On China by Henry Kissinger
I thought I'd put in a light 12 hours of reading time but I think it took me 20+. The slowness of my reading speed is alarming so I have to make up for it with sheer time -- I'll be gobsmacked.
There are 20 chapters, including the preface and epilogue. I'll be writing this post more as a series of thoughts / quotations from Kissinger that I felt were strong takeaways. (I didn't read this book intending to write a good post about it -- I'm writing the post to help me distill just a few takeaways).
"The strategist must capture the direction of that evolution and make it serve his ends. Sun Tzu uses the word shi for that quality... the strategic trend and 'potential energy' of a developing situation, 'the power inherent in the particular arrangement of elements and... its developmental tendency.'
[...]
The Art of War articulates a doctrine less of territorial conquest than of psychological dominance.
[...]
In contrast to the Western approach of treating history as a process of modernity achieving a series of absolute victories over evil and backwardness, the traditional Chinese view of history emphasized a cyclical process of decay and rectification in which nature and the world can be understood but not completely mastered. The best that can be accomplished is to grow in harmony with it."
For the vast majority of history, Beijing was the center of the world. Chinese bureaucrats stressed Confucian principles of government and stood staunchly against technological advancement. While the West was modernizing and Japan had joined their ranks, China faced both incredible internal pressures and external pressures. The Boxer rebellion and the Taiping rebellion caused massive losses internally and the Opium Wars and competing colonial forces of Britain, France, Russia, and America fractured China externally. Ultimately, China's refusal to adopt modern technology needed to combat the outside forces and quell domestic pressures led to its collapse. The fact that the Qing dynasty held out so long is a testament to the incredible statesmanship of officials like Qiying and thinkers like Wei Yuan, who pitted parties against each other by using "barbarians against barbarians." Eventually, China also faced conquest by a more industrialized Japan, which took Taiwan and many more concessions. Many of these 19th century events scarred the Chinese people and stirred resentment that still affects the modern state.
After WW2, the communist party (led by Mao Zedong) drove the nationalist party (led by Chiang Kai-shek) to Taiwan (Formosa/Taipei). America recognized the nationalist party on Taiwan as the official China and for decades, they didn't have coherent communication with mainland China. Because of American defense (notably the 7th fleet cruisers), China was unable to decisively take it back. The Taiwan Issue has come up multiple times through history and still goes on today. Eventually, America resumed communications with China. America and China both have an official "one China" policy wherein America hopes for a peaceful transition; China is strictly opposed to any stance that treats Taiwan as separate or which gives Taiwan official representation; and Taiwan is vehement about maintaining its own national identity. The issue has historically been kept ambiguous by both the People's Republic of China and the USA on purpose, for in that ambiguity lies the ability of the statesman to make consequential decisions outside of the normal deadlock. Mao famously said that it is nor urgent and that China may have to wait 100 years, but Taiwan will be reclaimed. To this day, the Taiwan Issues remains. In an era where Taiwan controls large amounts of American chips and technology supply chain, Taiwan is a key national interest for America. Most recently, tensions flared when Nancy Pelosi made a high-profile visit to Taiwan which set off militant showings by Beijing.
As a westerner, it's important to see past my bias for my own country. Imagine how the US would perceive geopolitics about a communist Texas. Or a California with a socialist agenda (oh wait). The point being: should a country be willing to acquiesce what it perceives as its right to govern a province because of international pressures by a world order that it may deem fake? A lot of these issues about a war that has never ended appear across the world: North vs South Korea, Israel vs Palestine, etc. As Jiang noted on one of his last conversations with Kissinger before he left office, a global perspective would be needed.
Moving on to Mao. Mao was an ideological man of contradictions who wielded incredible influence. He wanted to push the country's economic development by centralizing resources that may have been better left decentralized and without creating markets; he also used passionate speeches to push people to limits that they could not physically meet (The Great Leap Forward). He seeked to eliminate Chinese culture and traditions and rebuild anew through revolutionary fervor (The Cultural Revolution), but also would often draw core ideas from Confucian poetry and texts. He was strict about self-sufficiency yet also through incremental margins, enabled statesmen like Zhou Enlai to play off powers against each other and enable China to seize opportunities from the outside world. Whereas Zhou was pragmatic and executive, Mao was idealist, philosophical, poetic, and knew how to play the Machiavellian power game.
The US viewed the Communist world as a single conspiracy against liberty and freedom. There was a lot of ignorance for the cultural sensitivity of Chinese world and power struggles that occurred between them and the Soviet Union. China had a history of Russian forces accumulating at the Northern border near areas like Manchuria. Through the imperialist power struggles of the 18th and 19th centuries in China, the Soviet's maneuvered claiming large chunks of land that initially belonged to China. This distrust didn't disappear in Mao's time. China also really didn't like Gorbachev. They thought he went away from Stalin's stronger communist ideology and was representative of domestic unrest.
China often played in between the two superpowers and was part of a group of non-aligned countries in the "third world." With craft, China led competing interests against each other to challenging advances. While there was no official alliance with the US, communication from high level representatives of each government created assurances of support. The issue of Vietnam is an example.
As a greater government, China historically felt like it had a debt to uphold for the Vietnamese people. Although Chinese military helped communist Vietnamese forces with building vital infrastructure (roads, etc), they were not married to a relationship between the two that changed balances of power. Sensing Vietnamese aspirations to create an Indo-Chinese Federation, China became alarmed. With the Soviets, Americans, and the Four Little Dragons (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) surrounding China, the last thing they wanted was an ambitious Indo-Chinese Federation of Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and others united and disrupting regional balance. Naturally, the US was aligned with China against this. The Chinese also worried that Vietnam was overstepping and that the Soviet Union (an ally of Vietnam) was either manipulating them or empowering them in a brash way. In typical Chinese fashion, an offense that tips the psychological balance is the best defense and so they decided to take a first stab against Vietnam. In what in the West is considered a terrible loss for China, China invaded ~30 km into Vietnam. While they could have potentially made it to Hanoi, the purpose was to send a message. While the US didn't give material aid and warned about the implications of a Chinese attack, they did offer support in case that the Soviet Union responded with an attack on China's the northern borders in response.
Similarly, in the Korean War decades earlier while China was at one of its most vulnerable post-civil war periods, Mao sent a massive force to support the North Korean army. The last thing he wanted was either direct Soviet or American influences governing such a historically important piece of land next to China.
At the end of Mao's reign, there was a power struggle between Deng, who wanted to modernize China on Western economic market principles, and the gang of four, which seeked a return to traditional Maoist communism. Ultimately, Deng won and China was able to liberalize its economies through special economic zones. Deng instituted the 70-30 rule which is still in use today: 70% of what Mao did was right and 30% of it was not. China was scarred by periods like the Cultural Revolution and Deng was not afraid to admit it.
I did not know about the political workings behind the Tiananmen Square massacre. What started off as large student protest (which coming from economic liberalization and thus the perceptions of more political freedoms) escalated into what may have been another civil war. Because of the chaos of the civil war and the cultural revolution, party leaders feared domestic instability more than anything. Decisively, the party laid an iron fist down and prevented what could have been an even larger uprising across China. I personally didn't realize how divided the Communist party was and how close they could have been to internal revolution. The crisis was further exacerbated by Gorbachev's incoming visit to China for which there was a ton of Western press in attendance covering the occasion. The US naturally responded with mega sanctions and the removal of high level offices, and most of the West followed suit.
The attempt to alter the domestic structure of a country of the magnitude of China from the outside is likely to involve vast unintended consequences. American society should never abandon its commitment to human dignity. It does not diminish the importance of that commitment to acknowledge that Western concepts of human rights and individual liberties may not be directly translatable, in a finite period of time geared to Western political and news cycles, to a civilization for millennia ordered around different concepts. Nor can the traditional Chinese fear of political chaos be dismissed as an anachronistic irrelevancy needing only 'correction' by Western enlightenment. Chinese history, especially in the last two centuries, provides numerous examples in which a splintering of political authority --- sometimes inaugurated with high expectations of increased liberties --- tempted social and ethnic upheaval; frequently it was the most militant, not the most liberal, elements that stuck"
President H.W. Bush, a former diplomat to China, was forced to convey secret messages to Beijing in order to prevent what could have been a return to a previous era of diplomatic silence. Bill Clinton notably took a hard stance on China. Ultimately, American presidents have had to acquiesce, as the Chinese have proven to be stubborn about foreigners messing in internal affairs of the state but have been willing to compromise on many other things.
"In the period under discussion, different American administrations have come up with varying solutions to the conundrum of balancing commitment to American political ideals with the pursuit of peaceful and productive US-China relations. The administration of George H.W. Bush chose to advance American preferences through engagement; that of Bill Clinton, in his first term, would attempt pressure. Both had to face the reality that in foreign policy, a nation's highest aspirations tend to be fulfilled only in imperfect stages."
The Chinese people are "extraordinarily touchy regarding any hint of intervention in their domestic affairs." Understanding the intangibles about their approach to foreign policy is important to create policy measures that are effective and that can also balance American human values.
"The basic direction of a society is shaped by its values, which define its ultimate goals. At the same time, accepting the limits of one's capacities is one of the tests of statesmanship; it implies a judgement of the possible. Philosophers are responsible to their intuition. Statesmen are judged by their ability to sustain their concepts over time."
"Countries dealing with America need to understand that the basic values of our country include an inalienable concept of human rights and that American judgements can never be separated from America's perceptions of the practice of democracy. There are abuses bound to evoke an American reaction, even at the cost of an overall relationship. Such events can drive American foreign policy beyond national interest calculations. No American President can ignore them, but he must be careful to define them and be aware of the principle of unintended consequences. No foreign leader should dismiss them. How to define and how to establish the balance will determine the nature of America's relationship to China and perhaps the peace of the world.
"China 'is in its own category ---- too big to ignore, too repressive to embrace, difficult to influence, and very, very proud."
When it came to modernizing China, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin where both crucial General Secretary's for this period. Deng took China away from its concept of self sufficiency and turned to the outside world. He was the first Chinese leader to visit the US and made rounds through China building up sentiments for the ideas of moving economically forward. This massive undertaking had built its necessary momentum by the time Jiang Zemin came in, at which point the US and China were interdependent and had to navigate nuanced complexities in a more globalized world. This makes a great transition into Xi Jingpin, which I'll go into whenever I make my substantially shorter post on The Prince by The Economist. I have much more to hash out regarding thoughts on Chinese economic growth but this post is already running very long and I'm sure I'll cover more in a future book I read about China and will rehash information. This post is better served focusing on a few major foreign policy points anyway.
As US-Sino relations prove: "statesmanship needs to be judged by the management of ambiguities, not absolutes." How will we go from here?
Will premonitions about China end up like the Crowe Memorandum in 1907, which analyzed the balance of power between a unified Germany and smaller European states. How will the states co-evolve, in which they "pursue their domestic imperatives, cooperating where possible, and adjusting their relations to minimize conflict."
Or will Chinese leaders stick to their historical stance of not applying their domestic principles abroad? Is the American mission about spreading democracy and liberal institutions in China or to cooperate with China to bring upon an overall more peaceful world, or both?
Reading list:
Finish Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu in Thanksgiving break
India In The Age of Ideas by Sanjeev Sanyal
India And The World: A Blueprint for Partnership and Growth
The Age of AI by Henry Kissinger