COLUMN: Life after Deng:Orientalism

From: Michael Periera's, "The Raw and the Cooked," Fall '97 From: Michael Periera's, "The Raw and the Cooked," Fall '97 Chairman Mao played the politics of paradox: he derided old Chinese emperors yet he lived in an Imperial City that dwarfed antique palaces. His quest for "egalitarian virtue" culminated in his so-called "Cultural Revolution" which starved and killed millions. His brutal attacks on bureaucracy created internal chaos which necessitated more bureaucracy. Mao was a sexual adventurer, a drug addict, and a self-styled philosopher-king, surrounded by an aura of divine atheism. Though heir to Mao's legacy, Deng managed to shed the straight jacket of ideology. Whereas Mao specialized in elusive statecraft, Deng's first concern was praxis. Deng abolished agricultural communes, decentralized economic decision making, encouraged private business and even fostered some provincial autonomy. Deng stressed "The Four Modernizations" -- agriculture, industry, national defense and science -- instead of outmoded communist notions of "class struggle." He normalized diplomatic relations with the United States, regularly meeting with Henry Kissinger and others from the early 1970s until the thaw of the Cold War. But Deng, for all the liberal overtones in his policy, was first and foremost nationalistic; his goal was to make China strong, not democratic. He called his relationship to the United States "friendly" -- but a qualified, distant friendliness. Although willing to adapt Western modernization -- taking the "best from the East and West" in technology and even governance -- he was by no means prepared to emulate Western-style liberalism. In his own words, Deng was "neither a conservative nor a reformer." He claimed to "seek truth from facts," a search that yielded the volatile pragmatism that erupted in 1989 in Tiananmen Square. Deng learned, as Kissinger said, he could not "compartmentalize reform;" that economic modernization would inevitably require a partial return to Maoist politics. So Deng's China, like his predecessor's, was haunted by-the specter of political paradox: he tried to mix irreconcilable elements -- to fashion a communism-cum-liberalism -- with a result akin to oil with water. In foreign policy, Deng mastered the "mixed message." He said he wanted peaceful unification with Taiwan, but would not rule out force as a "last resort." The party line mentions continued freedoms in Hong Kong after 1997 -- "the dance hall girls will still dance," as Deng artlessly phrased it -- but the fate of a reunified Hong Kong remains uncertain at best. Even Japan -- Asia's post-World War II economic prodigy -- has sensed the danger of an updated Chinese military, prompting Tokyo to reconsider its pacifist constitution. Taking Deng as their model, successor dictatorships have redirected the ambitions of domestic policy; communism is no longer merely a way of life, now it may also be an idea for export. It's the same old ideology, but with a newfound power. Now China can exert its political will with a certain economic legitimacy. Regional concerns --for example, Japan's oil interests in the East China Sea, Taiwan's decision to admit the exiled Dalai Lama into its borders or Thailand allowing American naval vessels to dock in its ports -- become China's decisions in its blueprint of regional authoritarianism. In short, China's undeniable momentum into the 21st century has engendered a vigorous nationalism and a political self-awareness that threatens to undermine Asia's present hegemon -- the United States. The China threat is finally real, yet China is ironically perceived as a nation on the "road to reform." However, political liberties do not necessarily come hand in hand with economic improvement. Misperception is still on China's side. In the grip of hard-line Maoism, China presented an image of malignant, militant ideology -- an image fueled in America by rabid red scares and footage of the Manhattan Project set to Wagner. In reality, Mao's China was slowly self-destructing; it had almost no global influence and had 30 million policy casualties instead of the bloodthirsty battalions depicted by American demagogue. Now on a successful course of global economic involvement, China can back its international ambitions with real power. The United States, as the strongest representative of democracy and human rights in Asia, can counteract China's meteoric growth process. Unlike the former Soviet Union, China is building a credible military force on a stable economic base. With a growing annual defense budget of $87 billion (roughly one-third of the United States'), China's immediate and realizable aims are a Taiwan invasion force and the ability to sink American aircraft carriers near the Straits of Taiwan. As a counter-measure to China's growing power, the United States must step up its own military presence in Asia and prevent the expansion of China's nuclear arsenal. But to successfully block Chinese hegemony, the United States will have to enter into a voluntary partnership with Japan -- a partnership that does not excite anti-American sentiment among the Japanese, or vice versa. The United States has been involved in three major wars in Asia in the past half-century, each time to prevent a single power from gaining ascendency. Similar conflict with China is possible? and preventable. As a Chinese foreign affairs specialist said, "Historically, Chinese leaders have believed in force? And in the Chinese value system, sovereignty, national unification and preserving the regime have always been higher than peace." America should not concede to the temptation to vilify China -- the sort of Cold War prophesy that might fulfill itself this time around. Instead America should remain vigilant, cautious, resolute and realistic in Asia, and thereby hope to balance and contain next millenium's potential time-bomb.