Cruising along the
“Jing Cheng Gao Su”, the highway that connects the capital with the Emperor Kangxi’s
(1654 – 1722) summer retreat up in Chengde.
That trip, not unlike Voltaire and Emilie’s ride I mentioned yesterday
must have taken the entourage a few days to navigate when they moved court up
to the north. (I notice that Kangxi and
Voltaire, (1694- 1778) shared 28 years on earth.) On the Jing Cheng Expressway, one can get up to
Chengde now in a few hours. Heading the
other way, into Beijing, I’m lucky this morning. There’s no traffic.
We visited Chengde once a few years back and there are some
lovely extant palaces there. Kangxi and
his successors like Qianlong, whom I’ve brined-about before, would welcome the
neighboring leaders from Tibet and Mongolia and other vassal states and host
them in mock accommodations of their home palaces. One vivid memory is of a rectangular pillar
sat atop a turtle, which is a popular motif.
The pillar had a message carved in four languages, Tibetan, Mongolian,
Manchu and Chinese. Part of the message was that the Chinese and its empire
should serve the other three ethnicities.
At first glance this remarkable sentiment isn’t something
one would expect from imperial China.
But the Qing were a Manchu people.
Not ethnically Han. And even
though they strove to emulate Han Chinese sophistication, they retained their
Manchu distinction. Traveling out of
dry, hot Beijing for something more like the grasslands of their ancestors was
part of the purpose a place like Chengde.
Furthermore this notion of “serving” reinforces the unquestionable
centrality, even if supplicant centrality, of Han China.
I’ve dug into a book long recommended by a friend on China
Foreign Policy by Edward Luttwak, provocatively entitled: “The Rise of China
vs. the Logic of Strategy.” http://www.amazon.com/The-Rise-China-Logic-Strategy/dp/0674066421 Last summer Luttwak had a nuanced editorial
in the New York Times on Syria which suggests he’s a gent that gets around,
geographically:) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/opinion/sunday/in-syria-america-loses-if-either-side-wins.html?_r=0
As the title of the China book suggests, China’s foreign
policy often proceeds in opposition to what otherwise seems to be their
strategic objectives. For example in the
period immediately after the U.S. financial crisis, a mixture of hubris and vindication
pushed Chinese state actors to follow nationally unsound but personally or
departmentally aggrandizing behavior patterns.
So that in the case of Vietnam and Philippines, China forcefully
insisted on bilateral negotiations around the Spratly Islands, during a
multilateral event. This tin-ear
approach squelched what should have been a great moment for China and set the
other two nations straight to America’s arms.
This phenomenon is something Luttwak defines early as
“Great-State Autism,” wherein the
largest of states such as India, Russia, the United States and China don’t
understand what impact their actions are having on the world around them nearly
so well as smaller states who are necessarily more nimble at considering their
neighborhood, as they don’t have such broad, populated territories to manage. He
raises a fascinating and for me, overlooked example of successful (bilateral)
negotiations between China and its immediate physical neighbors. In at least a half-a-dozen cases physical territory
that China had claimed, (sacred soil!) was successfully swapped and differences
settled with at least six different neighboring states. That is remarkable.
Think about it. There
are at least six different examples of contemporary China giving up territorial
claims, in the interest of settling restive areas with ethnic minorities,
creating order at the border, etc. And
the Chinese citizenry, who would presumably tear their shirts off in outrage,
if a solitary inch of the Diaoyu/Senakaku guano pile were seceded, say nothing.
In a multi-party state opposition parties would make such
information available and pummel a ruling party with it. With a one party state, they CCP does not
have to defend much against public opinion.
If they don’t want the public to know, it is merely downplayed. If it is historical, it isn’t taught or
mentioned. Because it is not framed by
the propaganda ministry as an outrage, it is not seen as an outrage. Diaoyu /
Senaku could certainly be settled rationally, as China has done in the
past. It only needs to be seen as a 丧权辱国[1] if the CCP wants it seen that way. The same of course, applies to Japan as it
concerns this particular mid-ocean, bird waste repository.
On the Diaoyu or the Spratly islands, where there are no
boarder crossings, and minority people to subdue, it is rather, oil that is at
stake. The “injustice” of other
countries’ claims and invaluable sovereign rights to the territory have already
been promoted to the Chinese nation, so it is much more difficult to change
course and reframe. But the debate can
certainly be had with educated Chinese people about just what supposedly
“sacred” soil is and why it is OK to renounce claims to it in one instance, by
the ruling Party, and not in another.
In other news, I seem to recall a time when the prevailing
meme was that the rapscallion Chinese were the ones who were hacking the
world’s computer systems and had military units and hacker hacks who were
squirrelled away in this building or that, as shown on CNN, compromising the
security of upstanding nation’s such as the U.S. Have a look at this article. http://www.spacewar.com/reports/France_UAE_satellite_deal_shaky_after_US_spy_tech_discovered_onboard_999.html
U.S. equipment, embedded in a French satellite sold to the
UAE, is designed to surreptitiously intercept and capture data
transmissions. Tough time to be a spook
at Langley I suppose. It’s almost like
people keep finding reasons not to trust you.
That simple story of ‘China = hacking’ really was forever
compromised or shown for the one-sided jingoism it was, in the post Snowden
world. The Chinese were actually telling
the truth, when they said “we are the greatest victims of hacking in the
world.”
I heard Roy Ayres playing vibes with Fela at the gym this
morning and it sounded lovely. “Africa-Centre
of the World.” I dug around a bit
looking into his work. I have a copy of
“Everybody Loves the Sunshine” somewhere, which is also up lifting. But I was hoping, I suppose to find some
earlier, straight-up jazz of his, but nearly everything is fusion or soul and
often with a less than stirring vocal mix.
Now I know where “Diggable Planets “ got the “We Live In Brooklyn” bit
from. But it’s not what I’m in the mood
for this morning. I can’t write with
someone yelling “Don’t Stop the Feeling” in one ear while a woman moans in the
other. I’m heading back a few decades
for the groove I’m looking for.
[1] sàngquánrǔguó: to forfeit sovereignty and humiliate the
country (idiom) / to surrender territory under humiliating terms
