Why China doesn't trust the West

I was cynically amused to read US Defense Secretary William Gates' comments about China in a speech to the Air Force Association last week. Among other things, he said:

"In fact, when considering the military-modernization programs of countries like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the US symmetrically -- fighter to fighter or ship to ship -- and more with their ability to disrupt our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options," Gates said in a speech to the Air Force Association.

"Investments in cyber and anti-satellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry, and ballistic missiles could threaten America's primary way to project power and help allies in the Pacific -- in particular our forward air bases and carrier strike groups," Gates said in National Harbor, Maryland.

. . .

Defense analysts have warned that the US military will soon lose its dominance on the high seas, in space and in cyberspace as China and other emerging powers obtain sophisticated weaponry and missiles.

The United States released its 2009 National Intelligence Strategy document Tuesday, in which China's "natural resource-focused diplomacy and military modernization" were cited as factors making it a "global challenge."

The intelligence guidelines for the next four years also elevated the importance of the cyber domain, singling out China as "very aggressive in the cyberworld."

There's more at the link.

To those who express surprise, or displeasure, or distrust, at China's rapid strides in improving its defense forces and equipment, and assertion of its national interest in the face of the competing national interests of other countries, I can only ask, "Why are you surprised?"

Consider history.

China's first contacts with the West were fairly innocuous - Jesuit missionaries, Marco Polo, and the like. However, their first large-scale dealings sowed the seeds for almost two centuries of profound suspicion and mistrust. Consider the First Opium War from 1839 to 1842. The British East India Company wanted to sell opium to the millions of Chinese drug addicts (and, for that matter, make addicts of millions more - there was money to be made from their misery). When China banned the trade in opium, the Company and the British Government declared war. In 1842 China was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, ceding Hong Kong to Britain, permitting the importation of opium without restriction. and paying reparations. It was a humiliating defeat, the first of many.

The Treaty of Nanjing was the first of the so-called 'Unequal Treaties', of which there were to be a further seventeen until the last, the Tanggu Truce with Japan in 1933. In every case, China was forced to make concessions, pay reparations, allow infringements of its sovereignty, etc., all under threat of military force if she failed to comply. The Treaties were concluded with every major Western power, and with Japan. China had - and has - no reason to love these nations, based on her historical encounters with them.

Prior to and during World War II, during the Second Sino-Japanese War, China became a charnel-house of Japanese expansionism. The West did nothing to intervene, and little to help, until Japan attacked the US in December 1941. Thereafter aid to China increased markedly, but never in sufficient quality or quantity to enable Chinese forces to confront the Japanese occupiers on an equal footing. Indeed, most Western aid was directed towards operations against the Japanese in Japan proper, or in Burma or Formosa or other theaters, as part of a Pacific-wide strategy. The interests and needs of, and risks to, China itself were largely ignored. Needless to say, Japanese countermeasures cost China dearly. According to Wikipedia:

Chinese sources list the total number of military and non-military casualties, both dead and wounded, at 35 million. Most Western historians believed that the total number of casualties was at least 20 million. The property loss suffered by the Chinese was valued at 383 billion US dollars according to the currency exchange rate in July 1937, roughly 50 times the GDP of Japan at that time (US$7.7 billion).

These immense figures places China second only to (and not very far behind) the Soviet Union in the number of casualties (military and civilian) and cost of damage suffered during the Second World War. No Western nation - not even Nazi Germany - suffered anything like the same number of casualties.

Many of these casualties were the direct result of US and allied actions during the war. A classic example (but by no means the only one) may be found in the famous Doolittle Raid of April 1942. Sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers led by Lt.-Col. Jimmy Doolittle took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. They struck Tokyo and surrounding areas, dropping a mere 12 tons of high-explosive bombs and 4 tons of incendiaries, and causing casualties (according to the Japanese) amounting to 50 dead and 250 injured. The aircraft then attempted to fly to China and land behind Chinese lines, but didn't have enough fuel to get that far. Most crash-landed in Japanese-occupied China, from where most of their crews were led to safety by Chinese guerillas and sympathizers.

Doolittle and his crew with Chinese rescuers after crash-landing in China (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

The US authorities must - must! - have realized that Japan would take reprisals against any and all Chinese who assisted, or even appeared to sympathize with, the airmen: but they did nothing to minimize the risk. The Japanese response was to send no less than 53 battalions of troops on a savage search and reprisal mission in the affected areas of China. They killed a quarter of a million innocent civilians in the process.

So . . . 16 tons (32,000 pounds) of bombs dropped on Japan, causing 300 casualties, versus a cost to China (in reprisals) of 250,000 dead. That's almost 8 dead Chinese per pound of bombs dropped (7,812 per ton, if you wish), or 833 dead Chinese for every Japanese casualty (killed or injured). Was that a fair exchange? The US didn't even bother to ask. Dead Chinese were not an operational consideration in Washington's perspective on the war. The Doolittle raid was celebrated as a great propaganda victory, and Doolittle himself was promoted two ranks to Brigadier-General and received the Medal of Honor . . . but no-one ever asked how those dead Chinese, or their surviving relatives and friends, felt about it. Would they have said the almost entirely symbolic, propaganda victory was worth the sacrifice of their lives? I doubt it.

After the war, some embittered Chinese (both Nationalists and Communists) blamed the West for China's immense death toll, believing that it simply didn't care what happened to the Chinese people as long as they served to divert Japanese troops and attention away from the main Pacific battlefront. I've read extensively about the history of that time, and I have to admit that those Chinese critics have a point. To make matters worse, most of the Japanese leaders guilty of war crimes against the Chinese people (including the staff of the infamous Unit 731) escaped without trial, and some were even employed by the United States in an effort to learn the secrets of their barbarous and inhumane experiments.

I have nothing good to say about Communism: but if the West hadn't been so indifferent to the needs of China, that country's development during the second half of the twentieth century might have been very different. Ironically, the West helped to ensure a Communist victory in China by asking the Soviet Union (at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and the Yalta Conference in 1945) to invade that country, so as to attack Japanese forces there after the conclusion of the war in Europe. (The Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek, nominally treated as an equal ally by the Western powers, was not even represented at the conferences. It had no say in the matter.) Stalin was happy to agree. His armies later handed over to Communist guerillas most of the weapons they confiscated from the Japanese army, and made sure that Communists controlled all the territory they had seized before they returned to the Soviet Union. In effect, through their request to Stalin, the West hammered the last nail into free China's coffin.

Under the Communist regime of Mao Zedong, China was treated with suspicion, hostility and even contempt by the West. The remnants of the corrupt, ineffective Nationalist regime fled to the island of Formosa, or Taiwan, where it established an independent state whose existence was instantly recognized by the major Western powers. They ensured that Taiwan, rather than mainland China, was given a seat at the United Nations and permanent membership of the Security Council. (This would only be reversed in 1971.)

Given this disdain, China set its face against the West. It sent clear messages that it would act if Western forces attempted to occupy North Korea during the Korean War, only to have its warnings disregarded, even treated with contempt. It did as it had warned, intervening decisively in November 1950, throwing United Nations forces back in disarray. After the Korean War ended in stalemate, China went on to support Communist and anti-Western forces throughout South-East Asia during the 1950's, '60's and '70's, in almost all cases to the ultimate discomfiture of the West.

(One of the great ironies of the Vietnam War is the indignation with which some US politicians and leaders accused China of aiding and abetting the production and distribution of illegal narcotics such as marijuana, LSD and heroin, the use of which became rampant among certain sectors of the US armed forces. One can hardly blame the Chinese - not after the example set by the West during the First Opium War the previous century! China had learned its lesson well, and was simply following the ancient and time-honored practice of 'tit for tat'.)

In more recent times, China has become, to a very large extent, the manufacturing hub of the world. Let's take just one example of growth, steel production, and compare the USA to China in 1980 and 2008 (the latest year for which figures are available from the World Steel Association):




Most of the manufacturing industries of the Western world have shifted their production to China, due to the low cost of labor and materials there. This wasn't done to do China any favors: it was done solely in the pursuit of greater profits by those industries. They'd move their production elsewhere tomorrow if they could find somewhere with lower labor costs, offering greater profits.

This industrial boom has brought undoubted economic benefits for China, which is well on the way to superpower status, and (if current trends continue) may emerge as the world's leading superpower by the middle of the twenty-first century: but it's also brought with it very serious environmental problems (including the infamous 'cancer villages', amongst other blights). The two photographs of the Beijing skyline, below, illustrate the problem. They were taken in August 2005 within a few days of each other, from the same place, at the same hour of the morning. The first was taken after two days of rain had cleared the air; the second shows 'normal' air, without the cleansing effect of the rain.

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

China has made great strides in expanding and modernizing its armed forces, using the revenues earned from its burgeoning economy to do so. It's now in a position to proclaim, insist upon and defend its national priorities, just like the United States or any other nation on Earth. The difference is, it can't be pushed around any longer. It's grown strong enough to ensure that its wishes will be heard and respected.

When Secretary Gates refers to China's military buildup as 'threatening' or 'challenging' or 'aggressive', he should remember that the US posture towards China could fairly be described in precisely and exactly those words during most of the recent and not-so-recent past. China is doing no more than assert her national pride and priorities, as she has every right to do. Given the shameful, exploitative, frequently dishonest and underhanded treatment she's received from the West in the past, is it any wonder that the Chinese leadership and people are profoundly suspicious of the West, even xenophobic to a degree? If I were in their shoes, I, too, would be building up my country's armed forces, and insisting on being treated with the respect I'd been denied for so very, very long.

China is now in the formerly unimaginable position of holding the health of the entire US economy in its hands. If China stops investing in US bonds, the rest of Asia, and probably the rest of the world, will be forced to follow suit. This would cut the US government's revenues by something like 50%. Imagine our Government telling Americans, "Sorry, but there's no more Social Security, no more Medicare or Medicaid, no more federal welfare money - you're on your own." That's what China can do to us now, and she's in that position because we've put her there. We've allowed ourselves to become financially dependent on her through our own economic fecklessness and greed. (Of course, if China did that to the USA, she'd also cause the collapse of her own export-driven economy, which makes such action highly unlikely: but the mere fact that she can do so must give immense satisfaction to her leaders.)

'What goes around, comes around', as the saying goes - and the contempt and disdain with which the West has treated China for so long is now bouncing back on our heads with a vengeance. China is now a superpower, and isn't about to let us forget it, or treat her in the same way that our forefathers did. I imagine that must make the people of China feel pleased and proud. It would certainly make me feel that way, if I were Chinese.

All the preceding facts should make it clear why China protests about, and tries to interfere with, US Navy intelligence-gathering vessels trying to operate within China's declared economic zone, spying on her submarine activities. That's why China is using her current account surplus to buy up (and buy into) natural resources all around the globe, ensuring that her industries will have ongoing supplies of the raw materials they need - even if the US runs short of those same raw materials. China is acting in her national interest, just as the US has always acted in its own national interest. The difference today is that we can no longer impose our national interest on China, as we have in the past. China won't (and can't) be pushed around any longer.

I wish China well in her quest to continue her national development, and to find a way forward that will bring greater prosperity to her people and progress in human rights and democratic reform. It won't be easy, but great strides have already been made (admittedly, accompanied by appalling atrocities such as the Tiananmen Square massacre). China still faces immense challenges in dealing with the divide between rich and poor, urban and rural, educated and uneducated, etc. Let's hope and pray, for all our sakes, that nothing happens to derail Chinese stability. The consequences for all of us would be grim indeed.

Peter