How China almost became an American backyard China versus the United States in comparative perspective Bertrand M. Roehner ABRACA PUBLISHING 2017 2 ABRACA PUBLISHING Roehner, 26 rue Poliveau, Paris 75005, France [email protected] http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/∼roehner First Published 2017. Comments are welcome. Printed in France This publication is not copyrighted in the sense that its content can be used without restriction for non-commercial purposes. ISBN 978-2-9500181-0-6 EAN 9782950018106 3 “We have got to keep the Pacific as an American lake.” — President Eisenhower, Security Conference, 2 June 1954 (FRUS) “What should we be doing? We should be reaching out to our allies and constituencies within China. There are 500 million internet users in China and 80 million bloggers. They are bringing about change, the likes of which is gonna take China down.” —Jon Huntsman, former US ambassador in Beijing, 12 November 2011 “I had in a previous career a diplomatic post where I helped bring down the Soviet Union.” —Ted Malloch, Deputy Chief at the “United Nations Economic Commission for Europe” from 1988 to 1992. 16 November 2016 (interview given to the BBC) “Current [US] rules on campaign finance are an abomination. A regime that allows a minority of wealthy people to use their wealth to determine a political outcome for the majority cannot be called a democracy.” —Jon Huntsman, Lecture given at UCLA on 16 April 2014 [Speaking of Party Secretary Zhao Ziyang] “A person who denies his own culture does not have a future”. —Chinese Physics Nobel prize winners, T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang. cited in Jong 1989 There is a strong family resemblance about the misdeeds, and if you have all the details of a thousand at your finger ends, it is odd if you can’t unravel the thousand and first. —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Valley of Fear (1915) Quoi! Des cohortes etrang´ eres` feraient la loi dans nos foyers! —French national anthem (excerpt of 3rd verse), July 1792 4 5 Table of contents Preface Ch. 1 The sweet drug of Americanization Ch. 2 Dollar vs. renminbi Ch. 3 The Pacific as an American lake Ch. 4 “Our constituencies in China” Ch. 5 How to start revolutions Ch. 6 US influence in Russia (1991-1999) Ch. 7 Hu Yaobang, Zhao Ziyang and Tiananmen Ch. 8 Conclusion about foreign political influence Ch. 9 Conclusion about Deng’s domestic legacy Ch. 10 The US foreign affairs machinery Ch. 11 Acronyms References Most of this book was written in the first semester of 2015. Additional material was included subsequently whenever coming to the attention of the author. List of figures, tables and text boxes Fig.2.1: Share of central bank reserves of the pound sterling and dollar respectively. Fig.2.2: Advantages of a common trade currency Fig. 3.1a US possessions in the Pacific. First set consisting of 20 islands. Fig. 3.1b US possessions in the Pacific. Second set consisting of 27 islands. Fig.3.2: Silk road projects Fig.3.3: Relentless and well-organized public relations campaigns by small groups of activists. Fig.3.4: US-China visits of military officials Fig.3.5 A Chinese amphibious dock ship (type 071) and the guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens Fig.4.1a,b: China’s Leaders in Development Executive Program (2012) Fig.4.2: How Harvard comes to China Fig.4.3: Performance of national healthcare systems Fig.4.4: State Department endorsement of the ICMA China Center Fig.4.5: Income inequality 6 Fig.4.6: Meeting of February 2010 between the Dalai Lama and President Obama Fig.4.7: Ambassador Huntsman in a flash-mob demonstration in Beijing on 20 Febru- ary 2011 Fig.4.8: Bernard-Henri Levy´ with two Syrian “freedom fighters” (May 2012). Fig.4.9: Actions by a group which called itself the “HomMen”. Fig.4.10: Russian President Boris Yeltsin with US and Chinese presidents. Fig.4.11: French president Sarkozy and US president Bush Fig.4.12: Protection by US Diplomatic Security special agents Fig.5.1: Polish poster for the election of 4 June 1989 Fig.5.2: The rendition program Fig.5.3: The 15 republics which constituted the USSR Fig.5.4: Protests in Hong Kong Fig.6.1: GDP per capita in Russia. Fig.7.1: President Reagan walking with Premier Zhao Ziyang during his visit to the White House in 1984. Fig.7.2: Gene Sharp in Beijing in late May 1989 Fig.7.3: Liberty statue on Tiananmen Square in 1989 Fig.7.4: Violence and casualties Fig.8.1: Celebrating the President of Venezuela Copyright notice: Most of the pictures are either made by the author or are in the public domain. However, if you think you are the copyright owner of one of them then please get in touch so that we can find an arrangement. Table 1: Meetings of US presidents with the Dalai Lama Table 2.1: Share of the renminbi in financial markets (2014) Table 3.1: Challenges to US hegemony in the Pacific Table 4.1: Foreign students in the US Table 4.2: French and British “grantees” of the “International Visitor Leadership Program” Box 2.1: The dollar in disarray in the 1960s Box 3.1: Military incidents between China and the US Box 4.1: Amway in China Box 4.2: “We will send you to Harvard” Box 4.4: Liu Xiaobo Box 4.5: Chronology of WikiLeaks Box 4.6: The BitTorrent procedure Box 4.7: Riot in Guanxi (excerpts of a Wikileaks file) Box 4.8: Discussion with US political officer about North Korean nuclear tests 7 Box 4.9: Discussion with US political officer about Chinese oil supply to North Korea Box 5.1: Contacts between US intelligence experts and leaders of Baltic countries Box 5.2: Possible scenario of a Baltic country-like episode in China. Box 7.1: Stone Corporation / Stone Institute Box 8.1: Xu Zhiyong Preface A distinctive characteristic of the present study is that, as advocated in Roehner and Syme (2002), it uses a comparative approach. We strongly believe that comparisons bring with them a deeper understanding. Comparison makes us realize that people and nations are more alike than might be thought at first sight. Just to give one exam- ple in the West it is customary to ridicule the fact that in the USSR photographs were retouched to remove leaders fallen in disfavor. Yet, something similar happened in the United States during the Cold War. When the movie “Friendly Persuasion” was released in 1956 the screenwriting credit was left blank because the actual screen- writer, Michael Wilson, was on the Hollywood blacklist. His credit was officially restored in 1996. The same thing happened in 1957 for the film “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. The screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, were on the Hollywood blacklist and could only work on the film in secret. The official credit was given to Pierre Boulle, the French author of the novel on which the film was based. Despite the fact that he did not speak English the Oscar for Best Screen- play was awarded to him! Only in 1984 did the “Academy of Motion Picture Arts” rectify the situation by retroactively awarding the Oscar to Foreman and Wilson, posthumously in both cases. Incidentally, Wilson also wrote a script for a movie about the “Industrial Workers of the World”. Titled “The Wobblies”, this movie was never produced. A second characteristic (which is in fact a consequence of the first) is that our ap- proach brings to light interactions between countries. All too often interferences of foreign countries are largely overlooked. Taking exogenous factors into account is a crucial requirement of a scientific approach. As an illustration one can mention the role of US “advisers” in the privatization pro- grams set up in Russia after 1992. Surprisingly, the Wikipedia article entitled “Pri- vatization in Russia” does not mention any foreign advisers. Yet, in the present case, far from being hidden, US influence was channeled through well-known institutions such as: • The “Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission”, named after US Vice-President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. In the Wikipedia article about this commission, its role in the privatization is indeed recognized but described Preface 9 only very briefly at the end of the article. • The “Harvard Institute for International Development” (HIID) advised the Russian government on privatization. It was headed by Harvard Professor Andrei Shleifer and supported by funding from the State Department’s “US Agency for In- ternational Development” (USAID). Among several other Harvard figures who par- ticipated in the privatization, one can mention Jeffrey Sachs (who had already carried out the privatization program in Poland), Jonathan Hay (in 2000 he was indicted for conflict of interest together with Shleifer), Marshall Goldman and Graham Allison. With the exception of Shleifer, none of these “advisers” was fluent in Russian. In fact, although we call these persons “advisers” they were much more than just advis- ers. Why did we say that a scientific approach must necessarily take into account exter- nal forces? Consider a physicist who wants to measure the period of a pendulum. Suppose that during the experiment he leaves open the windows and doors of his lab- oratory. As a result, the pendulum will be exposed to fluctuating air flows; certainly this will lead to poor accuracy measurements. Note that even with closed doors and windows one will face the same problem if the pendulum is subject to air flows from the air conditioner.