ON CHINA
Henry Kissinger
586 pages.
The Penguin Press
New York, U.S.A.
2011
Henry Kissinger is a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1973. He served as National Security Adviser and US State Secretary for President Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He is the first official American emissary to the Communist China. And in his old age, he wrote “On China” as a recollection of his career as a diplomat.
In the Preface of his book On China, he explained that the aim of the book is to explain the Sino-US relationship through an understanding of the ‘conceptual way the Chinese think about problems of peace and war and international order, and its relationship to the more pragmatic, case-to-case American approach’. It also focuses, according to him, to the interaction of leaders of both nations since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. This could be done through an understanding of cross-historical and cross-cultural differences between these nations.
He posits that the American exceptionalism is missionary – that is has the obligation to propagate its values; while that of China is cultural. It does not seek to propagate its values or seek to convert other nations or cultures but it treated other nations as tributary ones based on Chinese social and political institutions – effectively creating an idea of cultural universality.
According to Kissinger, in order to understand twentieth-century Chinese diplomacy we must first understand the traditional Chinese way of thinking.
Here, that vision to ‘make sense’ of China’s two and a half millennia of diplomacy and tradition to give light to the present day Chinese diplomacy seemed ambitious. Reading the book as a whole and minding Kissinger’s long and winding narrative, we can conveniently identify six variations: (1) China’s ancient history, (2) China’s inadequate attempts to modify the imperial system of the dynasties, (3) the formative years of Maoist consolidation, (4) Kissinger’s experiences in 1972 and the Nixon visit, (5) China’s later cycles of “opening up” and repression under Deng Xiaoping, (6) pre–World War I British and German expansion up to some of the current problems facing the United States and China today.
Chapter 1, titled “The Singularity of China”, discusses how vast and superior the Chinese civilization is that he cited scholars saying that China is a civilization that has no clear commencement – a civilization in antiquity. It is even referred to as the tian xia or the “All Under Heaven”. China’s early expeditions showed its lack of interest for expansion. The expedition of Zheng He merely flaunted the magnificence of the Chinese civilization and the Chinese Emperor and by performing the kowtow this was best demonstrated. For the Chinese civilization, they viewed themselves as the center of the world or the “Middle Kingdom”. This radiance led an American scholar Lucian Pye to call China a “civilization pretending to be a nation-state”.
What was China’s conception of international relations then? While the Western conception of international relations emerged in a context where states have approximately equal strengths – or the so-called Balance-of-Power Diplomacy 1968, China never had an instance to become in contact with nations with approximately equal strengths, culture or magnitude for the simple reason that it isolated itself from the rest. Kissinger noted that ‘it never espoused the American notion of universalism to spread its values around the world,’ rather “[it] confined itself to controlling the barbarians immediately at its doorstep.”
In this Chapter, Kissinger discussed the how China managed hostilities from barbarians. His idea of the five baits showed how Chinese exploits barbarians to rise up against barbarians and keep them at periphery and the psychological elements of such maneuver. The art of war (based on the book of Master Sun), the wei qi or the ‘game of surrounding pieces’ was so unique to China. It is a game of protracted campaign in contrast with chess (best describes the art of war for the West), which is about total victory. Take note of this for Kissinger keeps on making references to this Chinese realpolitik. This art of war entails psychological combat and indirect attacks. And for them, siege warfare is the last resort. This is also the basis of Kissinger’s idea of the triangular diplomacy between China, the Soviet Union and the United States. Kissinger even quoted Master Sun:
Ultimate excellence lies
Not in winning
Every battle
But in defeating the enemy
Without ever fighting.
This accounts for the preeminence China enjoyed as a superior civilization which viewed itself as the tian xia. But the succeeding accounts portray an apparent decline in China’s reputation as the Middle Kingdom. The various cultural, economic, and political blows that hit China in numbing succession, from the arrival of Lord Macartney’s mission in 1793, seeking expanded trade and residence rights, to the opium wars, the internal rebellions, the Christian sectarians, down to the Boxers of 1900 and the collapse of the imperial regime itself shows a predominant China in decline. Kissinger noted: “ . . . centuries of predominance had warped the Celestial Court’s sense of reality. Pretension of superiority only accentuated the inevitable humiliation.”
Kissinger’s narrative on China’s quest for a new order, however, became fuzzy as overlapping events were taken into consideration.
In his book, the tone changed when he started to narrate his Secret Trip in 1971 and the Mao-Nixon meet up in 1972 when he first used the word “I”. Needless to say, the accounts were very detailed. However, Kissinger adamantly portrayed an image of the United States that is passive and is a mere observer ready to act only upon a noble or just reason to act and mingle. In the chapters of his book discussing this apparent beginning of Sino-US relations, Kissinger dwelled on the idea of triangular diplomacy. He noted that China needs the United States to protect it from Soviet aggression. However, he believed that this is still China’s traditional way of using ‘barbarians against barbarians until they end up rising against each other and this keeps them at the periphery [of China]. This quasi-alliance between China and the US then lead to the ‘brutal suppression of democratic efforts in the Tiananmen Square in 1989’ (which apparently put to test the American exceptionalism that is missionary).
The long and winding narrative of Kissinger almost fuzzed the central theme of his book On China. Only in the latter pages of his book did he tackle the prospects of Sino-US relationship now that with no common enemy (the Soviet Union during Mao’s time) to bind them, what will maintain the peace and promote collaboration and trust between the world’s major powers?
In form, his book On China is generally idiosyncratic. It is quasi-memoir, quasi-monograph, quasi-history, and quasi-reflection.
Clearly, Kissinger respects China but the general tone of this book tells us the obvious bias he has for the United States. If you are a reader with no substantial understanding of Chinese political history and culture, this is not the book you ought to read first, but note that this also provide us necessary insights on the Sino-US relationship.
Thoughts Gone Astray 