From @UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU:owner-china-nt@UGA.CC.UGA.EDU Fri Dec 10 13:18:34 1993 Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1993 12:30:53 -0500 Reply-To: yaxin wang Sender: China-Net From: yaxin wang Subject: CCF #9326, 12/10/93, Weekend Edition: China Watch Comments: To: china-nt@uga.cc.uga.edu To: Multiple recipients of list CHINA-NT ==+==+==+== C h i n e s e C o m m u n i t y F o r u m ==+==+==+=== Friday, December 10, 1993 (Weekend Edition, Issue No. 9326) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Chinese Community Forum (CCF) is a journal published on China-Net. CCF is dedicated to the discussion and debate on the issues related to the Chinese community. The opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of the Editorial Board of CCF. Contributions to the discussions and suggestions of new topics are very much appreciated. +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+= Table of Contents Author | # of Lines ============================================================================ 1. Give Face, Make Deals -- An interview of Lee Kuan Yew by Editors of Don Jones & Co...............................Far Eastern Economic Review 142 2. Chinese Leader Plays To Audience at Home..............Daniel Williams 64 3. DEALING WITH CHINA--The Barbarians At The Gate.........The Economist 262 ============================================================================ ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== From The Editor +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ The theme of this issue of Chinese Community Forum is China watch. We carry three articles focused on Chinese politics regarding to the questions raised up from the early issue's China related news. The first article in this issue is the view of Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew to China problem; the second article is about Chinese President Jiang Zemin's action during APEC meeting and the last article is general discussion of how Chinese deal with foreigners. We hope these three articles will help us to understand Chinese politics better. In the next two issues of CCF, we will focus on human right discussion and the economics of China. +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 1. Give Face, Make Deals -- An interview of Lee Kuan Yew by Editors of Don Jones & Co...............................Far Eastern Economic Review 142 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ [Editor's Note: Following article is the interview of Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew publish in Far Eastern Economic REVIEW Novemeber 18, 1993.] A US-China Deal Chinese leaders are accustomed to making deals and freezing their principles in order to get a deal through. .... They are not searching for soulmates on a march to democracy and human rights. They were most comfortable with president Nixon and president Reagan. China's Agenda They want stability and certainty for the next few decades so that they can carry on with their economic reforms. They have enough internal problems sorting out the effects of these reforms. They don't want to add to the uncertainties with this constant nagging and badgering over MFN [most-favoured-nation status] and human rights, transfer of missile technology in contravention of the control regime and chemical materials to Iran or whatever. Arms Proliferation You've got to treat [China] as a partner like you are treating Russia as a partner. You can't treat her as a Third World pariah whom you bait and torment at will. This will just make an enemy out of her. [China's leaders] are never going to give up their right to govern China their way. They Will make tactical, cynical concessions on human rights or democracy or whatever, but there will be no conversion on the road to Damascus. They want a deal. You cannot send Billy Graham there to convert them. It's something that has got to come from within themselves. North Korea Nobody is able to predict what an ailing desperate old man in his 80s will do when cornered in his eccentric black hole. Given the right terms, the Chinese may even agree not to veto an embargo on oil or other essential items to North Korea. Without oil they can't run an economy, not even one as primitive as North Korea's. The Chinese are not going to give that card away until they have other things secured. "Face" Matters "Face" matters because "face" affects [the Chinese leadership's] standing with their own people. This matters to them. They are convinced you want to undermine the current regime. You have said so publicly. I am not sure they are convinced that you can do that without unravelling the whole of China. [The US has] rooted for the dissidents, many of whose ideas would unravel China. If there are sudden reversals in their economy, plus several bad harvests, that could be the beginning of an unravelling if the leadership is blamed for it and if the political and military leadership then splits. It's not their fear of minorities breaking away, but of the system breaking up and China again reduced to chaos. It's primarily a Chinese internal problem, but the US is not without influence to make things more difficult. On Gatt The best thing that could happen to Gatt and to world peace and stability is for China to join Gatt. In her present mood, she is willing to comply with the rules of Gatt. Say what you like, when they cut a deal they keep to their deal. The US Agenda The US agenda should be to craft a world in which peace and stability are more assured and less threatened and so less costly to maintain. If you have a China out to make mischief, that increases the costs. Why not hoist this fellow on board? He needs you at this moment. In 10 years he might not. Before then get China on board, educate their younger generation and one day they will suddenly say: "God, we are as dependent on the world as they are on us. This is one world and if we destroy the environment, whether political or physical, we are all destroyed." It may take them 20 years to come to that conclusion. I didn't come to that conclusion when I started on this journey. I came to this realization as a result of learning, stage by stage, as I peeled layer by layer off and came to the heart of the problem. This is one world because, for the first time in the history of man, technologically we are one interacting world. Goals for the Apec Sumrnit A successful Apec will give the European Community an incentive to move in the right direction. If the Europeans believe that regionalism leads to the three-bloc world, they will be quite comfortable. If they believe that it will lead to a two-bloc world, the Europeans wiU be most uncomfortable. If Asia-Pacific is one bloc and Europe another bloc, that's not something Europe can afford. Apec should send this serious message to the other Europeans: that if they back the French, they wiU carry the can. On China's Military Build-up The Chinese do not see a threat to themselves immediately. But first they have to be able to back their claim to the Spratlys. They need to have enough refuelling capacity for aircraft, and a naval capability. I watch it like a slow-moving dance, where the others may agree to some oil sharing in which the Chinese will generously agree that it need not be in accordance with population ratio or area of territory. Taiwan Issue The most difficult issue is Taiwan. I once said to a Chinese leader that if China had taken Taiwan back at the time of the Quemoy crisis in the 1950s, China would be worse off today. China wouldn't have had a Taiwan with all this know-how, plus industrial and research capabilities. Look at what Taiwan has done for them. He accepted my view. I then said that if China were to take Taiwan back now, then the Taiwanese would be cut off from the wealth of knowledge. Whereas if they left Taiwan alone for another 40 years, the Taiwanese would be part of the R&D in Silicon Valley, Bell Lab etc. This knowledge will filter through to China, not in leading-edge technology, but in solid industrial investments from Taiwan. He did not agree. But I believe peaceful reunification will allow all sides to gain: China, Taiwan, East Asia and the world. Chance of Concrete Agreements This [APEC] summit will be primarily exploratory, but not unimportant. Cliton knows that Jiang Zemin is not the sole decider; he is one of the deciders, and probably the most important. Jiang Zemin will go back and give his assessment of Clinton. The Chinese team will study it and then probe Clinton to see whether Jiang's assessments are correct. Clinton's response could lead to a deal, and more stable relations based on long-term considerations. ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 2. Chinese Leader Plays To Audience at Home..............Daniel Williams 64 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ [Editor's Note: The article originally published in Washington Post by Daniel Williams. Since APEC meeting was the first international showup for Jiang Zemin, the image of Jiang as the third generation leader to success Deng is news media focus recently.] During his face-to-face meeting with President Clinton, China's President Jiang Zemin listened stiffly as the American leader presenteds Washington's demands for improvements in human rights. At one point Clinton pressed for cultural and religious freedoms in Tibet and for China to open talks with the Dalai Lama, the ex- iled Tibetan leader. Jiang responded with what, for him, was a rare improvisation. "I have some books on Tibet written by Americans that show how Tibet was enslaved under the Dalai Lama," he said. "I can provide a list for your reference." Clinton did not take up the offer. "Those books won't be on his shelf any time soon," said a U.S. official. The visit of Jiang Zemin to the United States was marked by a no-apology, little-give attitude softened by public relations ef- forts to soften China's image. Chinese statements alternated between the high road of futuristic descriptions of the 21st cen- tury to the low road of defaming adversaries: Chinese officials, for example, accused the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, of fashioning cups out of human skulls. As a participant in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Jiang, perhaps more than most of the visitors, had to take care to play for a particular home audience. Jiang is a candidate to succeed aging and ailing Deng Xiaoping as China's top leader and his performance was undoubtedly watched closely by kingmakers in the Communist Party and army. Jiang and his entourage were, however, prepared to present China's case within the news media frenzy surrounding the visit. In remarks at Boeing Aircraft Corp., which hopes to sell planes to fill China's commercial fleet, Jiang indirectly noted the business stakes in resolving disputes with the Clinton adminis- tration. As long as "all negative factors and artificially imposed obsta- cles" are removed, "our bilateral trade and economic cooperation will yield greater successes," he said. In his talk with Clinton, Jiang spoke for 15 unbroken minutes on the complementary futures of China in the 21st century, China as the biggest developing country, the United States the biggest developed country. A U.S. official described the performance as "very formal." Jiang rejected tying China's trade privileges in the United States to human rights issues, but there was a hint of possible conciliatory gestures. Jiang noted that under Chinese law, ill prisoners can be released and family members of exiled dissidents are able to apply for visas - although it is not clear they would be routinely granted. After leaving Seattle today Jiang plans to travel to Cuba and Brazil. The trip to Cuba is a show of solidarity with the govern- ment of Fidel Castro, one of the last totalitarain governments in the world. ===========***==========***==========**==========***==========***=========== 3. DEALING WITH CHINA--The Barbarians At The Gate.........The Economist 262 +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Two hundred years ago, China spurned the West's advances. Its uneasy relations with the outside world still bear the marks of a troubled history. Thanks for the birthday presents, wrote the Emperor Qianlong to King George III, who had sent examples of Britain's scientific and technological achievements in the hope of winning trade concessions. But, Qianlong explained, "the kings of the myriad nations come by land and sea with all sorts of precious things. Consequently, there is nothing we lack. We have never set much store by strange and ingenious objects, nor do we need any more of your country's manufactures." So Lord Macartney, the first British ambassador to China, returned home in 1794 with a flea in his ear and the British fixed on sterner measures. China was then still happily indifferent to the outside world. In respect of Britain, the mandarins were clear about only one thing: that the British were determined to trade because they would die of constipation if deprived of rhubarb, one of China's exports. But there was confusion about the status of Britain, which some officials believed to be a province of Holland. Britain returned with more ships, demanding concessions and eventually engaging China in the first "opium war" of 1839-42. They forced Bengal opium on China, annexed Hong Kong and claimed enclaves in Chinese ports. A second opium war and a second defeat for China followed in 1856- 60; France, Germany and Russia, seeing how easy it was, wrung their own concessions out of the tottering empire; Japan took Taiwan after smashing China in the war of 1894-95. This "century of humiliation" finally brought down the decaying imperial government and plunged China into a phase of warlordism, frustrating attempts to establish a stable republic. Japanese invasion, war and civil war eventually yielded victory for Mao Zedong's communist forces and defeat for Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists in 1949. Three decades of often-chaotic "class struggle" followed, ending when Deng Xiaoping took control of the Communist Party in 1978 and fixed economic growth as the national priority. Even as China now grows richer and more powerful, memories of its past suffering remain very much alive--particularly where the Communist Party finds in them a useful modern resonance. When Mr. Deng told Mrs. Thatcher in 1982 that Britain must leave Hong Kong, he explained that compromise was impossible because China would not tolerate "another Li Hongzhang"--the official who signed away most of Hong Kong to Britain in 1898. Tourists visit the site near Guangzhou where Imperial Commissioner Lin, sent from Beijing in 1839 to halt the opium trade, burnt British merchants' stocks and triggered war. Similarly, the remains of the emperors' summer palace near Beijing, destroyed by British and French forces in the second opium war, have been preserved for the edification of school parties. Through the prism of such history, China's modern view of foreigners and their intentions is necessarily refracted colouring them in a variety of ways. For example: * FOREIGNERS AS INFERIORS. For two millennia the Chinese empire was its own universe. Korea, Vietnam and, for a while, Japan were among its tribute-paying nations. China was the source of the region's written language and high culture. Anybody who wished to trade with China had first to send an envoy to kowtow to the emperor--that is, bow down before him, touching forehead to the floor. (Macartney refused, horrifying his imperial minders.) Two centuries on, China still likes to see foreigners paying their respects. The evening television news often features new ambassadors lining up to present their credentials. Manoeuvres will usually be attempted to lure diplomatic negotiations involving China to Beijing, so that the foreigners will arrive as if begging for favours. But such play- acting aside, the Chinese leadership has no illusions about commanding international deference. Far from it. Since the military defeats of the 19th century, belief in both the power and the malevolence of foreigners has been an article of faith underpinning the combative nationalism which Chinese leaders have instilled as a unifying force across their vast realm . A persistent sense of cultural superiority makes real-world weakness harder to bear: China finds itself poorer and less admired than other nations which it considers its cultural inferiors. * FOREIGNERS AS DEVILS. In the days when China believed itself the centre of the world, officials rarely stooped to expressing any emotion stronger than mild contempt for foreign 'barbarians". But impotence spawned more sinister sentiments. The Boxer rebels of 1899 sought to "extinguish the foreigners and enforce right principles on behalf of heaven", according to a contemporary broad sheet, and did indeed murder several thousand of their target. If xenophobia might then in principle have been an understandable reaction to China's immediate plight, it endured long after foreigners had left China's soil. When the Korean war again set China against the West, the "resist America, support Korea" propaganda campaign burned with hatred. A booklet called "Look, so this is the American way of life" declared America to be "where reaction, darkness, cruelty, decadence, corruption, debauchery, the oppression of the people by the people, cannibalism and all the evils in the whole world today are produced." Similar rhetoric can still be heard now, but rarely and more faintly. The governor of Hong Kong, Christopher Patten, has been a favourite target since he declared last year his wish to make the colony's political system more democratic in the final phase of British rule. "Under the veneer of democracy and civilisation", said Shanghai's Liberation Daily in March, "stinking colonialism is still wriggling, and this is revealed undisguised in the person of Patten." * FOREIGNERS AS "HEGEMONISTS". The experience of 19th-century imperialism supplied the Chinese communists with the main basis for their claim that capitalist countries were bent on possessing the rest of the world in order to exploit it economically. The argument had to be refined in the early 1960s after the Sino-Soviet schism, because other communists were then at it too. Mao Zedong's "three worlds" theory explained that two "hegemonistic" (would-be dominant) powers, America and the Soviet Union, were battling for control of the second world (Europe) and the third world (led by China); those circumstances justified China's cosying-up to America so as to reinforce itself against the threat next door. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chinese leaders have come to see their country as the chief target of American anti-communism. They draw an analogy between "peaceful evolution"--John Foster Dulles's phrase for undermining communism with democracy--and l9th-century British colonialism. Then, the British forced opium on the Chinese by violent means; now, the Americans are trying to force western-style democracy on China by non- violent coercion (such as threats to withhold most favoured-nation trading status). Both, say the communists, attack China's sovereignty and threaten its health. Still, even the paranoid can have real enemies. Kenneth Wherry, an American congressman, threatened China with a horrible fate in the 1940s: "With God's help," he said, "we will lift Shanghai up and ever up, until it is just like Kansas City." * FOREIGNERS AS TOOLS. When the Anglo-French expeditionary force invaded Beijing in 1860, the fleeing emperor left his half-brother, Prince Gong, in charge. Gong and other officials later formed the nucleus of the "self-strengthening" movement which held that China must "understand the barbarians in order to control them." The self-strengtheners understood that western manufactures, so lightly dismissed by Qianlong, had brought the barbarians victory. They also recognised that Japan had copied western techniques of industry and government after the Meiji restoration, and they believed (rightly) that if they did not do the same then China would be vulnerable to Japan as well as to the West. They had no plans to substitute western for Chinese culture: rather, western learning would supply the tools with which China's culture might be protected. They insisted: "Chinese values as the essence, western technology for practical purposes." Unfortunately for imperial China, the court's conservative factions fought back and won. History records a conversation between Li Hongzhang, one of the chief reformers, and Hirobumi Ito, a leading light of Japan's modernisation, after Japan's defeat of China in 1895. "Ten years ago," said Ito, "I talked about reform with the grand secretary [Li Hongzhang]. Why is it that up to now not a single thing has been changed or reformed? This I deeply regret." "I am even more regretful," said Li, as his country slid further towards collapse. The current Chinese leadership's reasons for opening the country to foreign investment and trade echo those of the self-strengtheners. Jiang Zemin, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, told the l4th party congress in October 1992: "The goal of this reform is to build a socialist democracy suited to Chinese conditions." This would enable the people to "resist the corrosive influence of the decadent capitalist and feudal ideologies and cherish correct ideals, convictions and values." Openness was not an end in itself, but a necessary tactic in the struggle to strengthen the Chinese nation. * FOREIGNERS AS MODELS. It has sometimes suited the Chinese to look outside China for a system to adapt. At Sun Yat-sen's inauguration as president in 1911, the provisional government which opened China's republican era declared: "Admiring the systems of equality of the American and French peoples, we have met and planned together for the overthrow of tyranny and the restoration of the rights of man." Mao found his own model in Stalin's Soviet Union, until the schism caused by Stalin's death and Mao's unwillingness to see China subordinated to Russia. Now, at the close of the Deng era, China has tired of ideology; acquiring material wealth seems to many the only worthwhile aspiration left. Since China tends to perceive westerners as amoral, greedy and rich, it has once again made them something of a model. But the West has institutions and laws designed to constrain greed within socially-useful bounds; China does not. The get-rich-quick ethos encouraged under Deng has generated a tidal wave of corruption which now threatens the integrity of the Communist Party itself. Whereas envy of western prosperity is officially blessed, envy of western liberalism as a model for China's political or social development is emphatically not. The Tiananmen massacre of 1989 made a fairly effective short-term job of silencing calls for political pluralism, but China's leaders still worry about renewed discontent: they cited concern about the effect of western propaganda to justify a ban on ownership of satellite dishes announced in October. The Beijing Daily declared that foreign broadcasts "have already had a certain effect on the building of our country's socialist spiritual civilisation". Presumably in an attempt to redress the balance, Chinese television has been broadcasting a series called "Beijing People in New York" which (much like American television) concentrates on drugs, theft, murder and apathy, rather than on gold-paved streets. * FOREIGNERS AS DIFFERENT. In 1839, the emperor wrote to Commissioner Lin inquiring about stories that foreigners had bought 1,000 Chinese children in order to boil their eyes up into a magic potion. Lin replied that he thought this was probably an exaggeration. He quoted the "Record of the Seas", one of the few Chinese books on foreigners, which maintained that England was "so short of inhabitants that they rear all the children that are born. Even prostitutes who have children never destroy them." Lin surmised that since foreigners thought children so valuable, they probably did not use them much for eye-boiling. The sense persists that foreigners are a different species. They are generally referred to as lao wai--literally "old outsider". The government discourages familiarity: it segregates foreign journalists and diplomats into compounds and controls their travel, as it does Chinese travel to the outside world. Staff at the China International Trust and Investment Corporation are told how to talk to them: "Do not get into deep discussion with people you are not familiar with; find excuses to avoid answering questions which you are not confident about." Students going abroad at state expense are told "what to say if we are asked a question about China's economy, or if someone asks us about the human-rights situation." Distance breeds distrust, most visibly in discord between China and the West on basic political and social values. In the days of the emperors, all was well in China if the hierarchy was stable; and China's experience over the past two centuries has reinforced the view that order is the greatest good that government can confer on a country. The notion of luan, disorder, sends shivers down Chinese spines: it recalls such tragedies as the Taiping rebellion of 1850-64 in which 20m people may have died; and more recently the cultural revolution. Many Chinese find pluralism perplexing because it seems designed to foster disorder: why encourage all sorts of different points of view which will almost certainly lead to unnecessary disagreement? They find it strange that intellectuals should disagree openly with their governments, and the more so that a government should support the right of the press to criticise its actions. In practice, Chinese leaders often seem to suspect that pluralism is a fiction. They find it implausible that American congressmen might attack Chinese human rights abuses without having been put up to it by the American government. Foreign attempts to wish pluralism upon China are seen as part of a plot to bring China once more to its knees. Hence, in part, the violence of China's reaction to Mr. Patten's proposals for Hong Kong. * FOREIGNERS AS FRIENDS? Modern China has never had a lasting friendly relationship with a distant country. It regards them with suspicion. Its memory of past wrongs leads it to believe that the foreigners owe it some thing. It resents the disparity between the respect it expects to command and the weakness to which poverty has consigned it. The death of Mr. Deng, who is 89, will probably not improve matters. It may well be followed by a period of uncertainty and perhaps a prolonged power-struggle during which crude nationalism could provide China's next leaders with one of their few sure tools for rallying popular support. But there is room for optimism in the longer term. If China holds together and grows richer still, it will rise high in the order of nations. A China which has regained the respect it considers its due should be a China more at ease with itself and with the world. (From: The Economist, November 27, 1993; FWD by: cqyang@chemistry.umass.edu) +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++ + Executive Editor: Yaxin Wang Executive Moderator: Yan Bai + +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + For subscription: mail "SUB CHINA-NT Your-First-Name Your-Last-Name" + + to LISTSERV@UGA (bitnet) or listserv@uga.cc.uga.edu (internet) + + For back issues of CCF: + + anonymous ftp to cnd.org[132.249.229.100]:pub/community/CCF + + For contribution and inquiry: mail to ccf-editor@ifcss.org + +=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=++