ترمب في عيون الصين

Jan 10, 2017 Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom

إرفاين - عندما فاز دونالد ترمب بالانتخابات الرئاسية الأمريكية في نوفمبر، حظى بالكثير من المعجبين الصينيين ولكن شهدت شعبية ترمب تراجعًا، بسبب تصريحاته - التي كان أغلبها من خلال موقع تويتر- حول قضايا مثيرة للخلاف، مثل قضية تايوان وبحر الصين الجنوبي وهذه ليست المرة الأولى التي تسوء فيها نظرة الصين لرئيس أمريكي بهذه السرعة.

يُذكِرّنا هذا التغير المفاجئ في موقف الصين تجاه ترمب بما حدث مع الرئيس الأمريكي وودرو ويلسون بعد إعادة انتخابه قبل قرن من الزمان .كان الكثير من المفكرين الصينيين في ذلك الوقت، بمن فيهم ماو تسي تونغ الشاب، معجبين بويلسون، وهو أحد علماء السياسة والرئيس السابق لجامعة برينستون وفي عام 1919 أيَّد ويلسون معاهدة فرساي، والتي نقلت السيطرة على المقاطعات الألمانية السابقة في إقليم شاندونغ إلى اليابان بدلًا من إرجاعها إلى الصينوسرعان مافقد ويلسون بعد ذلك حظوته عند الصين..

كان ذلك التحول مشابهًا لما يحدث الآن، ولكن الأسباب كانت مختلفة تماما فقد كانت الصين منذ قرنٍ مضى مُضطرة بسبب ضعف موقفها إلى تأييد ويلسون أول الأمر، ثم إلى النفور منه. أما اليوم، فموقف الصين القوي هو الذي يرسم ملامح نظرتها للرئيس الأميركي.

To continue reading, register now.

As a registered user, you can enjoy more PS content every month – for free.

Subscribe now for unlimited access to everything PS has to offer.

Already have an account? Log in

Subscribe to Project Syndicate

Enjoy unlimited access to the ideas and opinions of the world's leading thinkers, including weekly long reads, book reviews, topical collections, and interviews; The Year Ahead annual print magazine; the complete PS archive; and more. All for less than $9 a month.

Subscribe Now

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 6 Comments on this article

j. von Hettlingen Jan 14, 2017

Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom highlights the fraught relations Trump has with China, even before he takes office. During his campaign, Chinese policy advisers were sanguine about future US-China relations. "He had a lot of Chinese fans," despite insulting remarks: "We can't continue to allow China to rape our country." Trump accused Beijing of currency manipulation, damaging businesses, creating global warming as a “hoax” to undermine US competitiveness etc. Since his election his popularity has nosedived, "owing to his statements - often via Twitter - on contentious issues, such as Taiwan and the South China Sea."
The author points out "this isn’t the first time China’s view of a US leader has deteriorated rapidly" and describes how the Sino-American relationship was like a century ago under Woodrow Wilson. The fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 coincided with Wilson's election. The fledgling republic was in anarchy, governed by unruly warlords. Chinese intellectuals were impressed by Wilson's "fourteen points" address, which laid out the principle of justice: that all peoples and nationalities had the right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they were strong or weak.
During his second term Wilson was so popular in China that everything relating to his speeches and ideals was published.The American Revolutionary ideals and political system became desirable models for China. The Chinese thought that the US under Wilsono's leadership would help China overcome decades of defeat and humiliation, and hoped that "the US might deepen its involvement in Asia in ways that would help protect China from the predations of Imperial Japan."
In 1919 the Chinese tried to use the Versailles peae conference to change their country's weak status and recover their sovereignty and independence. They had great faith in Wilson, who, however supported the Treaty of Versailles and handed Germany's former colony in China over to Japan, rather than back to its rightful owner. China was bitterly disappointed, seeing it as a "profound betrayal." Wilson was awarded the 1919 Nobel Prize for Peace for his efforts to create the League of Nations. Later that year, he suffered a massive stroke. He refused to resign, but was unable to function adequately for the rest of his presidential term."
There is a huge difference between Trump and Wilson, who had a successful academic career at Princeton. He was responsible for increasing American involvement in world affairs and his idealistic vision led to the creation of the League of Nations. Trump heeds his gut feelings and sees America's commitments abroad through the prism of a businessman.
China is a completely different country today than it was in 1919. It seeks to defy the US and doesn't needs its "protection." The author says, what Beijing has wanted is a president who would be preoccupied with "domestic issues," that he wouldn't be "much concerned with constraining China’s rise, as Barack Obama was." This would allow China to sort out its "power relationships in Asia for its own benefit, without having to worry about American interference."
During the campaign Trump was favoured by China over Hillary Clinton because of his "apparent lack of interest in foreign policy," that would "leave China alone." As he would be "less committed" than his predecessors to upholding ties with long-time allies, like South Korea and Japan, it "was music to Chinese nationalists’ ears, as much as his questioning of American commitments to NATO was music to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s."
No doubt Trump will be dogged by domestic turmoil concerning the legitimacy of his election, his pick of people in the cabinet, his strife with Congress etc. that he would have little interest in and time for geopolitics, allowing Putin and Xi Jinping to divide their turfs around the world. Nevertheless Trump might still pick up a fight with China, especially if he needs a scapegoat, and wouldn't "get out of its way - at least not without throwing a few elbows."
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
lt lee Jan 13, 2017

Different Chinese, of course, have different views on Trump. However, most will agree that Trump is not the best possible American to serve as US president. Whether he would benefit or harm China's rise is too early to tell. Judging from the last 2 months, he will disappoint a lot of Americans, including those who vote for him.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Cal Bengoshi Jan 11, 2017

While it is reasonable to conclude that those in China who did not like Clinton were happy to see her lose, a claim that a political candidate who regularly vilified China during the presidential campaign "had a lot of Chinese fans" strains credulity.

For that matter, I think it strains credulity for an American professor who lives in California to claim that he knows "Trump Through Chinese Eyes." One would think that someone who works for the Chinese government, or at least someone who lives in China and actually is Chinese, would be a better source of information regarding how the Chinese view Donald Trump.
- lt lee Jan 13, 2017
  
  The article is about "Chinese Through Wasserstrom's Eyes".
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Yoshimichi Moriyama Jan 11, 2017

Prof. Wasserstrom,
You said in China In The 21st Century, "a 2 + 2 = 5 style" of the Chinese logic. I am not good at arithmetic but I am afraid it may be more comprehensive and accurate to say, "2 + 2 ≠ 4," in the sense that 2 + 2 can be any numbers except 4.
A Japanese sinologist, Kojiro Yoshikawa (KY) said, perhaps a little before October, 1949, "Chinese communists are leaving the countryside and entering urban areas. Every Chinese dynasty had its social and political bases in cities. What will they do?"
George F. Kennan talked with a group of people of Kyoto University in 1964. KY was there. Kennan said that Chinese leaders were refined in manners and speech but that we should not be decieved by that. A Kyoto University professor said to him, perhaps what he had heard from his father who was a renowned sinologist, "Chinese depise flowers such as daisies; you look down and see them. They admire flowers (blossoms) that come out on a tall tree; you look up and see them."
According to Edwin O. Reischauer/The Japanese, "For one thing, the Chinese have never reciprocated the warm feelins of the Japanese, viewing them with distrust and more than a little contempt. The Japanese nostalgia for China has been a classic case of unrequited love. Moreover, Japan and China were culturally very different countries already in the early nineteenth century, and since then they have followed quite different courses of development, drifting ever farther apart." (Japan admired and respected the modern Wester values, developing democracy and social norms based on human rights, etc. even in pre-war days. The key-tone of its diplomacy had been taking into consideration and making important compromises with the interests of the two Anglo-Saxon countries. President Wilson, so much encased in his own blind, ego-centric self-righteousness as to be forgetful of America's own imperialism in the Pacifc area, saw Japan in a dark, negative light. For instance, as you did not refer to the Washington Conference, Japan threw up most of the little it had got soon after the World War I.)
According to Terumasa Nakanishi, a professor emeritis of Kyoto University, two event most shocked the diplomatic circle of China in the twentieth century. One was that the Japanese delegation sat on the same side of the table as the American and European delegations at the Peace Conference of Beijing after the Boxers' Rebellion. The other was that Japan had a permanent seat in the Council of the League of Nations while China did not. It was all sacrilegious.

I understand the people of the West have not a small difficulty in telling Japan/a Japanese apart from China/a Chinese. I could tell two easy ways but I do not like this comment any further now.

The pan-Asian sentiments of the Japanese themselves were felt largely for Chinese and applied little to other Asians...They (Chinese) may themselves have had pan-Asian sentimente
- Yoshimichi Moriyama Jan 11, 2017
  
  The professor who said to Kennan, "The Chinese depise flowers like daisies...," was Takeo Kuwabara, 桑原武夫、and his father was Jitsuzo Kuwabara, 桑原隲蔵.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.

https://prosyn.org/vgejy4Zar

ترمب في عيون الصين

Subscribe to Project Syndicate

New Comment

Email this piece to a friend

Contact us

Log in/Register

ترمب في عيون الصين

Subscribe to Project Syndicate

Edit Newsletter Preferences

Set up Notification