The China Syndrome

Chinese Vice President Xi Jingping swept through Iowa yesterday after stopping for high level meetings in Washington. He revisited the lovely burg of Muscatine where he had stayed during a 1985 visit (when, presumably, he was much lower in the Chinese Communist Food Chain than he is now) and continued on to renew his friendship with Our Glorious Leader, the Moustache himself who laid on a state dinner in Des Moines for the guy.

To be honest, I didn't give it all that much in the way of thought. China buys food, we grow food. But after reading The Quiet Man's reaction, I decided to take a step back and really think about it. Do I have a problem with hosting the Vice President and heir apparent of a brutal totalitarian regime that just happens to buy a lot of our shit?

I probably should, but I don't, mainly because I see the PRC as unsustainable over the long term. Amongst China wonks in the Poli-Sci world, this is a popular opinion to hold, but over here in America we only hear about some of the social unrest. There's undoubtedly more that we don't hear about. When Deng Xiaoping (evil douchebag, dictator) took over in 1979, he made the pragmatic calculation that in order for China to be truly great, they needed moola. And fast. So he pretty much said: 'Go get rich, but we run the show.' And it's more or less worked, ever since. (Note that the Soviets went kaput, but the Chinese didn't.)

But income disparity is growing. The flashy wealth of the Coastal Cities isn't to be found in the less affluent interior and while we suffer through a recession, China's white hot growth (at the cost of their environment and with no labor regulations to speak of- is it ironic that you can't form a union in a technically Communist country?) has slowed to a par-broil but hasn't slipped into a recession. How they handle that will be a true test of how well Deng's pragmatism is holding up after all these years...

But I do think that pragmatism is the name of the game, when all is said and done. I don't worry that much about North Korea for precisely that reason: China can just flip off the lights and choke off the oil and the fuel- they probably would have done so long ago, but they're not crazy about a United Korea full of American troops that close to their borders and from a purely geopolitical sense, I can't blame them. Communism has fallen away to be replaced with pragmatism- Vietnam has been liberalizing economically since the early 90s, Burma is taking tentative steps still further as the military regime relaxes it's grip little by little. In a very real sense the Cold War split between Moscow and Beijing is over: Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese won when they put pragmatism ahead of ideology. How deep that goes is something the next few decades will answer: economic growth can't last forever after all.

Perhaps though, The Quiet Man has a point. While hardly a thuggish regime like some out there, the PRC is authoritarian. It does oppress it's own people on a regular basis- why do business with them?

Well, they don't care about our morals, that's for sure. When the Western Democracies get a case of the vapors over some atrocity or another, China studiously ignores them. If they do deign to release a prominent dissident it's usually in time for a visit by someone important from whom they want something. If China pays attention to human rights, it's for it's own reasons- only thing we can do is sell them stuff, buy their stuff and grow a middle class that finally gets tired of it.

Pragmatically speaking, that's the idea.

And while this is neither here nor there, you have to admit, it's getting better than it used to be- say in, for example the late 60s (the Cultural Revolution) or the late 70s (The Gang of Four) or even say, 1989 (Tiananmen). That's not excusing current behavior, but the idea of buying good behavior tends to gain some credence when things incrementally improve over the years.

While it is somewhat ironic that we happily entertained a prominent Communist leader, it shouldn't be all that surprising. We have, after all, done it before: