China Apologist : U.S. Must Decline as China Returns to Former Greatness

US Business & Industry Council ^ | April 6, 2007 | William R. Hawkins

[Paul Ross]

China Apologist : U.S. Must Decline as China Returns to Former Greatness

By William R. Hawkins
Friday, April 06, 2007

The CNA Corporation is a non-profit organization that is best known for operating the Center for Naval Analysis, which for over 50 years has worked closely with the U.S. Navy to develop strategies and weapon systems to defend American security.  It opened a new China Study Center on March 27, which seems like a natural evolution of its work given Beijing’s rise as a global geopolitical rival to the United States.  China has the world’s third largest shipbuilding industry and its rapidly expanding its navy.  However, by choosing devoted Beijing apologist Chas Freeman to deliver its inaugural lecture, it raised doubts about the direction its research will take.  

Chas Freeman was Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the first term of the Clinton Administration, and had been Director for Chinese Affairs at the State Department at the end of the Carter administration.  In between, he had been ambassador to Saudi Arabia under President George H. W. Bush.  He is Co-Chair of the United States-China Policy Foundation, a group “founded to ensure the continued improvement of U.S.-China relations.” Freeman embraces this mission, even though he was the diplomat chosen in October 1995 by Chinese General  Xiong Guangkai to convey a threat to use nuclear weapons against the United States over Taiwan.  

Freeman is also on the board of Projects International, Inc., a Washington-based firm that has helped broker a cross-investment agreement between major Chinese and Brazilian oil companies; set up joint ventures for American firms in China; and has provided advice to Chinese venture capital funds.  In his remarks to CNA, Freeman stressed business over any other consideration in China relations.  He argued, “Contrary to repeated forecasts, the many imperfections of China's legal system have neither prevented it from developing a vigorous market economy nor inhibited foreign investment – of which China continues to attract more than any other country, including our own.  China's failure to democratize and its continuing censorship of its media, including the Internet, have not stifled its economic progress or capacity to innovate, which are increasingly impressive.  China's perverse practices with respect to human rights have not cost China's Communist Party or its government their legitimacy.  On the contrary, polling data suggests that Chinese have a very much higher regard for their political leaders and government than Americans currently do for ours.”

If Freeman was polled, he would say the same.  Indeed, his speech was filled with criticism of the United States along side praise for China, taking on bizarre dimensions at times.  He claimed, “At the birth of the United States of America, what some then called ‘the Celestial Kingdom’ loomed large in our imagination....We knew little of China itself, but we had inhaled the European idealization of it as the most ethically advanced and orderly, as well as the most populous, realm on the planet.  As they designed our system of government, the brilliant political engineers who were our founding fathers drew on Leibniz' and Voltaire's musings on the secrets of the good society China exemplified to its Jesuit admirers.”

In Freeman’s view, “our founding fathers' ambitions to build a better system of government than those in Europe” led them to look to China for guidance! What an absurd notion! While there is mention of several European states in The Federalist Papers, there is no mention of China, which for all its opulence and stability, was ruled by a Emperor far more brutal than the British monarch against who the Founders rebelled.  The musings of the foolish Voltaire should be swept into the same dustbin as those of Hollywood dimwits like Shirley MacLaine, who once gushed over the blood-soaked reign of Mao Zedong for creating a more egalitarian and happy society than America.

But it is China’s future which beguiles Freeman.  “China had a couple of bad centuries, but it is back, and it is on the way to the center of global affairs.  As China restores itself to wealth and power, its leaders display a resolute confidence in the future,” he proclaims.  And in what should be a warning, he intones with optimism: “Our country came into being as the age of Atlantic dominance and the industrial revolution began to eclipse China and India.  Americans therefore have no experience with the more normal condition of human history, in which Asia was for millennia the global center of gravity.  One way or another, in the 21st Century, China and its neighbors will determine what the resumption of Asian leadership in more and more fields of human endeavor means for an emerging post-industrial world, including for us Americans.”

Anyone who might think there is danger ahead for the United States is treated disdainfully by Freeman.  “Sometimes, for example, in the matters of Taiwan, Tibet, or the democracy movement in Hong Kong, Americans are enlisted by lobbyists acting on behalf of separatist or dissident movements in greater China.  Those who wish America to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy can always find one worthy of our attention there.  China has become a screen on which Americans can project both our reveries and our nightmares,” he says.

On the question of China’s “authentic aspirations,” which Americans need to understand, looms the national security issue.  Freeman told his audience, “No one still dismisses the PLA as a ‘junkyard army.’ China's recent anti-satellite test, growing participation in UN peacekeeping missions, and near tripling of defense spending since 2000 mark its emergence as a considerable military power.” Yet, we should not react to this.  Indeed, he urged the CNA, whose job it is to worry about such things, to reject “our apparent nostalgia for the aggressive expansionism of our now inconveniently vanished Soviet rivals” and to avoid “writing narrowly focused and highly tendentious reports mandated by Congress to justify the single-issue agendas of our military-industrial complex or, for that matter, our humanitarian-industrial complex.”

He believes China is behaving as a “responsible stakeholder.....This is already the case with respect to the world monetary system, in which the Renminbi yuan is poised to emerge as a major trading and reserve currency within the coming decade.” This assessment flies in the face of reality.  Beijing sets the value of its currency by fiat, undervaluing it by 40 percent or more to gain competitive advantages in world trade.  It is not a convertible currency like the dollar or the euro.  China has built up a trillion dollar hard currency reserve through its trade surpluses, but maintains control of these funds for purely national purposes.  

“I am optimistic,” Freeman proclaims. “China's leaders are trying hard, in connection with the 17th Chinese Communist Party Congress to be held this fall, to develop a restatement of ideological principles that emphasizes the imperatives of societal and international harmony and the sinicization of Western-originated theories of innovation in science and technology.” Toward that end, the U.S. should not try to restrict the transfer of technology to Beijing, but welcome China’s further success.

Freeman seems to have fallen into that school of dissident thought that is looking for a foreign alternative to what his liberal sensibilities find distasteful about American preeminence.  

In a speech to other retired diplomats in February, he launched a marathon assault on every aspect of American policy and society.  “We have sought to exempt ourselves from the jurisdiction of international law.  We have suspended our efforts to lead the world to further liberalization of trade and investment through the Doha Round.  We no longer participate in the UN body charged with the global promotion of human rights.  We decline to discuss global climate change, nuclear disarmament, or the avoidance of arms races in outer space.”

His talk was in accord with his position as head of the Middle East Policy Council.  His twisted view of that region of the world matches his view of Asia.  He denounced the U.S. provision of “military support and political cover for Israeli operations entailing intermittent massacres of civilian populations in Lebanon and Gaza.”  No mention is made of the China-Iran-Hezbollah terrorist connection that is pushing Lebanon towards civil war, and which not only Israel and the U.S., but also most of the Arab world, are trying to contain.

Freeman also told his audience, ”There will be no American imperium.  The effort to bully the world into accepting one has instead set in motion trends that threaten both the core values of our republic and the prospects for a world order based on something other than the law of the jungle.”  Freeman is hopelessly deluded, however, if he thinks China’s rise under its current Communist regime will not continue to be conducted by the law of the jungle.  That is the nature of both economic and geopolitical competition, which Beijing’s leaders know very well from China’s long and violent history.

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William R. Hawkins is Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council.

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[Sandreckoner]

“Gee, I guess Freeman hasn’t seen some of the posts here where there are always a few who still do....”

There’s a difference between dismissing the PLA as a junkyard army and dismissing the idea that it is — or will be for decades — even a remote peer of the United States. For some reason there are always a few who can’t accept that difference.

[Sandreckoner]

“China has much more potential than the United States on account of its much larger population.”

I’ve never, ever understood this line of reasoning. It has never made sense historically. Its huge population could work against it just as easily over the longer term. If mere population size was the dictator of potential, history would look quite vastly different.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Population size isn't the mere dictator of potential, but it definitely is a big one.

All of the mentioned civilizations in the earlier bulleted post had (comparatively) huge populations, if not the largest population in their region. Both the Roman Empire and Ancient China were estimated to have a quarter of the global population, each. Western Europe "picked up steam" (appropriate for this sentence) after the Industrial Revolution allowed for an immense increase in population (more medicinal practices, more food, etc.). There is a large correlation between population and power.

[mhx]

China should, of course, try to be the greatest country on Earth. We should expect that everyone will do that, and that every country will think highly of themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Of course we will make sure they don’t succeed at it because we’ll be better :-)

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

I have read some Asian history and know that China referred to itself as the “Middle Kingdom.” In other words, the rest of the world revolves around China. The longer the PRC hangs on the the vestiges of Communist Dictatorial rule, the slower their progress.

I have read that some of the reasons that China stagnated are:
1) Their curtailment of China’s naval exploration centuries ago;
2) Confucius-ism is a positive and a negative for Chinese culture. The negative side of it was that Confucius-ism created a kind of tunnel vision. Education was focused on memorization, contrary to Western Enlightenment and the Socratic and Scientific methods. 3) The Chinese language is written with pictograms, and requires an enormous effort to learn (Western languages are phonetic based). 4) Contrary to European civilization, China became more isolated and failed to adapt by absorbing the best of foreign cultures, as did the West.

[chilepepper]

molon labe

[GeorgefromGeorgia]

Good response. The Republic had evolved into a complex form of government that divided power between two Consuls, elected from the aristocracy (however new men were allowed), ten tribunes of the plebes that any one of which could veto a law, and an assembly where all citizens voted (some tribes had more members and tribes voted) on important measures.
Rome was not a pure Democracy like the Athenian Republic, but it divided power, and every citizen had some voice in the outcome in some way. By ancient standards, it was much more pluralistic than the absolute monarchies of Egypt, Persia or Hellenistic states in the Med.
Once of the reasons that Rome’s Republic collapsed was that its government was not able to handle the huge empire it had created. Two Consuls were elected every year, and until Gaius Marius in the early 1st Century BC, Consuls were not allowed to be elected in successive years, effectively limiting the time a commander could pursue a campaign.

[Niuhuru]

"When, oh when, are we going to make treason a capital offense again? When the hippies are kicked out of office because of their advanced age. Either htat or a miracle.

[ALOHA RONNIE]

.

NEVER FORGET

.

Then CLINTON National Security Advisor SANDY BERGER, after he had already been Chief Washington D.C. Lobbyist for the Communist Chinese,

...went on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ to “guarantee” the American People that there was “no way” the Communist Chinese could get our precious Missile and Space Satellite technology while launching U.S. Space Satellites from inside Communist China.

Which they, of course, prompty did.

For,
...the Enemy is now Within...
...and always has been.

And is planning to once again occupy our Oval Office for America’s last time.

.

NEVER FORGET

.

[Clemenza]

Lesson for these morons: Geopolitics in not a zero sum game in a multipolar world.

[Candor7]

“Sometimes, for example, in the matters of Taiwan, Tibet, or the democracy movement in Hong Kong, Americans are enlisted by lobbyists acting on behalf of separatist or dissident movements in greater China.>>>>>>>>>>>>

This gives the lie to Freeman. He is essentially ignorant of the totalitarian , autocratic, dictatorial, cultural foundation , which is the natural cultural condition of China's hierarchical society. For that reason, China can never be free, for it is bound not to the tree of liberty as is America, but instead is bound to the tree of totalitarianism, tyranny and hierarchy. It is a constant thread throughout China's history.

The West destroyed a decadent China, a corrupt hierarchy fell prey to Opium and all that went with the addictive dynamic of a drug which destroyed Chinese Society. It is the lasting stain on the Western nations, and China has not and will not forgive it, nor forget it.

China's plan for the West is one of hierarchical domination by whatever means available, hegemony, economic conquest, technological conquest. Any historian who thinks not . has got the blinkers of political correctness on, and fails in a distinct lack of candor, in realizing the truth.

Mark you all. China means little good for the West, which is meant by China to become an assembly of conquered tribute nations, bowing down to the Sons of Heaven. Anyone who thinks not is a liberal dreamer. It is a constant thread of China's history, and one which Tibet and the Dalia Lama ignored to their great and lasting peril.

War , according to Chinese tradition ( Sun Tzu) is the last , reluctant option for conquest, and conquest is steadfastly prosecuted in many other alternative routes.Witness China's traducement of the Clinton administration through campaign contributions, the death of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown who would not toe the line on sensitive technology review which Clinton had shifted from the Department of State , to the Dept. of Commerce.

I have not been enlisted by a lobbyist. I just happen to know many Tibetans from Kham who live in the West. And from them I have heard the truth, and recognize it when I see it.

That is why this picture of president Bush in Mongolia, is so important, for it radiates that truth:

China Containment policy is of utmost important to the US. Freeman is a mere plenipotentiary which would subtly convince otherwise, for those who would buy Egg Fu Yung instead of freedom.

Japan has been under constant cultural attack over the last five years, because the Chinese do not want to eventually have to face a Japan that has regained its own offensive military capability, a necessity which is unavoidable. I hope the reemergence of a complete military function for Japan proceeds with all due haste.

[Paul Ross]

Bump.

[Paul Ross]

I would definitely restore the technological and financial containment policy that we pursued with the Soviet Union...and then go to the Reagan options...direct clash and political undermining.

[Candor7]

I hope that we stand firm against China's political , social and economic incursions into the Western hemispher. She is already a contender in South and Meso America.

The current trade complaints by the US against China are a weak, late start, but it has infuriated the Chinese.

I like it when the Chinese lose their cool.

[Candor7]

China's perverse practices with respect to human rights have not cost China's Communist Party or its government their legitimacy. On the contrary, polling data suggests that Chinese have a very much higher regard for their political leaders and government than Americans currently do for ours.”>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

This Freeman character is hardly an American in the ordinary sense. He actually in these sentences is thumbing his nose at our democratic republic. Perhaps he should take a seat between two burly US Marines on a long trans Pacific flight. We could arrange for the flight attendants to hand the Marines this article to read.

It would be Willy Whompa and the fudge factory all over the place on that flight.

[Old_Mil]

When, oh when, are we going to make treason a capital offense again? People like this make me sick to my stomach.

As disgusted as I am with the mans comments, I'm more concerned about those people within our country who act in such a way to make his words prophetic.

[Eye of Unk]

Their plan is already working, we are dependant upon THEIR vitamins, we are being weakened internally by small amounts of poisons in many many different food additives.

Of course they will become greater than us eventually, unless we shut off the supply of products that are killing us slowly.