 to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Keeping the World Company today and we're talking to Gene Rosenfeld who is an independent scholar, a history professor from UCLA who is in Hawaii. Gene, welcome to the show. Thank you, Jay. Today we're going to talk about the vision, the agenda of Xi Jinping and the Chinese government, the PRC, and how that feeds into the world events maybe to follow. But I think before we ever get to that, you have to help us set the stage and give us an historical perspective of where China, how China got to be where it is today. Well, that's an enormous question that Chinese experts can address in their seminars. Generally speaking, China is one of the oldest continuous civilizations on the face of the earth and one of the greatest. We have to admire China except China. Democracy is a relatively new creation in the history of the world. And prior to the French Revolution, let's say, it was unknown. So most of human history has engaged with autocratic systems. And we can't judge China because it has an autocratic system. We have to judge China in its own terms. Also, the second point I would make is that for most of its history, after it has established its borders, of course, particularly on the Eurasian continent to the West, where there were different peoples, China has not been externally aggressive. We have to be very careful how we interpret China's moves today outside of its own borders as we recognize those borders. Because in the context of great powers, China has not been externally aggressive. In fact, if you look back 100 years, Japan has been much more aggressive than China. So that's the second thing. The third thing is we have to understand that China developed independently of the United States. We talked about Russia last week. Russia and the United States histories have been intertwined at least since the early 19th century. This is not the case with China. Our interactions, our relationship with China is very recent and post-colonial. So taking all those things into consideration and the fact that this is a closed government and a closed system to the outside world, everything we have to say today must be taken with a grain of salt. Well, let me remind myself that there were books written about this, popular books, about China's economic prowess and its global trade, and I guess its acquisitions back in what, the 16th century. And it was a world power of sorts back then. And then it declined as a world power as you get closer to the 20th, 21st century. How did that affect things? I mean, do people in China know about their past glory as a global trading partner? People in China? Oh, I'm sure. I mean, they have such enormous pride. As a matter of fact, reminding of the Greeks, who really thought they were superior to every other people in the world. And there is a certain amount of comparison, Europe, Greece, vis-a-vis China, Eurasia, or Asia, I think. So, yes, I think there's an enormous sense of ethnic identity and pride in China. Yeah. The other thing is, you know, I know this is popular culture, and I hate to throw references on popular culture, but if you remember Steve McQueen and the Sand Pebbles movie way back when. And the lesson was that the U.S. was really unfair. The U.S. had treated China and the Chinese badly. And I think there's a lot of truth to that in the 19th century, I guess. And query how much of what happened then, if the United States, and probably Europe also, you know, carving up China, being very aggressive against China. How did that affect this sense of, what did you call it, a government that people turned in on itself, kind of isolationist mentality? You know, we're talking about colonialism now. And the British were far more aggressive than we were in China. I really don't think we had much of a dog in that fight, except as a Western colonial power, of course. But as I've pointed out before, we have to sort of pat ourselves on the back a little bit as a colonial power, because yes, we have acted colonially, but we have also returned our so-called colonies to their people and given them independence from other great powers. So as far as I know, we're the only great power that has done this. I mean, you can argue that Britain has done this under duress, but Britain was far more extended into colonization than we were. So, but what happened was that the Chinese are a very proud people and deservedly so. They had a great civilization, they still do. What happened after World War II, though, is we cast our lot with the nationalists, Zheng Kai-shek, not Mao Zedong, and the Bolsheviks won in China. So the near history of the relationship between China and the United States is very fraught, very conflict-ridden, and it still is. We raise those tropes all the time. I have to give Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger credit for opening up diplomacy and trade with China today. But one thing that strikes me, you talk about, you know, how Mao was Bolshevik, affected by the Bolsheviks. So, okay, so Mao arises to power after World War II, and he beats off, you know, Zheng Kai-shek and sends him to Taiwan, whatever. But what's left is a communist government, and I'm just, you know, connecting dots, but it seems to me that Mao's concept of communism, the way he set things up in China, the way he established China in 1949, has to be with a tremendous amount of influence from Russia. That's where it all came from. That's where communism came from, although certainly his brand is different. Yes, the Russian Revolution happened first in 1917, and it provided a model for other communist parties to follow. There was a great deal of inequity, inequality in the world, and people seized upon the Marxian explanation of this, the dialectic of this, the opposition between the worker and the dominant party elites to justify or explain what was happening in their own countries. But we have to look at communism in China as communism in a Chinese context, and the great history of China. Anything China takes into itself from Buddhism to trade from Europe in the Middle Ages and opening up to, you know, the Catholic Jesuits that were there at that time, close to the emperors, or what is happening today. China gives it a uniquely Chinese cast brand. They recast everything in their own terms. So if we really want to have optimal relationship with China or avoid disasters with China and our own stupidity sometimes, we really need to study China and understand how the Chinese have operated for thousands of years, because they're still operating that way. I mean, to some extent Mao Zedong was a warlord who succeeded and took over the government. And that has happened in numerous times over thousands of years in Chinese history. There's a concept called the mandate of Kevin. And if we look at Xi Jinping today, he is disappearing, high officials, notably even the ones he himself emplaced a little over a year ago, the minister of defense, the foreign secretary, they're disappeared somewhere. I mean, they're probably alive, but who knows what's going on with them. It gives us pause that perhaps there's something going on in China today, a certain fear of instability. When the dominant government fears instability, it's usually because of disasters or famine. And then conflict occurs. And these conflicts have been among the greatest conflicts in history in terms of loss of life. They haven't been external, they've been internal, but millions, hundreds of millions of people have died in the eighth century, in the 19th century, and the centuries in between. Even more so than other countries, because it has a huge population and the numbers that die are just proportional even to what we see in the loss of life in World War II. So a lot of the carnage that has taken place in China has been a result of the loss of the mandate of Kevin. We can translate the mandate of Kevin, which originated about 1000 BCE, with the Zhao dynasty as a divine right for the government to exist. And then philosophers seized upon it as a reason to question the justice of the current government and to give rise to rebellion. And the current administration is an absolutist administration, which they always are. And yet, maybe feeling some concerns about the mandate of Kevin right now, because there's huge shake-ups going on and posturing. And for the first time, we have seen some aggressive external moves on the part of China. Well, it certainly sounds like an autocracy. It sounds like what happened in Russia years ago and what's happening in Russia now. But what strikes me is this, and this may this may be a little off the path, but when you live in the United States and you enjoy civil rights and freedom of expression and economic opportunity equal economic opportunity. Despite the fact that we have a conflict, we are a conflict society. We've been fighting with each other for a long time from the beginning. But we have a certain concept that is realized of freedom. If I live in China or Russia and I worry about being turned in, I worry about being targeted politically, I worry about being disappeared for no reason without a trial or any sense of fairness or justice. I conduct myself differently. I am much quieter. I don't speak out when I see that people who do speak out are disappeared or punished or banished. And I think that affects everything in the society, doesn't it? It certainly affects everything in our society and it's got to be affecting their society, right? You know, my research on fascism based on a source from a woman who lived during the time of Mussolini and lived in Germany during the time of Hitler, perhaps the only person who have done that, brought home to me the fact that people do self-censor when they're living under an absolutist government. Yes, you're absolutely right. And we talked about the Russian population being hesitant to join the Progression Rebellion because they wanted to step back and see and wait and determine who was going to be top dog first. They want to go with the top dog. What people, what people, the Chinese culture values prosperity and stability. If all you have known is a government that is absolute, if that government provides for you and yours to the point where you can live a normal life and not worry about politics. And all that government asks of you is loyalty and stability and it provides you with the means of two prosperity, which is, I mean, every Chinese public ritual is resolving around prosperity, which is why there's such good trade partners or bad trade partners as you want to look at it. But at least their ambitions are to be prosperous. So with that in mind, we can tailor our approach to China and our interactions with China, respecting where they're coming from. Well, I'm thinking of, for example, the scapegoats that we saw under Hitler, and for that matter, Stalin, including Jewish people, minorities, what have you, who those guys had no compunctions about doing genocide. But we have the Uyghurs now in the west of China, and we have anybody who would speak against China or the government and they become, in a sense, not a good parallel, but it is a parallel. In a sense, they become the scapegoats. They get attacked for this false corruption kind of charge, and who knows what, inability to fully support the state, perhaps, communist kinds of deprivation of civil liberties. But where I get stuck, and I hope you can help me with this, is that what's the connection between this mandate of heaven and the notion that economics are everything and the well-being of the individual and his family is top notch on the list of priorities. Where does that connect with the South China Sea? Where does that connect with the Belt Road Initiative? Where does that connect with the clear, obvious, nefarious aggression that China has been demonstrating in recent years? Where does it come from? Is that part of the history you're talking about, or is that something that's been generated more recently for some reason perhaps rooted in history? Well, big question. Ultimately, you have to say, I don't know where that comes from, because as I noted, it's not necessarily the way China has acted in the past. We have to look to ourselves, I think, more as to why China is doing this, in what context, and also we have to look at China's relationship with Russia. You pointed out earlier that the impetus for Mao Zedong's revolution was Russia, in terms of the philosophy and ideology, which is mainly what I study in history, because ideology is what motivates people, and it can change history. I think, too, we have to look to Russia today, and again, go back to what we were talking about last week, Putin's vision, and China's vision are like the Venn diagram. They overlap strategically in very important ways, and then there are important ways in which China and Russia are historically and perhaps just generically enemies. They're close neighbors in a neighborhood that is an autocratic neighborhood and a very nationalistic neighborhood. China and Russia are in and out, and in and out, but they have a common enemy now. If you can unite your people ideologically around a common enemy, and you can characterize that enemy, and then fashion a seductive recruitment policy for other countries. I'll give you just one example. Putin's vision is that the United States is the great hegemon in the world, and the United States and its satellites in Western Europe are responsible for an array of injustices that still exist in equities, poverty, all the inequality in the world, and they sell this message to the Bricks countries to Asia, not Asia, parts of Asia, definitely yes, but also to other continents, Africa and Latin America. Pakistan today is in a rough neighborhood. It's got the Taliban on one side, and it's got India on the other side, which is its generic enemy. Pakistan and India have been enemies since the partition. They're still in hot conflict in Kashmir over borders, but India and China are also in hot conflict in the high Himalayas. They've been fighting the longest, highest conflict between armies in the world for many, many years, and there's a conflict of borders there, so there is an uneasiness. China exists between India, which is becoming a major rival of China's in terms of development, and then there's Pakistan that's caught between these two major countries that want to free themselves from the hegemony of the United States, and the idea for this is Russia. We went back to Ilyan and Dugan last week, and these philosophers, how they have affected Putin's vision. Now, he needs China and is using China today and co-opting countries like Pakistan to transact, which is very transactional country. It's not a country that has loyalties to other countries or even necessarily to its own governments. It's ruled by the military, and it's like a, I don't know, like a cartel of some sort, where they're transactional with everybody, including us. So it's very complicated, but there is a general vision of dumping the United States and particularly getting rid of the dollarist currency and establishing economic dominance. So this is where China steps in. And in terms of this vision of the world, of a, quote, multi-polar world instead of a unipolar world, China wants to be the elephant in the room in terms of economics. And its currency, the Yuan, is already being utilized in transactional arrangements between Russia, Pakistan, and China. So it's very complicated, but undoubtedly there is a polarization between Russia, China on one side, the United States, and Europe on the other side. Well, yeah, I mean, I keep thinking of Steve McQueen, and I keep thinking of a slogan, which I never could remember in Mandarin, but it was something but it was something like, China stand up. And it was, I think it came up in the time of Hu Jintao, where he was saying, you know, we've been dominated by others for long enough now, and we are not only going to stand up, but we're going to stand very tall. And I want the loyalty and, you know, support of everyone in China to do that. And lo and behold, you know, that work, especially when you feed into little capitalism alongside and you're using capitalism against the capitalist. There's an interesting twist on that one. But, you know, back in 20 years ago, they were very clearly trying to establish an economy that would dominate. And in large part, you know, they have, they are a major force. And when they decide, for example, that they want to have a Navy almost as big as ours, they can do it because they have that economic ability. So I am just wondering where that comes from. I suggest that we are the big, you know, enemy. We are the, you know, the one that they use to show who the enemy is. And you know what? It seems to me that at the end of the day, be interested in your thought about this, at the end of the day, it's political. He is saying, she is saying to the people of China, we have to fight the United States. They are our big enemy. And a lot of what you do has to be directed at building a China that can resist them. And in saying that he's politicizing the relationship, and he's getting loyalty from them, and they're coming along on a political, and that's the way onocrats remain in power, isn't it? Well, again, everything we have to see through a Chinese lens. Xi Jinping is having some problems right now, not just political problems, but he's having economic problems. The overinvestment in real estate by the state over a period of time has resulted in what may be a serious economic crisis for Chinese. So he's having that to manage. He's just come out of trying to manage the COVID crisis, where there were resistance in the streets. That's something that a Chinese ruler cannot abide, no matter if he's an emperor, or he's a president or whatever he is. The crackdown on Xinjiang, the Muslims to the West, was a result of actual terrorist operations by jihadist Muslims in Xinjiang, in the mainland of China. China will not abide that. So they cracked down on the entire population. Internal resistance of any sort in China is cracked down on because of the mandate of the heaven. Things can change so quickly, and the consequences can be so dire that whoever is in power in China is going to do whatever they think is necessary to stop this thing before it gets out of camp. I don't think that we should look at our conflict with China in terms of autocracy and democracy. China is open to accepting capitalism. We have seen this capitalism with a Chinese face. Yes, but capitalism, open trade, development, they have in essence challenged us to a contest, and after all, we are a country that's based on contest, on may the best team win, and we can accept that. But I don't, I think it's very dangerous for us to look upon China as we looked upon something like Vietnam as a threat to the United States because it embraced a certain ideology. I think we have to look for ways to connect with China that are not ideological, as far as what China is doing in the South China Sea right now. You can look upon that as part of the economic vision because the South China Sea is a major route for world trade, especially through the Malacca Straits, and China wants control of that. They also fear the militarism they believe is coming from the West, so they want to establish bases in response to the bases we've had established. Now granted, this government is responding differently from previous governments. Xi Jinping seems to be wanting to go back to a more purely communist program in his government, and unfortunately, he can't do that and maintain China's economic strength because that kind of collectivism doesn't work economically. So when the state takes over the major capitalist enterprises as it has done and relegates people like Jack Ma to the margins, it undermines China, undermines the stability and prosperity of China, and then they're caught in this circular thing where they need capitalism. They can't use capitalism because it threatens the mandate of heaven. They have to crack down, establish communist or absolutist programs that don't work in the modern world. China has the capacity to accept modern society, civilization, science, trade, everything brilliantly, but they have to do it in terms that they understand and their stability must not be undermined or threatened. You know, 20 years ago, there was a clear possibility of a kind of Chinese version of democracy where you voted, and there was representative government. It was flawed in the sense that you voted for the lowest level of official, and then that level voted for the next level and on up seven or eight steps before you got to the Politburo, but it was voting, and maybe it was make-believe democracy, but they touted it as democracy. I think these days, they don't tout it as democracy so much, but I agree with you and that they have the possibility of making a form of government that would really allow for a lot more self-expression, economic activity, and diplomatic relations with the West. Seemed to be heading in another direction, which is sort of sad because it makes more contention with the West, but what I want to get to here, and it's kind of, we're getting to the end of our time, is how is that possible? Is it possible that we could have a win-win relationship with them? Because I think it's in everyone's interest in the world that we have a win-win relationship with them, and yet they seem to be going into something else, and granted that we have flaws, and maybe we're finding out just how flawed we are by virtue of what's going on in federal government right now, but ideally, isn't it the better thing to have a win-win, and if so, how do we take these two ideologies, these two huge economies, and make them work together for global success? Number one, we have to have a win-win. China is a nuclear power, Russia is a nuclear power, United States is a nuclear power. Recently, Signal's Intelligence has demonstrated that all three of these powers are preparing their major sites for atomic testing. They're expanding them and preparing them for atomic testing. China is developing a formidable military presence. It's not anywhere near the United States power. We don't have to worry about that now, but they are engaging in this because this is what modern powers do. Modern powers have to be nuclear, they have to have strong military establishments, but the win-win idea, I've been trying to point out throughout this entire discussion, ways in which we can achieve that, and I think we have to start with our own country. We have to start with our own government, which is in disarray. We are electing the wrong people. We are decrying, quote, the elites, which is a radical revolutionary concept that we have to get rid of the people in government and just put in ideological loyalists. You know, since we have to conquer the virus of fascism in our own country, have people in charge who are responsible, and I will say this, the Biden administration has put responsible people in power. The National Security Advisor, Lincoln, the Secretary of State, special envoys like John Kerry have done an absolutely fantastic job of trying to clean up the mess that Trump wanted to leave behind because he has absolutely no concept of how to run foreign policy. And we need to understand, as Americans, we need to grow up and be adults and get rid of these radicals that are elected by these gerrymandered districts and which are hyped on social media to people who think only in terms, in ideological terms. We have to conquer our problems first. If we do that, I guarantee you, we get better people in government. I don't worry about our relationship with China. Well, let's turn to the ghost of Christmas future, not to bring dickens in this conversation, but suppose we don't do that. You know, one thing I can see happening is that she and the Chinese in general, they make fun of us. They say, you know, we are winning this competition. We are better than you are economically. We are better than you are in terms of diplomacy, although that that'll take a lot of doing. And we are better than you in terms of stability. So you are a laughing stock for the United States. So what I'm saying is you say that we need to clean up our act to reach a win-win. But I'm asking what's the flip side, and if we don't do that? Well, we don't even have to blame it on China. We blame it on ourselves. You can imagine what it is. And one of the big problems right now that we could clean up is for the press to stop making Trump the major subject of every story that comes across their desk. We're just giving him free publicity. We don't need that. We need to put this man in his place. He's a major loser. He's lost every single contest. Even when he won, he didn't win by a majority. And he's obsessed with his crowd size, which is lousy. So we just have to kind of put the virus. We have a worse virus than COVID. Right now it's called MAGA. I totally agree. Let's control what we can control first. What it tells me is that our success or lack of it is in an echo chamber, a global echo chamber. So if we want to succeed in the world, we have to clean up our act. And if we want to fail in the world and we fail locally, then it's nationally, we are going to have a huge effect on the world. And who knows exactly what will happen with respect to Russia and China and other autocracies. But I fear that we are the only thing that could stand between success and failure globally. I mean, there are organizations now that are pushing back on the money being spent in Europe on climate change. They're complaining that the European countries are spending too much. And so we need a global leader to speak to them. Maybe somebody like Joe Biden, say stop that. Bottom line is that we are in an echo chamber like it or not. And what we do or don't do affects not only the relationship we have with China and Russia, but what they do to others. Everything if the United States sneezes, it's going to go around the world right now. Because the fact is whether you want to call us a hegemon or we want to refer to the Pax Americana. So either as we phrase it negatively or positively, whatever we do in the world has consequences. However, there are continents full of aspiring peoples who have their own desires for freedom, autonomy, prosperity, health, and so forth. I think we have to look at our common humanity. We have to go beyond politics and geopolitics and appeal to our common humanity. The individuals who do this in human history are the ones that are most highly guarded. These are the individuals that speak person to person across great distances of cultural difference because there is a certain biological and psychological basis to human behavior that forms a common ground. Maybe we can reach out and meet on that common ground. Whenever we have person to person relationships with people in other countries, if we have person to person relationships, cultural exchanges between Russia and the United States during the Cold War, for example, it sets a tone for eventual cooperation and collaboration. Peace Corps has done this. It's a person to person kind of program. We need more of that even under the most dire circumstances. We can reach out and touch somebody in another country. I'm so worried that the cost of getting to a kind of balance is dire. It's a huge cost. People who are of bare-mindedness will be at risk. Sometimes in global history, you will have to agree that a lot of people who were decent, law-abiding people were killed in the process. Those leaders you're talking about who have the right idea, we need them now. We need them soon. We do have them. We do have them. I mean, think of Navalny and Karamazat and of course Mandela in his time. These were not individuals that the United States government necessarily supported for their philosophy that we recognize them across borders and across political ideology as individuals that are animated by an unusual sense of justice. We place our hopes in them. We regard them as heroes. We remember them over centuries. All the great religious leaders have been such types of leaders and they transcend everything else in human history. I would like to explore that more with you, Jane. I would like to explore with you how somebody who has the right sensibilities, the right ideology, the right words and thoughts can get to be a leader or not. Because I'm sure there are a lot of people who had very good ideas and thoughts who didn't get to be leaders. How does the better leader emerge in our world and change things for the better? I hope I can get you back for that discussion, Jane. Well, we go to the appeal of Joseph Campbell and the hero of Thousand Faces and Star Wars and all of our cultural entertainment today and our preoccupation with heroes and saviors and messiahs. It's very much a part of our culture because we're so frightened by what media now is unloading on our doorsteps. I agree with everything that you say. Thank you, Jane Rosenfeld. Thank you for coming down on keeping the world company. I so enjoy these shows and I hope we can get you back in the next few weeks. Thank you, Jane.