Book Review: "China's Wisdom," by Jin Canrong

I would suspect that anyone who follows this blog is aware by now that I have a dim view of China, and that I accuse their government (and indeed their entire society) of being built on a tripod of Jingoism, hypocrisy and thinly-veiled hegemonic ambition, all reinforced by the dangerous and seemingly paradoxical double-helix of narcissism and insecurity. One would be hard-pressed to find a book that reinforces that view better than Renmin University Press's China's Wisdom, cobbled together by Jin Canrong and a panel of 10 other Communist-Party-Approved "scholars" and translated into a mostly-decipherable approximation of quasi-English by Wen Jianxin. As one could probably guess from its title, this book, published in June of 2017, strikes an almost comical blend of Western-hating blame-games on every subject from the Middle East to the 2008 economic crisis, patronizing examinations of the failings of "chaotic" non-dictatorial governance, and a self-assured belief that a broken and contrite world lies helpless and ruined, desperately awaiting the Glorious Appearing of "China the Great."

And So Modest

The nationalistic tubthumping starts early in this one. The very first paragraph of the entire book (which is on page 4, leaving the reader to wonder where the first 3 pages went) ends with this sentence.

Hence, it [the Central Committee of the CPC] ushers in a new era of major-country diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.

For those who are not fluent in the innuendos and euphemistic entendres of Xi-speak, let me explain. This is an Imperial-style proclamation by the Central Committee of the CPC that "all Major Powers of the World shall henceforth conduct their diplomacy in a manner decreed by China." Two pages later comes the assertion that "experts" have forecasted China's continued double-digit GDP growth after it surpasses the US (which the book later predicts will happen before 2020), a prediction that will draw a hearty belly-laugh from any economist watching China's economy crash and burn. From here, the twin themes of "China rules the world" and "China deserves to rule the world" weave their way through the entire book. Indeed, I cannot find four consecutive pages anywhere in the book without some kind of assertion of either moral or intellectual superiority on China's behalf, and the phrasing ranges from jaw-droppingly brazen...

[China's] initiative of re-obtaining a leading position seems to conform to the laws of history. (p. 35)

The credibility of China is flawless in the international community (p. 59).

Not only does China's rise shoulder the glory of the Chinese nation, but also it shows China's responsibility for the whole Humankind (p. 211).

...to eye-rollingly asinine and self-righteous.

China's wisdom and power can serve global governance in this way (p.77).

Global governance calls for global vision, mind and responsibility. China's path of peaceful development, which answers the call of the times, will inject new vitality into global governance (p. 188).

Maintaining its own food security will be China's great contribution to the world (p. 201).

Seeing that China is drunk on their own ego, however, is nothing new. What comes as a bit of a shock is when the book implies (as it does on more than one occasion) that the rest of the world is as awestruck by China's "magnificence" as China is. One of the sub-themes of the book is that the world is in absolute chaos (chaos which they are not subtle about blaming on the U.S, but more on that later) and crying out for China's "Triumphant Return" to the place of global supremacy that the Chinese believe the world prospered from under the tyranny of the dead-and-buried Sinocentric Order.

This is not only a natural expression of China's rising national power, but also a response to the international community's expectation that China will play a greater role (p. 133).

The world calls for stability. Major countries are expected to shoulder more responsibilities. China's rise meets the very interests of the world (p. 230).

In essence, the entire book reads as if China is having a conversation with its own reflection in a mirror wherein it flatters the reflection and the reflection haughtily answers "yes, I know, I know."

Blame Game World Champions

Though the book's primary theme is unquestionably "All Hail China, the land free of problems," the theme of "all our problems, of which we have none by the way, are America's fault" runs a close second. This theme too begins on the very first page.

Although the Cold War ended, Western countries led by the United States of America have never given up their Cold War mentality. They are still "seeking hegemony" here and there. They have never ceased their efforts to contain China and Russia. (P. 4)

It is not many pages later when the book blames the US for the collapse of the ill-fated Sino-American entente of the 1980's.

The first stage fell in the 1990's, when the United States identified imagined enemies... giving up the "quasi-allied" China-US relationship defined during the Cold War, the United States strategically targeted China as its imagined enemy (p. 7)

Right, let's ignore the fact that the one who ended the Sino-American alliance and then went a step further by openly proclaiming a "New Cold War" against the US was Deng Xiaoping in a 1991 speech before the National People's Congress. One of the most sensational moments though, comes later on the same page.

The third stage is the Barack Hussein Obama's administration, whose "Asia-Pacific Rebalancing" strategy posed manifold oppression to China (p. 7).

There is, as far as I can detect, no hint anywhere in the book as to what this "manifold oppression (which Obama supposedly imposed upon the helpless Chinese)" might be. The book's scathing allegations against the wicked United States do not end there though. In fact, there is an entire subsection in Chapter 8 dedicated solely to this, and it is here where the blame is laid on in the most childish manner.

The United States is not contented with China's economic growth, and it has no other way but to condemn China. Second, the United States is likely to stir up trouble in China's neighboring areas... The United States is desperate to plot with its allies to check China... In the face of the United States' provocation, China must stay calm (p. 220).

The United States is also apparently the reason why the victims of China's aggression have not all embraced their would-be conquerors with open arms.

China's image in neighboring countries and African countries is still distorted by Western countries (p. 57).

However, once the confrontation extends to multiple countries plus unfavorable public opinions created by the United States in the international community, China will have trouble coping with them all (p. 222-223).

The idea that this unfavorable opinion of China could be generated by firing upon civilian fishermen in their own waters, seizing maritime territory by force on the basis of historically dubious claims, or running drugs to neighboring countries, clearly never enters the author's mind. However, stirring up dissent against China's "benevolent global hegemony" isn't the harshest of the authors' allegations against the insidious United States. No, the authors also claim that the only reason the Taiwanese have this silly desire to maintain their independence rather than joining their brethren happily at the feet of Xi, is because of serpent-tongued America.

The rise of "Taiwan pro-independence" force resulted from the intervention of the United States and Japan (p. 224).

Yet the authors do not stop there. These stalwart verbal champions of the "Glorious Middle Kingdom" have one final, brutal accusation to levy against their hateful American rivals. They later go on to accuse us, quite pointedly, of (gasp) encouraging a treaty-ally to appeal to international law over a blatant violation of their sovereignty by China, rather than simply blasting China back to the Stone-Age for stepping on our ally's toes (as the treaty stipulates we should have).

[The US] even endorsed the Philippines' appealing for international arbitration to settle the South China Sea dispute (p. 99).

The nerve of these Americans!
To be fair, the authors do eventually broaden their horizons from simply blaming the US for everything to blaming the entire Western Hemisphere. Apparently, the West invented a state of affairs called "war," which an idyllic and otherwise utopian world had never seen before.

For a long time, Western countries have sought to achieve peace in a zero-sum manner, which ha often led to chaos in other regions. This kind of practice is not recommended. Neither will China grow at the expense of other countries' interests, nor will China bring disasters and turmoil to other regions in the pretext of development (p. 12).

I'm curious how China claims that their militant annexation of the Paracels, Spratlies, and most of the entire South China Sea including waters WELL-inside the Economic Exclusion Zones of the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia (among others) is not growing at the expense of other countries' interests, or how their creation of North Korea is not bringing disaster and turmoil, but never mind. The "blame the West" theme continues rather unabated through most of the book.

Global governance reform is undertaken to solve the crisis caused by the Western governance paradigm centered on the United States (p. 51)

The book's diagnosis of the problem in this "global governance paradigm," which China considers so ghastly, is best summarized as "the West's silly obsession with individual rights," which could be so easily solved by a little old-fashioned iron-fisted rule, as the authors state several times.

The United States and other Western countries are keen on promoting "universal values" worldwide regardless of whether their promotion manner is acceptable to other countries or not (p. 27).

At present, development models and governance modes around the world are extremely influenced by Western cultures and ideologies. However, this governance model is subject to serious drawbacks, embodied by divided societies and separatist campaigns around the world. As the world's two major engines of the United States and the EU get bogged down in plight, global governance calls for a new set of perspectives and concepts. (p. 232)

But then, perhaps one can excuse the authors for being so paranoid about Western influence, considering that "Western countries never cease their desire to destroy China (p. 224)." Explanations of how the West, which has China outgunned by several orders of magnitude, has somehow managed not to fulfill this goal that we apparently never cease aspiring to, must have been saved for the sequel.

They're Not Lies; They're "Facts with Chinese Characteristics"

I may have mentioned this in a previous article or two, but the Chinese government lies a lot, even as governments go. In China's Wisdom, the authors make sure to do their patriotic duty of adding to China's litany of lies, and they are not little white lies. A few have already been mentioned in this review, but the book also includes the assertion that "China stayed self-controlled in the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1995 - 1996 (p. 6)," and has an entire chapter devoted to pouting about how China is being "bullied" around its shores by Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines (p. 122 - 126). The authors go on to thank the brave regional superpower Cambodia for protecting tiny and helpless China against these irascible Vietnamese and Filipino bullies (p. 163).
...Wait, didn't they already claim China was the most powerful nation on Earth?
Never mind.
I think the one that brought me the most laughter, though, was the Goebbels-esque Freudian projection of the ancient Sinocentric model, wherein nations were ranked according to how civilized (read "sinicized") they were, onto US diplomacy.

The United States is committed to maintaining a hierarchial system, the United States places itself at the top level. The second-level comprises English-speaking countries, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, etc. The third level consists of its allies Japan and Germany. The fourth level constitutes its partners including Thailand, Brazil among others. The fifth level is China, which is listed under the category of "competitor." The sixth level is Russia, which is considered as a "rival." The seventh level is "enemy" including the "Islamic State" and other non-state actors and terrorists. The eighth level is the "pariah" in the caste system of India, who is negligible or unworthy to the United States (p. 26).

If you are acquainted with anyone who works in the State Department and want to give them a good laugh, let them read that. I cannot figure out what information China is using to form this picture. It certainly has nothing to do with the structure of international organizations (for instance, the UN Security Council has Russia and China as permanent members), nor does it really correlate to the degree of foreign influence exercised by any of the countries on it, as is evidenced by the laughable fact that world powers like the UK and middle powers like Canada are listed on the same rung.
Perhaps it was written as China's judgement of which countries the US deems "worthy of the most diplomatic attention." If that is the case then it is even more ridiculous. Not only does China think that Germany and Japan are roughly equivalent in the US's global strategy, but they actually place both of them below "English speaking countries," whom China believes are all considered of the same importance to the US. If the authors had even the vaguest understanding of US foreign policy, then even if they insisted on trying to shoe-horn the world into a pyramidal structure like this they would have put the two tech-titans, Japan (unquestionably America's most vital strategic alliance, both in the present and over the past five decades) and Israel (the only nation in the Middle East willing to do our dirty work such as taking out Iraq's nuclear reactor in the '80's and taking out Syria's reactor in the mid 2000's, in exchange for protection) on the rung right below the US, followed closely by Australia, the Philippines, and New Zealand on tier 3 (due to their location). The next layer would have been the UK and France (by virtue of their military power) and Canada (by virtue of proximity), followed by India and Brazil (tomorrow's regional powers, according to most forecasters).
Whatever the case, this description of a top-down, hierarchial world-order will come as a shock to almost anyone who has lived anywhere outside of China. Yet the authors maintain rigidly that this is precisely the US-built Post-WW2 order.

The Best Anti-China Propaganda China Ever Wrote

If the US is, as the authors state, on a quest to make the world revile China, then we owe China a major thank-you because they have written a book which, if distributed across ASEAN, would accomplish that goal more completely than Voice of America or Radio-Free Asia could ever hope to do. Speaking plainly, I cannot fathom why this volume was translated into English into the first place. It reads like the kind of thing that was intended for internal consumption, and is easily debunked by even the most cursory examination of any information found outside China's infamous censorship net. I have to wonder if translating it and distributing it abroad was a bureaucratic screw-up on the part of someone in the Party.
Whatever the case, I am glad it was (somewhat) translated, as it has been an invaluable resource to me. I would recommend this book to any and all students of Political Science or Sinology, and anyone working in foreign policy whose job will bring them into contact with the Chinese government: not because it contains any useful information. It doesn't, but the manner in which it is written provides a marvelous glimpse into the collective mind of the CPC, and shows a reader through just what a twisted lense the Party sees the world.
And that, as China stumbles drunkenly onto the World Stage, is a useful perspective to have.