The Tomorrow People

A few weeks back I was talking to an adviser to one of our Democratic campaigns who was making an observation about the narrow focus of our political debate at any given time. Right now, we've very concerned with Iraq. We're also pretty concerned with events in some countries near Iraq -- Iran, Israel, Egypt, etc. These related issues form a kind of rough-and-ready political spectrum that we understand and can refer to in convenient shorthand.

But it's a big world out there. Today, I read Rick Perlstein's long article on China and also Gary Schmitt's brief op-ed on the subject. I also recently read a long James Fallows article about China in The Atlantic. What's striking is that though Rick and Schmitt are definitely saying different things, the lefty historian and the former PNACster also have a great deal in common -- a common sense that the country is in the grips of an establishment (one that includes me and, quite possibly, Jim Fallows) of dupes caught in the grips of an unduly benign view of China and its rise.

At any rate, if we're fortunate as a nation, the current series of blunders in the Gulf region will come to an end at some point, and China-related issues will start looming much larger. At that point, you can probably expect to see a lot of things configure themselves in different ways from how they are at the moment.

Comments

Matt - you're self-identifying as part of the establishment these days? Say it ain't so.

Posted by otto | June 14, 2007 3:31 PM

We have ADL ads on this site now? I clicked through that thing. It's embarassing, even by Abraham Foxman's low standards.

Posted by Mike | June 14, 2007 3:35 PM

> the former PNACster also have a great deal in
> common -- a common sense that the country is in
> the grips of an establishment (one that includes
> me and, quite possibly, Jim Fallows) of dupes
> caught in the grips of an unduly benign view of
> China and its rise.

Having utterly screwed up the Middle East and probably destroyed the US' position in the world for good, PNAC now moves on to its next project...

I mean, seriously: can this country even _survive_ another "grand vision"?

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | June 14, 2007 3:52 PM

I hear the Beastie Boys are also anti-China.

Posted by JP | June 14, 2007 5:09 PM

There's something amiss with all this "beware China" stuff. It's hard to pinpoint in a comment, maybe I need to start blogging, since I seem to have spent more time in and about China than the average "China-watcher" but, briefly:

1) As with Iraq, what do these "seriously serious people who are serious about China" actually propose? It's one thing to criticise open trade and "wait and see" stances on the growth of democracy, it's another to actually map out a plausible alternative.

2) They seem to be trying to claim that Chinese society has barely changed from all the trading and financial opening. That's a pretty dubious analysis. There have been enormous changes, which in fact pose alternate dangers, but we won't get far addressing those if we're obsessed with containing "the next Chairman Mao."

Posted by Meh | June 14, 2007 5:34 PM

A lot of center-left liberals agreed with neoconservatives that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a threat but argued for containment rather than invasion. Practically no one - even on the left - predicted the implosion of the country, and a sectarian civil war.

Similiarly (though not exactly similiarly) I think the chief China threat today is not the regime's growing military capability but the relative insecurity and instability of the regime itself - the prospect that China could begin to fragment along sectarian (linguistic, ethnic, religious, regional, cultural, and economic) lines, and that nuclear materials could fall into the hands of international crime and terror syndicates.

To Western (and especially American) eyes China is a highly cohesive, nationalist country with an eye toward regional if not global hegemony. China is in fact an extremely complex and fragmented country, with more than 50 nationalities, and multiple fault lines. When we speak of China's impressive 9-12% growth a year, what we're really talking about is a narrow belt of prosperity in the east, with a culture that is coming to resemble much of the rest of the prosperous zones in East Asia and increasingly less the rest of the country (which is in itself extremely complex). The Chinese of the prosperous east may at some point in the not so distant future have more in common with people in Tokyo than the peoples of central China. The monumental interior of the country is riven by widespread poverty and decreasing government subsidies (including guaranteed food rations), increasing disease, eroding top soil and loss of arable land, increasing drought and flooding, deforestation, and other environmental degredation, labor unrest, increasing crime, and in some places ethnic and religious tensions. Indeed, civil unrest is now a daily occurence in the country (especially in the interior).

I think that a confrontation with the west over Taiwan is less likely than that country ultimately being absorbed - with the prosperity belt of eastern China - into the East Asian political, economic, and cultural ecosystem, and that broader ecosystem becoming something like an extended gated community, protected less by Beijing (and other national governments in the region) than by private corporate security forces, with the huddled masses of interior China (and Asia more generally) wanting in, but facing in no small number of cases deprivation, disease, struggle, and death. (Demagogy, and even a successful showdown with the west over Taiwan would at best buy China time, and as Mr. Bush is finding out these things only work so long with an increasingly restive populace). In that context, bad things - destabilizing things - happen, and it is I think decidedly unclear that the nouveau riche of China's east end will be willing to subsidize a better life for their poor countrymen, or contribute to the development of strong national institutions (that are among the vital ingredients to a successful democratic nation-state). This is in some sense what seems to be happening in Iraq (although to be sure the Shiites were never the wealthy elite of that country, at least before now), and increasingly throughout the world (the Americas is an especially good example). Even if we ultimately get elections in China, the middle and upper classes of the east may vote to effectively dissolve the country, and rid themselves the burden of providing for the interior. And many peoples in central and western may well, for their own reasons, choose to dissolve the country. Democratic reform could well spell the end of China, and the absence of democratic reform could also spell the end of China.

In this strange postmodern world, we may have a China that is simultaneously putting a man on the moon and trying desperately to put down mass peasant uprisings and a low grade ethnic and religious civil war in the west, with drought, famine, and disease plaguing parts of the country's center. All these factors, combined with China's continued reliance on Gulf oil, and resources and raw materials from the west and elsewhere (it's cutting special deals with Africa), do not especially bode well for a new Sino imperium.

Posted by Linus | June 14, 2007 5:35 PM

Isn't the PNAC concern with China totally not accidental? IIRC, the White House's search for an enemy originally rested squarely on the Red Menace of the Far East until 9/11 intervened and created a convenient level of tunnel vision directed toward the Middle East.

Not to say there isn't a kernel of truth in being wary of China; there probably is. But reading Schmitt's op-ed, one can't help but see it as a simple push toward militarizing against a new enemy right now. If we could successfully shift American paranoia in such a way, the PNAC might miraculously escape the total discredit it has earned itself.

I mean, he writes things like this:

There is a tendency on the part of American Sinologists to think that China's "peaceful development" precludes it from craving what all rising powers before it have craved -- power and recognition.

Seriously, does anyone think China is lacking in power and recognition? The only reason to make such weird remarks is to make people think they're coming for us.

Posted by jhupp | June 14, 2007 5:36 PM

What's striking is that though Rick and Schmitt are definitely saying different things, the lefty historian and the former PNACster also have a great deal in common -- a common sense that the country is in the grips of an establishment (one that includes me and, quite possibly, Jim Fallows) of dupes caught in the grips of an unduly benign view of China and its rise.

That might be one of the worse sentences that you have ever written on this blog.

What can it possibly mean for a country to be in the grips of an estiblishment of dupes caught in the grips of an unduly benign view of China? That's some confused gripping.

Posted by blah | June 14, 2007 5:37 PM

Practically no one - even on the left - predicted the implosion of the country, and a sectarian civil war.

Nonsense. Quite a few people predicted that Iraq would devolve into sectarian civil war if we deposed Saddam - Brent Scowcroft and Wesley Clark just off the top of my head.

Posted by blah | June 14, 2007 5:42 PM

"Practically no one - even on the left - predicted the implosion of the country, and a sectarian civil war.

Nonsense. Quite a few people predicted that Iraq would devolve into sectarian civil war if we deposed Saddam - Brent Scowcroft and Wesley Clark just off the top of my head."

Practically no one is not the same thing as no one although I don't recall specifically if or when Scowcroft and Clark may have made statements warning about the threat of civil war. I'm talking about the pre-war period.

But even long after the invasion opposition to the war among Democrats was usually premised on the idea that invading Iraq was a "diversion" from the "real war on terror," that it was a violation of international law, that it had insufficient backing from the UN and allies, etc. The possibility of Iraq descending into civil war was rarely chief among the stated concerns of war opponents.

Posted by Linus | June 14, 2007 5:48 PM

Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE): I have not been very enamored with the way half this administration has gone about this effort without thoroughly going into what happens the day after Saddam is down. … The president said that, “What could be worse than Saddam?” Well, what could be worse than Saddam would be a major civil war in the region. [CNN Larry King Live, 10/9/02]

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV): What plans do we have to prevent Iraq from breaking up and descending into civil war? [Congressional Record, S10006-10007, 10/7/02]

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD): The end of Saddam Hussein could mean the start of a civil war. [Congressional Record, S10078, 10/8/02]

Posted by blah | June 14, 2007 6:06 PM

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2007; Page A06

Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the prewar studies.

The two assessments, titled "Principal Challenges in Post-Saddam Iraq" and "Regional Consequences of Regime Change in Iraq," were produced by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and will be a major part of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's long-awaited Phase II report on prewar intelligence assessments about Iraq. The assessments were delivered to the White House and to congressional intelligence committees before the war started.

The committee chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and the vice chairman, Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), announced earlier this month that the panel had asked Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell to declassify the report for public release. Congressional sources said the two NIC assessments are to be declassified and would be part of a portion of the Phase II report that could be released within the next week.

The assessment on post-Hussein Iraq included judgments that while Iraq was unlikely to split apart, there was a significant chance that domestic groups would fight each other and that ex-regime military elements could merge with terrorist groups to battle any new government. It even talks of guerrilla warfare, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials.

Posted by blah | June 14, 2007 6:08 PM

SEN. CLELAND: General Hugh Shelton told me about a week ago, in his great North Carolina accent, which I understand -- that if Saddam Hussein were removed and the Ba'ath Party ousted, that the Kurds, the Shi'ites and the Sunnis would go at each other like banshee chickens.

Hearing of the
Senate Armed Services Committee

September 23, 2002

Posted by blah | June 14, 2007 6:23 PM

I also recall that no one could have anticipated the breach of the levees.

Posted by Steve | June 14, 2007 6:26 PM

“Why We Didn’t Remove Saddam” by George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, Time (2 March 1998):

. . . While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. . .

Posted by blah | June 14, 2007 6:28 PM

from Perlstein's Nation piece:

"Pick a dictator anywhere on the globe," Mann writes, and you'll find Chinese backing. The Chinese gave Robert Mugabe an honorary degree--and "new surveillance equipment to crack down on Internet traffic and block dissident radio signals." The military regime in Burma has enjoyed consistent backing, as have Uzbek President Islam Karimov (the "body boiler"), the genocidal government of Sudan, even the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991."

Sorry you naive pacifists that believe the military-industrial complex is hunting for a new enemy of the week, all of this is true. Does this mean we bomb China? Absolutely not. First off China's and the U.S. economic systems are too intertwined. They're subsidizing us, financially, and we're growing their economy by buying their stuff.

But whenever one describes the true nature of China, you go against liberals' narrative that Bush is the most evil force in the world.

Posted by Peter K. | June 14, 2007 6:34 PM

"Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the prewar studies."

I didn't say there weren't some bright and perceptive people in the intelligence community (though I doubt it's more than a couple). And I certainly didn't say there weren't some very bright and perceptive junior officers and professors at various war colleges in and outside America (there are I think quite a few of both). But the idea that the American news media explored the possibility of a civil war in Iraq before the invasion anymore than barely at all is a silly suggestion. The idea that this idea was debated by Congress in the lead up to the war is a silly suggestion. And the idea that it was a leading reason for opposing the Iraq War among people who opposed the war out loud and in public is a silly suggestion.

Posted by Linus | June 14, 2007 6:38 PM

James Fallows

The Atlantic Monthly | November 2002

As Arab regimes in the region assess the possible outcomes of a war, Telhami says, "they see instability, at a minimum, for a long period of time, and in the worst case the disintegration of the Iraqi state." These fears matter to the United States, because of oil. Chaos in the Persian Gulf would disrupt world oil markets and therefore the world economy. Significant expansion of Iran's influence, too, would work against the Western goal of balancing regional power among Saudi Arabia, Iran, and postwar Iraq. So as the dust of war cleared, keeping Iraq together would suddenly be America's problem. If the Kurds rebelled in the north, if the Shiite government in Iran tried to "reclaim" the southern districts of Iraq in which fellow Shiites live, the occupation powers would have to respond—even by sending in U.S. troops for follow-up battles.

Posted by blah | June 14, 2007 6:40 PM

That's an interesting post on China Linus. I think the doomsday scenario you sketch out is possible but not especially likely. It seems to me that the ruling elites are 100% committed to keeping China intact and unified. This is why they keep going after Taiwan after all these years. Even if the actual material circumstances of the Eastern corridor have diverged from the interior, the ideal of "One China" is still very strong and I don't see how the Chinese government would ever be willing to write off vast swaths of the countryside and partition the country. Indeed, the government would probably do whatever it took to keep China intact.

It's perhaps too easy to say that China has a lot of internal problems--it surely does--and therefore will collapse economically or politically--a far more questionable prediction. I do think the dangers of such a collapse are very real, though. Pre-WWI Germany is probably the classic example of a rising economic power riven with internal strife, and turning to war as a convenient outlet for relieving those domestic pressures. The same could happen with China, hypothetically. Or maybe China could turn into a democratic, liberal, rich utopia. The interests of the U.S. are certainly in the latter thing, I think.

Posted by Korha | June 14, 2007 6:43 PM

But the idea that the American news media explored the possibility of a civil war in Iraq before the invasion anymore than barely at all is a silly suggestion.

Of course the media did a historically miserable job of exploring any of the arguments against the Iraq war. This has been documented so extensively it's practically a truism at this point. That shouldn't be taken as evidence of what people were actually arguing, though.

Posted by Steve | June 14, 2007 6:44 PM

Come on, Peter. Not a lot of people here or elsewhere believe Bush is the most evil force in the world. And, indeed, literally zero people here have claimed that China is a net positive force in international relations and stability. But we do believe:

1) Bush is a terribly destructive force that happens to have more power than any of the other human destructive forces out there (e.g., Mugabe), so it's especially important not to encourage his destructive impulses or enable them without exceptionally good cause.

2) The sort of mindset that brought us the Iraq War is one we must be on guard against. The issue that Biden, Bush Sr., and Scowcroft point to is a pretty important one that somehow got no shrift whatsoever in 2002. You rightly describe China's terrible human rights record, but people said (and say) similar things about Saddam, albeit with fewer people and less money. Those things didn't make the war or even the saber-rattling that went before it a good idea.

In fact, Schmitt's description of China's desire for "power and recognition" is all the reason not to cry havoc. No matter what they're doing wrong, this will put them on the defensive and make it harder to achieve non-military solutions to their human rights problems. (See, as examples, Saddam and Ahmadinejad.)

Neither I nor anyone else here is saying, "This is ridiculous; China is wonderful in every way!" But we are saying that maybe it's not such a good idea to start ramping them up as a threat. And maybe the threat isn't as severe as these folks seem to be claiming it is. If you disagree with that, say so. But stop attacking strawmen.

Posted by jhupp | June 14, 2007 6:57 PM

"I think the doomsday scenario you sketch out is possible but not especially likely."

I didn't mean to be melodramatic. Yugoslavia came to a graphic end. Iraq appears headed in the same direction. But Czechoslovakia came apart peaceably.

A fragmented China is perfectly consistent with its history. The country has gone through similiar periods in the past but I think that this time it would be taking place in a context where not just sub-national forces (language, ethnicity, religion, etc) assert themselves (as they're asserting themselves all over the world) but trans-national force as well.

I think China is already seeing the emerging primacy of criminal networks with links throughout the region and the world, and in the west terror networks too. And part of what is missing in the western media for the most part in the discussion of both of these things is how they're filling the void as national and traditional cultures erode, and state subsidies and welfare are cut, and the power to control the direction of events by central governments is weakened. This is what's happening everywhere from the former Soviet Union to Latin America. I think we'll see certain echos of these trends in the west including here in the US. (Pay close attention to the emerging gang war in Los Angeles. It's very different than anything that has happened before.)

Posted by Linus | June 14, 2007 7:20 PM

Re: A fragmented China is perfectly consistent with its history.

China has not been seriously fragmented (for a significant length of time) since right before Genghis Khan arrived on the scene-- 850 years ago, more or less. Even during the twilight of the Manchu, when European powers (and Japan) nibbled off bits here and there and Tibet and Mongolia made good their independence, the core Chinese regions remained under central rule, however dysfunctional. Moreover Chinese fragmentation in the distant past was usually the result of foreign invaders, generally Turks and Mongols, occasionally the Tibetans, overrunning large parts of the country then settling down as a ruling class over the chunks they had conquered. You have to go back all the way to the era of Confucius to find a fragmented China absent foreign invasion.

Posted by JonF | June 14, 2007 7:55 PM

Practically no one - even on the left - predicted the implosion of the country, and a sectarian civil war.

I stopped reading there. A lot of people predicted exactly that - it's just that you guys didn't want to hear it.

Posted by novakant | June 14, 2007 8:08 PM

The Perlstein piece was really embarassingly bad. The last time I recall a writer so out of his depth in a political article was Jonathan Franzen's fawning New Yorker profile of Hastert a few years ago.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | June 14, 2007 8:10 PM

Look, the best way to transform China's emergence onto the world stage into a bigger threat than it is would be for the U.S. to try to oppose it somehow. Hello, new Cold War. Or worse, new hot war.

There are powerful forces in this country who are institutionally committed to finding all kinds of reasons for the U.S. military to meddle with other countries. The evidence for the past couple of decades has consistently been that such meddling is not helpful.

Posted by mq | June 14, 2007 9:10 PM

China was indeed fragmented from the end of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 to the Communist victory in 1949. Despite claims to power by both Sun Yatsen and later Chiang Kai-Shek, much of interior China was governed by warlords. In fact, one of the reasons Mao remains revered is that he is credited with "unifying China".

I don't agree with Linus, though, that China today is on the verge of fragmentation. Nationalism replaced Marxism as the unifying force here, and regardless of China's various ethnicities there is no significant separatist movement anywhere and no serious opposition to Beijing's rule. Chinese people, in fact, are mystified that Westerners agitate for Tibetan freedom as they consider Tibet to be an unquestionable part of China.

Finally, the assertion that the coastal Chinese may soon have more in common with Toyko than central China strikes me as unlikely. Anti-Japanese nationalism has grown precipitously in recent years and even well-to-do Chinese in cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou harbor deep historical resentment for Japan that isn't going away.

Posted by Matt Schiavenza | June 14, 2007 9:46 PM

"China has not been seriously fragmented (for a significant length of time) since right before Genghis Khan arrived on the scene-- 850 years ago, more or less."

Sure - great points in fact (I didn't fill in much historical detail) - but in my view history matters. China can still be called China but have a much weaker central government, much stronger local and regional governance, a reassertion of ethnic, linguistic, and religious identity, and be profoundly affected by many of the same trans-national forces reshaping the world from multi-national corporations to crime and terror syndicates that cross national borders.

Posted by Linus | June 14, 2007 9:53 PM

Linus, the prospect of an extended insurgency and potential civil war in Iraq was widely discussed in the non-US press before the invasion.

Posted by Renwick | June 14, 2007 10:13 PM

Molly Ivans and Obama also discussed whether or not Iraq could be held together.

China will become more de-centralized with time, but that is different from expecting collapse. Outsiders always say at important historical junctures that China will break apart and cease to be China, but this is always temporary. The Opium War, the Taiping Rebellion, WWII, the Warlord Era and the CCP-GMD Civil War all temporarily split China, but China still re-formed. India and Russia have shown that you can experience such dynamics in one form or another while also seeing one's power grow. In addition, the Warlord Era was a result of the Republican Revolution of 1911 and its backers to consolidate power and to continue the revolution. For there to be a parallel, a coup or revolution would have to win out over the CCP, which is unlikely in at least the medium-term.

On a side note, during a discussion with Robert Wright over at bloggingheads.tv, Fukuyama - who ran in the same circles as the guys over at the Weekly Standard, the National Interest and Commentary - noted that the Weekly Standard editors (guys like Kristol of the PNAC and David Brooks) felt that the US needed a new Nazi Germany / Soviet Union-type ally to help the Republicans win elections. They had concluded that Republicans can only really win when the focus is on foreign policy, which is one reason Bush I lost after the Iraq War was won and over. They spent the 1990's choosing amongst themselves to focus on either China or Islamist terrorism as this new bete noir that would give the Republicans meaning and votes and ended up choosing China (pre-9/11). This partly explains why Brooks also tried to emphasize some new international mission for the country, no matter what the mission was (he was rather up-front that the substance of the mission itself didn't matter as much as it gave America meaning and prevented a slide into decadence).

Posted by Reality Man | June 15, 2007 3:00 AM

I do believe that china will collaspe, mainly due to water issues, one way or another.

However, Linus is substantially incorrect. There are very few parts of china that it can afford to lose a grip on. Xinjiang, for example is a resource rich area with energy being prominent, as well as old Manchuria. Also, most of the eastern parts of China isn't very valuable land. There is a reason places like Nanking, Hangchow, Xian were capitals of China before, they were close to the richest areas of China at the time they ruled. A place like Xiamen, for example, isn't really capable of sustained 1rst world living standards without huge imports...

If China tries malign neglect, critical resources and infrastructure is likely to affect, and afftect the viability of the rest of the state...

Posted by shah8 | June 15, 2007 4:27 AM

Jhupp:

"Bush is a terribly destructive force that happens to have more power than any of the other human destructive forces out there (e.g., Mugabe), so it's especially important not to encourage his destructive impulses or enable them without exceptionally good cause."

This is the difference between the so-called democratic left and the so-called anti-American left. (not very good terms).

The anti-American left make excuses and alibis for China, Mugabe, Cuba etc., because Bush "has more power."

The democratic left doesn't excuse or soft pedal descriptions of anti-American dictatorships just b/c they don't have as much power as Bush.

I'm sure Aung San Suu Kyi would agree that Bush has more power than the Burmese junta, but so what? She shouldn't encourge Bush's worst impulses?

Posted by Peter K. | June 15, 2007 10:16 AM

"Linus, the prospect of an extended insurgency and potential civil war in Iraq was widely discussed in the non-US press before the invasion."

I don't doubt it. But by virtue of language deficiency and laziness most Americans don't really have access to news media sources outside the US. Only a tiny percent I gather read any of the British papers at all let alone regularly.

The point I'm trying to make here is that I can't help but think that people who see a China threat (as well as maybe any number of the people who see in China a benign superpower) are looking at the world in twentieth century terms. I just think we've been living in a world since the end of the Cold War where the primacy of the nation-state is diminishing, and conflicts and relations between nation states will be less important over time, where the new history will be shaped more by subnational and transnational forces.

I'm not a China expert but something like the narrative I'm presenting - which runs counter to almost everything being presented in the mainstream media about China - is being talked about among academics around the world (just google the right keywords) - especially geographers. And these days the geographers are tending to be a whole lot more right than the historians and international relationists.

Posted by Linus | June 15, 2007 11:26 AM

WTF IS the narrative you are presenting, Linus?

You start of by telling us the patent BS that no-one predicted the implosion of Iraq (which you then backpedalled from in the face of massive evidence from blah).

Now you are claiming that you and a tiny minority of academics are the only people worried about the implosion of China. Just as much BS. The freaking *primary reason* many on the left in the US are willing to give the current Chinese government a pass is precisely that they appreciate the problem of civil unrest in China and believe that, unpleasant as it may be, the existing situation is about the best of all realistic possibilities.

More generally, L, you seem to operate on the bizarre assumption that the decision makers and thinking people in the US are identical to the audience of the popular media and completely informed by them. The fact that, to take say two obvious examples,
• Russia is doing well economically because of the price of oil and
• Robert Pape has (backed with ample evidence) plenty of things to say about suicide bombing that are at direct odds with the Bush team's claims
neither of which is ever covered by local TV news, and rarely covered by the LA Times, does not mean that intelligent America is unaware of these issues.

You want to moan about the stupidities of the bulk of America and the media that caters to them, go ahead. But get your argument correct.

Posted by Maynard Handley | June 15, 2007 2:14 PM

"The point I'm trying to make here is that I can't help but think that people who see a China threat (as well as maybe any number of the people who see in China a benign superpower) are looking at the world in twentieth century terms. I just think we've been living in a world since the end of the Cold War where the primacy of the nation-state is diminishing, and conflicts and relations between nation states will be less important over time, where the new history will be shaped more by subnational and transnational forces."

Have to agree with you here.

"I'm not a China expert but something like the narrative I'm presenting - which runs counter to almost everything being presented in the mainstream media about China - is being talked about among academics around the world (just google the right keywords) - especially geographers. And these days the geographers are tending to be a whole lot more right than the historians and international relationists."

Maybe, but having majored in East Asian Studies, I just have to say don't put too much stock in what geographers say on China. They don't have a good track record. Rhoads Murphey contradicated his own career, Owen Lattimore wasted his career on fool's errands and Wittfogel became a caricature of himself.

Posted by Reality Man | June 16, 2007 12:01 AM

"...China-related issues will start looming much larger. At that point, you can probably expect to see a lot of things configure themselves in different ways from how they are at the moment."

No, it will be the same. It will start with signed letters and think-tank reports in the obscurity around M street. Next will be a cottage industry of books with titles like: Red Dragon: How America Must Respond to The Growing China Threat, Before It's Too Late. Soon, it will come to the attention of a U.S. President(probably Republican). Maybe there will be an inciting incident at this point, or maybe it will continue to be based on the Force Of History That We Must Be Clear-Eyed Enough To See. The growing threat will pass to the army of right-wing pundits on TV and in Op-Ed columns. They will, of course, use China's human rights record to guilt trip lefties into supporting "doing something" about the China crisis. By now there will be a regular stream of rhetoric coming out of China (seriously, Chinese diplomats have a tin ear for how bellicose their pronouncements sound to Americans; can't someone hire them a PR firm?) The president will announce he's sending more carrier groups to the straits of Taiwan. We'll here stories about what a great little democracy Taiwan is, and how it deserves to be protected, which is true. The whole thing will follow the classic trope of If X is true, Y is true. Is X true? Yes? Then Y is true. X being "China Bad!" and Y being "War!" Then there will be an inciting incident, and off we go! Or maybe we'll just keep the tensions ramped up to make sure everyone's nice and scared.

"...China-related issues will start looming much larger. At that point, you can probably expect to see a lot of things configure themselves in different ways from how they are at the moment."

No. It will be the same. A repeat. And statements like "the country is in the grips of an establishment... of dupes caught in the grips of an unduly benign view of China and its rise." just play that game.

PS. Embarrassing is the word for the Perlstein article. I know he's a historian and all, but how can you make an argument about China's situation today and not mention THE NAME OF THE CHINESE PRESIDENT. (He mentions Jiang Zemin, in a quote, but Jiang left office in 2002). Mao has been dead for 30 years. Deal with it.

Posted by mikexcite | June 16, 2007 1:48 AM