Why There Is a Cold War in Asia
When someone escapes from North Korea and makes contact with South Koreans, and when China then repatriates that person to North Korea, the North Korean authorities typically execute that person, or send him to die in a prison camp. China has known this for years. That’s why the Chinese government is an accessory to murder when it does things like this:
China has repatriated an 81-year-old former South Korean prisoner of war who had fled North Korea decades after being captured, a newspaper report and an activist said Tuesday. Dong-A Ilbo quoted an unidentified government official as saying the man surnamed Jung was sent back despite intensive diplomatic efforts by Seoul to bring him to the South. [….]
“The government made tremendous diplomatic efforts but he was eventually sent back to the North,” the source was quoted as saying. South Korea had contacted Chinese diplomatic authorities more than 50 times since Jung’s arrest, the daily said. Choi Sung-Yong, an activist who campaigns for the return of South Korean abductees, said Jung was forcibly returned to the North in September last year, about a month after being arrested in China where he was hiding. He said Jung was arrested eight days after he fled the North with the help of South Korean activists. [AFP]
In the end, all of our differences with China over Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Korea, and everything else come down to its contempt for the rights of individual human beings. If China recognized that the condition of humanity carries with it certain basic rights and liberties, it would be a threat to no one, it would have peacefully reunified with Taiwan decades ago, it wouldn’t be plagued with ethnic and labor unrest today, and wary Asian nations wouldn’t be looking for alternative structures to check its thuggish conduct, its hegemonic predations, and most recently, its aggression through its North Korean proxy. That is why Pacific nations need a military alliance, patterned after NATO during the Cold War, to contain China for next 20 years until demographics, economics, religion, and politics catch up with its anachronistic statism. There already is a new Cold War in Asia — it’s just that some would rather not admit it. But I suspect that historians will record that it was presaged by the ugly nationalism of the 2008 Olympics, and “officially” began with the Cheonan Incident.
The Chinese reaction to such an expansive argument will certainly be that I am making too much of one man’s life, which is just my point. Societies and nations are composed of individuals who want the state to serve them, and not the other way around. Gradually, those who can see the significance of an individual’s life are learning to loathe China’s oligarchy, one small injustice at a time. Because this includes growing numbers of the Chinese people, this will be the downfall of the fascist experiment that has functionally replaced the failed Maoist one. In the case of China, that downfall is likely to be more episodic than cataclysmic, but a system can only brutalize so many people before their rage eventually consumes it.
BINGO.
This post is a homerun, Mr. Stanton. Thank you for your passion and leadership on the strategic issue that will soon matter to every American.
Excellent post. The elegant simplicity of the second paragraph, about what China could do to be a threat to no one, inspired me to write my own post that highlights the importance of what you wrote.
I fear, however, that your twenty years of a NEATO (Northeast Asia Treaty Organization) may be a tad optimistic. I look back at Beijing policies twenty years ago and I see too little change to think that the PRC won’t need hemming in after two or even three decades.
This shows China is behaving even more obnoxiously than before. The rule used to be that although they would forcibly repatriate family members of former South Korean POWs, but the POWs themselves would quietly be sent to South Korea. If your son or daughter is forcibly sent back to North Korea, this gives very little comfort but they at least recognized South Korea’s concern over its own soldiers. They no longer seem to be playing by even this low standard. This is truly a slap in our face worse than their response to the Cheonan since they have absolutely nothing to loose by sending an 81 year old home.
I do hope that South Korea’s leadership finally steps up to the plate and formally requests China to stop its practice of repatriating North Koreans period and backs it up with some teeth. Quiet diplomacy is over at this point.
If China really wants to play Cold-War and power geopolitics, old style, there are many things Korea can do. While former President Roh Moo Hyun gets little respect here, one of the interesting things he wanted to do was build a naval base on Jeju island. A serious base there would put much of China’s Eastern Seaboard in weapon range. If we really wanted to slap them back in the face, Korea should funnel spare parts and other military hardware to Taiwan. Once we finish the Jeju Naval Base, we can invite Taiwanese pilots to Jeju for TOP GUN style exercises (for actually improving combat skills) and perhaps some live fire as well (just so that the large explosions make the news).
But what really needs to be done seems a Plan B for China. The Chinese people suffer even worse from their government which cares little about kids getting lead poisoning and infants eating melanin. Support for Chinese religious groups including the Falun Gong, providing technical aid to dissidents, labor leaders and reformers will probably be more effective than the old-style saber rattling.
“If China recognized that the condition of humanity carries with it certain basic rights and liberties, it would be a threat to no one, it would have peacefully reunified with Taiwan decades ago, it wouldn’t be plagued with ethnic and labor unrest today, and wary Asian nations wouldn’t be looking for alternative structures to check its thuggish conduct, its hegemonic predations, and most recently, its aggression through its North Korean proxy.”
With all due respect, I understand the good intentions here, but this comment displays a fundamental ignorance regarding the Chinese situation and Chinese history generally. China is really a Han core with a periphery of ethnic minorities that is forced into the group (and has been to varying degrees for centuries). The ethnic struggle and labor unrest you reference would only intensify if China became the bastion of liberty that you so righteously speak of. You can see the situation with the former Russian states and have an idea of what might happen to China if everyone who wanted to be separate was allowed to do so…
You can also witness how long it took Taiwan and South Korea to get functional democracies together that really could be said to recognize “basic rights and liberties”. This is actually not an accident.
No, peaceful reunification with Taiwan wouldn’t have happened decades ago if some Chinese leaders just said they wanted to recognize human rights and liberty. Decades ago, China’s economy was garbage… it could not turn into a functioning democracy with wonderful human rights overnight. Taiwan would not reunify into that (and, for the record I’ve also lived in Taiwan before and spoken with many generations of Taiwanese about reunification). Taiwan will be controlled by China when and if actual reunification occurs. This is a fundamental difference between North and South Korea, where the prosperous South has a solid majority of the total population.
China’s history is the devastation of “chaos” — roaming warlords… the emperor being “far away”… Before the commies, China was conquered by Japan and had internal fighting and economic stagnation because there was no strong internal power… This problem actually goes back thousands of years in Chinese history. “ 天下“ It’s the justification for the power of the emperor. A small amount of suffering endured under the emperor’s yolk is justified by the great benefit provided in avoiding civil war and being secure from invasion. The Chinese psyche is shaped by this collective history, the same way you can say that confuscionism still shapes the Korean pysche.
A lot of the criticism about China is warranted.. sending an 81 year old back to die seems very callous, but the alternative to the underlying policy… simply letting folks flood in and letting NK collapse is not yet acceptable to China.
China is a country that stomached millions of forced abortions in the OCP because it was determined that this was in the people’s best long term interests. Now finally there is talk of scaling this back. Human rights will come to China slowly… because that’s really the only way they can come.
Another issue worth thinking about… is utilitarianism fundamentally nhumane? The U.S. will spend millions of dollars to keep a person in a vegetative state on life support ad infinitum, while thousands of neglected people die in ghettos in largely preventable deaths.
Do you try to save 1 person if you reasonably determine that there is a 10% chance 100 people will die if you do so (e.g., through resulting civil unrest/riots)? In China, these are not always simply theoretical questions. They are things the government thinks about.
Anyway, China has to deal with a lot of issues in its country. Please, let’s not oversimplify the solutions to all of these.
With that said, you may carry on with the daily China bashing.
Biff, Why must we assume that China must continue to be “a Han core with a periphery of ethnic minorities that is forced into the group?” With all due respect to you, the Han core doesn’t have an inalienable right to keep a prison of nations. There is certainly a wide range of peaceful means to parole them out. The Dalai Lama is only asking for limited autonomy, and all the mainstream Uygur activists really want is an end to the demographic colonization of their traditional homeland.
I agree largely with biff on this. While many of the actions of the Chinese state (including the one you highlight) are deplorable, I don’t think that imposing dramatic limits to the Chinese state is necessarily a good thing.
“In the end, all of our differences with China over Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Korea, and everything else come down to its contempt for the rights of individual human beings.”
Now you know that’s not true. There are huge economic differences such as trade imbalance and currency valuation between China and the US.
“If China recognized that the condition of humanity carries with it certain basic rights and liberties, it would be a threat to no one,”
Leaving aside the question as to who exactly has the power to designate the “condition of humanity” to carry such attributes, I don’t see the threat from China in this regard. While they don’t place human rights on the agenda in dealing with other countries, I would hesitate to say that neglect for human rights is an ideology they perpetuate internationally. Many countries have dealings with dictatorships. Democratic India provides support for Burma just as much as China does.
“it would have peacefully reunified with Taiwan decades ago, it wouldn’t be plagued with ethnic and labor unrest today, and wary Asian nations wouldn’t be looking for alternative structures to check its thuggish conduct, its hegemonic predations, and most recently, its aggression through its North Korean proxy.”
Taiwan is too complicated to make offhand predictions like that. Every country has ethnic and labour unrest; it’s just that the media likes to make a big deal out of it in China. Hegemonic predations? I don’t see them myself (other than in economic terms but if the West continues to buy Chinese goods and invest in it then whose got the right to complain?) As to aggression through North Korea, are you suggesting the Chinese ordered North korea to take out the Cheonan?
“to contain China for next 20 years until demographics, economics, religion, and politics catch up with its anachronistic statism. There already is a new Cold War in Asia”
The Chinese may not have an ideology to export but you most certainly do. It’s things like countries wanting to “contain” other countries that can lead to cold wars.
“Gradually, those who can see the significance of an individual’s life are learning to loathe China’s oligarchy, one small injustice at a time. Because this includes growing numbers of the Chinese people, this will be the downfall of the fascist experiment that has functionally replaced the failed Maoist one. In the case of China, that downfall is likely to be more episodic than cataclysmic, but a system can only brutalize so many people before their rage eventually consumes it.”
Individual rights have improved over the last few years and with social mobility on the rise I can’t see any of this happening any time soon.
“Biff, Why must we assume that China must continue to be “a Han core with a periphery of ethnic minorities that is forced into the group?†With all due respect to you, the Han core doesn’t have an inalienable right to keep a prison of nations. There is certainly a wide range of peaceful means to parole them out. The Dalai Lama is only asking for limited autonomy, and all the mainstream Uygur activists really want is an end to the demographic colonization of their traditional homeland.”
China has had ethnic minorities within its borders for centuries, if not millennia. The borders of much of present-day China were built up under the rule of a non-Han group. Of course, Han chauvinism is something to be condemned, but splitting up China along ethnic lines could lead to horrific scenes like most partitions have demonstrated.
If China recognized that the condition of humanity carries with it certain basic rights and liberties…
The PRC Constitution DOES recognize that the condition of humanity carries with it certain basic rights and liberties. But that official ideology has as much to do with the current state of China as a piece of paper crafted in the late 1780s has to do with the current state of the US–zilch.
* China couldn’t have been “peacfully” reunified with Taiwan for a lot of practical (not ideological) reasons–economic, ethnic, social, and political. The military support given to Taiwan, even after the US recognized the PRC as the official government, have had something to do with that.
* The labor issues stem from rebellion against the low pay and shitty conditions that foreign and other private investors provide Chinese laborers, the inability to find work thanks to the economic collapse, and the state reneging on promises it made [including in the constitution] to support retirement and provide employment.
* The ethnic issues do not stem from a lack of ideological commitment in equality and rights. They stem from the issue of there being a war of conquest on. No ideological blathering is going to stop a government from keeping its hold on territory it wants. Despite its Constitution, the US did not get all warm and fuzzy when the American Indians sought independence/separation from an encroaching imperial power, and it would be absurd to expect the Chinese government to do so. YES, it is evil and they should stop, but do you have a coherent, practical alternative for them? No. Criticize them all you want, but when was the last time you even *noticed*, let alone did something about, the problems in our own country caused by the incompetent, negligent, and occasionally outright abusive BIA?
(As for Tibet, I don’t get the Western/hippie obsession with it.)
So: does china have problems? Yes, obviously–but they aren’t a result of the Chinese government hating on the idea of human rights.
I grew up in a town that’s at least 1/4 Lakota, but I certainly don’t remember any riots or significant support for secession or independence.
Couldn’t resist responding to this. Do you mean to say the Lakota never really wanted their independence (which of course you can’t mean)? Or they had just been sufficiently integrated/pacified by the time of our childhood (I’m guessing not more than 30 years ago) to not openly complain anymore (which proves what?)?
Give China 50-100 more years. Han immigrants are moving into Tibet (and other minority controlled regions) quickly, I understand. Maybe soon there will be no more problems there. Just a matter of time for assimilation (and it’s worth noting that many of the Chinese minorities have been pretty well assimilated already).
In any case, one other point to note.
In the case of China, that downfall is likely to be more episodic than cataclysmic, but a system can only brutalize so many people before their rage eventually consumes it.
Again, I appreciate the intention here, but want to emphasize that the trajectories of NK and China right now are very very different. I feel like you could have used the same words for the Dear Leader (thought cataclysmic may be more likely in that case). I’ve been in China for about 3 years now and see no signs of general social unrest or the “rage” you speak of. This could all change if the economy doesn’t continue its meteoric rise, but, for now, people’s lives are improving tangibly and they are pretty darn proud of their country’s entry into the international arena as a world superpower. I’ve had frank conversations with 100s of Chinese, but never heard one suggest that it would be in the interests of the Chinese people to somehow topple their government in the near future (which is something I can’t say about my time in the U.S.)–and yes, they could tell me they hated the current gov’t without fear of reprisal–they just couldn’t yell it with a megaphone in Tian An Men. So don’t hold your breath waiting for the collapse of the CCP..
Biff, as a matter of curiosity where exactly have you been in China? Because it sounds pretty much like you have been on the tiny slice of China currently enjoying a boom and I suspect the “100s of people” you have spoken to are from the tiny minority of china that has benefited materially under the last 20 odd years.
GQ, however “shitty” the conditions might be in foreign firms they are a million times better than it was when China was chasing “self-reliance” – funded and trained by the USSR – and there is strong competition to enter those foreign firms precisely because the conditions are better than other places. Now China is slowly trying to push those foreign firms back out again, you think conditions are going to become better or worse for the locals?
Danny:
Yes, I’m based in a major city here (but if I was based in the countryside, you’d say I didn’t know what it was like in the cities, right). However, most of the service personnel I interract with (e.g., staff in restaurants, hotels, barbershops and (legitimate) massage parlors) are from the countryside, and yes, sometimes I do engage in extended conversations with them. Also, I’ve visited more than a dozen cities of various shapes and sizes scattered throughout China (I’d venture to say I’ve seen more different areas of China than many Chinese). Even places in the neglected “rust belt” of China, e.g., Haerbin and Dandong are bustling with life and development. China is actually a lot more evenly developed in terms of ciities than it is given credit for. It has nothing close to a primate city, like those in South Korea, North Korea and Japan. And going forward, development will focus more on 2nd tier and 3rd tier cities, since there are only so many sky scrapers you can throw up in BJ.
Where do you live in China, Danny? You really believe only a tiny minority of China has benefited “materially” in the last 20 years?
As for China actually pushing out foreign firms, haven’t seen it. They continue to come and every Chinese guy wants to own a Buick (though I have no idea why, other than that they still generally hate Japanese products, but it is a sight to see).
I lived in Qingdao for four years, speak decent Chinese, and while I do not always agree with Biff, I share his perceptions about Chinese people’ attittudes towards their government and general satisfaction with the rise in living standards initiated by Deng’s reforms.