Looking at China as Chinese do

Martin Jacques makes a strong case for Western leaders to not use Western concepts in trying to know China. Those leaders, says the British economist-sinologist, includes many in Southeast Asia who were raised in Western thinking. Rather, he advises, view China the way the Chinese do, in order to plot what kind of global power it will be.

That shouldn’t be too hard for Filipinos, mostly schooled Western-style but also a fourth Chinese and so revere their heritage. By their surname, eyes and skin, one can tell that the country’s highest political, business and civic leaders have Chinese ancestry. Perhaps they’d be the best appreciators of Jacques’s book, When China Rules the World, his many talks (especially on TED.com), and a recent lecture in Manila (sponsored by The STAR).

 Three points account for China’s unity, order and stability, Jacques says:

• China is more a civilization-state than a nation-state, as the West sees countries. Multicultural, it can concurrently sustain diverse systems, including economic as illustrated by Hong Kong-Macau compared to the mainland. It is so conscious of national history, and aims to correct the century-long humiliation by the West. It knows its place in the world, having been the biggest contributor (over 30 percent) to economic output pre-Industrial Revolution, declining in contrast to the West, but now fast climbing back to the past figure.

• Relatedly, 90 percent of the Chinese, concentrated in the central to the eastern and southern provinces, are of the Han race. So 1.17 billion of its 1.3-billion population has affinity to the state. Such oneness is the glue that holds the huge country together, unlike fallen empires. In economic terms, cohesive China is using more and more its currency for foreign trade; HSBC foresees half of such trade to be using the renminbi by 2012.

• The Chinese view the state as extension of the individual, to some degree a member of the family. Unlike Western critics who brand the communist rule as an illegitimate political system, the Chinese credit the Party with their economic leap. (Democracy does not mean stability, Jacques says, pointing to Italy.) The Chinese, surveys show, have higher trust in the central government than provincial or district, and certainly township or village councils.

Given these, many countries smartly have hitched economic rides with China. Even Korea and Japan that have bitter territorial disputes with China have it as their biggest trade and investment partner. Jacques suggests that Manila too set aside, though not waive, its sea row with the giant neighbor, to invigorate economic ties.

Jacques fortifies his advice with a point that even Chinese-Filipinos find hard to believe. China, he says, is not imperialistic. It does aim to conquer other lands; the last time it went to war for territory was over seven centuries ago, and supposedly only to regain past possessions of the Middle Kingdom.

Truly China may not be thinking of military expansion at this point. But that’s only because it is still building up militarily. And yet it has clashed with Korea, Japan and Russia over small islands in the East Sea, as well as Vietnam in the South China Sea. Despite pacts for status quo, it has occupied reefs and shoals disputed with the Philippines. As far back as 1985 China’s People’s Liberation Army sought to establish a new Great Wall two thousand miles from its shores, in the Pacific beyond Japan and the Philippines.

Looking at the country the way the Chinese do, China can be neo-colonial without being militaristic (yet). It has been bribing despots in Africa with “aid”, in exchange for mines, minerals and timber. It will do anything to get its hands on coal and petroleum resources.

China can be Cold Warlike too. Its way of subjugating the West is by implanting bugs and malware in telecoms systems and components, as the US Congress subcommittee on intelligence found out about ZTE and Huawei. Recently it withheld rare earth metal exports to Japan due to the sea quarrel.

And a government that does not fully democratize is liable to militarize. The Beijing government restricts Internet use even for education, research and communication. Weeks ago it jammed Google, just because the Party leaders were transitioning. It is allergic to social media and blogs that are not apparatchik.

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About this time of year I’d usually be running the Christmas wish list of the dozens of child patients of Cancer Warriors Foundation. Most of the 168 young cancer victims suffer from leukemia; some from worse, painful, debilitating types. Their gift wishes have ranged from a toy doll to a bike, a family picnic at the Luneta to meeting Kris Aquino, a prosthetic leg to a wheelchair.

Over the past three years the group has enlisted regular Yuletide donors. Still it is in need of funds to sustain — yearlong — the treatment and, for some, the daily meals and education of the kids. Any amount from abroad or in the Philippines is welcome, in these bank accounts:

Cancer Warriors Foundation, Inc.

• UnionBank (UPB) ICTSI Branch

# 00-157-000-1010 (for Manila patients)

# 00-157-000-1100 (for Batangas patients)

 • Banco de Oro (BDO) DPC Place-Don Chino Roces Makati

# 00540-800-8808

# 5400085084 (dollar)

• MetroBank Marajo Tower Branch-The Fort

# 519-7-51901107-3

• RCBC Don Chino Roces Makati

# 02-888-037-81

Know more about the foundation online or Facebook.

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