Impact of culture & history on China's foreign policy - Part 4 Challenges

China's recent rise has made many uncomfortable with its direction as a world power.  The experience called China and its thinking are so very different to that in the West that misunderstanding is so easy, leading to unnecessary fear and unwarranted optimism.  If Russia is a riddle in an enigma, China is even more mysterious, with little contact with Western history until lately, different religion & philosophy and even different basis for its language.

While I am not a scholar or an expert in the field, I find most analysis of China's foreign policy ignores the history and culture of this great nation and so I will attempt to explain how China's foreign policy is rooted in its history and its culture.  The timeline of the Chinese dynasties here may help put things into historical perspective.  Also, by culture, I do not mean the arts, although that is an element, but I mean the way people think and behave in the social sphere.

The article got much longer than I expected and is now part of a five part series.  In the process I all realised that what I really want to do is to share insights into Chinese culture, philosophy and practices, which shaped and are shaped by its history.  Many non-Chinese observers view China as a mirror of their own experience but while there is much that the Chinese culture shares with the rest of the world, being part of the human world after all, there is also much that can be very alien to it.  And of course, a great deal lies in the middle - same drives expressed in different conditions.  So, I hope I can help the Western mind understand China using an examination of its foreign policy as a convenient vehicle.  You will need to keep this intention in mind as this series is not intended to be a complete thesis of all the topics it touches on. 

The first article in the series is here and the previous article is here.

Challenges for China

It is hard for me to see China's rise to be anything but transient, despite the current media fascination with its inexorable rise.  How difficult would it be for China to overcome the baggage of its history and culture remains to be seen, considering the very fundamental challenges to its continuing ascent to the global apex.  There is probably a small window for China to realise any global ambitions before these challenges drags its trajectory back to earth.

Without going over the same grounds that many more qualified commentators have analysed in depth in specific topics like China's debt bomb, I would like to outline the more cultural aspects of China's challenges.  I will focus only on three of the many challenges China faces, and I have selected them really as vehicles to discuss insights into the Chinese culture that I often feel has been left out in analysis of the future of China.

Economy and demographics

Much has been made of the economic rise of China and working out when it will overtake the American economy.  I find that irksome because of the intellectual laziness of merely projecting past growth into an indefinite future to plot when two lines will cross, satisfying the lure of sensational headlines in the process.  Some years ago, much ink was split over reports that the Chinese economy has overtaken the American economy if calculated by PPP, which is an economically nonsensical comparison, and thankfully is hardly heard now.

The past: are the numbers accurate?

The discussion of future Chinese growth rarely considers several points.  First, there is the issue of the past: how much of this economic growth numbers is accurate?  Indeed, even the Prime Minister himself was said to have questioned the reliability of the numbers and said he relied on proxy numbers to gauge economic growth: freight transportation and electricity consumption are among the proxies most economic analysts use, which have developed to become sophisticated indices.  Studies seem to indicate growth numbers using these proxies/indices are consistently lower than the official numbers reported.  Wouldn't you be suspicious if annual economic growth has been reported came in at almost exactly the projections issued by the government, every single year for decades?  This questionability of Chinese numbers extend to other areas, not just purely economic: for instance, in 2014 the US SEC imposed a six months ban on the Big 4 accounting firms' reliance on audit work of their affiliates in China.  I do think most China observers & reporters can and do understand the reality but why put facts in the way of a good story, right?

In a culture where a centralised autocracy struggle to maintain control over practically autonomous provinces that nominally report to them, it is common for provincial officials to report what the emperor far away wants to hear but find difficult to verify.  This arose from a combination of a lack of transparency, reliance on a centralised bureaucracy for promotion, 
complexity of the country and a culture saving face.  The central government is aware of this and does moderate the numbers to compensate: the sum of provincial GDP numbers are some 5-10% higher than the consolidated national GDP issued by the National Bureau of Statistics.  This misreporting had disastrous consequence in the past: the central government response to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan in 2019, though highly effective, was delayed by the hesitation of local party officers to report it upwards.  The reluctance to challenge industrial policies of an idealistic Mao in the 1950s led to the charade of Potemkin villages and agricultural misreporting at each level of government.  The reported but non-existent surpluses ended up being exported by Mao to bolster communist allies in the midst of the worst famine in history.  The photo shows grain harvests so dense that a child could sit on it, intended like many other reports to impress central government but led to other farms densely growing grains until they failed.

The future: will demographics catch up with economics

Second, there is the issue of the future: demographics will be even more difficult to defeat.  One has to remember that the generation who first had children under the one child policy in the 80s are now retiring: two pensioners supported by the economic efforts of one worker, eventually four grandparents by that one sole grandchild.  By the end of the century, China's population will halve while America's increases, to half that of China's from under a quarter now.  The Chinese labour force has already started to shrink, and is now running on increased efficiency to generate growth.  The government responded by raising the limit per family to three, but is unlikely to reverse the decline for long (still having a limit could be aimed at restive minorities like Uighurs and Tibetans rather than Han Chinese).  The xenophobic nature of the culture preclude imported labour, unlike the American demographics built on immigration.  If not reversed, we could expect the economic growth to falter as efficiency growth runs out.  Japan could be a model for its recent opening up to foreign labour, but then again Japan never had resentment of exploitative foreign devils but always held a fascination with the foreign gaijin.  The adage of China will be the first country to get old before getting rich is gaining currency for some time now.

The current: can it still remain centrally controlled

Third, there is the issue of the current: the structure of China's growth, which is largely based on centrally-directed public investments, as opposed to more sustainable private consumption common in Western economies.  This created a massive overcapacity in the economy with entire ghost cities lying empty waiting for inhabitants.  Yes, these cities will eventually be filled like Pudong, initially a ghost city now a part of Shanghai, eventually did.  In a way, overcapacity would be expected in a centrally planned economy like China's as economic needs usually change faster than economic policy can adjust.  While one can say China's centrally planned economy is a result of the communist system, I find it unlikely considering that communism really only inhabit the small visible spectrum of China's public life, especially in today capitalism-fuelled growth.  Governance ambitions of emperors of the past often outstrips their ability to reach into Chinese lives, public and private.  The communist emperor is no different and with the focus on economic management because its legitimacy depends on it, one would understand its aspirations to control the economy to the nth degree.  Who knows, they may succeed, with China's much vaunted mobilisation abilities at its disposal - but history is stacked against centrally-planned economic management.

In a way, the Belt and Road Initiative is very much an attempt to export this overcapacity to be paid by hire purchase by buying countries, winning diplomatic points as a by-product.  Chinese foreign policy is as transactional as Chinese culture: Belt and Road is not the Marshall 

Plan where the United States gave away some 5% of its GDP in form of grants and more importantly, opened its economy to rebuild nations devastated by the war.  Sure, American generosity was not driven entirely by altruism but also by geopolitical and commercial considerations but Belt and Road lack the subtlety of the Marshall Plan to competently consider the broader factors beyond self-interest - maybe it is just a Chinese learning curve and they will acquire this perspective eventually.   I have tracked Chinese investments in Africa since the 80s and noted how they brought in Chinese workers to build railroads with the accompanying infrastructure of living quarters and cooks instead of using local labour which would have stimulated the local economy.  I wondered whether they will bring in their own cooks to support their labour force building their investments in Malaysia, where there are plenty of local ethnic Chinese cooks.  No, they brought in Chinese cooks too: that was confirmation to me that Chinese investments were not intended to help the local economy but theirs.

Another concern arose from the recent reduction of democracy within the Chinese Communist Party with the rise of Xi's cult of personality and the removal of term limits to allow him to be leader pretty much for life.  The accumulation and centralisation of power in the person of Xi has the inevitable result of surrounding him with sycophants who will not be able to provide the diversity required in decision-making.  Should this state of affairs persist and spread to the rest of society, the worry within the Communist Party is that it diminishes creativity with self-censorship of thoughts and solutions inconsistent with the promoted narrative.  And creativity is really what China needs now if it is to challenge for the global economic leadership with no one to copy, unlike the command and logistical skills that facilitated its rise along paths trodden by previous global economic powers.

Culture and its role in the world

Of late, China's relationship with Western culture shifted in the 80s with Deng's opening up.  With the trauma of the Cultural Revolution still fresh in memory, the realisation was that the Cultural Revolution happened because of inherent vulnerabilities of the Chinese culture.  Reconciling it with the nascent rediscovery of the Chinese culture laid waste by Mao's turmoil, China's public debate slowly seek to consider Western openness that has engendered its vibrant progress while anchoring in the rehabilitated Chinese Confucianism to ameliorate the worst of Western world's tendency for traumatic change.  Ironically, the model suggested was that of its own cultural colony, Japan.

Re-examining the social contract

Unfortunately, the debate got increasingly politicised in the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident when many conservative communists identified too much exposure to Western ideals as the root cause to the communist grip on power.  Refocussing the social contract onto the 'we let you get rich' part became the paramount effort to ensure 'you let us stay in power' part.  The communist leadership correctly identified the emerging internet as the gateway to Western thinking & culture that needed controlling and the result was the Great Firewall of China, behind which a controlled narrative was exclusively fed to an entire population.

If anything, the Chinese culture is a very practical culture.  Chinese religion, for instance, has little need for sophisticated concepts of divinity, unlike Western and Indian religions.  Chinese philosophy is largely aimed at ensuring the smooth running of society as Confucianism does.  I can't think of any internal or external war the Chinese fought over principles.  (OK, the Taiping Rebellion was ostensibly led by the 'younger brother of Jesus Christ' but that really took place against a backdrop of economic and food deprivation).  That is another reason why Chinese foreign policy is so transactional.

The social contract also became very transactional, especially the 'we let you get rich' part.  Many young people today have sources of information outside of the official narrative, particularly those who had the opportunity to study or work overseas.  While there are some who take the government narrative as the unvarnished truth, I believe most understand the government narrative for what it is - government narrative.  They are happy to behave in China in the manner endearing them to the communist government to ensure their personal advancement and security of their families but I often wonder how they will act if you put a retribution-free green card in their hands.

Will the social contract change with the ever growing awareness of Chinese youths, with their loosening need for economic security?  The bellwethers are the experience of the successes in the Chinese diaspora: Hong Kong and Singapore.  The social contract in Hong Kong has broken down after a century of apolitical pursuit of economic advancement: Hong Kong youths are now keen to seek non-material goals of democracy and self-choice.  At the same time though, Singaporeans are willing to support the government at the ballot box to continue the deal of peace and prosperity in exchange for giving up their political voice.  It will be interesting to examine these two societies for indications which way China will go.

Mass cultural products

Historically, mass cultural products in China do not involve satisfying the cravings of the populace by commercial interests as in the West but rather to exploit popular trends for political purposes, which could be as benign as maintaining a peaceful society or as insidious as keeping the emperor in power.  Often both are basically the same thing.  The communist party is merely following an ancient tradition when they tapped into latent anger at the Century of Humiliation whenever their grip on power is questioned.  They could just as easily have swung to the other end of the spectrum to court Western culture, technology and economies as they did in the 70s when Mao sought American support to buttress Soviet power, or in the 80s when Deng sought Western affirmation and assistance for his market reforms.  Popular culture in China is at the service of government policy.

The cultural vandalism of the Mao years was the not uncommon in China: Shi Huangdi was infamous for his book burning and burying Confucianist scholars alive but his trauma was short-lived and was followed by the flowering of Chinese culture under the Hans after a short interregnum.  Would the Mao interregnum lead to a similar renaissance in Chinese culture but in a way that is no longer exclusively Chinese?  Western competitiveness married to Eastern corporatism in an environment of Chinese pride at its pre-eminence in the world?  

And what of the place of the centralised autocracy in such a culture: would it still be able to hold the narrative to drive the diplomacy and soft power projections or would the Western features of a hybrid culture means Chinese power is more driven more by the aspirations of the Chinese people as a whole than the Beidahe elite?  And how much retributions for the Century of Humiliations would it seek?

How will such a syncretised Chinese culture strengthen its challenge to Western culture to export itself beyond its traditional cultural orbit? Unlike Japan and Korea, Chinese soft power has not been taken up in the rest of the world outside of culinary (where it is arguably more overshadowed by Hong Kong cuisine) and maybe kungfu (which has not achieved Olympic status like Japanese and Korean martial arts have, and first popularised in the 1970s by Bruce Lee, an American).  Will the transactional nature of the Chinese culture be a hinderance to its ability to project soft power projections?  As the Soft Power Report 2019 concluded

Until global audiences see China as an unequivocal force for good in the world, China will struggle to generate the soft power one might expect of such an important and great nation.

Governance and language

The Chinese language has long been a source of befuddlement to those not born with the language.  Its highly tonal nature has been exasperating for those never exposed from young to basic Chinese and are used to non-tonal languages prevalent in almost all over the world.  Also, the ideogramic nature of written Chinese, probably the most practical way to effectively represent a tonal language, makes it difficult for foreigners to memorise the 3000 characters or so needed to read a newspaper.  Memorise, because there is really no other way to learn to read the language.  And learning to write is even more difficult with the teacher's emphasis on stroke order.  This emphasis on memorisation is likely to be the origins of the rote learning prevalent in Chinese education, with its consequence on the Chinese conformal work ethic.

Not only that, southern China is a patchwork of local dialects, overlaid with Mandarin as the Beijing dialect imposed as the national common language.  Interestingly, all dialects including Mandarin share a common script.  The dialects are incomprehensible to non-speakers and are separate verbal languages but much like Japanese and Chinese, the dialecticists (is that a word: what do you call someone who speaks a dialect?) can intercommunicate via writing.  Basically, you speak Mandarin or Cantonese and not Chinese but you write Chinese and not Mandarin or Cantonese.

OK, I am not getting into a debate here over the definitions of language and dialects.  Just to state that in Chinese thinking, Cantonese occupies a lower status as a mere dialect, even if it has some 80 million native speakers, if you use the widest definition of Cantonese.  The ruling elite considers Mandarin as putonghua, the common tongue which has a higher status as a language, when linguistically it is just the Beijing dialect of the Mandarin branch of the Chinese language.  One can see some cultural imperialism here in the denial of Cantonese the dignity of a language, something Cantonese resents, particularly those in Hong Kong.

Potential consequences of language reforms

Chinese authorities do realise the difficulties of the language, particularly its writing system and have simplified most of the common characters.  Successive Chinese governments have also tried to romanise the Chinese written language but none has gained traction until smartphones arrived.  (Interesting note: At one point during the Sino-Soviet rapprochement in the 1950s, Mao flirted with the idea of cyrillisation of written Chinese, with books and propaganda posters printed in Cyrillic Chinese.)  The explosion of technology use and the tiny size of the keyboard made it impractical to form characters using strokes.  Romanised pinyin make it easier to select the correct character from the pinyin keyed in, especially with the advent of predictive text.  Thus, the skill moved from formation of characters (which you have to follow strict rules on stroke sequence) to merely recognising them.  Many recent surveys revealed the inability, not just lack of fluency, of Chinese youths to write basic characters on paper from scratch.  In effect, Chinese children learn to write Chinese characters to know how difficult it is and learn the alphabets so that they can forget how to write characters.  Is my childhood exasperation showing?

Each dialect is spoken differently with different pronunciation and/or tone even when reading the same script.  Thus, there are separate pinyin for Mandarin and each dialect.  To be able to write each other's pinyin require ability to speak each other's dialect, which would otherwise be unnecessary.  Communication can still take place via the common script but each person has to input separately, much like using translators when travelling.

At the present trend with the increasing reliance on pinyin, the unity of the Chinese language could come into question.   An extreme development would be that a future Chinese education system skips the characters themselves and teach only pinyin.  This would be the ultimate fragmentation of the Chinese language like how Vietnamese and Korean broke away.  But is that an extreme unlikely scenario: would the Chinese turn its back on over two millennia of continuous Chinese writing?  There is pride in an untrained Chinese ability to read inscriptions on a two-millennia-old tomb, something I don't think any other living language can claim.

Options

A more likely scenario would be a parallel writing system as in Japan or Korea, where Chinese characters act as a supplement to an alphabetic-based system: Koreans refer back to classical Chinese characters if there is any ambiguity in the Korean script.  Having said that, Koreans schools no longer teach Chinese characters, though available as an elective.  One hears stories of Chinese couples finding out that they have the same surname only on sending out wedding invitations with their names in Chinese characters, a taboo in traditional Chinese societies.  Non-Chinese government officers often unknowingly transliterate the same Chinese name using different spelling, eg., Chen & Tan could be the same Chinese character.   Even a parallel writing system could lead to fragmentation.

The current accommodation seems to be a lite version of the Japanese model and Chinese newspapers already use it: Chinese characters forming the bulk of writing but foreign names and new loan words are spelt out in fully romanised alphabets instead of previously transliterating them with the nearest sounding Chinese words, sometimes with hilarious meanings.  Japanese and more structured and transliterate imported words using their own syllabic katakana script to supplement Chinese-based kanji characters.  While this will likely preserve the unity of the language, the overt differentiation in pinyin systems could give rise to reassertion of regional identities, undermining the historical centralising tendencies of Chinese emperors.  At the very least, it could spin off Chinese sub-cultures within mainland China as is happening in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore.

If this happens, how will it affect overall Chinese culture & the remaining sub-cultures and consequently Chinese domestic power?  Will it still be able to propagate its soft power in the future when its own culture is fragmenting rather than consolidating?  Wasn't this what happened to previously ascendant powers that proved too unwieldy to stay together: Roman, Islamic, British?  More pertinently, what will be the impact on national politics if reassertion of regional identities leads to cycles of cultural repression, accelerating fragmentation through resentment, especially in the more independent-minded South?

The next article in this series is here.