Is it so hard for American foreign policy scholars to give credits to China for her foreign policy success? The case in point is about China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This column piece appears here because it will never be accepted by Foreign Policy (FP, A prominent journal on foreign policy) where only papers defaming or making criticism on China appear. Recently, on the FP website, a paper entitled, China’s Global Critics Are Helping It Win, by Joshua Eisenman and Devin T. Stewart, October 30, 2019, caught my attention. The following papers suggested for further reading by FP, Belt and Road Tests China’s Image in Pakistan - by Daud Khattak , Can China Deliver a Better Belt and Road? - by Jamie Horsley, China’s Belt and Road Initiative Is a Corruption Bonanza - by Will Doig, compelled me to write this column piece.

I have written a few times about BRI since its beginning in 2013 known as One Belt and One Road (OBOR) tracking its origin and progress as well as its problems and criticisms appeared in the media. Perhaps influenced by the Silk Road history I had learned in my youth, I was glad to learn such a proposal. But I was duly concerned with its magnitude and scope which definitely will challenge China for its implementation from finance, engineering and foreign relations points of view. Therefore, I could understand if any country was hesitant to endorse or join the program and any foreign policy scholar was critical about its potential problems. However, as an economic development program chartered to encourage inter-State collaboration and to produce win-win economic results, even possible social and cultural benefits, I don’t see any reason for anyone to oppose or sabotage the program. Rather, I expect to see analysts to encourage participation in BRI and keep a critical eye on its progress. My previous papers on BRI appeared in this column (#312, 8/10/2019, #302, 5/25/2019, #301, 5/18/2019, #297, 4/20/2019, #296, 4/13/2019, #168, 10/29/2016, #91, 5/9/2015) were written with the above attitude.

As seven years have passed and 126 countries have joined the BRI program, BRI must be considered as the most significant foreign policy ever introduced by any nation in a peaceful time with a positive objective (not a war or anti-war alliance). As an American citizen, I do not understand why the United States would not take part in such an international program and make a positive influence and contribution to it. It is reasonable to make criticism (such as warning on finance burden and analysis on inadequate payback) but it is unreasonable to discredit them if China and many participating countries had weathered through the financing problems or made mutually agreeable debt-equity swap to sustain their part of the BRI development. Eisenman and Stewart’s article is obviously biased to wish the BRI to fail (or hoping China has ignored the criticism and failed miserably). As foreign policy scholars, the authors underestimated the wisdom of the policy makers in China and her partner countries. Why wouldn’t they understand the problems and criticisms? Why wouldn’t they even foresee those problems and solve them? In all fairness, they, not the criticizers, deserve the credit if they win or succeed.

Eisenman and Stewart started their essay with the story of Hong Kong’s protest and NBA Houston Rockets’ blunder in handling general manager Daryl Morey’s irresponsible tweet about Hong Kong’s protest. After seven months of demonstrations in Hong Kong, even common folks now know that there were fake reports about the Hong Kong protest. The protest against amendment of extradition law for criminals should have ceased after the Hong Kong government scrapped the amendment attempt. (Even though the extradition law is needed to include Taiwan so that a murder, Chen Tong Jia, a Hong Kong citizen, killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan and escaped back to Hong Kong avoiding murder charges, could be brought to justice.) On the contrary, the Hong Kong protests were agitated by external influence and turned violent destroying properties and hurting innocent people and police.

President Trump knew and called the Hong Kong protest as riot long before lots footage of riot scene circulated through the Internet contradicting the fake news reporting. Thus now even common folks know that the Hong Kong protest is not for freedom and democracy. The Hong Kong people have more freedom than Americans as they have gotten away with rioting. (Which would never be permitted in the U.S.) So Morey’s tweet supporting Hong Kong protest is just like supporting violence or hate crime or racial slur which cannot be tolerated as freedom of speech. The Chinese people certainly have the right to be angry at Houston Rockets and NBA that they made insincere apologies, different in Chinese and English versions, and tried hypocritically to hide behind the shield of freedom of speech. I am totally surprised that Eisenman and Stewart would use the Houston Rockets’ case to support his opening statement:  ”The American public has suddenly awoken to China’s pervasive influence over U.S. corporations.“ The U.S. has used business sanctions and boycotts freely to punish foreign corporations for their misbehavior. I think the Americans are wise enough to know that on this issue the China is mimicking the U.S. to use boycotting NBA games to punish them.

As a foreign policy, the BRI is genuinely a Chinese proposal in many ways completely opposite to the isolationism the U.S. seems to be adopting lately. Since WW II, the U.S. has been the strongest leader in the world engaging everywhere on the globe. However, our current foreign policy has been shying away from international obligations, for example, withdrawing from Paris Climate Change Agreement, Trans Pacific Partnership (Trade agreement), UN Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and UN Human Rights Organization (UNHRO). We also did not join the UN Convention of Laws of the Seas (UNCLOS) which makes us less righteous in making claims on ocean rights (such as Freedom of Navigation) in the South China Sea. China and South East Asian countries are members of UNCLOS and they are working on a policy regarding ‘Proper Conduct in the South China Sea’ (PCSCS). When PCSCS is ready, the U.S. has to either accept it or ignore it showing the world that the U.S. is an ocean bully.

From foreign policy perspective, globalization is a de facto phenomenon whether one likes it or not. The BRI program aligns very well with the principles of globalization. There were 68 countries 65% of world populations and over 40% world GDP participating in BRI in 2017. In 2019, it has 126 countries and 29 international organizations involved with BRI. The second annual BRI conference held in Beijing had 29 head of States attended. Should the U.S. stubbornly refuse to join the BRI? I don’t think so. The FP journal and its foreign policy scholars are doing a disservice to our country by keep publishing biased articles regarding China’s foreign policies, especially the widely accepted BRI. 



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The book, China’s Vision of Victory, authored by Jonathan D.T. Ward, 316pp, Atlas Publishing, March 2019 was reviewed by Tanner Greer in a review article, Can American Values Survive in a Chinese World?, published in Foreign Policy, pp 68-70, Fall 2019 (foreignpolicy.com, 10/12/2019). Dr. Jonathan D.T. Ward is a multi-lingual China-India relations specialist with a doctorate from the University of Oxford. He had spent over a decade living and traveling in Russia, China, India, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East. He speaks Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic. Dr. Ward, a frequently invited speaker, founded the company, Atlas, a consulting firm advising American companies doing business in China, etc. He was interviewed on Fox News but as usual the questions were brief tailored with Fox’s current interest such as the Hong Kong protests rather than getting into his book. Tanner Greer, a writer and strategist residing in Taiwan, on the other hand, did make some analysis of Ward’s book with his own opinion in his review. However, Greer’s opinion and America mass media’s narrative (such as Fox, CNN, ...) on China’s foreign policy often contain a deep bias revealed by Ward’s book and visible in Greer’s review. Hence, a review on the review and the book is meaningful. 



Ward with his credentials as a keen observer of Chinese politics operates his political consultancy from Washington. His book title certainly catches attention of many people concerned with US-China Relations. With China rising rapidly gaining wealth and power relative to her peers in the world, what do the leaders in China hope to achieve with the nation’s new found clout is the central question posed in Ward’s book. Greer said that Ward’s simple answer to the question is ‘supremacy’. Greer cites Ward’s book as a useful anecdote to “the delusion that Chinese leaders seek nothing more than to roll back U.S. hegemony in the Western Pacific (or just satisfied by becoming the dominant East Asian power). Ward guided readers through many Chinese official documents to show how wide-ranging the Chinese leaders’ ambitions are, from projecting the strength of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to be second to none by 2050 to a China-centered future where the U.S. led system will be discarded and a community of common destiny for mankind will emerge.



Ward traces the Chinese desire to shape the future of all mankind to a notion being taught to schoolchildren: China was once the center of the world (the mother of invention, the seat of wealth and the beacon of civilization) - China’s natural role in the world order - a role disrupted by a century of humiliation, foreign invasions. The age of suffering is over and now comes the “national rejuvenation”. Ward stresses repeatedly that the popularity of national rejuvenation ideal lies much more outside of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, Greer expresses objection to Ward’s view by claiming that Ward is wrong about CCP not being the driving force behind China’s foreign policy. Greer discounts Ward’s conversations with common folks and his findings in Chinese books and think-tank reports, rather Greer claims that the critical issue is what the Chinese leaders in Zhongnanhai believes on which Ward has nothing to report.



Greer technically agrees with Ward’s implicit question throughout his book: whether the U.S. should acquiesce to China’s vision of victory? Greer’s reasoning is plausible since he says that the U.S. is a strong nuclear-armed nation blessed with rich resources, with positive influx of immigrants, and situated between two oceans with no near-enemy. China would not pose a credible geopolitical threat to the U.S. However, Greer raised the issue of ideological threat that the Chinese leaders are locked in what Xi Jinping has called “fierce competition” ... in the ideological sphere.” “The Chinese leaders assert that this ideological competition threatens the existence of the CCP and to national rejuvenation.” Greer further writes, “This is the root motivation behind the “interference” and “influence” operations conducted by the West.” These operations are not just about shaping the opinions of foreign policy elites in China but also aim at the enemies China’s leaders fear the most, from Christians and Ulghurs fleeing from religious persecution to Taiwanese, Hong Kongers, etc. who live in America. Ideological threat may be greater than geopolitical threat, however, Greer is outdated and wrong in emphasizing CCP’s fear of ideology threat and CCP being an insecure regime, as I shall explain below.



Greer’s above logic may be acceptable when the Communist China was just established. The U.S. being the strongest nation was holding the anti-Communism flag and leading the world against Communism. Mainland China was a new Republic facing an opposing regime retreated to Taiwan. The Ideological threat of ‘Democracy against Communism’ was genuinely felt by CCP, but China experimented with Communism with failures and bitter lessons for nearly three decades. Then China changed her ideology by gingerly embracing capitalism and reforming her own socialism. The U.S. later recognized China acknowledging Taiwan as a part of China. The U.S. engaged China causing the collapse of Soviet Union in 1990, a victory year for ‘anti-Communism’. China went on with her reform and economic development to become world’s second largest economy, but the U.S. still held her anti-Communism flag even though the number of Communist countries dwindled significantly. So the ideology battle of ‘Democracy vs Communism’ is gradually replaced with the inter-nation competition and geopolitical conflicts.

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Among top twenty high GDP countries, fewer countries are democratic. China’s rapid rise certainly cannot be attributable to Democracy neither attributable to pure Communism. After three-four decades of continuous economic growth propelled by China’s political/economic reform, CCP certainly deserves credit for her hard work and success. At the same time, many Western democratic countries went into turmoil some bankrupted. Therefore, it is China who cannot understand why the U.S. is still obsessed with ideology threat or fear of Communism which had been abandoned in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America. China proclaims “non-interference” doctrine in her foreign policy but she gets plenty of problems coming from external influence and interference. China was able to lift several hundreds of millions of people above poverty including Tibetans, Ulghurs and other minorities living in the western part of China. The ever self-confident Chinese (billion people) are wondering why the strongest U.S. is insecure and wants to interfere and influence China’s domestic issues? No wonder, Ward finds Chinese people so positive about national rejuvenation.

Greer said correctly that geopolitical threat is easy to handle but with the wrong argument. Geopolitical threat boils down to national economic interests, problems solvable with economic solutions or money. For instance, South China Sea islands disputes, the involved countries are finding solutions barring external political interference. So are the India-Pakistan-China or Korea-Japan-China problems all solvable if external political influence were removed. I would say Ward’s book can shed some light for the American foreign policy elites if they remove “the ideology threat” bias. From foreign policy point of view, the U.S. should not use ideology as an excuse to influence and interfere in other nations’ domestic issues. What is the real justification for wasting so much resources on soft power, interference and influence operations in the name of ideology threat to topple other regimes?
 
Take Hong Kong’s protest as an example, Hong Kong citizens enjoy more freedom and democracy than most people in Asia, even more freedom than US citizens judging on how Hong Kongers got away with riot for four months. Americans can never get away with any violent protest. China is gaining self-confidence every day; Hong Kong situation will be remembered as a political lesson for her citizens. The U.S. and China are simply two great nations in competition, neither affordable to have a war. If both sides remove insecurity from non-existent “ideology threat”, any conflicting problems can be avoided. Most American Values can survive in a Chinese World since most Chinese are used to adapting beneficial American values through their system reform. The U.S. can also benefit from China’s rejuvenation.
 
Ifay Chang. Ph.D., Inventor, Author, TV Game Show Host and Columnist (www.us-chinaforum.org) as well as serving as Trustee, Somers Central School District.
 
 

The U.S. - China relation is like a hotpot under fire, the broth is gradually boiling. If you were ever experienced with a hotpot dinner, you would know that your food was what you put into the hotpot. The taste of your food gets the benefit of the broth as well as from what your dinner partner put into the hotpot to cook. So the important thing for sharing a good hotpot dinner is to first agree on a mutually acceptable broth and order your own food components, seafood, meats, tofu, vegetables and species which hopefully are compatible with the food ingredients your partner selected. There are lots of food components that can be cooked in the hotpot appealing to one’s appetite as well as contributing to the flavor of the broth (known as pot bottom) that is continuously developing in flavor during the hotpot dinner. Only in an cooperative way, the partners sharing a hotpot banquet will enjoy a great meal together and often the resulting cooked broth will be so delicious which can be shared and enjoyed by all participants. Furthermore, the tasty remaining  hotpot broth can be saved for next day for cooking a pot of noodles or rice or macaroni serving more people. So the hotpot cuisine is an art of making agreeable choices of compatible broth, food components and species so to produce an enjoyable meal for all. However, if any disagreeable choice was made, the hotpot could be ruined and even possibly cracked open under unattended fire. This “hotpot analogy” of the US-China relation can be understood and appreciated better, if we characterize the past US-China relationship as the starting broth, a very agreeable broth developed through “mutual engagement”, now the broth is being added with too much vinegar (business sanctions), extra soy sauce and salt (tariffs in trade) and hot chilli pepper or jalapeno (weapon race) making the food and broth too sour and too hot to eat. 

There are plenty of commentators discussing the issues and warning the consequences of the souring or not U.S.-China relationship. One of the key factors for the deteriorating U.S. - China Relations is the rapid rise of China with an economic growth rate (GDP) of three to four times of that of the U.S. in the past couple of decades. This fact should not be a reason for the U.S. to take a hostile attitude targeting China (spoiling the broth), rather it should be a motivation factor for the U.S. to investigate why is China able to sustain such a high growth rate. In another word, what is the secret of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) keeping China in a high growth for decades? Many political analysts have studied and compared the political systems in China and the United States. They have tried to pinpoint a causality principle for China’s rapid rise but rarely making sense. Thus the political rhetoric continues on, debating the superiority of  “democracy” versus “authoritarian” system with the argument leaning towards blaming the latter system stealing from the former system through State owned enterprises (SOEs) taking advantages of the free enterprises (NGOs, non-Government owned). In my personal observations, I have come to a conclusion that the above assertion is illogical. Rather, there is a simple causality principle which can explain why the CCP has been a successful achiever. This causality principle is based on a philosophy - “協調， Xie Tiao” for success, that is, the CCP is requiring all its party members to develop and use this high EQ skill. This skill would be regarded more important than having professional knowledge and project management skill, if a party member was ever to serve in the government and to manage a government project. The CCP’s party authority is actually acquired and built on the above coordination and management skills. I shall explain this secret of success of CCP with more details and supporting evidences below.

The word, “Xie Tiao”, has no exact single English word translation. I used the word coordination and management skill above to represent “Xie Tiao”, but one must add a few modifiers to convey its complete meaning. “Xie Tiao is a verb and a noun describing a concept or philosophy which implies “providing assistance and persuasion while coordinating a task or project involving doing a set of actions to obtain consensus and to assure success” in a persistent and patient manner. The above modifiers only explained the word, “Xie Tiao”, as a noun - concept and philosophy, but as a verb - action and process one must use examples and actual cases to explain it. First, the CCP not only teaches its members the concept and philosophy of “Xie Tiao” (noun) with literature and studies but also trains its members the action and process of “Xie Tiao”(verb) by assigning them responsibilities from low level to high level government management jobs (village, county, city, province then national level) in progression and/or government projects (small tasks to billions of dollars projects). The promotions of CCP members are results and success oriented. Therefore, the public service officials in China are extremely effective in obtaining success but appearing not so efficient due to time consuming “Xie Tiao” work, patiently and persistently coordinating across their peer level (horizontally) to get endorsement and cooperation as well as across their stake holders (vertically) to build consensus, approval and support. 

The above explanation can be confirmed by many examples, from small project to big project in CCP’s economic development plans. The prominent cases are the various industrial parks, science and technology parks and economic development zones that have been built from the South and East growing into North and West. These parks and zones were competing for success and success were replicated elsewhere. Another area providing ample evidence of the “Xie Tiao for success” is in the energy domain, from various energy exploration, oil, gas, solar, wind, thermal, methane ice to the now famous Yangtze River hydropower. The Yangtze project is not only a grand engineering project but also an amazing “Xie Tiao” project requiring persuasion and coordination from getting consensus from millions of citizens (simple support to agreeing to be relocated hundreds of miles away) and getting financial and administrative support from all levels of government. There are plenty of other examples such as across State mega-infrastructure project, satellite communication and geo positioning system. The fact hundreds of millions of Chinese are lifted above the poverty level and being elevated towards middle class speaks volume to CCP’s success which can all be traced to the fundamental philosophy: Xie Tiao for success!

In the United States, such “Xie Tiao for success” breaks down often across interest groups and geographic regions; the high speed rail project from North to South California dragging on over ten years is a pitiful example. China now has over one hundred thousand miles of “gao tie 高鐵“ in a grid covering the entire China. The “Xie Tiao” philosophy or skills work in China; will it work outside of China? I personally am anxious to see the success of the “One Belt and One Road” or “Belt and Road Initiative”. The early results do show some success but also some set backs. We shall watch the progress in BRI and see whether the “Xie Tiao” philosophy can be universally accepted.



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