Ten Questions for America’s Leader Presumptive (version 2.0)
By Ping Chen
[Note] This version 2.0 is drafted on Deb.19, 2012 after receiving warm comments from China, Europe, and the US. I found a big mistake when I read Obama’s Nobel Peace Speech AFTER I wrote the version 1.0. I was shocked that Obama did not promise to reduce the risk of American led-war, but to expand it in three new ways. In his speech, Obama did not acknowledge any mistakes America made in the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Instead, he justified the failed Vietnam War by China’s successful reform in last three decades. He also justified the US-led war in Afghanistan that was supported by Norway, since Nobel Peace Prize is selected by the committee members appointed by the Norwegian Parliament. I added the APPENDIX II here for reader’s awareness.
I am shocked by the New York Time Op-Ed “Ten Questions for China’s Heir Presumptive” by David Shambaugh, published on Feb.10, 2012, on the eve of China’s Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to the United States.
As a China expert, Prof. Shambaugh certainly knows the minimum international curtsey for high level exchanges. His questions sounded as if everything China tried was wrong if they did not follow the American model. However, the 2008 crisis was originated in the US, not in China. It is not this time for me or even the New York Time editors to dwell on the issue of diplomatic formality. As a Chinese saying goes “It is impolite not to reciprocate （来而不往非礼也）,” I would like to raise ten questions here in the similar tune of David Shambaugh. I would apologize in advance if my questions are somewhat provocative to some American readers.
American media always told the world since the end of WWII that the US President is legitimately elected through the democratic process, but people around the world are deeply skeptical about the legitimacy of America’s role as a self-appointed world policeman, since they openly declare that their decisions are based on American interests, not wellbeing of other countries.
This will be a good opportunity for Chinese people to familiarize with America and vice versa. As American self-cantered policy is well known in the United States, but not quite clear in China and other Asian countries.
Here are 10 questions American observers would like to know about the leaders of the United States, including the President Obama and his Republican challengers:
1.Will US leaders return to a politically reformist path for the US political system?
Since the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC), the world economy has been dragged into a recession. As Simon Johnson, the former IMF chief economist and now a MIT professor, has pointed out, the root cause for GFC was the capture of the US government by financial oligarchs. The only way to save the US economy is to break-up the power of the oligarchs and the banking giants. Paul Volcker, the former chair of the US Federal Reserve and former economic advisor to Obama, also expressed the similar view.
However, the Obama administration has injected 1 trillion US dollars into the financial giants, but without doing anything to discipline the creators of the crisis. Can US leaders stand up to the powerful interest groups that have blocked financial and political reforms — the financial oligarchs, the military-industry complex, the lobbying groups for large multi-national enterprises — or will Obama and others be beholden to them, as former President George W. Bush was? Will any reformers, Democrat or Republican, be elected to top leadership positions at the coming elections in November?
2. Can the US leaders turn the rhetoric of budget "rebalancing" into reality?
Many official speeches have been made over the past two years calling for a reorientation of the deficit budget away from the entitlement and the military adventure overseas to domestic restructuring as the basis for a new and more sustainable growth model for the US. To date the reality of budget reform has not matched the rhetoric.
3. Will US leader be able to devise a more generous policy toward historical compensation for Native Americans, whose population plummeted from tens of millions to completely disappearing from America's political stage?
The US government has apologized to Japanese American citizens who were put in internment camps during World War II. However, the US government still owes an apology to Chinese-Americans who built two thirds of the transcontinental railway.
Unlike Irish workers, Chinese immigrants were barred by the racist Chinese Exclusion Act from 1882 to 1965. As the Canadian government has had the political courage to offer an apology and some compensation, will US leaders have the similar courage to face their historical debt in human rights?
4. Can US leaders reign in the militarism that is pushing the government to take aggressive positions on territorial disputes with China’s neighbours, to “stand up” to China?
5. Will the US leaders be sufficiently confident to encourage culture diversity and equal dialogue on mainstream media, social media, the internet and educational institutions, so that they become an avenue to a more pluralistic world rather than a new battlefield of information warfare and culture conflicts?
6. Can the US people reign in their leaders, which have demonstrated a worrisome tendency since the Cold War to undertake invasions around the world, and act independently of UN and international laws? The US sends troops to a number of African countries that transformed some instability into civil war in Libya and total anarchy in Somalia.
7. Will US leaders conduct a foreign policy that is more about substance than rhetoric?
America's diplomatic platitudes have become increasingly incredulous in a dangerous world where real action is needed from Washington. One ominous signal was Obama’s Nobel Lecture on December 10, 2009. He gave a moral justification of expending the US military targets. In addition to the traditional argument of defending the nation, Obama added three new ways of waging a war outside the US: to those breaking the rule of law (as Iran and North Korea), to those violating the human rights (like Darfur, Congo and Burma), and to those threatening “economic security and opportunity” (a hint for trade war with China).
Obama’s new strategic plan seems more ambitious than George W. Bush’s war against terrorism. He moves more navy battle ships into the Pacific arena with the grandiose aim of containing the “China threat.”
By his calculation, the costs of invading Iraq and Afghanistan were not large enough to stimulate the American economy. He needs a bigger fish like Iran or even China to carry out an effective fiscal stimulus plan: the military Keynesian. Remember, the end of the 13 year long Great Depression was not by the New Deal. The fastest way to create jobs was a grand war. It was true both to Germany and the US.
China did not back off from General Douglas MacArthur’s threat of using the atomic bomb in 1950, when China had no navy and air force during the Korea war. Now, China is armed with missiles, nuclear weapons and satellite communication systems with four times of population of the US. How many American leaders, Democrats and Republicans alike, truly believe that the US would win a hot war or trade war with China? Or simply another campaign show aimed at angry voters?
8. How can US leaders handle the growing discontent across Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America over America's rapacious and imperialist energy, security and trade policies?
The US and other Western powers have only 10 percent of global population, but control near 90 percent of resources, and consume near half of produced energy. In contrast, China has 20% of the world’s population and consumes only 10% of world oil production. Now, the US is rich but deep in debt. Why could the US simply follow the market conventions of selling assets to pay the debt or reach an agreement for a debt-equity swap and international cooperation in financial crisis and peaceful development?
9. Will US leaders begin to take more active and less passive, more supportive and less obstructionist, roles in global governance?
The US virtual economy is 10 times the size of world GDP and near fifty times bigger than the US real economy. US speculative money has ignited financial crises in Latin America, East Asia, Russia, Southern Europe and the US itself. Will US continue to stand with financial oligarchs in the G20 meeting against the majority of other nations on issues like global warming, international financial regulation, and anti-trust law against international oligarchs?
The US military budget is near half of the world total and more than the next top 20 nations combined. The US has more than 700 military bases in other countries around the globe. The US is the world’s largest arms exporter. The US was the first, and remains the only, country to use the atomic bomb. Will the US become part of solution instead of part of the problem in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America in preventing wars and arm races from escalating?
10. Will US leaders have the strategic foresight to invest in advancing the relationship with China?
There is no more important relationship for either country in the world today, yet strategic mistrust permeates the current relationship. Advancing the relationship requires the active engagement of China's leaders and the US leaders to build strategic trust between the two great nations.
Historically, China and the US have no geopolitical conflicts except the Taiwan question. To remove the mistrust between China and the US, there is a simple solution: abolish the Taiwan Relation Act in exchange for economic cooperation in Pacific and world affairs. The US did not ask France to be a broker during the US Civil War. By the same token, Chinese people on both sides of Taiwan Straits do not need US interference for China's peaceful unification. The US policy is more a problem than a solution in China's peaceful development and unification.
I believe that most US businessmen and state governors would love to participate in open the Chinese markets and make friends with the Chinese people. Only a few Cold War veterans are reluctant to open their mind to a changing world.
That is o.k. We Chinese people have patience. We fought a hundred year war to regain China’s independence from Western Powers. The People’s Republic waited for 21 years to return to the United Nations, and joined the WTO through 15 year-long negotiations. Based on the 2200 year-long history of a united China, we have confidence to wait until American leaders finally realize that the United States needs China as much as China needs the United States, since we all live in the same small village of the earth.
As vice president Xi Jinping's visit is not likely to know all the answers, time will tell if the US finally has a "transformational" leader who embraces and shapes positive changes for America at home and abroad, or whether the US will just elect another showman who is risk aversion in domestic reform but risk-taking in foreign adventure.
The unfolding events will witness a grand test between the two systems: which system is more effective and sustainable in coordinating national and global division of labor? To maintain the persistent divide between the rich and poor, which is guarded by politicians chosen by a competition in words, or to create a new world for the social wellbeing, which is explored by visionary leaders selected by a competition in deeds?
The author is professor at the National School of Development, Peking University and a senior fellow at the Center for New Political Economy at Fudan University, China. Author: Economic Complexity and Equilibrium Illusion, Routledge, London (2010). pchen@ccer.pku.edu.cn
[Note] Originally, this article was submitted to the New York Times on Feb.12, 2012 at 5:31 PM (Beijing Time).
After two days without any response from NYT, this article was posted on a Chinese website (Observer) on 2012-02-14 10:21 at: http://www.guancha.cn/html/49646/2012/02/14/65828.shtml. The shorter version was published by Global Times on 2012-02=15 20:01 at: http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/696041/Ten-questions-for-the-US-leader-presumptive.aspx.
The version 2.0 is drafted on Deb.19, 2012, posted at: http://www.guancha.cn/html/60318/2012/02/24/66469.shtml
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AppendixI：
Op-Ed Contributor
Ten Questions for China's Heir Presumptive
By DAVID SHAMBAUGH
Published: February 10, 2012
WASHINGTON — The visit by China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, to Washington this coming week offers a unique opportunity to take the measure of the man who will lead China for the next decade.
While Xi has traveled the world since being anointed Hu Jintao’s designated successor in 2007, he has not been to the United States during this grooming period (he did visit earlier as a provincial official).
This will be a good opportunity for Xi to familiarize himself with America and vice versa. As he is not well known outside of China and enigmatic even inside the country, observers will be looking for clues to Xi’s domestic and international orientation.
Here are 10 questions China watchers would like to know about Xi Jinping:
?1. Will Xi return to a politically reformist path for the Chinese Communist Party?
Since late 2009, the party has retrenched significantly — halting and rolling back reforms by Xi’s predecessor, Zeng Qinghong. Can Xi stand up to the powerful conservative institutions that have blocked reforms — the state security apparatus, the military, the party propaganda system and large state-owned enterprises — or will he be beholden to them, as Hu Jintao has been? Will reformers such as Li Yuanchao, Wang Yang, Bo Xilai, Wang Huning and Liu Yandong be promoted to top Politburo positions along with Xi at the 18th Party Congress in October?
? 2. Can Xi and the next prime minister (the contenders are reportedly Vice Prime Ministers Li Keqiang and Wang Qishan) turn the rhetoric of economic “rebalancing” into reality?
Many official speeches have been made over the past two years calling for a reorientation of the economy away from the export sector and the coastal regions to domestic consumption and the interior as the basis for a new and more sustainable growth model for China. To date the reality of investment has not matched the rhetoric.
?3. Will Xi be able to devise a more humane policy toward Tibet and Xinjiang, where ethnic unrest has steadily risen since 2008 and has spiked in recent weeks?
Government security forces have responded with a heavy hand, resulting in loss of life and heightened instability. A new, softer approach is needed. But will Xi have the political strength to stand up to the repressive apparatus and put in place conditions for a more stable coexistence between restive ethnic groups and the Chinese state?
?4. Can Xi and the party apparatus reign in the nationalism that is pushing the government to take extreme positions on territorial disputes with China’s neighbors, to “stand up” to the United States and behave aggressively internationally?
? 5. Will Xi be sufficiently confident to all the relaxation of tightened controls on mainstream media, social media, the Internet and educational institutions?
?6. Can Xi reign in the military, which has demonstrated a worrisome tendency in recent years to undertake actions that provoke China’s neighbors and, seemingly, act independently of civilian party control?
?7. Will Xi authorize a foreign policy that is more about substance than rhetoric?
China’s diplomatic platitudes have become increasingly incredulous in a dangerous world where real action is needed from Beijing. One hopeful indicator in this regard is a speech Xi gave at the Central Party School in late 2009, in which he explicitly criticized the pervasive tendency toward sloganeering in domestic and foreign policy, arguing that slogans needed to be replaced by substance and hard work.
?8. How will Xi handle the growing discontent across Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America over China’s rapacious and mercantilist energy, aid and trade policies?
?9. Will Xi and the Chinese government begin to take more active and less passive, more supportive and less obstructionist, roles in global governance? Will China continue to stand with Russia in the United Nations Security Council against the will of the majority of other nations on issues like Syria and Iran — and become part of the solution instead of part of the problem?
?10. Will Xi have the strategic foresight to invest in advancing the relationship with the United States?
There is no more important relationship for either country in the world today, yet strategic mistrust permeates the current relationship. Advancing the relationship requires the active engagement of China’s next leader — and the American president — to build strategic trust between the two great nations.
As Xi’s visit is not likely to provide answers to these 10 questions, time will tell if he is a “transformational” leader who embraces and shapes positive changes for China at home and abroad, or whether he is another risk-averse apparatchik.
David Shambaugh is director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University.
A version of this op-ed appeared in print on February 11, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/11/opinion/ten-questions-for-chinas-heir-presumptive.html
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Appendix II.
A Just and Lasting Peace
Obama’s Nobel Lecture on Dec.10, 2009
Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:
I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility.
And yet I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated. (Laughter.) In part, this is because I am at the beginning, and not the end, of my labors on the world stage. Compared to some of the giants of history who've received this prize – –……. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women ……to be far more deserving of this honor than I.
But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of the military of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by 42 other countries – including Norway – in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.
The concept of a "just war" emerged, suggesting that war is justified only when certain conditions were met. ……Of course, we know that for most of history, this concept of "just war" was rarely observed.
To begin with, I believe that all nations – strong and weak alike – must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I – like any head of state – reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation.
I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war.
America's commitment to global security will never waver. America alone cannot secure the peace. This is true in Afghanistan. This is true in failed states like Somalia, where terrorism and piracy is joined by famine and human suffering.
But let me now turn to our effort to avoid such tragic choices, and speak of three ways that we can build a just and lasting peace.
First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws,……. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. …..
But it is also incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system. ……Those who care for their own security cannot ignore the danger of an arms race in the Middle East or East Asia. Those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war.
The same principle applies to those who violate international laws by brutalizing their own people. When there is genocide in Darfur, systematic rape in Congo, repression in Burma – there must be consequences.
This brings me to a second point – the nature of the peace that we seek. For peace is not merely the absence of visible conflict. Only a just peace based on the inherent rights and dignity of every individual can truly be lasting.
We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran.
Let me also say this: The promotion of human rights cannot be about exhortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach – condemnation without discussion – can carry forward only a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an open door.
In light of the Cultural Revolution's horrors, Nixon's meeting with Mao appeared inexcusable – and yet it surely helped set China on a path where millions of its citizens have been lifted from poverty and connected to open societies. ……. Ronald Reagan's efforts on arms control and embrace of perestroika not only improved relations with the Soviet Union, but empowered dissidents throughout Eastern Europe.
Third, a just peace includes not only civil and political rights – it must encompass economic security and opportunity. For true peace is not just freedom from fear, but freedom from want.
Agreements among nations. Strong institutions. Support for human rights. Investments in development. .And yet, I do not believe that we will have the will, the determination, the staying power, to complete this work without something more – and that's the continued expansion of our moral imagination; an insistence that there's something irreducible that we all share.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/obama-lecture_en.html
