The realities of China

...After all, it is possible to view favo ra bly some things Clinton has done (moving tow arc 1 a resumption of high-level exchanges) whil e I -emaining critical of others (treating Jiang Zemin so cordially in Manila last fall, just after a new campaign of repression had been launched...

...This is a hard question to answer succinctly, but a couple of things come to mind...

...Another would be to try harder to listen to the views of Chinese dissidents (both those who have left the PRC and those who have remained behind) and some of the more independent-minded establishment intellectuals as well...

...The second worrisome tendency, which helps SUMMER • 1997 • 17 Politics Abroad drive the binary framing of the China debate, involves the demonization of the current regime...

...This is a potential ly i langerous time in many areas of world affairs 1, i, ncluding that of SinoAmerican relations...

...In it we find Congressman Chris Smith characterizing the "fundamental basis of the disagreement" in the United States on Sino-American relations as a simple division between those foolish enough to think that "the men who rule China are more like businessmen," and those sensible enough to realize that "they are more like Nazis...

...i nteres is and world peace that earlier generations of 'Arne' icans had associated first with the Axis pow :rs and then the Soviet Union...

...Presenting their view as the only serious alto ;rni itive to the kind of "constructive engagement 4" with little talk of such messy issues as humar i ri ghts, that is being advocated by pro-China t nusi mess interests and the political establishment- —a n approach that the new demonizers brand tpp easement"— these touters of the "China Thre at" have been making their presence felt for so me time now...

...A similar sampling of the Chinese scene, with a variety of contributors weighing in on the kinds of issues raised here (and some important ones mentioned only very briefly in passing, such as the changing nature of gender-based inequalities) would be a welcome addition to a debate that needs to break loose from its old categories and patterns...

...they are rather the Star Wars movies of George Lucas...

...Ti `le regime is not like that which presided over R uss is in the days of Stalin, if for no other reason th, an that there is a great deal more individual t 'rek 'dom in many aspects of private and public 1 ife in the PRC now than ever existed in the Si •ivi et Union, at least before Gorbachev's day...

...Finally, recent statements by the Dalai Lama indicate that, in contrast to the new demonizers, he views the current Chinese regime as one that is undergoing important changes that may lead to positive developments...

...For example, in the journal's Spring 1997 symposium "China and Human Rights," some contributors tried to avoid the trap of reducing the complexities of the issues to simple either/or choices—such as when Margaret O'Brien Steinfels wrote of the fall of the Soviet bloc providing "mixed evidence" about the potential of capitalism to bring liberty in its wake, and when she noted as well the potential value of separating out discussions of how the American government should deal with the Chinese regime and how American consumers might want to respond...

...In its more unbridled forms, such as sensationalist magazine covers that use graphics and text to try to convince us of the magnitude of the Chinese menace, it goes beyond this—it breathes new life into old images of the Yellow Peril that should by now be dead and buried...

...Clearly, the main thing we should do in order to "side with the dissidents" is to start listening more carefully to the range of their opinions, as well as those of people in China who have been 20 • DISSENT Politics Abroad taking independent stands on certain issues, while refusing at the same time to sever completely their ties to the regime...

...It is equally foolish to imagine that there are only two types of China experts: those who think economic development will magically turn the PRC into a liberal democracy and those who view China as an increasingly powerful but otherwise unchanging totalitarian state, shaped by the same dangerous mixture of indigenous despotic traditions, imported Marxist-Leninist ideas, and nationalistic dreams that fueled high Maoism...

...For example, though they remain determined that no political parties able to compete with the Communists should be allowed, and unwilling to entertain any thoughts of freeing Tibet or giving up on reunification with Taiwan, many within the current leadership do seem to care about (being perceived as) moving their country toward the rule of law...

...E )) It runs an enormous country that is rapidly be ;con -ling less cohesive and more decentralized, )7( et a the very same time is also more fervently i iatii )nalistic than ever in certain ways...

...officials might be able to bring some much needed consistency to the human rights dimension of Sino-American relations...

...On the other hand, we do not think it makes sense to present China as an unchanging despotism, because much has been changing in the PRC, for the better as well as the worse...

...Some of the people in this group are so naive as to believe economic development always leads to democracy and freedom...

...The April 21 issue suggests in its cover story that there are only two types of experts: a majority who mistakenly claim that "China is marching toward democracy" and a minority who realize that the country is still in the grips of a crippling form of totalitarianism...

...Others, such as the Democratic and Republican former policy makers turned businesspeople and consultants belonging to the Kissinger Associates firm, who have large investments in China to protect and clients with even larger stakes in the Chinese market, are motivated by a less naive belief: namely, that engagement means profits...

...B) It retains its ' L ,eninist cast in many matters yet is quite read) I to experiment with market reforms and even all ,‘ ,)w some room for local innovation and expel r imentation in the political realm, including vil 1 ,age elections in which independent candidates , more than occasionally win...

...Similarly, when it comes to nationalism, there are dissidents (such as Liu Xiaobo) who have continued to use, and other dissidents (such as Fang Lizhi) who have sought to distance themselves from, the symbolism of jiuguo (national salvation)—in both cases because they know that notions of patriotic renewal played a key role in the protests of 1989 yet were also invoked by the government to defend the massacres that put an end to that struggle...

...For our purposes, what is most interesting about it is the claim that China experts can be divided up into two basic groups...

...It is difficult but important to fij p are out how best to think about a Chinese ruli n g party that is still powerful but battle-scarre d , internally divided but unlikely to fall as lour g as there is no organized opposition to challe n ,ge it...

...But it can do so c ily if Beijing begins to demonstrate more eff e( :lively that it can abide by the rules it makes' fc m itself...

...A good next step might be to take up the second proposal: listening more closely to the diversity of Chinese opinion on where the PRC is heading...

...Harry Wu, a former resident of the gulag, may call for both a hard line and consumer boycotts of goods produced by prison labor, but the recently reimprisoned Wang Dan has argued strongly for the desirability of foreign powers engaging with rather than trying to isolate the Beijing authorities...

...the "Evil Empire" and hat ling the need for a "Star Wars" defense system...

...The Chinese regime is 11 lot , a "Red Dynasty" like an imperial ruling hous, e o f old, if for no other reason than that successi on issues are settled in radically different ways...

...How can one speak blithely of being for or against "the dissidents," when there are important divisions within that group on many issues, including the policies the people and government of the United States should follow in regard to China...

...They make it harder than it alr ead y was (and it has never been easy) to think till -ouE ,,h how people who view themselves as part of the independent "left" (as defined by Mitchell Co her . in the Spring Dissent) should respond to a c hat- iging China...

...others focus only on business and call for a soft line toward Beijing...

...current regime, finally, is not even like that wl iich ran China during the period of high Ma ois m, if for no other reason than that it is less cc nitted to the stern ideal of absolute equality—v vhe In it singles out people for political persecution, it is not because they were born into the wrong s loc 'al class...

...Another basic factual problem with the binary oppositions is that they minimize the range of opinions expressed by the Chinese themselves and the complexity of the developments occurring in China these days...

...Where did these two trends come from, and how exactly have they been distorting the China debate...

...And, they make it more difficul t tt Ian it should be to design government appro ac' hes to the PRC that are more effective than tho: se of the Clinton administration...

...Still others are part of a small band of unnamed "senior scholars of China" who "write useful articles on Chinese politics," in part because they are able to "maintain excellent contacts" with top leaders, but know that in order to gain the access on which they depend they must "remain silent" or "flatter" the regime on "certain subjects," such as human rights and Tibet...

...Thy ; regime is not just like Nazi Germany, if for i io ether reasons than that Beijing's current leader ire much less popular with the citizens of the 13 RC than Hitler was with ordinary Germans in the late 1930s and the Chinese Communist pai tyl not trying to exterminate any racial group...

...You would never know that intermediate positions, complex questions, or ambiguous feelings about the accomplishments and social costs of revolution and reform could even exist, however, if you paid attention only to the voices shouting loudest and being amplified most effectively in the mainstream media...

...It is very difficult for academic China specialists (including this author)—who have neither business investments nor top level contacts in the PRC, yet have not had trouble getting visas despite speaking out against things the Beijing regime has done—to be heard in the current debate or even to find a place from which to speak...

...The first type of specialists, according to Bernstein and Munro, can all be classed as belonging to the New China Lobby, a catch-all for academics and nonacademics who minimize the threat to American interests of the PRC and downplay the value of pushing hard on human rights issues...

...As ; a result, there is a pressing need to find son let hing better than the scattershot approach to C hina that has characterized the policies of t he last two administrations, each of which has sei Zt Beijing erratic signals and chosen strange in .es to make gestures of conciliation...

...There are many academic China specialists (myself included) who are deeply skeptical of the business lobby's claims about the natural link between free trade and democratization, yet still think that the PRC is currently weaker and its future more uncertain than those who warn of a mounting "China Threat" insist...

...SUMMER • 1997 • 23...

...It seemed po5 ,sible speculate, in fact, that if there was a new consensus, it might be that there was no longer any totalitarian regime that could aptly be desc ribedlis representing the special threat to U.S...

...Most generally, they create yet another situation in which American foreign policy is tossed between the Scylla of condescending romanticization and the Charybdis of dehumanizing demonization—perils that Isaacs described so well in his discussion of Good Earth and Fu Manchu imagery...

...In fact, one thing that worries us about contemporary China is the suffering produced by the increasing inequalities of wealth and reconfigurations of patriarchy that are in part results of economic growth...

...By doing this, the American govern tr tent would make the point that it prefers to e to al with foreign powers on a basis of equality r and is ready to move beyond condescending t , o or demonizing the PRC...

...Beyond the Binaries There are all sorts of problems with the dichotomies...

...With Beijing's many promises to Hon ig Kong on the line, upcoming debates on most-f iorednation status (MFN) provide particularl y ; appro -priate oportunities to send China i ,-n( :,sage: in order for the United States to take a foreign power seriously in issues of trade or d ip lomacy, it needs to know that the regime ca n keep its word...

...When the trilogy returned to the them ters earlier this year, audiences were living in a ( ;hanged world...

...When a m •N approach is needed, as any Hollywood director • k nows, doctoring old scripts and clinging to the aired imagery of an earlier generation of scriptwriters is not the thing to do...

...One key theme that independentminded establishment intellectuals and dissidents alike have focused on in recent years is that the current leaders in Beijing are more sensitive to outside influence on some issues than on others...

...Retroactively, this would have meant being more assertive when Wang Dan and Liu Xiaobo were reimprisoned recently for engaging in activities that are supposed to be legally protected in the PRC, but being less energetic (though not silent) when Harry Wu was detained for doing things that may have been admirable t that even he admits involved breaking laws...

...Perhaps the overarching pr o ,blem with the trend toward framing the deb al to on China in binary terms is that we are pn rented from focusing on the main challenge t .h at lies before all people who want to understa n .d the PRC—the challenge of making sense o f a regime that is not like any that has existe( before, either in China or elsewhere, and th a .t is undergoing a strange mixture of unpreced ,e ,nted changes...

...1 'hey hinder public understanding of a majo r foi reign power...

...Have we fin ally entered an epoch in which there is no to rrestr jai regime that is viewed as being as clang( ;rous as the extraterrestrial one of Darth Vader...

...The world of "Star Wars" is a wonderful one to revisit in the theaters, but a dangerous and disturbing one to try to recreate in the real world...

...Just to ma ke sure that the public made these connections, Ronald Reagan and others on the right took to calling the U.S.S.R...

...Dissent has already made efforts to do the first of these things...

...Some of us are convinced that the PRC has changed and continues to change in fundamental ways, and that the quality of life of many ordinary Chinese was improved in the Maoist and Dengist eras—yet still find much to criticize about how the country was run in both periods, as well as how it is governed today...

...Looking at China from the Left: Where to Go from Here What might members of an independent left do to aid the rewriting of America's China scripts...

...Looking back again to the Spring issue, there is a model for moving in this direction in the sampling of opinion provided by the three former East European dissidents who (in 22 • DISSENT Politics Abroad Michael Walzer's words) "have maintained a critical position (or three different critical positions) in the years since 1989...

...On the one hand, we do not believe that the business lobbyists are right when they insist that investment and industrialization always lead to freedom— Singapore and other cases suggest that authoritarianism and development can go hand in hand...

...Both of these sl houIC l be a cause for concern to readers of DisSi ?nt...

...As in the past, the option of treating China as an equal power with which the United States has very serious areas of disagreement is given short shrift...

...Many found it natural , therefore, to equate the heroic "Rebels" with ti he Free World alliance led by the United States, and to see in the tyrants of the "Dark Side" sci-I i counterparts to the Soviet leaders...

...Though much that Isaacs said still rings true, my use of cinematic allusions is different from his, because the films that I want to talk about have nothing to do with China...

...There is a long tradition among China watchers of using Hollywood movies to probe popular understanding or misunderstanding of the Chinese...

...Growing concern about the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong and domestic scandals associated with Asian and Asian-American campaign contributions are but two of many factors that have added new polemical force to the demonization of China and the reproduction of the old binary opposition...

...Congress could make it very c lear that future extensions of MFN would be Ii ,nked not to vague and shifting criteria but to 1 e Chinese regime's ability to keep promises, b oth to the United States and to residents oft h( PRC...

...We are not included when commentators divide the experts into two groups, since many of us have been bitterly disappointed by some of Beijing's actions, but also believe that it is misleading to describe the current Chinese regime as analogous to that of Hitler or Stalin...

...American discussions of the People's Republic of China (PRC) have been distorted by two iinter-r elated developments: (1) attempts by some IA the : most vocal supporters and critics of 1Clinto n's approach to China, as well as the main:strean- i media covering their interchanges, to reduce c :omplex choices to simple binary oppositions, , and (2) moves by an odd alliance of former (:old v( ,ar hawks and people whose political affiliations are much harder to categorize (some tend t °war( 1 the left on many issues) to convince us that th e Beijing regime is as bad as any that has e'xiste( I in modern times, and that anything short o f an i mqualified hard line toward it amounts to a willi ngness to "coddle" tyrants...

...Contributors to recent issues of the New Republic have also invoked related binary oppositions...

...Take, for example, the China issue of the Weekly Standard...

...This question remains an open one bi it a concerted effort is being made by inf luen tial American pundits and politicians to corn Tina a, us that China fits the bill, and in doing so th ey b lave demonstrated a fondness for linking the cur rent leaders of the PRC to everyone from ( ten ghis Khan and Fu Manchu to Hitler and Stal in...

...Then, during the presidential campaign last fall, Abe Rosenthal used his New York Times columns to invoke memories of Hitler, lambasting both Clinton and Dole for behaving like "Chamberlains" instead of "Churchills" toward the PRC, while other writers called for cold war "containment" strategies...

...The specialists described by Bernstein and Munro as being on the opposite side of the fence from The New China Lobby are the small handful of journalists and academics who have been denied permission to go to or at least had trouble getting visas for the PRC...

...Not only have prominent pundits such as George Will jumped on the bandwagon, but contributors to special China Threat issues of periodicals, such as the February 24 edition of the Weekly Standard, have even begun making explicit references to the PRC as a new "Evil Empire" to be feared and resisted...

...The demonizing trend has definitely intensified in recent months...

...Written by a pair of former Time magazine Asia bureau chiefs, Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, who are represented in the February 24 issue of the Weekly Standard by an essay entitled "PLA Incorporated," this book is a mixture of careful and even at times insightful commentary, interesting but sensationalized detail, and alarmist analysis...

...According to Isaacs, we have often swung between viewing the Chinese as simple people just waiting to be converted to our ways and start buying our goods, on the one hand, and seeing them as members of a despotic culture prone to unspeakable acts of savagery, on the other...

...We are just not used to thinking realistica 11 ,y about a regime with the following characteri' 3t ,ics: (A) It is based on a Leninist organization that has managed to m a' intain its monopoly on power despite being be .h olden to an official ideology that is discredit ,e ;c1 in the eyes of many, including more than t few top members of the governing elite itself...

...A fanciful, but nonetheless effective, point of departure for taking up these issues is provided by the recent re-release of three films...

...Rather than alternating between presenting the Chinese authorities with laundry lists of abuses and simply being silent on human rights, as recent American administrations have tended to do, it might be helpful for policy makers to draw a distinction between general practices that are part of PRC state policy but with which the American government disagrees (such as the occupation of Tibet) and things that the regime has done that violate China's Constitution (which guarantees a certain amount of free expression, for example) or break promises that have been made to foreigners or Chinese citizens...

...I am not sure how Wang Dan stands on consumer boycotts, but there are probably people within the dissident community who are in favor of these yet approve of the Clinton line toward China, as well as some who are critical of the administration's approach to the PRC yet do not think consumer boycotts appropriate...

...Darth Vader at id the Demonization of 1 :hints It is worth remembering that when these ; films devoted to epic struggles between good a ad evil first opened in theaters two decades ago, American moviegoers had worldviews structured around cold war polarities...

...One of the most interesting illustrations of how complexities are reduced to simple oppositions by the new demonizers, as well as of how familiar divisions between the "left" and the "right" are often muddied, is provided by The Coming Conflict with China...

...The press has divided up policies and experts into dichotomous piles, and now seems incapable of considering the border areas lying betwixt and between...

...The cover of the March 10 issue of the New Republic, which showed a fierce dragon crushing people beneath its talons while being supplicated by Uncle Sam, was bad enough...

...Developments such as these have important implications when it comes to strategies for bringing pressure on Beijing to improve its human rights record...

...In its more restrained manifestations, such as in a much discussed book entitled The Coming Conflict with China, this trend simply distorts our understanding of an important issue...

...Coming Conflict suggests that, if we want to find people whose opinSUMMER • 1997 • 19 Politics Abroad ions about Beijing can be trusted, we should look to the members of this politically eclectic group, which includes both Ross Terrill (who had an article on Deng's death in the National Review issue with the racist cover) and Orville Schell (whose pieces appear in the Nation from time to time...

...A year ago, for example, some Rer )ubl icans 18 • DISSENT Politics Abroad in Congress tried to convince us that aborted human fetuses were routinely sold for food in the PRC...

...In the late 1950s, for example, in his classic study Scratches on Our Minds: American Views of China and India, Harold R. Isaacs explored the cinematic portrayals of the Chinese, in romanticized films such as The Good Earth and demonizing movies such as the Fu Manchu serials, to drive home his point about the bipolar nature of American opinions...

...One is to encourage an opening up of the debate on China within the United States by providing forums for dissenting views, where participants could explore new ways of thinking without fear of being typed as alarmist (because, for example, they questioned the natural link between free markets and free elections) or derided as apologists (because, for example, they reminded people that the living conditions of many ordinary Chinese were changed for the better by some of the things that the Communist party did when it took power...

...Still more disturbing was the cover of the March 24 issue of National Review, which dubbed the president a "Manchurian Candidate" and included racist caricatures of Al Gore and both the Clintons, complete with slanted eyes and stereotypically Asian garb...

...In the March 10 issue, one contributor says that Chinese-Americans fall into two basic camps: some care about human rights and side with dissidents such as Harry Wu, who wants a "Holocaust museum-style memorial" built to honor those incarcerated in PRC labor camps...

...This has even allowed some ordinary people and some intellectuals to sue the government for mistreating them (as the controversial muckraking journalist Dai Qing did at one point) without being thrown in jail or killed as one would imagine happening if China was indeed ruled by Darth Vader...

...It was unclear whether, in this pi 1st-cold war environment, there would be any kind o f consensus, even among conservatives, at )out the contemporary power that new general ions o viewers should be encouraged to identify with dila Evil Empire of the films...

...By concentrating most of their attention on the latter type of abuses, while not ignoring completely the former, U.S...

...What t his means is that, if we want to make sense of Chi na today, we need to think afresh about a c •mr: try that is transforming itself and being tram 3foi med in novel ways...

...Interestingly, in a recent New York Review of Books essay on Coming Conflict, Jonathan Mirsky (a journalist who has had some trouble of his own getting into China lately) uses a similar criterion for supporting his claim that Bernstein and Munro deserve to be believed: he cites as evidence that their argument about the PRC has struck home the fact that the official Xinhua news agency has denounced it as "racist" scribbling that supports the assertion of American "hegemony" in Asia...

...It is foolish to imagine that the only way to con le down on policy issues is either to embrace the se 1ft line being pursued by the administration (an( I apparently supported as well by a few Republ lic :an luminaries, including Henry Kissinger and n( )w Newt Gingrich) or to advocate the much hard et r line supported by the White House's most virus le, nt critics...

...Others draw lines between those who do and do not take seriously the rising tide of Chinese nationalism and those who are and are not willing to "sell out" the cause of dissidents "in order to sell a few more Big Macs...

...SUMMER • 1997 • 21 Politics Abroad (C, I It clings to symbols and rituals developed by ismatic leaders and yet is now headed by verb 7dit ferent sorts of people, including some who belie we wile sincerely (though often as much for prap nay c as moral reasons) that it is important for C him i to move toward the rule of law...