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Michael Schuman is the author of “Superpower Interrupted: The Chinese History of the World” (PublicAffairs, 2020) and “The Miracle: The Epic Story of Asia’s Quest for Wealth” (HarperBusiness, 2009).
HONG KONG — I really don’t want to be a China hawk. The whole idea goes against my belief in openness and the great things that can be accomplished by it. But the current Chinese leadership is leaving me no choice: They are a threat to democracy, and those who care about civil liberties can no longer pretend they aren’t.
My journey to that unfortunate conclusion has been painful. I’ve witnessed the progress achieved by engagement with China for the past 40 years. Like many of us from democratic societies, I’d like to see it continue.
But it’s become increasingly clear that it can’t, because Chinese leader Xi Jinping doesn’t share that vision: He wants a world where China dominates the commanding heights of the global economy and dictates the rules of international diplomacy and discourse. And such a world is not safe for democracy.
The situation has left me feeling almost betrayed. For much of the past two decades, my life has been devoted to China. I’ve lived and worked in either Beijing or Hong Kong since 2002, and written two books related to China — one a study of the great philosopher Confucius; the other, a world history told from the Chinese perspective. I have visited literally every corner of the country, from the icy outpost of Heihe on the northeast border with Russia to the desert market haven of Kashgar in the distant west, near Pakistan.
Like many of us who write about China, I became mesmerized by the place upon first setting foot there, which for me was in 1996. I recall vividly clambering over the ruins of the Great Wall, entering Mao Zedong’s crypt on Tiananmen Square and wandering, mostly alone, through the winding alleyways of the Forbidden City, getting hopelessly lost in its maze of stately courtyards.
Nowadays, with the Chinese far richer, finding an empty nook of the palace amid the crowds of tourists is nearly impossible. As an economics journalist, I’ve spent most of my time chronicling China’s historic ascent out of poverty, from factory floors to farming villages to tech startups. The rising skyscrapers of Shanghai are impressive, but not as impressive as the ordinary Chinese family’s excitement at buying their first car, or having enough savings for their old age.
Through this prism, it seemed to me that U.S. policy toward China was working. The whole idea of engagement was to tie China to the Western world through bonds of trade and finance, in the process making Chinese society more open and the communist government a partner in global affairs.
To be sure, I never really believed that free markets would rid China of Mao. The Communist Party was entrenched and, if anything, gaining strength as development advanced. Its leadership remained a nasty bunch, crushing any dissent with swift brutality.
But it was also obvious that China was transforming in positive ways. More and more, Chinese were able to travel around the world and communicate through new technologies. Even amid deteriorating relations with the U.S., 372,000 Chinese studied at American universities in the last academic year, more than from any other country.
And so, as China joined the World Trade Organization and participated more actively in the institutions of the West, it appeared likely that Beijing would become immersed in — and committed to — a global order that was benefiting the nation and its people. I thought a wealthier China would be good for the world — another pillar supporting global prosperity, as the country had traditionally been throughout much of its history.
The more time passed, however, the more my mood has darkened. Part of the change can be perhaps attributed to my living in a place where the individual has no recourse against the state: There is always a worry in the back of your mind that you’ll get a middle-of-the-night knock on your door. (Two people I personally know well have recently been detained.)
Another part of it is a growing realization that China’s leaders have been losing interest in cooperation with the U.S. That started in the late years of U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, when no amount of dialogue seemed to move Chinese officials to address American concerns about their unfair treatment of U.S. companies. The whole process of “reform and opening up” launched in the late 1970s seemed to be stalling. I began writing that Washington needed to take a tougher stance.
But developments over the past three years are what made me truly hawkish. I changed because it became undeniable that China was changing.
Technology, rather than freeing the Chinese people, is ensnaring them in an Orwellian web of controls, where every word and movement is monitored by the state for any inkling of dissent. Xi’s government has locked up untold numbers of Uighurs in the western region of Xinjiang in what is the 21st-century equivalent of Siberian gulags — and thinks nothing of it. China also broke a treaty with the United Kingdom to get its hands on democracy activists in Hong Kong, many of whom are already behind bars.
Now Xi is trying to change the way we think about good government and democratic values to render his brutal behavior acceptable in the eyes of the world.
Sure, Xi isn’t fomenting communist revolutions around the world, or banging his shoe on a table (at least not yet). But more and more, Xi is upholding China’s autocratic system as every bit as legitimate — and even superior — to Western-style representative government. He is taking his assault on Western primacy into the all-important realm of ideas — and this presents a greater threat to the world’s democracies than any edge it might achieve in trade or technology.
Chinese state media has relentlessly mocked the U.S. for its abysmal response to the pandemic and increasingly portrays it as a declining power. By comparison, Beijing markets itself as the more responsible global actor, eager to cooperate and share its (homemade) vaccines with the world’s poor. But more than that, its propaganda machine is blaming the difficulties facing Western countries on the basic tenets of democracy itself.
One recent commentary in the Global Times, a Communist Party-run newspaper, took in everything from Washington’s political gridlock to the recent coup in Myanmar to argue that the source of democracy’s woes is its “one man, one vote” principle and the confrontation of multiparty politics. “In addition to being inappropriate for non-Western countries, Western-styled democracy itself is malfunctioning and hard to sustain in its very home,” the author claimed.
Xi wants to elevate authoritarianism and foster a new world system devoid of liberal values. In a January speech, he argued that it was “arrogance, prejudice and hatred” to promote democracy and human rights. “What does ring the alarm,” he stated, “is the attempt to impose hierarchy on human civilization or to force one’s own history, culture and social system upon others.”
In other words, to Beijing, the entire American mission to promote civil liberties is an inappropriate intrusion on the world.
Democracies are, of course, far from perfect. They suffer from inequality and injustice. But Xi’s vision for “a community with a shared future,” as he calls it, is like a neighborhood where a man beats his wife every night, but anyone who tries to help her is “intervening in his internal affairs.” In order to show you are not “prejudiced,” you invite the guy over for pool parties, and smile as if nothing’s wrong. Maybe he’ll bring you a few beers. That’s how Xi defines “mutual respect.”
I don’t want to live in that neighborhood. For the West to full-on decouple from China is impractical. But we do have to think hard about how we choose to engage with Beijing. Fueling Xi’s rise by sharing our best technology is not a good idea. Imposing costs on China for its human rights abuses, in the form of sanctions, is a must.
Pro-Beijing advocates will say that we in the West are being hypocritical and that our real agenda is to “keep China down.” Still, we’re under no obligation to share our technology and capital with a regime that is increasingly contemptuous of what we hold dear.
The only way to contend with today’s China is for more people to become China hawks. That’s a terrible solution. But the alternative is worse.
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