Can China Be Contained? | Hacker News Reader

Can China Be Contained?

wsj.com

16 pointsIBM35 comments

This part makes my stomach turn:

The West has been in this position before. Optimism about the prospects of transforming an ancient civilization through engagement, followed by deep disillusion, has been the pattern ever since early Jesuit missionaries sought to convert the Chinese to Christianity. Those envoys adopted the gowns of the Mandarin class, grew long beards and even couched their gospel message in Confucian terms to make it more palatable. The 17th-century German priest Adam Schall got as far as becoming the chief astronomer of the Qing dynasty. But he fell from favor, and the Jesuits were later expelled.

More like disillusioned with "the West." The lesson learned on the other side (which took a really long time with wars, revolutions, and capitalist reforms to un-learn) is to not trust 'the West' because they'll try to hook your citizens on opium while trying to convert you to their religion. And if you ban opium and deport opium dealers, they'll kidnap your emperor, start a war, and burn/loot your ancient civilization.

What the author of the article seems to forget is that there are elderly people alive today who lived through that. My grandfather was sold into indentured servitude because of his parents' opium habit.

Moreover, for a nation with China's current levels of import/export and the rate at which cargo ships get attacked by pirates (as they go around Somalia to reach the Mediterranean), what's wrong with building up a navy? That's reducing dependence on local infrastructure and has got nothing to do with the U.S.

> what's wrong with building up a navy?

Ask Taiwan and the Philippines how they feel about that.

By the same logic we probably should also ask China about US Navy cruising close to its territory regularly, i.e. how does China feels about that over the years. China has indeed never been a country that is offensive, unlike the west.

China prefers to fighting internally instead historically.

Unless never does not apply to any history older than about three decades past, I think Vietnam and India would have serious problems with the characterization that china has not been (militarily) offensive.

That's not to draw any comparison to the history of the us, but china is hardly a paragon of restraint, even in the relatively recent past.

> China has indeed never been a country that is offensive, unlike the west.

Tibet? Korea?

> China prefers to fighting internally

There's a lot of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_wars_and_battl...

Can China be contained? No, because China has finally figured out how to make their country work.

Russia never worked very well. It didn't work under the tsars, it made some progress under communism but never caught up, it regressed when the USSR broke up and Russia tried capitalism (deaths and poverty rose a lot), the oligarch era didn't help, and it's not doing that great as a semi-dictatorship. Containing the USSR worked because nobody wanted the USSR in charge.

China, on the other hand, has a system which is moving forward rapidly. It took them a long time to find something that worked. They had their disasters, such as the "Great Leap Forward", under Mao. Now, though, the country is doing a lot of things right. The government is unapologetically authoritarian, but not stupid. As long as the government can keep the standard of living going up, it can stay in power.

China's foreign policy is another matter. The government would like to dominate Asia. Taiwan remains an annoyance, but it's more like Cuba being an annoyance to the US, not a real problem for China. The countries in the area spend a lot of time and effort fussing over minor islands, but that's not likely to lead to a major war.

China is gradually building up a blue-water navy. With the amount of shipping China has, that makes sense for them. China has a lot of economic interests outside China now, and wants to be able to protect them. Economic power, not military power, leads the way.

It all depends on whether China can maintain its growth rate.

I would not say that the USSR did not make a lot of progress. It was technologically advanced (through it's use of design bureaus) but the inherent inefficiencies of it's system made it quite impossible to grow after a certain point (economically speaking).

China is playing it smart. It is waving the proverbial carrot in front of the faces of poorer countries in Africa etc. They would gladly support the Chinese coming over to build their infrastructure after being f*ed over by the international (i.e. Western) financial institutions. They are running over to China because it can help them. China can already count on a large base of support from these countries.

The military is going to be used to further this base of support. Being strong means that more people would be inclined to deal with you, knowing that you can accord them protection. The military will play a huge role in increasing the economic might of China.

This will not happen soon. China still has a long way to go. China needs to assume greater control of world finance for this to work. Their new development bank is just firing up. China is still only a major exporter of cheap goods and electronics.

I don't think Chinese navy is much of a concern or blue water for that matter. What good is it when the only countries letting you use their port is on a different part of the ocean?

United States is a true naval and aerial super power. It has air and naval ports all over the world surrounding Russia & China.

To walk, you need to crawl first. Just because you built an air craft carrier on a shitty soviet era ship doesn't mean you can flaunt it without seriously risking an international embarassment.

The number of actual facts in this article is distressingly small. Paragraphs like this:

Even the U.S. business community, once Beijing’s staunchest advocate in Washington, has lost some of its enthusiasm for engagement. James McGregor, a former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China and now the China chairman of APCO Worldwide, a business consultancy, recalls helping to persuade U.S. trade associations to lobby for China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, which happened in 2001.

make me wince because at any given time you can probably get someone to say business has lost enthusiasm for "engagement" and someone else to say business is as engaged as ever.

More importantly, Andrew Browne misses an extremely obvious point: the USSR had an ideology totally opposed to capitalism, a murderous state machine that killed tens of millions of its own citizens, and an expansionist mindset demonstrated by Russia's control of Eastern Europe. China has none of those things. It is "communist" in name only; to the extent it has an ideology at its heart it might be called crony capitalism, or something like "material goods for all!" It would like to invade Taiwan, which is bad, and it is attempting to claim the South China Sea, which is also bad, but it isn't in the same order of magnitude as taking over half of Europe and flaming proxy wars around the world.

That an article like this even makes it into the WSJ is depressing.

China will probably not invade Taiwan. Both Taiwan and China agree there is only one China, so what would that look like? Chinese soldiers killing Chinese people to claim territory for a country they are already a part of? Also, the PRC has a pretty strong distaste for imperialism, dating back to Mao. The PRC has substantially more public support for invading Japan than Taiwan.

> tens of millions of its own citizens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward

>The Great Leap ended in catastrophe, resulting in tens of millions of deaths.[3] Estimates of the death toll range from 18 million[4] to 45 million,[5] with estimates by demographic specialists ranging from 18 million to 32.5 million.[4]

> that killed tens of millions of its own citizens

China doesn't have that? It certainly had it.

No, it doesn't have that. The era of Mao and the soviet ideology is long gone, but the number one priority ("maintain social harmony") made rejecting communism too expensive. jseliger is right in saying that today's China is "communist" only by name.

I don't know how much truth there is to this, but from the point of view of the several hundred Chinese netizens I know, a lot of China's current international policy decisions are arising out of desperation. For the past couple of decades, China has experience about 10% growth to its economy per year which has led to a wealth gap that makes ours look small. While the tide was rising, I suppose the average Chinese citizen had hope that perhaps he too can make it big... but with Xi's crack down on corruption (which, for good or evil, was just how business had worked in China), the economy slowed down considerably.

With that slow-down, the feeling of hope that the young unmarried men of China depended on to buoy up their spirits (it needed buoying up because there is tremendous societal pressure for them to find a good wife, but they outnumber girls their age by as many as 17 to 1 in certain cities) just vanished, leaving in its place restlessness and frustration. And if you get a bunch of young, restless, and frustrated men together, you have the historically tried and true recipe for destruction. I guess China's leadership, fearing for government stability, is looking to turn that sentiment outward via war, rather than take it inward via civil disobedience / revolution.

I don't know why you were downvoted but you've hit a lot of points which is fairly correct to assume.

Given that core East Asian familial, I'm not surprised by the tremendous societal and materialistic pressure on men of East Asian descent. Seriously....places like Korea and China men are regarded as just...fucking money making machine and nothing more.

Downturn of Chinese economy is a serious threat to the stability of the regime. The Chinese Dream or Zhonguo Meng, is uniting force. Everyone is out chasing money. It's like a giant ponzi scheme with someone on the other end always getting fucked while enriching those before it. When the flow of money stops so do these societal hierarchies built on money and power (easily purchasable with money in China), and suddenly 500 million middle class citizens who wants to stay that way become a very big force.

Meanwhile, in China, a headline reads "Can the U.S. be Contained?". On its face this rings of ethnocentrism.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism

It's less ethnocentrism and more realism (the IR theory) and realist scholars proposing a different tack with how the US deals with China going forward.

What would mean "be contained?"

Can US prevents China's influence to grow and keep bombing and destabilizing governments all around the world while the chinese invest so much in Latin America, Africa and Asia? I don't think so.

The view from the other side: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/06/chi...

It will require a much different strategy than with the Soviets. We don't have a fundamental political difference in belief with the Chinese. The Chinese are ultra-capitalists with a technocracy leadership (although the u.s. is more lead by lawyers than engineers, so maybe there's a conflict there). It's not even clear if a conflict is necessary.

The Chinese mostly care about resources and economics in China - they are determined to have a minimum percentage of economic growth in order to continue pulling their population out of poverty. They have brought something like 500,000,000 Chinese into the middle class and want to continue doing so, and this requires economic growth. Their military is mostly run by officers that are running factories - not even on the side, it's just normal.

Granted, there's friction in places like in the South China Sea. But the real conflict will be in Africa - there are entire Chinese cities in Africa as they move engineers and resources to take on large engineering projects and exploit the vast resources of the area. But the u.s. has seemingly abandoned Africa (and South America) and instead is putting all of their money into the middle east and Afghanistan/Iraq/Iran.

I wonder if the u.s. will just concede Africa to the Chinese or if there will be conflict in the future.

(If you do a google search you'll come across articles about chinese ghost cities in Africa, but keep in mind that all of these ghost cities, even in china and mongolia, are eventually filled with chinese)

Thank god there are Chinese cities in Africa. If they follow the western way and put high paid management there only, there will never be roads. For years western can always go to Africa and say 'oh, so poor, we can help them' to top up their compassion credit.

I think the closest historical parallel is Britain and its efforts to contain Germany in the early 20th century. Nuclear weapons will probably prevent a calamity like WW1 though.

"watching the administration of President Xi Jinping crack down hard on internal dissent while challenging the U.S. for leadership in Asia"

but that's exactly Xi Jinping's motive. People watching and making their own conclusions as long as its coming from the citizens. To Chinese public, Xi looks like a straightshooter, standing up for justice and vying for the attention of united states.

In reality, the outcome is increased internal support for Xi. The foreign policy component is a paper tiger. China has no desire or the capability to enter a military conflict with United States. No other countries can seriously oppose United States in a conventional warfare, even if they all got together and decided to attack it.

So China can be contained as long as it rejects democracy and run by a central power. This won't last long however. We are already seeing the CCP is faltering. When you live by the gun you die by the gun. Such is power in a allocated and dictated hierarchy. The challenge for China is to determine at which point do you introduce a democracy. Too soon or too late will both divide the country.

Empires rise and fall. The British empire at its zenith was impressive as well and was almost unchallenged. Military supremacy follows economic development.

I'm curious how the next 100 years will turn out (I'll experience 60+ of those, if I'm lucky), considering the following:

- the shift in American demographics (how long will the slightly right-of-center politics hold? To which side of the spectrum will it shift?)

- if China manages to sustain it's growth rate. Superpower status seems guaranteed at this point

- how unified will Europe be? what happens to Nato

I thought it was certain there will be less right of center people in the us, as the older white conservative/republican generation dies off, and is replaced by more people of color and/or somewhat less conservative kids.

To me the open question is will this lead to a more liberal or Canadian like politics, or could the shrinking conservative base blow us up into multiple countries? US northeast and west coast joins canada? Rest, becomes jesus land?

If you believe the 'singularity' stuff, the changes will dwarf those you mention.

I do believe in the 'singularity' stuff - but I doubt it will happen within the next 100 years. I don't think as humans we are ready for it yet socially or politically (post-scarcity).

We're pretty terrible at distributing resources currently - not because of logistics mind you, but pure self-interest. that's not going to change overnight. If we were to upload our consciousness today, we're going to end up looking more like a balkanized "The Terminator" rather than "The Culture"

China has an authoritarian government that produces pollution that threatens the entire world, uses the great firewall to attack tech companies in other countries, prints up to 282% of GDP [1] in order to buy their way into other countries real estate and companies, ignores human rights and free speech, and supports dictators in Russia and Africa. If China gets anymore powerful, the world is doomed. We need to curb commerce with China.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/11/c...

I don't know if you realize it or maybe the sarcasm is lost in this medium. However many of the things you just said about China, with the exception of being an authoritarian government, could also be said about the US.

It's even worse than that. The u.s. has been in constant warfare for the last 25 years and have killed ~600,000 people in that time.

What countries have the Chinese been bombing, killing in that time?

The u.s. is fighting an ideological war while the Chinese are fighting an economic war. The u.s. doesn't care if they wipe out a population as long as they defeat their ideas, while the chinese want to develop economic ties.

I don't know what more to say. The u.s. will lose if they don't change their thoughts.

You can't be serious either; an authoritarian government is no way the same as a democracy. There are forced disapperances [1], outright censorship [2], state enrichment vs individuals [3], and on and on. US has courts and 3 separate branches of government and elections and debates. You can be cynical, sure, if the democracy isn't working well, but we still have a democracy. Do you honestly think a government controlled by a small secretive group of old men is better than elected government?

[1] https://news.vice.com/article/forced-disappearances-brutalit... [2] http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4707107 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_State-owned_enterprise...

I would rather have US as an authoritarian government than China. I mean do you see how China treats it's own people? It's fucking horrid. the 500 mil Chinese pulled out of poverty line is classic propaganda CCP would love to have you spewing.

It seems pretty clear that china has done a better job in raising the overall circumstances of the poorest of its citizens than many other developing countries over a similar time span. I'm not just talking about a bunch of African basket cases either. Look at India; for all the progress they have made, the poorest of their people live in horrible circumstances, the likes of which one doesn't find in the same enormous magnitude. I'm sure china could have done much worse. I know which country I'd rather be destitute in. Now how much of that is attributable to something like the one child policy where the have essentially mortgaged their future in exchange for fantastic present growth? We will find out eventually.

India is different because they don't embrace the same communist party ideology and leadership structure. Unfortunately, the government has no power because all the money in India is flowing to private anonymous banking friendly countries and they can't tax it.

> I mean do you see how China treats it's own people?

Do you ? Because you seem to be mixing up China and North Korea. Today's China is not Mao's China. It's not the best thing ever, but to think that it's so different that the US is just wrong.

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