Benjamin C. Works, Executive Director

--Celebrating Chaos Theory Since 1990--

_

China 6-17; Wednesday June 17, 1998

Nine years have passed since Tiananmen Square and much has changed in China since that tragic event. As an analyst dealing with patterns and facts, I find that most of what has transpired since June 1989 is very much for the better. Yet reading today's press and listening to the debate coming from both sides of the aisle in Congress, it would be all but impossible to believe anything had changed for the better or changed at all.

Most curious in this is that self-proclaimed conservatives and conservative Republicans sound utterly ignorant of the facts while indulging in purely emotional-based rhetoric based on a static analysis, using labels instead of insight. In this, they appear to be out-liberaling the Liberals in terms of gushy sentimentalism, while ignoring Beijing's clear economic opening, political evolution, social progress and general planned development of China into a modern, literate, constitutional state. At SIRIUS, my associates and I try to practice dynamic analysis, solving for what is changing and how it will effect reactions and affect us and we view China very differently.

Change is precisely what is going on, and rapidly so. But the leadership in Beijing cannot come out and admit they have a game plan for developing a Chinese form of constitutional democracy over a period of time as that would only serve to empower the impatient and open China to a renewed risk of political chaos. Have patience, friends, the genius of Washington, Hamilton, Madison and Adam Smith is at work in China, but as with our evolution, China's is taking some time and the conditions are not conducive to an impatiently imposed "shake & bake" democracy.

I cannot reconcile every exception or open-item at this writing, and will label my own questions, which would be the subject for quiet but steady policy action from the US view. But I would give Beijing ample credit for its successes and by stringing those together show that it does not represent a static, repressive and authoritarian model, but rather a very progressive but strategically wise and properly moderated model suited to China's very volatile population, economic and social dynamics.

China's population now stands at about 1.25 billion souls, 92% of whom are ethnic Chinese. Though the official literacy rate is 78%, the effective illiteracy is rather higher. The best guess is that China has an estimated 500-700 million illiterates and literacy in China is defined by understanding at least 5-6000 of its ideogram characters. Further, some 300 million agricultural peasants (near 25% of the population) have been displaced from their farms in the modernization begun by Deng Xiao Ping since 1980. To China's credit, this agricultural modernization ended China's food shortage in three years flat and today China is the leading producer of wheat in the world, topping even the US.

In the rapidly burgeoning cities, there are now some 100 million displaced peasants classified as "drifters" as they have not caught on with the modern commercial-industrial economy. That number alone should indicate to the reader that China has a present danger of volatile social unrest should a charismatic populist set up and operate freely. Hence, China continues to control the movement of people within the country, to assure an idle and vulnerable population does not grow over-large in any given city. Hence, too, China's willingness to exercise the death penalty for a broad range of crimes, as broad or broader as the United States applied the penalty c. 1800. I am no more comfortable with that definition of capital crime than anybody else, but China knows its people, its circumstances and its long term goals. In time, things have changed, are changing today and will continue to change for the better. Herewith, factual evidence of rapid progress.

To be specific, though many wax sentimentally about the slain egoistic naifs of Tiananmen Square, China has initiated genuine democratic elections at the village level. With that success (documented by Thomas L Friedman in three pieces in The New York Times this spring), Beijing has widened the process and will hold competitive races at the township level. This is Tocqueville's --and my-- New England town democracy being imbedded into China just the way it should be and sets the stage for elections at city, provincial and finally the national level, as the system evolved here.

Further, after all the screaming and carrying on about reversing Chris Patten's democracy in Hong Kong, lo and behold, governor CH Tung (who patiently has borne a lot of nasty sniping from posturers in the Western Media) has presided over a very successful democratic election this year, where the anti-Beijing democrats won their races and took their seats in the city-state's parliament. Mrs. Anson Chu, the universally respected chief of Hong Kong's bureaucracy and a holdover from Colonial rule, reported to Jim Lehrer last Friday that there are no problems of constitutional or democratic continuity, and that Hong Kong continues to progress. Free speech is only nominally an issue and the democrats had a wonderful anniversary demonstration to commemorate the dead of Tiananmen Square. Does any of this sound like a repressive and authoritarian regime trying to defend a rigid status quo ante? But in China's interior provinces, standards are not as high and the educated person's respect for law is not entrenched.

I could, of course, be attacked as naïve and ingenuous in accepting Beijing's party line in reporting this, but Beijing does not have a publicized party line. They do not broadcast these significant facts, nor do they arrange elaborate photo opportunities. Again, by being overt, they would spark an impatient opposition which could precipitate the disasters of a premature revolution of rising expectations --what Tiananmen Square really was. It is for us to discover and measure the truth for ourselves as analysts and "experts" --Beijing does not much care in the short term what the American Media think and barely cares what the Christian Right thinks on any given day. Fifty years from now the ongoing results will have spoken eloquently for themselves.

Since the GOP has been overwhelmed by an emotional definition of what conservatism is, and since that definition is largely provided by a bunch of self-anointed Christian fundamentalist "experts" such as Gary Bauer, James Dobson, Pat Robertson et al, let us look at the older relationship between China and the GOP. China understood and cooperated with President Nixon. Deng took power in the Carter years and gave Jimmy no great offense. Thanks to George Bush's efforts as Nixon's plenipotentiary in Beijing, the Reagan years went extremely well as did the opening months of Bush's term. Reagan, Bush, George Schulz, et al, knew where Deng was leading the country and how long that development would take, roughly 40-50 years from the inception of the program in 1980.

Taiwan, which avoided conglomerate capitalism, and South Korea, which did not, both showed that it takes forty years from utter socio-economic chaos to a fully developed capitalist economy and participatory democracy. It takes forty years for a college freshman to become an experienced senior manager. There is no secret to this. Fifty years is the time it takes to generate two generations of literate, industrially capable citizens with sufficient civic discipline and education to sustain a modern economy and polity. It took 36 years for Franco to deliver Spain from Communism to a vigor so robust that it could survive even a socialist successor government and it to Pinochet more than 20 years to deliver Chile from the reckless mischief of one year of Allende's misrule, but like Franco, he succeeded, thanks to the free enterprisers of the Chicago School.

Nixon, Reagan and Bush intimately understood the dynamics of illiteracy, agricultural inefficiency and China's lack of infrastructure. The United States, itself, took 50 years from 1780-1830 to broaden the voting franchise to all free white males, even longer in a few states. It should come as no surprise to the reader that China has taken 18 years to get to the village-township elections in the countryside, after thorough preparation of the people for the duties of constitutional democracy.

Set aside the Clinton scandals involving Beijing for a moment and consider that Clinton has tumbled onto the Nixon-Bush policy, has adopted it, and is now in the process of attempting to co-opt a "secret" GOP policy for the Democratic Party, under the very noses of the diplomatically-illiterate leadership of the Republicans in Congress and in Punditry. That is precisely what Clinton is attempting and why he does not fear going into Tiananmen Square. Clinton is well criticized these weeks, but for all the wrong reasons as well as for a few damned good ones. Do not be surprised if Beijing makes new and meaningful gestures at Tiananmen Square to advance their evolutionary process while deflating their sillier critics.

As just one example of how off-center current criticism can get, if the Chinese Army is openly communicating over one of our satellites, the electronic sensors of the National Security Agency (NSA) can monitor every word --where's the scandal in that? Such amateurish political blame-laying.

I remind the reader what I remind every entry level political science student I've addressed this spring (five classes at three colleges as a guest lecturer): Democracy is an emotionally charged event that occurs only in one day every two, four or five years. It is a moment, characterized by politicians manipulating our emotions and sentiments against our reason and experience in order to further a specific agenda that confirms power. The business of a democracy is in its constitutional checks & balances, in the sophistication of the electorate and ultimately in the skepticism of the voters. The judiciary can achieve only so much in policing the other two branches; ultimately the people must guard the guardians in order to protect themselves from tyranny. This is why I reasonably suspect any country that does not have a written constitution and why the UN's glistering "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" and its attempt to substitute an exhaustive bill of human rights as a proxy for checks & balances and a more discrete bill of civil rights is a failure of reason, structure and common sense.

Human rights has become a rhetorical playground for the self-esteem crowd, while civil rights can be defined discretely. Civil rights cannot be taken out of another person's pocket and apply to an individuals right "to be," "to do," and, as with the First Amendment, selectively "to behave" as an individual and in public groups gathered for civic, political and religious purposes. The UN Charter permanently empowers groups "to behave" in potentially contrary-minded permanent ethnic ways. So, too, with Gay Rights and with "Bilingual education" which subsidize group rights "to behave differently" in public over time.

Beijing knows that duties without rights is tyranny, but that rights without duties is anarchy. China well knows the human costs of anarchy; setting aside its ancient history of invasions and slaughter, some 25-30 millions died in the charismatic-religious Taiping Rebellion of 1850-64. The butcher bill of the 1900 Boxer Rebellion was not high in itself, but the Ch'ing (Manchu) Dynasty discredited itself and the subsequent convulsions of this century from 1908 to Mao's Cultural Revolution killed substantially more than 100 millions. Include the Japanese occupation and you will consider that Beijing has reasons to control the growth of democracy to assure that the process is not hijacked by a new adventurist who could trigger new social convulsions.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that foreign entrepreneurs and corporate investors are increasingly free to establish wholly-foreign owned operations inside China. The key failure in Japan, South Korea and Indonesia has been the tendency to attempt conglomerate capitalism where 7 or so Combines attempt to run everything from steel mills, auto plants and electronics to banks and brokerage. These are natural failures born of hubris.

China, though it often gives the appearance of conglomeratism and crony capitalism, is simply too large for oligarchy and too sensible to lay its faith in autocratic capitalism of a narrow plutocracy. Simply put, the nation and its economy is too large to be controlled by the few. An economy of 1.25 billion is too large for anything less than a "Standard & Poors 500" sized corporate community. Still, in its early years, where free enterprisers are still coming out of the universities or repatriating from overseas, there is a narrow group at the top with sufficient capitalist skills to manage. Hence, the appearance of a plutocracy. That will change in time.

Still, Beijing inherited 100 percent of the nation's capital base and somebody has to own it in a capitalist democracy. Thus, charges of crony capitalism as the capital base is divided and privatized. But Beijing is studying Frederick von Hayek (as the Journal confirms) and other modern economists .Rather than practicing "capitalism" as narrowly defined in the last century by its socialist-communist critics and stupidly defended as itself in the left's terms by Milton Friedman and others, China is practicing "free enterprise" of "the invisible hand" and laissez-faire." The secret here is that "free enterprise" and "constitutional democracy" are the two legs of our ideology, capitalism is not a philosophy, but is merely a handmaiden to free enterprise.

That opens the question, if The Wall Street Journal's editorial page can print the dynamic facts of China's rapid intellectual and economic progress on the same page as it continues its static analysis criticisms of the tragic events nine of years ago, are we really thinking things through? Are we analyzing strategically or are we satisfying our egotistic sense of moral purity and superiority? I gently rebuke my friends of the free Press to get consistent with their own reported facts and trends. Such is the problem of being book-smart but not street-wise. But then no newspaper staff ever wrote or inaugurated a lasting constitution.

What happened in Tiananmen Square, where some 2,000 and more lives were lost, was a tragedy; but a tragedy born of naivete, egoism and spontaneous fear. I have some evidence indicating that what was initiated as a non-lethal show of force to end the demonstrations, descended into killing by accident. Just as with the Boston Massacre, Kent State and other events, it appears the killing began spontaneously, in this case on a side-street exit when a lower level commander's troops panicked when a swarm of students attempted to leave the square. But the Peoples Liberation Army had brought in Manchurian troops --ethnically different-- to dominate the students.

If you look closely at the famous photo of the lone protester stopping the column of tanks as I do, you would note that every tank gun (except the second tank) and machine gun has a canvas cover over it --they could not shoot those guns in this classic "mailed fist under a velvet glove" show of force, so that act of lone valor was something of a slam dunk. I noted that one main gun was missing its cover and it is common that some one is always missing some piece of equipment as every sports coach, sergeant and lieutenant knows. The point is that the troops were under orders not to kill both before the massacre and after. No rational government sets out to slaughter students in front of the news cameras.

But why do conservative Republicans dwell overmuch --and romantically-- on student demonstrations to begin with? Do we not recall the arrogant egoism of our own mass demonstrations of 1968-72? Have we all lapsed into accepting a "false cause," or "post hoc" argument that democracy can only be advanced by partially-educated youths camping out in public and substituting slogans for solutions? Apparently so. But a symbolic "goddess of Liberty" is a nice symbol, but it doesn't educate an electorate and provides no reliable checks and balances. Honor the dead but let's don't magnify naivete into genius or ingenuousness into insight. Harvard, Yale and William & Mary cadres did not win our revolution or frame our Constitution, though Phi Beta Kappa was founded the same week that Tom Paine published Common Sense. Just last month in Jakarta we were reminded that student demonstrations can spark underclass riots and rebellion against ethnically different merchants. We saw this too in the East LA riots, where Media attention and Leftist rhetoric pre-justified a riot that turned against liquor stores and Korean merchants.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other such activist NGOs are masters of fabricating post hoc arguments of their successes in advancing human rights, but in fact, their greatest successes are in countries pre-disposed to reform and already initiating it. It is no accident that these organizations continue to criticize the past in El Salvador, Chile and China, not crediting those robust economies or rapidly evolving civic progress, while they do nothing to meaningfully advance rights in Cuba, Iraq or North Korea. I note the frequency of NGO transmitted rumors that Chinese activists from Tiananmen days have died in prison and the frequency of these rumors being disproved as famous activist after famous activist emerges from several years of incarceration. One recently released prisoner --I forget his name-- gave a press conference in which he betrayed a vastly increased understanding of the process of educating a civic polity and I suspect he got some tailored re-education while in prison. The Press missed this nuance, SIRIUS did not.

(How funny timing can be; having already written this report, including the below, Father Gerald Murray of St. Agnes Church in Manhattan highlighted a front-page article in today's New York Times reporting on the spread of Protestant Christianity in China. I refrained from further editing and invite the reader to compare, but that article also underscores that criticism of human rights violations tends to get inflated).

I very much understand criticism of China on religious freedom and on the question of mandatory abortion. But I believe these are transitory initiatives that are justifiable as practical necessities (not mere atheistic pragmatisms) under its special circumstances.

Regarding religious freedom, I recall again the experience of the Taiping, where a quasi-Christian declared himself a messiah and led a rebellion that ended with 30 million dead, and without the benefit of assault rifles. I understand that the Roman Catholic Church is under a light form of official "oppression" in favor of China's hand picked bishops. The Roman Empire proved that a little official oppression can do wonders for religious recruiting and both official and unofficial churches are growing and spreading like wildfire.

In early March I published a paper (still available as a background report at the website) on the "Fourth Great Awakening;" the universal wave of religious fundamentalism that this time is affecting Christianity, Islam, Orthodox Jewry and Hinduism. We have, with the Indian nuclear tests, seen the political effects of riding the fundamentalist wave to power. China cannot and will not stop the necessary human trend to faith as a means of dealing with the sweeping dislocations of socio-economic change, but it has a right to protect its people from the charismatics, the Elmer Gantrys and the zealous crusaders who precipitate mass slaughters.

With regard to the Catholic Church, we all know how many socialists and New Left activists are masquerading under the cassock among the Maryknolls, some Jesuit chapters and other orders. In Latin America, the social activists lost the scramble for souls to the neo-Protestant cults of the Second and Third Awakenings such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, Adventists, Pentacostalists, Mormans, etc. China has seen the extreme misbehavior of Father Aristide in Haiti and knows the Pope does not like this social activism much, either. China also recalls the positive contributions of its Congregationalist, Presbyterian and other mainstream Protestant and Catholic missionaries. Having abandoned Communist Universalism, it will not adopt Rome's religious Universalism, but will allow mainstream faiths and churches to compete for souls. I believe that if John Paul were to solicit negotiations he could come to terms with Beijing in rapid order, but he is increasingly frail and we shall see what falls out.

With regard to Tibet and the Dalai Lama, I note that China has never sent out a hit squad or attempted to muzzle him in the greater world of his exile. He strikes me as more than a bit of a charismatic egoist, but how can one be otherwise when one begins life as a pampered holy King? I note that he is Richard Gere's pet cause, not John Paul's. But religious freedom should include all. Still, I note that other Tibetan Lamas are not as hectored as the Dalai Lama's flock. It appears that they make no overt claims to secular, as well as religious supremacy over their country and do not object as strongly to Tibet's amalgamation with China. Tibetan independence is a lost cause, I think, and would only put it back in play as a manipulated political chip between India and China. I also think that activist allegations of a genocidal campaign against ethnic Tibetans is vastly inflated to the point of absurdity.

That leaves the issue of enforced abortion in the cities. Though China's population of 1.25 million is big, a literate, urban population of 1.25 billion is not a problem as the developed world shows. But when you're still building your cities, while contending with underdeveloped infrastructure, egregious pollution, high illiteracy and large numbers of "drifters" and underclasses, the last thing you need is an uncontrolled baby boom --reread Dickens and recall that we passed through these problems in the West in the 19^th Century. As a practical necessity, controlling the growth of the younger population for a generation or two, until civic education, economic opportunity and infrastructure is developed, is a reasonable course for those charged with the responsibility of managing such an epic change on such a monumental scale. Building respect for life and the civil rights of the living is built into the process and in time, restrictions on family size will no longer be necessary. For now, let us urge a more generous policy of adoption into the West of surplus infants and let us not play into the Feminist politics of gyno-infanticide.

Three issues come to mind that conservatives and moderates should appreciate; Beijing's war is not with its Chinese people and its ethnic minorities, but with New Left nonsense coming out of our American Universities, New Left activist groups, "think tanks" and the UN and its cluster of activist NGOs. China, in obstructing nonsense such as permanent international tribunals, landmine treaties and other such claptrap is fighting a battle for us all. Russia is not yet educating its future leaders in the United States, but China is, in legions. Such was the Cecil Rhodes model of intellectual Universalism and such is the practice of the Fulbright scholars and other American programs.

Financially, China holds US treasury securities at the US Federal Reserve instead of hoarding gold in Beijing or international vaults. China is actively supporting US initiatives to force Japan to recognize its financial losses and speculative excesses in order to bring "the Asian Contagion" to a quick end before further delays create deeper disasters. China's own growth is at some risk.

Internationally, China has its own objectives of enjoying its paramountcy in its region, while preventing any other hegemonistic tendencies from the US, or UN, but its motives are more benign than imperialistic. Still, politically, Beijing has deliberately kept the two Koreas apart and divided other Asian powers against themselves in order to further its own development. China does not want to see a strong US-Japan-united Korean political-economic axis arrayed against them. On the plus side, China knows America's long-standing interest and involvement in China's development, begun by our missionaries, and I think that Beijing has a natural affinity for George Washington's model of federalism.

Even the most misguided "experts" among today's Republicans and punditry cannot materially damage the strong ties between Beijing and America, and a cooperative spirit continues at the higher levels and within our two great economies. Rights advancement is not being deferred at the behest of our business community as is commonly charged, and the "autocracy" is growing itself into a larger managerial class as rapidly as it safely can.

Twenty and thirty years from now the future presidents of China are still going to strongly resemble the Middle Kingdom's emperors in power and practice. But they will be elected by a broadening base of enfranchised citizens in a system that has checks and balances tailored to China's ancient constitutional practice, modified to its modern socio-economic circumstances. In the interim, we will see the franchise broaden in the implementation of "bottom up" civic democracy, as Tom Friedman and others have already observed at the village level.

We Federalists, Republicans and others who truly understand and respect our constitutional democracy within this republic and who bother to analyze the dynamics of China's constitutional evolution will not be disappointed in how our greatest western traditions, values and experiences are adopted and adapted to China's modern situation and further development. Our own greatest genius is at work here. This is a case study for how to properly execute emergence into the post-modern community of sovereign republics without the incidence of widespread violence and chaos born in premature revolutions of rising expectations, as with France, Russia, the China of Chian Kai-Shek and Mao, Iran, or the near disaster in Indonesia. We can also safely chuckle at all the emotive idiocy and recycled non-thought that passes for expert wisdom in the mainstream Media.

© Copyright 1998 Benjamin C. Works-SIRIUS

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