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End the Mao Dynasty?
Some say American history goes back 249 years. Some say 406 years. Chinese history goes back over 4000 years. So, since this essay’s subject began 76 years ago, please appreciate that it is leaving out a bunch of important stuff. Chinese historians speak of dynasties to identify chunks of time. The Chinese Communist—or Mao—Dynasty began 76 years ago. The great unanswerable question is to what extent are the people currently living in China “Chinese,” or are they “Communists”? Given that there are a billion such people, to say that the answer varies is a significant understatement.
As is always the case, the moment Communists took over China was a low point in Chinese history. Poverty and starvation were widespread. The first communist leader was Mao Zedong. He ruled with an iron fist until he died in 1976. Like the good communist he was, poverty, starvation, and oppression increased under his rule. The carnage can only be estimated. 40 to 80 million is a fair guess.
Immediately after Mao’s death, the communist leadership went a tad loony, and things went from very bad to horrid. Then, after a couple years of bat-s**t crazy, an old communist came to power who was moderately sane. His name was Deng Xiaoping.
Deng was a communist who recognized that communist methods worked well to control and govern a billion people, but communism itself really sucked economically. So, Deng became an oxymoron — a free-market communist.
Deng presented America and the free world with a profound choice. Economic interaction with a free-market China had great potential for mutual economic success. But, that success would give wealth and power to communists, and… well, communists are a**holes.
It was a Republican president — Reagan — who tentatively accepted Deng’s invitation. He justified it at the time with this logic: if we help the Chinese escape poverty with free trade capitalism, the newly rich Chinese middle class will insist on political freedom and throw out the communists. It was a Democrat president — Clinton — who doubled down on the logic by admitting a trade agreement, cheating China into the World Trade Organization.
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Hell, it would seem like a good idea now except that four decades later there is still no political freedom in China even though there is a wonderfully prosperous middle class, plus a large number of alleged communists who are millionaires and billionaires.
Why is this abbreviated history lesson relevant this week? Because Trump is testing the logic. A true capitalist China would negotiate a new set of win-win trade rules with Trump. A true Communist China, bent on world domination, starting with soon-to-be Taiwan domination, will never agree to mutually beneficial trade rules.
The immediate future does not look good. But, a destructive trade war with China in 2025 is far preferable to a shooting war with China in 2027. Personally, I am hoping Reagan and Clinton were right. I am hoping 2025 is the year the rich Chinese (pretend) communists tell the true-believer Chinese communists that it is time for the Mao Dynasty to end.
This is not a prediction. It is a hope. It is also not necessarily good news for Taiwan. There are plenty of instances of absorbing neighbors by force in the 4000 years of Chinese history that do not include a**hole communists.
Published in Foreign Policy
Virtually every aspect of China’s economy is in shambles. Foreign manufacturers are leaving and setting up shop elsewhere. Workers who haven’t been paid for up to six months are torching the factories where they work. China’s infrastructure is crumbling and literally falling apart – from buildings that were poorly constructed, entire cities with multiple vacant high rises, some cities built on flood plains and dried lakes that are experiencing massive sink holes, high-speed trains that are crashing or tumbling off elevated tracks, train stations that flood or collapse…and numerous attacks from truck drivers or others who deliberately plow down pedestrians and slam into other cars or buildings because they reached a breaking point.
Almost none of this is covered on news programs in the US but information does leak out and is covered by podcasters familiar with China.
China is at a defining moment in its history. Whether the CCP is overthrown in a matter of days or months or in the next few years remains to be seen…but millions of Chinese know they are being lied to every day and it’s only a matter of time.
I think there is still economic progress but the ‘easy’ part of industrialization is over.
My own theory is that Christians will end Communism and the revolution will be led by Catholics.
It worked in Poland. We shall see.
It was a Republican president — Reagan — who tentatively accepted Deng’s invitation. He justified it at the time with this logic: if we help the Chinese escape poverty with free trade capitalism, the newly rich Chinese middle class will insist on political freedom and throw out the communists. It was a Democrat president — Clinton — who doubled down on the logic by admitting a trade-agreement-cheating China into the World Trade Organization.
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Indeed it was. It just didn’t work. The idea was that the profits from free trade would fundamentally transform China. But it didn’t. It fundamentally transformed us. I guess it was half right.
One of the pillars of Chinese civilization is the “mandate of Heaven.” Does that have an impact on the course of current and future events?
This recent interview of China scholar Frank Dïkotter is very insightful on “Why China isn’t a Superpower”
https://ricochet.com/1802191/empire-of-illusion-frank-dikotter-on-why-china-isnt-a-superpower/
Some quotes:
“Chinese communism is communism.”
“The State gets larger portion of GDP; the people get small portion.”
“When Mao died in 1976, the average standard of living for most Chinese was lower than it was in 1949.”
“This is an extraordinarily backward country.”
“When you impose order from above through a monopoly over power you create disorder on a huge scale.”
I wonder how carefully that word “extraordinarily” was chosen. I’ll bet it wasn’t meant as a synonym for “very.”
I think these commies will kill many of their own and go to war with us and the rest of the region rather than give up power and privilege. The system is entirely corrupt. The pigs are more equal than others on that farm. If they don’t keep the masses down by force they know they will be hanging in some Chinese Piazzale Loreto because everybody knows how corrupt it is. There is too much anger and resentment for a peaceful transition to more democracy, especially if things get worse soon.
It did a tremendous amount of good, and it was the right kind of help for a country that in a lot of trouble after the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution and ongoing Communist oppression.
We were a Christian nation back then, interested in helping other countries. That was what we wanted to do–and create a friendship wedge between China and Russia, as well, which we also accomplished–and this was a brilliant way to achieve it.
This initiative brought about what this article from the Atlantic Monthly called in April 1994 “China’s Gilded Age.”
We made enduring friendships with China. That resulted in a surge of Chinese national students in our universities, which resulted in friendships as well.
Change is a part of life, and it is especially so in free societies like ours. The relationships may be different now, and the problems have changed too.
But I believe the United States should be extremely proud of its work in lifting up the Chinese people. I am glad they are doing well. That’s what we wanted to do. It was charity done right. :)
We did it mostly to benefit ourselves. I don’t think that’s charity. It’s not immoral but not Saintly either.
You are probably too young to remember. I remember it well. It was a movement. I heard about helping China everywhere I went as a kid: scouts, Sunday school, school, home.
Yes, it absolutely was a Christian imperative. And back then, Christian imperatives were drivers in our government.
Something has changed in our country, and I think it was the shift toward secularization. I remember the volunteerism Summit for Service in 1997 led by the George H. W. Bush administration, at which Colin Powell was asked how we can help so many people in need, and he said, paraphrasing, “One child at a time.” At any rate, 41 remarked at some point during the summit, “I don’t understand what has happened. It used to be people wanted to know how many people we had helped!”
The change was gradual but significant. And very unfortunate, I think.