Spreading Values by Example

The 10th anniversary of the killings by Chinese of Chinese at Tiananmen Square ought to be a time for sober reflection by Americans as well. While China has yet to come to grips with the murders of Chinese citizens (and soldiers) that took place June 3-4, 1989, we in the U.S. have still to develop a thoughtful and effective way in which to deal with the challenges--political and intellectual, economic and moral--that the world’s most populous nation presents.

It would be easy to attribute the confusion that surrounds our interaction with China to the ineptitude of the Clinton administration’s “policy.” Hoping to please everyone, the administration has succeeded in pleasing no one, leaving the business, national security and human rights communities exasperated with its unwillingness to stick to its promises and its overall lack of conviction and consistency. The administration also has managed the not-inconsiderable feat of leaving Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo and the expatriate dissident Chinese community, all dissatisfied if not feeling betrayed.

But, unfortunately, America’s problems in coming to grips with China run far deeper and raise more basic questions about our approach toward the world. Whether out of hubris, ignorance or laziness, or some combination thereof, we have chosen to interpret China’s course over the past two decades as an ineluctable movement toward an American model or at least that of a liberal democratic state.

This attitude was perhaps most starkly evident in the giddy reporting that misleadingly portrayed the 1989 occupation of Tiananmen Square as a call for American-style democracy. It also is apparent in our focus since then (at least until the recent trashing of U.S. diplomatic facilities and reports of Chinese spying) on images of Chinese consumers merrily holding aloft American products, the flood of legislation many have taken as China’s commitment to the rule of law and the much-touted village elections.

Changes in China’s economy, legal system and state administration ought not to be slighted, but neither should they be overstated. President Jiang Zemin announced at the last major Communist Party Congress that even as it sheds smaller state-owned enterprises, China intends to pick hundreds of major state-owned enterprises to convert into international conglomerates. Chinese judges suffer from the triple whammy of being drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the party, lacking independence from the local authorities who pay their salaries and yet finding it hard to secure enforcement of their judgments, whether against the state or other actors. And leading scholars of village elections suggest that they have been promoted in large measure because they provide higher-level authorities with a more palatable means through which to promote unpopular national policies concerning matters such as birth control, taxation and the like.

We need to keep in mind that the Chinese are undertaking these changes to strengthen China (or at least the position of those now in power) rather than to follow us. At least some Chinese view any reliance on foreign models with a profound ambivalence, given China’s sense of cultural superiority, the legacy of the so-called “century of humiliation” (mid-1800s to mid-1900s) at the hands of foreigners and the distortions fostered by indigenous media that are still far from free.

Even those in China more willing to borrow from abroad may be discarding some of what we think most valuable in the American example, adopting some of what we deem least desirable and adapting practices that we would think unsustainable absent certain underlying institutions and values. And in so doing, they may be especially conscious of the gap between what we urge upon them and our own behavior (as in our demands that they adhere to international law while we do an end-run around the United Nations vis-a-vis Kosovo or in our outcries about campaign contributions at the same time our hands have been outstretched for them).

The really difficult question for Americans in both practical and philosophical terms will be how to reconcile the likelihood that a great many Chinese may not wish to be like us with our on-going commitment to promote those ideas and ideals we think worthy of emulation. Stated differently, once freed from the conceit that others have no choice but to follow our example, how do we, in fact, persuade them on the merits of what we may have to offer? Arguably, at least the beginning of an answer lies in our own rededication to the ideals that we would have others follow--for, in the end, if our actions belie our ideals, there is no reason to expect others to take them more seriously than we do.