recommended readings

two to add to your thinking, too

As of mid-afternoon eastern time, we have a Speaker of the House: Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana. An extreme conservative who denied the 2020 presidential vote and supports a national ban on abortion among other causes, Johnson was someone I had never heard of 30 hours ago. Since the House has 435 Members, this is unsurprising but he was a stealth candidate emerging from a rather contentious process over the past 21 days.

I suspect he has strongly anti-PRC credentials in conjunction with most of Capitol Hill today. From what I can gather, his focus has been on the domestic social agenda rather than foreign policy a la Congressman Gallagher of Wisconsin but I am not going to pretend I know much about him yet.

Rather than wander into the usual morass of uninformed judgement, I prefer to recommend two pieces I read this morning for your consideration. Both are insightful for not only their power of analysis but their foci.

Evan Osnos has been analysing the Middle Kingdom for a quarter century. A staff writer with The New Yorker, Osnos lived in China during the seemingly halcyon days of the late 1990s and early 2000s as the PRC not only witnessed modernisation but foreshadowed the challenges it created for the current generation. His 2014 book, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China portrayed a country ‘feeling its oats’ through ploughing through the multitude of factors shaping the new era. Everything was bigger and better because China was back. Osnos has a keen eye and a powerful ability to bring his experience to the reader to set the context clearly.

Osnos today offers a bleaker analysis of China in the New Yorker next week. ‘China’s Age of Malaise’ is substantially more pessimistic about the internal affairs now that General Secretary Xi completed a full decade of ‘anti-corruption’, the Party returned to a central position in people’s lives, and the nation struggles with the maturing—if not conclusion—of its economic model.

As an acquaintance mused, we have no way to be certain how fully what Osnos found in the wealthy coastal urban areas is the mood elsewhere in this vast nation. Indeed, I am invariably reminded we can never harvest the views of any entire population over a billion in number. The discouraged atmosphere the article describes is probably more representative than than not, however, because the folks Osnos did engage with are 1. aware they are always monitored when speaking with a foreigner and 2. the ‘successful’ segment of society that had the hubris his earlier book described in pursuing ambition.

The gap between wealth along the coast and in the interior has been growing for quite some time. Chinese officials themselves acknowledge that the Four Modernisations did not produce a uniform success but one still pocketed with lagging standards of living, education and, most importantly, hope/opportunity. My own observations, admittedly not rigourously pursued through scientific method, noted the flashy improvements in interior cities such as Urumqi (before they incarcerated Uighurs there) but less evidence of continuing improvements after infrastructure development peaked around 2005. But, I have not been to the mainland since the spring of 2019, never anticipating travelling there again, so I acknowledge my data is not fresh as Osnos’ is.

What he hammers is the massive psychological damage for youth: the optimism that fueled chasing a far better future has hit a brick wall. Reports earlier this year of post-graduation unemployment are flashing lights for a society no longer marching forward with the confidence it had only a few years back. Those young who invested time and optimism in education, the most classic of advancement tools in any post-Enlightenment nation, are finding it has not provided the key to the jobs, security, and a never-ending better future. And they still have no role in setting the future course because the CCP is in charge rather than facilitating political debate across the country.

Ironically, we are undergoing a bit of the same psychological doubts about education in this country but that is linked far more to the cost of repaying the expense. Questions about whether education matter do crop up in the United States but the assumption of its certainty in helping China’s one-child families was a given for the past forty-five years. Education has always been a honoured tradition in the Middle Kingdom. While many families sacrifice greatly to educate their single son or daughter, the focus of concern is somewhat different from repaying exhorbitant loans.

Reluctance by men and women in the PRC to producing more children is an additional indication of how discouraged society is. China’s demographic problems of gender imbalance only complicates the reality of declining birthrates as young Chinese ask themselves what the best course is for their futures.

And this is a key: Osnos’ writing indicates what I see as a subtle but important shift from China’s young thinking of what’s better for China to a somewhat greater consideration of what is better for them as individuals. A Confucian society encourages puttin the greater good over the individual’s desires. China certainly is not yet run by individual entitlement but I do detect ever so slightly less focus on the collective than we saw in Age of Ambition.

The second piece is by former Foreign Service Officer and National Security Council official-turned-Brookings Institution scholar Ryan Hass in ‘What America Wants From China’. I recommend this article as Ryan Hass almost invariably offers the most appropriate POLICY-focused writing on China in the current era: he stops trying to tell us how to fix China but asks us to focus on what we want to do, thus empowering us to achieve that.

I admit any author tends to like a publication aligning with our own perspectives but Hass’s Foreign Affairs contribution hits a theme I repeatedly raise: what is the desired outcome or, as we say in strategy, endstate for the bilateral relationship? For the umpteenth time, I will repeat that we spend most of our time telling us what we don’t like about China’s actions. Great. And we have virtually no chance of making China change.

Let me repeat that. We assume we are deterring China’s bad behaviour but that may not be the case. We are surmising behaviour in their internal decision-making process, often projecting our own thinking. We may or may not be correct but we have no true fidelity about their assumptions, their confidence levels, etc. It’s all postulation with zero chance China will confirm or deny. Providing us certainty is not the way the Chinese system has worked over three quarters of a century.

If we reconfigure our thinking to ask what we want as an outcome, we can then ask ourselves what steps we have the power to execute and why. Hass continues to focus on what we actually do have control over—ourselves—much as George Kennan so forcefully and elegantly noted in the famous ‘Mr. X’ article in the same journal in 1947.

Both of these are superb ways to spend your precious time. I would love to hear your responses, rebuttals, and suggestions so fire away!

Thank you for reading Actions Create Consequences and please feel free to circulate to others if you think they would appreciate the column. Thank you again to those who subscribe financially to support this work as I appreciate it greatly.

It was warm enough today that we hit the mid-70 degree mark in the Chesapeake region. What a spectacular day! I hope it was a #Wednesdaywonder for you as well. the clouds showed some pink strands this morning on the water.

And Harry was his embarrassingly indiscreet self (sigh) but he does provide comic relief.

Be safe and be well. FIN

Ryan Hass, ‘What American Wants From China’, Foreign Affairs, 24 October 2023.

Mr. X, ‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct’, Foreign Affairs, July 1947

Evan Osnos, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China (New York: Farra, Straus, Giroux, 2014)

—-, ‘China’s Age of Malaise’, TheNewYorker.com, 30 October 2023, retrieved at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/30/chinas-age-of-malaise