Real War (22 page)

Mao made a revolution. He successfully won and consolidated power over the most populous nation on earth, and he used that power to bring about a series of social upheavals that cost millions of lives and transformed one of the world's oldest civilizations. But China was not totally transformed. One thing that must powerfully impress any visitor today, in fact, is the extent to which it is still China. Mao did “change a few places in the vicinity of Peking,” and he did change much else. But millions of peasants still till the land much as they have for centuries, and the educated Chinese mind remains the same subtle, sophisticated instrument it has been for centuries. Just as China absorbed invading barbarians until they became Chinese, so there is good reason to believe that the communist revolution, too, will be absorbed into the body of China. In fact, the process has already begun. The question is how far and how fast it will go, and how many reversals there will be along the way.

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Among the great questions of the last decades of the twentieth century and most of the twenty-first will be how long the Sino-Soviet split lasts, how permanent the new U.S.–China relationship will be, how far along the paths of pragmatism the Chinese will go in order to develop their immense economic potential, what sort of world view the Chinese leaders will hold and what sort of world role they will play. Related to these is the question of how long they will continue to go along with the existence of an independent Taiwan. The answers to these will depend as much on Washington as on Peking.

The Chinese know that we have no territorial designs on them. They respect and want our technological and financial assistance. They realize that we are the only power capable of checking the designs of the Soviet Union. Some argue that economic interdependence is enough to hold us together. This is not true. Above all, the Chinese leaders want China to survive. To them, this means maintaining an effective counter to the Soviet threat. If, with our assistance, they become stronger economically, this will help them to develop on their own the military strength to defend their interests. But this is a long-term prospect. In the next twenty years they will not have that capability,
and they are going to look closely at the United States to see whether we have the power and leadership with the will to use it, not just in our own defense but also in defense of our friends and allies in the event that they become targets of Soviet aggression.

If the Chinese lose confidence in the United States in this respect, no amount of trade or financial aid will keep the U.S.–Chinese relationship viable. China then will have to revert to its historical pattern of accommodating its enemies and hoping to absorb them.

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Economically, China today is in a rush to catch up. The task is one to stagger the imagination. Western experience has no parallel: a billion people, most of them living almost as their ancestors did centuries ago, with only a primitive infrastructure of transportation and communication; a hostile superpower on their northern border, and a heavily armed client of that hostile superpower on their southern border; a population left distrustful, cynical, and weary by decades of Maoist revolutionary upheaval.

Yet with all the problems, there is reason for the Chinese to be optimistic about their long-term future. China has enormous natural resources, including vast reserves of coal, oil, and other minerals. But more important, the Chinese have shown themselves exceptionally able people. Wherever the overseas Chinese have settled, they have been high achievers. Hong Kong and Singapore are essentially Chinese cities. Taiwan has staged a remarkable economic performance. Its per capita income is three times that of the mainland, and with less than 2 percent of the mainland's population its exports are 20 percent more. Throughout the Far East the influence and success of Chinese merchants, bankers, and businessmen is legendary. Only in mainland China itself have the Chinese failed economically, and the reasons for that failure have largely been political and ideological.

Japan offers one key to what China might achieve economically in the next century. The populations of both countries are highly intelligent and exceptionally gifted; both have ancient civilizations that combine great delicacy and grace with a fierce martial tradition; both are highly disciplined and imbued
with a strong “work ethic.” But in their initial encounters with the West, they responded very differently. Japan reached out to absorb Western technology; China resisted Westernization, fearing its corrupting influence. As a result, Japan was already a major industrial power before World War II, while China was still a vast, primitive agricultural preserve. But China is now beginning to do what Japan did much earlier. Japan is already on the verge of becoming the world's second greatest industrial power—and China has nine times the population of Japan, and an incomparably greater wealth of natural resources. It will take generations to bring the vastness of China fully into the modern world; even as parts of its economy advance, perhaps rapidly, others will remain far behind. But the potential is there, if the Chinese show the skill and pragmatism to develop it, and the patience to do so in an orderly way.

One reason for Japan's stunning economic success is that it never hobbled itself with communist dogma or a socialist system. But China now appears to be trying to free itself from at least some of those constraints. If this trend continues, the economic ceiling for the Chinese could be virtually unlimited; if China reverts to a stultifying Marxist ideology, it will have no chance to realize its potential.

Today's leaders have seen the mistakes of the Maoist era, and they seem determined not to repeat them. Mao died in 1976. His body was hardly cold before the new leaders moved against the “Gang of Four,” which included Mao's widow, Jhiang Qing. The “Gang of Four” were dogmatists, fierce keepers of the flame of ideological purity. While not assailing Mao personally, today's Chinese leaders speak freely of the last decade of Mao's rule as a time of disastrous mistakes. The fact that they do not defend the recent past but rather emphasize the need to recover from its mistakes is the best evidence that they
can
recover. Whereas politics and ideology were the previous rulers' touchstone for virtually everything, the present rulers' assessments are far more pragmatic; they deal less in abstract theory, more in concrete observation. Deng's motto—“Seek truth from facts”—might seem elemental to a Westerner, but it is a radical departure from recent Chinese dogmatism. At the moment, moderation seems to be winning out over revolution.

Today's top Chinese leaders are self-confident, sophisticated, realistic. Hua Guofeng is a tough-minded pragmatist. He speaks softly but firmly, with a quiet assurance. Deng Xiaoping is more volatile, more dynamic; he gives the appearance of never being assailed by doubts. It seems a reasonable guess that in charting China's changes, Deng is the more aggressive innovator, while Hua quietly works to ensure that the changes are not too abrupt or too hastily considered. But both give evidence of having been liberated by Mao's death and the subsequent eclipse of the “Gang of Four,” which traded on Mao's name and authority in enforcing a doctrinaire ideological purity.

Precisely what form the Chinese economy and society will take in the years ahead is impossible to predict. The Chinese are extremely subtle, which is one reason Westerners sometimes find them “inscrutable.” Subtlety is one of the arts of both diplomacy and statecraft, and it often provides ways of resolving, or at least skirting, otherwise intractable differences. Already, the Chinese are showing great flexibility in their efforts to attract foreign investment and to structure joint ventures with Western companies. The officials handling this—who include business leaders of the prerevolutionary era—show a sophisticated understanding of the capitalist system and of international finance. More capitalist-style incentives are being introduced into China's own economic system. In fact, the willingness to experiment is one of the most striking features of China today, and it seems to be rooted in confidence rather than insecurity. China's leaders give the impression of being sufficiently sure of themselves and their power to be able to try new ways, and to learn from experience what works and what does not. Westerners complain that the major problem they face in trying to do business with China is the infuriating layers of Chinese bureaucracy they have to contend with. This should not be surprising, since muscle-bound bureaucracy is a common characteristic of communist and socialist regimes; ironically, it was also a major weakness of the governments of Imperial China.

The Taiwan issue continues to be one for which no easy or immediate answer appears on the horizon. The United States cannot and should not back away from its firm declaration—made in the Shanghai communiqué in 1972—against the use of
force to resolve the problem. While China will predictably continue to press for bringing Taiwan under the central government in Peking, self-interest will strongly argue against any resort to military action. Despite an enormous population advantage, crossing a hundred miles of open sea and making an amphibious landing on Taiwan would be a formidable task for the mainland Chinese. To commit the forces required would weaken their capability to defend their long border with the Soviet Union and jeopardize the new American relation. It would not make sense to impose the mainland's primitive economic system on Taiwan, which has one of the most prosperous economies in Asia.

If the economic and political system of the People's Republic of China continues to change, it is possible to imagine ways in which the mainland and Taiwan might—not soon, but eventually—agree on some form of reunification.

As the differences between the two systems narrow, the bridge that has to be built between them will become shorter. For now, it is enough that the issue be postponed, with neither side accepting the status quo but with both sides living with it. Different conditions will eventually create a different situation, and it may well be one more conducive to a peaceful and voluntary accommodation between the two sides.

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China's policies are dictated by what its leaders see as China's national interests. It is abundantly clear, both from talking with China's leaders and from the record of their actions, that they are far less bound today in foreign policy by abstract considerations of ideology than are most communist governments, or than they themselves were a few years ago. They do see the world—and they do discuss the world—in highly sophisticated geopolitical terms; more than the leaders of most nations, they now have a truly global view. Their chief concern is with the impact of policies on China. But they measure this impact both directly and indirectly. What weakens the Soviet lessens the threat to China; thus they support a strong NATO. Vietnam is a Soviet ally, and invades Cambodia; thus they make common cause even with the despicable Pol Pot regime, and launch their own punitive invasion of Vietnam to “teach Vietnam a lesson.” The United States is the chief counterweight to the Soviet
Union; thus they make overtures to the United States, and press us to strengthen our defenses.

How other countries organize their internal affairs is of infinitely less concern to the Chinese than the way they conduct their external affairs. In this respect, China has more of a traditional great-power attitude than have most of the democratic nations, and certainly far more than the U.S. State Department's division of human rights.

Looking to the future, as China develops its economy, builds its military strength, and becomes, as it may, the world's most powerful nation, the key question will be how it uses that power. The answer to this will depend, in effect, on whether it becomes more Chinese than communist, or more communist than Chinese. If for any reason the Chinese revert to their policies of the 1950s and 1960s, when they were bent on extending communist control throughout Asia and the world, they will be an enormous threat to the peace of the world and to the survival of the West. But if they continue on their present path of becoming more traditionally Chinese, then history will be on the side of optimism. Unlike Russia, whose whole history has been one of relentless outward expansion, China has traditionally been the self-sufficient, self-contained “Middle Kingdom,” which had neither need of nor interest in foreign conquests. Which course China chooses may depend as much on the United States as on China. If we make it clearly in China's interest to be, in this respect, more Chinese than communist, then we will have served China's interest, our own interest, and the world's.

The unrealistic euphoria that resulted from the normalization of relations between the United States and the P.R.C., followed by Vice Premier Deng's extremely effective visit to the United States, has begun to wear off. American businessmen who flocked to Peking expecting to make a “fast buck” selling products to a billion Chinese have been disillusioned. China is short on foreign exchange. The Chinese bureaucracy moves at a snail's pace, and as Americans discovered in the Soviet Union, it is exceedingly difficult for a private firm to do business with a communist government. After a brief burst of “liberalization,” the regime cracked down on expressions of dissent that threatened to get out of hand. The Soviet move
into Afghanistan brought predictably sharp criticism from Peking, but Chinese leaders have made it clear in other areas that they reserve the right to pursue whatever foreign policy they believe is in their interests, rather than always following America's lead.

China has always been a mystery. The nagging question now is, how deep is the conviction that led to Peking's move toward the West abroad and away from doctrinaire Marxism at home?

It must be remembered that for five years during the 1920s Lenin's New Economic Policy encouraged and welcomed American capital and know-how. Once these had served their purpose, the Kremlin decided to go it alone and the Americans and other “capitalists” were sent home. This could happen in China unless Chinese leaders remain convinced that foreign investment is indispensable to their progress and security. This in turn will depend on whether their new friends from the capitalist world avoid the temptation to put a quick profit ahead of long-term investments that will make China's future progress dependent on continued cooperation with the West.