THE
HUNDRED-YEAR MARATHON: CHINA'S SECRET STRATEGY TO
REPLACE
AMERICA AS THE GLOBAL SUPERPOWER
(New
York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2015)
BY
MICHAEL PILLSBURY
Rev.
by Hugh Murray
Pillsbury
has written an informative book about Sino-American relations from
his youth in the 1960s up to the copyright date of the 2015 volume.
Unfortunately, he fails to raise questions pertinent to his topic,
and these I shall discuss later in my review. Because Pillsbury
knows Mandarin and is seeped in Chinese culture, he writes about
various Chinese texts on strategy, which the Chinese war-hawks often
cite, but these ancient writings reveal no more about general
strategy than applied by players of games Risk or Diplomacy and which
are implicit in regular common sense.
At
the outset of Pillsbury's career, he writes: “Throughout Mao's
tenure, American intelligence...[generally] viewed the Chinese as a
reclusive, almost primitive people being led by a collection of
radicals.”(p. 20) It saw China as unable to challenge the Soviet
Union, much less the United States.(20-21) Was there a possible
split between the S.U. and China in the 1960s? Pillsbury describes
the contradictory information coming from Soviet defectors, like Yuri
Nosenko, who came to the West in 1964. Interestingly, Pillsbury
never mentions how vibrations of that split were already evident in
1962 among the separate groups organizing to attend the World Youth
Festival that summer in Helsinki (not just the pro-Westerners, but
the pro-Chinese factions distinct from the pro-Moscow ones).
In
1969 while the 24-year-old Pillsbury was working for the UN
Secretariat, he also agreed to work as a spy for the US
government.(24) Thereafter, he would hold various posts and provide
information, analysis, and opinion to American leaders. A Soviet
representative at the UN told Pillsbury that “the Soviet Union had
essentially built the modern Communist Chinese state,(25) but now
China “planned to use the Americans as they had used the Soviets –
as tools...while pledging cooperation against a 3rd rival
power.”(27)
Pillsbury
contends that it was not Nixon who sought to open up China, but
“...the Chinese military secretly designed China's opening to
America.”(54) Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy was also quietly making
overtures to Beijing, and Nixon, when told of his Democratic rival's
initiative, the President felt pressured to finally plunge ahead with
high-level meetings with the Chinese. Nixon also asked the Chinese
not to invite any American politician to Beijing before him.(57)
Because China was deemed a basket case, Nixon and Ford provided gifts
to the Chinese, which were hidden from the American public for over
30 years. These included eliminating aid to the Dalai Lama and
canceling naval patrols in the Taiwan Straight.(69) About this time,
Pillsbury was advising to increase aid to China and to build
Sino-American military ties against the USSR.(69) He writes that the
Chinese were trying to use the US against its Soviet rival, but
clearly the US was also attempting to use China against the same
rival. In these types of agreements, each nation hopes to use the
other for its own benefit.
After
opening, the US and China cooperated, not only where the US provided
China with early warning systems near the Soviet border, and help in
nuclear affairs,(73) but in military operations: 1) against the
Soviets in then-occupied Afghanistan, 2) in support of the
anti-Vietnamese genocidal Communist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and 3)
against the joint Soviet-Cuban groups fighting in Angola.(72, 74)
China, which had felt itself surrounded by an increasingly hostile
USSR and its allies, even went to war against Vietnam in 1979,
following that nation's long wars with France and the USA.
Basically, Pillsbury, and most others, would agree that
Chinese-American cooperation helped topple the Soviet Union, the
Kremlin crumbling that might not have happened without such joined
ventures.
Then,
in spring/summer 1989 there were student demonstrations in China.
Pillsbury contends that US intelligence at that time greatly misread
events in China. American leaders thought that Deng Xiaoping led the
reform faction among China's leaders, but Pillsbury now believes this
was a critical mistake. The student protests began with the mourning
and funeral of a real reformer Hu Yaobang, who died 15 April 1989,
These collective gatherings grew in size and spread throughout the
nation. In Tienanmen, it became a love fest of the young Chinese for
America, with an imitation Statue of Liberty (Goddess of Democracy)
in the huge square and ever more people joining the continuing
demonstrations. Dan Rather, anchor of the CBS Evening News flew to
Beijing's Tienanmen to focus America's attention on the faraway
events. While Pillsbury and others usually portray these protests
beneath a halo, there were reports at the time that elsewhere in the
country the demonstrators were beating Black students studying in
China. How widespread was this, I do not know, and it may have been
a reaction to special privileges afforded to foreign students by the
Communist government. Pillsbury writes that at the time America's
China experts tended to dismiss the protests, concerned more that
they might cause problems for the “reform” faction led by Deng
Xiaoping. Pillsbury later admits one of the great failures of
American intelligence was in misunderstanding that the real reformers
then were Zhao Ziyang and the late Hu Yaobang, while dominant Deng
prepared to throw his weight to lead the anti-reform faction.
Deng
and his allies ordered the crackdown. 300,000 troops were ordered to
Beijing. Most of us recall the student who stood alone against an
advancing tank, halting the military occupation of Tienanmen – for
a short time. And then more orders were given, shots were fired, and
blood of students flowed through the square, and into the streets
nearby, and even up in the neighboring balconies when troops shot up
into onlookers. Many regular citizens of Beijing had been killed
trying to stop the troops from entering the city. Some were run-over
by military vehicles, others shot with bullets meant to expand in the
victim and cause more damage, others simply beaten. And many were
arrested. This was happening before the army got to Tienanmen.
According
to Pillsbury, Deng was horrified that Chinese youths should look to
America as a model for China's future. From the early 1970s, when
Mao met Nixon, the Chinese had portrayed America favorably. Deng now
determined: - that must stop. So, history was suddenly rewritten and
the media would popularize the new “view” of the past. Beginning
with US President John Tyler and the 1844 Treaty of Wanghia (which
gave most favored nation status in tariffs to the US, and which
provided extraterritoriality; the treaty would remain in effect until
1943), America sought to follow Britain's imperial path and exploit
China. Lincoln, Wilson, on to Truman and beyond, America was out to
undermine and exploit China.(104-05) That would be the new outline
for presenting the role of the US in China's sphere.
After
the crackdown, China hands, and even former Pres. Nixon, urged Pres.
George H. W. Bush not to allow the Tienanmen suppression to disrupt
the improving relations with the US. Those relations were not
disrupted.
Missing
from the Pillsbury volume is any discussion of another series of
demonstrations that also began in 1989. Outside the St. Nickolas
Church in Leipzig, the second largest city of the German Democratic
Republic (East Germany), Monday night demos began quite peacefully
asking for more democratic reforms and the right to travel. In
nearby Hungary (also part of the Soviet bloc), some GDR citizens were
allowed to cross into the West without obtaining permission of the
GDR authorities. Dissatisfaction and protests were growing. GDR
leader Erich Honecker asked Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to crack
down. Instead, he demanded a softer approach, more in line with the
Perestroika then unfolding in the USSR. Soon, he removed Honecker,
and Egon Krenz was installed as the new leader of the GDR. Protests
grew in size, and spread to the capital, East Berlin. But Leipzig
remained the hub of the trouble. Special troops were called up to
meet the crisis. What would they do? A repeat of the suppression in
Germany that occurred in 1953? Would the authorities have the
courage to do as the tanks in Tienanmen did to restore order, even if
it meant mass killings? In the end, they did not fire on the crowds.
The government sought to ease the situation by transmitting that the
border would be open; but what did this mean, was the government
really opening the wall? All was confused with masses suddenly
gathering at Brandenburg Gate, and then, actually passing through the
GDR barriers into West Berlin. The wall was eroding, and with it,
the GDR. By 1991 the GDR had ceased to exist, and so had the USSR.
If the troops had not brutally shot and killed and later imprisoned
the protestors in Tienanmen and round that nation, would the People's
Republic of China still exist? Pillsbury fails to ask this essential
question.
So
soon after the Chinese Communist Party reasserted its physical
authority in China, rounding up reformers, keeping some reform
leaders under house arrest for years, and for the small fry, prison,
and possibly worse. The education/propaganda machine now portrayed
America as an enemy of China's natural aspirations. And a most
crucial point – the glue that held the Sino-American cooperation
together, the fear of the mighty USSR, was removed with the
disintegration of that Communist creation. Pillsbury maintains that
while the China hands and experts in America continued to think that
the cooperation would continue as before, the Chinese, freed from any
renewed threat of Soviet encirclement, could now aim to grow and
surpass the US, so that China could become the world's dominant power
by 2049. But China would not show its true hand until ready, until
sure it could defeat the Americans. Until then, it would play the
part of the backward nation that required scientific, technical, and
other assistance. And to win this assistance, China would continue
to pretend to be moving toward democracy, toward a free market
economy, while it announced its peaceful intentions to all other
nations. To achieve these fine, acceptable goals, China might
require America's help, in gaining admission to the World Trade
Organization, and in dealings with the International Monetary Fund
and the World Bank. Thus, China needed America's help on these
issues so it could continue progress toward a democratic and
free-market economy, which would improve the standard of living for
the average Chinese and make for a more peaceful world. So, American
experts did indeed help China achieve WTO membership, which made
China eligible for loans from the World Bank and the IMF. Experts
from Goldman Sachs and other firms provided vital information to
Chinese officials so they could present papers to international
bodies promising to act like any other nation in international trade
and finance. The Chinese were delighted to receive the memberships,
but they had no intention of abiding by the terms of these treaties.
Other Western experts were advising the Chinese on how to reform
China's banks, so they could infuse funds into the stumbling state
owned enterprises (SOEs), trimming them, making them financially
muscular, rebuilding old state corporations and promoting new,
promising ones.
However,
there were also signs that China was testing a new policy with the
US. In the wars that accompanied the break-up of Yugoslavia, the US,
in alliance with Western Europe, sided with the opponents of Serbia.
America flew planes in to bomb Serbian targets. On one mission, the
night of 7 May 1999, apparently by mistake, US aircraft bombed the
Chinese Embassy in the Serbian capital of Belgrade, killing 3 and
injuring 20. The US quickly apologized. However, this was
insufficient for the CCP nationalists and hawks. Massive
demonstrations outside the American Embassy in Beijing basically
entrapped the Ambassador in part of the enclave. Phone calls for
help, both from the Embassy and from the US to authorities in Beijing
were essentially evaded or ignored. At this point, no large
demonstrations could occur in Beijing without the tacit support of
the regime, especially when goaded to do so by the Chinese media to
rouse the crowds. Deng had already begun the de-emphasis on Marx and
the promotion of patriotism and nationalism; now he could combine
that in an open way to test the reaction of the Americans to see how
or if the superpower would respond to the humiliation of its
Ambassador. The new China policy was not afraid to annoy or threaten
the prestige of the USA.
Pillsbury
contends that China's Marathon depends on the good-will of the
US.(115) But China was now assuming it could retain that good-will
even while holding the American Ambassador as a hostage. How would
China keep good-will in America, and indeed throughout the world? In
2004 the Confucius Institute was created by CCP front groups. Like
the British Council, and the Goethe Institute, the Confucius
Institute's purpose is to make the homeland look good to the rest of
the world. It would stress the pacific nature of Confucius, of
Chinese culture and the Chinese nation. Pillsbury writes that it may
also provide cover for “industrial and military espionage.”(125)
The Confucius Institute will sign contracts with universities, and
even high schools, to provide teachers of Mandarin and Chinese
culture. But part of the agreements, - there can be no hostile
research or discussion of Tienanmen, Tibet, or an independent Taiwan.
A university with a Confucius Institute that allows a department to
invite the Dalai Lama to lecture may find its funding cut. What most
Westerners would deem “objective” research in “sensitive”
areas is discouraged or rejected.
The
Chinese can use the financial lever because of the enormous growth of
the Chinese economy, and Pillsbury maintains the US is largely
responsible for the Chinese economic miracle.(159) How can he
assert this? The economy under Mao was a disaster, and Pillsbury
relates that from 1958-61 some 30 million died of famine.(162) He
provides no figure on how many were killed during the Cultural
Revolution and other Maoist “reforms,” but under Mao's communism,
consumerism was clearly another casualty. After Mao's death and the
ensuing struggle for power with the Gang of 4 and others, Deng
surfaced as the most powerful leader inside the CCP. He was
determined to change the economic policies that he was convinced had
held China back. Marx and the other saints of Communism would still
be honored, but China would now aim for socialism with Chinese
characteristics. And what did that mean precisely? The collapse of
the Soviet Union witnessed a rush by the government to sell off the
huge state operating enterprises (SOEs), operations that were usually
heavy on bureaucracy and weak on producing quality goods. These
dinosaurs were quickly bought by men with insider information,
insider contacts, and skill who soon became known as the new Russian
oligarchs. Should China follow the same path? Some suggested that
this would be the fastest way to become a capitalist, free market
economy, and China would then be prosperous. But Deng listened to
alternative proposals. Some suggested that the CCP should rebuild,
modernize, and innovate the old dinosaur SOEs. If this could be
done, at least with some SOEs, then they could be subsidized by the
state and Party in many ways. State banks could force mergers of
stronger and weaker state corporations, force very weak ones into
bankruptcy, aid others with tax incentives, with curbs to diminish
and destroy foreign competition in the home market using ever more
stringent regulations against the foreign companies; harassment. The
objective of the CCP using these methods was for the dinosaurs to
evolve into national champions, SOEs and new CCP-government favored
corporations capable of competing with any foreign corporation.
Pillsbury notes that in the 1960s, the only internationally known
Chinese brand was Tsingtao Beer. Today, Huawei is only one of the
most famous in the news.
Pillsbury
presents a graphic example of how China's new wealth, accumulated in
part by cheating, has influenced the globe. In the 2013 film
“Gravity,” with Sandra Bullock, the star faces death in space
because the Russians have, without any notification, blown up a
satellite, and the fragments spinning through space, endanger
anything in neighboring orbits including Bullock.(198) The film is
fiction. The Russians had not exploded a satellite on purpose; but
the Chinese had! And for the American film to gain access to the
huge Chinese market, the film executives knew it had better not blame
the villainy in the script on China. So they decided to assign that
role to the Russians instead. Thus, the Russians became the bad
guys. Money talks. And because of America's trade and other
policies with China, that nation has gained lots of money
.
The
People's Republic of China has used its newly acquired wealth to
pressure nations to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan, as the PRC
does not view the island as an independent nation but only a rogue
breakaway province that must be returned to the mainland. It should
be stressed that for over a century, Taiwan has been connected to
Beijing for at most 5 years, and probably less. In 1895, as a result
of the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan took the island calling it
Formosa, and it remained Japanese until the end of WWII, 1945. It
was then given to the officially recognized government of China, led
by Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek. As his forces lost to the
Communists on the mainland, Chiang had to evacuate his troops to the
island where he continued as head of the Republic of China,
recognized by the US and some other nations until the 1970s. Mao's
government had no power over Taiwan, though the PRC claimed it. When
the US finally recognized the PRC as the official government of
China, it then recognized Taiwan as a separate Chinese entity, as did
many other nations allied with the US.
In recent years,
China uses it wealth to pressure smaller nations to cut ties with
Taiwan. If they want Chinese investment, Chinese help in building
roads, infrastructure, then they should rid their capitals of any
Taiwan embassy. So, some African and Latin American nations have
severed diplomatic relations with the island, tending to isolate it
from the international community. The mainland has been offering
both the carrot and stick to Taiwan, itself. Taiwanese were allowed
to invest in mainland areas, hiring large numbers of mainland workers
at low wages, and producing products for the international market.
Firms like Foxconn built huge factories on the mainland with
conditions so oppressive that nets had to be installed below workers'
dormitory windows to reduce the suicide rate. Taiwanese business men
have done well in the PRC. And the CCP has invested in Taiwan, not
so much in factories, but in politicians. While some politicians
speak of declaring Taiwan an independent nation, others openly
promote reunion with the mainland. But the PRC policy is not all
carrots. Thus 1 April 2019 ABC New reported: “
Taiwan
said Monday its planes warned off Chinese military aircraft that
crossed the center line in the Taiwan Strait, and called China's move
a provocation that seeks to alter the status quo...”
It
was not only in Taiwanese politicians that the PRC was investing. In
the 1996 Presidential campaign the Chinese indirectly funneled money
to the campaign of then Pres. Bill Clinton. When the GOP sought to
investigate, the pro-Democratic major media discounted Sen. Fred
Thompson's efforts, but the Democratic National Committee would
eventually be required to return $2.8 million in illegal and
improper contributions from foreign nationals – some with
connections to the Chinese military.(National Review, John Fund's
piece, 16 July 2017). Pillsbury notes that the Chinese were caught
paying into Democratic coffers in the 2000 Presidential
campaign.(121) Since it was the Democrats, there was no years'-long
investigation of collusion by a Mueller-type Special Counsel. We now
know that the husband of Senator Diane Feinstein (Dem.-Cal.) won
lucrative deals with Beijing, while she often voted for improved
relations with the PRC. From 2009-2017 she chaired the Senate
Committee on Intelligence, and was an important member of the
committee even when the Democrats were not the majority. And at the
time of the hearings for the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh for the
US Supreme Court before the Judiciary Committee, on which Feinstein
is the leading Democrat, it was revealed that Feinstein's chauffeur
of over 2 decades was a spy for the Chinese Communists.
Pillsbury
notes that a Chinese spy inside the CIA was convicted in 1985, but he
had been plying his trade since 1945.(p. 53) This is one of the
weaknesses of Pillsbury's book. He writes that for most of his time
working for the US government, he was a “panda huger,”
sympathetic to the PRC and urging cooperation and aid to that nation.
Their operatives described him as part of the Red Team. But by
around 2000, he questioned his former positions. He was becoming a
panda slugger. However, aside from a sentence about a Chinese spy in
the CIA going back to 1945, Pillsbury ignores the earlier Red Teams
in the US government, ones that were probably far more influential in
promoting Chinese Communism and in changing the world. The pro-Red
Teams long preceded Nixon and the opening of China. They were in
place during WWII.
WWII
began in Asia with the 2nd
Sino-Japanese War, an escalation of an incident on the Marco Polo
Bridge between Chinese and Japanese soldiers just outside of Beijing
on 7 July 1937. The Japanese pressed south, taking Shanghai, and
then Chiang's capital, Nanjing. The Imperial forces were so brutal
it was called “the rape of Nanking.” By December 1941 Chiang had
retreated to a capital in the south west, Chungking (Chongqing).
Manchukuo had been carved from several provinces of China that had
been home to the minority Manchus. The Japanese satellite nation was
established in the early 1930s and headed by Pu Yi, a Manchu, and the
last emperor of China. By 1941 most of the northern and central
coast of China had been conquered by the Japanese. Mao and his
Communists had been thrust from the Nationalist coalition government
in the 1920s, and after a long march, were located closer to the
Mongolian border (with possible help coming from the USSR). After
several years of retreat, Wang Jingwei and others who had been close
to Dr. Sun Yat Sen (he had led the rebellion that overthrew the
Chinese dynasty in 1911), decided the best role for the Nationalists
was to stop the war, and join as junior partners with Japan. He left
Chungking, flew to Hanoi, and thence to Japanese occupied areas. He
would lead a Nationalist collaborationist government, which had
600,000 troops in its military, and under which many more Chinese
lived than under Chiang's anti-Japanese Nationalist government, or in
the small areas under Mao.
In
summer 1939 the USSR and Japan had a short, undeclared war near the
borders of their satellites – (Soviet) Mongolia vs. (Japanese)
Manchukuo. The Japanese lost badly. But the 2 nations wanted peace
so they could test their warriors elsewhere. The USSR was one of the
few nations to recognize Manchukuo. And after June 1941 when Hitler
invaded, Stalin had little time to aid Mao. Chiang hoped for
American aid after Pearl Harbor. But his Nationalist forces were
isolated. All the coast that was not Japanese, was Japanese waters.
Indo-China was Vichy French, working with the Japanese, Thailand was
soon a Japanese ally, as was Burma. Only by flights over the hump of
Tibet with supplies from British India, or through the vulnerable
Burma road, could Chiang get supplies. American advisor, General
“Vinegar” Joe Stilwell treated Chiang as a “peanut,” the
nickname he used to mock the Chinese leader. Stilwell also abused
Nationalist China, treating it as a satellite rather than as an ally.
Initially,
the media were sympathetic to Chiang, but as the war went on, his
image changed. As did the image of Joseph Stalin. FDR's
Administration asked Hollywood for films to portray the Soviets in a
favorable light. One such film, “Mission to Moscow,” was dubbed
by those who knew better as “Submission to Moscow.” In some
segments of the media, Chiang was now seen as corrupt, unwilling to
fight the Japanese, while the agrarian reformers under Mao Zedong
seemed idealists and determined to oppose the Japanese invaders.
Washington began to press for a coalition government, of Nationalist
and Communist to oppose both the Japs and Wang's collaborationist
Nationalism. Chiang kept finding ways to reject these proposals.
Washington
desperately wanted the Soviets to enter the war against Japan.
Stalin promised to do so 3 months after the end of the war in Europe.
Invasion of the Japanese home island might cost 2 million lives.
The Japanese were ready to surrender and asked the Soviets to convey
that message to the Americans. However, Stalin did not want the war
to end until he could enter and receive the goodies Roosevelt had
promised him. Stalin did not relay the Japanese message about
surrender. Three months after the Nazis surrendered, the US dropped
A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, AND the Soviets entered the war,
easily sweeping through Manchukuo (where much of China's industrial
belt was located, and which was denuded of Japanese troops as they
were still occupying vast territories). Japan sued for peace.
Almost by chance, the Soviets and Americans were to share the Korean
peninsula, divided about half for each. For one week's war, the
Soviet's did extremely well.
The
Soviets prevented the Chiang government soldiers from quickly
occupying Manchuria. The Soviets took as much of the industrial
hardware as it could, but what to do with the left-over Japanese
weapons? Should these go to the official government of China led by
Chiang? Chiang did make mistakes. He tended to treat many of those
who lived under the occupation government as traitors. But soon
there was fighting between Nationalists and Communists.
The
civil war continued. When Chiang was finally getting the upper hand
by the spring of 1946. American General George Marshall, a good
friend of Gen. Stilwell, came to arrange for a cease fire between the
conflicting camps. The cease fire halted Chiang's offensive.
Meanwhile, the Japanese weapons confiscated by the Soviets were given
to the Chinese Communists. For Chiang to receive weapons from the
Americans, Marshall demanded that he bring the Communists into his
government. Chiang refused. So while Mao was being supplied with
Japanese weapons seized by the Soviets, Chiang was denied weapons by
the Americans. Then, for some bewildering reason, events on the
battlefield began to change. Chiang's Nationalists began to lose,
and lose. With the election in the US of the heavily Republican 80th
Congress in November, it voted a large sum to help Chiang, but the
Treasury Department included those sympathetic to the Communist cause
like Harry Dexter White, who sabotaged these funds. The war kept
getting worse for Chiang. When finally the Americans decided to
restore military aid to Chiang, rifles would be received, but no
bullets, and other means of cripple his efforts. Meanwhile, secrets
from the State Department were published in a left-wing Asian
journal. The Deep State had employed many whose sympathies and
actions favored the communist cause. Eventually, Chiang had to flee
to Taiwan to survive. And in October 1949 Mao in Beijing declared
victory and the establishment of the PRC, Would he have been able to
do so without the help of Stalin and the pro-communist elements in
the US? When Republicans asked, “Who lost China?” there was more
to this question than liberals cared to admit. The elite of both
parties still decry McCarthyism and believe he was rightly censured
by the US Senate. But McCarthy alleged there were Red Teams in the
US government, Teams that were far more influential than the FDR
crowd and its successors (the academedia complex) would ever admit.
While
Pillsbury mentions the Korean War on a few pages of his book, he
never tries to relate the antics of the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea to Chinese-American relations. Clearly, there were and are
links between North Korea and the PRC. As Gen. MacArthur's UN troops
approached the Yalu River, wiping the DPRK off the map, the PRC
responded with masses of “volunteers” whose numbers overwhelmed
the American-led armies. MacArthur was surprised by the Chinese
intervention, and wanted to use nuclear bombs. Truman knew the UN,
under whose flag we were fighting, would never agree. And Truman
undoubtedly thought it a bad idea or he might have done it. So the
UN troops fell back and the war continued with no sign of victory for
either side. Truman's unwinnable war was one reason Republican
Dwight Eisenhower ended a 20 year drought and brought the GOP back to
the White House in 1952. He had promised to end the war, and a cease
fire was concluded (though, still no peace treaty).
What
is the relation between North Korea and China today? When North
Korea does something the US dislikes, the US may ask for diplomatic
help from the PRC. If China does intervene on behalf of the American
request, what does China get in return from the US. Might China ever
goad North Korea to do something it knows will upset Washington in
order to gain a concession? But if China is not involved at the
time, and American diplomats come for help because of some outrageous
act by North Korea, China can plead impotence, or refer the US to
another nation bordering the DPRK, the USSR (or later Russia).
China-Korea can play a low-level extortion game with the US. What is
Pillsbury view of this? He never alludes to it in his book.
Finally,
one of the many disasters of the Obama Administration was to allow
the PRC to build up tiny islands in the South China Sea, and then
militarize them. The Chinese claims to the area were denied by the
International Court in the Hague, but the new aggressive Chinese
leadership cares nothing for such court rulings. Instead, it
proclaims it has old maps showing the waters were once Chinese. Of
course, it might also have maps laying claim to Siberia, but this is
not the time to dust those off. The Chinese military presence in the
South China Sea is a threat to Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippines, Brunei,
Indonesia, Malaysia, and indirectly, Singapore. It is also a threat
to all shipping nations. By taking such a surprise and powerful
stand, and with no real opposition from Obama's appeasing White
House, China shows it is aiming for bigger things, just as Pillsbury
has written.
Pillsbury
contends that the Chinese Communist leadership plans to become the
dominant world power by 2049, the anniversary of Mao's victory in
their civil war. Mao came to power with the help of the Soviets, AND
with help from American Communist sympathizers in high-level posts,
who may have given bad advice to some non-Communists like Gen.
Marshall. The result was to effectively disarm Chiang Kai Shek and
allow Mao's forces to defeat him. Within a year, Mao was strong
enough militarily to snatch victory from the US in Korea. However,
Mao's internal economic “reforms” set China back 30 years, in
Deng's view. Many millions starved, and then thousands or millions
were killed. The military pushed for an opening with the USA which
occurred under Nixon. China, fearing encirclement by the Soviets,
and the US, still in a Cold War against the Soviets, had a common foe
in Moscow. The US and China worked together in Afghanistan, Angola,
and Cambodia. But beginning in 1989 with protests, nations took
different paths. The Soviet East Bloc chose not to crack down, and
their systems collapsed. The Chinese under Deng did crack down and
determined that never again would Chinese youths look to America for
inspiration. Chinese history was rewritten, making America into just
another imperialist nation intent on distorting and exploiting
Chinese aspirations. China would pretend to be moving to democracy
and a free-market economy, while building SOEs into national champion
industries in a mercantilist trade system of cheating and stealing.
China
had altered the result of the Korean “police action” in 1950. It
won a short war with India in 1962, and an undeclared one with the
Soviets in 1969. A decade later it had another one with Vietnam.
Now it tries to isolate, strangle, and bribe Taiwan. Its new
presence in the South China Sea makes it the bully of the
neighborhood. Pillsbury writes that the US is still aiding the
Chinese.(216) Whether this is true under Trump, is questionable.
Pres. Trump has surely sought to shed the image (and reality) of
Obamappeasement. Pillsbury makes a strong case that the US is now in
a competitive race with China for world leadership, and that the
freedoms we take for granted in the West may disappear in a
“harmonized” world under Chinese leadership. Most Westerners
still reject the harmony of the ant hill, preferring instead to
retain the freedom, to fall or soar, instead.
There
is another point, not directly related to China but to the
competition Pillsbury describes between China and the US in the
Middle Kingdom's marathon of the century. When protests rose in
Eastern Europe in 1989 and the GDR leader asked Gorbachev to crack
down, the Soviet leader declined. He wanted a softer approach, and
more reform. The crowds in Germany grew, as did tensions. The
troops were there with weapons. But they did not fire. The TV
indicated the government would open the border. Masses went to the
border points in Berlin, and they were permitted to leave the GDR for
West Berlin! Suddenly, everything was in flux. In two years, the
GDR ceased to exist; and so had the USSR. Somewhat earlier in 1989,
in Tienanmen Square, growing masses of demonstrators demanded a more
democratic China, symbolized by the students' version of the Statue
of Liberty. Days went by, with the demonstrators growing in number.
Finally the CCP leadership decided to end it. Like the GDR, where
guards for the wall in Berlin were usually Saxons, not natives
Berliners, Deng brought in Chinese troops from outside Beijing to
shoot to kill those protesting against the nation's Communist
leadership. And the crack-down continued, so that even today
discussion of Tienanmen is blocked on the Chinese internet. Deng was
brutal, but the CCP is still in power 30 years after Tienanmen.
These
incidents have a relation to the US. In February 2019 some 75,000
invaders entered the US through the southern border with Mexico, and
it's forecast that the number in March will be 100,000. Millions are
already here. “Experts” on mainstream media announce that really
nothing can be done to stop this. However, in the 1950s under
President Eisenhower, Operation Wetback rounded up about a million
illegals and deported them back over the border. (Now, with
left-wing gatekeepers of language, we are no longer supposed to even
use the word wetback.) America has laws on the books to apprehend
and deport illegal entrants, yet whole cities, usually run by
Democrats, openly announce their defiance of the law under the term
“sanctuary” cities. Lawless cities would be more appropriate.
Pres. Trump, whose signature issue was stopping illegal immigration –
an issue that led him to victory over a dozen professional
politicians in the primaries for the Republican nomination, and then
led Trump to carry some blue-collar states to win the 2016
Presidential election over Hillary Clinton. He still orates against
the invaders, but whenever he tries to build a wall or make it more
difficult to enter, Trump is handcuffed, either by liberal judges, by
Congress, or by the bureaucracy.
I
ask, how will a wall stop the invaders when all they have to do is
utter a few words and they will be home in the US where they will
receive free schooling, welfare, healthcare, and other economic
incentives. We live in a nation under stress: one major party
supports open invasion of the nation. And some of the Republicans
are just as bad. Even going back to the 1990s and the era of Pres.
Bill Clinton, he gave a speech and announced that by the year 2050
whites would be a minority in the United States, and the audience
applauded and cheered. Can you imagine Xi Jinping announcing that in
50 years the Han people will be a minority in China, and the Chinese
cheer? Inconceivable! Or Prime Minister Modi making a similar
comment about Indians being reduced to a minority in India. No
Indian would cheer such an announcement.
To
prevent an invasion of people who speak a foreign language with
foreign customs, entering our country to take from the wealth of
American citizens, a wall may help, but it is not sufficient. Those
who say the caravans cannot be stopped are warped in their thinking
(and some support the invasion). How do you stop an invasion? You
use armed troops, border patrols, or regular army, or create a
special force. They should have electronic speakers to make simple
announcements in English first, and then Spanish. “This is the
border. This is no entry point. If you want a visa, get it in the
American Embassy in the capital city of your country. If you try to
enter, you will not be permitted in. If you try to cross the border
here, you may be shot.” If they ignore the announcement, first,
shoot in the air. If they continue coming, shoot to stop or kill.
It is probable few would need to be shot before the mob turns around
and runs the other way. Do not interfere with the leftwing media as
it films any killings. It will show to the world that America is
determined to preserve itself and its borders. If only one invader
is killed, the caravans would soon turn south to their points of
origins. Those who hate America would hate it even more. Those who
love America, will be grateful to know that the invasion has been
halted by our government and American can continue to exist. Indeed,
America could be great again.
If
people are not willing to fight for their country, it will go under.
But it is insufficient just to fight. When invaders try to cross the
border, the defenders must be willing to shoot and kill. That way a
nation survives and can continue to thrive. The invasion today is
our Tienanmen, our Leipzig. The Germans learned the lesson: no
border, no country. Will we have the courage to defend our borders
and save our way of life? Even if we have to kill to do so? If we
fail to stop the flood of invaders, America will soon join the Soviet
Union in history's dustbin.