Alternate China
I visited Beijing and vicinity toward the end of summer. After coming back, I realized by chance that, if I had checked and heeded the U.S. State Department’s China Travel Advisory—an Orange Warning of “arbitrary detention,” just one notch below an outright Red Do Not Travel—I probably wouldn’t have gone, thus missing the chance to see how the official Advisory contrasts with what I experienced firsthand: at Beijing Capital International Airport, I entered and, six days later, exited immigration, swiftly passing courteous officers. On the ground, cops in Beijing streets were not armed, also a stark contrast to the tense, armed and armored Chicago cops.
Evidently, that State Department propaganda in the form of travel advisory and the “China-bad” narrative permeating American media has been considered insufficient by Washington, because the House has passed $1.6 billion to fund "independent media and civil society" abroad as well as at home to combat “malign Chinese influence” globally. One big plan for that budget is to focus on China’s Belt and Road Initiative and pay local media overseas to spread covert anti-China messages to effect disruptions where there is a Chinese company building infrastructure for an underdeveloped economy. The hypocrisy is that when Russia manipulated American public opinion, it was Russian interference in the U.S. elections; yet when the U.S. does it in other countries, it is spreading democracy around the world. For homeless Americans and those who are bankrupt due to a lack of medical coverage—I will do my part to explain why those funds aren’t coming to their aid instead.
Threat
It's that “China threat” mentality. I must say if that alleged threat were true, or even only half-true, I, too, would sympathize with it and be alarmed. But interestingly what is all over the media and what the State Department warns us about is Alternate China—a China in some people’s heads—not the real country where I sweat climbing up the Great Wall a few weeks ago.
I feel for those Americans whose minds are weighed down by U.S. government and media’s China fearmongering while deriving comfort inside and outside their homes from Chinese products. To free themselves from the cognitive dissonance, they might want to start considering that there might be a faraway land where the European way of thinking and behaving doesn’t apply because society there came through a different path than European society and people there are un-related to Europeans. The distinction can be mindboggling. One can simply get a sense of how different two independently emerged and evolved civilizations can be by having a look at how dissimilar Chinese people’s speech and writing system is to all European languages.
In European tradition, war of expansion/conquest is structural. Just as China is alien to the Westerner; Europe is alien to the Chinese person, who is baffled by how Europe has had so many wars so frequently. Moreover, characteristic of the years leading to the First World War was the feeling among the major European nations that there hadn’t been a major war for decades and they were itching to try their new weaponry as their respective industrial accomplishment. In imperial China, on the other hand, the ruler spent resources on building the Great Wall—a defensive attitude in the face of the threat from nomadic peoples’ repeated invasions—rather than on offensive weapons for expansionist war. To be clear, China at times would fight to push the nomads farther away from its northern borders to create strategic depth for the lessons learned where the defense provided by Great Wall alone proved inadequate and the country ended up being conquered or partially occupied by northern peoples, such as the Mongols. But those wars were merely defensive against an existential threat. China has had its ups and downs in its long history; it simply does not have an expansionist mindset awakening when strong.
One united country as a norm of China was established in 219 BC, when one of the feudal kings ended China’s feudal era by subduing the last of other fiefs, thereby unifying the country and becoming the first emperor of China. Since then, China had been punctuated by civil wars that ended with the country’s reunification. In contrast to Europe, China had its feudal era BEFORE the era of centralized governance. Thus the feudal times characterized by frequent wars became a thing in the past for China about 2000 years before the Western world passed its, which gives China 2000 more years’ time than Europe to evolve away from the belligerent nature.
After the “century of humiliation” (1840-1949) at the hands of Western imperialism (including Japan, which considers itself West), during which China was inflicted with unprecedented destruction of life, land, culture, and self-confidence, the Chinese people regained their footing and are drawing strength from that tragedy for rebuilding their nation and ensuring such tragedy will never happen again. As a result, for security China endeavors to create strategic depth in the East and South China Sea. Also, to right the historical wrong and to end the legacy of the national humiliation, the Chinese mind is set on reintegrating Taiwan, an island that is legally (by Cairo Declaration) and historically (going back some 400 years) part of China but under separate administration due to the last civil war. Given the peaceful means of reunification at Beijing’s disposal, that time is on their side, and that one would not want to break something that is theirs, you can bet your bottom (dollar) that Beijing’s top priority is to achieve a peaceful reunification with Taiwan, under the conditions that the redlines not be crossed—(1) a declaration of independence by the Taiwanese government; and (2) the deployment of a foreign military in Taiwan. Anyone who is aware of America’s bloody Civil War, fought to stop Southern secession, can probably appreciate Beijing’s resolve mandated by the norm of one unified nation, a tradition 2000 years older than America as a nation.
Harmony
At the core of the Chinese psyche is “harmony.” In Chinese society, from top to bottom, it is nothing short of a second nature to gravitate toward the state of harmony, for that is the only condition known in the Chinese mind to be wholesome, balanced, and sustainable. Traditionally, China expected harmony in foreign relations, based on mutual respect and noninterventionism. Even during the seven maritime voyages reaching as far as the East African coast more than half a century ahead of Magellan’s consequential voyage, with multiple times the size of Magellan’s fleet, China committed no coercion or colonization on countries far or near, but rather only conducted peaceful contact and trade. In today’s connected world, furthermore, China pursues mutually beneficial dealings and connections with peoples who share the values of respect and nonintervention. Aggression toward other lands and peoples is antithetical to the Chinese spirit, no matter how much stronger China has become. To allege Chinese aggression is to project a European mindset on an alien culture about which one is ignorant—or to engage in psyop with misrepresentation and warmongering.
Domestically, harmony is the basis of China’s social order. A traditionally but contemporarily-diminished patriarchal society, China is a world where subordination and caring come hand-in-hand in a two-way street up and down hierarchies, within the family as well as the country. As such, whereas Europeans’ adversary mindset calls for checks and balances with individual rights being the nexus for ensuring fairness and general well-being, Chinese people’s well-being is rooted in harmonious stability. It follows that the political system most natural to harmony is distinct from that borne out of adversary dynamics inherent in Western culture. Therefore, despite the Western tendency of judging a nation’s modernization and “human rights” by whether it adheres to the type of democracy that is built on individuality and checks and balances, Chinese people have been and should continue to be the masters of their own political destiny in the path paved with their tradition of reciprocity of benevolence.
People’s Will
“We [the monarch] rise and fall on the people’s will—like water can carry and capsize the boat.” This is one Chinese adage long known by Chinese rulers, leaders, as well as everyday people. The fact is that, even without two-year election cycles, people’s will is bound to become the government’s reality—overlook or go against it at the ruler’s peril, which was responsible for the changes of dynasty because eventually the ruler couldn’t get away with it. And China has had over twenty dynasties and countless other unrests over its five-thousand-year existence. Against this solemn cultural backdrop, Chinese government has in place citizen feedback apparatus. Part of it is local governments’ Message Board for Leaders, which have handled 2.3 million demands, concerns and complaints from citizens since its inception in 2006. Another nationwide initiative, the One Two Three Four Five Hotline, fields more than 55 thousand everyday issues per day in Beijing alone, with over 85 percent of those concerns resolved. And the Local Legislative Liaison Stations connect grass roots to the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s highest legislative office. From its launch in 2015 to 2023, there were 3,100 ideas collected for legislative drafts.
“In the U.S. you can change the party but you can’t change the policies, while in China you can change the policies but not the party,” observe some Westerners. For better or worse, China’s history and culture has not led to a political system where election campaigns cost a great deal of money and the highest court of the land rules political “contributions” are protected speech, whereby money interests possess power through financing candidates and parties while hedging by paying both sides. So, is there any wonder why it’s the money that always wins regardless of which side accedes to office in the U.S.?
Ethnic Diversity
China is composed of 56 ethnic groups. Apart from cases of foreign usurpation of China’s territorial sovereignty, maintaining harmonious relations between the majority and minority groups are in the forefront of Beijing’s consciousness.
Unlike the U.S. (and other countries originated from colonies of European settlers), China’s ethnic minorities live in their respective ancestral regions, with some members migrating to other parts of the country typically attending schools or working.
Ethnicities are fluid in China in that assimilation erases the line between ethnic groups—while minorities’ own culture and religion are respected. Lacking such a tradition of inclusivity (at least before the “woke” movement), the U.S. and some of its Western allies have no qualms about projecting their own egregious past on China by fabricating ethnic genocides and “cultural genocides” (meaning zero evidence) to vilify China—or as they habitually emphasize with every piece of “China bad” rhetoric, “it is not the Chinese people, but ‘the CCP.’”
Trust
One measurement of hearts and minds tells a story contrary to the dominant Western narrative: a Western survey, the Edleman Trust Barometer, found China to be the country rated highest globally in terms of citizens’ trust in their government. China has in fact held the top spot every year but one since 2018. Its comprehensive trust index is at 79 in 2024, while the U.S. is at 46. And that is from an American survey. Also being not motivated to speak in favor of China is the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei, who visited Julian Assange, a journalist wanted by the U.S. and arrested by the U.K., in the London prison. After years of living in the West, Ai lamented that the West’s censorship is worse than China’s. Indeed, being implied and covert, censorship in the U.S. is an epitome of hypocrisy, in contrast to China’s explicit and overt censorship.
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Based on Alternate China, Washington’s wanton action against China—ranging from economic sanctions to military encirclement—will only make Americans poorer or at least less prosperous, and, above all, make them less safe with the danger of a devastating war never seen in American history, if not nuclear Armageddon.
There is no need for an American to like China; but for Pete’s sake they need to know the real China.