A regular talking point of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) critics is the need to separate “China” from the CCP and adopt a stance that is “anti-CCP,” rather than “anti-China.”
However, this is an abstraction that avoids the fact that the People’s Republic of China government is the legally recognized government of China, meaning that the critics are hiding behind an image of China of their own making.
In his speeches, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has taken a different view, drawing a clear line between the CCP and China’s population. He said that the US cannot blindly take an unyieldingly tough attitude toward China, but should communicate with its people and help give them strength, adding that Chinese and the CCP are as different as night and day.
Pompeo is seeking to incorporate the Chinese into the US’ encirclement of the CCP. This might be at the suggestion of Pompeo’s principal China policy adviser, Miles Yu (余茂春).
Yu, who was born in China, would inevitably have complex personal feelings toward China.
However, his former compatriots have been quick to disown him.
Pompeo has said that the US has pursued an erroneous China policy for the past 25 years. Two-and-a-half decades ago, Washington tried to bring China in to the ranks of the free world based on liberal values.
The thinking was that once China’s middle class reached a critical mass, the country would inevitably democratize. Paradoxically, the more the US invested in China, the more closely the capitalists and the middle class, created as a result of that investment, embraced the party. Washington policymakers’ wishful thinking proved to be wide off the mark and the US ended up nursing a viper in its bosom.
Would US President Donald Trump’s policy of separating China from the CCP actually work?
Interestingly, on July 9, Harvard University’s Ash Center published a study, titled Taking China’s Pulse, for which it conducted eight surveys in China between 2003 and 2016, gathering data from 32,000 respondents.
According to the survey’s findings, in 2016 a record 93.1 percent of respondents expressed satisfaction with the central government.
Since the survey’s publication, many people have questioned whether the CCP had a hand in it.
Cai Xia (蔡霞), a “second-generation red” and former professor at China’s elite Central Party School and member of the CCP’s “liberal” faction, who fled to the US, has said that the Harvard survey appears suspect.
There is a reason why the Chinese public supports its government: Where there is fertile earth, trees will grow.
As Chinese writer Hu Shi (胡適) wrote: “The CCP did not leap out from a cave.”
Reporting by the New York Times has revealed that behind Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) hardline approach to ruling the country are a coterie of authoritarian theoreticians and policymakers. After Xi took over as leader, he began to denigrate the fundamental building blocks of liberal societies such as universal human rights and the separation of powers.
The Mao Zedong (毛澤東)-era policy of “overtaking Britain and catching up with the US” once again became a benchmark.
One of the most penetrating catchphrases to emerge from Xi so far has been: “Sorry, the goal now is not Westernization, but the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.”
Another example is the German documentary film A German Life, released in 2016, which documents the life of Brunhilde Pomsel, a former secretary, stenographer and typist for Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, aged 105 at the time of the interview.
During the course of the interview, Pomsel said: “I don’t feel guilty ... unless you’re going to accuse the whole German people of helping that government come to power.”
Separating Nazis from Germans is difficult; likewise, it is problematic to detach the CCP from Chinese.
US historian Carl Becker wrote: “Democratic government is a species of social luxury” that is reliant on material conditions and wisdom for its success.
China seriously lacks the values of the Enlightenment — proof of this is everywhere: Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (李克強) in May admitted that 600 million Chinese are living on a monthly income of barely 1,000 yuan (US$147.26 at the current exchange rate).
Chinese intellectuals and politicians still blindly argue that liberal democracy is on the wane, that China is on the rise and that it will bring on a new era.
Last month, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said it is not seeking to improve relations with either the US or China at the expense of the other.
KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) is also reported to have said that the party is to seek “value” in its relations with the US and China.
In truth, you cannot put a cigarette paper between the KMT’s “values” and those touted by the CCP under Xi.
Chin Heng-wei is a political commentator.
Translated by Edward Jones
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
After 37 US lawmakers wrote to express concern over legislators’ stalling of critical budgets, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) pledged to make the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget a top priority for legislative review. On Tuesday, it was finally listed on the legislator’s plenary agenda for Friday next week. The special defense budget was proposed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration in November last year to enhance the nation’s defense capabilities against external threats from China. However, the legislature, dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), repeatedly blocked its review. The
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) said on Monday that it would be announcing its mayoral nominees for New Taipei City, Yilan County and Chiayi City on March 11, after which it would begin talks with the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) to field joint opposition candidates. The KMT would likely support Deputy Taipei Mayor Lee Shu-chuan (李四川) as its candidate for New Taipei City. The TPP is fielding its chairman, Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), for New Taipei City mayor, after Huang had officially announced his candidacy in December last year. Speaking in a radio program, Huang was asked whether he would join Lee’s
RSS