by Odd Westad
THE CURRENT LEADERSHIP in Beijing is obsessively fearful of political deviance and ethnic or religious dissonance. Maybe because they know that their power to govern the economy is limited, they insist on controlling the political sphere. At the moment there are no political alternatives in China, and although workers’ movements and professional organizations pressure the government from many different directions, the number of political dissidents is very small. Even so, the CCP overreacts—with disastrous consequences for its regime’s international reputation—whenever it feels challenged by opposition. When the soft-spoken dissident Liu Xiaobo, already sentenced to eleven years in prison for peaceful protest, won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2010, he was demonized by Chinese authorities as a criminal and an insult to the prize. The vaguely millenarian and transcendental Buddhist movement Falun Gong was banned in 1999, with the CCP condemning its “feudal superstitions and decadent ideas.”4 Thousands of its members ended up in prison. The CCP seems inherently incapable of dealing with criticism and therefore appears to be afraid of anyone or anything outside the economic sector that the party itself has not explicitly sanctioned.
The two most important issues concerning the CCP’s treatment of minorities—political, religious, ethnic, and cultural—will be its policies toward Tibetans and Uigurs, and toward religious revivalists. These policies will of course be linked. Part of the reason why the party is so afraid of regional autonomy is that it fears such freedoms would be used by religious extremists within China. Internationally, its harsh treatment of the Tibet and Xinjiang opposition is among the regime’s biggest problems—more important, according to recent polls, than any other single issue for US, European, and Muslim views of the country. Many Chinese, and not just those who support the government, think this criticism is unfair: China’s economic transformation is surely more important, they think, and Tibetans and Muslims in western China have benefited at least as much as the majority of Chinese from the growth in the economy. What these defenders of the status quo fail to realize is that it is the CCP’s tone-deafness to the natural religious and national aspirations of minority groups that is creating China’s problems on these issues at home and abroad. As we have seen, the Communists are not the only leading group in recent Chinese history who have had trouble understanding China’s minority populations. But spreading the leadership’s retrograde views through modern media is rapidly making matters worse.
There are very clear signs that China is running out of time to start allowing more autonomy and less interference for its main minorities. At the moment, most Tibetans and Xinjiang Muslims would be satisfied with being allowed to run their own religious affairs (mainly because outright independence seems chimerical). But with the Communists denigrating the Tibetan religious leader, the Dalai Lama, as a “wolf in monk’s robes” and calling the exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer “a housewife who has used her illegal fortune to conduct secessionist activities,” the future does not look bright.5 The younger generation of Tibetans and Uighurs will want increased recognition of their own identity within China, and will not be satisfied with less. Sending political education teams to be stationed in Lamaist Buddhist monasteries and closing Xinjiang mosques for so-called preservation and repair will mean only more tension between minorities and non-Tibetans/non-Muslims in the western provinces. The CCP government will then be forced to intervene on behalf of immigrants from other parts of China, and the negative consequences of such confrontations for China’s image in the world will be great.
The international reputation of the CCP and the PRC is also challenged by a revival of religion within the main parts of China itself. The Falun Gong phenomenon may just be a beginning of Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian resurgences and metamorphoses. As we have seen, the Chinese state has been—from its perspective—cursed with such “superstitious sects” for the last 250 years. But today the challenge seems greater than ever, simply because the state itself gives its people so little to believe in—except material progress, which rarely has stirred people’s hearts. I sometimes visit a Christian congregation in the Beijing suburb of Haidian. It is not registered with the authorities, because its members want to avoid outside control, but still counts more than 1,000 members. The congregation is evangelical Protestant, and its members are young, white-collar Chinese with good educations and little political ambition, but a lot of interest in money and finance. As with other congregations, irrespective of religion, the authorities face a choice in how to treat this group of Christians. If they are smart enough to leave them alone, there is little reason to expect trouble. But if they do not, then there is little doubt that these people will follow what they see as the will of God rather than the will of the Communist Party.
The same pattern holds up for other groups in society as well. Some young Chinese may believe CCP propaganda about foreign interference being behind arrogant Tibetans or disloyal Muslims. But the very same people get embarrassed if they have to talk about the CCP’s Internet censorship to friends or relatives from abroad. In all my years of teaching history in China, the most embarrassing moment I have witnessed for a Chinese student was not discussing, say, Mao’s purges or the 1989 crackdown. The worst moment came when the student had to explain to newly arrived foreign classmates that Facebook is blocked in China. Young people in China are seething over not having access to the same forms of networking or simple fun as kids elsewhere. Despite the government’s best efforts to build a Great Firewall of China, the country’s youngsters know better. They know what they are missing out on, and they resent the authorities for blocking it. Some observers will say that easy access to games or chatrooms is of minor importance in a country that still imprisons people for their beliefs. But no government in recent Chinese history has gone on annoying its young people for very long without paying a price. In this sense the Great Firewall may be more a symbol of the regime’s impotence than a protection against foreign seditious influences.
BECAUSE OF ITS RAPIDLY EXPANDING economy, China’s future international position will to a large extent be set by how well its acquisition of knowledge keeps up with that of other countries. So far China is not doing well in this respect. Young Chinese are exceptionally good at reading and algebra: Shanghai high school leavers are the best in the world on both scores, according to recent statistics. But China’s institutions of higher education often let them down, and they have to go abroad for their advanced training. Very often the best young Chinese then excel at their foreign universities and remain abroad for long periods of time. This dichotomy is particularly true for the humanities and social sciences but is also notable in science and technology.
China’s top universities suffer in comparison to the best American or European institutions. They have a very large number of talented people in them, but they are run in ways very similar to Soviet institutions of old. Conformist mediocrity is rewarded above unsettling brilliance. The party and its views hover over everything, and hiring and promotion are decided by patronage rather than by talent. The problem is not censorship by itself. Debates and discussions at the top institutions are today free to an extent unthinkable only a few years ago. The problem is the conformism that institutions of higher education produce, and the lacunae in innovative knowledge, which descend from that. China today is simply not, by itself, producing enough top thinkers within various fields of knowledge to sustain its future growth.
This failure is a serious problem for China’s engagement with the world. To overcome it, the Chinese government needs to rework its higher education system, or—a less likely prospect—allow these institutions to reform themselves profoundly from within. Given the centrality of education in the government’s own development plans, it is remarkable that not more is done already. In the meantime China is, in fact, shedding talent at a high rate. Newspapers and the universities and research centers themselves often publish major articles about how world-famous scholars who were born in China or have Chinese ancestry retur
n to teach at Chinese institutions. But there are few of these, and they are usually at the end of their careers. Young scholars who are trained abroad sometimes go back, although, as we have seen, only in small numbers. But then they only stay for a few years if they are so good that they have the chance for a job abroad. The encounter with the problems and intricacies of the Chinese higher education system defeats them. They felt they fitted in at Yale or Cambridge or CalTech but feel marginalized at Chinese universities.
It is possible that foreign-trained scholars who return and remain in China will, eventually, change the system. There are examples of real centers of excellence in Chinese research, and they are sometimes found in surprising places. One such example in my field is the Central Party School of the CCP. Here there are no limits to discussion (even though little of it can be repeated outside the school’s compound in northwestern Beijing), and it attracts first-rate minds to teach the party’s future leaders. There is also the possibility that the establishment of foreign universities in China will transform the Chinese landscape of higher education, as it did in the late nineteenth century. The largest of these at the moment, the British-run University of Nottingham campus in Ningbo near Shanghai, can take up to 8,000 students and teach them in a university setting that is similar to what they would encounter outside China.
Over time, perhaps the biggest problem in China’s search for knowledge is its failure to recruit first-rate talent from abroad. More than a third of all US Nobel Prize laureates in medicine in the postwar period were born outside the United States.6 In China, one would be hard pressed to find a handful of full professors of foreign origin in all fields at the country’s top universities. One reason for this is that China is not yet an attractive enough place of residence for the world’s top scientists. But it also has something to do with attitudes in China today. While many people around the world can imagine themselves reinvented as Americans, few think in the same way about China, even after its economic growth has put the country at the center of attention. Unlike the situation when our story began back in the eighteenth century, Chinese authorities and institutions seem to go out of their way to narrow the concept of what it means to be Chinese. If such attitudes persist, China will find it difficult to compete in innovation and knowledge the way they are now competing very successfully in production.
AS WE HAVE SEEN, nationalism in anything approaching its Western form is a very recent phenomenon in China. It is largely a product of the tumultuous twentieth century. Today, however, different forms of nationalism thrive in the Chinese political landscape, in variants that would be easily recognizable to nineteenth-century Europeans. Not all of this is negative. A sense of pride in being Chinese and in the long history of the Chinese people can be a counterweight to regime diktat or to the insecurities that have marred China’s relations with the outside world. The problems begin when nationalism is manipulated by the regime for political gain, or when it creates resentment against foreigners or people who look different or behave differently. Most dangerous of all is the nationalism that says, “The world hates us, but we don’t care,” because it may provide license to behave in ways that are truly inhumane against those who are defined as outsiders.7
Related to (but not equal with) the problems of nationalism is the increasing Chinese preoccupation with ethnic or racial characteristics. Again, as we have seen earlier, this is a recent fixation of some Chinese, and it has been stimulated by the Communist Party’s need to find an argument for its continued rule. The Chinese, the line of reasoning goes, are different from other peoples—oriented toward collective gain, coherent policies, and admirable aims. They are adverse to chaos and uncertainty, and in favor of analytical approaches and accurate predictions. Where other peoples are easily led astray into indolence or inconstancy, the Chinese are earnest, hard-working epitomes of common sense. They are also, because of their long history, more authentic and more righteous than others. All of this nonsense stands in the way of developing a reasonable foreign policy for the People’s Republic and deflects its people from dealing with its own problems, most importantly the democratic deficit within China itself.8
On occasion, the CCP borrows the terminology of the small number of Chinese who are extreme nationalists. But the party is also afraid of them, aware that its own imported ideology and adherence to open international markets could make it the focus of ultranationalist attacks. Indeed, both in 1989 and more recently, nationalist slogans have been used against the party and its rule. The CCP wants to use nationalism as legitimacy for its continued control of China, but it is not quite sure how to employ it without risk. It must be said, though, that some of the party’s propaganda about special Chinese characteristics for development has struck a chord with youth who are eager for something to believe in. A student I was talking with in 2010 explained it succinctly. Even though most people of her generation are aware of the deficiencies created by one-party rule, she said, they are less and less willing to discuss it, especially with foreigners present. In a China that is becoming increasingly internationalized, there must, some of them think, be a part that is truly and uniquely Chinese, and not just an imitation of foreign models, something that helps explain China’s current stride to the fore. The West already has prosperity and democracy. Maybe prosperity without democracy could be something for Chinese to be proud of, since it has created unprecedented economic progress. But my student friend was quick to add that her group only thought that way when thinking about China in comparison with other countries. As soon as the conversation turned to China itself, the party’s many failings in governance provoked broad condemnation.
The existence of this dual view of China’s relations with the outside world is supported by recent opinion polls. One has to be careful with data collected under a dictatorship, but some general trends are visible. Younger people feel more threatened by the outside world than older people. In a recent poll, almost two-thirds of all eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds agreed that the United States posed a threat, but only a third of those over fifty-five felt the same way. Men and those with higher education were more likely to find Americans (and Japanese and Indians) threatening. All groups, however, agreed that global processes such as climate change or water or food shortages were more threatening than any foreign military force. When asked why the United States posed a threat to China, the whole sample answered that it might seek to restrain China’s growing influence in the world; it might support separatist elements in China; it is more likely to take the side of Taiwan in a cross-strait dispute; and it has a more powerful military than China’s own.9
Those pessimistic about China’s future on the international stage focus on its growing nationalism, but some who are more optimistic dwell on a countercurrent. China’s interest and orientation, they say, are closely linked to the development of international law and to harmony and balance in international affairs. Such a search for a better-organized international community that can accommodate China’s international economic expansion has, as we have seen, as deep if not deeper roots in Chinese history than today’s nationalism. It is striking how often Chinese foreign policy analysts and diplomats use the term “international society” when they describe the conduct of international affairs that they are looking for. Wang Jisi, the influential dean of Peking University’s School of International Studies, argues that “China will serve its interests better if it can provide more common goods to the international community and share more values with other states.”10 But, as Wang would be the first to agree, it can only do so if it throws overboard the concept of a “special path” to modernity for China and the belief that outsiders are inherently hostile to China’s rise.
SOME HISTORICALLY INFORMED commentators think that Asia, or at least its eastern parts, is on its way back to the international system that existed when our story began: a China-centered world, where other countries conformed to the symbols of Chinese power. I do not think that is the case, even if
there may be some similarities between the situation 250 years ago and today. China is undoubtedly becoming the central power in its region and the economic powerhouse that will define Asia’s growth for at least the next two generations. But it is not likely to be easily able to bend others to its will, except in extreme crises. Even during the Qianlong emperor’s reign there was, as we have seen and contrary to a widely held view, no set tribute system through which China could enforce its control. Today, the country would face insurmountable obstacles if it were to try to dominate and control its neighbors. Today’s China is nationalist, not universalist. Its nationalism is up against other nationalisms in the region that are at least as powerful in domestic ideological terms as China’s own; think only about Korea or Vietnam. The United States will not disappear as an Asian power. And, in cultural terms, China is singularly lacking in soft power: No young person of sound mind in Tokyo or Seoul, or even in Taibei or Singapore, is looking to the PRC for music to download, films to watch, or ideas to latch on to.
China’s centrality in Asia will therefore increasingly be expressed in economic terms, as a place not just of production but also of consumption. One of the big stories of the early twenty-first century will be the increase in intra-Asian trade, as economies within the region continue to grow very fast, but not in parallel or even in the same manner. The concept that Asian states have little to trade among themselves has been a myth for almost all historical periods. Even when the Chinese state was at its weakest—from 1880 to the 1910s—trade within Asia grew faster than East-West trade, within what economic historians call an informal Chinese commercial sphere.11 Unless political disasters intervene to stop it, one may think of a significant part of Asia’s future growth as a relay, in which technologies, production, and markets in different countries take over from each other decade after decade. If we use the past as evidence, no Asian nationalism, however virulent, has been able to stop this process.