Barnett on China -- Here We Go Again

The other day, I did a post on a Thomas P.M. Barnett post and I had this to say about Barnett:

Thomas P.M. Barnett is one of the few people who truly understands world politics.  Among other things, he understands how countries develop.  He is not a China expert per se, but it seems every time he applies his overall knowledge of the world to China, he is right on.  His latest post on China, entitled, "The normalization of China proceeds apace," is classic Barnett in that it is short, to the point, and most importantly, dead on.  If I could write like he does, I would be writing books also.

Damned if he did not do it again. 

In a post, entitled, "A 'responsible' China is self-interested China," Barnett extols a middle ground in assessing China.

Barnett begins by noting his amazement "at how little people in America understand about how much China has changed in just two generations since the Cultural Revolution."  Barnett equates these changes to those in America from 1865 to 1905.

Barnett then states that though China does not fit the U.S. model of political development, we Americans also "suffered a lot of crappy and inept and corrupt government across those decades, just like China does today."

Barnett then pulls the following quote from a "brilliantly good" James McGregor (author of One Billion Customers), Wall Street Journal editorial:

The Chinese people want the rule of law and fairness.  But they also want a government that solves problems and focuses on progress.  The many vainglorious and venal local Communist Party cadres are roundly detested.  But Chinese who experienced the chaos of the Cultural Revolution also believe that America must be purposely seeking to destabilize China.  Surely the U.S. isn't so naive as to think that instant democracy would make China a better place?

Half a world away, our sensationalist broadcast media is equally adept at demonizing China for the American populace.  When CNN's Lou Dobbs discovered that ranting generates ratings, he quit asking CEOs thoughtful questions about China and now focuses on flogging it for stealing jobs and unfairly threatening U.S. economic preeminence.  Bill O'Reilly and his infotainment-obsessed brethren at Fox stir up a similar stew of angry anti-Chinese cornpone.  And neither network has any trouble finding like-minded and uninformed talking heads from the Congress eager to obscure their own leadership and policy failings by laying America's economic insecurities and difficulties at China's doorstep.  During a book tour that took me to many American broadcast outlets in the past year the producers invariably asked: "Are you our anti-China or our pro-China guest?"  They were baffled when I answered that I was the "let's-try-to-understand-China guest."  Our TV screens may be in color, but discussions of China are exclusively in black and white.

The rest of the world doesn't share our fear and loathing of China.  For the past 15 years, its diplomats have undertaken a very effective charm offensive to build a positive image abroad.  People-to-people contacts abound, with Chinese students filling universities around the globe.  Outbound Chinese tourists now outnumber those from Japan.  China's slogan for dealing with its neighbors is: mulin, anlin, fulin, which translates as: be friendly, make them feel secure and help make them rich.  It works.  A 2004 BBC poll of 23,000 people in 22 countries showed that 48% considered China a positive global influence--10 points higher than the U.S.  Moreover, the survey showed that 58% of the respondents ages 18-to-29 had a positive view of China.

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Behind the bluster, the Chinese leadership under President Hu Jintao is uncertain and searching for where to take the country as it becomes an integrated part of the global community for the first time.  China doesn't really know what it wants next.  It just knows it doesn't want to be what it used to be: a feudal country that foreigners could carve up like a ripe melon, eventually becoming a dysfunctional civilization that a messianic leader could bring to the edge of social and economic insanity.

Barnett views China as "doing just fine, considering the vast and entirely profound social and economic change it's handling right now -- without blowing up."   In other words, though China certainly is and should be subject to criticism, in doing so, we should not ignore where it was only just recently and how far it has come in such a short time.