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One of the most significant recent developments in American foreign policy is the emergence of a near-unanimous consensus, at least on the political right, that China is now definitively America’s most potent rival in nearly every sphere—be it economically, militarily, or ideologically.

Most retail-level anti-China rhetoric nonetheless fails to understand the true nature of China and its challenge to the United States. To hear Republican lawmakers and pundits tell it, China is threatening because it is communist, the last remnant of the threat posed by the Soviet Union in the Cold War.

China = Communist = Bad is a logical enough thought process. After all, China is ruled by a Communist Party and this plays right to decades of associations built up by the Cold War. Nonetheless, the term “communist” reveals very little about the Chinese Regime in 2022. The People’s Republic of China has transformed, developed, and adapted so much in the past thirty years that the ideological term “communism” obscures more than it reveals about the Chinese regime in the 21st Century, much as the term “liberal democracy” reveals very little about the actual state of contemporary America.

The very same people who attack China for being communist routinely use “communist” as an epithet for university professors who promote critical race theory, librarians who put on drag queen story hours, or BLM extremists promote rioting in major cities. And this reveals the confusion: China’s government is not remotely like those professors or librarians or BLM activists. However little insight one may gain into China by reading Marx, Lenin, or even Mao, one gains zero insight into communist China by reading Ibram X. Kendi. Or, in briefer terms: China isn’t woke.

While America tries to abolish the gender binary entirely, China is telling young boys to be more manly. While Americans are bombarded with shows like I am Jazz, China is banning “sissy” pop stars from television. In recent years, Chinese observers have even coined the pejorative baizuo (“white left”) to capture their amusement at and contempt towards the woke white, anti-racist, liberal religion that dominates every aspect of American life.

In the ideological battle lines of the 21st century, China doesn’t stand out for its ideological embrace of communism. Rather, China stands out for its ruthlessly and pragmatic rejection of wokeness. Yet despite this, there is almost no critical engagement in the West along these lines.

Almost.

Thankfully, a handful of observers have noted the evolution of Chinese ideology in this direction, and studied its implications for the many years of superpower rivalry to come.

On Feb. 6, a Twitter thread highlighted a 2013 DOD-commissioned report, “The Strategic Consequences of Chinese Racism: A Strategic Asymmetry for the United States.” While so many other reports on China focus narrowly on the country’s economic power, military capabilities, and its authoritarian mechanisms of control, this report looked squarely at the strength China derives from a thoroughly anti-woke worldview. Given America’s pervasive, even quasi-religious obsession with race, China’s ruthless disregard for politically correct pieties is one of the most drastic differences between the two superpowers, and worthy of close study.

The report in question is massive (more than 250 pages), though the Twitter thread linked above provides a some worthwhile highlights.

While the report’s author is redacted from the release, Revolver was able to contact him, and he graciously agreed to a written interview about his 2013 paper and his thoughts on it nearly a decade later.

Enjoy.

When you say the Chinese are racist, what precisely do you mean by that? Does typical Chinese “racism” differ from the so-called “racist” ideas that once prevailed among American elites a century ago?

When racism is used in the study it is informed by three elements. First, yes, there are similarities with racism as practiced in the West in the past, and as would be most familiar to Western audiences today. This understanding of racism must also include xenophobic and chauvinistic attitudes, which frequently are also directed at ethnic minorities in China. Tibetans, Uighurs and other Muslims, in particular, are all too often targets of racism, as are darker complexioned people.

Second, the Chinese conception of racism is also importantly informed by eugenics. Eugenics is discrete from racism, of course, but can underpin it. Eugenics was widely believed a century ago in the West but has never been discredited in China where these beliefs are widely held.

Third, the Chinese have a strict racial hierarchy that informs their racism. Other peoples and groups are considered to be inferior, with a sliding scale of inferiority. The major Chinese distinction is between the “black devils,” the savage inferiors beyond any hope of interaction, and the “white devils,” the tame barbarians with whom the Chinese can interact. Lighter skinned peoples are favored and those with darker complexations are not. This leads to endemic discrimination against Africans and other darker complexioned people within China or where the Chinese interact. For Europeans and other lighter skinned people, there is considerable envy as whiteness is desirable. This is a complicated issue, of course, but for no greater reason than the Chinese are profoundly conflicted about race: touting theirs while at the same time envious and jealous of whites.

Early on in the paper, you state that the Chinese “see multiculturalism as a sickness that has overtaken the United States, and a component of US decline.” You later note that the Chinese believe that Westerners are “obsessed” with race and this constitutes a strategic vulnerability. Have the events of the past ten years, and particularly the past two, proven China right?

Yes, over the last ten years, the West has witnessed an intensification of its obsession with race and racism. This is really the culmination of a process started decades ago. As the study notes, the Chinese are nonplussed by this Western obsession because on the one hand Westerners are overwhelmingly white, a characteristic so valued by the Chinese. Equally, they cannot comprehend the hatred directed by so many in the West against their own societies and the beauty and wonder of Western civilization—witness the number of Chinese tourists in London, Paris, or Rome in awe of Western masterpieces of art, architecture, or literature. This is unthinkable for the majority of the Han as they could never devalue the glory of Chinese civilization. So, indeed, the West has entered a period of madness, of intellectual and civilizational cannibalism whose terminus is not yet known, but is weakening Western cohesiveness and unity in the face of China’s threat to the West.

You argue that China’s racism and sense of ethnic superiority will eventually push it into arrogance and overconfidence as it grows. Ten years on, are we seeing mistakes caused by this overconfidence yet? Has China’s non-Western attitude on racial issues become a geopolitical hindrance?

Absolutely. China’s racism is causing mistakes and complicating its foreign policy and interactions with the rest of the world. China can never treat other states and other peoples as equals, so they always have this limitation to overcome. China’s presence from Pakistan, throughout Africa, and Southeast Asia has brought resistance from local peoples due its exploitative practices and racist attitudes. Its crushing of Hong Kong also resonated negatively around the world, including in the Commonwealth and importantly in South Korea, where China’s influence had been growing. Covid-19 has made this worse due to its origins, the defective PPE China shared with the rest of the world, and unwillingness to share information about the virus. The stark fact is, when compared with a hyper-nationalistic racist China, it is relatively easy to convey to the rest of the world the message that the United States is better polity, society, ally, and friend. U.S. political principles and history stand in sharp relief to Communist China’s. This is a great advantage for the U.S. and should be a source of profound pride for the American people and, more broadly, those in the free world. We have a better ideology and a better society.

Since your paper came out, we’ve seen the Afghan War end in disaster. Libya has become a failed state, and few look on the Iraq War as an unqualified success. Couldn’t it be argued that America is a more overconfident nation than China is?

Certainly, the U.S. has ample hubris and overconfidence. They have contributed to U.S. foreign policy failures. But this must be kept in perspective, and hubris and overconfidence are relative. When the U.S. is placed next to China, America looks very good. Our system has flaws and difficulties, but it doesn’t have the perverse and anti-humanistic nature of the Chinese Communist Party. The unrivalled, unalloyed arrogance of the CCP and of Xi explains their maladroit diplomacy. This includes their crude and foolish attempts at bribery and influence operations from Australia to Sweden, as well as the taking of the “two Michaels” hostage which alienated Canada. Their aggression in the East and South China Seas and against India facilitates balancing against Beijing. The Duchess of Windsor said you can never be too rich or too thin. But observing Xi, she might amend her quip: you can be too arrogant.

George Soros has recently emerged as one of the foremost critics of the Chinese government, going so far as to accuse Chinese President Xi of representing the “greatest threat that open societies face today.” Is Soros correct at least in the descriptive if not normative sense? Put another way, might we say that China is interesting (and threatening to many) precisely because it merges economic strength and technological progress with a radical rejection of what Soros describes as the open society? 

Yes, China, as well as Japan, India, and Russia, are threats to George Soros’ vision of the “open” society. Among this set, there is variation concerning the cause of the threat. China, Japan, and India are wealthy in the case of the first two, and increasingly so in the case of India. Each is technologically advanced with significant and growing military power. Each has an ideology that is different that the liberal democracy of the United States. I see this as not related to “racism,” but to the fact they are largely ethnically homogenous in the case of China and Japan, or have a dominant ethnic caste/social group in the case of India. Additionally, each is a civilizational state. Eight features define China, Japan, and India as civilizational states: first, large populations; second, significant territory; third, singular traditions; fourth, well-developed cultures; fifth, unique languages; sixth, indigenous political cultures; seventh, distinctive societies; and eighth, inimitable economies. Thus, the key elements here are not racism but the homogeneity of the society, confidence in one’s society and country, and pride in one’s civilization and identity.

Do you see any danger in emphasizing the role of “racism” in Chinese society as a primary vector of critique? Could we see a future where the State Department drags us into an unnecessary crisis as part of a “anti-racism” crusade against China? Only half-way tongue in cheek, how far are we from pushing for conflict to make Taiwan safe for drag queens?

Increasingly, there is concern that foreign policy in the Biden Administration is heavily influenced by wokism, and this wokism is supplanting liberalism as the ideology the U.S. seeks to impose on the world. This ideology increasingly informs how the U.S. sees the world and its allies and opponents. There is the danger that the Biden Administration will seek to “make the world safe for wokism” as Wilson sought to do for democracy when he took the U.S. into World War I. Like Wilson’s quest, this will fail. First, as it is driven by U.S. power, and U.S. power is in relative decline compared to the rest of the world, the ability to advance this ideology weakens. Second, the rest of the world, from Macron to Xi, do not accept it and perceive it as an artifact of U.S. politics, or at most, of the Anglosphere. Third, the U.S. applies woke ideology clearly unevenly and hypocritically. Russia is targeted but not the UAE or Saudi Arabia; Hungary, but not China; Australia may be at some point but not Japan or India. This is a clear attack on Western civilization as Macron identified. It would be far better for the U.S. to return to seeking to advance liberalism and its freedoms of thought, speech, religion, economic exchange. That is far superior to support in world politics than furthering wokism, which is anchored in the thought of Leninists, Gramscians, and critical theorists.

It seems as though a “China hawk” consensus is emerging across the spectrum of the American elite. There are lots of explanations for this: The Military-Industrial Complex faction needs an enemy to oppose, corporate America is increasingly worried about IP theft from China (after exporting industry to them for decades), and Wall Street, though still favorable to China, has suffered a lapse in relative prestige since 2008. Do you agree that a hawkish consensus is emerging? What, if anything, is missing from the account above?

Yes, there is an increasing awareness of the threat, but it is profoundly tardy and it is not yet triumphant. The rise of China has occurred over a generation. It is now risen. The horse has left the barn. It was not checked when it could have been done far more easily in the George H.W. Bush or Clinton presidencies. George W. Bush should have as well, but was distracted by the aftermath of 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The Obama presidency actually refused to support the Philippines when it needed strong U.S. support to resist China’s aggression in its territorial waters in the South China Sea. It is only with the Trump Administration that actual balancing against China occurred. The accurate assessment of the China threat might now be identified at the Pentagon and State, and increasingly at think tanks. But there are multiple centers of resistance to that worldview in Treasury, SEC, in Congress, finance, trade, Big Tech, media, in universities, as well as in many state and local governments. These centers of power are formidable and still support cooperation. The U.S. is still a long way from consensus regarding the threat from the PRC, and there are powerful interests that seek to return to the ancien régime of business as normal with China. To this equation it must be added that China’s influence operations are sophisticated and have penetrated centers of power in the U.S. This introduces a related but new set of problems. Thus, identification of the scope of the China threat is limited by our own elite and our own flaws, but also by China’s efforts to shape American opinion, ideas, culture, and policies, as well as our conception of U.S. national security interest.

Despite the decidedly politically incorrect attitudes Chinese themselves hold regarding race and other issues, their public diplomacy seems very much enmeshed in a certain kind of “wokeness,” albeit of a sloppy and derivative variety. For instance, China’s rejoinder to U.S. accusations of human rights abuses against Uighurs is to clumsily parrot woke, BLM-style talking points about America’s mistreatment of minorities. Is it surprising to you that China has not used its rejection of American-style wokeness as a public diplomacy asset? What if Xi responded to American criticism by pointing to the lack of free speech in America when it comes to sensitive topics on race and gender?

This is an exceptional question, but I do not believe that the PRC would adopt the thoughtful narratives that you identify. In part, this is for the reason you mention. But three other points are relevant. First, to adopt those narratives would require an admission of their own weaknesses or failings. The CCP will never admit weakness or failing. Second, it would also establish an equivalency, for example, between the Uighurs and Western immigration as you mention. That is also unacceptable to the CCP, for whom there is no Uighur problem, only bad behavior by some anti-social elements. Third, touting free speech will not work because the Chinese are far worse violators, and because the CCP will never welcome free speech and other liberal political norms for reasons of regime stability. There will never be an inherent recognition that liberalism is superior to Communism.

We must keep in mind the CCP’s goal. The CCP is determined to destroy the United States and to demonstrate that the future belongs to China. For the CCP, the rest of the world should see this, and lend their support to China’s efforts to create “the common destiny of mankind.”

Accordingly, the CCP welcomes any effort that will weaken the U.S. and promote instability within it. These include efforts that will undermine American political, educational, social, and cultural institutions, the unity of the American people, and the understanding by Americans of the traditional American ideology of political liberalism and Western civilization.

In essence, the further the U.S. moves from its traditional political ideology and foundation, the better this is for China, in a Leninesque “The worse the better.” In addition to the profound problems we have discussed, the greatest we have yet not mentioned: the U.S. is in a period of ideological competition and transition. This weakens the U.S., paralyzes its ability to advance its interests, and hinders its capability to respond to the China threat.

In contrast, China is emerging as the “anti-woke” superpower. Not by its own efforts, but as a result of what the U.S. and Anglosphere are undergoing and will undergo if “wokeism” wins the ideological competition with liberalism. Thus, China can advance the narratives that one should be proud of one’s country and civilization no matter where one is born. That is appealing across countries. However, that message’s attractiveness inevitably is checked by the reality of traditional Chinese beliefs: you may be good and proud of your country, but we, China and the Han people, are better and you will never be as good as we are. Thus, China will never have an ideology of universal appeal. Chinese supremacy or Han supremacy will always get in the way.

However, the U.S. does get in the way, or did, with its ideology of political liberalism. With its freedoms, institutions, liberties, and strong belief in itself, America offered a powerful competing ideology to China. Americans need to recognize this.

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