The recent political eruption over the Chinese balloon has revealed an ugly and dangerous underside of ‘Twitter politics’. This kind of sensational ‘journalism’ is not new. Remember the Maine? If you were alive and paying attention in 1898, you would remember this slogan that drove us to an imperialist war with Spain. A bomb went off under an American warship, (The Maine) sinking it in Havana harbor. We didn’t know who set the bomb, and to this day have never determined it, but it led to a rush to judgment and jingo! We stole Spain’s colonial empire.
Or how about the Incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, where McNamara exaggerated a minor naval incident into a Casus belli that led to 50K American and up to a million Vietnamese dead for essentially nothing?
This sort of spark is not uniquely American by any means. Bismarck wanted war with France, so he edited a telegram, (see Ems Telegram) about a minor disagreement with the French to seem as though the French had been insulted, egging them into starting the war that they would lose badly.
One gets the feeling that we are experiencing this type of public opinion manipulation now. Everybody is jumping on the attack of the balloon, from Fox News to MSNBC. As of today, (Feb 10, 2023) we have heard from the US State department, claiming that the balloon was capable of sophisticated data collection, hinting at possible telephone conversations being overheard, and used this as the rationale for shooting down the balloon over the Atlantic. But at the same time they are saying that measures were taken to ensure no important intelligence was leaked. What is this really about?
We have the “China Hawks”, who are shouting about shooting it down sooner, and taking retaliatory measures, that appear to have no bounds. These China Hawks have an irrational hatred of China, and are part of a multi-generational American faction that have hated China ever since Truman stopped MacArthur from nuking Beijing (or Peking, as it was known in the West in those days.) Their motto then was “Unleash Chiang Kai Chek!” under the delusion that the losers of a 20 year Civil War could return from Taiwan and take back the Mainland from the Party that had just defeated them.
The China Hawks grumbled when Nixon went to China, yelled when Carter let the Mainland into the UN, (and demoted Taiwan), and have silently simmered as their bank accounts fattened as more and more trade developed between the US and China.
But this trade (in part) led to the demise of many industries here, and it has hit working people the hardest. There are other factors involved in this decline that have nothing to do with China, as well, but they are glossed over. This decline in American manufacturing has led to a reorientation of US politics, flipping the economic classes and the parties that represent them. The result being the rise of Trump, who leaned heavily on racism and warlike bluster to gin up hatred of China among the Walmart shoppers who purchase Chinese made consumer goods. The Rs cravenly jumped on the Trump bandwagon and turned China into a sinister ‘Fu Manchu’ power that has a ‘Plan’ to destroy America.
Oddly, many of those same ‘China Hawks’ have shown sympathy for Putin, and seem ready to forgive his blatant attack on Ukraine.
We have been through this before. In the 1950s, many of the Americans who really understood the facts on the ground in China were purged from government and academia. They had seen the futility in supporting the Guomindang, (国民党）ie. The Nationalists, who ended up fleeing to Taiwan in 1949. This led to a loss of knowledge about China, creating a blind spot that led to disastrous mistakes.
As we subsequently learned, Mao had no love for Russia or Stalin, and we could have avoided the Korean War with a bit of diplomacy. Mao had no love for American liberal democracy either, for sure, and he did become unhinged with his many mad schemes from 100 Flowers, Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, etc. But how much of that was the result of the American imposed international isolation? It is impossible to answer that, but the policies we did have at that time were a failure. They led to to two wasting wars on the Asian mainland, and 30 years of non-contact. Would the aging Eisenhower have allowed those policies to flourish if he wasn’t protecting his ‘crazy right flank’(ie. Joe McCarthy)?
Biden appears again to be allowing us to fall into another period of China bashing, also at the behest of his Crazy right Flank, (ie. Kevin McCarthy - front man for Cotton, Marco, Cruz, et al). He is trying to control it, with nuanced outrage, canceling the Blinken trip, and protesting the balloon. Hopefully this will die down as the Rs seem more interested in Hunter's laptop.
China is not going to be internationally adventurous. Its recent outbursts have been extremely costly and will weaken Xi’s grip on power. He has awakened Japan, the Philippines are re-signing treaties with the US, and the Indian border is warming up. They don’t need any of this after losing two years of economic growth because of COVID. It has too much to lose. It is surrounded by potential enemies that loom much larger than the US. Xi’s (and his right wing) recent threats to Taiwan are hollow. Stability is its prime directive. They will go to any length to maintain it, including locking up its own political dissidents, which is horrible, but this is nothing new, and we can’t totally remake a country with 5000 years of continuous history, and ways of governing itself.
Biden’s instincts are correct, that we engage with China, adjust to the changing economic situation regarding trade, but keeping in mind what any student of economics knows - that trade is good, it lifts everyone, it adds wealth to all. But we should not fall into the ignorant cacophony of China bashing. Having lived there and developed friendships, yes, I am biased, but I also have the benefit of understanding a little bit about how things work and how China really thinks and feels about the world and the US in particular. They know we are a better bet long term as friends. We should not close them off again.
For more on American blunders in Asia see review of "The China Mirage".
The China Mirage
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