A frank discussion of US-China relations
A lecturer from China explains the differences in priorities between the U.S. and Chinese governments, writes blogger Steve Kelman.
Our master’s degree students working on the “Spring Exercise” in U.S.-China relations – see my last post from earlier this week – heard an absolutely fascinating lecture on Thursday from Chu Shulong of Qinghua University in Beijing, which is China’s equivalent of MIT. Chu flew over from China just to speak with our students, arriving at midnight Wednesday after a 15-hour air journey.
Chu, who has a Ph.D. from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., is deputy director for an international affairs institute at the university, former chief America-watcher for a government-affiliated think tank and a consultant on international affairs coverage for China’s state-owned TV network CCTV. Although he was not speaking as a government spokesman, he did not hide that he was speaking as someone very familiar with the views of China’s establishment.
I consider myself moderately knowledgeable about China and U.S.-China relations, but I learned a lot from the lecture. Early on, he frankly stated that the U.S.-China relationship was not essentially based on shared values: because, in his words, the U.S. believes in human rights and democracy, and Chinese leaders are Marxists (whatever that means in today’s context in China). The relationship is based on a desire to avoid war and on mutual economic interests. He believes the relationship therefore is basically unstable, subject to ups and downs.
The basic point of the rest of the lecture was that China is essentially inward-directed, much more so than the U.S., which has larger and more universal aspirations. Again speaking very frankly, he told the students that, while China would prefer that Iran and North Korea not obtain nuclear weapons, preventing them from doing so is way, way down on China’s list of priorities. China cannot be expected to have an interest in dealing with human rights violations in places such as Darfur because China’s government lacks a commitment to human rights itself – and also doesn’t want foreign interference in its affairs. Although these are important foreign policy issues for the U.S. in its dealings with China, he stated that China’s number one bilateral concern with the U.S. (he was thinking of straight foreign policy issues, not economic relations) was U.S. support for Taiwan, because that issue is close to China’s borders.
Earlier in the week, Professor Yasheng Huang of (the real) MIT gave the students a lecture on Chinese economic policy, arguing that Chinese policy emphasis on big cities had kept rural consumption way down and produced a dramatic decline in the proportion of the gross national product going to consumption. China’s consumption was pathologically low, Huang argued.