一剑飘尘
一生豪情扫江湖，剑气曾为社稷初。飘落米国不老心，尘埃散尽无汉楚
COLD WAR 2.0
Alex Lu
Yesterday I went to a business dinner, and the trade war between China and US was a hot topic. But many people were extremely doubtful about Trump’s tariff’s policy. According to the vice-president of a famous bank, China had its own problems and the US just needed to be itself other than pushing it too hard as what President Trump was doing now. Another president of an information consultant Company took the same side, saying that “didn’t the Soviet Union fall apart by itself? A tons of inner conflictions of those totalitarian governments will make them break apart from its inside.”
Alas! Even though I was one of the only two Chinese Americans there, I cannot hold my opinion anymore. I told them: We all know that the stone will finally become sands during weathering process, simply because stones are not made of single material, but of different type of crystals comprising multiple molecular structures. As times goes by, all sorts of natural environment such like temperature changes cause tensions among crystals, which leads to the final disintegration of the stone. However, what about if somebody removes the tension and uses superglue to stick all different crystals together?
They all laughed: “How could such kind of superglue ever even exist which could penetrate into stones and perfectly combine all those crystals!”
Yes it does exist!
I brought out a piece of Dollar: this is the superglue of China and it’s made in USA. We can say that in the past decades, without supports of America, Chinese Economy won’t be any better than today’s Korea. At least its economic collapse would be a past tense already.
The discussion later on didn’t lead to any unanimous answer. This is part of the American culture: If not for scrupulous academic discussion, all debates are superficial and depthless. Nobody is going to persuade another person.
But I do understand their view point. It’s not fresh at all. It’s a perspective from the bi-hegemony era of US and the Soviet Union. And yes the result did happen according to this script. Or we could say that this was the very foundation of the Peaceful Evolution: Waiting in the forest for a bunny to run into a tree and knock itself out, as long as it is a stupid bunny.
Obviously, today’s China is not a stupid bunny as the Soviet Union at all. Most importantly, China has connected itself economically with the US and the whole world. You are in me and I am in you. This is totally different as the era of Soviet Union. At that time, the western and eastern were having incompatible economical systems and rarely connected with each other. And this was the economical reason which caused the collapse of Soviet Union, and it is the most crucial reason as well.
Apparently China learned a good lesson from the collapse of Soviet Union. It wrapped its own economic system tightly with the West, just like a leech on a cow. It doesn’t only stop on the surface of the cow, but deeply into its blood vine. Therefore, the fantasy of waiting for the collapse of Chinese economy is not reliable at all. The huge trade deficit of western world to China every year is analogous to a cow feeding leeches with its own blood, or adding superglue into a stone. The Trade War of President Trump is not pushing it too hard, but way too late. It can only stop the bleeding. That’s all. If we expect China to collapse like Soviet Union, another cold war is absolutely needed: THE COLD WAR 2.0.
It has been more than a quarter of a century since the cold war ended. And it happened to be the three decades that China’s economy took off and the West lost itself. In these three decades, the prospering Science and technology didn’t bring more wealth and progress for the western society. To the opposite, we are facing more threats and vulnerability. Since the World War II, Islam became a disastrous impendence to the civil world unprecedentedly, which did not only stay in the Middle East but went deeply into Europe, the origin of modern civilization. Here I won’t discuss more about this. What’s more, the rise of China multiplied the variables to the global situation and this was why the Sino-America relationship became a main topic in a business dinner.
After cold war, Dr. Fukuyama, in his ecstasy, wrote his book, The End of History and the Last Man, in which he proclaimed that the Democratic System is the final stop of human society. But now would he be as confident to himself as before?
When it comes to Sino-America discussion, it would be absolutely defective if we only stopped at the Trade War. And this has been the deficit of all US presidents since Clinton: just like Dr. Fukuyama, the end of Cold War leads them to an illusion of overconfidence and arrogance against China, which generated the dilemma that the US and West have to confront today.
(WRITTEN by Alex Lu, TWITTER: yjpc1989)
1) Advantage of the System
Referring to China’s advantage, westerners always concentrate on its large population and huge market. The advantage of population will disappear anyway. India is also populous, but from the past history until today, did any country ever worry about the rise of India? No. Therefore, here what I want to talk about is the advantage of Chinese system.
I believe many people would already reject my standpoint when reading this. At least they took it for granted that Chinese system cannot rival the American one. Surely I am a rigid advocate of democracy. But it does not mean that democracy has natural advantage on all aspects and could shatter all other systems, including Chinese system.
Firstly, how should we definite Chinese system? Political and cultural dictatorship and economic freedom. Characteristic Chinese corruption is the inevitable result of the combination of the two. Anybody who had business in both China and US would agree with this: the economic atmosphere is more liberal than US in many aspects. Specifically, this is an advantage under political dictatorship: under the rule of man, a certain kind of freedom is granted to economic behavior. China has no trade unions and no laws that rigidly restrict the behavior of capitalist ---- even if there are, it’s super flexible.
We all know that the main driving force for economic development comes from capital. As people who hold capital, capitalists are certainly the impelling hand behind economic prosperity. If ten thousand workers were assigned to a government, the government would not be able to make sure all those workers earn a living for themselves, and it has to shoulder the cost of their living, not to mention to realize economic growth. But if one capitalist was assigned to a government, this capitalist would transfer local resources to economic vitality just for his own “small goals”.
Compared with Chinese system, the western world has an almost perfect legal system, which greatly restricts government and protects human rights of every human being. This is why I vote for democratic system. But this system cannot positively propel economic development but drag it backward. This is the reason I strongly brace the idea of small-size government in the West, at least domestically. Looking at the results, the difference between economic managements by China and western government started to formulate a conception in people’s mind: Chinese system is more efficient than democracy. And this is where Xi Jinping’s illusionary confidence comes from.
Of course, there are numerous evidences against this point. But if we only look at things from economic growth and social construction within a certain period of time, this perspective is very reasonable. Even in the United State, the New Deal by President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lot of similarity with this kind of Chinese system: a government holding huge resources would stimulate investment.
2) Cost of Extensive Human Right
The western world defeated its biggest rival in cold war, and went way too far in welfare society. The enforcement of law, together with the rising of human right, is dampening the enthusiasm of capitalists. No matter this is right or wrong, at least one of the serious consequences is the outflow of traditional industries, with the exception of some high-return business as those related with high-tech and innovation. Even without China, those traditional industries would drain to other countries. Actually it betrayed the modern western value: Extensive human right. If nobody in western countries would like to get involved into those seemingly-to-be low-end industries, why should they shift those industries to peoples from other countries? Surely it was caused by the inequality of economy. The low-cost of labor in China and other developing countries will definitely spur this industrial transfer. The cost of labor includes human right.
The West gives way too much attention to human right, to an unimaginable extent, which greatly increased the cost of capital growth.
Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, wrote that the growth of national wealth is determined by one crucial element: technique, skill and judgment of labor. As an entrepreneur who owns business in both China and US, I am under the rough impression that individual Chinese workers are far less efficient than those in the US. Obviously, the technique, skill and judgment of labors in free and open society are a lot better than those in a dictatorial regime. This is why the US has only ¼ of the population of China but could create more wealth. This also means that the cost of labor in a bunch of local product is not skyrocketing to an unacceptable extent. For the same product, China need more labor time. I calculated a business program in 2015, including the transportation cost, the labor cost in the US is only 25 percent high than that in China. I would say this distance is not unbridgeable.
However, if all those restrictions upon capitalists of American law ---- some time only the political correctness is more than enough ---- are taken into consideration, contrasting with the freedom of Chinese business environment, the overall American product are way higher than that of China. Basically all the American entrepreneurs had been sued by their employees. I personally experienced with one case brought by a previous employee (and I won), and it was absolutely fabricated false accusation. However, under the environment of extensive human right, an employee could falsely sue his boss without any cost (not even the lawyer fee), without concern of being punished if he lost the case. Is that fair? In contrast, most capitalists in China have never heard of that.
(WRITTEN by Alex Lu, TWITTER: yjpc1989)
So, this advantage from low human right originated from “rule of man”, instead of “rule of law”. The government is used to the “rule of man” and so are the common people. Especially, in business activities, the ruling man has enough executive power, with a certain extent of supervision from the upper level. This type of management in economic activities can lower the cost of gaining interest from capital, especially of those large capitals. In this case, the shift of industries is inevitable. Nobody can stop those western international companies from transferring their industries.
Those benefiting from the industrial shift are countries such like Japan and South Korea, the democratic countries which has adopted similar political systems as the Europe and America. They changed their own domestic economic situation by accepting western manufacture industries and also reallocated wealth perfectly under the democratic government and benefited their people. However, for those countries who refused to take the democratic political mode, or those who do not have a stable democratic system, this industrial shift didn’t bring success to them. To the opposite, this industrial transfer only magnified the distances of the poor and rich, because those governments didn’t distribute the accumulated wealth from this fairly enough and it resulted the concentration of wealth into a few hands. And this is why those countries with low human right failed.
If we can say that long time ago those countries have a small ration of population and wouldn’t affect other western countries, the large foundation of Chinese population totally crushed this industrial shift mode. Today, Chinese tycoons have been escalating the price of real estate in many European countries as well as in America, and this almost overturned the whole traditional western real estate market. In a word, the worldly enlargement of the distance between the rich and poor is mainly caused by the Chinese mode.
On one side it is the western political system with extensive human right, and on the other side it is the Chinese one with low human right. There should be no reconciliation between the two if not for the globalization. High-technology made it extremely easy to communicate among people, information and capitals. It’s like adding water into heated oil and will surely go crackling and spluttering.
I am all for human right. And I have been persecuted in China because the human rights are not protected there. However, in the current situation of heated oil mixing with water, should we re-considerate about if the western human right protection goes way to far that it became an obstacle of social progress especially economic development? If Adam Smith resurrect today, he would definitely lament: today’s western world is not the West with free market anymore! Any protection of human right that is beyond a necessary extent is becoming the burden of economic development. If the whole world are the same and own a united standard, I would vote for this kind of human right protection: whoever wouldn’t like the idea of eating without working! But tragically, the western world only has 1/10 of the global population and it is surrounded by wolves like China, Russia and Islam. It is time for us to wake up from the illusionary confidence of the Clinton Time!
3) Poor Individuals, Prosperous Country
For individualists, the wealth of people means the wealth of nation. Simply, the purpose of a nation is to serve its nationalities. But for those collectivists, whether the people is poor does not matter ---- even though they themselves don’t want to be poor either ---- what does matter is the power and wealth of a nation. This is actually the so called greatest achievement of China in the past thirty years: Poor people and powerful nation. Nevertheless, when two countries confront with each other, it means confrontation between two nations, and most directly, between governments who are on behalf of the nations. It is useless to compare the wealth between an individual American family and a Chinese family. From this aspect, Chinese government obviously has advantages that American government doesn’t have.
Wake up! You conceited Yankees who believe that US will win. How could the US government fight against a government who can print money unlimitedly? How could the US government fight against a government who can add taxable items whenever they want to? How could the US government fight against a government who never needs to worry about unemployment rate? A government who doesn’t need to consider the insurance and pension of old people, a government who doesn’t need to concern about the inflation, the dropping down of stocks by its limit, a government who doesn’t care about those children dropping off from school, a government who controls the media and internet, a government who can slaughter its people as how they wish to, how could you fight against it?
And such government could ever exist? Yes it doesn't only exist, but becomes the second biggest government in the world! Take a look! How unfair this world is! This is the fact. Those who are crying about how unfair the American government is, you’d better print this paragraph and stick it on your forehead. Whenever you are whining about how unfairly you are treated, look into the mirror and read it.
Look at those poor Chinese people. Different as you Yankees who get fussy all the time about those trivial stuffs in your life, how submissive they are! In front of the powerful they are licking their ass; In front of Police Officer they would even control the way they walk! When seeing unfair things they would at most sigh, but probably just close their eyes, pretending that they didn’t see anything. If not forced to rebel the authority, they don’t even know how to complain. This is a race that the westerners can never understand, and they are controlled by a bully government. Moreover, the huge trade difference between China and US are made by their hands. In another words, they worked really hard with their own hands and built for themselves a most modernized pigsty! Isn’t that miserable? Isn’t that horrible!
China’s overall GDP cannot compare with US and GDP per capita is lower than US too. China’s military strength and technology is not as good as US either. However, the resources under the control of Chinese government are way more than US government! Chinese government could drive their soldiers like animals, and a bunch of Chinese are stealing technology in the US and sending it back to China. This is the reality we got to know. Who is more powerful?
Don’t use Soviet Union as an example. The collapse of that communist regime was not historically doomed! Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a second powerful government rising to be US’s rival in such a short period!
4) Stability of Policy
Without any doubt, one weakness of democratic system is that their policies are not stable enough. Like China, the Mao’s era could be three decades’ of Left Wing and after that is another three decades’ of Right Wing in Deng’s era. This is unimaginable in the US. Within a term of four years, a succeeding president is always eager to erase off all his predecessor’s policies to prove that he himself is freaking damn good. This US system has no problem domestically, because no matter whoever became the President, they have one explicit goal: doing good in economy. And they have one enemy: Economic Recession.
As for its foreign policy, unless fighting with deadly enemies such as Germany and Japan in World War II, Soviet Union in Cold War, US even has difficulty to triumph over a small country. Some good examples are Korea War, Vietnam War, Iraq, and so like. Among all failures of those wars there was a same reason: Inconsistent policy. Democratic system weakened and blurred the resolution of the States and along with the end of a presidential term, game was over. In fact, every president has to face the mid-term election, plus the four-year limitation of a term. So, if a president just wants to destroy America intentionally just like OBAMA, or just wants to dawdle on his Presidential Seat like Clinton, his time would be super easy.
However if he wants to have any achievement on Foreign Policy, he would have a really hard time. Therefore we should understand how resolute President Trump’s attitude is in launching the Trade War.
Very different from the former Soviet Union, one the one hand, China is really good at gaining and utilizing favor from the US, who has never treated China as its rival in history, but not being grateful at all, or just pretending to be grateful. This is one of most absurd drama in World Political History. On the other hand, China knows all the weakness of the US. For this reason, even for a President like Bush, who swore to God to stall China in his election, all his aspiration was gone with the wind, depleted by China. We can say that China, among all US’s rivals in history, showed the best apprehension of America’s weakness. In these three decades, China’s most effective strategy against US is: to POSTPONE! Just wait, hold on, this President was gone. Another president came, with his new cabinet, just wait, and hold on, he will be gone!
(WRITTEN by Alex Lu, TWITTER: yjpc1989)
And China itself, not to mention that Xi Jinping is going to be lifetime president, even in the Era of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, their opinions are unanimous towards how to deal with the US. So, if there is confrontation between China and the US, if not a life-and-death battle, here is a good bet: China Wins.
5) Trade War CANNOT solve the problem
If only from the perspective of trade balance, US will certainly win the trade war. Just like what President Trump said, a country losing almost 400 billion dollars every year has nothing to lose. However, it is too shallow to analyze Sino-American relationship from the aspect of economic interest only. The importance of this trade war is that it would probably determine the direction of what human civilization will go in the next one hundred years.
Problem between China and the US is not the trade balance, but the conflict between two ways and two cultures. The West is in trust of Multi-culture and this belief itself is part of its culture. In Chinese history, it has been a uniform country with a single culture. Two hundred years ago, all different countries lived by themselves. But in an internet age like now, it is impossible to segregate each other from the network of people and information. Conflict is unavoidable. It was not so distinct before only because the West is too powerful and China has no confidence in challenging. Nevertheless, along with the expansion of China’s economic power today, the confidence in Chinese traditional culture with its contemptuousness is doomed to emerge. It was an incidental event that Xi Jinping came to power, and if another person was in his position perhaps China would not be as aggressive as it is today. Yet the ideology of “Divined Dynasty, Centric Empire” inherited from thousands years of traditional Chinese culture is extremely liable to explode. Think about South Korea, a nation raped by North Korea, when it comes to the issue of United South and North Korea, or national self-esteem, it immediately loses its rationality. This is the essence of Oriental Culture.
It is said that Sino-American relationship is different from that of US and Soviet Union because there is no collision of ideology. But what is more lethal is that not only there is cultural conflict but ideology is only part of culture. If we can say that the culture of Soviet Union is essentially western and concentrates on individualism, Chinese culture is oriental by its nature and it emphasizes collectivism. If not the advanced western technology defeated China in Tsing Dynasty, would Chinese people ever want to change their own life style? By no means! Therefore, why there are so many young patriots in China is not only a consequence of brain wash by the government. Instead, government maneuvered the conceitedness of collectivism derived from Oriental Culture.
Ultimately, the confrontation between China and US is that of individualism and collectivism. Individualists pursue freedom and collectivists focus on succession. Which one is right? Which one is wrong? It is not important any more. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is which one is going to win the battle.
6) COLD WAR 2.0
Human being is living for his or her ideas. What we think is right might be very wrong in other people’s eyes. It won’t really affect our lives until one side is determined to annihilate the other one and wipe him from the earth. To withdraw cannot avoid confrontation.
Nowadays China is exactly the one side haunting and stalking to devour and ravage the other one. Seemingly this confrontation was triggered by Trump’s trade war but actually it came from Xi Jinping’s imperial ambition. If my argument goes to the right direction, Xi Jinping is an extraordinarily ambitious leader. However, his passion is significantly inconsistent with the value of modern civilization. He wants to be one of those outstanding emperors in Chinese history such like Tangtaizong (唐太宗) , Kangxi (康熙) and so like. As for how much the people suffered under their reign doesn’t matter to him at all. If he determined to emulate those emperors, assuredly the most achievement he could ever think of is to confront and defeat the US. We have to admit that considering the reality, Xi Jinping might not be too determined to start the war against the US. Other than that, his secondary objective is to take over US’s hegemonic position in the world. This is probably the target in Xi Jinping’s plan, or at least, he wants China to become the former Soviet Union, standing as the other pole as same as the US.
Allegedly, China doesn’t have the same ideology as the Soviet Union. However, it has its culture: a pragmatism culture that is reckless and heedless. This is a prolongation of Chinese traditional culture and it substantially exceeds the communism and is way more vigorous. This could explain why Russians seemed to be more honest in their competition with US. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Russians promised not to set the missile system in Cuba and they didn’t do it, even though there were several presidential shifts in the US after that. If China was in that situation, after it promised to President Kennedy, during President Johnson’s term it would stealthily ship its missile to Cuba again. Wasn’t it what happened after they made their promises in WTO?
Therefore, the seemingly-to-be military and economic confrontation between China and US is actually cultural confrontation: Rule of Man versus Rule of Law, Stratum versus Equality, Privilege versus Human Right, and Corruption versus Honesty: in a word, Evil versus Virtue!
In fact, I am not really contented with the extravagant virtue of the West. This kind of “virtue” has reached a point of harming oneself without impairing enemies. There is no pure “virtue” on the earth and all virtues should be practiced on the condition of self-protection. Other than that, “virtue” means foolishness. But if I have to choose one between “Evil” and “Foolishness”, I would rather choose “virtue”.
Even if the trade balance between US and China is realized, is their confrontation preventable? Is China’s occupation of Taiwan preventable? Is it preventable for China to buy and corrupt some small countries and spread their virus of this “evil” culture? By no means!
The Trade War is a poor choice out of no choice and it was delayed for at least a decade. If today we still cannot realize the destined confrontation between China and the US, after ten years we have to regret another loss of a decade!
So what we should do now is to launch the COLD WAR 2.0 between China and US!
In 1946, right after the World War II, George Kennan, deputy chief of the mission in Moscow, sent the famous “long telegram” to the State Department, in which he explained in detail Soviet Domestic society and its foreign policy, and formulated the policy of “containment”, the long-term United States strategy for fighting against the Soviet Union. The policy of containment finally became the basic strategy of US. Now when talking about Kennan’s contribution, all nice words putting together are not enough to salute him. Without the
containment policy, there wouldn’t be the COLD WAR later on. Though, for a country like US with no consistent policy, that Kennan’s strategy could be adopted for several decades is not because of his GOD-like influence, but because the powerfulness of Soviet Union was intimidating enough to threaten the national security of the US. Kennan only made Americans realize the danger of Soviet Union.
Until today, the US has lost at least ten years. The dust from the newly started Trade War is not settled down yet. Is there going to be a peaceful result, or a deteriorated situation? It depends on the negotiation between China and US leadership. But undoubtedly, Americans need a new contemporary Kennan to send them another “long telegram”: Without a COLD WAR 2.0, the US is doomed to lose! Not only a problem of losing the trade war, but a huge retrogression of human civilization!
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