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China’s thinking goes
in circles
By Jerome Keating
Taiwan is an island nation that after a long struggle with a variety of colonial
masters has achieved and enjoys democracy. Unfortunately, across the Taiwan
Strait is a different nation, China, which covets Taiwan’s territory and
sovereignty. Since the average Westerner may not always be aware of Taiwan’s
complex history and struggle for democracy, some background is in order. This is
especially true if a Westerner might hear, accept or believe erroneous ideas
like “Taiwan has always been a part of China” or “Taiwan has been a part of
China since time immemorial.”
So where does one start to deconstruct such falsehoods? Begin, ironically, with
Taiwan’s bigger neighbor across the Strait. How does China’s ruling Politburo
seek to legitimize its current rule and all-encompassing identity while at the
same time seeking to extend China’s borders?
First, China traditionally suffers from mixed metaphors; its rulers have always
attempted to legitimize their rule by claiming that they alone deserve the
mantle to rule a mythic Middle Kingdom, the center of the universe. There is
nothing extraordinary about this; it is a common and symbolic tactic that rulers
of various nations and promoters of cultures have pursued to celebrate and
justify such beliefs and identity.
They are claiming what Mircea Eiade calls the “cosmogonic value of the Center.”
Troubles arise for China’s current rulers with such claims in that while they
pursue this end they also suffer from a different metaphor. They fear that other
nations are perceived enemies that are always trying to encircle them. How this
conflict of mixed metaphors developed will be explained later in more detail.
For now, suffice to say that China’s problem is that it wants to claim a world
where it is the center and other nations are simply satellites on its borders.
However, the claiming of this central position and reputation brings the
inevitable fear and complaint that other nations refuse to be satellites;
instead they persist in trying to encircle China.
Another and separate expression that one hears mouthed by China’s leaders is one
that aims to excuse and explain away misdeeds and ill-treatment of citizens by
claiming that their rule is different, unique.
They are different and therefore will never be understood by outsiders because
they exercise socialism “with Chinese characteristics” or capitalism “with
Chinese characteristics.”
You will never understand them because they are, well, different and unique.
Nonetheless, one way to cut through such uniquely opaque claims is to examine
how easily other nations could make similar claims. Japan is a democracy with
Japanese characteristics whereas South Korea is a democracy with Korean
characteristics and Taiwan, of course, is a democracy with Taiwanese
characteristics. Outsiders will never understand them.
In China’s case, this claim becomes clearer if one phrases it by borrowing from
George Orwell: China is “Animal Farm, but with Chinese characteristics.” For
though Animal Farm was written with former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and
Russia in mind, this allegorical tale has a similar easy application to China.
In “Animal Farm with Chinese characteristics,” substitute Mao Tse-tung (毛澤東) for
Napoleon, Squealer for the state news agency etc; for the expression “all
animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” substitute all Chinese
are considered equal, but some (the Han) are more equal than others (Tibetans,
Uighurs, Mongolians and other minorities).
A further separate characteristic that flows from this is how China’s rulers
often disguise their hegemonic ambitions by relying on the cyclic claim of
Chinese history: It must always be seen as a return to the greatness of the
Middle Kingdom, even though the borders keep changing and expanding.
Luo Guanzhong (羅貫中), author of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義)
expressed that idea well in the classic opening lines of that novel: “The
kingdom long divided must unite, long united must divide; thus it has ever
been.”
China is caught in an unending cycle of breaking from and returning to the
“cosmogonic” center. Such a destiny gives China’s rulers leeway to claim they
are thus in one form of the cycle or another; in such a pursuit, they can always
blame either insiders or outsiders for being the cause of trying to “split” the
Middle Kingdom.
In the enveloping claim of their cyclic destiny, China’s leaders can also claim
a further opacity to explain why others who are not Chinese cannot understand
their history. Outsiders are simply not able to look back or forward far enough.
Such is belied in the lines attributed to former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai
(周恩來), when former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger asked him what he
thought of the French Revolution.
His answer was: “It is too soon to tell.”
This appears to be profound, but in reality it is an easy put-off since both
will be long dead before the answer supposedly appears and one’s interpretation
could be challenged.
A final point in understanding methods by which China’s rulers will try to both
legitimize their rule as part of a larger cosmic cycle while at the same time
claiming the unique opacity of that same history lay with the role of the court
historian in this.
It is the court historian’s job to always demonstrate that the current
administration bears the “mantle of heaven” and all others do not. In some ways,
this is an easy job; whomever wins has the mantle, whoever loses does not. The
intricacies come in more in trying to demonstrate how the current China is at
one end of the cycle and not another and why one was chosen and others were not.
As long as the Chinese Communist Party is in power, a current Chinese historian
could never say that Mao was more than 30 percent wrong. You would not find a
Chinese historian writing a book like Jasper Becker’s Hungry Ghosts, Mao’s
Secret Famine or Frank Dikotter’s Mao’s Great Famine, the History of China’s
Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62. Revisionist historians are simply not
allowed in China; those that aspire to be such are either dead or in jail; the
court historians’ job is to show that the satellites are denying China’s destiny
and instead trying to encircle it.
So goes the deception, and while many Western pundits and historians are
reluctant to question or challenge it, hopefully those that know and deal with
Taiwan will appreciate and understand the challenges that its democracy faces.
Jerome Keating is a Taipei-based commentator.
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