China Conundrum
04.12.2007 - 3:12 PMWhat should we do about the rise of China? To answer this question, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) convened an “independent task force,” a group of thirty experts, including Commentary contributors Aaron Friedberg and Arthur Waldron. The group has just issued its findings under the title: U.S.-China Relations: An Affirmative Agenda, A Responsible Course.
Like all such documents, the report has its share of compelling and tedious moments. The most revealing section of this one is its nine dissents, a record-breaker for the consensus-seeking CFR. (For the record, Friedberg and Waldron are among the dissenters.) In his demurral, Winston Lord, U.S. ambassador to the PRC under Ronald Reagan, complains that the report “seriously understates the harshness of the Chinese political system and the backsliding in recent years on political reform and human rights.”
Coming at the same issue from another direction is Maurice Greenberg, the insurance tycoon and former chairman of AIG, who in his own dissent takes issue with what he calls the report’s “persistent urging of democracy in China.”
Greenberg, who has been making a mint in China, notes that since 1975 when he began to travel there, he has seen “unbelievable change,” especially in the economy. The key to it all, he maintains, is political stability, which we should not endanger. The United States should therefore “stop pressing China to adopt a democratic political system–that is up to them. If it is to occur, it has to be their own choice.”
I do not know what this particular logical fallacy is called in Latin, but one is left wondering who is the “them” that Greenberg is referring to here? And if democracy in China “has to be their own choice,” who is going to be making this choice? The Chinese people or their self-appointed and self-perpetuating Communist leaders?
But let’s not be in a rush to solve this difficult conundrum. The Chinese market is huge. There’s money to be made.
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April 12th, 2007 at 11:30 PM
I am in qualified agreement with Mr. Greenberg about not pressing democratic changes on the PRC at this time or any. They only lead to greater tension in an already twisted state of affairs in which there is economic cooperation and politico-ideological hostility, and in 1989 the current government made its views on democratic reforms pretty plain. However, Mr. Greenberg’s statement that the Chinese people themselves should decide on democracy (”that’s up to them”) seems absurd from a long-time observer of the place. I lived there three years and have spent seven more in northeast Asia, and I see no innate inclination to democracy among the populations here, except among some individuals. It is a fact that democracy was imposed one way or another on Japan, South Korea and Taiwan by the United States, and anyone can see the tendency against it in their governments and societies past and present. No country here has a history of home-grown liberal institutions, and the abuses of quasi- (or pseudo-) liberal institutions they have copied or imported are clear in all of them, especially China. Mr. Greenberg’s caution about pressing for democratic reforms clearly derives from his “making a mint” in China rather than a recognition of the population’s incapacity to grow them. I believe that the corrupt semi-democracies established here by western influence will revert back to the centrified neofeudalism they have never entirely left whenever US power declines. This, I seriously think, is the real crux of the matter. The CCP would never have gained and held power in China for so long without depending on many ancient characteristics of the populace, and that country would probably be 80% the same as it is now, daily riots and all, under any form of government. Small wonder that Mr. Waldron, for whose views I have much respect, dissented.
April 14th, 2007 at 12:42 AM
HONG KONG — Maurice Greenberg paid a visit here recently and gave a luncheon speech to the American Chamber of Commerce. He never fails to disappoint me, as a “old friend of China,” with his bullish view on the People’s Republic. Western businessmen there nodded in agreeement.
Let’s pretend Mr. Greenberg’s argument were correct, i.e., that “it’s up to them” to adopt a democratic political system. My question is: how can “they” adopt a democratic political system when people like Mr. Greenberg keeps strengthening the biggest obstacle — the Chinese Communist Party — for “them” to do so?
Making money in China and ignoring what’s going on there, while morally questionable, at least is an honest position. Making money in China, ignoring what’s going on there and claiming to be doing the people a favor, that’s giving capitalism a bad name.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:12 PM
So Mr. Greenberg wouldn’t especially object, I suppose, if “we” just decided that democracy wasn’t for us, right? I mean all that stuff about inalienable rights and universal human dignity and the like are just so much cultural preferences, so if “our” culture decides that they’re inconvenient, unprofitable or whatever, we can just ditch them, right?