As China’s leadership prepares for its transition to the fifth generation, a fixation on identity and core interests is a troubling sign for U.S. ties.
The problems confronting the Sino-U.S. relationship were always going to be too severe to expect a boost in bilateral relations from Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s coast-to-coast tour of the United States last month. And although the visit served a constructive purpose in preparing the way for bilateral dialogue after China’s leadership transition, there are few signs that either side is close to finding solutions to the numerous issues complicating bilateral relations.
On the American side, there’s concern over the broad direction in which China appears to be heading, and U.S. officials likely had three key questions in mind for the visiting Xi. First, is the generational shift in China’s leadership later this year a meaningful opportunity to pursue common interests that have been on hold during the Obama administration? Second, would Xi be able to shed more light on what is meant by China’s repeated reference to “core interests”? And third, is China ready for constructive dialogue on some of the more pressing issues that threaten to explode?
Unfortunately, Xi’s public statements offered little to be optimistic about on these points. Of course, at this delicate time in the struggle over who will be admitted into the new Chinese leadership, Xi must exercise caution. But it’s probably fair to say that more was learned about the leadership succession from the Wang Lijun affair in Sichuan than from Xi’s taciturn remarks. The fact that the crime fighting deputy mayor of Chongqing spent a night at the U.S. consulate in Chengdu as security forces representing rival leadership figures vied to see who would supervise his “vacation therapy” is testimony to the high stakes involved. Should Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai’s rise to the Political Standing Committee be derailed, this could affect the balance between the two most widely demarcated factions of “princelings” and Communist Youth League veterans.
Given the occasional calls of Premier Wen Jiabao for political reform, even in the midst of ever tougher crackdowns on dissent, the struggle likely extends to advocates of clashing models of domestic development.
Meanwhile, in the background to Xi’s visit, another division was on many minds, in both the U.S. and China – the struggle between the hardline faction that appeared to wrest control over foreign policy in mid-2009, and the “biding one’s time” faction that reasserted itself to a certain extent from December 2010. There’s little public evidence on how such a struggle might be playing out, but Chinese publications are revealing about the national identity divide.
Such divisions underscore the complications that can come with generational transition. In the Khrushchev era, and again as Mikhail Gorbachev’s “new thinking” spread, analysts pointed to the “children of the 20th Party Congress” as the best hope to end the Cold War. Similarly, from the 1980s, as Chinese youth travelled abroad in droves for education and gained access to the “information revolution” of the Internet, there was hope that the generation would narrow the gap with the United States. But with the fifth generation poised to take power, and as was the case with the Soviet leadership before Gorbachev, a small group active in choosing its representatives is determined to filter out those who might be “soft” on the West and dissident reformers. Even the son of a scion of the Communist Party may not be trusted, as care is taken to stack the Politburo Standing Committee with trusted officials whose step-by-step climb up the leadership ladder has weathered close scrutiny. The fact is that Xi couldn’t afford to engage in the inquisitive conversations that Gorbachev had while waiting in the wings, nor will he have the status to show bold leadership.
One issue that U.S. officials are likely particularly curious about is China’s “core interests,” a term that has become code for a range of identity concerns from sovereignty and territorial integrity, to regime security and the stressing of non-interference in internal affairs, to the controversies that swirl around the use of the term as it refers to disputed boundaries and islands, including in the South China Sea. Tied to this is the priority given to “cultural security” since 2011, and the top-down control over TV, publications, and the Internet – all this belongs in the category of national identity priorities, which has obvious implications for international ties. The more fully the list of “core interests” is specified, the more hemmed in the fifth generation will be. Every time identity labels are used, the more it limits future diplomatic flexibility, trumping pragmatism with claims of national identity.
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USAma Bin Laden
Let me translate this article from American Doublespeak:
China refuses to kowtow to American interests on various issues and instead (shock!) advocates for its own national interests–just like the USA or its allies routinely do. Yet, this article tries to lay blame on what it bizarrely calls the “curse of China’s identity fixation.”
Apparently, this article believes that China should adopt American interests as its own–just like the USA’s many satraps like Japan routinely do!
It’s truly hilarious that the USA (or its “democratic” allies) will accuse this or that nation of being too stubborn to negotiate, given the fact that America is pathologically unwilling to negotiate in good faith with anyone.
Thus, America has been deservedly criticized for what is euphemistically called its “unilateralism” on a range of issues from its fake War on Terrorism to its aggression against Iraq and Libya to its handling of the 2008 Wall Street implosion that negatively affected the entire world.
Many people here pretend to forget that the USA and its Coalition of the Killing allies cynically manipulated the issues of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” in Iraq as pretext to bomb and later invade that country–all the while trying to posturing as negotiating in good faith on this issue.
America’s Machiavellian manipulation of the WMD issue is reflective of how the self-styled Land of the Free operates in the international arena IN GENERAL.
America deploys a variety of propaganda pretexts (WMDs, terrorism, human rights, etc.) to advance its aggressive agenda that has NOTHING to do with the stated issue.
It will manipulate what it laughably calls “diplomacy” only as means to advance this agenda against a targeted nation.
If the targeted nation doesn’t go along with the USA’s diplomatic deception, American predictably throws a hissy fit, which includes bombing and invading a sovereign country and murdering 100,000s of people as result.
Just see how the USA attacked Iraq in defiance of any UN sanction or even the pretense of a legal figleaf.
This behavior is true of America regardless of the regime in Washington DC. The only difference is that Democrats like Obama make more of a show of “diplomacy” while Republicans are more nakedly unilateralist.
If America doesn’t get what it wants from a particular nation, it will instinctively demonize this country and then threaten to bomb it back to the Stone Age. (The comments of Leonard R. above exemplify this America mentality.)
You can call this the curse of Americanism.
Lucifer
The problem with your comment is that Americans do not care about China – this is in their interests not to care. Whatever an authoritarian dictatorship, isolated except among its pariah state friends does, is of little interests to Americans in general. Trade is good, and when Chinese leaders are burned at the stake in Beijing, Americans will trade with whoever else is in change afterwards. The day of reckoning is soon to come as Chinese pyramid scheme economics seems to be running out of steam
Jay W
"
Lucifer
March 15, 2012 at 8:17 am
The problem with your comment is that Americans do not care about China – this is in their interests not to care. Whatever an authoritarian dictatorship, isolated except among its pariah state friends does, is of little interests to Americans in general. Trade is good, and when Chinese leaders are burned at the stake in Beijing, Americans will trade with whoever else is in change afterwards. The day of reckoning is soon to come as Chinese pyramid scheme economics seems to be running out of steam"
If I recall correctly, it was not China's "pyramid scheme" that ran out of steam and came crashing down in 2008. Also, remind me who is borrowing from whom to sort out the aforementioned self-inflicted 2008 financial debacle? When you live in a glass house …
Also, if you do not care, why are you making comments here? And if you are waiting for the Chinese leadership to be burned at the stake … do not hold your breath on it. The Chinese people seems to be pretty happy about their economic performance. The same cannot be said about a certain large country that has a budget deficit of more than $1.5 trillion per year, a stagnating economy, and a huge unemployment problem in which probably as many as a quarter of all able-bodied adults cannot find jobs. Maybe it is the Americans who need to burn their politicians and their Wall Street bankers on the stakes.
Dianne Jarreau
“Similarly, from the 1980s, as Chinese youth travelled abroad in droves for education and gained access to the “information revolution” of the Internet…”
Much depends whether you refer to pre-1989? I would phrase it as, rather than “youth”, obviously there was a community of Chinese physicists at Princeton University until George Herber Walker Bush(who had done significant campaigning within the the Princeton Community among the moderate Republicans) cracked down and terminated their access to the laboratories where experiments in cold fusion and more ecological energy resources were taking place. Youth appeared in Princeton(and elsewhere in the academic sphere)following the appearance of the Democracy movement in the Tiananmen Square incident. I happened to notice academic leadership in attendence when I went to an international food festival one Sunday afternoon which was held in an adjacent room at the Dillon Gym. I probably would not have recognized this pro-Democracy figure-head, had I not studied in the Midwest during the Seventies and then approached the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts in the Gelb Collection,Princeton, if I might interlibrary loan from their collection, to which he responded that he would because of the merit of my teacher who was a literary forerunner in the translation of Chinese and Japanese poets.I chose to do that rather than approach Harvard’s Yen Ching Library where Kissinger was on faculty at the time.
Why, in 2012, anyone should wish to engage in saber-rattling using nuclear subs given the PRC Navy supremacy is beyond me, when we have many other significant fronts to engage with diplomacy.
Mike From Tampa
what ?
Leonard R.
I have read D. Jarreau’s post twice and I have no idea what point she is trying to make.
She starts with questioning the author’s statement on 1980′s Chinese ‘youth’ studying in the US.
Then she moves on to a personal reminiscence about a certain inter-library book she was a party to.
Finally, she closes by telling us the PLAN is superior to the US Navy & thus America should
not be saber-rattling here.
Maybe D. Jarreau will clarify all this for us.
Mike From Tampa
We need to buy about 500 more virginia class submarines and fill them with nuclear cruise missiles.
Vec
Buy with more borrowing from China?
Can China repossess the submarines when Ameria defaults in payment?
George
You’re a nutcase if you’re advocating nuclear holocaust as an acceptable endgame.
Leonard R.
It is advisable to avoid wading into knee-deep mud. Trying to make sense of various
CCP factions and their pronouncements is the equivalent of walking into knee-
deep mud. So is trying to negotiate anything with the PRC.
Here lies a mud hole. Don’t go there. If it expands and becomes a threat, bring in a bulldozer, fill it in and pave it over.
SCdad07
Remind me of Foster Friess’ simple answer to a complex issue: Keep an aspirin tablet between your knees.
Jay W
"
Leonard R.
March 7, 2012 at 10:16 am
It is advisable to avoid wading into knee-deep mud. Trying to make sense of various
CCP factions and their pronouncements is the equivalent of walking into knee-
deep mud. So is trying to negotiate anything with the PRC.
Here lies a mud hole. Don’t go there. If it expands and becomes a threat, bring in a bulldozer, fill it in and pave it over."
So you want to pave over 1.3 billion people because you think negotiating with them is a waste of time? Please step away from the keyboard unless you get at least a grade school education.