{"id":30860,"date":"2013-06-24T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=30860"},"modified":"2015-05-06T09:00:13","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T08:00:13","slug":"the-chimerica-dream-two-nations-two-dreams-one-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/06\/the-chimerica-dream-two-nations-two-dreams-one-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chimerica Dream: Two Nations, Two Dreams, One Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sun Tzu, the ancient author of The Art of War<\/em>, must be throwing a rice wine party in his heavenly tomb in the wake of the shirtsleeves California love-in between President Obama and President Xi Jinping. “Know your enemy” was, it seems, the theme of the meeting. Beijing was very much aware of — and had furiously protested — Washington\u2019s deep plunge into China\u2019s computer networks over the past 15 years via a secretive NSA<\/a> unit, the Office of Tailored Access Operations (with the apt acronym TAO). Yet Xi merrily allowed Obama to pontificate on hacking and cyber-theft as if China were alone on such a stage.<\/p>\n

Enter — with perfect timing — Edward Snowden, the spy<\/a> who came in from Hawaii and who has been holed up in Hong Kong since May 20th. And cut to the wickedly straight-faced, no-commentary-needed take<\/a> on Obama\u2019s hacker army by Xinhua, the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s official press service. With America\u2019s dark-side-of-the-moon surveillance programs like Prism suddenly in the global spotlight, the Chinese, long blistered by Washington\u2019s charges about hacking American corporate and military websites, were polite enough. They didn\u2019t even bother to mention that Prism was just another node<\/a> in the Pentagon\u2019s Joint Vision 2020 dream of \u201cfull spectrum dominance.\u201d<\/p>\n

By revealing the existence of Prism (and other related surveillance programs), Snowden handed Beijing a roast duck banquet of a motive for sticking with cyber-surveillance. Especially after Snowden, a few days later, doubled down by unveiling what Xi, of course, already knew — that the National Security Agency had for years been relentlessly hacking<\/a> both Hong Kong and mainland Chinese computer networks.<\/p>\n

But the ultimate shark fin\u2019s soup on China\u2019s recent banquet card was an editorial<\/a> in the Communist Party-controlled Global Times<\/em>.\u00a0 \u201cSnowden,\u201d it acknowledged, \u201cis a \u2018card\u2019 that China never expected,\u201d adding that \u201cChina is neither adept at nor used to playing it.\u201d Its recommendation: use the recent leaks \u201cas evidence to negotiate with the U.S.\u201d It also offered a warning that \u201cpublic opinion will turn against China\u2019s central government and the Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region] government if they choose to send [Snowden] back.\u201d<\/p>\n

With a set of cyber-campaigns — from cyber-enabled economic theft and espionage to the possibility of future state-sanctioned cyber-attacks — evolving in the shadows, it\u2019s hard to spin the sunny \u201cnew type of great power relationship\u201d President Xi suggested for the U.S. and China at the recent summit.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the (State) Economy, Stupid<\/strong><\/p>\n

The unfolding Snowden cyber-saga effectively drowned out the Obama administration\u2019s interest in learning more about Xi\u2019s immensely ambitious plans for reconfiguring<\/a> the Chinese economy — and how to capture a piece of that future economic pie for American business. Essential to those plans is an astonishing investment of $6.4 trillion<\/a> by China\u2019s leadership in a drive<\/a> to \u201curbanize\u201d the economy yet further by 2020.<\/p>\n

That will be the dragon\u2019s share of a reconfigured development model emphasizing<\/a> heightened productivity, moving the country up the international manufacturing quality ladder and digital pecking order, and encouraging ever more domestic consumption by an ever-expanding middle class. This will be joined to a massive ongoing investment in scientific and technological research.\u00a0 China has adopted the U.S. model of public-private sector academic integration with the aim of producing dual-use technologies and so boosting not only the military but also the civilian economy.<\/p>\n

Beijing may, in the end, spend up to 30% of its budget on defense-related research and development. This has certainly been a key vector in the country\u2019s recent breakneck expansion of information technology, microelectronics, telecommunications, nuclear energy, biotechnology, and the aerospace industry. Crucially, none of this has happened thanks to the good graces of the Goddess of the Market.<\/p>\n

The pace in China remains frantic — from the building<\/a> of supercomputers\u00a0and an explosion of innovation<\/a> to massive urban development.\u00a0 This would include, for example, the development of the southwestern hinterland city of Chongqin into arguably the biggest urban conglomeration in the world, with an estimated population of more than 33 million and still growing. \u00a0A typical savory side story in the China boom of recent years would be the way that energy-gobbling country \u201cwon\u201d the war in Iraq.\u00a0 The New York Times<\/em> recently reported that it is now buying<\/a> nearly 50% of all the oil Iraq produces. (If that doesn\u2019t hit Dick Cheney right in the heart, what will?)<\/p>\n

Dreaming of What?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As soon as he was confirmed as general secretary at the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s 18th Party Congress in November 2012, Xi Jinping started to weave a \u201cChina dream<\/a>\u201d (zhongguo meng<\/em>) for public consumption. Think of his new game plan as a Roy Orbison<\/a> song with Chinese characteristics.\u00a0 It boils down to what Xi has termed \u201cfulfilling the great renaissance of the Chinese race.\u201d\u00a0 And the dreaming isn\u2019t supposed to stop until the 20th Party Congress convenes in 2022, if then.<\/p>\n

The $6.4 trillion question is whether any dream competition involving the Chinese and American ruling elites could yield a \u201cwin-win\u201d relationship between the planet\u2019s \u201csole superpower\u201d and the emerging power in Asia. What\u2019s certain is that to increase the dream\u2019s appeal to distinctly standoffish, if not hostile neighbors, China\u2019s diplomats would have to embark on a blockbuster soft-power charm offensive.<\/p>\n

Xi’s two predecessors could not come up with anything better than the vague concept of a \u201charmonious society\u201d (Hu Jintao) or an abstruse \u201ctheory of the Three Represents\u201d (Jiang Zemin), as corruption ran wild among the Chinese elite, the country\u2019s economy began to slow, and environmental conditions went over a cliff.<\/p>\n

Xi\u2019s dream comes with a roadmap for what a powerful future China would be like.\u00a0 In the shorthand language of the moment, it goes like this: strong China (economically, politically, diplomatically, scientifically, militarily), civilized China (equity and fairness, rich culture, high morals), harmonious China (among social classes), and finally beautiful China (healthy environment, low pollution).<\/p>\n

The Holy Grail of the moment is the \u201cTwo 100s\u201d — the achievement of a \u201cmoderately prosperous society\u201d by the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s 100th birthday in 2021, one year before Xi\u2019s retirement; and a \u201crich, strong, democratic, civilized, and harmonious socialist modern country\u201d by 2049, the 100th birthday of the founding of the People\u2019s Republic.<\/p>\n

Wang Yiming, senior economist at the National Development and Reform Commission, has asserted that China’s gross domestic product (GDP) will reach 90 trillion yuan ($14.6 trillion) by 2020, when annual per capita GDP will, theoretically at least, hit the psychologically groundbreaking level of $10,000. By 2050, according to him, the country\u2019s GDP could reach 350 trillion yuan ($56.6 trillion), and annual per capita GDP could pass the 260,000 yuan ($42,000) mark.<\/p>\n

Built into such projections is a powerful belief in the economic motor that a relentless urbanization drive will provide — the goal being to put 70% of China\u2019s population, or a staggering one billion people, in its cities by 2030.<\/p>\n

Chinese academics are already enthusing about Xi\u2019s dreamscape. For Xin Ming from the Central Party School (CPS) — an establishment pillar — what\u2019s being promised is \u201ca sufficient level of democracy, well-developed rule of law, sacrosanct human rights, and the free and full development of every citizen.”<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t confuse \u201cdemocracy,\u201d however, with the Western multiparty system or imagine this having anything to do with political \u201cwesternization.\u201d \u00a0Renmin University political scientist Wang Yiwei typically describes it as \u201cthe Sinocization of Marxism\u2026 opening up the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”<\/p>\n

Hail the Model Urban Citizen (aka Migrant Worker)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course, the real question isn\u2019t how sweet China\u2019s party supporters and rhapsodists can make Xi\u2019s dream sound, but how such plans will fare when facing an increasingly complex and anxiety-producing reality.<\/p>\n

Just take a stroll through Hong Kong\u2019s mega-malls like the IFC or Harbour City and you don’t need to be Li Chunling, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, to observe that China\u2019s middle class is definitely dreaming about achieving one kind of westernization — living the full consumer life of their (now embattled) American middle-class counterparts.<\/p>\n

The real question remains:\u00a0 On a planet at the edge and in a country with plenty of looming problems, how can such a dream possibly be sustainable?<\/p>\n

A number of Chinese academics are, in fact, worrying about what an emphasis on building up the country\u2019s urban environment at a breakneck pace might actually mean.\u00a0 Peking University economist Li Yining, a mentor of Premier Li Keqiang, has, for instance, pointed out that when \u201ceveryone swarmed like bees\u201d to invest in urban projects, the result was a near bubble-bursting financial crisis. \u201cThe biggest risk for China is in the financial sector. If growth comes without efficiency, how can debt be repaid after a boom in credit supply?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n

Chen Xiwen, director of the Party\u2019s Central Rural Work Leading Group, prefers to stress the obvious ills of hardcore urbanization: the possible depletion of energy, resources, and water supplies, the occupation of striking amounts of land that previously produced crops, massive environmental pollution, and overwhelming traffic congestion.<\/p>\n

Among the most pressing questions raised by Xi\u2019s dream is what it will take to turn yet more millions of rural workers into urban citizens, which often turns out to mean<\/a> migrant workers living in shanty towns at the edge of a monster city. In 2011 alone, a staggering 253 million workers left the countryside for the big city. Rural per capita income is three times less than urban disposable<\/em> income, which is still only an annual 21,800 yuan, or a little over $3,500 (a reminder that \u201cmiddle class China\u201d is still a somewhat limited reality).<\/p>\n

A 2012 report by the National Population and Family Planning Commission revealed that 25.8% of the population is \u201cself-employed,\u201d which is a fancy way of describing the degraded state of migrant workers in a booming informal economy.\u00a0 Three-quarters of them are employed by private or family-owned businesses in an off-the-books fashion. Fewer than 40% of business owners sign labor contracts. In turn, only 51% of all migrant workers sign fixed-term labor contracts, and only 24% have medical insurance.<\/p>\n

As working citizens, they should — in theory — have access to local health care. But plenty of local governments deny them because their hukou<\/em> — household registrations — are from other cities. In this way, slums swell everywhere and urban \u201ccitizens\u201d drown in debt and misery. In the meantime, top urban management in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Chongqin is working to eliminate such slums in order to clear the way for the wildest kinds of financial speculation and real estate madness.\u00a0 Something, of course, will have to give.<\/p>\n

When former World Bank chief economist Justin Lin Yifu warned that China should avoid \u201cover-urbanization,\u201d he nailed it.\u00a0 On the ground, President Xi\u2019s big dream looks suspiciously like a formula for meltdown. If too many migrants flood the big cities and the country fails to upgrade productivity, China will be stuck in the dreaded middle-income trap<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If, however, it succeeds in such a crash way, it can only do so by further devastating the national environment with long-term consequences that are hard to calculate but potentially devastating.<\/p>\n

We Don\u2019t Want No Historical Nihilism<\/strong><\/p>\n

Xi, the dreamer, may simply be a master modernist PR tactician hiding an old school outlook. Hong Kong-based political analyst Willy Lam, for instance, is convinced<\/a> that \u201cideologically Xi is a Maoist\u201d who wants to maintain \u201ctight control over the party and the military.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consider the political landscape. Xi must act as the ideological guide for 80 million Communist Party members. The first thing he did after becoming general secretary was to launch an \u201cinspection tour\u201d of the major southern city of Shenzhen, which in the early 1980s was made China\u2019s initial \u201cspecial economic zone.\u201d\u00a0 In this, he was emulating China\u2019s first \u201ccapitalist roader,\u201d the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping\u2019s landmark 1992 turbo-reform tour of the same area.\u00a0 It was undoubtedly his way of promising to lead the next capitalist surge in the country.<\/p>\n

However, a fascinating academic and Internet debate in China now revolves around Xi\u2019s push to restore the authority and legitimacy of the ur-Communist leader Mao Zedong. Otherwise, the president claims, there would be nothing left but \u201chistorical nihilism.\u201d As his example of the road not to take, Xi points to the Soviet Union; that is, he is signaling that whatever he will be, it won\u2019t be the Chinese equivalent of the USSR\u2019s last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, nor by implication will he lose control over China\u2019s military.<\/p>\n

Xi is indeed meticulous in his interactions with the People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA), always stressing “the dream of a strong China” and “the dream of a strong military.” \u00a0At the same time, his attitude perfectly embodies the Communist Party\u2019s grand narrative about its own grandness. Only the Party, they claim, is capable of ensuring that living standards continue to improve and the country\u2019s ever-widening inequality gap is kept in check. Only it can ensure a stable, unified country and a \u201chappy,\u201d \u201charmonious\u201d society. Only it can guarantee the continuing \u201crejuvenation of the Chinese nation,\u201d defend \u201ccore interests\u201d (especially what it refers to as \u201cterritorial sovereignty\u201d), and ensure China, kicked around by other great powers in much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, global respect.<\/p>\n

A Sinophile Western cynic would be excused for thinking that this is just a more elaborate way of stressing, as the Chinese do, that the might of the pen (bi gan zi<\/em>) and the barrel of a gun (qiang gan zi<\/em>) are the two pillars of the People\u2019s Republic.<\/p>\n

All of this was essentially sketched out by senior PLA colonel Liu Mingfu in his recently republished 2010 book, China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era<\/em>.\u00a0 On one thing Liu and Xi (along with all China\u2019s recent leaders and PLA commanders) agree: China is \u201cback as the most powerful nation where it\u2019s been for a thousand years before the \u2018century of humiliation.\u2019\u201d The bottom line:\u00a0 when the problems start, Xi\u2019s dream will feed on nationalism. And nationalism — that ultimate social glue — will be the essential precondition for any reforms to come.<\/p>\n

In April, one month after the National People\u2019s Congress, Xi repeated that his dream would be fulfilled by 2050, while the Party\u2019s propaganda chief Liu Yunshan ordered that the dream be written into all school textbooks.\u00a0 But repeating something hardly makes it so.<\/p>\n

Xi\u2019s father, former vice premier Xi Zhongxun, was a man who thought outside the box. In many ways, Xi is clearly trying to do the same, already promising to tackle everything from massive corruption (\u201cfighting tigers and flies at the same time\u201d) to government rackets. (Forget lavish banquets; from now on, it\u2019s only supposed to be \u201cfour dishes and a soup.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But one thing is certain: Xi won’t even make a gesture towards changing the essential model. He\u2019ll basically only tweak<\/a> it.<\/p>\n

Fear and Loathing in the South China Sea<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everyone wants to know how Xi\u2019s dream will translate into foreign policy. Three months ago, talking to journalists from the emerging BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the Chinese president emphasized that \u201cthe China Dream also will bring opportunities to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Enter the charm offensive: in Xi\u2019s new world, \u201cpeaceful development\u201d is always in and \u201cthe China threat\u201d is always out. In Beijing\u2019s terms, it\u2019s called<\/a> \u201call-dimensional diplomacy\u201d and has been reflected in the incessant global travel schedule of Xi and Prime Minister Li Keqiang in their first months in office.<\/p>\n

Still, as with the dream at home, so abroad.\u00a0 Facts on the ground — or more specifically in the waters of the South China Sea<\/a> — once again threaten to turn Xi\u2019s dream into a future nightmare.\u00a0 Nationalism has unsurprisingly proven a crucial factor and there\u2019s been nothing dreamy about the continuing clash of claims<\/a> to various energy-rich islands and waters in the region.<\/p>\n

Warships have recently been maneuvering as China faces off against, among other countries, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines.\u00a0 This unsettling development has played well in Washington as the Obama administration announced a \u201cpivot\u201d to or \u201crebalancing\u201d in Asia and a new strategy that visibly involves playing China\u2019s neighbors off against the Middle Kingdom in what could only be considered a twenty-first century containment policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From Washington\u2019s point of view, there have, however, been more ominous aspects to China\u2019s new moves in the world. In bilateral trade with Japan, Russia, Iran, India, and Brazil, China has been working to bypass the U.S. dollar.\u00a0 Similarly, China and Britain have established a currency swap line, linking the yuan to the pound, and France plans to do the same thing with regard to the euro in an attempt to turn Paris into a major offshore trading hub for the yuan.<\/p>\n

Nor was it an accident that Xi\u2019s first trip abroad took him to Moscow. There is no more crucial economic and strategic relationship for the Chinese leadership. As much as Moscow won\u2019t accept NATO\u2019s infinite eastward expansion, Beijing won\u2019t accept the U.S. pivot strategy in the Pacific, and Moscow will back it in that.<\/p>\n

I was in Singapore recently when Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel dropped in<\/a> at the Shangri-La Dialogue, an Asian defense and security forum, to sell the new U.S. focus on creating what would essentially be an anti-Chinese alliance in South and Southeast Asia, as well as the Pacific. \u00a0Major General Qi Jianguo, deputy chief of the general staff of the PLA, was there as well listening attentively to Hagel, ready to outline a Chinese counter-strategy that would highlight Beijing\u2019s respect for international law, its interest in turbo-charging trade with Southeast Asia, but most of all its unwillingness to yield on any of the escalating territorial disputes in the region. As he said, “The reason China constantly patrols the South China Sea and East Sea is because China considers this to be sovereign territory.”<\/p>\n

In this way, the dream and nationalism are proving uncomfortable bedfellows abroad as well as at home.\u00a0 Beijing sees the U.S. pivot as a not-so-veiled declaration of the coming of a new Cold War in the Asia-Pacific region, and a dangerous add-on to the Pentagon\u2019s Air-Sea Battle concept<\/a>, a militarized approach to China\u2019s Pacific ambitions as the (presumed) next rising power on the planet.<\/p>\n

At the Shangri-La, Hagel did call for \u201ca positive and constructive relationship with China\u201d as an \u201cessential part of America’s rebalance to Asia.” That\u2019s where the new U.S.-driven Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) — essentially the economic arm of the pivot — would fit in. China\u2019s Ministry of Commerce is reportedly even studying<\/a> the possibility of being part of it.<\/p>\n

There is, however, no way a resurgent Beijing would accept unfettered U.S. economic control across the region, nor is there any guarantee that TPP will become the dominant trading group in the Asia-Pacific. After all, with its economic muscle China is already leading the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership<\/a> that includes all 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.<\/p>\n

In April, after visiting Beijing, Secretary of State John Kerry began spinning his own \u201cPacific dream\u201d during a stopover in Tokyo. Yet Beijing will remain wary of Washington\u2019s dreaming, as the Chinese leadership inevitably equates any dream that involves moves everywhere in Asia as synonymous with a desire to maintain perpetual American dominance in the region and so stunt China\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n

However nationalism comes into play in the disputed, energy-rich islands of the South China Sea, the notion<\/a> that China wants to rule even the Asian world, no less the world, is nonsense. At the same time, the roadmap promoted at the recent Obama-Xi summit remains at best a fragile dream, especially given the American pivot and Edward Snowden\u2019s recent revelations about the way Washington has been hacking Chinese computer systems.\u00a0 Perhaps the question in the region is simply whose dream will vanish first when faced with economic and military realities.<\/p>\n

At least theoretically, a strategic adjustment by both sides could ensure that the dream of cooperation, of Chimerica, might prove less them chimerical.\u00a0 That, however, would imply that Washington was capable of acknowledging \u201ccore\u201d Chinese national interests — on this Xi\u2019s dream is explicit indeed.\u00a0 Whatever the confusions and difficulties the Chinese leadership faces, Beijing seems to understand the realities behind Washington\u2019s strategic intentions. One wonders whether the reverse applies.<\/p>\n

_________________________<\/p>\n

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for <\/em>Asia Times<\/a>, an analyst for the Russian network <\/em>RT<\/em><\/a> and al-Jazeera English, as well as a <\/em>TomDispatch regular<\/em><\/a>. His most recent book is <\/em>Obama Does Globalistan<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright 2013 Pepe Escobar<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 tomdispatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beijing was very much aware of Washington\u2019s deep plunge into China\u2019s computer networks over the past 15 years. Yet Xi merrily allowed Obama to pontificate on hacking and cyber-theft as if China were alone on such a stage. Enter — with perfect timing — Edward Snowden, the spy who came in from Hawaii and who has been holed up in Hong Kong since May 20th.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197,61,65,62,57,56,147,180,55,139,52,148,146,169,203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-feature","category-environment","category-anglo-america","category-media","category-militarism","category-asia-pacific","category-energy","category-brics","category-capitalism","category-justice","category-health","category-history","category-economics","category-trade","category-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}