ANXIETIES OVER A NEW VERSION OF THE CHINA SYNDROME
(….as red underwear becomes…pale pink)

The recent internal turmoil within the Chinese Communist Party is causing a mix of eager hope and strong concerns in the Western world.

After a half century of absolute political control and rule over China’s masses, the Party appears to be facing a progressive and steady decline of its hold on the levers of power. Meanwhile, the rest of the world waits and watches with anxiety at this phenomenon as  more and more it begins to appear as a new version of the – China Syndrome. That is, will it be containable….or become….explosive?

To even begin to have a glimmer of proper perspective about it one really needs to consider the long, long trail of China’s history. The key pattern of which has been reliance on a strong central authority to keep all its disparate parts glued together. Much of Chinese mythic folklore reflects that. But the era of its five warring states was no myth. That was its reality before China became….China….and the cultural memories of all that persist to this day.

After centuries of instability and warfare between those five states, one, the ruler of Wei, by adapting a new military technology (the mounted archer of the wild nomads along his borders, instead of the traditional  foot pike-men and war chariots of his neighbors), finally managed to knock all their heads together to become the first emperor of a unified China. And although submerged into that new empire’s matrix by that process, much like tectonic plates colliding with each other, those five components remain as fault lines in China’s present day fabric. A good example of that being this anecdote….a young married couple attending a social event were introduced and spent their time there exchanging social chit-chat with another young married couple. On the way home, the husband of the first couple remarked how pleasant it had been to meet another Chinese couple at that event. His Cantonese wife replied….Dear, they were very nice, but they’re not Chinese….they’re from Shanghai!

So, from the earliest times and dynasties of  the Tang, Sung, Han, Mongol, Chin, Manchu, through to the last Ming emperor into the modern era, China has always relied on a strong central authority to maintain its economic, social, and political stability. Whenever that authority has been weak chaos and instability have usually followed. And that pattern has continued right into modern times. The weakness of the early Sun Yat Sen republic eventually dissolved into a stew of conflicting warlord rivalries, culminating at the end of WWII with the Kuo Mintang and Maoist contest, which the Maoists ultimately won, by  driving Kuo Mintang off the mainland to seek refuge in Taiwan, and becoming the sole overlords of all China.

These new overlords, though wearing red underwear, took on the trappings of the old style imperial dynasties, ruling from Beijing, enforcing its ideology and regulations with a ruthlessness that made the first emperor Wu Ti seem like a pussy-cat. A brand of totalitarianism that made that of their Soviet neighbors look mild by comparison. But there are limits even to absolute power and control, and as the first Maoist generation passed on, the following ones began to realize that a monopoly on power is worthless unless it can be used as a means for accumulating personal privilege and wealth. That realization, begun by Mao’s immediate successor, Cho En Lai, is what put China on the path towards becoming the economic dynamo it is today.

Of course, once economic reins are loosened, that’s the equivalent of letting a genie out of its bottle. It can never be put back into it again, which is what has happened with China over these past twenty years. And inevitably, as economic freedom has grown in that time, the demand and hunger for political freedom to go along with it has also grown. The Tien Anmen Square episode being the strongest example of that. If that demand and hunger are not either met or assuaged somehow, the entire situation can,  then does, become…. explosive. That’s what happened with their Soviet neighbor, with the events of the Arab Spring, and most recently with Myanmar.

But with a billion-plus mass of population on its hands, the latter-day imperial court in Beijing is focused on avoiding a similar fate. Thus the political turmoil seen among its hierarchs today is a reflection of that. What we’re seeing there are the maneuverings of  various commissar interests trying to figure out how to transform themselves into relatively benign oligarchs (wearing a more fetching shade of Socialist-pink underwear), with as little conflict as possible. The most problematic of these, however, are the military hierarchs of the PLA, who have had some fifty years time advantage to develop the longest and farthest reaching economic tentacles beyond anyone else’s, so  it remains to be seen how well things will eventually be sorted out among such competing interests.

While the potential for the situation to become explosive is there, because of that mass of population, there is an over-riding common interest not to rock the boat too much, and risk killing the goose laying so many golden eggs for them. All of which perhaps explains why China now seems to be reverting to even more rigid constraints on any form of political dissent. It just can’t afford the risk right now of what a loosened political structure might entail.

So one way or the other the odds are that this new – China Syndrome – will be contained rather than be allowed to become explosive, as China  works out and transitions into whatever ultimate economic, social, and political matrix will work best for it.

Meanwhile, the Western world should act with restraint towards it during that process. The best advice for that being given by my late grandmother who said….never interfere in family feuds….no matter how good your intentions might be…they won’t be appreciated….and the entire family will hate you for it!

CENTURION