Page 43 - Rethinking China Policy

Rethinking China Policy

It is, in that respect, best understood as a Master Franchisor in a relatively loose franchise arrangement with
individual Provinces or local governments or military regions as franchisees.

The Franchisor have the power to command obedience on a limited number of highly visible and obvious issues
that signal the symbolic obedience to the Beijing regime: flying the PRC flag, having the approved local
government or military organization on paper, and the right of Beijing to name top local officials and
occasionally, selectively enforce a few draconian laws. But what actually happens at the local level on a
day to day basis is very much left to the devices of local governments or PLA regional commanders.

There is a striking parallel with the Ching Dynasty diktat that all adult males must shave their forehead and
braid their hair into a queue as a symbol of obedience to the Ching court. Failure to comply with the Manchu
queue was obviously visible and punished by death.

With the exception of those rare instances where the Ching dynasty was willing to enforce a diktat (e.g.
banning cheap British opium imported from India that was undercutting Chinese opium), which directly led to
the Ching Dynasty losing the opium war and compelled to settle on unfavorable terms, the Ching regime
largely left the autonomous provinces alone provided that they remitted requisite taxes to the court. The real
foreign policy of southern China was locally determined largely by the Cantonese themselves, with the
wealthy merchants being key players.

This picture of de facto highly decentralized “foreign policy” leads one to ask very different questions as to
what would work in working with the local authorities that are presently driving Chinese foreign policy in the
South China Sea.

Pressure on Beijing, per se, is counterproductive in two ways:

First, if pressure on Beijing managed to induce Beijing to act (after Beijing negotiated many concessions on
issues that is likely irrelevant to the Southern Chinese provinces) and watered down the demands, it is likely to
last only as long as Beijing pressure on the relevant actors are intense. That will come, and like any Chinese
government campaign, go after a brief period, and then it is business as usual.

Second, a Beijing centric policy ends up strengthening Beijing, which directly countering western interests
compared to the alternative of a more diffused China with competing interests that can be more reasonably
dealt with.

Western foreign policy have a long tradition of pragmatism: dealing with counterparts that can credibly and
reliably deliver the goods irrespective of their official standing or reputation for brutality or barbarism.

In this vein, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill saw nothing wrong with working with Stalin to
defeat the greater evil of Nazi Germany.

Nixon and Kissinger exploited the divisions between communists to weaken the Soviets.

In this vein, working with the local interests and authorities that can deliver an acceptable solution to the South
China Sea disputes that preserve the substance of UNCLOS may be more important than the symbols.

In order to do so, it will require a fundamentally new orientation away from the present Beijing centric
strategy.

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