Biden and US hawks must understand China before waving the democratic torch

Viewing the conflict between the US and China as a zero-sum ideological competition between democracy and autocracy overlooks the origin of China’s current governing tradition

Jing Lee

Published: 12:30am, 12 Jul 2021

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The geopolitical map of our time is unsettling. World politics is entering a new phase, and many politicians and intellectuals have not hesitated to proliferate visions of what it should be: a clash of civilisations, the end of history, the decline of the nation-state, and the return of traditional rivalries between nations.

In US President Joe Biden’s world view, there exist only democracies and autocracies, all in competition with each other. A polarised political landscape in the US is united by the anti-China campaign. China, however, has recently celebrated its Communist Party’s centenary, doubling down on the conviction of its own path.

The rivalry between the United States and China has been interpreted as one of conflicting ideologies that originated from Western-centric philosophies which developed during the rise of the nation-states. The emerging Biden doctrine is that the tension between democracy and autocracy, with the US and China at opposite ends, is the defining clash of our time. In reality, the world is not binary, and life has many shades of grey.

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Gloves off at top-level US-China summit in Alaska with on-camera sparring

Humans dominate the Earth by mythmaking, according to Yuval Noah Harari. Religions and ideologies have played important roles in history, bringing hope and despair, prosperity and catastrophe to populations in different parts of the world.

Given the suffering caused by inflammatory religious ideas and political ideologies in the past, we must exercise caution in using the righteousness of our own moral stories. The map has to fit the terrain. To de-escalate ideological conflicts, we should look into our past, the time and space through which we have travelled and made our history.

China, sits on the Eurasian plate, stretching from Mount Everest to the Pacific, from tropical to sub-Arctic climates. People have always migrated within China, following the seasons and river flows. To survive and prosper, people became more collective in order to capture the seasonal flows of torrential rivers, guide them into dams and graded plains, protect these fields from floods, and defend hard-earned harvests from nomads’ invasions.

As a result, China has developed mega infrastructure to overcome geographical challenges. This has continued to this day – from the Great Wall and the Grand Canal to the Three Gorges Dam and the South-North Water Diversion Project, which will link up all China’s main rivers, planned for completion in 2050.

China sees more domestic migration than anywhere else – every year before the pandemic struck, during the holidays surrounding the Spring Festival, nearly 3 billion trips were recorded internally. To support this, the country has developed the world’s longest and one of its most extensively used high-speed railway networks.

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China builds over 4,000km of railway in 2020

The sheer size of the geographical and logistical challenges involved in administering this territory stimulated the development of a centralised Chinese bureaucracy. After the turbulence of the Spring and Autumn (770-476 BC) and Warring States (475-221 BC) periods, China was united under Qin, the first imperial dynasty, and a centralised bureaucratic state was born.

The vast geographical interdependence required a complex organisation on a huge scale. Professional functionaries were selected through examinations, which brought many men of humble origin into government. They applied administrative techniques based on Shen Buhai’s administrative innovations rooted in “rational” considerations rather than religion and traditions. In territorial terms, China resembles a superstate, and still demands rule by a central administration.

The decline of the Middle Kingdom nearly 200 years ago is a cautionary tale. Often portrayed as caused by the last imperial dynasty’s incompetence and refusal to be enlightened, history tells a more complicated story.

In addition to the White Lotus Rebellion (1794-1804) over taxation, natural disasters played a significant role. The Tambora Volcano eruption in 1815 triggered several years of global climatic disturbances, drastically disrupted the Middle Kingdom’s agriculture and trade in South China Sea. The devastating Yellow River floods (1824-1826) precipitated famines and fomented riots.

The deflationary spiral intensified in subsequent decades, coinciding with a few more traumatic events: the Opium wars (1839-1842, then 1856-1860), the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) that left much of the central and lower Yangtze River basins, China’s economic heartland, in ruins, the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, followed by the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) and the invasion by the Eight-Nation Alliance (1900). After the collapse of its centralised bureaucracy, the Middle Kingdom descended into prolonged decline.

This timeline is imprinted on the Chinese psyche. These internal, external and natural disasters occurred just as the West began to enjoy the fruits of the Industrial Revolution. China’s torment transformed its image from a legendary kingdom on the ancient Silk Road to a poor and backward country, influencing how China and the West interact with each other in this century.

A woman wearing hanfu, traditional Chinese clothing, poses for photographs in the Forbidden City in Beijing on August 19, 2020. While the decline of the Middle Kingdom is often portrayed as the result of the incompetence of the last imperial dynasty, history tells a more complicated tale. Photo: EPA-EFE

Today, we’ve again arrived at an inflection point. The West’s perception of China has been changed from a land to be conquered and enlightened during the colonial era to the “China threat” today in the US-dominated world order.

The China that has re-emerged, with its organisational structure and “socialism with Chinese characteristics” based on a millennia-old centralised bureaucracy, though serving its people well, doesn’t fit with the Western liberal narrative.

Has China’s Communist Party delivered what the people want?

Viewing the conflict between the US and China as a zero-sum ideological competition between democracy and autocracy overlooks the origin of China’s current governing tradition. Without considering the history of its collective and governing philosophy from the prism of geography, China is misunderstood in the current ideological debate.

Perhaps looking at reality through the lens of the liberal order has obscured our understanding and perception of the world, and issues that affect humanity as a whole. It is always challenging to find our bearings in another’s geography and history. However, we must try for the sake of world peace and stability.

Hopefully, we can somehow connect the two strands of our history, and establish an informed strategy in the search of a better world for us all.

Jing Lee is a Hong Kong-based investment banker and lawyer