Hi David, we met during the Science of the Noosphere class, and I continue to appreciate your writings. This one is as impressively wide ranging as any I have seen, but comes across as a virtual whitewashing of what is actually going on.
It is apparent that Xi and Putin are role models for a new generation of what we used to call tinhorn dictators and separatists, whose partnership comes cheap. Xi and Putin get markets for weapons and sources of mineral wealth, without making these countries subject to human rights, environmental values, or worker non-exploitation. Blood mineral is such an inconvenient term. So is genocide (China having practiced a form of that in obliterating the cultures of Tibet (Buddhists) and Xinjiang (Muslims). In this context, your quote from Xi – “We should increase inter-civilization exchanges to promote harmony, inclusiveness, and respect for differences” – is not just hypocritical but monstrous.
And it’s not like Washington didn’t turn a blind eye to authoritarians (the Shah of Iran, the sheikhs of Saudi Arabia) as long as the cheap oil was flowing. We are doing better, but it still going on - the most striking geopolitical language I have seen lately in the wake of the Israel/Gaza invasion is the military attacks “against the Conoco Oil Fields” as if that were the proper sovereign title rather than eastern Syria or Kurdistan.
Li’s new Civilization-State has clearly arrived – but I prefer to call it the League of Super Villains. In this context, I find your statement - ”In the past, Western colonizers were wrong to claim civilizational superiority and seek hegemony. In the future, no single universal model of civilization will or should exist” - pretty cold-blooded.
What I find more insightful and productive comes out of your presentations on noopolitik:
“Normally, I would urge at length, as John Arquilla and I have long done, that geopolitics and realpolitik should give way to noopolitics and noopolitik. Civilizations and cultures are more noöpolitical than geopolitical in nature, and fostering pro-civilizational dialogue will require becoming adept at noopolitics.”
And as you’ve asked in other presentations, “Whose Story Wins”? I think about this a lot. Social media in the last 20 years has overwhelmed my own theory in that direction – what I called the neurosphere. Alas, it appears to me now that a noosphere, defined as global mind, is not just constituted of our best qualities, but of all our qualities, some of which are downright violent.
I’m hoping that your future presentations will address how this will work – “let’s take Xi up on his calls since 2015 for “inter-civilization exchanges to promote harmony, inclusiveness, and respect for differences” - without respecting differences that include a taste for ethnic slaughter and environmental destruction.
Hey, Don. Good to hear from you. Yes, I appreciated being in the Science of the Noosphere class too. I still hope to finish my series of posts about it, but other concerns have taken priority lately.
I recoil at your presuming that this post amounts to a “virtual whitewashing” of what’s going on in China. In saying so, you offer two quotes from the post as evidence. But look again. The first is a direct quote from Xi Jinping — it expresses his view, not mine. Your second quote is my paraphrase (note the word “Accordingly”) of text in a Chinese government document — again, their view, not mine.
This is not a post meant to detail how I generally perceive China and Xi’s regime. It’s meant to raise a particular idea for civilizational dialogue that no one else has raised and that might (or might not) lead to some useful activity from the standpoint of U.S. interests, at best something freshly cooperative off to the side, at minimum a way to learn (“smoke out” as someone put it to me the other day) Chinese thoughts and options regarding a matter we’ve explored very little. In terms of that class we took, it’s a noopolitical proposal in a time/context where most U.S. discourse is still very geopolitical in nature.
But even though I’m a bit nonplussed at your “whitewashing” take on my post, I’m glad you voiced it, partly because I sense others may be reacting reflexively that way. In today’s intense touchy environment, it’s as though I am supposed to blatantly condemn China as an ogreish foe, and subscribe to hardline strategic competition (or a harder stance) in detail, proving my bona fides, before I even suggest proposing a move to open a talk channel on a new topic— and if I don’t do so, I can be suspected of having a benign appeasing view of China, being out of line and out of tune with what’s really needed in U.S. policy and strategy toward China, and not to be inherently worthy of trust and faith. (See additional remarks I make in earlier reply to earlier comment here..)
Reminds me of when, shortly after I was hired at RAND in the 1970s, a senior colleague and friend recounted how an even more senior colleague accused him of maybe being a Castro/Cuba sympathizer during a seminar when all my friend was doing was trying to describe Castro’s world view. Apparently, it’s an old reflexive pattern, now more evident than usual. Or so it seems to me.
I’m sure I’m quite aware of all the downsides you mention about China and its party-government regime; I just have no reason to dwell on them at this point. What I’m not sure is whether opening up a pro-civilization dialogue may be a possibility, and potentially productive. I’m still waiting for more review comments, here and elsewhere. I’m also not sure whether to write more on the topic, though I’ve got more to say. Depends. After all, I’m a retired outsider at this stage, no longer plugged into circuits other than my electrical outlets.
Anyway, good to hear from you. With appreciation. Onward.
thanks David - sorry I was a little out of line with the "whitewashing" comment. But I was reacting esp. to this toward the end:
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This document then specifies “Four Proposals of the Global Civilization Initiative,” as follows:
“– Jointly advocating respect for the diversity of civilizations. Countries should uphold equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness among civilizations, and let cultural exchanges transcend estrangement, mutual learning transcend conflict, and inclusiveness transcend supremacy.
“– Jointly advocating the common values of humanity. Peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom are shared aspirations of people across the world. Countries should be open to appreciating different perceptions of values by different civilizations, and refrain from imposing their own values or models on others and from stoking ideological confrontation.
“– Jointly advocating the importance of continuity and evolution of civilizations. Countries should fully harness the relevance of their histories and cultures to the present times, and push for creative transformation and innovative development of their fine traditional cultures in the course of modernization.
“– Jointly advocating closer international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation. Countries should explore the building of a global network for inter-civilization dialogue and cooperation, enrich the contents of exchanges and expand avenues of cooperation to promote mutual understanding and friendship among people of all countries, and jointly advance the progress of human civilization.”
A respectable document, I’d say. I see nothing overtly objectionable or insulting from a U.S. point of view. In my reading, its civilizational rubric offers new openings for exploration, new angles and avenues for bilateral if not broader dialogue, new vectors for probing future prospects for U.S.-China cooperation, competition, and conflict. For all of China’s objections to apparent domination of the global order by Western values and by Western ideas about universal values, the GCI seems filled with parallel values and ideas, not distinctly contrary ones. Grounds for engagement and debate, I’d say.
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I think it would be "respectable" if it wasn't so hypocritical. But maybe that's the point. The U.S. itself has a history of violating its own principles in interventions abroad. I think we have our own "League of Supervillains" - our alignment with the dictator (sorry "King") of Saudi Arabia comes to mind. Our post 9-11 engagement with "terrorists" around the world overlaid nicely with oil and mineral resources.
a thing I'm working on, post Noosphere class, is how both the U.S. and China are still figuring out, in the post Soviet Union decentralization/breakup/realignment of nation-states - and how there still might be noospheric unity - geodesic rather than top down. And indeed the problem with a noosphere is we're all in there, good and bad.
wondering if you see rising authoritarianism as a necessary feature of this realignment.
“Just how seriously this business was taken is vividly conveyed by a story from second-century BCE Vietnam, when a local king got it into his head to proclaim himself emperor in his own land. The response of the Han dynasty emperor Wen-Di was swift and unequivocal. “When two emperors appear simultaneously, one must be destroyed… struggling and not yielding is not the way of a person endowed with humanity,” he wrote to scold the Vietnamese ruler, whose response can only be described as one of abject submission. “I hear that two heroes cannot appear together, that two sages cannot exist in the same generation,” he stated in a public proclamation. “The Han emperor is the sagacious Son of Heaven. Henceforth, I shall suppress my own imperial edicts.” This pushback from China operated at two levels. Most explicitly, it was a direct statement that in its home region, the Han emperor would not countenance any would-be peers. Beyond that, China was signaling its determination to intervene anywhere in the world where it felt its central role or its vital interests might be challenged. In 1979, more than two thousand years later, as we shall see, China would mount an invasion of Vietnam aimed at making these precise points.”
— Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power by Howard W. French
Many thanks for your latest two pointers to writings by Tobin and French. They definitely look helpful for improving my understanding. I hope to read soon, but it may take me a while to have comments and questions specifically on them.
Right now, in light of the resistance my post has aroused here and elsewhere, I'd like to clarify that my interest in all this stems mostly from spotting how China’s diplomats acted unusually aggressively in meetings with U.S. diplomats right after Biden et al. first ascended to office. At the time I happened to be exchanging views with an old friend and colleague about the so-called 3Cs spectrum — cooperation-competition-conflict — and its use for decades in diplomatic and military circles. A favorite old discussion topic for us and others. It looked to me as though the Chinese had “gamed” and “hacked” how Americans tended to use the 3Cs spectrum (not to mention its 4Cs and 5Cs variants). So I wrote a paper about it in 2021 with another party to that email exchange, to no noticeable effect. Today it sits on the SSRN site.
One implication in it — "• Pursue a policy of strategic multiplexity" — may help explain some of the negative reactivity to my “Two Civilization-States At Odds” stance. As that earlier paper explains, the 3Cs/4Cs framework has meant that U.S. strategists call for policies that explicitly emphasize either cooperation, or competition, or confrontation, even conflict, or say a combination, like balanced cooperation and competition — that is, to identify with a specific point or area in the spectrum.
Instead, we suggested pursuing “strategic multiplexity” in regard to U.S.-China relations such that U.S. policy would explicitly reflect and span the entire spectrum, rather than identifying with a particular point on it. The multiplexity term, which comes from network analysis, is rhetorically unattractive, but is the only concept I could find that fit with my purpose — to advise making the U.S. posture more holistic as well as more ambiguous, maneuverable, and adaptable, thus harder to pin down, less easy for adversaries to dissect category-by-category or issue-by-issue as Chinese diplomats were doing back then.
This 2021-22 experience may (or may not) apply to recent reactions in the following sense: Most of today’s China experts appear to be tightly wound around the concept of “strategic competition” and to want all U.S. beliefs and moves at other points on the spectrum to serve strategic competition. Some individuals strike me as rather fervent about this, ready to jump at skeptics. Their collective view values uniplexity; it is not multiplex. I’m just watching from afar and thus cannot be sure about this, and I’m glossing over nuances and caveats. But to the degree my characterization is correct, my proposal to explore opening a pro-civilization dialogue with Chinese counterparts — a proposal that looks like an act of cooperation — might be received as entertainable rather than anathema within expert circles if I had explicitly couched it as an adjunct to enhance strategic competition, not as a way to seek cooperation. Make sense?
Then along came a series of articles in Noema magazine in 2022-23 about the civilization-state concept, particularly re. China. I’m attracted to big concepts like that. And that one I could see had potential links to two long-standing interests of mine: (1) a framework about long-range social evolution (past, present, and future) based on four cardinal forms of organization (tribes + institutions + markets + networks, aka TIMN); and (2) the emergence of Earth’s long-predicted noosphere (“realm of the mind,” global “thinking-circuit”) as a result of new information and communications technologies, with implications that new modes of strategy and statecraft — in our view, noopolitik and noopolitics — will matter more and more relative to older modes like realpolitik and geopolitics.
Those two frameworks are my vantage point for supposing that the civilization-state concept is worth heeding, and that its traction will grow as the years advance. In short, I have became interested in U.S.-China relations not because China is interesting, but because I’m interested in future-oriented concepts about civilization, social evolution, and noopolitics. And in light of my orientations toward those matters, I’m now baffled that potentially ideational terrain is being ceded to China. This terrain’s strategic significance may seem marginal today but will become increasingly decisive in the decades ahead — perhaps a noöpolitical battlefield fraught with new kinds of story-wars for which China’s theorists and strategists will be more seasoned and prepared than our own.
Yes, my proposal to attempt opening a pro-civilization dialogue with China would be for the purpose of “seeking ways to avoid conflict,” as you put it. But my deeper purpose is more double-edged and dual-purpose than that. If the attempt did open new lines for cooperative dialogue, or at least opened some breathing space, that’d be good. But in exchanging views about possibilities for civilizational dialogue, it’d be equally important to gain new knowledge for analyzing how China’s civilizational narrative is constructed — ton scout how it is designed not only to push China’s narratives but also to intersect, challenge, and potentially suborn other parties’ narratives.
Theirs is not a singular narrative; it’s a networked constellation of narratives flexibly spanning and integrating a lot of other narratives — democracy vs. autocracy, capitalism vs. socialism, individualism vs. collectivism, freedom vs. order, chaos vs. harmony, diversity vs. uniformity, etc. And of course about what does vs. what does not qualify as civilization, and about which civilizations are rising vs. which are declining, and why. I know better than to pose them all as sharp dichotomies, but it’s quick and easy to sketch that way, and hopefully you get my point.
So, we might end up in a possibly cooperative yet competitive dialogue about civilizational matters, a productive result. Or we could end up in a new set of conflictive story-wars. But at least we will have learned more about the terrain and become better prepared to stand our ground, maneuver, and fight noopolitically. Today’s apparent dismissiveness and lack of inquisitiveness in U.S. circles appears to augur poorly for our abilities to prepare for what I sense lies ahead.
Of course, there’s always the possibility I’m wrong about all this…. Onward anyway.
Here is Dan Tobin’s piece that I think gets to crux of your question. Dan is a member of Marauders and a good friend who teaches at the National Intelligence University. Dan, along with wife Liza, have written extensively about the PRCs intentions, with Dan focused most;t on the political side and Liza on the economic. Again, I’m not dismissing the PRC civilizational-state argument, but I am concerned about their couching said argument to displace the international order to one more favorable to the CCP, and using this language to mask long held Leninist-Marxist goals for world order.
This is nothing to say of the “Han” culture being pushed on all other 55 recognized ethnicities, eradicating such cultures as the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, Hui Muslims, Zhuang, etc. the effort by the CCP to suppress regional languages and other cultures, such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc, not to mention Taiwan of course, signifies their intention to create a sinocentric world under the auspices of the CCP and their unique Leninist/Maoist form of communism. Dan touches on this in his speech.
Again, my take on the PRC is one of a country/former empire who is under the control of the CCP, made of different “nations”, as different in culture and language as the Europe of old.
Michael: Another good piece by Tanner Greer that I didn't know about (from before I regularly began following his writing).
Coincidentally, when your comment arrived I was focused on his latest post, "The Five Fundamentals of Chinese Grand Strategy" at his The Scholar's Stage blog. Here's comment I left there, which is apropos my post here too:
"I have long admired and learned from your posts, but this one is questionable.
The points you make about China’s grand strategy (foreign policy) are fine, esp. for China as a nation-state. They cover the standard political, economic, and military categories normally used for analyzing nation-states.
However, China’s leaders now regard China as a civilization-state too. They want China to be viewed and treated as such, and are developing policy and strategy fundamentals to advance as a civilization-state. I’m finding that nearly all U.S. experts on China have ignored or dismissed this turn. But if it’s for real (as I think it is), it will mean that U.S. analyses of China’s grand strategy (foreign policy) would benefit from adjustments.
Civilizations, more than empires and nations, are defined primarily by their cultural contents, broadly defined. From what I gather, adopting a civilization-state moniker means upholding one’s identity in terms of the cultural values and formative traditions that are said to define a people, thereby determining their ways of life and their beliefs in themselves as a collectivity, no matter where they reside. Accordingly, collective identity trumps individual identity; spiritual values are more defining than ideology; and cultural heritage and tradition matter mightily.
I’m no China expert, but Xi’s regime sure looks to be going in that direction. It’s even developing concepts about cultural sovereignty and cultural security. If so, adding a cultural fundamental to the your list of strategy/policy fundamentals would seem advisable. To some extent, my point is embedded in your allusions to glory, heritage, and ideology — but not clearly or strongly enough.
Accordingly, you write, “4. Chinese leaders imagine they will reshape the global order primarily through economic, not military, tools.” That’s a kind of point I typically see in U.S. analyses these days. But it overlooks seeing that, by thinking and acting as a civilization-state, China is using cultural tools too. It would be more accurate to write that “Chinese leaders imagine they will reshape the global order primarily through cultural and economic, not military, tools.”
I remain baffled that China’s civilizational thrust is so widely disregarded and shrugged-off by U.S. experts on China. It seems part of China’s long game, and might offer new angles for getting along (or not?).
One quibble: Your post is about “the fundamentals of Chinese grand strategy” but then lays out “the essentials of Chinese foreign policy.” Grand strategy and foreign policy are not the same, though they overlap. I’m sure you know this. Maybe keep in mind for next write-up."
Afternoon David! Your argument continues to make me think, especially as I am getting ready to teach young officers about strategic competition. Big Air Force is focused on the PRC, rightly I may add, as the long term rival. I posted yesterday on Donovan’s the argument for including ideology in our assessments, as I felt much of the literature recently is avoiding it. The Chinese kosmos, weltanschauung, or however we want to describe it, is laced with early mythology about the Yellow Emperor and the ascendance of the Han as the leader of this civilization. The modern CCP is re-writing the history of China to display an unfettered Chinese civilization led by the Han (which the study of how to define who was a Han began in the later stages of the Qing dynasty). Westerners, including those who proclaim to “know” China, often repeat this CCP AND Nationalist narrative without question.
The fact is, the “Han” were the early winners in Chinese state formation. During the Warring State period, the Qin finally emerged as the winner. ( I liken this to European polities battling for supremacy, especially German state formation under Bismarck). Under Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of “China”, we got Legalism as the guiding ideology overtaking early Confucians. Various dynasties would rise and flourish, bringing in new territories and losing them when dynasties were weak and failing. Two non “Han” dynasties would rule “China” : the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing, the last of which - pushed the frontier of modern China to its maximum, the map of which both the Nationalists and the Communists used to express the national humiliation we hear of today.
Much of what I write you may already be aware. But I think it’s important as we discuss the civilization aspect, that we remember that the modern state of China was born in 1949, under Mao’s CCP. Wanting the world to recognize the PRC as a civilization, fits neatly into the CCP narrative as the latest in an unbroken line from the first emperor to Xi Jinping. It is not, however, that simple. Many of the rebellions which occurred over the course of Chinese history began in the south for example. The North-South divide in China is real, even to the point of labeling these people as Han and making Mandarin the national language, at the expense of other languages such as Cantonese.
I’ll write more later. Like I said, you’ve peaked my interest into the topic.
Thanks also for this, Michael. I've been a fan of Greer's incisive writings for years, but this one is new to me. Greer and I are "friends" on Facebook, and I tried to get his(? her?) advice about my civilizational-dialogue proposal a year or so ago, but I never heard back.
Lots of overlaps with the other article you sent (and with writings by N.S. Lyons too). Point that catches my eye is about ideological struggle/security:
"Westerners asked to think about competition with China—a minority until fairly recently, as many envisioned a China liberalized by economic integration—tend to see it through a geopolitical or military lens. But Chinese communists believe that the greatest threat to the security of their party, the stability of their country, and China’s return to its rightful place at the center of human civilization, is ideological. They are not fond of the military machines United States Pacific Command has arrayed against them, but what spooks them more than American weapons and soldiers are ideas—hostile ideas they believe America has embedded in the discourse and institutions of the existing global order...."
This fits with Arquilla's and my past work on the rising significance of noopolitics over geopolitics, and with my point that civilizational dialogue, if pursued, is bound to require noopolitical as well as geopolitical skills. It also fits with my concerns about global great-power netwar going on.
Again, I see nothing here that countermands my proposal, but I do see cautions to keep in mind. Now, if I could just get Tanner Greer to read and comment....
Thanks for this. I've seen her articles in Foreign Affairs, but missed this one, which I like better.
Let's take a look at here closing paragraph:
"In this essay, I have put forward several interrelated arguments. First, the CCP regime is a refined neo-totalitarian rather than an authoritarian system. Second, the top priority of the China-US Relations in the Eyes of the Chinese Communist Party CCP’s international relations, especially with the US, is to strengthen its internal control and prevent the collapse of the regime. Third, the nature of the relationship between China and the US is actually one of adversaries and rivals rather than competitors. Fourth, both countries are large and possess considerable strength. Neither one can swallow the other, and a “hot war” between the two would be calamitous for the world. It is on this basic assessment that I suggest that the US needs to clearly see the CCP and PRC for what they are—strategic adversaries—and thus forge its strategies and policies toward China accordingly. Wishful thinking about “engagement” must be replaced by hardheaded defensive measures to protect the United States from the CCP’s aggression—while bringing offensive pressures to bear on it, as the Chinese Communist Party is much more fragile than Americans assume."
Strong stuff. But I don't see anything that countermands my proposal probe to probe and possibly pursue a pro-civilizational dialogue with China. My proposal is not meant to replace what she recommends, but to go alongside it and see where it leads. We'd have to be extra wary of course, in light of points she makes.
Hi David, we met during the Science of the Noosphere class, and I continue to appreciate your writings. This one is as impressively wide ranging as any I have seen, but comes across as a virtual whitewashing of what is actually going on.
It is apparent that Xi and Putin are role models for a new generation of what we used to call tinhorn dictators and separatists, whose partnership comes cheap. Xi and Putin get markets for weapons and sources of mineral wealth, without making these countries subject to human rights, environmental values, or worker non-exploitation. Blood mineral is such an inconvenient term. So is genocide (China having practiced a form of that in obliterating the cultures of Tibet (Buddhists) and Xinjiang (Muslims). In this context, your quote from Xi – “We should increase inter-civilization exchanges to promote harmony, inclusiveness, and respect for differences” – is not just hypocritical but monstrous.
And it’s not like Washington didn’t turn a blind eye to authoritarians (the Shah of Iran, the sheikhs of Saudi Arabia) as long as the cheap oil was flowing. We are doing better, but it still going on - the most striking geopolitical language I have seen lately in the wake of the Israel/Gaza invasion is the military attacks “against the Conoco Oil Fields” as if that were the proper sovereign title rather than eastern Syria or Kurdistan.
Li’s new Civilization-State has clearly arrived – but I prefer to call it the League of Super Villains. In this context, I find your statement - ”In the past, Western colonizers were wrong to claim civilizational superiority and seek hegemony. In the future, no single universal model of civilization will or should exist” - pretty cold-blooded.
What I find more insightful and productive comes out of your presentations on noopolitik:
“Normally, I would urge at length, as John Arquilla and I have long done, that geopolitics and realpolitik should give way to noopolitics and noopolitik. Civilizations and cultures are more noöpolitical than geopolitical in nature, and fostering pro-civilizational dialogue will require becoming adept at noopolitics.”
And as you’ve asked in other presentations, “Whose Story Wins”? I think about this a lot. Social media in the last 20 years has overwhelmed my own theory in that direction – what I called the neurosphere. Alas, it appears to me now that a noosphere, defined as global mind, is not just constituted of our best qualities, but of all our qualities, some of which are downright violent.
I’m hoping that your future presentations will address how this will work – “let’s take Xi up on his calls since 2015 for “inter-civilization exchanges to promote harmony, inclusiveness, and respect for differences” - without respecting differences that include a taste for ethnic slaughter and environmental destruction.
Hey, Don. Good to hear from you. Yes, I appreciated being in the Science of the Noosphere class too. I still hope to finish my series of posts about it, but other concerns have taken priority lately.
I recoil at your presuming that this post amounts to a “virtual whitewashing” of what’s going on in China. In saying so, you offer two quotes from the post as evidence. But look again. The first is a direct quote from Xi Jinping — it expresses his view, not mine. Your second quote is my paraphrase (note the word “Accordingly”) of text in a Chinese government document — again, their view, not mine.
This is not a post meant to detail how I generally perceive China and Xi’s regime. It’s meant to raise a particular idea for civilizational dialogue that no one else has raised and that might (or might not) lead to some useful activity from the standpoint of U.S. interests, at best something freshly cooperative off to the side, at minimum a way to learn (“smoke out” as someone put it to me the other day) Chinese thoughts and options regarding a matter we’ve explored very little. In terms of that class we took, it’s a noopolitical proposal in a time/context where most U.S. discourse is still very geopolitical in nature.
But even though I’m a bit nonplussed at your “whitewashing” take on my post, I’m glad you voiced it, partly because I sense others may be reacting reflexively that way. In today’s intense touchy environment, it’s as though I am supposed to blatantly condemn China as an ogreish foe, and subscribe to hardline strategic competition (or a harder stance) in detail, proving my bona fides, before I even suggest proposing a move to open a talk channel on a new topic— and if I don’t do so, I can be suspected of having a benign appeasing view of China, being out of line and out of tune with what’s really needed in U.S. policy and strategy toward China, and not to be inherently worthy of trust and faith. (See additional remarks I make in earlier reply to earlier comment here..)
Reminds me of when, shortly after I was hired at RAND in the 1970s, a senior colleague and friend recounted how an even more senior colleague accused him of maybe being a Castro/Cuba sympathizer during a seminar when all my friend was doing was trying to describe Castro’s world view. Apparently, it’s an old reflexive pattern, now more evident than usual. Or so it seems to me.
I’m sure I’m quite aware of all the downsides you mention about China and its party-government regime; I just have no reason to dwell on them at this point. What I’m not sure is whether opening up a pro-civilization dialogue may be a possibility, and potentially productive. I’m still waiting for more review comments, here and elsewhere. I’m also not sure whether to write more on the topic, though I’ve got more to say. Depends. After all, I’m a retired outsider at this stage, no longer plugged into circuits other than my electrical outlets.
Anyway, good to hear from you. With appreciation. Onward.
thanks David - sorry I was a little out of line with the "whitewashing" comment. But I was reacting esp. to this toward the end:
>>
This document then specifies “Four Proposals of the Global Civilization Initiative,” as follows:
“– Jointly advocating respect for the diversity of civilizations. Countries should uphold equality, mutual learning, dialogue, and inclusiveness among civilizations, and let cultural exchanges transcend estrangement, mutual learning transcend conflict, and inclusiveness transcend supremacy.
“– Jointly advocating the common values of humanity. Peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom are shared aspirations of people across the world. Countries should be open to appreciating different perceptions of values by different civilizations, and refrain from imposing their own values or models on others and from stoking ideological confrontation.
“– Jointly advocating the importance of continuity and evolution of civilizations. Countries should fully harness the relevance of their histories and cultures to the present times, and push for creative transformation and innovative development of their fine traditional cultures in the course of modernization.
“– Jointly advocating closer international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation. Countries should explore the building of a global network for inter-civilization dialogue and cooperation, enrich the contents of exchanges and expand avenues of cooperation to promote mutual understanding and friendship among people of all countries, and jointly advance the progress of human civilization.”
A respectable document, I’d say. I see nothing overtly objectionable or insulting from a U.S. point of view. In my reading, its civilizational rubric offers new openings for exploration, new angles and avenues for bilateral if not broader dialogue, new vectors for probing future prospects for U.S.-China cooperation, competition, and conflict. For all of China’s objections to apparent domination of the global order by Western values and by Western ideas about universal values, the GCI seems filled with parallel values and ideas, not distinctly contrary ones. Grounds for engagement and debate, I’d say.
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I think it would be "respectable" if it wasn't so hypocritical. But maybe that's the point. The U.S. itself has a history of violating its own principles in interventions abroad. I think we have our own "League of Supervillains" - our alignment with the dictator (sorry "King") of Saudi Arabia comes to mind. Our post 9-11 engagement with "terrorists" around the world overlaid nicely with oil and mineral resources.
a thing I'm working on, post Noosphere class, is how both the U.S. and China are still figuring out, in the post Soviet Union decentralization/breakup/realignment of nation-states - and how there still might be noospheric unity - geodesic rather than top down. And indeed the problem with a noosphere is we're all in there, good and bad.
wondering if you see rising authoritarianism as a necessary feature of this realignment.
“Just how seriously this business was taken is vividly conveyed by a story from second-century BCE Vietnam, when a local king got it into his head to proclaim himself emperor in his own land. The response of the Han dynasty emperor Wen-Di was swift and unequivocal. “When two emperors appear simultaneously, one must be destroyed… struggling and not yielding is not the way of a person endowed with humanity,” he wrote to scold the Vietnamese ruler, whose response can only be described as one of abject submission. “I hear that two heroes cannot appear together, that two sages cannot exist in the same generation,” he stated in a public proclamation. “The Han emperor is the sagacious Son of Heaven. Henceforth, I shall suppress my own imperial edicts.” This pushback from China operated at two levels. Most explicitly, it was a direct statement that in its home region, the Han emperor would not countenance any would-be peers. Beyond that, China was signaling its determination to intervene anywhere in the world where it felt its central role or its vital interests might be challenged. In 1979, more than two thousand years later, as we shall see, China would mount an invasion of Vietnam aimed at making these precise points.”
— Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power by Howard W. French
https://a.co/d9lmNKJ
Many thanks for your latest two pointers to writings by Tobin and French. They definitely look helpful for improving my understanding. I hope to read soon, but it may take me a while to have comments and questions specifically on them.
Right now, in light of the resistance my post has aroused here and elsewhere, I'd like to clarify that my interest in all this stems mostly from spotting how China’s diplomats acted unusually aggressively in meetings with U.S. diplomats right after Biden et al. first ascended to office. At the time I happened to be exchanging views with an old friend and colleague about the so-called 3Cs spectrum — cooperation-competition-conflict — and its use for decades in diplomatic and military circles. A favorite old discussion topic for us and others. It looked to me as though the Chinese had “gamed” and “hacked” how Americans tended to use the 3Cs spectrum (not to mention its 4Cs and 5Cs variants). So I wrote a paper about it in 2021 with another party to that email exchange, to no noticeable effect. Today it sits on the SSRN site.
One implication in it — "• Pursue a policy of strategic multiplexity" — may help explain some of the negative reactivity to my “Two Civilization-States At Odds” stance. As that earlier paper explains, the 3Cs/4Cs framework has meant that U.S. strategists call for policies that explicitly emphasize either cooperation, or competition, or confrontation, even conflict, or say a combination, like balanced cooperation and competition — that is, to identify with a specific point or area in the spectrum.
Instead, we suggested pursuing “strategic multiplexity” in regard to U.S.-China relations such that U.S. policy would explicitly reflect and span the entire spectrum, rather than identifying with a particular point on it. The multiplexity term, which comes from network analysis, is rhetorically unattractive, but is the only concept I could find that fit with my purpose — to advise making the U.S. posture more holistic as well as more ambiguous, maneuverable, and adaptable, thus harder to pin down, less easy for adversaries to dissect category-by-category or issue-by-issue as Chinese diplomats were doing back then.
This 2021-22 experience may (or may not) apply to recent reactions in the following sense: Most of today’s China experts appear to be tightly wound around the concept of “strategic competition” and to want all U.S. beliefs and moves at other points on the spectrum to serve strategic competition. Some individuals strike me as rather fervent about this, ready to jump at skeptics. Their collective view values uniplexity; it is not multiplex. I’m just watching from afar and thus cannot be sure about this, and I’m glossing over nuances and caveats. But to the degree my characterization is correct, my proposal to explore opening a pro-civilization dialogue with Chinese counterparts — a proposal that looks like an act of cooperation — might be received as entertainable rather than anathema within expert circles if I had explicitly couched it as an adjunct to enhance strategic competition, not as a way to seek cooperation. Make sense?
Then along came a series of articles in Noema magazine in 2022-23 about the civilization-state concept, particularly re. China. I’m attracted to big concepts like that. And that one I could see had potential links to two long-standing interests of mine: (1) a framework about long-range social evolution (past, present, and future) based on four cardinal forms of organization (tribes + institutions + markets + networks, aka TIMN); and (2) the emergence of Earth’s long-predicted noosphere (“realm of the mind,” global “thinking-circuit”) as a result of new information and communications technologies, with implications that new modes of strategy and statecraft — in our view, noopolitik and noopolitics — will matter more and more relative to older modes like realpolitik and geopolitics.
Those two frameworks are my vantage point for supposing that the civilization-state concept is worth heeding, and that its traction will grow as the years advance. In short, I have became interested in U.S.-China relations not because China is interesting, but because I’m interested in future-oriented concepts about civilization, social evolution, and noopolitics. And in light of my orientations toward those matters, I’m now baffled that potentially ideational terrain is being ceded to China. This terrain’s strategic significance may seem marginal today but will become increasingly decisive in the decades ahead — perhaps a noöpolitical battlefield fraught with new kinds of story-wars for which China’s theorists and strategists will be more seasoned and prepared than our own.
Yes, my proposal to attempt opening a pro-civilization dialogue with China would be for the purpose of “seeking ways to avoid conflict,” as you put it. But my deeper purpose is more double-edged and dual-purpose than that. If the attempt did open new lines for cooperative dialogue, or at least opened some breathing space, that’d be good. But in exchanging views about possibilities for civilizational dialogue, it’d be equally important to gain new knowledge for analyzing how China’s civilizational narrative is constructed — ton scout how it is designed not only to push China’s narratives but also to intersect, challenge, and potentially suborn other parties’ narratives.
Theirs is not a singular narrative; it’s a networked constellation of narratives flexibly spanning and integrating a lot of other narratives — democracy vs. autocracy, capitalism vs. socialism, individualism vs. collectivism, freedom vs. order, chaos vs. harmony, diversity vs. uniformity, etc. And of course about what does vs. what does not qualify as civilization, and about which civilizations are rising vs. which are declining, and why. I know better than to pose them all as sharp dichotomies, but it’s quick and easy to sketch that way, and hopefully you get my point.
So, we might end up in a possibly cooperative yet competitive dialogue about civilizational matters, a productive result. Or we could end up in a new set of conflictive story-wars. But at least we will have learned more about the terrain and become better prepared to stand our ground, maneuver, and fight noopolitically. Today’s apparent dismissiveness and lack of inquisitiveness in U.S. circles appears to augur poorly for our abilities to prepare for what I sense lies ahead.
Of course, there’s always the possibility I’m wrong about all this…. Onward anyway.
https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/testimonies/SFR%20for%20USCC%20TobinD%2020200313.pdf
Here is Dan Tobin’s piece that I think gets to crux of your question. Dan is a member of Marauders and a good friend who teaches at the National Intelligence University. Dan, along with wife Liza, have written extensively about the PRCs intentions, with Dan focused most;t on the political side and Liza on the economic. Again, I’m not dismissing the PRC civilizational-state argument, but I am concerned about their couching said argument to displace the international order to one more favorable to the CCP, and using this language to mask long held Leninist-Marxist goals for world order.
This is nothing to say of the “Han” culture being pushed on all other 55 recognized ethnicities, eradicating such cultures as the Uyghurs, Tibetans, Mongolians, Hui Muslims, Zhuang, etc. the effort by the CCP to suppress regional languages and other cultures, such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc, not to mention Taiwan of course, signifies their intention to create a sinocentric world under the auspices of the CCP and their unique Leninist/Maoist form of communism. Dan touches on this in his speech.
Again, my take on the PRC is one of a country/former empire who is under the control of the CCP, made of different “nations”, as different in culture and language as the Europe of old.
Curious to hear your thoughts.
Mike
https://scholars-stage.org/the-world-that-china-wants-iii-taking-chinese-communism-seriously/
Michael: Another good piece by Tanner Greer that I didn't know about (from before I regularly began following his writing).
Coincidentally, when your comment arrived I was focused on his latest post, "The Five Fundamentals of Chinese Grand Strategy" at his The Scholar's Stage blog. Here's comment I left there, which is apropos my post here too:
"I have long admired and learned from your posts, but this one is questionable.
The points you make about China’s grand strategy (foreign policy) are fine, esp. for China as a nation-state. They cover the standard political, economic, and military categories normally used for analyzing nation-states.
However, China’s leaders now regard China as a civilization-state too. They want China to be viewed and treated as such, and are developing policy and strategy fundamentals to advance as a civilization-state. I’m finding that nearly all U.S. experts on China have ignored or dismissed this turn. But if it’s for real (as I think it is), it will mean that U.S. analyses of China’s grand strategy (foreign policy) would benefit from adjustments.
Civilizations, more than empires and nations, are defined primarily by their cultural contents, broadly defined. From what I gather, adopting a civilization-state moniker means upholding one’s identity in terms of the cultural values and formative traditions that are said to define a people, thereby determining their ways of life and their beliefs in themselves as a collectivity, no matter where they reside. Accordingly, collective identity trumps individual identity; spiritual values are more defining than ideology; and cultural heritage and tradition matter mightily.
I’m no China expert, but Xi’s regime sure looks to be going in that direction. It’s even developing concepts about cultural sovereignty and cultural security. If so, adding a cultural fundamental to the your list of strategy/policy fundamentals would seem advisable. To some extent, my point is embedded in your allusions to glory, heritage, and ideology — but not clearly or strongly enough.
Accordingly, you write, “4. Chinese leaders imagine they will reshape the global order primarily through economic, not military, tools.” That’s a kind of point I typically see in U.S. analyses these days. But it overlooks seeing that, by thinking and acting as a civilization-state, China is using cultural tools too. It would be more accurate to write that “Chinese leaders imagine they will reshape the global order primarily through cultural and economic, not military, tools.”
I remain baffled that China’s civilizational thrust is so widely disregarded and shrugged-off by U.S. experts on China. It seems part of China’s long game, and might offer new angles for getting along (or not?).
One quibble: Your post is about “the fundamentals of Chinese grand strategy” but then lays out “the essentials of Chinese foreign policy.” Grand strategy and foreign policy are not the same, though they overlap. I’m sure you know this. Maybe keep in mind for next write-up."
Afternoon David! Your argument continues to make me think, especially as I am getting ready to teach young officers about strategic competition. Big Air Force is focused on the PRC, rightly I may add, as the long term rival. I posted yesterday on Donovan’s the argument for including ideology in our assessments, as I felt much of the literature recently is avoiding it. The Chinese kosmos, weltanschauung, or however we want to describe it, is laced with early mythology about the Yellow Emperor and the ascendance of the Han as the leader of this civilization. The modern CCP is re-writing the history of China to display an unfettered Chinese civilization led by the Han (which the study of how to define who was a Han began in the later stages of the Qing dynasty). Westerners, including those who proclaim to “know” China, often repeat this CCP AND Nationalist narrative without question.
The fact is, the “Han” were the early winners in Chinese state formation. During the Warring State period, the Qin finally emerged as the winner. ( I liken this to European polities battling for supremacy, especially German state formation under Bismarck). Under Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of “China”, we got Legalism as the guiding ideology overtaking early Confucians. Various dynasties would rise and flourish, bringing in new territories and losing them when dynasties were weak and failing. Two non “Han” dynasties would rule “China” : the Mongol Yuan and the Manchu Qing, the last of which - pushed the frontier of modern China to its maximum, the map of which both the Nationalists and the Communists used to express the national humiliation we hear of today.
Much of what I write you may already be aware. But I think it’s important as we discuss the civilization aspect, that we remember that the modern state of China was born in 1949, under Mao’s CCP. Wanting the world to recognize the PRC as a civilization, fits neatly into the CCP narrative as the latest in an unbroken line from the first emperor to Xi Jinping. It is not, however, that simple. Many of the rebellions which occurred over the course of Chinese history began in the south for example. The North-South divide in China is real, even to the point of labeling these people as Han and making Mandarin the national language, at the expense of other languages such as Cantonese.
I’ll write more later. Like I said, you’ve peaked my interest into the topic.
Cheers,
Mike
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/china-plans-global-order
Thanks also for this, Michael. I've been a fan of Greer's incisive writings for years, but this one is new to me. Greer and I are "friends" on Facebook, and I tried to get his(? her?) advice about my civilizational-dialogue proposal a year or so ago, but I never heard back.
Lots of overlaps with the other article you sent (and with writings by N.S. Lyons too). Point that catches my eye is about ideological struggle/security:
"Westerners asked to think about competition with China—a minority until fairly recently, as many envisioned a China liberalized by economic integration—tend to see it through a geopolitical or military lens. But Chinese communists believe that the greatest threat to the security of their party, the stability of their country, and China’s return to its rightful place at the center of human civilization, is ideological. They are not fond of the military machines United States Pacific Command has arrayed against them, but what spooks them more than American weapons and soldiers are ideas—hostile ideas they believe America has embedded in the discourse and institutions of the existing global order...."
This fits with Arquilla's and my past work on the rising significance of noopolitics over geopolitics, and with my point that civilizational dialogue, if pursued, is bound to require noopolitical as well as geopolitical skills. It also fits with my concerns about global great-power netwar going on.
Again, I see nothing here that countermands my proposal, but I do see cautions to keep in mind. Now, if I could just get Tanner Greer to read and comment....
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/xia_chinausrelations_web-ready_v2.pdf
Thanks for this. I've seen her articles in Foreign Affairs, but missed this one, which I like better.
Let's take a look at here closing paragraph:
"In this essay, I have put forward several interrelated arguments. First, the CCP regime is a refined neo-totalitarian rather than an authoritarian system. Second, the top priority of the China-US Relations in the Eyes of the Chinese Communist Party CCP’s international relations, especially with the US, is to strengthen its internal control and prevent the collapse of the regime. Third, the nature of the relationship between China and the US is actually one of adversaries and rivals rather than competitors. Fourth, both countries are large and possess considerable strength. Neither one can swallow the other, and a “hot war” between the two would be calamitous for the world. It is on this basic assessment that I suggest that the US needs to clearly see the CCP and PRC for what they are—strategic adversaries—and thus forge its strategies and policies toward China accordingly. Wishful thinking about “engagement” must be replaced by hardheaded defensive measures to protect the United States from the CCP’s aggression—while bringing offensive pressures to bear on it, as the Chinese Communist Party is much more fragile than Americans assume."
Strong stuff. But I don't see anything that countermands my proposal probe to probe and possibly pursue a pro-civilizational dialogue with China. My proposal is not meant to replace what she recommends, but to go alongside it and see where it leads. We'd have to be extra wary of course, in light of points she makes.
I’ve plenty of thoughts on this, but I want to digest what you wrote. Good food for thought piece!