What stiffens the back of China’s leaders and people as they confront a United States bent on subjugating their country through economic and other means ? I would argue that it is their collective memory of the century of humiliation by foreign powers that began with the First Opium War (1839-1842), a period of unforgettable injury to national pride best captured in that infamous sign “Dogs and Chinese not allowed” which was hung at the entrance of a park in the so-called British concession inside Shanghai. American politicians who think of relations between nations only in terms of transactions and deal-making just do not understand the power of national self-esteem that underpins China’s resilience – or the strength that the Chinese can draw from the depths of their soul. Australia’s former prime minister Kevin Rudd does, and in a commentary published in The New York Times last week, he argued that America’s disregard for Chinese nationalist sentiments had all but closed any window for a speedy resolution of differences between the two countries. Perhaps some of the hawks in the American establishment do get it, but just do not care. Doubtless, they believe America might will prevail, as it seems to have over the past few decades when the US rode roughshod over other countries. And so the Trump administration kept turning the screws, only to find that a people who have stood up at long last after being on their knees for so long are determined not to genuflect again – ever. It will understand soon enough that in the face of even the most intense bullying, the Chinese will not roll over like the Canadians or the Japanese. Its brazen attempt to dictate to the Chinese what they can or cannot do to catapult their country to the forefront of industrial and technological development has served only to rip open scars in the Chinese psyche that have barely healed. The Chinese people will be damned if they allow a replay of that traumatic period of their history when, among other indignities, their government had to yield the sovereign right to collect custom duty to foreigners. China’s wrong, US can kill off Huawei. But here’s why it won’t China’s leaders know full well that the so-called trade war is not just about buying more soybeans or Boeing aircraft, or agreeing to a trading concession here and a compliance there. The US is demanding nothing less than having China submit to its will and give up its lead in certain cutting-edge technologies and industries. Beijing sees that as a bid to colonise China by another name and has called it out as such through its media. China’s leaders will fight this full-frontal assault on its sovereignty – to the bitter end, if need be. They have little choice. They know capitulation will undermine their rule. Worse, history will judge them harshly as sinners who have betrayed their nation just as it is poised to resume its rightful place in the world. It is hard to see how President Xi Jinping and his senior colleagues, who see the fulfilment of China’s destiny as resting squarely on their shoulders, will allow such a damning verdict to be laid at their door. If Trump kills off Huawei, do Asia’s 5G dreams die? They are not surprised that the West, especially the US, has acted, finally and with a vengeance, on its perception of China’s rise as a grave threat to its dominance of the world order. For the better part of two decades, they have been at pains to tell the world that China is not out to challenge anyone, and hope they will be believed. It is inconceivable that they have also not prepared for the worst. Well, the worst has arrived – as proponents of American hegemony have decided that it is now or never to take China down while it is still vulnerable. And in the present occupant of the White House they have found their useful idiot, to use the Leninist term, to lead the battering, and take the blame if all hell breaks loose. So what gives when the seemingly irresistible meets the immovable? For the Americans, it is either doubling down or coming around, however reluctantly, to accepting that China will never cave in and that working out an arrangement in which both countries can cooperate as well as compete without disrupting the entire global economy and order is the next best option. On the Chinese side, I think they think they can wait if they cannot find a compromise they can live with. Meanwhile, they will continue to look into history, if they have not already done so, for pointers to guide their future action. Trade war: here are Beijing’s options – and not one looks any good Apart from the First and Second Opium Wars – from which the chief lesson is that the weak must suffer what they must – there is also much to learn from the first Sino-Japanese war (July 1894 to April 1895). In that encounter, China under the Qing dynasty fought Japan after the latter invaded Korea, at that time a Chinese protectorate. Despite numerical superiority in terms of fighting men and ships, China’s Beiyang Fleet was trounced. China ended up suing for peace and in the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, ceded Taiwan and Penghu Island to Japan in perpetuity. While the disputed Diaoyu Islands were not named in that treaty, Japan also took the opportunity to seize and annex them as part of its Okinawa Prefecture. In addition, China had to pay 13,600 tonnes of silver to Japan as war reparations, equivalent to 4.6 times the Japanese government’s total annual revenue at that time. The first lesson from this debacle is that an essentially agricultural economy, as China was at the time, could never match a rapidly industrialising state like Japan which had chosen to learn from the West after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. While China today is no longer a weak agricultural country, what Beijing must think very carefully about is whether it has built up sufficient depth and strength in its economy to withstand a long, drawn-out cold war with the US and maybe large parts of the West as well. This is how it will calibrate the scale and intensity of the Chinese tit for the American tat. Why China shouldn’t retaliate against US firms after Huawei ban The second lesson is that China cannot hope to take on an encroaching foreign power if its own government is divided and corrupt, as the Qing court had long been at the time. Li Hongzhang, the leading official charged with warding off the Japanese, did not have the support of the still-influential Manchu princes as well as other officials, who carried on in their corrupt ways as though the war had nothing to do with them. Indeed, the Qing Treasury refused to allocate the funds Li needed to buy modern ships and guns, and money that was to have gone into the war effort went instead to pay for the Empress Dowager’s elaborate birthday celebrations. The paralysis resulting from the intense power struggle was utterly demoralising to the soldiers at the front. Little wonder then that Western newspapers at the time commented that it looked as if it was just Li alone, not the Qing government, who was fighting the Japanese. A trade deal is still possible. But it’ll take a Xi-Trump one-on-one Further, Li was then in his 70s, did not have the stamina necessary for so immense a task as going to war with a powerful enemy, knew little about strategy and foreign affairs, and had no planning and support staff to assist him in making decisions. Seen from this perspective, it is now apparent that one of the reasons President Xi has been so ruthless in cracking down on corruption and dissent might well be that he does not want to give any hostage to fortune as he marshals a united front to stave off any Western attempt at disrupting and containing China’s inexorable rise. Further, Xi, who appears to be full of vigour and can call on the best minds in the nation of 1.4 billion, is not likely to repeat Li’s three grave mistakes. The first was Li’s forlorn hope for British and Russian intervention to stop the Japanese in Korea. Xi is not going to wait for any country to come openly to China’s aid in the fight against American hegemony. Second, Li dillied and dallied when it came to dispatching the Beiyang Fleet as well as land forces to the Korean theatre, even when he knew war was going to be inevitable. That delay cost China dearly. And third, when forces were indeed deployed, his order was to preserve China’s battleships, not repel the Japanese armada before it came anywhere near Korean shores. Lessons learned by China in opium wars ring true in US trade row Beijing will take the fight to the Americans, not just sit there and wait for their blows to land. But it will do so in a graduated fashion – targeting President Trump’s political base , including soybean farmers; American businesses that openly support him; US enterprises in China; exporters of rare earths, etcetera. And … remember what happened to Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei ? ■ Leslie Fong is a former editor of Singapore’s The Straits Times
