Whither China: Can Humaneness Take Root?

Since U.S. President Richard Nixon first established diplomatic with communist China in 1972, sinologists have watched China for signs of increased respect for human rights. (‘Sinologists’ are scholars who study China.)

Observers have hoped that increased interaction with other nations would nudge China toward developing a more free society. These hopes have been dashed sometimes, and been confirmed sometimes.

China’s legacy of atrocities and genocides included the ‘Great Leap Forward’ from 1958 to 1962 and the ‘Cultural Revolution’ from 1966 to 1969.

The ‘Great Leap Forward’ culminated in a manufactured famine which caused the deaths of approximately fifteen million people (some estimates range as high as thirty million).

The ‘Cultural Revolution,’ despite officially ending in 1969, caused painful ripple effects until 1976, causing the deaths of between 500,000 and two million Chinese, and several million more Tibetans.

The question, in the wake of Nixon’s diplomacy, was whether China would become more humane. The results were at best mixed. Occasionally gestures toward civil rights alternated with the events like the Massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, in which several thousand people died, or with the bullying of religious minorities like Christians and Tibetan Buddhists.

By 2015, journalists Chen Guangcheng and Melanie Kirkpatrick could write:

China often punishes its critics by abusing their relatives; Chen’s family was no exception. Over the years, his wife was assaulted, his daughter was forbidden to go to school, and a nephew was jailed. Some family members and close friends advised him to give up his work. “I felt misery about the pain my family had suffered,” he writes. “[But] I firmly believed — as I still do — that if you bow your head before the Communist Party, it will soon make you get on your hands and knees, and next it will stomp on your crouching body until it destroys you.”

Until 2015, China also pursued its ‘one child policy,’ forcing women to undergo forced sterilization and forced abortions.

Chen never says what motivated him to be the voice of the voiceless in China. He invokes “heaven” from time to time, and he remains faithful to Chinese traditions such as praying at the graves of ancestors. He makes no mention of God or religion. What his deeds make abundantly clear, though, is his belief in the sanctity of life and his great compassion for the sick, those with disabilities, and the unborn.

Moving toward the third decade of the twentieth century, the nations of the world looked to mass protests in Hong Kong in mid-2019 to see if there were any signs of what would come next: Whither China? Oppression or freedom?

Founding Civilization in Brazil

Although Brazil was discovered in the year 1500 by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral, it remained largely uncivilized and undeveloped for several centuries. Brazil’s first advancement happened when the queen of Portugal temporarily moved her capital to Brazil from 1807 to 1814.

The capital had been relocated because Napoleon threatened the safety of Lisbon, Portugal’s permanent capital city.

Around the same time, and perhaps partly for similar reasons, the first groups of German-speaking settlers brought cultural development to Brazil, as Thomas Sowell writes:

Substantial German immigration to Brazil, as to South America in general, began early in the nineteenth century and included over the years not only immigrants from what is now Germany, but also sizable numbers of Germans from Russia, Switzerland, and Austria.

The reader might be puzzled at the phrase ‘Germans from Russia,’ but from the mid-1700s forward, large numbers of Germans had emigrated to parts of Russia, hoping to make a new home there. Russia’s low literacy rates and weak economic infrastructure, however, caused many of these Germans to move on to other countries.

In 1818, a group of Germans settled in Ilheus. In 1819, another group settled in Sao Jorge. When Brazil became politically independent from Portugal in 1822, the new nation’s government worked to entice Germans to live in Brazil.

Most settled in the southern part of Brazil, concentrated in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, where the first enduring German agricultural colony was established in 1824, though earlier unsuccessful attempts to establish German colonies in Brazil go back to the late eighteenth century.

Among the first Germans to make their home in Brazil, farming was a dominant activity. Later waves of Germans settled in cities instead of in the countryside, and became entrepreneurs, merchants, technical innovators, craftsmen, and industrialists.

Settlements of Germans, in groups numbering in the hundreds or the thousands, continued to be made in the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century.

By the end of the twentieth century, almost a million Brazilians used German as their primary language at home; almost three million speak German. There are villages which operate primarily as German-speaking communities.

Over the decades, the flow of Germans into Brazil enabled the development of technology and commerce. The Germans were, and are, leaders in medicine, the arts, and the economy of Brazil.

China’s New Imposing Military Bases: Artificial Islands in the South China Sea

In its expanding empire, China had begun to exert colonial control — even without formal colonization — in places like Cambodia, Myanmar (Burma), and Sri Lanka. The muscle used to intimidate these and other regions into compliance is in part military and in part economic.

In a novel development, where no convenient land base for its military is present, China has begun the construction of manmade islands as bases for weapons and soldiers. Already in 2014, Robert Kaplan wrote:

Take the Spratlys, with significant oil and natural gas deposits, which are claimed in full by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, and in part by Malaysia, the Philippines, and Brunei. China has built concrete helipads and military structures on seven reefs and shoals. On Mischief Reef, which China occupied under the nose of the Philippine navy in the 1990s, China has constructed a three-­story building and five octagonal concrete structures, all for military use. On Johnson Reef, China put up a structure armed with high-­powered machine guns.

When a superpower like China creates an island where none had previously existed, stocks that island with troops and missiles, and then makes claims on the waters in the region and on the shipping lanes through them, then nations like Vietnam and Malaysia can rightfully speak of extortion.

The nations around the South China Sea hope to offer some resistance to the Chinese, as Robert Kaplan reports:

Taiwan occupies Itu Aba Island, on which it has constructed dozens of buildings for military use, protected by hundreds of troops and twenty coastal guns. Vietnam occupies twenty-­one islands on which it has built runways, piers, barracks, storage tanks, and gun emplacements. Malaysia and the Philippines, as stated, have five and nine sites respectively, occupied by naval detachments. Anyone who speculates that with globalization, territorial boundaries and fights for territory have lost their meaning should behold the South China Sea.

While these nations are to be admired for struggling against the expanding Chinese imperialist power, they cannot stand alone against China and survive. With its large labor force and large manufacturing base, China is building missiles and battleships at a rate which these smaller nations cannot match.

The behavior of China in the South China Sea is parallel to the behavior of Athens in the Aegean Sea, as revealed in the ‘Melian Dialogue’ section of The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.

When Chinese hegemony over the South China Sea is complete, it will control one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, and will be able to greatly influence the world’s economy, thereby affecting nearly every nation on earth.

Xi Jinping and His Vision of China As the Leader of a New World Order: Capabilities in Cyberwar, Space War, Conventional War, and Economic War

The current reign of Xi Jinping in China marks a high point in the consolidation of power and control. This can be seen de jure by the large number of official titles he has amassed for himself: Secretary General of the Communist Party of China, President of the People’s Republic of China, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Chairman of the National Security Commission of the Communist Party, Chairman of the Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission, Chairman of the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, Chairman of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission, and many others.

He holds all of these offices simultaneously. Like Louis XIV in France, Xi Jinping would be correct if he said, L’etat, c’est moi: ‘I am the state.’

Aside from the official titles, it is simply the case de facto that Xi is a dictator and an absolutist.

Robert Maginnis, as an insider in America’s military intelligence agencies, finds a quote from Steven Mosher accurate:

Dr. Steven Mosher, author of the 2017 book, Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream Is the New Threat to World Order, said: “Xi Jinping is the new Chairman Mao, a thoroughly Communist dictator who has managed to seize control of the Party, the Army, and the Government. The new Red Emperor, as we should call him, is likely to be in power for decades to come. And he is not our friend. He is carrying out a new Cultural Revolution in China. Communist Party leader Xi’s China ‘Dream’ is the world’s nightmare. Xi ‘dreams’ of overturning the current U.S.-led world order and replacing it with [a new world order] … dominated by China. A world dominated by China would be less free, less democratic, and less safe, not only for Americans, but for the Chinese people themselves. Xi believes that international law and agreements are, as he has said, just ‘waste paper,’ or better put, ‘toilet paper.’”

As an uncontrolled autocrat, Xi Jinping poses a threat both to the Chinese people and to the global community of nations at large. It is clear that diplomacy is meaningless to Xi, and that negotiated treaties with him are a futile exercise, as Robert Maginnis writes:

China’s constitutional change to make Xi Jinping president for life is a harbinger of the authoritarian nation’s direction and a strategic threat to America.

To be sure, between Mao and Xi, China has had a number of leaders, all of whom demonstrated a relatively high degree of authoritarianism and absolutism. But Xi represents a zenith of those qualities, even in China.

It is easy for diplomats from other nations to misunderstand the situation in China, because the degree of autocracy and of a willingness to deceive are so extreme that the situation is non-intuitive for emissaries from other countries. Robert Maginnis quotes from a report given to Congress by Admiral Harry Harris:

“China has taken advantage of our openness,” Harris told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2018. “Our hope in the past has been that if we bring China into organizations like the World Trade Organization and include China in our military exercises and the like, and that somehow China will become like us.”

“The reality is that’s simply not true. China has taken advantage of our openness … to continue the path that they’ve always been on and we’re seeing that play out now in 2018. Certainly over the next 20 years or so that will be a concern,” Harris said.

Even while engaging in seemingly amiable talks with other governments, China is preparing for a variety of offensive scenarios. One outline goes like this: a three-pronged operation in which, simultaneously, China’s attack satellites would disable several U.S. satellites, instantly reducing communication, GPS, and logistical coordination capabilities; would hack into and disable computer networks on the ground in the United States, further handicapping transportation and communication, and crippling our economic infrastructure; and would move its armed forces into the South China Sea, an occupation which the U.S. would then be powerless to challenge or resist.

In such a scenario, China would have gained control of what is arguably the world’s single most important shipping lane, and have obtained hegemony over the nations around the South China Sea: Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, etc.

Admiral Harris explained that Beijing seeks regional hegemony and intends to oust America from Asia. It is developing the means to do that via systems such as the hypersonic glide weapons and stealth fighters. Besides, the admiral expressed concern about China’s militarization of islands in the South China Sea and its acquisition of icebreaker ships, although it has no Arctic coast.

China’s pronounced military buildup in recent years has a double motive: on the one hand, it can use massive armed forces to gain by threats and extortion what it wants, and so dominate without firing a shot; on the other hand, China is more than willing to go to war to achieve its objectives, and will use its military that way if necessary.

Beyond the South China Sea, Xi Jinping’s ambitions extend to Africa and beyond. Among smaller, less-developed “third world” nations, China’s tactic is a Mafia-like racket. It begins with China offering to help one of these nations with infrastructure project: building roads, dams, hospitals, water and sewage systems, electrical generating plants, etc. Such nations can’t afford to pay for these items, so China generously extends credit. When the nations are unable to make the payments on the loans, China offers to “forgive” the debt in return for placing permanent military bases in these nations, in return for rights to ship into, out of, and through these nations, and in return for exclusive rights which lock other nations out of what by now has become a vassal state.

Water Becomes Political: Nobody Need Thirst

Water is the world’s most abundant resource. Lakes, rivers, streams, and ponds - not to mention rain - water crops around the world. Fresh drinking water is more available than ever before. Even oceanic saltwater - once thought irredeemably unpotable - is now subject to desalinization at ever shrinking prices.

Why, then, would any human being not have enough water to drink?

Yet it is the case that water is in some places scarce - even to the point at which lives are lost.

The problem is not the amount of water on the planet - there’s more than enough of that. The problem is politics.

While most of the human race has plenty of fresh clean water, people are thirsting and even dying in specific places: (1) nations with socialist or communist governments, (2) Islamic republics, and (3) nations with notoriously corrupt governments.

It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between “Islamic republics” on the one hand, and “Muslim majority” or “majority Muslim” nations on the other.

In any case, water shortages are unnecessary, as author David Wallace-Wells writes:

Today, the crisis is political — which is to say, not inevitable or necessary or beyond our capacity to fix — and, therefore, functionally elective. That is one reason it is nevertheless harrowing as a climate parable: an abundant resource made scarce through governmental neglect and indifference, bad infrastructure and contamination, careless urbanization and development. There is no need for a water crisis, in other words, but we have one anyway, and aren’t doing much to address it. Some cities lose more water to leaks than they deliver to homes: even in the United States, leaks and theft account for an estimated loss of 16 percent of freshwater; in Brazil, the estimate is 40 percent.

A political problem demands a political solution - not an engineering or climatological one.

An infinite amount of pipelines and wells will not solve the world’s water problem; neither will gerrymandering human behavior to impact the climate.

Only when a nation has a government which has at least a modicum of respect for human life - only then will the water problem be solved.

China’s Two-Pronged Strategy: Cyber Warfare and Military Buildup

In the early twenty-first century, foreign policy analysts have paid a great deal of attention to China, even if the news media and public at large failed to do so. On those rare occasions when China was the focus of news coverage, the topic was often trade agreements.

The analysts, however, are more concerned about China’s teams of hackers, and about China’s military buildup.

China’s cyberwar teams have gone beyond mere theft of intellectual property. They now focus on disruptive techniques to take American systems offline entirely.

China’s physical military has constructed islands out of concrete and cement in the South China Sea. These islands are home to sophisticated weapons and radar systems, as well as bases for soldiers, as Jim Sciutto writes:

By the mid-2000s, China’s national effort to steal US technology and state secrets was already in high gear and logging up enormous successes in both the public and private sectors. In 2014 China defied both international law and the laws of physics to manufacture entirely new sovereign territory in the middle of the South China Sea, beginning construction of a string of man-made islands in waters claimed by several of its Southeast Asian neighbors. China was also expanding its military capabilities and military footprint from under the waves all the way into space, with the express intention of surpassing the United States and — if necessary — defeating the United States in war.

What’s at stake? Here’s one of many possible scenarios: China could activate its killer satellites to destroy several American satellites. This would cause disruptions in all manner of telecommunication, paralyzing the military, the government, and the businesses of the private-sector economy. Next, China’s hackers overwhelm or otherwise crash major computer systems, further paralyzing the nation and potentially causing permanent loss of data.

Finally, with the U.S. paralyzed, the Chinese military would be positioned in the South China Sea to carry out a sort of piracy or extortion. Passing freighters would be made pay cash or a fraction of their cargo to pass through was are supposed to be free international waters.

Estimates state that perhaps between 30% and 40% of the world’s cargo shipping passes through the South China Sea. Any nation which could control that region would have a stranglehold on the global economy.

Not only have the media failed to inform the public about Chinese threats, but even officials inside the U.S. government often fail to assess or respond to China’s slow-motion aggression, as Jim Sciutto reports:

Inside the US government and the intelligence community, these aggressive steps were first missed and then downplayed. US officials, led by President Barack Obama, accepted China’s assurances it would not militarize its man-made islands in the South China Sea — assurances Beijing reneged on almost immediately. Obama would later accept Chinese assurances that Beijing would dial back its cyber theft of US corporate secrets, malicious activity that remains rampant and aggressive today. Even after finally acknowledging these acts of aggression, many US officials and policy experts continued to portray them as short-term or easily reversible.

As serious as other situations may be — Iran, Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Afghanistan, etc. — China has the potential to easily become a much graver danger than any of the others.

Yet media reporting and government diplomats fail to emphasize the seriousness of China’s long-range plans to dominate not only the South China Sea, but larger segments of the global economy. Smaller ‘developing’ nations in Africa and Asia have already fallen victim to China’s program to reduce them to vassal states.

China offers to help these nations with large infrastructure projects (roads, dams, etc.). When these ‘third-world’ countries are unable to pay the ensuing debts, China offers to ‘forgive’ the debt in return for the rights to permanently station Chinese military units in those nations, and in return for rights to in, around, and through those countries.

Under this pattern, called the “Belt and Road” initiative, China would dominate both world trade and transportation. This goal has been deliberately articulated among the highest levels of Chinese leadership.

One possible response to China would be for American leaders to publicly explain China’s tactics and goals, to create a global awareness. The leaders of many nations could be expected to unite on this matter, even if they disagree about many other topics.

New Global Configurations: The Hostile Beginning of the Millennium’s World Order

Early in the new millennium, a type of book began to appear with increasing frequency. This set of books offered a fresh analysis of the global diplomatic situation.

Exemplary of this category were Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert Kaplan, which underscored how little attention was being paid to southeast Asia by the mainstream American news media; The Shadow War: Inside Russia’s and China’s Secret Operations to Defeat America by Jim Sciutto, which pointed to the coordination of seemingly unrelated events; The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower by Michael Pillsbury, which encompassses a longer view of China’s global ambitions; and The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David Sanger, which highlights the relentless, constant, and hidden cyberwar unfolding across the globe.

Although two of these works contain the word ‘America’ in their subtitles, none of them are parochial in perspective. The systemic patterns which they reveal will interest readers in Zambia and Chad, in Paraguay and Bolivia, in Cambodia and Thailand.

Neither are these books overly sensationalistic, although their publishers may have titled and marketed them with passion.

The picture which emerges from these books is that any and every nation around the globe is under constant cyberattacks. Every country must therefore be engaged in cybersecurity and countermeasures.

This ceaseless cyberwarfare is no mere harassment, but can be quite deadly, and is also coordinated with economic pressure and occasionally with direct military action. This ongoing conflict is invisible and largely ignored by the news media.

While huge amounts of media coverage were and are devoted to Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea, actions undertaken by the much larger aggressors - Russia and China - go unreported by newspapers and unchallenged by world governments, as Robert Maginnis writes:

A major factor in the new great power competition is the leadership at the helm of these countries. Both China and Russia are headed by autocrats who test international order just as the United States seems to be losing its way.

China and Russia carefully watch any response to their espionage and weaponized cyber activity. When they see little or none, the increase such efforts. Robert Maginnis continues:

In the fact of this confrontation, the West seems feckless at stopping Putin’s and Xi’s great power ambitions, efforts driven by their authoritarian personalities and evidently accepted and cheered by their domestic power bases.

The nations of the world need a greater degree of awareness, both about China’s and Russia’s plans and goals, and about the consequences which the world would endure, should those goals be realized.

China’s “Belt and Road” strategy includes selling technology and construction projects to ‘emerging’ third-world nations. When those nations can’t pay the debts incurred by those purchases, China offers to ‘forgive’ the obligations in return for permanently stationing Chinese military in those nations, and in return for trade and transportation rights being given to China in, around, and through those countries.

The global community of nations also needs to form a steady resolve to resist, and to engage in countermeasures against, cyber aggression and economic extortion by Russia and China.