The Sleeping Dragon

I am always cautious of predictions, particularly when they come to the Middle Kingdom. Such an ancient place has a resilient tendency to amaze.

However, I am not so reticent to make predictions about the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Their days have been and are numbered. Theirs is a discredited and forgotten ideology that is in many ways being daily chipped away by Western liberalism (little "l"). What concerns me, as it has since 1989, is what happens when the CCP starts to crumble. We have seen a slow, painful decline of the party with a simultaneous rise in world affairs.

There will be a power grab, a desperate act to divert attention from the true plight of the people (all of the people, not just the elite and the wealthy in the halls of power). This is evident from 6 June 1989 (Tianenmen Square) onward. When threatened the party leadership responds unflinchingly with violence. They have never had any problem massacring their own people in the name of Communism (always the problem with Communist ideologies). Mao did it. Deng did it. Hu will likely do it too.

I'm reminded of the stories in 1996, while I was living in the Middle Kingdom, of the massacre of Buddhist monks in Western China and of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province. Today one only has to do a simple internet search to find the many reports out of China, on a nearly daily basis, of some type of social unrest that is spreading like the bird flu throughout the countryside.

Don't get me wrong. I think the CCP leadership is bumbling and naive. They discount the power of their own people to counter the selfishness and vulgar disregard the Party has for "the people".

And the countryside is where the CCP has to worry most. While peasants flood into the cities of China's prosperous coasts, they are putting pressure on the CCP to provide opportunities (and minor freedoms) given to citizens of the cities. Normally Beijing throws them a bone of say democratic control over their locality or of an old party-owned factory. It's all a game though, a waiting game, an end game by which the party leadership is coldly calculating how to get out on top.

The CCP has been lobbing missiles and "accidentally" entering the Taiwan Straits (outside the territorial waters of the the PRC) for years now. The frequency and brashness of these incursions has been increasing though. Now with the Washington Times report (entry below) that the CCP's gotten the attention of the Pentagon comes cause for new concern. Add this to the very real machinations on the world stage with CNOOC's bid this week for Unocal oil and we've got serious problems at hand. Add into this already volatile mix the tinder-box that is North Korea and the abyss that is Russia and we should have a serious concern about future Sino-US relations. Combine all of these tell-tale signs and we see the classic set-up of a regime that is about to make a move.

In short, what we need is a bold foreign policy about China and not just a Bush family mantra of killing the party with capitalism (read: buying the Party off with economic concessions while the people suffer). We need a foreign policy that addresses the real threats of a potential war to protect Taiwan and the many unstable players (North Korea, Russia, et al) that could play into that nightmarish equation. The Bush Administration could start by outright blocking the CNOOC offer for national security reasons.

In a new strategic policy shift, I'm not talking about an Iraq-style regime change: that would be suicidal. But we can return to efforts to encourage democracy and undermine the CCP's efforts to stave it off. We can start by reversing the Bush Sr. deceivingly-benign policy of ignoring their human rights abuses. (They make Abu Graib look like a picnic in Central Park.) Turn up the heat and watch the CCP leadership sweat. Make efforts to force transparency and accountability for their actions. When the CCP says they have religious freedom, hold them accountable. When they say they have freedom of speech, make them prove it.

One subversive strategy might be pulled from the pages of the Cold War playbook, the Reagan chapter: ally ourselves with the Vatican to foment change through the illegal and underground Church in China that has a very vibrant and secret presence there. Continue by strengthening old alliances with the Dalai Lama and the Free Tibet movement (alliances Nixon broke off when he "normalized" relations with the PRC). Forge new alliances with the Western Muslim sects that have long been oppressed by Beijing and with new groups such as the brutalized Falun Gong (a very large, vocal, and powerful force in China today).

My point is there are many ways to go about avoiding what we are currently doing, which is plainly nothing. We can do something, and we should. I truly believe in the ability of the Chinese people to stand up for themselves and to make the right choice towards the democracy they were promised, at the end of imperial rule, and never received. But they are not likely to get such a democracy or avert war if we sit idly by. We either get our hands dirty now, or we see them bloodied later.