Pro-China supporters tear a U.S. flag during a protest against U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan outside the Consulate General of the United States on August 03, 2022 in Hong Kong, China. Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday as part of a tour of Asia aimed at reassuring allies in the region, as China made it clear that her visit to Taiwan would be seen in a negative light. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
In his bestseller When China Rules the World (2012), the China expert Martin Jacques writes: “The underlying argument of this book is that China’s impact on the world will be as great as that of the United States over the last century, probably far greater, and certainly very different.” This is, of course, a reference to the West’s great desire for their priorities and values to be attractive for the Chinese to emulate. But, as Jacques is at pains to point out, it certainly is not the case.
This sentiment, however, is strongly reflected in US Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan to show support for the island’s democracy and stance toward independence from China. This took place amid anger and resentment from Taiwan’s neighbour on the mainland, which commenced with live military exercises around the island. On Monday 15 August, the Associated Press reported: “China announced more military drills around Taiwan as the self-governing island’s president met with members of a new US congressional delegation … threatening to renew tensions between Beijing and Washington just days after a similar visit by Pelosi.”
This sentiment is also present in US secretary of state Anthony Blinken’s remark during a recent state visit to three African countries, including South Africa, that the Chinese response to Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan is “an overreaction”. Not only is Blinken’s remark steeped in cultural ignorance but it also evinces a dangerous strain of orientalism.
The cultural ignorance referred to is Blinken being oblivious of the notion of “ganhua” [face] which is so important in Chinese culture that it could be front and centre for an understanding of that culture.
Criminologists have explored the concept of ganhua in the context of China’s integrative shaming culture to successfully resettle and reintegrate ex-offenders into mainstream culture, unlike the case in the West with its mostly stigmatising shaming cultures.
In the words of the American comparative criminologist Frederick Allen, writing in a paper dated 1992: “So, while in the West, the criminal justice system may lack the rehabilitation initiative, the Chinese initiative will go only so far. If their efforts bear no fruits, they may terminate further efforts.” The Chinese integrative shaming cultures have very little patience with re-offending or recidivism. The reason for this is, of course, the issue of face.
Michael Dutton and Xu Zhangrun, an Australian and Chinese team of criminologists, explained this phenomenon with reference to the concept of ganhua in the following fecund terms: “[The Chinese idea of f]ace is something which is given through reciprocity and something one seeks revenge for if it is not given. Face makes the Chinese integrative strategy of ganhua possible, but face will also demand its revenge should this method falter. This is [so] because what is at stake with reintegrative ganhua is not just the criminal’s face, but also the face of the cadre, the police and the Party.
The point that I am driving at is that this concept of ganhua, so vital for an understanding of Chinese culture, can also be applied to grasp the Chinese reaction to Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan as well as that of the Chinese embassy in South Africa’s reaction to Blinken’s remark.
Since Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972, and the reopening of ties between the two countries, the American position has been one of a so-called strategic ambiguity. This means the US acknowledges the People’s Republic of China, and not Taiwan, while it is also (curiously) committed to the “one China policy” (unification of Taiwan with the mainland). Pelosi’s brief visit to the island — and the recent visit by a delegation from the US Congress — can thus be understood as a slap in the face of the Chinese as, at the very least, it points to the inconsistency and ambiguity (if not partial reversal) of the American position. But, as I alluded to at the opening of this piece, it also shows that Blinken and Pelosi are wrapped in curious orientalism, albeit on the cusp of a post-American world with values and priorities very different from those treasured by the West.
In the literature on the Far East, this wishful thinking – the Chinese emulation of Western values – is referred to as orientalism and was perhaps first identified by Raymond Dawson in his important text The Chinese Chameleon: An Analysis of European Conceptions of Chinese Civilization (1967). It is worth noting that this text appeared at least a decade before Edward Said’s famous book on the same topic by the same title, although within an Islamic-Middle Eastern context. The idea of orientalism has been explained along the following lines: European understandings of China (including those European diaspora traditions found in the United States and Australia) are multifaceted. These are as much shaped by objective issues in China as by the various “mirrors” that reflect Europeans’ own prejudice and obsessions (both conscious and unconscious), with the Chinese as an exotic outpost in an alien landscape.
Blinken’s dismissal of China’s outrage at Pelosi’s Taiwan visit is such a manifestation of orientalism since it assumes, on a visceral level perhaps, that the Chinese should also aspire to the Western values which he clearly holds dear. It also evinces a dangerous ignorance of China and its deep cultural priorities, such as the Chinese Dream, ignorance of a propensity which could thrust us into a Peloponnesian War (a war fought in ancient Greece between Athens and Sparta in 431 to 404 BCE) of the 21st century.
Graham Allison of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has popularised the idea of a possible Peloponnesian War between the United States and China by arguing that his Thucydides Trap files show a tendency for war where a rising power threatens an existing power, which is clearly the situation between China and the US on the cusp of the 21st century.
The Chinese Dream is President Xi Jinping’s trademark policy to regain great power status for China after the so-called hundred years of humiliation (1842 to 1949) which the Chinese suffered at the hands of foreign powers which, significantly, includes both Japan and the United States. It began with the conclusion of the First Opium War in 1842 when Great Britain succeeded in forcing the Qing Dynasty (1644 to 1911) to buy opium for domestic consumption. Opium was, and is to this day, being cultivated in Afghanistan and India, both British possessions at the time.
As a result of this war, China was forced to cede Hong Kong to Britain which only returned it in 1997. (Portugal returned Macao to China two years after this, in 1999). After a war fought unsuccessfully against a bellicose and imperialistic Japan in 1895, China was forced to cede the island of Taiwan (previously known as Formosa) to Japan.
In the light of the historical context of the Chinese Dream, both Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and Blinken’s ignorant remarks smack of arrogant orientalism and can only serve to advance the propensity of a Peloponnesian War in the 21st century. Considering the close ties between China and Russia, following in part from the war in Ukraine, it is not a war which the US is likely to win.
China’s leader Xi has staked his legacy in part on achieving the Chinese Dream which clearly includes the reunification of Taiwan with the mainland. Having said this, it is also the case that the truth is rarely simple. The Chinese Dream of wealth and power to regain their former great power status is ironically encapsulated in a Western linear understanding of history, which is based on a solar calendar, which includes the notions of nationalism, industrialisation and progress, partially marginalising the significance of their own lunar calendar.
Dr Casper Lӧtter is a conflict criminologist affiliated with North-West University’s School of Philosophy (Potchefstroom).
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.