fairy dust or a plan?

A caution on some China suggestions

It’s a brisk—yes, on 28 June, brisk—morning in the Chesapeake so I am motivated to write early.

I don’t watch debates because they are a preposterous format for Chief Executives of any party. Debate is the purview of the Legislative branch but ours at the federal level is allergic to discussion with the other side so it’s a meaningless concept in modern times. The media reviews are that Biden did poorly and Trump lied ceaselessly. I don’t know but neither of those surprise me.

I want to tackle a different topic altogether this morning: China regime change. Some advocating change in U.S. policy towards the PRC actually are inching towards forcing regime change in that vast country of 1.4 billion people.

Where exactly would that take the world or China?

Let me absolutely clear: the Communist Party is a self-perpetuating group of men (sure they have women for decoration but the Standing Committee of the Politburo has a grand total of ZERO (0) women and the Party bosses never seem to include women except as specialized interlocutors or to serve tea) who aim to hoard power to enrich their own families. Yes, I know that is not their stated position but I am an evidence-based kind so what I see is the 100 million like-minded corrupt Party members. Whatever the CCP founders thought they were creating in 1921, it’s a repressive, dictatorial, mercurial, and self-aggrandizing bunch today. In short, it is far from any worker’s paradise unless someone else is doing the work for you as you reap the profits. I haven’t been to China since 2019 and NEVER expect to return; that is deliriously fine with me.

The CCP’s ambitions in East Asia, if not the world, are worrying as they challenge the status quo of a relatively open Asia for commercial transit. Their bullying of the Philippines over land features in the South China Sea are emblematic of this determination to get their way. Japan occasionally suffers a similar fate over disputed rocks in northeast Asia.

Those aspirations also threaten Taiwan’s de facto sovereignty because of the Party’s fear it will be punished by its own people for ‘losing’ part of the Chinese motherland. No matter that Taiwan hasn’t been part of China since 1895 when the Qing Dynasty lost it to Japan, or that China’s ‘perpetual’ control dates back as far as the 1640s rather than 1640 B.C.E. (China is as loose with facts as other people while there is no one forcing them to retract their ‘facts’).

Xi Jinping also demands international ‘respect’ by pushing China to a position as a decision-maker around the world, reversing that never ending Century of Humiliation concern. Historically, China has been the dominant state and culture in Asia but his Belt & Road Initiative and Global Security Initiative promote Beijing as equal to the United States in determining the world’s future. This hasn’t come to fruition but the CCP is taking methodical steps with a panoply of instruments of statecraft to achieve the goal.

What should the United States do? There are a number of options but one is particularly problematic for us in my analysis.

Wouldn’t we be better off to oust the repressive Butchers of Beijing?

Well, it is a two step deal. Step one is ousting Beijing which could result from a conflict, from internal upheaval or abandoning power (I am confident we can discard option three). That portion of regime change could be bloody for the world and certainly destabilizing for the PRC and its citizens.

Here’s the part I never see explored: to replace them with what? empowering whom? enacting these changes how and how long would this take? We do get bored with international projects and expending resources to remake places we initially are eager to fix.

Discussions of regime change sound so refreshing in the abstract. We have been a relatively successful country over our two and a half centuries, though that success is neither no longer guaranteed nor even shared by a substantial portion of the country which feels left out for a variety of reasons.

But with the admitted and crucial exceptions of Japan and Germany following World War II, which of the many examples of regime change we have engaged in have been successful? I am keen to hear of the successes because I have a relatively good sense of contemporary history but I struggle to find too many examples.

Afghanistan? Uh, no, let’s forget that one. Iraq? No. Guatemala in the 1950s? Err, no again. Vietnam following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu? Nope. Cuba repeatedly between independence from Spain in 1898 and Fidel arriving in 1959? Abysmal record. The examples run on without successes that I can recall (Perhaps I am having a senior moment so please correct me if I am missing examples: I mean that).

The U.S. occupation of West Germany (remember, we did not even confront remaking the whole country in 1945) and Japan followed the two decimated countries declaring unconditional surrender after prolonged, brutal conflict. Even with that surrender resulting from complete defeat, the United States still has troops in those countries, albeit ostensibly for different reasons today than eighty years ago. Some of the frustration Americans show at our global responsibilities relate directly to these multi-generation deployments, a fact to consider.

Regime change is a two part deal: getting rid of the people we don’t like and replacing them with a sustainable government we think is better. Americans invariably either overestimate their capacity or ignore altogether the second part. And therein lies the rub. As Colin Powell famously told President George W. Bush before we launched the 2003 war in Iraq, 'it’s the Pottery Barn model. You break it, you own it’. He meant that if you overturn a government, it’s both irresponsible and unlikely to lead to a desired state of affairs if you don’t replace the government with something better.

That is much harder to do than it ever appears at the beginning.

China is a country roughly the size of the lower 48 states with five times the population of the United States. It’s geography is much more challenging with every single dynasty (including the CCP) finding it hard to govern outside of the capital. China’s internal challenges are renowned: water, food, jobs, environmental decay, climate-induced weather extremes, ethnic tensions, and demographic imbalances. Whomever rules China has no alternative but to address these concerns to prevent luan, or societal chaos.

How would we go about faciliating that? The success of the CCP over its seventy-five year history is in preventing the development of any alternate sources of power within the country. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Few words are more terrifying to the CCP than any of the Color Revolutions of the 2000s and 2010s; the response to anyone organizing, much less actually announcing policy options, has been instantaneous, thus preventing the creation of any organized opposition. Why do we think they monitor the internet so carefully?

A post-CCP regime would require some knowledge of governing, particularly such a huge, complex country. Sprinkling fairy dust all over the country is insufficient, I assure you.

What about letting Taiwan authorities govern China? Seriously? This is the same place where the Legislative Yuan members literally fight on the floor of that body. The reason the Guomindang fled to Formosa as they lost the civil war on the mainland was partially their poor standing among the population to whom they seemed only interested in pursuing corruption. Plus, after hearing for eight decades about the evils of democracy and the Taiwan ‘authorities’, support for Taipei taking over would be mixed at best.it is an amazing democracy but still young and only relevant to 24 million people rather than 1.4 billion.

Plus, who has the capacity to blanket this country with a force to preclude the CCP from reorganizing? Do we honestly think we would? Taiwan (seriously, people, seriously)? India or whom? This is not a silly question but one we should have learned to ask before March of 2003 took us into the regime change business in Iraq. This China regime overthrow would be infinitely worse.

Are we falling prey to that truly American view that the people of China are just hankering for freedoms in the face of the evil Chinese government? They may well be hankering for some freedoms but they are more concerned about the instability that could overwhelm the country. I don’t think we realize that for many millions of Chinese, the binary choice of CCP or freedom isn’t quite as compelling as we assume. Most of the world is not us—good or bad. And some Chinese, even non-Party members, like things as they are because conditions are better than a hundred years ago.

As we look at the options for the future bilateral relationship with China or the world’s engagement with the PRC, the reality is that it’s impossible to see much option to CCP leadership until the Chinese people decide organically to alter things. It’s seductive to encourage them but I neither have much faith we would succeed or that the CCP would allow such challenges to its rule to grow if they could see this occurring.

Does this mean the CCP will successfully retain power forever? Not necessarily. But, I think those advocating regime change are woefully underestimating or misrepresenting what that would both entail or create. At a minimum, we need serious thinking on what this would entail but I am not confident that is occurring, though I confess it would not be a public conversation.

I am not sure we would get a China decidedly more to our liking, either. We have interests that compete with China, regardless who is in power. Read any biography of Chiang Kai-shek to see how he hated Joseph Stilwell as he represented Franklin Roosevelt’s commitment to keeping China out of full Japanese control. It’s hard to then understand that we supported this man’s regime as he so desperately disparaged and hated the United States for its role in showing the Middle Kingdom’s weaknesses. Chiang’s value was that he wasn’t a Communist but that isn’t quite a ringing endorsement.

So, I suggest the next time you see an article advocating regime change in China or hear a speaker on the topic, make sure you ask questions about the follow on. What comes next as the first part of the process, the overthrow or cessation of a regime, is almost invariably far easier than the sustained, long process of inculcating something more to our preference, if we are able to do that at all.

Maybe this is all being considered but I would feel considerably better if I had some details beyond the apparent wishful thinking—or fairy dust assumptions. Actions crest consequences and a destabilizing China in Asia or around the world does not strike me as a better deal for us.

Rebuttals? Suggestions? Please hurl them my way as I want this to be a forum for conversation rather than withdrawing into corners without exchanging constructive, if painful, thoughts. I may be wrong! Let me know why you would argue for some other analysis, please.

Thank you for reading this lengthy column today. I espeically thank those who support Actions with a subscription as it both motivates and supports the work. If you find this useful, please feel free to distribute it to others.

It sounds as if we might receive a hurricane in the Atlantic soon but I do hope the you are safe from the horrible flooding or heat plaguing us of late. Be well and be safe. FIN