GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
HOW THE US HOPES CHINA WILL FAIL
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Three dates are locked in the mind-set of the US/UK/NATO/AUKUS political approach to world affairs. They tell us much about how the anti-China powers view world affairs.
1848 was the publication of the Communist Manifesto; 1917 was the year of the Russian Revolution; 1949 was the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China. The first two have come and gone. The third is very much with us.
1848 – THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO
The Communist Manifesto was a bold statement of intent about the future. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were predicting the end of the class based international capitalist system and its replacement by Communist Party led governments. The governments would build a socialist system capable of creating abundance on a scale that would lead to the creation of a classless society.
1917 – THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
1917 took the world by surprise with the downfall of the Romanov Tsarist dynasty and its replacement by a Communist Party proclaiming allegiance to the Marxist theory of development. It committed itself to implementing the principles of the 1848 Manifesto and the creation of a Socialist society with the goal of ultimately constructing a Communist classless society.
The Soviet experiment failed and Marxism took a big knock. President Gorbachev yielded power to President Yeltsin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union took a big step back as the new State of Russia took shape at the expense of the former USSR.
The world seemed safe. The Communist Manifesto had been tested and found wanting. It was unable to build a society based on socialist principles which could deliver a standard of living that was equivalent to or would exceed the achievement of the dominant USA. The Manifesto receded into the shadows as the socialist structure of the USSR was replaced by a new system of government dominated – not by the Party – but by the Oligarchy composed of the leading members of the privatised deregulated Soviet economy.
1949 – THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
Capitalism reigned supreme. The US was the sole Superpower. The world seemed safe from the Manifesto predictions of Marx and Engels. But something was beginning to stir in China and the language coming out of Beijing had more in common with the old mindset of the Soviet Kremlin than with the espousal of the Rule of Law principles that dominated the Western alliance.
It was at this point in time – the turn of the 20th Century – that the West made a significant miscalculation. Their academics, their politicians, their businessmen and women had witnessed the decline and fall of the Soviet system and assumed the same would happen to China. The Russian system had matured into Capitalism and China would follow the same path and the world would be safe for international capitalism. Socialism would be reduced to a university course of study. Marx and Engels would have yielded to Marks and Spencer.
How would the change come about in China? Quite simply – thought Washington, London, Paris, Harvard, Cambridge and the Sorbonne. Every assistance should be given to bring about the emergence of a Chinese middle class. Trade and business with China would grow and develop.
Economic rights in China would increase in number and translate in due course to an increase in political rights that would bring pressure to create a Western system of representative government that would marginalise and eventually remove the role of the Communist Party. China would become “one of us” and the world would be safe for capitalism. The threat of 1848 would also become a mere topic of academic study.
CHINA STRONGER – NOT WEAKER
But things have not turned out as predicted. The Party has grown stronger not weaker. The system of government continued to be consultative not representative and the Chinese economy expanded – it did not contract. Capitalists were given their heads. They were encouraged to grow and prosper. Millionaires became Billionaires and in the last year before Covid 137 million Chinese nationals filled the business lounges of the main airports of the world.
The Chinese Communist Party had commissioned its many think tanks to pore over the decline and fall of the USSR. What went wrong? Why did it happen? What lessons can be learned? The Chinese CP was hyper active in its pursuit of investigation of Soviet society from top to bottom. They did their homework. They wanted to know what had gone wrong. They pored over all aspects of the old USSR. The investigation was prolonged, intensive and widespread. Reports flooded into the Party. Abundant information was available.
CHINA’S CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE FAILURE OF THE USSR
The Chinese Party came to two important conclusions; first, the Party had to lead and not follow. The Party had to be in charge. The destiny of the People’s Republic of China lay in the hands of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The party had to apply the principles of Democratic Centralism ensuring the widest discussion of all issues at all levels of the Party and an acceptance of the discipline to implement policy decisions once they were made.
The second conclusion was to decentralise the administration of the Chinese economy and to move increased decision-making responsibility from Beijing to the Provincial Capitals. In this way the initiative of Local Government and the Capitalists was encouraged not discouraged. There is an important point here which is lost on many observers of present-day China – the Party knew what it did not know. The Party knew about Politics but it did not know about business. China has its own oligarchs and they were encouraged to contribute their fine-tuned commercial skills but they were focused on economics and not politics.
CHINA AND THE OLIGARCHS
The case of Jack Ma made it clear that the Party would control the Oligarchs and not the other way round. On 24 October 2020 in Shanghai, Jack Ma’s Ant Group was ready to launch the world’s biggest public offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Ahead of this, Ma addressed an assembly of high-profile figures with a controversial speech that criticised the Chinese financial system. The Chinese Government reacted and just days before the floatation – the biggest in financial history – the floatation was cancelled. Ma was not seen in public for three months. The message? – the Party not the Oligarchs are in charge. Where the Soviet Oligarchs succeeded, the Chinese Oligarchs took note and focused on Business not Politics.
But the West is determined to bring China down. China is its own boss. It is not at the beck and call of any other country or group. Its existence is a challenge to the West and the West’s anxiety is not that China will export revolution – send money and weapons to insurrectionists in other countries – the West knows that such actions are not on China’s agenda. No, it is the example of China as a model of development which will lead an increasing number of Global South countries to want to have increasingly close relations with China – first, economic relations and then political relations.
If China is not going to follow the example of the Soviet model and instead remain firm in pursuit of its goal to build a Socialist State with Chinese Characteristics then, the Western Alliance concluded, China needs to be stopped. The West – US, UK, EU, and Australasia – pursues three options;-
- STOP CHINA – OPTION 1. WAR
War is one possibility and this approach has been developed in earlier publications of GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON. Hence the build-up of armed forces in the Far East – hence AUKUS and the nuclear submarines – hence the Nancy Pelosi visit to Taiwan. Hence the constant references to the Thucydides Principle – the US is the established power and China is the coming power. War often results – according to prominent US Professor Allison. Obama’s Pivot to China has become a fully fledged military turn of direction – from West to East.
- STOP CHINA – OPTION 2. ECONOMIC SQUEEZE
Squeeze China economically until the pips squeak and civil unrest breaks out on the streets of China’s cities. The West wants to see a Beijing Spring following the example of the people protest on the streets of Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1969. Fuelled by hoped-for factory closures, and university shut downs, the US wants to see Chinese students and workers on the streets with placards, shouting slogans pulling down symbols of power and challenging the leading role of the Party.
The Western media thought they saw signs of such street activity at the end of Covid in Shanghai but their enthusiasm soon led to disappointment because trouble on the streets of Shanghai never materialised. But the hope remains that “de-coupling” will damage China’s economy, trigger discontent and protest and a breakdown of law and order.
- STOP CHINA – OPTION 3. ENCOURAGING GROWING PEOPLE DISCONTENT WITH THE QUALITY OF THEIR LIVES – LEADING TO STREET PROTEST.
The third possibility is based upon people’s alleged discontent with the pressures of living a life in China which the US and its allies hope will trigger a country-wide protest leading to across-the-country dissatisfaction, and street protests leading to the displacement of the Party. Support for such a hoped-for outcome has not been cited hitherto by Western media stationed in China but it remains a policy goal for those major countries looking to blow China off course.
A recent article in Foreign Affairs has developed this argument. It is written Peidong Sun an Associate Professor of China and Asia-Pacific Studies at Cornell University.
He cites recent evidence of events in China which, he contends, supports his thesis that China is under challenge. He refers to an incident in late September 2024 when, he says, a 37-year-old man killed three people and injured 15 others in a stabbing spree at a Shanghai supermarket. In October 2024, he says that a 50-year-old man injured five people in a knife attack in Beijing and then on November 11, a 62-year-old man drove into a crowd in the southern city of Zhuhai and killed 35 people and injured 43 others. He refers to other incidents and argues that “China’s social order, and revenge against society attacks should be understood in part as a response to structural violence perpetrated by the state itself, including the silencing of dissent, and other strategies for control such as the one-child policy.”
Generally, Sun argues, that “Public attacks are often reactions to repression; the irony is that the government generally responds to them with even more repression.” He concludes that “China risks fostering a cycle of frustration and unrest that could increasingly erupt into violence and even threaten the country’s long-term stability.” This, then would be Option 3 – a country wide people protest against the hardship of daily work and the dissatisfaction with a demanding life style.
People, like this Column, that are balanced about China have no illusions that life in China is tough. Working 9am to 9pm 6 days a week is not a panacea. It is hard but the evidence of widespread discontent has more to do with wishful thinking than real lifestyle failings. And then there is the famous 137 million Chinese citizens that travelled overseas to 80 different countries in the last full year before Covid. There have been no reports in the Western media that even one Chinese national took the opportunity to “escape” and apply for asylum in any one of the countries visited.
China is shrewd, experienced, motivated and going forward with confidence – always with its eyes wide open knowing that there will always be problems to overcome. But if it stays on its present path, and all the indications are that it will, it leaves its opponents trying even harder to blow China off course. This article suggests that China has anticipated the three policies that the US/UK+++ will follow – 1) War; 2) Economic Squeeze, and 3) Internal Society Tensions – and is prepared.
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TWO CONCLUDING COMMENTS;-
- TIKTOK
Shini Nakayama reports in NIKKEI ASIA
“With TikTok’s future in the U.S. up in the air, “refugees” from the platform are flooding into another Chinese app, Xiaohongshu. In just two weeks, millions of Americans have downloaded the app, known unofficially as RedNote in English, and sources say the platform is struggling to navigate the sudden influx.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
There is so often a “bounce back” factor in play where China is concerned. TikTok takes a knock and RedNote takes up the slack. Two years ago the West had written off Huawei and now it is used more widely than ever before.
- RARE EARTHS
THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST;-
“China’s push to reduce or cease exports of some critical materials such as germanium and gallium to the United States last year is already having an impact on their trade, while a potential expansion of such restrictions could serve as leverage for Beijing in tariff negotiations with the administration of president-elect Donald Trump.”
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
China’s leading position as the largest producer of Rare Earths will feature more prominently if Trump continues to increase tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the US. China knows how to defend itself.
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GRAHAM PERRY
