Diplomats speak a strange, sometimes amoral language as part of their trade, yet even allowing for this, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger’s mini-essay on Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) in Time magazine this week was wholly objectionable. It also illuminated a mindset that continues to dominate the US State Department, to the cost of both the US and Taiwan.
Personal praise of Hu aside, Kissinger only turned to the key issue late in the piece, arguing that while the US president is “obliged to articulate the deepest values of our people, including human rights ... Any Chinese President needs to reflect the necessities of his society, including the territorial integrity of a united China.”
In two simple sentences, readers could appreciate the stark distinction that exists in the conception of statehood for the most powerful country in the world and the pretender to that throne.
In the US, the people are the source of power and the creators of values. In China, the people are voiceless and defined by what they “need” rather than what they aspire to. And of all the things they need, apparently, “territorial integrity” is the thing that China privileges above all else, regardless of the opinions of its subjects or the fact that China is under no external territorial threat.
Regrettably, there is a sense that Kissinger approves of this philosophical state of affairs, or at least considers the autocratic Chinese mindset to be reasonable and natural.
What Kissinger does not say, but knows all too well, is that Chinese expansionism and patriotism are indistinguishable as far as the Chinese Communist Party is concerned, and Hu, the man of the hour, is its chief protagonist.
Instead, Kissinger prefers to indulge in pseudo-sociological claptrap, arguing that Hu is “not a crusader,” whatever that means, and has “proclaimed the goal of a harmonious society whose components work together by consensus rather than direction.”
Putting aside Hu’s “harmonious” butchery in Tibet when he was in charge there in the late 1980s, the obvious question emerges: How does Kissinger distinguish between “consensus” and “direction” when the former has been in the service of the latter in China for thousands of years? Chinese societies, regardless of their political structure, continue to prefer the appearance of consensus to the potentially beneficial public expression of division, and the biggest Chinese society of all continues to justify awful repression in the name of this “consensus.” (Kissinger’s suggestion that Hu’s approach to governance is a “marked evolution from Mao Zedong (毛澤東)” is also facile. Mao was a mass murderer and an egomaniac; every Chinese leader since has represented a “marked evolution” of some sort.)
The so-called “1992 consensus” between Taiwan and China on how to interpret the meaning of “one China” is a beautiful example of the Chinese autocrat trumping the historical record in the name of “consensus.” There was no such agreement, but that no longer matters, because top officials in China, Taiwan and the US now claim it is real.
For China and for some in Taiwan and the US, it is preferable to proceed on the basis of a fictional agreement than on the cold reality of conflict. But as Kissinger might acknowledge, given his lamentable record of backing criminal regimes around the world, sowing lies has its eventual dreadful harvest.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Ursula K. le Guin in The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas proposed a thought experiment of a utopian city whose existence depended on one child held captive in a dungeon. When taken to extremes, Le Guin suggests, utilitarian logic violates some of our deepest moral intuitions. Even the greatest social goods — peace, harmony and prosperity — are not worth the sacrifice of an innocent person. Former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), since leaving office, has lived an odyssey that has brought him to lows like Le Guin’s dungeon. From late 2008 to 2015 he was imprisoned, much of this