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Journal of International Relations and Development
The Conundrum of the Chinese-United States Relationship
by Xing Li
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Introduction
After the Second World War, the capacity and sustainability of the American superpower and its hegemony were largely based on three strategies: 1) establishing the Bretton Woods system of trade liberalisation, stable currencies, and expanding global economic interdependence (a capitalist world economic system); 2) forming an American-European-Asian military alliance (collective security); and 3) consolidating an Eurasia-centred global trade network (trade regime).
The establishment of the Bretton Woods system made the American economy become the principal engine of world economic growth. The security alliance included American military aid in exchange for its involvement in the Allies' national and regional security and defence issues. The trade network was built on a principle of "the trade regime" in which the United States offered the Allies economic benefits, i.e. the access to the American market, which made it possible for some countries in East Asia to protect their own markets and adopt an export-oriented development strategy. These strategies were aimed at preventing the Soviet Union and China from becoming the dominant powers in Europe and Asia and safeguarding the United States-centred capitalist world system (Segal 1966; Borthwick 1992; Hersh 1993).
After the Cold War, one of the United States' key global strategic objectives was to integrate Russia, China and other East European countries into the capitalist economic system so that the antagonistic communist forces within these countries could be contained, geopolitical confrontations between major powers reduced and a global trade regime established. To realise these grand objectives and to influence the evolution of Russia and China, the United States had to intervene in the development of these two former communist giants and define the rules of the game in their integration with global capitalism. With regard to its post-Cold War relations with China, it may be argued that Washington has three major objectives: to fully integrate China into the global market-based economic and trade system in the hope that China's integration will promote the process of market reform and increase the stability and prosperity in East Asia and will co-operate with the United States to build a secure international order (Clinton 1997b); to expand the United States' access to the Chinese market in the investment and export of goods and services; and to ideologically prove the universality of its democratic and human rights values through a "business track" (Abshire 1997).
Today, 10 years after the fall of communism, the grand expectations and objectives of the United States have failed. 1 Capitalism generated a series of crises in East Asia producing global consequences (Tabb 1998; Li et al. 2000); Russia and Eastern Europe's transition to market capitalism was indeed a transition to decade-long economic depression and to ‘Thirdworldisation' (Frank 1996); and China has been painfully struggling to resolve its social, political and economic problems (Goodman and Segal 1994; Weil 1996; Li 1998). Ironically, the Asian economic meltdown magnified the pernicious effects of China's communist authoritarian system that had not been dismantled. 2
These events raise some fundamental questions for the United States: how to maintain the United States-centred core structure in the world system (Schwenninger 1999)? 3 What is the supporting pillar for a continuing United States-led security network in the Triad (North America — Europe — Japan) when the former enemies are disappearing? What is the new political force after the USSR that can be identified as a threat to the United States' ‘New World Order' (Kagan and Kristol 2000)? Will China be a great success, a nation managing to resolve its international problems and to move from a regional power to a global power? What will China be like if Beijing fails to implement its reform programme and contain the social and political forces put into motion by its intense integration with the world economy? The last two questions are crucial because they concern a country that has one fifth of the world's population and is a rising economic powerhouse and a potential market. In both cases, China's future evolution is of great concern to the United States and is a matter of global consequence (Segal 1994; Gerry 1998).
The underlying methodological consideration in this article is based on a critical approach in the problem-oriented analysis of contradictory elements and tendencies in this relationship. It helps to conceptualise, using an interdisciplinary combination of historical, geopolitical and economic perspectives, the sources of conflicts between China and the United States and to understand their transformations in the new era as well as to explore their future development. The analytical combination of these perspectives permeates throughout this article because it is believed the dialectics behind the post-Cold War relations between China and the United States can be conceptualised by examining their multifaceted interactions at various levels.
The United States' Conundrum
In retrospect, the historical root of the China-United States disharmonious relationship can be related to the United States' conviction that it can fundamentally change China. As Zi (1997:550) points out: ‘In dealing with China over the last 100 years, Americans have rarely been free from the urge to change China or to influence China to their like.' Such a century-long conviction has resulted in many fundamental failures in its interactions with China whereby the United States has either rejected internal changes in China or sought to convert and transform it in a way it desires. The history of relations between China and the West 4 is a history of persistent Western efforts to engage China and to change Chinese society and behaviour:
The current Western thinking about China traces its roots to the very first inter-cultural contact five hundred years ago. Since that time, the West has consistently tried to change China, and the manner in which those interested in China have written about the civilisation and its people has been informed by the assumption that at the end of the rainbow is a China redone largely according to Western dictates. Over the years, numerous countries have employed multiple tactics and approaches in trying to mould China into an entity acceptable for their purposes — be they strategic, economic, political, cultural, or otherwise. In what amounted to a massive missionary zeal to remake China into something appropriate for the designs of others, Western scholars, religious leaders, politicians, journalists, writers, military personnel, business individuals, and others sought to take the essence of China, as they viewed it, and remould it into something else (Jespersen 1997:17).
Between 1931 and 1949, the close relations between China and the United States made Americans believe that China was on its way toward becoming a model for Asia — one bearing resemblance with the American historical footstep. Growing trade volumes and success from missionary educators convinced many Americans that China was joining the 21st century American commonwealth (Jespersen 1996). The relationship was also further strengthened on a personal basis: Chiang Kai-shek - China's nominal leader, highly influenced by his wife Song Meiling, converted to Christianity in 1931. The conversion of Chiang justified the American conviction after years of missionaries' efforts together with the persistent political, cultural, economic and military involvement of the United States government (ibid.).
Madame Chiang played an indispensable role in developing the American image of China. Speaking to the United States Senate in 1943, she stated, ‘I speak your language, not only the language of your hearts, but also your tongue. So coming here today I feel that I am also coming home' (quoted in Jespersen 1997:15). Madame Chiang, born in China, raised as a Christian and educated in America, offered the perfect embodiment of the century-long American image. At the same time, another image of China of the Chinese revolution under Mao became a target of fascination for the American left. This image was highly influenced by the vivid reporting of dedicated journalists such as Edgar Snow and Theodore White (Madsen 1998). These two mixed images of China made it difficult for Americans to grasp any comprehensive understanding of China.
In 1949, the Chinese Nationalists fled in exile to the island of Taiwan while the Chinese Communists won the civil war and founded the People's Republic of China. This "loss of China" gave American society a tremendous shock. Americans, from the President and government officials down to the mass of ordinary people, simply could not see how a hopeful Nationalist government with modern military armed to the back teeth by America could be defeated by the Chinese Communist-led insurrection. The Korean War and unfolding of the Cold War with the expansion of Chinese communist influences all over the Third World deeply shook or even traumatised American society (Borthwick 1992).
Perceptions about the imminent transformation of China into a democratic, capitalist and Christian nation vanished into the air. Who lost China? This question became the central point of debate in the United States. During the period of the Red Menace of the McCarthy years, the extended and relentless search for those who were responsible for the alleged loss of China targeted any American intellectual who showed the least bit of sympathy for Maoist China. Americans simply had difficulty in understanding how China could have become communist. It is argued that such an irrational fear of Chinese communist expansion led to the United States' involvement in the Indo-China War (Madsen 1998:55).
This constant feeling of irritation about the loss of China made the United States refuse to accept the crucial reality in China: the indefinite survival of communist power. The United States refused to recognise the success of the Maoist revolution and refused to acknowledge the fact that the Chinese revolution was a mass response to unendurable and unequal social formations. Revolution does not necessarily have to be communist. But communist ideology was indeed the most popular one for any poor agrarian societies seeking a fundamental social transformation. Some people in the West attempted to study the history of the Chinese Revolution in a non-Marxist approach, but they all ended up in a predicament. That is, no matter how much they dislike Marxism, they are simply not able to disassociate themselves from the Marxist theories as a main source of reference or analytical tools in understanding the Chinese revolution. As Dirlik (1989:255) notes:
students of Chinese Communism in the West, the majority of whom do not share a similar conviction in Marxism's truths, have nevertheless found in China's circumstances variegated reasons for radicals' attraction to Marxism and consequently turning to Communist politics, as the only means to resolve the problems of Chinese society.
The "loss of China" has long been a psychological barrier for the United States to recognise Beijing's authority. Thus, it is necessary to understand why China, a Confucian society, became a devotee of communism rather than capitalism, as both had their origins in the West.
Throughout Chinese modern history, generations of pioneering revolutionaries had actually been inspired by America not only as a model country for emulation but also as a source for ideas. Sun Yat-sen and his comrades, who put an end to monarchical dynasties through the 1911 Revolution, were undeniably inspired by American ideas, especially by the Declaration of Independence. Sun wrote an article in English entitled The True Solution of the Chinese Question: An Appeal to the People of the United States, which was published in the form of a pamphlet and distributed in New York and other cities of the United States, in which he directly appealed to the American people as follows:
We ... must appeal to the people of the civilised world in general and the people of the United States in particular for your sympathy and support either moral or material, because you are the pioneers of Western civilisation in Japan; because you are a Christian nation; because we intend to model our new government after yours; and above all because you are the champion of liberty and democracy. We hope we may find many Lafayettes among you (quoted in Zi 1997:539).
Sun's revolution, unfortunately, received a quite negative response from the United States. His appeal to Britain and the United States to recognise his regime and overthrow the warlords was rejected (Segal 1966:323). Due to its own political and economic concerns, the United States government actually promoted the political status-quo, territorial break-up and strongman leadership that could protect American interests. An article in The Atlantic Monthly (The Break-Up of China 1899) raised a crucial question, which also has contemporary significance — is it for the benefit of the United States to deal with China as a vast unit under its native flag, or as fragments under many flags? The answer seemed to have already been decided by the article's title: ‘The Break-Up of China, and Our Interest in It'.
Therefore, it is clear that since the late 19th century, the United States has actually preferred a policy of "open door and equal opportunity" — the breaking-up and sharing of China on an equal basis with other dominant powers so that "Briton, Cossack, Frank, Teuton, Japanese, or Yankee may grow whatever crop of institutions he may prefer and the soil can bear" (The Break-Up of China 1899). Today, dismantling an "assertive" China seems to be even more necessary and important. That has remained one of the key aims of American global strategy since the end of the Cold War (Amin 2000).
The underlying reason for such a strategy, as Hinton (1990:164) saw it, is because, ‘In the first place, the imperialist powers would not allow China to carry out any transformation aimed at autonomous capitalist development if they could possibly help it,' and every time when people stood up against the traditional rule, the imperial powers intervened and suppressed the effort by force. This left Sun Yat-sen feel perplexed. ‘Why don't the teachers ever allow the pupils to learn?' (quoted in Hinton 1990:164). Mao Zedong also observed that China had been determined to learn from the progressive model of Western capitalist countries since the 1840s, and China had also wanted to achieve modernisation. As Mao noted,
[b]ut the aggressions of the imperialists have shattered the dreams of the Chinese. How strange! Why do teachers always carry out aggression against the students? […] The October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China. To take the road of the Russians — this is the final conclusion (quoted in Chi 1986:294).
In addition, those who looked forward to Western democracy had little opportunity to see the advantage of free enterprise and economic competition. It was far from clear that Western democracy could be made to work in China. It was even difficult to find a Chinese definition of democracy that could fit neatly into Chinese society and its cultural tradition. Modern Western civilisation was imaged in Chinese minds by science and democracy, which the Chinese admired and wanted to learn from. But the problem was that Western political culture and economic advancement were often associated with memories of aggression. The West tried to help China, but in quite a different way. Missionaries had been sent to Christianise the Chinese, teachers to educate them, and money was provided to alleviate distress and sorrow. But none of this "help" addressed the real social problems. After all, it was the Western nations that had long downgraded China with contempt and had repeatedly used military force against it (Creel 1954). On the other hand, Marxism, as a theory of Western origin and yet critical of contemporary capitalism, found receptive followers among Chinese radical intellectuals, such as Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu who were the pioneers of China's communist movement and who were intellectually drawn to Western enlightenment (Peck 1975).
Marxism and especially Lenin's theory of capitalist imperialism provided Chinese intellectuals with a partial theoretical framework as well as a psychological answer to their difficulties in finding the proper explanations and theories to the failures of traditional Chinese culture and for the humiliation suffered at the hands of the West (Peck 1975:73). It was this school that they finally turned to. Marxism-Leninism made the Chinese intellectuals more open-minded and internationalised. It offered them a great source of inspiration to take positions and to analyse the world from different perspectives. China, as they saw it, was no longer an isolated centre of the world surrounded by barbarians, but a part of the world full of contending forces and ideas; and China's problem was part of the world's problems and the Chinese revolution was relevant for the outside world (Kapur 1987:3-4).
It was the Russian Revolution that finally dramatised for Chinese intellectuals the significance of Marxism as a global ideology of revolution and encouraged them to excite their revolutionary imagination. The Russians after 1917 called the Chinese to join with them and other people in the course that they claimed to be a new international order of economic, social and political justice which was to be founded on the premise of complete equality among all nations and races. The Soviet leaders not only denounced imperialism but also unilaterally abolished unequal treaties and relinquished many privileges gained in the era of Tsarist imperialism (Kapur 1987:3). The effect of this historical reversal was very dramatic, especially for China which itself had been victimised by Tsarist imperialism.
In his later years, Sun Yat-sen was deeply impressed by the fact that among all Western powers only Russia showed a strong willingness to co-operate with China on an equal basis. Sun mentioned in his popular essay Three Principles of the People that Russia ‘aims to curb the strong, support the weak, and promote justice.… It aims to destroy imperialism and capitalism throughout the world,' and Chinese people should ‘use the strength of our four hundred millions to fight against injustice for all mankind; this is our Heaven-appointed task' (quoted in Creel 1954:259). To unite with Russia, to unite with Chinese Communists and to rely on workers and peasants became Sun Yat-sen's key national policy in his later years.
The victory of the Chinese communists in 1949 made the United States realise the danger of communist expansion. Since then, hostility towards Chinese socialism has dominated the American political class and media. The upsurge of the New Left in the 1960s was brought to the heel of the student movement's opposition to both, imperialism (symbolised by the war in Indochina) as well as antagonism toward the Soviet Union's interventions in Eastern Europe. In these conditions, Maoism in China represented an ideological inspiration together with Guevarism in Latin America and other revolutionary currents in the Third World. Chairman Mao was viewed as a hero of the world-wide anti-imperialist movement and a champion of the liberation of the oppressed people both in the Third World and in industrial societies. In the late 1960s, academics on the left often wrote about the ‘great human gains of the Chinese revolution' (Madsen 1998:54) praising Mao Zedong as a revolutionary genius and condemning the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. These days many of the same scholars glorify Taiwan's ‘democracy' against China's ‘totalitarianism' (ibid.).
It is indeed an irony that with the changes introduced in China during the post-Mao period, the political classes and media in the United States transformed their attitudes toward China into sympathy and encouragement while, at the same time, left-leaning intellectuals became both critical of the previous period as well as of China in general. 5 China's "open door" policy and its re-entry into the world market at the end of the 1970s revitalised the American sense of "regaining" China. Beijing's dismantling of its key socialist principles together with the creation of a market economy, the pursuit of profits and wealth, the vitality of individual entrepreneurship, and intellectual tacit consent to Western political theories and democratic and human rights values seem to prove the vindication of the American faith that the triumph of market neo-liberalism would eventually produce a pluralistic society.
However, the 4 June Tiananmen incident in 1989 put China back in its own place, and revived deep sentiments of confusion and irritation in the United States. Deng Xiaoping, who twice (in 1978 and 1985) became Man of the Year in Time magazine, was once regarded as the image of the good guy who made China more like the West economically and structurally. His role on 4 June 1989 soon turned him into a bad guy because his political dispositions could not resolve the increasing political and economic contradictions generated by the economic reform, and his different conceptualisation of politics could not be justified by Western mainstream liberal discourse. The persistent imagination in the United States of what China should be like reflects, according to Madsen (1998:55), a latent side of the ‘American dream':
Consciously or not, Americans have used China to construct and sustain important ideological myths about our own identity and place in the world. Such myths are usually fragile attempts to reconcile contradictory elements in our common aspirations, and they are vulnerable to being shattered by dramatic, unanticipated events like the Tiananmen massacre.
Since 1989, it has been argued that the basis of the long-term problem in relations between China and the United States, seen from the American side, was China's lack of democracy and human rights (Li and Hersh 1997:5). This is because of the fact that, ideologically, China poses a moral and political paradox for America's notion of democracy and human rights in which economic, political and intellectual freedom is believed to prevail world-wide.
Yet, from the triumph of the Chinese Revolution in 1949 to the normalisation of relations between China and the United States, the confrontations between the two countries were regarded by Washington as a product of China's ‘security threat', i.e. export of communist revolution and support for Third World national liberation movements (Li and Hersh 1997:5). Having tried to isolate China, the United States viewed the Chinese foreign policy of active engagement in the international arena, export of communist revolution, and support for Third World national liberation movements as the kinds of threat that had to be contained. Both the Korean War and the Vietnam War had such dimensions. The shift in the policy of Washington, from the former emphasis on external security factors conditioning its relations with China, to the current focus on internal factors 6 — the transformation of China's internal political system — has become the new foundation of the relations between China and the United States.
Contradictions within America's foreign policy on China were unavoidable due to the fact that the American national interest always remains characterised by its determination to maintain the global and regional economic order. ‘We have 50 percent of the world's wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population ... In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment,' noted George Kennan in 1949, the then director of Policy Planning at the State Department, who was a leading architect of American post-war foreign policy. ‘Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships that will allow us to maintain this position of disparity,' he continued. ‘We should cease to talk about the raising of the living standards, human rights, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.' 7
Kennan's candid statement indicates that the main strategic objective of American foreign policy since the Second World War has been not so much to battle a "communist threat" as to defend gross inequalities in the international world order and the tremendous privilege and power this global disparity of wealth has brought to the United States. And it also indicates that democracy and human rights abroad were not a major concern of the United States in the formative years of the post-war world order. The danger of communist and socialist movements was not necessarily their ideological attraction but was their attempt and goal to alter the position and structure within the world economy that has been to the United States' advantage. Seen from these perspectives, the end of the Cold War is only the end of communism as an ideology that is being replaced by a set of new ideological threats — authoritarianism and human rights abuses. Thus, the danger of China does not lie in it being the remaining communist state and a human rights violator — the ideological menace of the post-Cold War order — but in its becoming the major structural challenger to the post-Cold War's new world order headed up by the United States.
During the period of Maoist self-reliant socialism, China adopted a self-reliance and self-sufficient path of development. This was seen as a threat by the United States-led capitalist alliance because of its projection as a potential development model and ideology. In the past, the central goal of Maoist politics was to overthrow or challenge the unequal hierarchy in the world economic system. Such an ambition, although threatening, existed more or less outside the United States-led capitalist world system. Today, ironically, China's post-Mao proto-capitalism together with its political authoritarianism is quite menacing due to its access to a larger share of world wealth, resources, as well as its generation of environmental problems. More importantly, such a menace exists within the structural mechanism of global capitalism. It is a paradox that China's proto-capitalism, compared to its former socialism, is potentially more threatening to the contemporary world led by the United States in realistic terms rather than in ideological challenges. The "menace" of China's 1.2 billion people in resource consumption and wealth collection is much more real than Samuel Huntington's notion (1993) of a ‘clash of civilizations'. This actual threat is perfectly understood by Washington. 8
Nowadays, mainstream politicians in the United States, notably in the Congress, have an implicit intention to contain Beijing's emergence as a global power while the business communities are directing investment to China's vast market. 9 The result is, on one hand, that the United States is endeavouring to confine Beijing's behaviour to the established rules without harming its vast market potential. On the other hand, China's accumulation of power through participation in the world market enables it to challenge the established order. Already Japan is regarded as the first and main challenger in the post-World War II trade system because its effective export-promotion policies undermine the domestic industries of the advanced industrial economies (Li and Hersh 1997:6). Likewise, Japan's "unfair" trade practices are blamed for growing protectionism on the part of its major Western trading partners. Now China is projected to be an emerging economic power whose impact on the international economic system will dwarf that of Japan.
American perceptions of China have transformed from extremes of denouncing Beijing for its security threat to extremes of praising the present regime for its pragmatic policies. The political discourse in the United States applauds China's liberalisation and marketisation of its economy, arguing that a free market economy will bring about political polyarchy and will eventually lead the country to democracy (Clinton 1997; 10 Mandelbaum 1997; Mullin, 1997). Such a discourse is based on a strong belief that Chinese Communist authoritarianism will be sooner or later wiped out by unprecedented economic reform and by its integration into the world economy.
Such a conviction was strengthened firstly by the collapse of the former Soviet Union, and secondly by the positive and breathtaking transformations taking place in China: the emergence of a private sector, the rise of an entrepreneurial middle class, the vibrancy of village industries, prospering south-east regions, booming coastal cities, the spread of stock markets, the increasing foreign investment, the prevalence of consumer goods, and emerging colourful life with elegant style. However, what the United States miscalculated was its ignorance of the crucial dialectics behind the fact that, on the one hand, economic progress has largely reduced the power and influence of the Communist Party. But, on the other hand, economic gains and rising living standards have also softened the social demand of political liberation and have created new legitimacy for the Party and the state, even though the credibility of the Chinese government has come to rest on its developmental performance, a tendency which makes it politically vulnerable to economic setbacks.
The United States claims to have defeated Chinese socialism, but at the same it is creating new significant contradictions with China's proto-capitalism. Contrary to the United States' expectations concerning China's market reforms that started 20 years ago, China — as a rising economic force 11 — is beginning to influence the global marketplace. China is seen as a nation acting on the basis of Realpolitik and self-interest not constrained by a set of international rules. In addition, in some cases Beijing, seen by Washington, is trying to follow its own interests and write its own rules, i.e. not respecting intellectual property rights, military manoeuvres to back its diplomacy on Taiwan and the South China Sea, alleged sale of missile technology to Pakistan and nuclear technology to Iran, continuing nuclear tests, and increasing its military budget. Washington increasingly regards China as an emerging challenger to the established international system.
The United States praises China for its economic success while criticising it on the issues of democracy and human rights. However, the United States government should understand that many of China's social and political problems as well as its emerging confrontations with the West are actually born out of its economic success. The contradictions to be faced by both China and the United States are those between human rights and capitalism, between the need for stability and the need for attracting foreign investment, between cheap labour and rapid exports, and between American moralism of democracy and human rights and its neo-liberalism emphasising interest and profit. Very often, the United States government shows the world that resolutions or agreements on trade and weapon technology issues are more important to its national security and interest than its moral concerns over China's democracy and human rights. 12
While the United States clearly has an interest in being present in the vast market with a purchasing power of 1.2 billion people, its government appears not to take into account very much that a nascent ebullient capitalism often takes on rather wild features and may produce unexpected results. The free market economy in China drives people to seek out every possible opportunity and means to earn a profit or just to survive. Much of Beijing's misbehaviour, as it were, is actually related to the consequences of the economic marketisation process. For instance, Beijing's "breaking rules" regarding intellectual property 13 is a typical example of the contradiction that, on the one hand, the United States wants to see a capitalist market economy demolish Chinese state authoritarianism but, on the other hand, the rule-less profit-seeking practices as a result of a premature capitalist economy are highly harmful to the United States' business interests and they must be stopped through the intervention of the state. The United States is increasingly gaining political bargaining power in its relations with Beijing but at the same time it is also becoming "addicted" to the Chinese market and is subjected to the concerns of Chinese interests. 14
As for the intellectual debate on China, two images seem to dominate. Some scholars argue that ‘China, not Russia, presents the only remaining long-term credible potential threat to Western and global peace and security' (Russett and Stam 1998:365). Others suggest that China does not really matter because it is still a weak developing country whose political, economic and military power is highly exaggerated (Segal 1999). Either fascination or irritation with China has always influenced the United States' scholarship and journalism, which has often produced sharp sentiment from the extremes of glowing approval and unqualified optimism to extremes of revulsion and deep pessimism (Gurtov 1994:109). There were promising optimistic writings about China's "second revolution" in the most of the 1980s (Harding 1987; Lampton and Keyser 1988); following the June 1989 crackdown there was strong antagonism toward China's lack of political change predicting its eventual collapse (Goldstone 1995), and in recent years there has been a swing back to exaggerated projections of China's rise to superpower status posing a serious threat to the United States (Bernstein and Munro 1997; Stokes 1997; Halloran 1998). From time to time, many American politicians and observers selectively use China's internal strength and weakness and the rise and fall in relations between China and the United States to justify their existing theories and prejudices.
In sum, many of the current China-American conflicts, be they political or ideological, are rooted in the history of America's image of China and its efforts to engage and change Chinese society. >From its early missionary expeditions to the Far East to the converting to Christianity of Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, the United States has been firmly convinced that it can transform China. Ever since, this deep belief has long made the United States either reject the internal changes that have actually taken place in China or want to convert and transform them in its way. In the post-Cold War era, the United States, with its mixture of realism (economic benefits and strategic concerns) and moralism (democracy and human rights), has caused serious ambiguity and inconsistency between the reality and the moral dimension of power in its interactions with China.
The Chinese Conundrum
In September and October 1999, two faces of China were on display. In Shanghai, Chinese authorities hosted the Fortune Global Forum, which gathered 300 of the world's biggest capitalists in the skyscrapers of a new commercial discourse. This Forum was described by Zhou Minwei, the dapper director of Shanghai's Foreign Affairs Office, as ‘a beacon of China's future' (International Herald Tribune, 30 September 1999). In Beijing, a different celebration took place marking 50 years of Communist rule. There, one found a strong sense of nationalism: soldiers accompanied by tanks, rockets and missiles; and half a million people parading with patriotic slogans. These two contrasting events symbolise the two mixed realities of China today: integration with the capitalist world system while maintaining self-perceived communist ideologies. To put it in a metaphorical way, Chinese nationalism is riding the tiger of capitalism.
China has been traditionally viewed as a self-centred and self-sufficient country. This view also covered the period between the establishment of the new Republic in 1949 and the economic reform in 1978. However, the isolation during Mao's rule was fundamentally different to that of previous dynasties. The key question here is whether China wanted to close its door or whether it was forced to do so. Recent studies and literature reveal how articulated misperceptions of both the United States and China were developed, shaped and changed. Many disputes between China and the United States have been due to frequent failures by both the Chinese and the Americans to understand each other's motives and actions.
After founding the People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong's major concern in his understanding and analysis of the United States was always how to measure its power and influence on the survival and security of the new Republic under his leadership. The traditional American image of Mao as an anti-American communist leader was largely mis-portrayed due to a lack of clear comprehension of Mao's real sentiments and perceptions about the United States.
Recent publications indicate that Mao actually had great fascination with and admiration of the United States. Xiao San, Mao's friend from his younger days, vividly recalled how Mao spent nights reading Great Heroes of the World, translated and compiled from American books (He 1994:145). Mao was greatly attracted by great figures such as Washington and Lincoln. Throughout his lifetime, in speeches and in talks with foreign guests, Mao frequently mentioned Washington's name in a positive fashion (He 1994:145). During the Sino-Japan War in the early part of this century, Mao had once hoped that China and the United States could establish a kind of collaboration, if not a formal alliance, to fight the Japanese invasion. In 1916, he wrote to his friend:
The time would be in ten years. The place would be in the Pacific. It has been talked about for a long time that the U.S. and Japan will go to war. In ten years, China and America will join the just cause. We attack the Japanese army, the U.S. attacks the Japanese navy. Then Japan would be defeated in no time. The two republics of the east and west would be friendly and close. This would be a contribution to economic development. It would benefit future generations (quoted in He 1994:145).
Even during the period when the United States unilaterally supported the Chiang Kai-shek regime in combating Mao's red army, Mao still believed the possibility of an American role in China's economic development. Mao once told an American diplomat in March 1945: ‘America is not only the most suitable country to assist the economic development of China; she is also the only country fully able to participate' (quoted in Von Laue 1987:276). At the end of January 1946, on his return to Chongqing from Yanan (the Chinese Communist Party's headquarters during the war), Zhou Enlai relayed Mao's message to the United States' Marshall Mission during its visit to Yanan:
We believe that the democracy to be initiated in China should follow the American pattern. Since in present day China, the conditions necessary to the introduction of Socialism do not exist, we Chinese Communists, who theoretically advocate Socialism as our ultimate goal, do not mean, nor deem possible, to carry it into effect in the immediate future. In saying that we should pursue the American path, we mean to acquire US styled democracy and science, and specifically to introduce to this country agricultural reform, industrialisation, free enterprise and development of individuality, so that we may build up an independent, free and prosperous China (quoted in Zi 1997:545).
Zhou Enlai then continued to relate the following interesting remarks:
It has been rumoured recently that Chairman Mao is going to pay a visit to Moscow. On learning this, Chairman Mao laughed and remarked half jokingly that if ever he would take a furlough abroad, which would certainly do much good to his present health condition, he would rather go to the United States, because he thinks that there he can learn lots of things useful to China (ibid.).
After the anti-Japanese war (1937-1945) and the surrender of Japan, Mao welcomed the United States' role of mediation hoping it would pressure Chiang Kai-shek to avoid civil war and to legitimise the existence of the Chinese Communist Party. However, the United States doubted that the communist peasant army could defeat the Nationalist army equipped with modern American weapons. Instead of being a fair co-ordinator, the United States helped to transport the Nationalist army to take more industrial cities and geographically vital places. It continued to provide Chiang's regime with large amounts of financial and military support. Such actions wiped out Mao's hope and changed his view towards the United States. He said later,
We made mistakes in our work during the previous period … . It was the first time for us to deal with the U.S. imperialists. We didn't have much experience. As a result we were taken in. With this experience we won't be cheated again. 15
When President Richard Nixon set foot on Chinese soil on February 21, 1972 and began what he described as ‘the week that changed the world' 16 that was the moment that Mao and his generation had waited for decades. This was not only because it was the first American President who had ever touched Chinese soil but also because the man as President of a superpower and leader of the Western world had finally recognised the existence of "Red China".
The driving force behind Nixon's visit was clear to both sides — the common goal to resist the expansionist Soviet Union. After Mao accepted Marxism and Leninism and decided to devote his life to the Chinese revolution, he looked toward the Soviet Union as his teacher and source of inspiration both theoretically and practically. But the Sino-Soviet split had totally changed his worldview. The irony was that the United States turned out to be Mao's most respected enemy and the Soviet Union his most distasteful friend (He 1994:146).
Nixon's 1972 state visit to China ended more than two decades of American efforts to isolate and contain the People's Republic of China. The end of the United States' containment policy was essentially designed to play the "China card" against the Soviet Union expansionism. The Vietnam War was still on at that time, and Nixon's visit was meant to deepen antagonism between the two largest socialist countries. Besides geopolitical reasons, the United States' business communities had long dreamed of China's vast market. China's size and population alone had beckoned them for over a century. The Nixon administration facilitated Beijing's entry into international financial institutions, lowered tariffs for Chinese goods, granted China a large quota for textile exports and created a special category for high-tech exports to China. These friendly moves created a favourable condition for the post-Mao leadership to implement a wide range of export-oriented development strategies (Friedman 1996).
Relations between China and the United States in the early years of the economic reform followed the line of Dengist economism which put a strong emphasis on economics and trade over politics and ideology. Based on a similar export-oriented strategy of East Asia Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs), Beijing's pragmatic foreign policy soon translated into improved ties with virtually the entire capitalist world, including its neighbouring states. The growth pace of Chinese exports began to cause uneasiness: its share of world trade increased from 0.9 percent in 1980 to 2.3 percent in 1992 (Lardy 1995:1076). Its annual foreign trade rose from a mere US $ 21 billion in 1978 to US $ 324 billion in 1998 (Pearson 2000:48); and it is estimated that over 40 percent of China's GNP (Gross National Product) now derives from international trade (Zweig 1999:68). Foreign direct investment in China reached more than US $ 60 billion in 1997 (Cai 1999:856), which ranks China as the largest absorber of foreign direct investment of any country other than the United States. The increasing integration of the Chinese economy into the global market also facilitates the gradual penetration of "foreign elements" into every aspect of Chinese society.
In other words, China's rapid economic growth since its "open-door" policy has been driven by exports with the assistance of foreign investments and joint-ventures. This has also raised some fundamental contradictions. The ascendancy of externally oriented, neo-liberal strata have deepened Chinese dependence and reinforced the hegemony of foreign linked groups, whereas the ascendancy of the nationalist sentiment are creating "half-way house" policies which tend to define the terms and conditions of associations between public and private capital of both internal and external investors as well as financiers. That market-driven growth encourages more concessions to induce capital flows and growth in unlimited possibilities of expansion and more structural changes to meet the demand of the overwhelming pursuit of external markets and resources. The costs of such a development strategy, as argued by Chinese nationalists, have contributed to ‘domestic capital flight, excessive foreign economic influence, and heavy dependence on trade to spur growth' (Wang 2000:54).
It is clear that China's remarkable achievement in economic growth has been made possible by its growing involvement in the capitalist world system. Beijing's economic gains from the global economic transformation are inseparable from its increasing dependence on the global market. The approach and pattern of China's economic development increasingly resemble the East Asian NICs model — deepening structural relations with Western industrial countries and dependence on foreign trade, investments and financing. If we look into China's success in economic growth, we easily find that Western investors and private entrepreneurs have been playing a vital role in the most dynamic sectors of the Chinese economy. 17
However, in recent years we have been witnessing contradictions between Chinese nationalism and American reactions to China's ascendance. Disputes between China and the United States have often opened opportunities for Beijing to pacify domestic dissatisfaction and build new bases of legitimisation by using nationalism in confrontation with external adversaries. Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, nationalism together with socialism was used to mobilise the people to make China into a self-reliant country. Now it seems that nationalism and Confucianism are being used to mobilise the people to turn China into a great power (Li and Hersh 1997).
Many of China's contradictions in its external relations especially in its relations with the West and the United States in particular lie in Beijing's "open-door policy" versus deep-rooted Chinese nationalism, which translates into two conflicting faces of China: entering the world capitalist market while preserving its "socialist" and national identity. A key contradiction arises between China's suspicion against the West and Japan, because of historical experiences, and its ambition to enter the club of Western advanced countries, and to borrow, learn and participate in trade, technology transfer, etc. With its sustained economic growth and rising military strength, China wants the United States to acknowledge its "Chinese characteristics" in the process of joining the established capitalist world system. Beijing's intention is to use the state power to accumulate enough influence to modify or redefine rules toward its desired direction. But this will cause serious clashes between Beijing and the core states of the world system. China's current mixture of neo-liberalism and nationalism has caused ambiguity in ideology and policy planning.
The new Chinese elite seems to accept American neo-liberalism regarding the role of the market and the relationship between productive forces and production relations, but at the same time it endeavours to preserve its political discourse. The move towards a market-oriented economy, whether labelling it socialist or not, is doomed to require a corresponding relaxation of direct political and administrative control over the economy. A market economy will eventually generate the articulation of various interest groups to maximise the opportunities inherent in the mobility of the system. The ideology and mechanism of a capitalist market economy is in essence contradictory to China's traditional societal organisation and politics. As a consequence, the Communist Party and the government theorise and engage in a political discourse at the superstructural level based on an ideology of "Chinese characteristics" both in its internal and external relations. However, this discourse is constantly challenged by the consequences of adopting a market-oriented development strategy, which affects the legitimacy of Beijing's political establishment. The predicament facing the authoritarian state is that change does not result from the determination of the leadership alone, but from its interaction with society at large, as well as the reactions of both leadership and society to the international environment (Li 1998).
China's success of market reform is not in dispute, but it is increasingly giving rise to serious problems, which used to be regarded as Western diseases. Many of the country's social, economic and political problems, such as corruption, polarisation, class division, warlordism, or banditry, are the actual outcomes of the market reform. China wishes to maintain its social stability and resist American political intervention and cultural influence, while it is simultaneously nursing market forces that run in the opposite direction. While China is importing products and technology from the United States, it cannot avoid importing "spiritual pollution" 18 from that country. Beijing is gaining economic strength but losing political independence. In other words, China's rise through active participation in the global political economy is, at the same time, translating into greater vulnerability and dependence. It is a situation of a "prisoner's dilemma" with the contrary effects that Beijing's desire to retain its legitimacy by integrating China's economy with global capitalism will make it politically vulnerable to internal economic setbacks and external pressures, thus endangering the preservation of its power.
While market forces are unconsciously transforming Beijing's external relations, Chinese officials and scholars alike still refuse to acknowledge the challenges to their traditional understanding of a number of concepts, such as sovereignty, national interests, internal affairs, and international relations. 19 China's five principles of peaceful co-existence, 20 which have long been the pillar of its foreign policy of international relations, were of significance under the Maoist independent, self-reliance development strategy. But these principles are increasingly facing challenges by the post-Cold War American power hegemony, democracy politics and human rights diplomacy. The American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention in Kosovo was a good example of action undertaken in the name of human rights and moral obligation rather than out of any traditional conception of national interest. NATO's unilateral use of force, deemed necessary on moral and political grounds, was a significant departure from classic international legality as Beijing perceived it. China's dilemma is that while it is eager to integrate itself with the globalisation process in which the traditional concept of state sovereignty is being eroded and the conventional notion of national interest is under transformation, its foreign policy is still based on an outmoded Westphalian notion of sovereignty (Deng 1998).
Since 1996, the Chinese political scene has been presented with the emergence of a number of assertive books (Li, Liu et al. 1996; Song et al. 1996; Fang et al. 1999; Qiao and Wang 1999). 21 These works reflect the awakening national consciousness in Chinese intellectuals in the 1990s driven by popular sentiment as a result of a series of disputes between China and the United States. Although resistance and antagonism towards Washington can be discovered among politicians, intellectuals and students, the Chinese leadership is not very clear on what is to be expected from the complete integration of China into the United States-led capitalist world system. The implications of the various contradictions generated by the market reform driven by the intense globalisation process are that the Chinese state and Chinese people will, sometime and somewhere, have to pause and figure out exactly where China is headed. Thus, critical rethinkings must be allowed to question the contradictions and consequences of China's structural linkage to the existing capitalist world system.
Conclusion
The multifaceted contradictions in the interactions between China and the United States are likely to bring about constraints as well as conflicts. Both sides seem to be riding a tiger in a typical prisoner's dilemma situation. The persistent effort to change vis-à-vis counter-change reflects the purposes of both the United States and China to reinforce their own moral and ideological construction of society.
Will China ever be able to fulfil the American expectations? Ever since Napoleon warned the world that it would be better not wake the "sleeping giant", 22 China has been both a source of fascination and disturbance for America which has had strong psychological perceptions of what China should be like. In China's own history and civilisation it was once conquered and ruled for centuries by its powerful minority groups such as the Mogols and the Manchus. They tried to change China's fundamental character, but were later themselves changed and sinicised. China has changed from time to time over the centuries, it will change again only when the Chinese themselves want it to. Accordingly, despite the changing China-United States relations in the post-Cold War era, it is believed that one thing will remain constant: America's persistent efforts to change China, as always in the past, will be doomed to failure (Jespersen 1997).
The reconciliation between China and the United States at the end of the 1970s was a marriage of convenience without a solid "love base". To play a card in counterbalancing the enemy was the fundamental pillar of rapprochement between China and the United States. Such a marriage was entirely built on the common goal — resisting the expansion of the Soviet Union. With the collapse of the USSR (Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) in the late 1980s, the strategic pillar which had been sustaining relations between China and the United States relations was also brought down. The economic relationship is now the sole foundation of the bilateral relationship, which is increasingly becoming less focused and more regularised. The mutual lack of consensus as a result of the loss of their common adversary often results in sleeping in the same bed while having different dreams. 23
For China, in the years ahead Beijing cannot escape from deepening its political and economic relations with the West especially with the United States. A hard reality, which China will have to swallow, is that after a quarter century of hating and suspecting the West, the post-Mao leadership has to turn to the West for technology transfer, financial investment and economic co-operation. For the United States, bullying China or moulding it into a United States-designed entity will be doomed to failure. The nationalism of the cultural tradition of China has a very peculiar characteristic: during a certain period of peaceful times, these often involve internal struggles within the leadership and within various contending social forces. As soon as war or confrontation with Western countries occurs, the nation will unite. What happened in China after its embassy was bombed during the Kosovo War is a good example.
Due to fact that the interactions between China and the United States are closely connected with the evolutions and transformations of global development as well as with their respective internal political struggles, China-United States relations are and will continue to be based on a dialectical process of waxing and waning, declining and rising, as understood in the ancient Chinese concept of yin and yang. Seen from this perspective, this relationship will continue to be in a state of flux and reflux, rather than in a purposeful forward or backward movement. Strategically, Washington does seem to want Beijing to become involved in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Asia, especially vis-à-vis North Korea, Iran and other "rogue" regimes. Also economically, the White House endeavours to bring China into the WTO (World Trade Organization) framework subjecting Beijing to the established international rules. However, in most cases China will only be willing to co-operate with Washington if Beijing can see that such co-operation can bring immediate economic or political benefits.
A stable relationship between China and the United States in the 21st century depends on a few determinants. Firstly, both sides must try to obtain a historical and realist understanding of the existence of the contradictions in the interactions of both nations' values, objectives and dreams. Secondly, China-US relations must be based on a greater sense of realism, avoiding false euphoria and hypocritical moralism, and acknowledging their unresolved (perhaps unresolvable) differences. Thirdly and more importantly, the two sides must continue to inherit the spirit of the Shanghai Communiqué that embodied the notion of agreeing to disagree 24 despite the transformation of the post-Cold War international political economy. To do so, both will have to find a regional and global role which the other will accept and support, and both will have to undergo a considerable period of related struggle, adjustment and tension.
October 2000
Notes:
Note *: Xing Li, Ph.D., is Research Fellow at the Research Centre on Development and International Relations, Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Denmark. Back
Note 1: Some consider the recent WTO (World Trade Organisation) agreement between China and the United States in November 1999 as the most significant example of positive American influence on China's development since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979. This represents the victory of the Clinton Administration's objectives in engaging China (Kapp 2000). Back
Note 2: Since China's economic reform started at the end of the 1970s, the Chinese government has been cautious in opening the Chinese economy and society up to the outside world for the sake of maintaining the communist leadership. Beijing has been especially reluctant to open China's financial sectors up to international competition, which is seen as a factor explaining why China could avoid financial meltdown as happened in other East and Southeast Asian countries. For example, the Chinese government is not yet ready for the local currency (the Chinese Yuan) to be convertible, which has made currency speculation on the Yuan impossible. Back
Note 3: The strategic objective of American foreign policy during the Cold War was not so much to fight the communist threat as to defend gross inequalities in the core-semiperiphery-periphery structure of the capitalist world system and the tremendous privilege and power this global disparity of wealth brought for the United States (Robinson 1995; Li 1996). The key concern for the United States in the post-Cold War era is how to structurally maintain the world capitalist system. Back
Note 4: The concept of the West usually refers to North American, Northern and Western Europe and also includes Australia and New Zealand. Since the United States emerged to become the leading superpower after the Second World War and became the leader of the Western world, and since this article mainly deals with the China-United States relations, the occasional appearances of the term West including those in the direct and indirect quotations mostly refer to the United States. Back
Note 5: Some of them were dismayed by the Cultural Revolution after they became aware of what had actually happened (Brady 1996). Back
Note 6: This is not to deny that the United States has always had global and regional security concerns regarding China, most notably in regard to Taiwan, the South China Sea as well as the Korean Peninsular. However, the United States' policies towards China since the end of the Cold War have shown a strong interest in China's internal evolutions both economically and politically. Many of the post-Cold War clashes between Beijing and Washington are, apart from the Taiwan issue, what China considers internal affairs — preventing foreign cultural and ideological penetration and containing liberal and pro-democracy forces. Back
Note 7: Policy Planning Study (PPS) 23, State Department, 24 February 1948, in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), I(2), 1948, p. 23. Back
Note 8: President Clinton revealed the exchange of conversation he had with Chinese President Jiang Zemin during a summit meeting. Clinton rejected the assumption that Washington intended to contain China. But he also frankly expressed his concerns to the Chinese President about China's real threat to American interests: Back
The greatest threat to our security that you present is that all of your people will want to get rich in exactly the same way we got rich. And unless we try to triple the automobile mileage and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if you all get rich in that way we won't be breathing very well. … There are just so many more of you than there are of us, and if you behave exactly the same way we do, you will do irrevocable damage to the global environment. And it will be partly our fault, because we got there first and we should be able to figure out how to help you solve this problem (International Herald Tribune, 18 April 1996).
Note 9: While the United States Congress conducts its annual debate over China's human rights abuses and MFN (Most-Favoured-Nation) status, American trade with China is enlarging year after year: According to Chinese Customs statistics, since 1996 the United States has been China's second largest trading partner, and China, the fourth largest trading partner of the United States. In 1997, bilateral trade reached US $ 49 billion, representing an average annual increase of 22.6 percent since 1990. By the end of September 1997, there were 23,800 United States-funded projects in China with a total contract value of over US $ 38.2 billion, and actual investments of US $ 16.1 billion (Li Zhaoxing 1998:33). Back
Note 10: For many years this has been the key argument that the Clinton Administration uses to extend China's MFN (Most-Favoured-Nation) trading status and to veto the Congress' bills in either rejecting or conditioning China's MFN status. Clinton has made this argument very clear during various public speeches and policy-making addresses since 1993 (Clinton 1997a; 2000). Back
Note 11: The rise of China's economic power is widely documented. One study argues that ‘in merely 20 years, the volume of business-to-business transactions engaged in by [Chinese] firms has risen from zero or nearly zero to among the highest in the world. Its annual foreign trade rose from a mere $ 21 billion in 1978 to $ 324 billion in 1998. Even more dramatic, the amount of incoming capital rose from zero in 1978 to a high of about $ 110 billion in 1993, though it has hovered around $ 50 billion in each of the past several years. In the early and mid-1990s China was second only to the United States as a recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI)' (Pearson 2000:48). One learns from another source that ‘[i]n 1997, China's GDP [Gross Domestic Product], measured at purchasing-power parity (PPP), was $ 3.8 trillion, according to the World Bank's latest World Development Indicators — the most comprehensive set of international economic and social statistics. This makes it the second-biggest economy in the world, ahead of Japan's $ 3.1 trillion …' (The Economist (1994) 351(8118), 110). Back
Note 12: This can be seen from the fact that after the 1989 Tiananmen incident (student demonstration), the United States Congress passed a law which connected China's yearly MFN (Most-Favoured-Nation) trade status with Beijing's human rights issues. Since then, however, there has been no single year that the MFN was not re-given to China despite the general consensus between the United States Administration and the Congress that China's human rights position has not been improved through all of these years. On the contrary, the Administration together with the Congress has spent much more effort in making China sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in conducting missile non-proliferation dialogues with Beijing. Furthermore, the China-US WTO agreement is seen as being "unquestionably in America's national interest" (Tyson 1999). Back
Note 13: In many cases, such as pirate copying of computer software, publications, audio and film products, and the like, it is not the central government which is breaking the rules regarding intellectual property. It is simply beyond Beijing's capacity to control the conduct of local factories and provinces in international business interactions due to the decentralisation and marketisation processes in the last two decades. Back
Note 14: This can be seen from two ongoing aspects of interactions between China and the United States. On one hand, the government in Washington, by taking the advantage of China's dependence on its market, is forcing China to make concessions on a number of issues, such as the release of political and religious dissidents, export of nuclear and missile technologies, intellectual property rights and compliance with international trade rules. On the other hand, the potential of China's huge market (for example, China is already the largest overseas buyer of American aeroplanes) and the dependence of a considerable portion of American jobs (about 200,000, most within high-tech industries) on trade between China and the United States, enables China to play the United States and Europe off against one another. For example, in 1999 China made a deal with France to buy dozens of Airbus aeroplanes, and this was seen as the Europeans' gain from strains in the relations between China and the United States (Thomas and Mecham 1999:22). Back
Note 15: Mao's speech at a farewell banquet for General Xu Xiangqian, July 1947, in the unpublished memoir of An Ziwen (He 1994). Back
Note 16: This was President Nixon's widely-quoted remark during his toast in Shanghai in 1972 celebrating the end of his visit. See ‘Richard M. Nixon: His place in history', Washington, DC: U.S. News & World Report, 2 May 1994. Back
Note 17: China's export-oriented economic growth in the past two decades has been driven by two engines: township enterprises and FDI in the form of wholly-owned enterprises or joint-ventures. The export sectors of China's economy are considered the most important and dynamic parts of the economy. The share of FDI-promoted exports in China's total trade growth has been rising steadily. According to the statistics, the share of such exports in 1985 was about 1 percent of China's total exports, and by 1994 it had reached almost 30 percent (Lardy 1995:1074). Back
Note 18: The term (in Chinese Jing Shen Wu Ran) is widely used in China and it explicitly refers to political and ideological influences from the West. Back
Note 19: From my readings of Chinese newspapers and journals, Chinese officials' and mainstream intellectuals' conceptualisations of "sovereignty" and "international relations" are still largely based on Realpolitik despite the fact that the Chinese economy is increasingly integrated with the world economy. Back
Note 20: The five principles refer to mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful co-existence. Back
Note 21: The regime seems to have a conflicting feeling about these books. On one hand, they could intensify Chinese nationalism, which then could be used to resist Western pressure on a number of issues. On the other hand, over-heated nationalism could damage China's economic relations with advanced industrial countries. Back
Note 22: In the over 170 years after Napoleon's death, one of his aphorisms ‘Let China sleep, for when it wakes, it will shake the world' has become Chinese observers' favourite cliché (The Economist (1987) 344(8026), 38). This quotation is widely cited by scholars when writing about the emergence of China since its economic reform started in 1979. Back
Note 23: This is a Chinese idiomatic expression implying that the love affair (or relationship) between two persons is based on convenience and pragmatism, but not on true love. Back
Note 24: During the 1972 negotiations between Nixon and Zhou Enlai on the normalisation of relations between the United States and China, the Taiwan question was the most difficult and sensitive issue. However, due to the overwhelming understanding that their agreement (mutual strategic interest) was more important than their disagreement (the Taiwan issue), Beijing and Washington successfully finalised the Shanghai Communiqué — the underpinning of relations between China and the United States — which contained their respective agreement and disagreement on major international affairs as well as on the Taiwan problem. Back
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