Chinese language and culture expert Larry Herzberg shares some important facts and history to help us understand China today.
Episode 040 – China: A Brief History
Larry: If we collaborated with two nations, we could reduce the cost and improve what we're doing. If we would cease to see China as an enemy. We're not going to agree with them on a lot of major issues, to be sure. Nor should we, because we're a democratic nation and and we do believe in human rights and so on. But we need to at least understand the Chinese perspective if we're going to peacefully coexist with them rather than demonize them.
Penny: I just want to mention for our audience that we are going to talk about the human rights issues related to China, but that's going to be in a separate episode, a second episode with Professor Herzberg on China and unpacking some of our key ideas, including the issues around human rights. But for this episode, we're focusing again on building in some nuance to our understanding of different pieces of Chinese identity and our relationship with China. Just so you know, the human rights issue is not being ignored, but it will be handled in a different episode.
Welcome to the Diversity and Inclusion for All project supported by Calvin University and the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship. Together, we'll listen to key perspectives, build our knowledge, inform our thinking, and get a little better equipped to engage our world.
Welcome everyone to our next episode and the Diversity and Inclusion for All podcast. Today we're going to explore a little bit more about China, to understand a little bit the relationship between China and the United States, how to understand that and how to think a little bit about China in terms of: is it an enemy or a threat or something else altogether?
Our guest today is Larry Hertzberg. Larry, is a professor emeritus at Calvin University with a long history and set of experiences teaching Chinese and Japanese, leading the Asian Studies Program at the university. I'm going to let Larry introduce himself a little bit better and tell you a little bit about where his perspectives and experiences come from. Larry.
Larry: Thank you, Penny. In my 41-year career teaching the Chinese language and teaching about China, I've been alarmed, especially in the last couple of decades, at the increased demonization of China by our politicians and by our media. There are four main reasons for that. One is that China's economic growth has been astounding, something faster than in any country in world history. That's alarming to people in the United States, especially because China has four and a half times our population. We've had no other superpower in the world to challenge us since World War Two, until recently with China's rise. China is ruled by a Communist Party and it's an authoritarian state, even though their economy is far from being communist. And finally, I don't think we can discount the fact that the Chinese are a different race from the great majority of Americans. So, for all those four reasons, China has been increasingly demonized. But I think it's really important in our world today with our personal relationships, but also in our relationship as a nation with other countries, to better understand them from their own perspective. If there's ever going to be any chance of peace in our world.
Penny: Yeah. I'm really excited to learn a little bit more because I feel like, like you said, it is a little bit about understanding some cultural differences, just different ways of orienting and thinking about the world. And I think some of those things would be helpful to point out for our audience. But also you kind of mentioned, you know, four specific kind of areas. So, let's let's dove in.
I'd like to start with the economic threat piece. So I think a lot of Americans do feel like maybe it's a zero sum game. Like if China is doing really well and gaining more economic power, that must mean bad news for the United States. So, one of you can explain that a little bit. Like some people think, oh, they're stealing all our jobs. And because they're they're so more economically powerful than they were perhaps, you know, decades ago, that must mean that that's bad for America. Could you explore that a little bit and explain that a little bit for us?
Larry: Yes, thank you. We tried to push back against the myth that it is a zero-sum game, that if the Chinese do well economically, America will not and vice versa. And that's not true. Our trade with China has made us both thrive in the last two… three decades. What most Americans don't realize, though, is, first of all, are the Chinese stealing our jobs? Well, actually, only about 1% of jobs in the U.S. have been lost over the last couple of decades due to outsourcing. And that isn't just to China, but to other countries Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and so on. More jobs are lost to automation than have been lost to outsourcing. But countries do best when they produce what they do best and trade with other countries for the goods which they're best producing.
It is estimated by economic experts that by American companies producing jobs in China, it's saved the average American consumer $1000 to $2000 a year. And the goods they buy, about 80% of goods that are sold at Wal-Mart were made in China for American companies. And so when the tariffs went into effect, Trump's tariffs went into effect, it didn't mean the Chinese government was paying money into the coffers of the American government. No, it meant that it cost American companies like Wal-Mart more money to import goods from China, and they passed along that cost to American consumers. But if the fact that China has been prospering and raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the last two or three decades, if that really meant that that was hurting the U.S. economy, then it wouldn't be true that our stock market is at an all-time high, that our unemployment is at the lowest it's been in many, many decades. And even before the pandemic, that was true. And trade with China continues on pretty much unabated, despite the tariffs. And so both countries are prospering at the same time. So that's clearly, on the face of it, not true that it is a zero-sum game. We both will prosper. if the other one does.
Penny: To what extent do we think about it as communist, and to what extent is it actually have a lot of capitalist pieces or pieces and elements of the economy and the culture?
Larry: It's really a myth that China is a communist country. We only think of it that way. Well, it's not the reason we think of it that way, but it is true that they are ruled by the Communist Party, and that's what the government calls itself and it is an authoritarian state. However, their economy is not communist at all. Not since the late 1970s. No, it's a combination of capitalism, rather freewheeling capitalism and socialism, where the government does control some industries. But there are more billionaires in China today than in the U.S. or any other country, and that's from free enterprise. For example, Jack Ma, the multi-billionaire, one of the wealthiest people in the world, is the CEO and founder of Alibaba, which is the Chinese equivalent of Amazon, although they're much, much bigger. So free enterprise has allowed a large middle class in China to arise, hundreds of millions of them who more and more will be interested in buying
American goods. So free enterprise was tried in China in the early 1980s, and the Chinese government, who had failed to improve the economy in the 50’s, 60s and 70’s of the last century by being a purely communist state, realized that they needed to perhaps try capitalism. They tried it and they liked it. It was highly successful. And so now it's expanded. And so there is private enterprise thriving all across China.
Penny: When you say the Chinese is run by the Communist Party, for a lot of Americans, that still sounds really scary. Because we have all these really negative associations with communism and our history after World War II and in the fifties and sixties. Can you help us understand a little better what it means that it's run by a Communist Party?
Larry: Yes. When the Communist Party won the Civil War with the support of hundreds of millions of Chinese, despite the U.S. backing the other side and the very corrupt Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Kai-shek and his troops fled to Taiwan. They tried a purely communist system where everything was owned by the government, all the land and housing and so on, and provided for free to the people and medical care as well. And that lasted in the fifties, sixties. But the Chinese realized they took away personal incentive. And the Chinese, before World War two, had been great entrepreneurs. So, then the Chinese government decided that if they were going to prosper like Western nations, they would need to allow capitalist free enterprise. And they did more and more starting in the late seventies, early eighties, and continuing to this day.
But the Communist Party has an unspoken deal with the Chinese people, and that is, you will allow us to remain in power as a single party, and we will continue to allow you not only free enterprise, but we will make our country prosper. We’ll invest in infrastructure. We’ll do the things that a socialist country, not a communist country where everything is owned by the government, but that a socialist country will do to help its citizens prosper while also allowing free enterprise. And it has worked. And the Chinese people are much happier with their government than Americans are with ours. It's hard for us to get even 50% of the American public to give a positive approval rating to our president in recent decades. Not just now, not just under Trump. But in China most people realize the Communist Party has made our lives better.
What percentage of the Chinese people believe in communism or are members of the Chinese Communist Party? Very, very few. A very small minority, only about say 80 million people out of 1.41 billion people in China are members of the Communist Party. And it doesn't mean that those people all believe in a communist government or communism. They don't. Many of them are capitalists themselves, but they realize that the Communist Party is doing good things for the country, by and large, regardless of how we view them from the outside. And also they realize that that's their only way to get a high position in a government. The government bureaucracy is very selective. It's almost like a fraternity. They look at your credentials. They try to have a mix of not just bureaucrats and not just entrepreneurs, but also farmers, intellectuals, scientists and so on, a mix of that. There are very strict requirements to get into the party, into that special club, but that does allow you then to advance to the highest positions.
Penny: So I think it's helpful for our listeners to just kind of latch on to the fact that we think of China as communist. And there are elements and certainly its history - recent history - comes out of a communist tradition or ideas, but that today really the way China functions is: there is this Communist Party in charge and they have certain history and ideals, but it's really balanced with more capitalist and then socialist - or “take care of your people” ideas and policies. So it's not just this communist entity anymore. It's really much more nuanced.
Larry: That's correct. And the world has never seen a country like China. It's very hard to pigeonhole them because there's been no country like it. And unlike a true communist country like the Soviet Union was, China does not seek to export its political system or its economic system to any other country in the world. They just feel that this is right for China.
And China, we should point out, has no history of democracy. They didn't have even a word for freedom, for human rights, for democracy until the late 19th century, early 20th century. And the translations, for example, of freedom are not only awkward, but the word freedom in China is Ziyóu, connotes selfishness. It means coming from the self. And we also need to recognize as Westerners who come from a really individualistic society, and the U.S. is arguably the most individualistic society in the history of the world…. In Asian society, the emphasis has always been on social harmony. It's always been on a group-centered society where the individual is willing to make sacrifices for the sake of the group and whether that's the family or the organization to which they belong or their country, it often goes far beyond what we would be willing to do. So, for example, with the pandemic, the Chinese people have been willing to put up with the most stringent and draconian measures to keep COVID under control than any democratic nation would ever agree to. But it has meant that it has kept the Chinese people quite safe from a virus that did break out in China. And they've had less than 5000 deaths, and we are now above 800,000 and they have four and a half times their population. China …and this is true of the democratic nations of Japan and South Korea as well, that they are groups under society and they will make concessions for the sake of the society, which Americans will not.
Penny: I think it's really important to just know that those differences, those cultural differences and our perspectives, are incredibly fundamental, so that in a lot of Asian cultures that my willingness to do something for the sake of the whole is almost a given. It's like, well, duh, I'm going to do that. And so when the government asks them or tells them they have to do that, it doesn't feel like as restrictive and bad as it does to some Americans, because …and I'm not making a judgment call either way… but in most for most us Americans, we are much more, as you said, individualistic. And we believe that I have the right to decide what happens to my own body and including getting a injection or wearing a mask. And I shouldn't have to listen to, if I don't want to, I shouldn't have to listen to other people telling me what to do in those areas. So, just those really fundamental differences in the role of individual in terms of it in the context of a greater society really makes the rules and the policies in the different countries a little more understandable. I think.
Larry: That is absolutely right on. And it doesn't have to do with China having a totalitarian government where the people are afraid of the government. No, the Chinese people believe that the government is there to help them. And too many Americans do not share that belief. They feel like government is the problem. And that's the big debate that we're having in this country right now. Can government be the solution or is it the problem and should stay out of the way of individuals?
But that's never been questioned in Asian society before communism. And as I said, it's also true in the democratic nations of Japan and South Korea where people are definitely not afraid of their government. They have democratically elected officials, but they will make those sacrifices for the group.
Penny: So I'd like to return to a couple of things that Professor Hertzberg has talked about. Larry, you talked about how China really isn't interested in exporting communism. And I think this is important to help us maybe get over some of our fear, like we might have some residual fear maybe from the fifties or sixties (I don't know) that they're going to go into the world and make a whole bunch of other countries, just like China and then democracy or American ideas or American markets won't be there in the same way. Could you unpack that a little bit for us?
Larry: Yes, it's certainly true that it's been alarming to see several other countries in the world, more than several, turn to a more totalitarian form of government. But it's not because of the Chinese model. It's because of internal forces in their own countries. So, we've seen this recently in Hungary and Belarus and Turkey and so on. But it's not there are Chinese advisers there. And the people that rule those countries that I just mentioned, they don't ever mention China as a model because they're not even thinking along those lines.
And so to see China as an existential threat to the United States, both in terms of ideology but also in terms of the military, is a totally bogus way of looking at things. And it's a dangerous way to have that kind of Cold War mentality. It's the U.S. that has gone into Vietnam, and Iraq and Afghanistan and killed or displaced millions of people. China has no history in the last 2000 years of going into any other country. The only thing that could be argued is, okay, what about Tibet in the 1950s? Well, China saw that as a traditional part-tributary state of China --should be part of China. I don't agree with that.
Most Westerners don't. But nevertheless, people in the U.S. government are alarmed that China is spending more and more on their military. However, China still, despite their increase in military expenditures, spends only one quarter what the U.S. does. We spend 4% of our GDP on the military, which is far more advanced than the Chinese military by the Pentagon's own assessment. Probably a decade or two ahead of the Chinese. The Chinese doesn't spend 4% of their GDP as we do. They spend 2% of their GDP now on the military. We have 800 military bases around the world in 70 different countries, 70 different countries we have put our troops. China has only one military base in a country outside of China, and that's in the tiny African nation of Djibouti.
Penny: Another item on our list to talk about today, Larry, is a little bit just how to think about China. So, for decades, it seems we really almost thought of China as an enemy because we had this association, because they were claimed to be communist and were communist and run by Communist Party. And that seems so anti-democratic. And at that time, it seemed also so anti-capitalist, anti-free market. I'm wondering if you can help us understand how best to think about China and our relationship with China today in the 21st century.
Larry: Our fairly new secretary of state, Antony Blinken, under the Biden administration this year, early on in his tenure, he's stated, at least publicly, that our relationship with China was changing and that for the last several decades, when China has been prospering economically and has had this really strong relationship with the US economically, we had been collaborating economically to a large extent and he said we're going to become increasingly confrontational. And he said that our approach to China as a U.S. government will be three fold. In some areas we will be confrontational, such as with Taiwan, such as with the South China Sea and China's military buildup, and with the Chinese attempting, it seems, to hack in to U.S.. Websites and so on. And then number two, China will be seen as competitors with US rivals economically and perhaps also for a voice on the political stage. But in a third way, in some areas we can see China as collaborators.
Now, I personally would like to see the US not demonize China, not to initiate the Cold War, which has already begun, actually. And I would like to see us be friendly rivals, because there are many areas in which we could collaborate. If we see them as an enemy, China and we have been in recent years… It's made China extremely defensive. And they used to have the average Chinese person until recently had a very positive view of the United States, contrary to the average American have a very negative view of the Chinese and China. But the Chinese people, not just the Chinese government, but the Chinese people, feel that correctly, that the United States and its citizens are resenting China's rise and making them into an enemy rather than a challenge, to be sure…but rather than seeing them as friendly rivals.
Penny: What are some possible areas of collaboration and partnership for the United States and China?
Larry: Here are some areas where we could collaborate and should collaborate with China. One is on public health. China should have been more open about the corona virus, but they did sequenced the genome back when there were the first outbreaks and they did share that with the rest of the world before it became a problem in the US. And but we need more of that. We need China to be more open, but we need to partner with them to prevent the next pandemic from coming, instead of each country coming up with their own vaccination and so on.
Global climate change, at least that's one area in which the Biden administration is attempting to collaborate with the Chinese. And the Chinese remain in the Paris Accord because between China and the U.S., our two countries produce 45% of all carbon emissions in the world. We’re the two great polluters, China, is trying to change that and is really working hard, investing more in solar power than the rest of the world combined, and more in wind power than the rest of the world combined. But Antony Blinken, our secretary of state, has and others have been talking to Chinese officials about that, trying to collaborate and agree that both nations will reduce our carbon emissions.
Arms control. The Chinese have far fewer nuclear warheads than we do. In fact, I have the statistic here. The U.S. has 7200 nuclear warheads, 7200 nuclear warheads. China has 260. U.S. has 20 aircraft carriers, by the way. China has but two.
And yet China is surrounded by unfriendly neighbors with nuclear weapons, including India. We could collaborate with the Chinese on arms control and nuclear nonproliferation, and the Chinese don't want North Korea to get out of hand any more than we do, and even less in a way because what China fears is destabilization in North Korea will mean that
literally millions of North Koreans will then flood over the border into China, where they'll seek a better life.
Piracy on the high seas. It sounds really funny to talk about piracy in the 21st. Yeah, that's a huge issue. It's a huge issue where sophisticated modern pirates, armed with AK 47s and so on, are boarding ships from around the country carrying cargo and raiding them. And it costs, I don't know, tens of billions, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars a year. China wants to control that. So does the U.S.. So that's an area where we can cooperate.
Certainly terrorism. The Chinese, the reason for the terrible treatment of the Muslim workers in their Xinjiang province, which we'll talk about later when we talk about human rights in another segment…. But it's because there were terrorist attacks by those Muslim separatists. They're a tiny fraction of the Muslims in that province, to be sure and not fair to then punish a huge number of of the Uighurs there. But nevertheless, the U.S. also fearing Muslim terrorism. So that's an area where we can definitely agree. And in fact, surprising as it is, in fact, shocking as it is, the FBI actually until recently had an office in China to collaborate with them on fighting Muslim terrorism.
And then Afghanistan, to keep Afghanistan stable and to have them treat their citizens well. Afghanistan borders on China. So that. It's something that is an issue that looms large for the Chinese.
And then space exploration with once again gotten into a space race with another nation, China, sending up their own spaceships, including to Mars, including to the dark side of the moon. If we collaborated, we two nations, we could reduce the cost and improve what we're doing. If we would cease to see China as an enemy. We're not going to agree with them on a lot of major issues, to be sure, nor should we, because we're a democratic nation and and we do believe in human rights and so on. But we need to at least understand the Chinese perspective if we're going to peacefully coexist with them rather than demonize them.
Penny: I really like the idea of rivals rather than enemies. We can compete in different areas and different markets, for example, and even a little bit in our philosophy about certain policies or whatever. But to do that as rivals rather than as enemies could be a way forward. And I love the the really specific ideas and areas for potential cooperation that could be so beneficial for us that you mentioned.
I think another thing too, that is helpful when I come from more intercultural learning backgrounds. And one of the things we talk about when we talk about cultural differences, especially with Asian cultures, is the idea of face. So, sort of the idea of a public perception and sort of honor or respect that's given to a person or a culture or a country. And I think that if we could frame a little more of our relationship as rivals, as existing together and actually cooperating respectfully in certain areas, that would really be a way to say we respect China. Maybe we also want to criticize China in certain areas, but in other areas we can respectfully engage and cooperate in a way that kind of gives them face and says they are also and we see them as respectable players in the world, in our in our world today. And that could be so helpful, actually, as just a stance or a position for the United States to have, even while we want to be critical of some other things, too. But just to create space for a respectful engagement could be so useful.
Larry: That's really well said, because in this increasingly small world… and I love what Martin Luther King said in the 1960s. This was back six decades ago, a=nd yet he said the world already had become so small and so interconnected that he said, I can get on a plane in Tokyo, Japan, and this would be true in Beijing, China, too, and arrive in San Francisco or Los Angeles before I left, according to my watch. That's how small the world has become. That's because of the time difference. Okay. But also speed of our our flights. And now we're connected with the Internet, with the Web or so on. And he said, given that increasingly shrinking world where we are so interconnected with one another, either we need to learn to live together as brothers and sisters or will die together as fools. And there's a danger that if we continue to have this Cold War with China, which has been one-sided until recently, which the U.S. really began feeling threatened by China's rise, then we may end up dying together as fools.
Penny: Well, on that friendly note, I'd like to thank you for sharing some of your understanding and insights about China today on our podcast, Larry. I want to encourage our listeners to look for a second episode where we will be unpacking some additional ideas and important issues to talk about to understand China and our relationship with China better
If you are interested in learning more to understand China, listen to our next episode, number 41, where Larry Herzberg shares facts and insights and also dispels some myths about pollution in China, China's relationship with Taiwan, and the start of the COVID 19 pandemic.
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