three different arguments

the china question edition

I admit today’s column may be too geeky for many of you today so I understand if it doesn’t appeal. Three things I read yesterday struck me as worth bringing to your attention, each for a different reason in the vein of exploring this oxygen-sucking topic we cannot seem to escape.

My former colleague at the National War College, Dr. Michael Mazarr, invariably asks some of the most pertinent questions one ever hears. Mike departed NWC a decade ago for the RAND Corporation, originally an Air Force think tank now serving as a behemoth incubator for public policy prescriptions. Mike’s questions are more penetrating as we see lots of “admiring the China problem” (as another former NWC colleague and graduate Marine Colonel Chris Coke used to say) while Mike goes to considering answers as well.

Mike’s, “Imagining the endgame of US-China rivalry”, is worth your time. Asking the same question I raise without hearing many responses, he wonders how do we want the relationship to appear when the rivalry between the two states subsides? Far too often, the answer one gets is “well, we want China not to threaten us” but what does that mean? How would we measure that? Why does we assume regime change, which rears its head more often these days as a desired outcome, would be to our benefit?

He observes about 40% of the way through: “The problem with American strategy today is not that the United States should not compete. It is that persistent contestation alone is an incomplete recipe for success. Unmoored from any concept of an endgame, American competitive instincts can run out of control and guide US grand strategy rather than serving it”. Ooh.

Mazarr goes on to power through several of the alternatives sometimes offered. I won’t rehash them since it’s his publication but will note his citation below is worth your time. Mike scores again in bringing us to several distinct aspects of the problem.

The second essay was by Peter Hessler, the same author I recommended last week for a brand new book on his return to the Middle Kingdom during the Covid years. The essay is perhaps a cheat sheet for what he learned during the experience if you’re not into reading a full book, although the details of his time in Sichuan are quite enlightening. The essay, also dated 23 July, is “Sideline Sinology” which starts by describing how Hessler’s departure from the Middle Kingdom led to selling a car.

Published in the Asia Society’s regular collection (and email product) China File, Hessler lays bare the juxtaposition he felt between being on the ground seeing and reporting what was going on between 2019 and 2021 versus being aware of the critics who see this as a form of apologizing for an abhorent regime. I won’t describe Hessler’s article as anguished but struggling as he explains his decisions and what he felt needed expose to U.S. audiences. It’s a personal yet superbly analytical piece giving us all the challenges of China from a single experience. Plus you can buy a used Honda, perhaps.

The final piece was a substack/podcast entitled Sinica by Kaiser Y. Kuo, a Chinese American who really blends contemporary China themes together into fascinating essays. Long before I read or wrote on substack regularly, I would find Kuo’s Youtube conversations with scholars on timely topics. Writing “A Letter from Beijing” yesterday, Kuo describes how different he found the capital from his last trip and why he felt as a China watcher, the benefits of being there outweighed the negatives.

Kuo, as true for anyone, acknowledged he engaged with a smattering of mainlanders rather than some representative sample of Chinese citizens. The vastness of a population as large as China’s (uh, same for the United States or India, of course, among other enormous places) makes that true. Even with the caveat that the CCP leadership wants to reimpose its will more firmly on the population, both the Kuo and Hessler essays remind us that variety of thought and experiences does exist in China. Kuo’s essay offers the most tangible descriptions of how the city is physically changing in response to the ebbs and flows of life, indicative of China’s contemporary experience. He has decided, according to the essay, to spend half of his year there in the future after this visit, showing the lure both the current Beijing and China offer him. That, of course, will seal his fate with some who feel we should cut off ties with China altogether (cue the Hessler essay for how negative criticisms can become) but he obviously is not concerned that everyone will stop reading his work.

As noted above, these are three slices on a huge country we spend much time discussing, occasionally in an evidence-free, abstract way. I simply thought them worth your time, each for gathering a different set of why questions to consider. I am convinced that after reading any, if not all three, we all have a better idea why finding singular answers on China is so difficult. It’s hardly cut and dried, from day to day or location to another location. Put another way, it’s complicated which almost invariably is not what we want to hear.

China isn’t going away so I believe we need look at as many slices of the place as we can much as an MRI examines the body so we have a better sense what we are seeing.

Thank you for reading Actions today. If you find this valuable, please feel free to circulate it. Thank you to those who subscribe as your financial support means a great deal to producing these columns.

Be well and be safe. FIN

Peter Hessler, “Sideline Sinology”, chinafile.com, 23 July 2024, retrieved at https://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/sideline-sinology

Kaiser Y. Kuo, “A Letter from Beijing”, Sinica podcast, 24 July 2024, retrieved at https://sinica.substack.com

Michael J. Mazarr, 23 July 2024, retrieved at https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/imagining-the-endgame-of-the-us-china-rivalry/