This post gathers my thoughts since the Chinese Party Congress in mid-October, all the way to the Biden-Xi meeting during the G20 summit. A lot has happened lately both inside and between China and the US. But the thing about history is that we humans do not always truly understand what had happened and/or what do they mean. It helps to pause and think through, much like insurance agents conduct regular or event-triggered reviews to adjust premium and policies based on updated risk profiles. Consider this writing one of such periodical reviews.
To begin with, I had no plan to write on China’s 20th National Party Congress (from October 16th to October 22nd). Not that the event was too trivial to deserve any attention. On the contrary, at least for Beijing, it was nothing less than a “monumental” milestone in the party’s history. Since China is a one party state, it is also a monumental milestone for the country.
But here is the thing: In the mainland, and perhaps in the rest of the world to a lesser extent, the more monumental the event, the more it leans toward being chokingly boring. They are for entries in the history book rather than for pleasing to the eyes. Everything is preplanned and everything has to be perfect because it is one of those occasions when “no news is the best news.”
Shocking News from China: Past and Present
Except China has had a history of appearing peaceful and stable but once in a while shocking the world with news like a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. The undoubtedly most dramatic incidents was the flee of Lin Biao (林彪) — Mao Zedong’s officially designated and globally declared successor according to the Party Constitution passed by the 9th Party National Congress during the Cultural Revolution — apparently to the former Soviet Union on September 13, 1971. Lin Biao ended up killing himself, his family and all the crew members onboard in a failed emergency landing in the desert of Mongolia.
Mr. Lin’s death successfully ended the myth of Mao being an “invincible” quasi-divinity figure, proving that given times dictators have a tendency to be defeated by themselves.
Jumping over the calendar to October 2022, 11 party congresses (from the 9th to the 20th) later and there is another shocking news witnessed by thousands of party delegates — 2,379 of them to be accurate according to this Chinese Wikipedia article — as well as international media dutifully following this otherwise incredibly boring conference.
Over-Reaction Is Forgiven
The unusual exit of the former party boss Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) — before the scheduled voting for members of the new Central Committee — has added not just a tidbit but fuel to the fire to further damage the already tainted image of Beijing. Given the location (the Great Hall of the People, in front of international media), occasion (the 20th Party Congress), and the persons (Xi Jinping sitting right next to Hu Jintao) involved, it is hard for an outsider to come up with a simple and straightforward reading without being framed by over-interpretations & conspiracies.
The way this Wall Street Journal report puts it, it is “the only unscripted moment in a tightly choreographed party congress.” A more analytic essay by Foreign Policy concludes that “Hu’s unannounced and clumsy removal was either a cock-up—or a conspiracy.”
I did not know what “cock-up” means so I Googled it: “Something done badly or inefficiently.” The author goes on to speculate one thing after another, including the possibilities that “information suddenly came up that made Xi — who would have had to personally approve any such move — afraid that Hu might abstain or even vote against him in the rounds of otherwise unanimous voting that finished off the Party Congress. That could have been a remark by Hu to his former colleagues backstage or perhaps even signs of dementia that caused a sudden panic that something might go wrong. That would make Hu’s confusion understandable.”
Apparently this analysis aims for comprehension more than precision with a “shotgun list” of possibilities. Unfortunately Beijing has not been helpful to shorten the list — or they did but nobody paid attention, or nobody believed them.
Beijing has itself to blame because transparency has never been its strength or trademark. Looking back to 1969, when the 9th Party Congress was held in the same “Great Hall of the People” (人民大会堂). The mainlanders, Mao himself included, were very proud of the fact that western media had no clue of the meeting attended by more than 1,500 party delegates — until it was formally announced by China’s Xinhua News Agency on April 1st of 1969, which came out as a total surprise, as nobody saw any sign of anything significant going on in Beijing.
We see little sign of change toward lifting the veil of mystery in the future, although I wish — but will not bet — Beijing comes to the epiphany that transparency is always the best policy since the more one tries to hide something from the public, the more speculations there will be, especially for celebrities, whom in China often mean national leaders more than sports stars. Unfortunately, things involving top leaders in China have always been carefully guarded as the “top national secrets.”
Over-interpretation is largely forgiven due to the rarity of events. Imagine the Fed suddenly announces today that it will stop implementing monetary policies, or Donald Trump turns himself in admitting all the wrongdoings throughout his life. One naturally will ask a disbelieving “Why?”
Conspiracies Are Likely Unfounded
Over-interpretation often does not stop by itself but morphs into conspiracy. Some call the Hu Jintao incident a “coup” that Xi Jinping illegally launched on the last day of the Party Congress. This obviously stretches too far in logic as Xi Jinping was obviously confident that he could win his third term through a clean voting rather than a dirty coup.
Note the word “coup” has been linked to Xi Jinping before. In September after Xi returned to Beijing after his visit to Samarkand, Uzbekistan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit there was a rumored military coup against Xi Jinping that turned out to be fake news.
The conspirators suspect that the whole “Hu Jintao incident” was a premeditated theater show, because Xi Jinping needed it to let the world know whom the real boss is, which explains why it has happened after the media was allowed to enter the meeting hall and freely take photos.
The way I see it, humiliation was not a part of the game plan. The relationship between Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao seems to be just fine. We later learned from a Chinese reporter Liu Jiawen that “Hu Jintao insisted on attending the closing session of the Party’s 20th National Congress… despite the fact that he has been taking time to recuperate recently.” I tend to believe that because Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping are the same party loyal guys willing to put the party interest before their own.
It is better to face the reality that Xi Jinping has secured his power and remains rather popular among the majority of the mainlanders.
While I am on the topic, I will even call Mr. Xi a “respectable enemy” because there are signs showing this man sincerely believes what he says about Marxism and is confident of the path that China is taking. He is also an authentic patriot.
Fighting Xi is more fun than fighting someone who is nothing but an actor, who changes his color of skin like a chameleon. You never know what exactly to expect from an actor, but Mr. Xi is different: He may come off as clumsy and awkward on the international stage (I remember watching a YouTube video showing he could not even answer a “friendly” question from the Russian press when he visited Moscow), but he often speaks what he means.
Paying Attention to the Party Congress Documents
Enough about Hu Jintao and let’s go back to the “boring” part of the party congress. One interesting piece of news is that China’ Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged the US Secretary of State Blinken to read the documents of the Congress to better understand China. This is like Blinken telling Wang to study Biden speeches on his midterm election campaign trail in order to understand the US foreign policy. It sounds arrogant and is not how diplomacy is or should be done.
People in Washington therefore have two choices: They can give Wang Yi (or China) a dirty finger and walk away, or they can heed Wang Yi’s advice and at least skim through the documents.
I wish more people falling into the second group, for the simple reason that if they want to develop a forward looking relationship with China, then reading those documents will be far more rewarding than figuring out what exactly happened to Mr. Hu Jintao.
I will be blunt: Hu Jintao is the old news — as he has been since the day he stepped down from his position as the party boss. This is not a moral judgment against Mr. Hu, who is a fine gentleman on a personal level, but a reflection of reality. To be convinced, you can just count the number of people at the front row tables on the stage of the meeting hall who had bothered to turn their heads to greet Mr. Hu when he was escorted out — none other than Xi Jinping and Li Zhanshu (栗战书), who is Xi Jinping’s top lieutenant. Chinese politics is a cruel and cold world: When you are out or down, you take your previous power, fame, respect and attention with you completely.
Maintaining Global Peace Is in the Interest of China
Meanwhile, there are real benefits from reading the party documents and here is a good example: Many in Washington have entered the business of estimating when the mainland will invade Taiwan. The particular attacking years are all over the place, starting from 2023. The world has finally breathed a sigh of relief when Biden declares that he sees no imminent danger in the Taiwan strait.
But if they paid even a tiny bit of attention to Xi Jinping’s “State of the Party” address at the Party Congress — even without reading between the lines but literally on the lines — they would have been smarter than guessing a unilaterally determined “Taiwan timetable.”
Beijing’s top priority is to revitalize the country and catching up with the US. While most everyone has heard Beijing saying that for decades, here is a link that has not been recognized by many: Beijing’s priority does not go well with wars or military conflicts outside China. Xi Jinping needs a peaceful environment more than anyone else in the world.
In an excellent but rare essay, Christopher Johnson points out why Beijing is likely to play safe after the 20th Congress. He has mainly considered the new members in the Politburo and concludes that “the United States should expect Beijing to continue to govern in a stable and predictable manner, if only because China is facing major challenges that make the Politburo crave stability.”
I would add a foundational fact to Johnson’s argument: For Beijing peace is not some remote, abstract and flexible option but a national security imperative. It has little to do with what ideology or value Xi Jinping personally holds, whose importance has been blown out of proportion to make it sound like Xi Jinping can do anything he wants, when the truth is in today’s world all “strong men” face far more constraints than democratic leaders, at least in international arena.
Losing Peace vs Getting Taiwan
Here is the reason why maintaining peace is so crucial to Beijing: The math does not lie. The latest figure from the World Bank says trade accounted for more than 37% of China’s GDP in 2021. That’s not the highest among nations (Germany for example had 89% trade GDP in 2021) but given China’s size of economy at $17.73 trillion in 2021, the dollar value of $6.56 trillion (37% of $17.73 trillion) from trade was definitely the largest. The US GDP is still larger at $23 trillion in 2021, but its trade share at 23.44% of GDP is translated into a much smaller dollar value at $5.39 trillion, $1+ trillion less than China.
All these statistics tell us how big a stake global trade has been to Chinese economy. Yet many in Washington have done the math wrong by claiming Beijing has an extra incentive to invade Taiwan to capture the booming semiconductor industry there. Xi Jinping is smarter than that. Between getting an (almost certainly will be) ruined chip company TSMC (台积电) and maintaining a peaceful environment that is crucial for trade, Beijing is much better off from the latter than the former.
In 2021 China imported a total of $432.5 billion chips, even when we assume all those chips were from Taiwan, that only amounts to 6.56% (=$432.5 billion/$6.56 trillion) of its total trade volume. Perhaps more importantly, Beijing can expect its global trade volume to stay stable by maintaining the status quo with Taiwan, while the gain from invading Taiwan is highly questionable.
How China Differs from Russia
This is fundamentally why I believe the world stands to gain from a peace preferred China, while exactly the opposite can be said about a war-mongering Russia — even though people in Washington has routinely placed China and Russia together like Germany and Italy back in WWII.
An average American probably perhaps is not even aware how many times Xi Jinping has expressed his reservations of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Of course, China is sympathetic to Putin because they believe the US has treated Russia unfairly that eventually triggered the invasion. But Beijing is allowed to have their opinions just like any other nation. The important fact is that even the Biden administration has acknowledged zero evidence Beijing has lent its pro-invasion hand to Moscow in Ukraine. In the most recent meeting with Biden and earlier with German Chancellor, Mr. Xi repeatedly and explicitly opposed using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
Does China want to lend its supporting hand to Russia in its warfare against the entire NATO? I am sure that idea has crossed their minds. What stopped Beijing is likely the rational reckoning of the sanctions against its trade gains from the US and other EU countries. What is at stake is also China’s reputation as a peace-loving nation, which is made believable by the fact that China has not entered any large scale military conflict with any nation since the Korea war, followed by a brief invasion of Vietnam.
There is another reason separating China from Russia that is related to Xi Jinping’s personal belief: Xi is a faithful disciple of Mao, who among other memorable slogans promoted the idea of improving one’s life through one’s own efforts (自力更生). Therefore, instead of relying on the imported chips from TSMC (台积电), Xi Jinping would rather see domestic producers trying hard and eventually getting ahead of overseas competitors.
The Chip War Against China
To be fair to Xi Jinping, we cannot blame Beijing for thinking and preparing for the worst, as Washington has been busy lately doing anything and everything in its power to stop China from moving forward in key technologies — even at the cost of brutally interfering the market and visibly hurting American firms along the way.
These moves are so thorough, hastened and sweeping that they are comparable to wartime measures taken by one state against its enemy state. They make the White House official statements pale and worthless in comparison. Let’s remind ourselves of what Secretary Blinken has summarized the Biden administration’s China strategy in three words: Invest, align and compete.
“We will invest in the foundations of our strength here at home – our competitiveness, our innovation, our democracy. We will align our efforts with our network of allies and partners, acting with common purpose and in common cause. And harnessing these two key assets, we’ll compete with China to defend our interests and build our vision for the future.”
It turns out that Washington is good at — and interested in — only one thing: fighting or slowing down if not completely stopping China.
The Perceived Urgency of Defeating China
Even though Beijing has been accused of being a revisionist state, I would say Washington itself is guilty of that. Beijing has been the largest beneficiary of globalization in the world and as such it has a weak incentive to break the current global supply chains — unless it is being cornered. When Xi Jinping claims that China has no intention to change the global status quo, there is an element of truth in it, at least in the short run.
What about the long run? Well, first of all, let’s remember what John Maynard Keynes said: In the long run we will all be dead. Secondly, even if we are still alive, the game in the future will be played like today. When China sees the opportunity of defeating the US at an affordable cost, it will seize it just like Japan did in the Pearl Harbor. Consider how Beijing has been treating other (smaller) G7 members to get a clue what they will do to the US if they believe they are stronger. On the other hand, if the US maintains its strengths even after China’s GDP becomes the largest in the world, Beijing will find it better off to stay within — rather than to break off — the existing world order.
Finally and most importantly, we don’t want to create a “clear and present danger” (the title of 1994 action movie featuring Harrison Ford) today by mixing risks of short and long runs. Just because China is likely a threat in the future doesn’t mean we should kill it today (while we still can).
The people thinking of doing that are feeling deeply insecure about our own future strengths, which make them see all competitions in near term as if there were just one window of opportunity to defeat China. Once that window is closed China will have an upper hand permanently. Therefore, the best strategy is to “fight like there’s no tomorrow!”
Deep down, implicitly or explicitly, consciously or unconsciously, these people believe Xi Jinping is right when he tells his party subordinates that the time is with China, that the future is with China, and that the western world is sinking while the eastern world is rising (东升西降).
The perceived urgency of fighting China drives Washington to fight the chip war without grace, pride and elegance — the qualities only seen among confident fighters but also the qualities that matter only in long lasting competition, not in a single and finally decisive battle.
I will write elsewhere on the weaknesses of China but suffice it to say here that the real American strength lies in its long term competitiveness. The longer the competition, the higher the odds for an American victory in defeating its competitors.
Focusing on the long run means there is no need to fixate on one particular technology like the semiconductor chips because American people and American businesses have long proven capable of surprising the world with endless innovations for new products, new technologies and new ways of doing things better, cheaper and sustainable, which is exactly the thing that is missing in China.
The New “Washington Consensus” from Groupthink
The danger from a perceived urgency of fighting China like no tomorrow is groupthink, more specifically the extreme version of groupthink where parties and individuals compete to see who is willing to go extremes and who is tougher to China.
According to Britannica, groupthink is a “mode of thinking in which individual members of small cohesive groups tend to accept a viewpoint or conclusion that represents a perceived group consensus, whether or not the group members believe it to be valid, correct, or optimal.”
I would go further by saying that groupthink is not limited to a group of a few people but can spread out easily to the society or even countries — especially when there is a common enemy. Its key feature is not a fixed group size but a lack of diversity due to self-censorship, lack of analyses due to scarcity of foundational knowledge, leading to a lack of meaningful discussions and debates — even in a country that is known for debates and exchanges of ideas.
One reason for groupthink, according to this tweet, is “many uncritical thinkers, conditioned to think in binary terms. We don’t live in a Disney world of heroes/villains. It’s possible to believe Putin is an evil man, whilst also acknowledging the Ukraine is one of the most corrupt nations in the world. One doesn’t undo t’other.”
A clear sign of Washington groupthink is the prevailing of, using the term in this article on Foreign Policy, “the restrictionist — zero-sum thinkers who urgently want to accelerate technological decoupling — have won the strategic debate inside the Biden Administration.”
But as pointed out by this article in Atlantic, “That priority does not bode well for the future. The mutual economic benefit brought by greater integration was a foundation of the U.S.-China partnership. As their two economies move apart, so will other relations attenuate. In a search for security, both leaders may be making their countries less secure.”
I doubt how many people in Washington today still subscribe to the view that the Sino-US relationship was (or is or will be) built on mutual economic benefit, given the current competition for defeating China by all means.
This is why a sole but insecure superpower can be a liability to the world, especially if the domestic demand for fact-checking outside the US borders is low, together with a weak international demand for rule of law. The latter means applying the same rule to all countries and putting American Exceptionalism to rest.
Learning Something from Domestic Politics
Most people do not think domestic affairs when they consider international strategy, but it helps to think outside the box. The 2022 midterm election has sent us a loud and clear message that voters don’t like leaders taking extreme position, like denying the 2020 Presidential election. It’s almost like the majority Americans silently accept the “middle ground doctrine” (中庸之道) of Confucianism, even though most of them have no or very vague idea what Confucianism is all about.
Elections are not much different from jury trials when the defendant and prosecution compete for favorite verdict by juries. To win the hearts and minds of juries, it’s never a game to compete which side is more extreme than the other. In the primaries candidates can be as extreme as they want to get nominated. But any smart candidate should be mindful of the general public.
The nice thing about domestic politics is that one gets the lesson quickly through the election results — unless of course one calls the results fake or fraud, which does not help much because guys like Trump still must move out of the White House at the end of his term. Most politicians learn that members of juries, those who do not belong to any party or those holding non-partisan views, do not like extreme positions and will vote extremists out.
When it comes to international relations, we have roughly the same story because while the G7 are one bloc of countries, many other countries out there can easily outnumber G7 by a big margin. If the US is having an internal competition for being tough with China, chances are that other countries do not follow that route.
Transparency Is the Best for Fighting Disinformation
Consider this suspicious case of who blew holes North Stream pipelines. Despite Denmark, Germany and Sweden are all having investigations over the ruptured pipeline sites, nobody has said anything yet, citing extra cautions due to the current warfare. Meanwhile, websites like CEPA.Org (The Center for European Policy Analysis) are quick to blame “disinformation” against the US and its allies.
However, I’ve said it before to China and will say it here: Transparency is the best way fighting disinformation. First of all, I would support Russia to join the investigation because it is clearly one of the stakeholders. Secondly, I also would encourage preliminary results to be released because the public deserves to hear them. Thirdly, I would also not prematurely exclude the US from the list of primary suspects because it has a real interest in exporting its own natural gas to the EU countries and also because it has shown repeatedly an interest in cutting off the energy link between Russia and Germany. Finally, do not let ideology gets in the way of investigating facts, because truth should always go above ideology.