For the past 30 years, every
candidate of whatever persuasion has loudly claimed he or she, unlike the
opponent, will get “tough” with China. Bashing is what some call it.
These days, this means
candidate Hillary Clinton proudly recalls championing the rights of women when,
as first lady, she attended the UN Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. She
also likes to wave Donald Trump products with “made in China” labels to her
audiences as evidence of the hypocrisy of his claimed support for the American
worker.
For his part, Trump attacks
China for ripping off Americans through currency manipulation and stealing
millions of jobs from the country. He promises to get “tough” with Beijing.
And we haven’t even got to the
candidate debates where national security issues always get prominence. Stay
tuned for the politicisation of the South China Sea dispute.
China provides much political
fodder. Americans today are obsessed with their country’s relationship with
China and what it means for their futures. The politicians know it.
There is an obvious and good
explanation for this: China has become an economic global superpower. From
Africa and Central America to middle America, China is establishing an
unprecedented economic presence.
But all this attention and
emotion is not entirely new in the America-China relationship. The current
American preoccupation with China draws from a turbulent and long history of
relations between the two countries.
China has always occupied a
central place in American conceptions of its identity and national destiny, as
friend or foe
The China-America connection
started at the earliest beginnings of America. China has always occupied a
central place in American conceptions of its identity and national destiny, as
friend or foe.
There was China before there
was an America, and it is because of China that America came to be and, in a sense,
China helped define America. Christopher Columbus sailed west from Spain in
search of a new route to China and Asia. He never found it but he did
“discover” America and the world has never been the same since. Marco Polo’s
fantastic account of China had inspired Columbus.
In the early 17th century, the
first English colonists who settled in what was to become Virginia were tasked
to find a water route to the Pacific Ocean so England could better engage in
trade with China. Americans themselves understood their special connection with
China. The tea at the famous Boston Tea Party that sparked the American War of
Independence was from southern China. Tea and the lucrative China trade
enriched the merchants of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
George Washington and other
early presidents and elites were proud of their large collections of chinaware
and were keenly interested in learning what they could borrow from China. John
Quincy Adams closely studied the Opium War and declared that he favoured
Britain in the war, outraging many fellow Americans who condemned the predatory
British. Adams hoped the British would help pry open China’s doors for American
traders.
The lure of China was there in
the American purchase of the Louisiana territory; in the legendary Lewis and
Clark expedition; in the coveting of California and the Oregon territory; in
the waging of the Mexican-American war; in the purchase of Alaska; in the construction
of the transcontinental railroad; and in the conquest of an insular empire in
the Pacific, including Hawaii and the Philippines.
Beginning in the early 19th
century, thousands of Americans went to China as missionaries, travellers,
soldiers and entrepreneurs. Tens of thousands of Chinese went to America in
search of work and fortune. Their labour was welcomed by some but feared by
others. They were a “yellow peril” that threatened America’s existence. Today’s
“China threat” is the current incarnation of that deep fear.
But president Woodrow Wilson
also enthusiastically hailed Sun Yat-sen’s young republic. Franklin Roosevelt
forged a close wartime alliance with Chiang Kai-shek’s government and hoped it
would anchor American interests in Asia. Every American president since Harry
Truman had to contend with a difficult China challenge. In the cold war,
Chinese and Americans even killed each other in the mountains of Korea. America
went to war in Vietnam in large part because of its fear of Chinese expansionism.
In 1972, president Richard
Nixon and chairman Mao Zedong (毛澤東) finally ended that confrontation and began a new era in relations.
Soon after, American presidents would have to contend with a growing Chinese
economic behemoth.
What is the significance of
this short review of history? It is that our present has a long past. America
and China have been linked for centuries. The connections are many and go
beyond commercial interaction and geopolitics. They are also social and
cultural and emotional.
Neither has a monopoly on
virtue. Both need to rise above insecurity
America and China, from a
historical viewpoint, are closer today than they have ever been.
Today, Americans and Chinese
have much more than a common enemy, as they did in the 1940s: they have a
linked fate. Both have a deep and fundamental interest in forging a
constructive, peaceful and mutually beneficial relationship. Problems and
conflicts there are aplenty, but at stake are their destinies as linked great
powers.
History cannot predict the
future but it can help us understand where we are: China and America are in the
midst of constructing a relationship of global significance that is likely to
decisively shape the future of the entire world. Their historical engagement is
longstanding. Neither is going away soon. Learning how to just get along will
not be enough. They will have to find ways to go forward into the future
together peaceably and constructively.
Neither has a monopoly on
virtue. Both need to rise above insecurity born of victimhood or defensiveness
from pride of place. The people of each country need to build on the deep
connections made by travellers, missionaries, businessmen, students and
intellectuals, artists, and migrants through the centuries. They helped bind
the two countries together in ways that have endured beyond any particular
political order or administration.
The current presidential race,
with its simple characterisations of China, will end, but the relationship will
continue. Let us hope that the cooperative venture of Shanghai Disney better
represents the future than the current political fearmongering on the campaign
trail.
Gordon H. Chang is professor of history at Stanford University
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