"If You Want To Understand China"
A TFF anthology in the making. Now 5 chapters ready
•
August 24, 2024
•
The Board of The Transnational Foundation in Sweden has decided to publish an easy-to-read, scholarly anthology that addresses one of the most important – and potentially dangerous – issues of our time: Why are the political, economic, and medialised Western images of China so consistently negative – and what can you do to understand China better?
These images may be expressions of a political will to present only various shades of grey and black with the aim of building a consciousness about China as an enemy and not a partner. They may also be seen as a sort of world-dominating ethos of ignorance based upon the assumption that “we’ve-got-nothing-to-learn-from-others,’ we are the teacher. Another possibility is that the West, deep down, feels that it is getting relatively weaker from a macro-historical perspective and comforts itself with denial and accusations against “the other” of being the reason for its manifest problems. (Topdogs of various kinds invariably encounter perception problems when feeling challenged).
Whatever the explanation, we face a hugely complex world-order change. The West reacts with its constructed self-portrait as a world leader on a civilising mission and the most civilised, superior values that deserve to be universalised through Bibles of politics, economy, culture, etc. or, if ‘necessary’, The Swords of militarist intervention, regime change, warfare, etc.
This isn’t as simple as it may sound. What is absolutely unavoidably involved here is psychology in a broad sense, eschatological assumptions (thanks to nuclear weapons), economy, innovation, education, ways of thinking, media, politics and theology – and how they interact over time with each other and at what depth in our ‘social cosmology’ they do.
We believe that it is imperative for the government as well as civil society West, grosso modo, to begin to try to learn what China is about and how to go about producing a more relevant, deep, and broad understanding of China, not only as a country but also as a 5000-year civilisation. Furthermore, in the process, the West – the Occident – must apply more humility, curiosity, and respect than what we have seen in the last 10-20 years.
Why? – you may ask. Simply because there is so much more to win from mutual understanding and cooperation – in respect for diversity than from confrontation, threatening, ‘red lines,’ provocations, sanctions as well as Cold and Warm war. Given humanity’s situation and the need for solving the ‘real’ problems of our global future, better begin today than tomorrow.
We call the anthology “If You Want To Understand China.” We know that some may not want to, but that will be self-defeating and self-marginalising. The world system – and the times – are changing faster than ever. And for those who do want to, we provide a series of analyses that – so we sincerely hope – can help the reader move in that constructive direction.
And that path will also be the path that leads to peace. As the Danish philosopher, Piet Hein, allegedly formulated our choice: It’s either co-existence or no-existence.
Finally, for a variety of reasons, TFF doesn’t publish books. Books tend to limit global readership, and their costs exclude less affluent but discerning readers. They also land profits in the wrong pockets on the market, i.e., publishing houses instead of writers, and last only for a short time after publication.
Online publishing circumvents all this and additionally allows publishing a larger study chapter-by-chapter. We shall, therefore, publish the various chapters (see below) during the rest of 2024 and perhaps into 2025, followed by the whole integrated publication. And perhaps, the final publication will include one or two chapters more than indicated here?
What follows offers the authors, the Table of Contents and the Introduction to “If You Want To Understand China” – a TFF anthology in the making.
We really want to hear from our readers. Please use the Comments field at the end of this chapter.
•
The Authors
Gordon Dumoulin
Peter Peverelli
Thore Vestby
Yuewei Wang
Johan Galtung
Jan Oberg
TFF • The Transnational Foundation for Peace & Future Research in Lund, Sweden • TFF@transnational.org • The Transnational • Ph +46 (0)738 525200 • August 2024 •
© TFF & the authors 2024
Cover photo: Jan Oberg
•
Table of Contents
Introduction
How to understand China and why it is important (see below).
Gordon Dumoulin
Echoes Of Volatile And Delusive Memory: Challenging Historical Interpretations
Peter Peverelli
Enemy or mirror image?
Jan Oberg
Complementarity is Possible: Chinese and Western ways of thinking. But does the West want it?
Thore Vestby
What Is It About China?
Peter Peverelli
How the Western media try to manipulate our impression about China
Yuewei Wang
How to treat others
Johan Galtung
A Theory of China
•
Introduction
In July 2020, former US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo declared straightforwardly that China is ‘a threat to the future of the free world’ in his (in)famous speech at the Nixon Library.
Until today, this is still an event at which many non-USA politicians, media and academics shrug their shoulders or even many are unaware.
However, future historians might see this speech as a (or the) clear turning point of US foreign policy towards China. Since then, Republicans and Democrats, as well as the White House, might well disagree on almost anything, but they agree on containing China in every way possible. China must not be allowed to challenge the world domination of the United States empire.
Whatever China does is, therefore, interpreted to be ‘a challenge’ or a direct’ threat’ to that full-spectrum dominance. This, of course, applies to NATO too. China is not – cannot be – a partner in the emerging new world order. The West prioritises that basic value/goal over cooperation that promotes a collective effort at solving humanity’s most urgent problems, such as combatting climate change, reducing poverty and inequality, and reducing armament, warfare and militarism.
From day one, the Biden administration passed far-reaching bills supporting and financing the containment of China in perception (media), diplomacy, military, trade, and innovation. And Michael Pompeo’s words have never been debunked or criticised by his Democratic successor, Antony Blinken.
Since Pompeo’s speech, politicians, media, academics, and think tanks in various Western nations have also geared up. Like all other countries, there are strong and weak sides to China and its development. However, Western elites disseminate exclusively negative stories from negative aspects of China and what it does. This systematic bias is a deliberate political choice – and anything but fair.
When we look back upon 1990, the year of euphoria after the Soviet Union’s collapse and the West started to run on an autopilot of superiority and narcissism in relaxed mode, could it be that this same autopilot is still running but has geared up to a nerving level?
Where are the lessons learned and the self-reflections from the past 30 years? Despite numerous indications that the West is in relative decline – and all empires have gone down in history – the Western political, media and academic world is still claiming to know best, whether domestically in other countries or worldwide. The much-needed observing, listening, analysing and reflecting – not to speak of a comprehensive, visionary perception of the world’s likely future trends and the West’s role in it – are features conspicuous by their absence.
•
Accusations against China
Western nations have showered accusations against China almost daily in recent years, from severe issues such as human rights violations or military aggression to the smallest details, such as influencing the weather during the Olympic Games. It is hard to find a needle of objective news about China, let alone positive news, in this massive haystack of negativity.
The present TFF anthology is not about analysing, judging or downplaying any potential human rights violations or other severe accusations – not in China, not anywhere else in the world. The authors are neither human rights experts nor investigative journalists. We represent a combined expertise in peace, conflict resolution and future research with decades-long experiences in working with and in China.
Thus, the anthology is a follow-up to two earlier TFF reports as well as numerous articles over the years public under the headline China & Silk on The Transnational:
Some of the main conclusions in these reports are:
Accusations contain both fake or dubious but also significantly and systematically biased choices of sources and deliberate omission of fundamentally important perspectives, theories, concepts and facts.
Research institutes and think tanks publishing reports or articles about China are often not “independent.” Upon closer examination, they are ‘special interest’ groups which are more Near- than Non-governmental organisations and institutes and funded accordingly.
Typically, one finds politicising human rights machinery in which human rights concerns tend to serve other political purposes – or being” weaponised” as part of a Cold War agenda.
The anti-China reporting and research is closely related to what we call the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex, MIMAC. Its creators are academics doing sub-standard academic work to satisfy the results wanted by their funders; it’s commissioned research produced to back up – not criticise – current policies. The funding invariably comes from governments, ministries and military corporations with an immediate interest in more armament, interventionism and other confrontational policies rather than in conflict resolution, negotiations, cooperation and genuine security and peace.
Western mainstream media no longer serve their classical roles as carriers of facts from diverse perspectives to provide fact-based, source-checked public education, to do so freely and critically, and thereby serve as a sort of Fourth Estate.
Instead, they are very clearly part of a huge, orchestrated campaign designed to promote worldviews and perspectives that are negative-only about China and justifies the imperial militarist interests of the MIMAC – thus the second “M” in that acronym. These media in the US and its allied countries serve to justify, or legitimate, US foreign and security policies and thereby maintain the US’ role as a global hegemon in the future.
These TFF reports outline and document with concrete examples how several Media Manipulation Methods (MMM) – fake and omission – the latter often the more important – are part and parcel of that second “M” in the MIMAC structure. What is frequently omitted is research, publications, data, researchers, and perspectives that do not fit the negative-only China narratives and might shed different lights on the chosen accusations.
Therefore, we conclude that the tragedy in all this is that the West itself undermines the noble principles of free media, fair hearing, diversity in analysis, source-critical coverage, and the roles of the independent power-critical press, which are absolutely fundamental to an enlightened democracy that the US and other West profess to be.
Sadly, the various reports that underpin the US/NATO/West’s rampant, ongoing’ accusation industry’ against China are, generally, of low academic quality and tend to reinforce the’ groupthink’ in the West that ‘we have nothing to learn, we teach and, since we are still a good and indispensable empire with a global reach, we can practise a series of double standards without people around the world noticing it.’
And that, exactly, is where things begin to go wrong: the decline sets in, the boomerangs come back, and the legitimacy in the eyes of the world rapidly fades. Much of it has the character of psycho-political projection: you project your own dark sides onto others and judge them as bad and evil while your own record is considerably worse. Or, in the words of rock and blues artist Eric Clapton,” Before you accuse me, take a look at yourself.”
•
From a China perspective
China’s change over the last 30-40 years is unique in human history, most importantly in terms of infrastructure, socio-economic development and overall human need satisfaction. It has embarked on an eclectic mix of its millennium-old civilisational values and historical experience (including the hundred years of Western and, later, Japanese oppression) with important Western ideologies such as Marxism and elements of capitalism.
We call it eclectic because the Chinese thinking and societal model combine elements that either/or thinking of the general West would dismiss as irreconcilable. This means that contemporary China represents a fundamentally new way of building a domestic society and engaging with the outside world.
The Western West – the United States and its friends and allies in NATO and the EU – perceives this as a huge challenge instead of as an opportunity. It has otherwise acted as if almost intoxicated with the hubris that stems from having won the historical competition over the Eastern West, the Soviet Union, and the Warsaw Pact, which was merely another way of being Western.
Thus, China also represents a wider challenge: How to understand a rapidly rising country and civilisation fundamentally different from the West, the Occidental social cosmology or way of thinking.
All this is usually portrayed as “China is moving from an economic miracle to an aggressive power and threat.” One can easily find formulations in, say, NATO documents that China is a challenge or threat because it is different from’ us’ and adheres to non-Western and’ foreign’ values.
Contrary to so many others who have been forced into subjugation, China is not open to Western missionary zeal or ‘becoming like us/US.’
This is a fundamentally new situation or stage in the evolution of the global system or world order – an expression of the relentless progress of humanity’s history. Nobody will be on top forever, ‘the times they are a-changing,’ and this macro-historical upheaval in thinking and structures can only be understood forwards, not backwards.
China has indeed changed – literally every day since 1949 – and will likely continue to change rapidly. China is not just an economic miracle; it is a dynamic, diverse society in constant, huge self-transformation.
As a relative newcomer to the recent era of globalisation, China has quickly become a significant and powerful member of the world community. And China has not peaked; it’s the West that has peaked.
It’s a huge game changer in the status quo of the hegemony in the past 100-200 years and a blow to the – foolish – end-of-history game declaration of Francis Fukuyama, who, in his 1992 book, wrongly argued that the West’s liberal democracy was history’s unsurpassable ideal.
The turning points after the West woke up in recent years have also made China adapt and change, both reactively and strategically.
Contrary to the Western world, China has studied Western nations much more in-depth than vice versa, both historically and contemporary. How China acts and reacts includes these studies, observations, and analyses as well; it takes the West into account.
China’s governance is different from a ‘liberal democracy,’ and equally important, Chinese culture and history are very different from Western cultures and histories.
Two criteria in China’s overall strategic policy can be outlined as substantial to considering today’s geopolitical tensions;
• What China has learned from the past 30 years of globalisation and huge, domestic transformations is to keep its own house in order, stable and secure at all times.
• Taking into account the past 180 years, China has set as a strategic requirement that no one can or will be allowed to intervene in China’s domestic affairs.
Especially in the current times of increasing global instability, growing foreign accusations and risks of interventions, we can see tighter policies towards keeping the house stable and secure and a military build-up as consequences.
A regularly accusing example of increasing authoritarianism in China in Western media is the rise of censorship. We do not dismiss any perspective for censorship, but the increasing foreign interference – mostly negative-only – about domestic matters in China can also be seen as a perspective of the growing need for censorship, as Western media claims.
According to a self-reflective perspective on censorship, censorships come in many different shapes worldwide. Either top-down straightforward applied or in forms of ‘self-censorship’ or ‘political correctness’ in the worlds of media, business, scholars, or government due to social or professional consequences. It is reasonable to ask: How does censorship and especially, self-censorship’ and ‘political correctness,’ apply in Western societies in recent years ? Especially in relation to subjects concerning China?
One hypothetical heuristic answer could be that the West accuses China of censorship and authoritarianism precisely to cover up its own increasing censorship and authoritarianism.
We ended the above-mentioned Smokescreen Report thus:
“In TFF’s third report, we shall predict and analyse some long-term consequences of this catastrophic China Cold War Agenda, CCWA, strategy. We take a look at why the West sees China as a mortal danger and offer perspectives on the US/Western psycho-political projection disorder.
The perspective will be macro-historical, less material and “political” and more civilisational and ways-of-thinking focused.
This third report/anthology will also seek to outline what must be done instead to facilitate peaceful change towards a new multi-polar and more peaceful world order.
Finally, we shall attempt to outline some answers to what is perhaps the most important question of all at this moment of global history: How can the world lend the US a hand to change its policies, find a new place in the future world order and thereby lower the risk of a catastrophe for humankind?”
We honour that commitment here in “If You Want To Understand China.” What we argue – in different ways and from various perspectives – is that:
a) the West is lagging grossly behind in understanding China compared with China’s understanding of the West;
b) China must be understood on its own socio-cultural and historical premises and not judged only by Western values and norms;
c) the accusation industry against China is delusional and, in the long run, more destructive to the West itself than to China;
d) there is, at the end of the day, much more that makes China and the West compatible with each other than divides them and, finally, that:
e) there is no way to solve humanity’s problems if the West continues to fight the macro-historical world order changes, and China’s well-deserved role in it, instead of adapting to itself to them.
In summary, mutual respect for diversity and differences, dialogue about them and a will to try to find the imminently possible synergy is vital to humanity’s better and more peaceful future.
