What China Wants – Revenge

For the most part, I think Boomers tend to greatly overstate the extent to which the geopolitical foes of the United States pose an actual threat. Russia is far from being Stalinist and Iranian culture is more nuanced and richer than someone like Sean Hannity cares to admit. And while North Korea is certainly a great evil and stain upon humanity, it is far too weak to pose any sort of serious threat. However, just because a Boomer thinks something, does not make it wrong. A good example of this is China. Yes, China actually does pose a threat to the United States, and not just the American Empire, but also the American people. This is one thing Boomers are right about, though they only understand one element as to why China is a threat.

If you ask most Boomers why China is a threat, they will tell you because they’re communist. And, this is certainly true. Communism really is a uniquely evil ideology that destroys nations. Although, this is not the only reason China is dangerous. The Chinese are certainly communists, but they are not as ideologically driven as someone like the late Leon Trotsky. The vast majority of the Chinese government agrees with Deng Xiaoping – “The color of the cat doesn’t matter, as long as it catches the mice.” What this means is that ideology – be it traditional Chinese authoritarianism, Marxism, or capitalism – is all secondary to the greater pursuit of national glory. To understand why this is so important, we must delve into Chinese history.

The first thing you must understand about China is its belief in its own cultural superiority. The Chinese call China Zhōngguó – central country – reflecting their belief that China was the center of the world. So important was this belief in the mind of the Chinese, that they were actually the last major civilization to abandon the flat earth model. It is easier to be in the center of a flat plain than on the surface of a sphere. The geography and population of China helped reinforce this notion. Geographically, China is very secure, being surrounded by an ocean, deserts, tundra and jungles. It is also encircled by nations far smaller than China and thus pose no serious threat. The Chinese population in 1800 was over 330 million, or roughly the size of the current U.S. population. To put that into even greater context, the current combined populations of Japan, the Koreas, and Vietnam is 300.7 million. As such, it is little wonder why Chinese culture has had such a strong impact on the surrounding nations. Furthering this notion of superiority is the long-term stability of China. This is a nation that has changed very little in thousands of years. Even when non-ethnic Han Chinese would invade China, as the Mongols and Manchu did, those tribes would take on Chinese characteristics and, more or less, rule as a normal Chinese dynasty.

Ultimately, this belief in cultural superiority created a very isolationist society – after all, why explore the world if it is so vastly inferior? This explains why the territory of each successive Chinese dynasty has an interesting pattern: they are almost all centered in Inner China, showing very little desire to expand. This is not because maintaining an expansive empire in those days was particularly difficult, as seen in the vast multi-continent empires of Rome and Islam. Rather, it was because the Chinese were content in their own isolation, basking in their own sense of cultural superiority. The Ming dynasty even went as far as banning overseas exploration, for fear of bringing in outside influence into China. The exceptions are the Yuan and Qing dynasties, but those were led by ethnic Mongols and Manchus, and they both had a little more appetite for conquest, even as they kept almost every other aspect of Han civilization.

This is why Chinese inventions have a tendency not to have much of an impact on China itself: they invented gunpowder only to make fireworks, they invented the compass but banned overseas exploration, and they invented the printing press only to print Confucian cannon. Without competition, they did not need to make practical military use of those inventions, as the divided nations of Europe had to do in order to survive. For a period of time, this worked for China. It was geographically protected and surrounded by nations that were far too small to pose a threat.

But all this changed in the 1800s, when improvements in technology meant that China’s traditional geographical barriers were no longer the protection they once were. They now faced a dynamic and powerful West that could beat China. To make matters even worse, the West was sure of its own civilization and had no desire to become Chinese. What had been the bedrock assumptions of the Chinese for thousands of years, that China was protected and if a barbarian tribe did conquer China, they would just become Chinese – had been crushed in just a few decades. The “Century of Humiliation” even saw Russia and Japan fighting over Manchuria, the ancestral home of China’s ruling Qing dynasty and the government could do nothing to stop it.

More than worldwide communist revolution, what really motivates China is anger over the humiliation they faced during the 19^th and 20^th centuries. They want revenge for what happened and are hellbent on achieving it. Doing to the West what was done to them, transforming the West into an impotent economic dependent, is deserving and just in their eyes. As Americans, we are accustomed to thinking of nations, like Germany or France, as having a “long history.” In the American context, a nation with a history of a little over a thousand years is considered long (I date the beginning of both nations to the Treaty of Verdun). But to the Chinese, this is a mere drop in the bucket; and, unlike other ancient civilizations, like the Greeks, Egyptians, and Mesopotamians, this is more or less the same culture as it was 2,000 years ago. With that scope of history, it is easy to see why the “Century of Humiliation” was recent to the Chinese and why they are set on revenge.

Yes, China is a threat because of communism. However, it is much deeper than that. Communism, capitalism, or anything else is simply a tool for China to set the world right – the world when China reigned supreme and could easily maintain a belief in its own superiority. One thousand years ago, they were content just to be the hegemon of East Asia. Today, in order for them to reset things back to the way they were before the “Century of Humiliation,” nothing short of world domination will suffice. The world is too interconnected now for anything else. This is something we have seen before. It is not a coincidence that Spain embarked on a massive territorial expansion after the Reconquista and Russia did the same after overthrowing the Mongol yoke. Eventually, they ran out of steam.

Eventually, China will, too. But with its massive population, it will take a long time. To add to that, they are still governed by a toxic ideology, even one they just consider a device for geopolitical revenge. A stark picture emerges of just how much of a threat China is and why the Dissident Right cannot simply ignore this to be contrarians to Boomers and American “patriots.” China is not a friend of the Dissident Right. If we don’t understand this, we may face our very own “Century of Humiliation.”