Fearing the straw man of tomorrow while sleeping with the devil

I enjoyed the one hour spent viewing Kishore’s lecture at the Kennedy’s School of Government in Harvard. While he was sharing the unpleasant truth of an Asian renaissance and the natural decline of the USA as the Number One hegemon in the 21^st Century, he also told the Americans that they were still stuck in their self reinforcing narratives of a benign hegemon showering the world with kindness and goodness. It was a hard truth that was delivered to the living rooms of America when the best intellectual minds dwelt. Perhaps his hard truth was too difficult to swallow that Vogel left just before the session came to a close. At least he sat through the lecture for one whole one hour and maybe something urgent needed his attention without showing disrespect.

 

Oh, Vogel wrote the book Japan as Number One. And this issue was raised during the Q&A that the Number Two economic power normally would overtake the Number One super power. But Japan did not and is now Number Three and will keep sliding down when India becomes Number Two. I think it was mentioned that Tommy Koh gave a lecture on this historical trend.

 

Anyway, with China rising, the same stupid question or mindset was floated again. What would China be when it becomes Number One? Would it be an expansionist country, a more aggressive hegemon than the USA? Kishore gave them all the proof that China would not be like the missionary Americans going all over the world to change regimes to make every country democratic, not necessarily rich and powerful. China too did not go around the world carry a gun, giving aids to countries to buy more weapons. China is out there all over the world, using its money and technology to rebuild a new world. It is all economics and infrastructure development and trade. No guns. Yes the Chinese did not carry their guns to the negotiating table when striking a commercial deal. The Chinese did not have more than 1,000 military bases all over the world, not even one outside its own territory.

 

Would the Americans be convinced that the Chinese would behave as badly as them as an evil hegemon?  Maybe, maybe not, as many Americans are very clear thinking and know what their American govt is doing to the rest of the world, stoking war, inciting war, destabilizing countries, bombing and killing people by the hundreds of thousands, and issuing threats after threats, even sailing across the Pacific Ocean to the South China Sea to show who is the hegemon. The Americans will see China differently over time.

 

But I am not too sure that Asian countries would see China differently. Many have been brainwashed and conditioned to see the world through the North American perspective. The countries that have the worse opinions of China are some in Asean that chose to sleep with the devil but fearing a China of the future that is anything but a self indulgence. For these few Asean countries that are calling China expansionist, they quote their disputes with China over some reefs and tiny islands. Actually they are the expansionist countries making aggressive claims against islands and reefs long claimed by China with centuries of precedents. They refused to see themselves as the aggressors and expansionists in the South China Sea.

 

The views of China’s neighbours in Central Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal and many others were very different. These people are not stupid. They knew that China was there to trade, to build infrastructure in exchange for natural resources on terms negotiated peacefully on the negotiating table, and often the terms were more favourable than the West would offer. But the West and the American viewpoint parroted by the unthinking Asian, especially in some South East Asian countries would put a negative spin on it, that China was not doing it for altruistic or humanitarian grounds but for the natural resources. Do they expect the Chinese to build all the infrastructures for free? How are these developing countries going to pay for the infrastructure developments and trade? Or were the Americans and the West so altruistic and kind to throw their money to their aid recipients for free?

 

What is more crazy, living in fear of an imaginary hegemon that has not done anything and did not carry a gun around, or sleeping with an evil hegemon that is bullying the world and starting and fighting wars everywhere, building military alliances and military bases all over the world?  The Asians deserved to be ruled by the West with their shallow intellect. The Americans told them China is bad, expansionist, oppressive, repressive, no human rights, no freedom and they swallowed every bit without thinking. They let the Americans think for them, on what to think, on who is good and who is bad.

 

Ask the 100m Chinese tourists that went all over the world, why did they return to an oppressive and repressive country that has no freedom and no human rights? Ask the hundreds of thousands of students China sent to the best universities in the West, why are they returning to China and not stay on in the West? Do these realities ring a bell?