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Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said in 2015 he had “already transferred” his duties to a successor. So when it comes to his recent remarks about Huawei, should the world understand him to be speaking as a father, whose daughter is still in detention in Canada, and not as a businessman whose words still carry weight? Photo: AFP 
Opinion
Billy Huang
Billy Huang

The perils of Chinese ambiguity: how and why the US mistrusts and misunderstands China

  • Chinese entrepreneurs seem well versed in the art of doublespeak, which dates back to a philosophical dichotomy in the Qin and Han dynasties. The practice is culturally acceptable in China but does not go down well in the West

Reclusive Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei has recently been taking the limelight and talking to the international media. In an interview with CBS that aired on February 19, he promised that the telecoms company would never spy on the United States and that even if he was required by Chinese law to share customer data with Beijing, he would “firmly reject that”.

The statement sounds genuine, but does not square with what he told foreign reporters at a round table weeks ago, when he said that he loves his country, supports the Communist Party, and that “we must abide by all applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate”.
If Ren meant what he said about obeying all applicable laws, he might be subject to legal and political risk in China. President Xi Jinping has declared: “Government, the military, society and schools, north, south, east and west – the party leads them all.” Also, China’s national intelligence law states that all organisations and citizens shall support and cooperate in national intelligence work.
According to China’s Caixin Global, Ren said in 2015 he had “already transferred” his duties to a successor. So when it comes to his recent remarks about Huawei, should the world understand him to be speaking as a father, whose daughter is still in detention in Canada, and not as a businessman whose words still carry weight?

The contradictory statements, bordering on duplicity, could arouse nothing but suspicion in the English-speaking world. But they also lead to a larger question: how should the West understand China, especially its entrepreneurs, in the 21st century?

In his 2017 book The China Order, Professor Fei-Ling Wang at the Georgia Institute of Technology writes: “Rarely were there a nation and a culture so morally and ideologically sanctioning so much highly utilitarian duplicity and pretentiousness.”

Wang traces the roots of Chinese doublethink to the divide between two popular schools of thought in the Qin and Han dynasties more than 2,000 years ago.

“The ruthless and unpredictable Legalist rule of brutal force and cunning ruses complemented and confronted the humane Confucian values and slogans while providing an inexpensive and effective centralised authoritarian rule”, he writes. “Massive manipulation and deep hypocrisy and duplicity were consequently inevitable.”

In an email interview, Wang said: “Ren is a party cadre and being duplicitous with foreigners is fully expected of him.”

Many Chinese businessmen seem well versed in the art of doublespeak. Jack Ma has said businesses should be in love with the government but never marry it, yet his company is reportedly behind the hit communist propaganda app Xuexi Qiangguo (“Study to Make China Strong”). Alibaba is listed in America; should we expect an English version of the app educating the American public about Xi Jinping Thought?

But it is not fair to blame Ren, Ma or any other entrepreneur who played a role in helping China become the world’s second-largest economy. They have made their peace with the government when they set up their businesses, and now it is costing them, especially in North America, where fairness and straightforward openness are usually expected of public figures.

It is entirely possible to see the Chinese culture of ambiguity in a positive light, and to understand it as flexibility and maturity, especially in the context of complex issues like the trade war. However, the West does not seem to buy it.

On September 26, 2018, a group of experts from China and the US gathered at the Hudson Institute to debate a host of thorny bilateral issues. A key strategy of the Chinese team was simply to brush off the issue of forced technology transfers, which did not really exist in their narrative.

A leading scholar from China’s famed “Thousand Talents” programme gave a long monologue on cultural differences and urged American scholars to update themselves on China. According to him, China and the US have changed places and Americans are acting like the Chinese Boxers of 1900 and driving out foreigners.

Chinese are very flexible and practical people, he said, adding that Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism feature heavily in Chinese life, but not in a way foreigners can easily grasp. “If you’re in office, you’re a Confucianist; if you’re out of office, you retire, you’re actually a Taoist; if you’re on the verge of death, Buddhist.”

Michael Pillsbury, the host, interrupted and urged the Chinese experts to go back to the nuts and bolts of the trade war, especially the US trade representative’s report detailing China’s alleged misdeeds.

He also said that Beijing, in denying or failing to deal with the allegations, was “insulting” the White House and “adding fuel to the fire” of the trade war. One week later, US Vice-President Mike Pence, in the same institute, delivered a China policy speech with a distinct cold-war tone.

Pillsbury’s book, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, starts with a story about acclaimed Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang using 2,000 explosives to blow up a 40-foot-high Christmas tree on the National Mall in Washington in November 2012. According to Pillsbury, Cai was presented with a medal by Hillary Clinton, then the US secretary of state, as well as a cheque for US$250,000.

Pillsbury writes that he was among the audience who applauded Cai’s show, but that he later wondered “if any of the guests contemplated why they were watching a Chinese artist blow up a symbol of the Christian faith in the middle of the nation’s capital less than a month before Christmas”.

He recounts becoming suspicious of Cai, who said: “All artists are like diplomats. Sometimes art can do things that politics cannot.” According to Pillsbury, Cai’s favourite book is Unrestricted Warfare, a study by two Chinese colonels that has been published in English with the ominous subtitle China's Master Plan to Destroy America.

Evidently, Chinese ambiguity can provide ammunition for China sceptics like Pillsbury. There are at present no signs that the rivalry between China and the US, haunted by the philosophical dichotomy between the countries, is ebbing. Regardless of how the trade war goes, the US and China are still on a very dangerous path.

Billy Huang is a media veteran who served leading media outlets in Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore and America for more than 20 years. [email protected]

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