Jumpy Dinosaur Losing Its Nerve?

The Communists united China in 1949 and kept it in one piece under several leaders with impressive authority for 50 years this Friday. The Chinese Communist Party has been harsh on its people, but no more so than dozens of pre-20th century Chinese regimes. China has advanced in basic education, health, communications, the status of women, military strength, rural housing and other areas. Yet the political methods by which this dynasty has endured suggest an uncertain future for the Beijing regime.

China in 1999 faces a dilemma the Qing Dynasty faced in the 1890s: Further reform is dangerous, but to stop reform may be fatal. Can a quasi-theocratic state streamline into a modern regime by small adjustments? Or will the fingers in the dike be repulsed by a flood of systemic change? Faith in a universal world view has gone. The nation, now, is sacred.

With a swagger that hides the enormity of the contradiction, the revolutionary operatives of the Communist Party have gate-crashed the triumphal banquet of capitalist economics. Is Beijing living on borrowed time, or has an equilibrium of yin and yang, Leninism-plus-consumerism, been attained?

The Chinese communist state seems schizophrenic. It has mellowed toward its own citizenry on most issues. Yet when it comes to Taiwan and other international controversies, the Chinese state is a jumpy dinosaur--just like the Qing court.

Sinologists for years compared the People’s Republic with the Soviet Union and the Nationalist regime on Taiwan. However, the more interesting comparisons may be with India and Indonesia. After China’s flirtation with Maoism, and the retreat to money-making since 1978, the end result is that most Chinese live at a level similar to most Indonesians and Indians.

It has been a story of high hopes, social-engineering illusions, pragmatic adjustments, lost opportunities, ingenuity from the grass-roots and increasing loss of nerve at the top.

China has been the wild card during 50 years of international relations. Its allies of the morning (Soviet Union, Vietnam, Albania) became foes by nightfall. Its initial enemies (United States, Japan) in the post-Mao era became tentative partners. No country, unless it be North Korea, has been China’s friend from 1949 until now. Who but the People’s Republic has, since 1949, fought the Soviet Union and the U.S.?

Today, China is philosophically rootless. Jiang Zemin’s speeches quote no thinkers or statesmen from China’s rich pre-20th century past. Instead, Jiang cites Marx, Lenin and Mao--a trio in whom few Chinese believe.

The People’s Republic past is itself strangely absent from Beijing discourse. Where is the explanation for Beijing’s breathtaking misjudgment of the 1960s that the U.S. was on the brink of violent socialist revolution? Or the confident assertion in the 1970s that a surging Soviet Union was overtaking the U.S.? Where are the monuments to the 30 million victims of the famine resulting from the Great Leap Forward? Money has replaced memory, which suits Beijing, especially so long as the U.S. buys one-third of its total exports.

Did China need Marxism after all? Jiang holds fast to Mao with a skillful selectivity. He embraces Mao as a Lenin (founder), but essentially rejects him as a Marx (theorist) and as a Stalin (ruler).

If the 21st century is China’s, the Communist Party will be woven into Chinese history as a successful dynasty. If China weakens or fragments, communism will be judged a mistaken foreign import.

Is the Chinese dynastic past a usable tradition or a heap of dust? Will modernity infect China with a Western individualism that will undermine China as a jia (one big family)? Today’s new economy and society soften the hard choices between tradition and the present, and between China and the West. As individuals choose their own values and career paths, the issues of rejecting or adapting Chinese tradition, and coping with Western influence, find a resolution.

But the Communists may not accept the resolution. As Leninists they cannot view history as a storehouse for easy give and take with the present. They need an amnesia about the recent People’s Republic past.

They also run uphill in trying to be cosmopolitans. They need the United States and Japan as boogeymen. After the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in May, the spectacle of U.S. Ambassador James Sasser standing by the shattered windows of his embassy in Beijing while righteous Chinese patriots hurled rocks toward him was an essential tableau in the mythology of communist self-legitimation. It was also a disaster for a China that wants to be a great, modern nation in an interdependent world.

Some analysts, pointing out that China is more secure and prosperous than ever in modern times, say it is a status quo power that wants only peace and integration into the world’s institutions. Economic development, they purr, will lead to a benign China. Maybe. But if so, why is anti-foreign nationalism stronger in 1999 than when the People’s Republic began? Why are lies about the U.S. even more prevalent in the Communist Party media than in 1949?

China is the most ambitious, conflicted and aggrieved of the world powers. Whether it also is on the march toward hegemony in Asia cannot be answered independent of whether the United States retains the will to lead in Asia and whether the Japan-U.S. alliance remains firm.