China in perspective

Monday, November 24, 2014 - 12:03

In 1999 in Beijing as part of the EU I gave a lecture to a visiting parliamentary group from Scandinavia on future outcomes for China. In that I predicted that China’s GDP would exceed that of the USA within ten years although not on a per capita basis, 2019.

I added that this would have a major shift in the world order and some of this might not be pleasant.

The problem for the West is that China is not well understood. Living in country you realise that they have been around for some 2000 years and are not constricted by pressures of time. Another thing one needs to understand, as put out in the excellent Lords of the Rim by Sterling Seagrave, the offshore Chinese while often having been driven away from the mainland, are still a large part of conceptual China and provide a massive buffer zone.  

It’s also necessary to understand that the Chinese will go along with anything thrown at them and all they really finally believe in if family and their dynasty. They have learned over centuries that rulers come and go, opposing them doesn't really work so just go with the flow and what comes around goes around.

But the essence of being Chinese means that face means far more than the West can understand which raises a two edged sword, one not understanding how far the Chinese will go to save face and the West over reacting to give it to them.

Living in China I started to admire their system. Chinese colleagues even in private agreed to central rule and said that was better than becoming a basket case like Russia, they agreed with the one child policy and put their newborns into “boarding kinda”during the week so they could work harder. There was little crime, everything seemed to work well on the surface and most people seemed happy.

Now I know there were about 90 murders a month in Qingdao and one city was quarantined after an outbreak of something quite serious which no one was to know about and a major foot and mouth disease outbreak was never reported. So acid rain stained our cars in winter when the coal fires heated the buildings but overall this did not bother the general population. It was comfortable and seemed under control. The anchor lady for CNN told me they were not permitted to report outside Beijing without permission so could not afford to lose their accreditation in China by reporting accurately.    

Then there was the Falun Gong sit in outside the Great Hall and the authorities went spastic. Having been embarrassed by such a peaceful protest, for three months every news program on radio and TV denounced Falun Gong with the same scrip read from kindergarten students to university professors. It was as if everyone lost the plot and it certainly revised my opinion of the quiet status quo I had believed to exist.

An aside was the Xmas dinner at the Austrian Ambassador’s house in Beijing where the Chinese head of the Catholic congregation of China presided. We all had a dressing down by his Eminence after rendition of Chris Kindle for diving into the buffet before he had said grace. “Amongst civilised people one said grace before eating” sounded good coming from a Chinese in China.

So what does all of this mean in relationship to where China will emerge on the world stage? I believe that now it probably owns enough of the USA’s paper to create havoc should it want to and would not hear a murmur from the States. One day in the near future while the USA is otherwise occupied it will quietly annex Taiwan without a shot fired. It just awaits its time. It will not have great territorial expansionist ambitions but it will have desire to acquire resources to support its ever increasing population.  It already has massive investments in Africa obtained for a song on bi-lateral promises and cash donations and it will increase its investments in Australia while laughing their heads off at how stupid Australians are to sell out their country when almost every other country believes in sovereign rights.

Once China has shown its dominance in geo-politics, expect that it will flex its muscles on territorial rights disputes and don’t forget that it is already populating the territories around its borders with ethnic Chinese so it does not have to invade with such a buffer zone.

Of course all of this can have a few positive effects since the USA will no longer have to be the world’s policeman but it will have a profound effect on what we understand of democracy today. If you told the average Chinese they were now free, most would not know what this meant. They have never had it and perhaps they wouldn’t want it. Does this mean you can chose which side of the road to drive on?

You have the G20 meeting in Brisbane and realise that the common person really has no contact with these leaders and can only vote from time to time on a two party system which does not give him much choice on specific issues. This means the person on the street can’t influence much on a day to day basis so may as well capitulate and hand it over to a strong government.

Not wishing to get into a debate on democracy, the good part in an alternative system I learned first in Africa when African’s shook their heads saying “Who ever heard of an opposition Chief. He is Chief because he got rid of all opposition”. But we go along with it because we need the money.

In China also, I was part of many heated policy debates with all sides having their say but at the end of the sometimes long day(s), consensus was reached and everyone spoke with one voice. The west sees 6,000 hands raised in the Great Hall and believes this is dictatorship from the top when in fact issues have been long fought from the bottom up.  The hypothesis is that the Chinese people do get a say but its put forward in a different way.

Except if they get embarrassed. And this is the danger, not from the Chinese but if the USA does not like their stand. The Chinese won’t start anything but they will let it known that if they don’t get their way they will finish it. And what will the rest of the world do about it? Watch this space.