products and the less room there will be for China to maneuver.
The second part of the problem derives from the first.
Assuming that the global economy does not decline now, it will at some point.
When it does, and Chinese exports fall dramatically, Beijing will have to
balance between an interior hungry for money and a coastal region that is
hurting badly. It is important to remember that something like 900 million
Chinese live in the interior while only about 400 million live in the coastal
region. When it comes to balancing power, the interior is the physical threat
to the regime while the coast destabilizes the distribution of wealth. The
interior has mass on its side. The coast has the international trading system
on its. Emperors have stumbled over less.
Conclusion
Geopolitics is based on
geography and politics. Politics is built on two foundations: military and
economic. The two interact and support each other but are ultimately distinct.
For China, securing its buffer regions generally eliminates military problems.
What problems are left for China are long-term issues concerning northeastern
Manchuria and the balance of power in the Pacific.
China’s geopolitical
problem is economic. Its first geopolitical imperative, maintain the unity of
Han China, and its third, protect the coast, are both more deeply affected by
economic considerations than military ones. Its internal and external political
problems flow from economics. The dramatic economic development of the last
generation has been ruthlessly geographic. This development has benefited the
coast and left the interior — the vast majority of Chinese — behind. It has
also left China vulnerable to global economic forces that it cannot control and
cannot accommodate. This is not new in Chinese history, but its usual
resolution is in regionalism and the weakening of the central government.
Deng’s gamble is being played out by his successors. He dealt the hand. They
have to play it.
The question on the table is whether the economic
basis of China is a foundation or a balancing act. If the former, it can last a
long time. If the latter, everyone falls down eventually. There appears to be
little evidence that it is a foundation. It excludes most of the Chinese from
the game, people who are making less than $100 a month. That is a balancing act
and it threatens the first geopolitical imperative of China: protecting the
unity of the Han Chinese.
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