sheng107_(XinhuaWang Ye via Getty Images_xi jinping

Division or Dialogue with China?

Nov 26, 2020 Andrew Sheng , Xiao Geng

Joe Biden’s presidency amounts to a golden opportunity to initiate a direct and honest dialogue with China on issues that require constructive engagement. But time is of the essence. If Biden begins his term by choosing division over dialogue, changing course will soon become difficult, if not impossible.

HONG KONG – Americans don’t agree on much of anything nowadays. Yet they are largely united in their belief that China represents an existential challenge to their country and the international order it has long led. This combination of internal division and external demonization has made the Sino-American rivalry increasingly inescapable – and potentially catastrophic.

America’s internal divisions have been fueled in recent years by social media, which, by populating users’ feeds with tailored content, creates “echo chambers” that reinforce, rather than challenge, their beliefs and values. When alternative ideas do make it into the echo chamber, they are often distorted or smeared. And when someone within the chamber calls into question shared beliefs, they risk being instantly ostracized or, in contemporary parlance, “canceled.”

This ultra-reactive demonization of diverging views not only flattens discourse; it also narrows the space between disagreement and conflict – even violent conflict. Widespread frustration with leaders’ failure to deliver justice, security, and opportunity heightens the risks further.

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Andrew Sheng

Writing for PS since 2011
108 Commentaries

Andrew Sheng, Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong and a member of the UNEP Advisory Council on Sustainable Finance, is a former chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. His latest book is From Asian to Global Financial Crisis.

Xiao Geng

Writing for PS since 2012
98 Commentaries

Xiao Geng, Chairman of the Hong Kong Institution for International Finance, is a professor and Director of the Research Institute of Maritime Silk-Road at Peking University HSBC Business School.

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Yoshimichi Moriyama Nov 29, 2020

I got a few replies to my comment from Robert Wolff and made a few to his.
I appreciate if readers here take time to read my last reply, perhaps shown at the bottom of this column.
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j. von Hettlingen Nov 29, 2020

Andrew Sheng and Xiao Geng maintain that Biden’s presidency amounts to “a golden opportunity” to initiate “a direct and honest dialogue” on issues that “require constructive engagement.” Obviously there is no time to lose, because “if Biden begins his term by choosing division over dialogue, changing course will soon become difficult, if not impossible.” It remains to be seen whether there will be a détente between the US and China.
The authors say the ball is now in Biden’s court after a bruising showdown with the Trump administration. Yet. despite deep and bitter divisions, Americans are “largely united in their belief that China represents an existential challenge to their country and the international order it has long led. This combination of internal division and external demonization has made the Sino-American rivalry increasingly inescapable – and potentially catastrophic.”
Social media are being blamed for exacerbating the divides in the US. Many people live in online echo chambers, in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own, so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered. No doubt China realises the danger such an environment poses, and has tightened its grip on the Internet. While the public in the West is being advised to analyse the sources of information and to determine falsehoods and biases, ordinary Chinese do not have to face this hustle.
The authors outline a litany of bellicose rhetoric against Beijing in addition of economic pressure. Meanwhile Chinese officials have spared no effort to show America’s “highly distorted political system” - a far cry “from being the exemplar of democracy.” Chinese citizens need to know that the US is “far from a land of freedom and opportunity,” with “a deeply fragmented society, blighted by systemic racism, rising inequality, and a lack of common purpose - ills that have long been obscured by fantasies about the ‘American Dream.’”
China is not betting on a détente with the US under Biden, shedding “long-held illusions about the US,” and “its hopes for a constructive bilateral relationship.” No doubt Biden is expected to soften his China rhetoric, but not his stance. He will be more predictable and less chaotic than Trump. “But less chaotic does not necessarily mean less confrontational: Biden has called Chinese President Xi Jinping a ‘thug’ and pledged to lead a coordinated campaign to “pressure, isolate, and punish China.”
Many Chinese have adopted a pessimistic view that the US-China relations are likely to be fraught for four more years, if not a generation. They expect Biden to pressure Beijing more effectively than Trump by galvanising US allies and criticising its human rights record - a strategy Biden and his advisers have touted on the campaign trail. The growing, bipartisan alarm in Washington about China’s rising strength, particularly in technology, could lead the two countries into the Thucydides Trap.
According to former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, “the US has two key powers: the power of inspiration and the power of intimidation.” With China – an economic powerhouse with a population of 1.4 billion – intimidation will not work. “China will not be cowed into submission on its domestic affairs, such as Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Taiwan.” Perhaps being a beacon of democracy could still be a source of inspiration.
The authors hope that trade and economy would motivate the two adversaries to look beyond their rivalry and look for common ground to cooperate - as “equal partners.” As a result of China’s “enduring commitment to multilateralism,” it has taken “important steps to advance international cooperation in key areas of shared concern… on climate change, Xi committed at the United Nations to achieve peak carbon-dioxide emissions before 2030 and to aim for carbon neutrality before 2060.”
This month, China has signed the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) - a free trade agreement between the Asia-Pacific nations of Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. The 15 member countries account for about 30% of the global GDP and 30% of the world population.
“Much to the world’s surprise,” China “has also indicated that it might join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which emerged after Trump withdrew the US from the original Trans-Pacific Partnership” - one of Obama’s foreign policy achievements. Biden did not mention any plan to bring the US back to the TPP as he was emphasisng the protection of domestic industries. The US could still rejoin it if the conditions were improved.
For the time being, Biden has to focus on containing the Covid-19 pandemic, because “many outsiders, including Chinese, cannot comprehend how the world’s most technologically advanced country could have allowed over 260,000 people to die from a virus that much poorer countries have combated far more successfully with simple measures. For cooperation to work, the US needs to demonstrate its ability to think in terms of ‘we,” rather than “I.’”
No doubt China can demonstrate that its stringent lockdown and total control of the population have borne fruit. The West has failed to contain Covid-19 because individuals wants to uphold their rights and freedoms to the detriment of the common good.
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Robert Wolff Nov 27, 2020

Interestingly, China does not need dialogue with the West/US right now. It just needs to keep on the path it is traveling on. to succeed and surpass the West in political and economic power.

The Thucydides Trap is for the West to actuate, i.e. if it cannot undermine the success of China through subversive means (trade barriers, export limits) then the only option it has to stop China from superseding America as the top world power is through superior military power. China understands this, and is building its military to prevent US military aggression as a successful strategy to stop the economic and political rise of China.
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Nov 27, 2020

Prof. Sheng and Prof. Geng are playing Chinese international politics.

There is a rather well-known Chinese saying 懸羊頭賣狗肉, "Crying mutton and selling dog," or "He cries wine and sells vinegar."
The title does not reflect the reality of China. Division or Dialogue with the US fits. Chinese economy is in trouble.
- P. Kamath Nov 27, 2020
  
  Yoshimichi: You are a well informed person about ancient and modern Chinese history. That aside, I am not sure Chinese economy is in any trouble. It may cool down considerably, but not in danger as we have in the case of India. But I agree with Robert Woolf that it understands strength of the adversary and threads carefully!
  - Yoshimichi Moriyama Nov 28, 2020
    
    Thank you. Please read my reply below to Robert Wolff.
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- Robert Wolff Nov 27, 2020
  
  The Japanese view is interesting, since it invaded China, quite heinously in WWII, but now is drawn to China as an economic partner due to China's economic success.
  
  I have doubts that the Chinese economy is in trouble, and that, that fact will continue the Japanese-US alliance against China.
  
  The idea that the Chinese economy is in trouble, more than the US and Japanese economies are in trouble, is questionable.
  
  Thus the alliance of Japan with China, versus its SEATO alliance with the US as an alliance against the supersession of US military support for Japan and SEATO by China is also in question.
  
  Consequently, the maintenance of the alliance of SEATO nations depends solely on the relationship between China and America. That relationship is close to breaking, not because the US does not wish it to break, but because economic relations between China and SEATO nations may benefit them more than economic relationships with the US.
  
  The relationship between SEATO nations and China depends solely on their continued solidarity or break with the American nation as their protector, trade partner and philosophical affiliate.
  
  Division or Dialogue with China?
  
  Very Machiavellian, and not at all Rationalism, from the Western viewpoint.
  - Yoshimichi Moriyama Nov 28, 2020
    
    Thank you for your reply. Will you read my comment on Zhang Jun/A Tale of Two Chinese Cities?
    China has not changed and will not change its political nature. But she has to live in a very different international environment from that which she had been in historically.
    Simply put, China had been an autarkical economy, most her wealth had been produced and consumed domestically within herself, though she had some trade with neighboring people. Today she has to depend on economic relations with the outside world; if she doesn't, much of her economic wealth would disappear and much of her might would go away. In a nutshell, she is dependent on the so-called open trading system and that is where her Achilles tendon is. The free world could throttle her at that point. And they know it.
    
    Japan's imperialistic policy in China is a bit more complex story than is usually believed. I am wondering how I could narrate it in a few sentences if not a few words.
    - Art Chen Nov 29, 2020
      
      Just answer the question about the Nanjing massacre. I was there right after WWII and read about the "contest" between Japanese officers to see who can behead more Chinese in a day. There is no complication about war crimes.
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    - Robert Wolff Nov 28, 2020
      
      The analogical reasoning of Confucius and Marx meld together quite well under Chinese Marxism "with a Chinese twist". Western Rationalism, beginning with the German philosophers of the 17th - 19th centuries, was based on their reading of Confucius and its analogical reasoning which Kant considered "somewhat rational". But Western Rationalism has evolved to include Democracy and Humanism, which now sets it at odds with Chinese Rationalism.
      
      Analogical Reasoning is frequently faulty because it has an emotional element of using an “intuitive leap”:
      Traits A,B,C,D (are included in ) X
      Trait A (is included in) Y
      Therefore, Traits B,C,D (are also included in Y) intuitive, but often wrong!
      
      All Religion is based on analogical reasoning because it is based on “stories”, i.e. analogies or “metaphor”. Uneducated people tend to use solely analogical reasoning, because they never learn syllogistic reasoning; so I can only come to the conclusion that they hate syllogistic reasoning and scientific reasoning because it often contradicts many of their beliefs and conclusions that are based on errant intuitive leaps in their solely analogically reasoning minds.
      
      But Rationalism in its totality is never faulty. Kant, the “King of Rationalism” claimed analogical reasoning is “somewhat rational, but needs syllogistic afterthoughts (science is a category of syllogistic reasoning based on the theory that cause --> Effect and that causal chains over time determine reality).Thus Kant concluded that we need not only analogical reasoning, but empiricism (and science) to provide a factual basis for this truth.
      
      Clear Republicans are being heavily faulted by educated intellectuals for their lack of education and false intuitive leaps to conclusions they cannot substantiate with empirically observable facts.
      
      Note that in Western Democracies the ‘Will of the People' is also sacrosanct and is foundational to Humanism which goal is that the people of a nation get along with each other and are compliant with its civil law. The right of protest is agreed to, based on the First Amendment that guarantees “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Religion”, but not the right of one religious or ideological group to rule the Government and enforce its religious or ideological beliefs on all citizens (Separation of Church/Ideology and State), or the right of an ideological dictatorship like China under Communism to rule in America.
      
      The Western adaptive form of Democratic Humanism is supported by all Western Rationalist Philosophers and an important foundation of Democracy. Therefore, the Western democratic/humanist concept of Rationalism must be preserved even in our struggle to get along with a rising China.
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    - Robert Wolff Nov 28, 2020
      
      Although China's economically aggressive stance includes bribing dictators and use of its wealth to spread its power, the US and the West in its heyday did the same things. The US was able to pay off its adversaries to gain their support. If this is corruption by China as both Democrats and Republicans claim, then it is the same type of corruption the West used to spread its power in the colonial era and post colonial era. So much of the US complaint against China now is very much, "The pot calling the kettle black."
      
      As the article claims, China is too big (1.5 billion people) and too far advanced already economically and militarily to be defeated by Western intimidation.
      
      I really don't understand Japan's policy towards China in the current era, but the push of SEATO nations to unite in their economic defense against Chinese hegemony seems a rational strategy.
      
      With the formation of the RCEP and China's membership as economic partner, and China's intent to joint the TPP, China has every advantage to control the future of Asian nations economically and politically.
      - Yoshimichi Moriyama Nov 29, 2020
        
        You get me crazy with your philosophical arguments, which are my Achilles heels.
        I could agree with you if you had said, with "Therefore" deleted, "The Western democratic/humanist concept of Rationalism must be preserved...." One big problem would be how can we preserve our democratic/humanist concept of Rationalism in mass and capitalist culture of irrationalism and in international anarchy where Western values are not necessarily respected, much less observed.
        Rationalist philosophers were born mainly in the eighteenth century but with later historical developments in Europe a lot of doubt has been cast on rationality of Rationalism. Kant, for instance, deal with earthly events metaphysically, which is characteristic of German philosophers, and therefore he is saved from earthly problems, passing as a rationalist; I admit, though, that earthly things cannot be separated from metaphysics.
        
        Confucius lived from 551 B.C.? - 479 B.C. He did not concern himself with metaphysical argument, he was a down-to-earth thinker. The first major revolutionary event was the establishment of the first empire of Qin. Books of Confucianism were burned and 420 Confucian scholars were buried alive. The Quin empire set the pattern for dynasties to come. The only viable political system has been a dynasty. The CCP can be best understood as such. Mao Zedong, a Chinese emperor, starved 30 million Chinese to death in the Great Leap Forward alone and he still remained at the top until his death. The Chinese joke, as I heard from a Chinese who was at the Tiananmen Protest as a student, was "Mao did one and only one great contribution to the people. It was that he died."
        Confucianism gave in to the political pressure and metamorphosed during the four hundred years of the Han Dynasty into the authorized ideology of and Chinese intellectuals became since then the supporters of the governments. The Confucian ideology covered up the Legalist philosophy that lay at the bottom of Chinese society. Legalism is a kind of rationalism in a Chinese way in that it thinks that human society cannot be kept together without severe (anti-humanitarian) penal codes and punishment.
        I understand people like Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Hegel, Marx, Weber and K. A. Wittfogel were appalled at the monumental despotism of China. There were another group of people, mainly liberalists like Bertrand Russell.
        The most powerful influence in shaping the Western and particularly American and British popular image came from businessmen and missionaries, the former seeing a lot of money to make, not freedom for the Chinese, and the latter expecting a huge number of Chinese to be converted. "The missionaries...made fools of themselves generally (Ralph Townsend, The Ways That Are Dark: The Truth About China, p.288)," in spite of a lot of blood they shed. "Unquestionably, our relation to the peoples of the Far East has been colored by a certain sentimentality toward the Chinese---a sentimentality as disrespectful to them and as unhelpful to the long-term interests...(George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, p. 53.)"
        
        Art Chen Nov 29, 2020
        
        Yes, you can say that China now ruled by CPC is a new "dynasty". However, it is one in which
        
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        Robert Wolff Nov 29, 2020
        
        I sincerely appreciate your response. Both the Western and Eastern concepts of Rationalism are combining to become a New World Order.
        
        We just don't know what that New World Order will be.
        
        What we do know is is that it will be a Negotiated New World Order, not a Unilateral or even an agreed upon New World Order.
        
        It will be Chaotic, and Contentious, as it always have been,.
        
        Art Chen Nov 29, 2020
        
        Agreed.
        
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