The Coming US-China Armed Conflict?
The Coming US-China Armed Conflict?
History shows that America has been addicted to war while China's heart has been for peace.
The Trap of "the Thucydides Trap"
Ever since Harvard professor Graham Allison coined the term "the Thucydides Trap" in the summer of 2012 to capture the rising tensions between "a ruling America" and "a rising China", the term has almost been accepted as something like a Newtonian law defining US-China relations.
Yet, the Thucydides Trap is a western logic imposed on China that has an eastern logic.
What is "the Thucydides Trap"?
Thucydides (c. 460 - c. 400 BC) was an Athenian general who fought in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens). But he was known for writing The History of the Peloponnesian War, one of the earliest scholarly works of history.
In an article for the Financial Times
on 21 August, 2012, Allison quoted the following line from Thucydides' work:
“It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.”
Applying the variables "rise" and "fear" to China and the US respectively, Allison believes that "the Thucydides Trap" is "the best lens for understanding the competition between China and the United States", i.e. "when a rising China threatens to displace a ruling America, the most likely outcome is war."
Allison also examined 16 cases since 1500 involving a rising power threatening to displace a ruling power (see table below), and found that 12 of these ended in war while in four cases, including three from the 20th century, imaginative statecraft averted war.
Since then, "the Thucydides Trap" has been quoted countless times across the world, and despite Allison's clarification in his 2017 book Destined for War
that Thucydides' use of the word "inevitable" is clearly meant as hyperbole, so many Americans are now convinced that the war between the US and China is inevitable unless China's rise is contained by America through such measures as Trump's trade war.
For most Americans, the above makes perfect logical sense. Yet the logic has profound flaws.
What does Allison's work actually show?
1. The logic expressed by the Thucydides Trap is only part of the Western tradition. For weren't Athens and Sparta ancient Greek city-states, and was't Thucydides writing about ancient Greek culture, which actually laid the foundation of Western tradition?
2. Wasn't Japan's attack on Qing China in the late 19th-early 20th centuries the result of the former's rise as a Western-style military power following its wholehearted embracing of Western imperialism since the Meiji Restoration (see Bertrand Russell on the right)?
3. The pattern of the 16 cases also shows that
even Western nations, whose cultural tradition was founded on war, heroism, honour and glory, have
evolved towards peace over the course of 500 years.
"The Thucydides Trap" as quoted by leading American politicians
What America gets wrong about China and the rest of Asia | Professor David Kang
"The traditional civilisation of China had developed in almost complete independence of Europe, and had merits and demerits quite different from those of the West...
China may be regarded as an artist nation, with the virtues and vices to be expected of the artist: virtues chiefly useful to others, and vices chiefly harmful to oneself," says Bertrand Russell in his 1922 book The Problem of China
(p. 10)
"In considering the effect of the white races on the Far East as a whole, modern Japan must count as a Western product; therefore the responsibility for Japan's doings in China rests ultimately with her white teachers," (p. 14).
Conclusions on "the Thucydides Trap"
China's rise: 1. It is both legitimate and inevitable
for China to rise economically.2. The US was founded on the principle of human rights, and also champions it as such around the world. Doesn't each of the 1.4 billion Chinese people have a right to develop themself economically?3. If 1.4 billion Chinese people put into practice what they have learnt from the West in the past 40 years, work as hard as they always do, and keep on learning, it is inevitable that China's economy will eventually overtake that of America - which has a population only 1/5 of China's and, as part of its "decadence" in recent decades, has not invested much in its own citizens' education and learning.
America's fear: 1.
There is no need for Americans to fear China's economic rise. 2. Even if China's economy eventually overtakes America's, the US will still be, by far, the strongest country in the world, in terms of per capita GDP, technological power, and above all, military power. 3. It is also absurd to assume that China has ambitions to "rule the world" by taking over America's nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories around the world. For,
except to settle certain land and maritime border disputes in a reasonable fashion, China, in its cultural genes formed over thousands of years, has never had ambitions to conquer distant lands (see below).
Geography and Thought in the Beginning
Sea versus land: Different worlds, different thinkers
In the 2004 film Troy
adapted from the Iliad, there is an episode, where Achilles came to see his mother for advice on whether he should go to Troy to fight the war and she told him:
"If you stay in Larisa, you will find peace. You will find a wonderful woman. You will have sons and daughters, and they will have children. And they will love you. When you are gone, they will remember you. But when your children are dead and their children after them, your name will be lost. If you go to Troy, glory will be yours. They will write stories about your victories for thousands of years. The world will remember your name. But if you go to Troy, you will never come home. For your glory walks hand in hand with your doom. And I shall never see you again."
Achilles, of course, went to the war. But as his mother made clear, there was the second, alternative path for Achilles: staying in his homeland, having a family, and living a peaceful life. What she did not know, though, was that this path was what the ancient Chinese had been inspired to choose.
The Iliad:Glorifying war
The 《尚书》:Valuing harmony
Open the 15,000-line epic poem
Iliad
at random, chances are you will come upon the fighting of heroes. Often, it depicts the horrors of battle in great detail, perhaps even gleefully:
“He fell on his back in the dust, stretching out his hands towards his comrades, gasping. The man who had hit him, Peiros, ran up and struck him with a spear near his navel. Out poured all his guts onto the ground, and darkness came over his eyes.”
In fact, the central theme of the Iliad
is
the glorification of war.
War was something young men had to do as descendents of their family. They fought because their fathers fought and their children will fight as they have fought, like Hector and Andromache wish for their son Astyanax. Fighting also had its place in religion, with war being the method to be in a god’s presence, to interact with gods personally, to win their favour or, in Diomedes’ case, who himself is just a mortal, to even fight them. Warriors are “servants of the War-god Ares,” and battle is depicted as “the War-god’s deadly dance.”
War booty is constantly mentioned, and it is the cause of Achilles’ absence from the battlefield. Soldiers seem to have plenty of women at their hands, their cups filled with wine that is in constant supply to the army and feasts celebrated on a daily basis as oxen are sacrificed to the deities. Above all,
battle is the place “where men win glory,” with the ultimate ambition being
kleos,
fame that stays with you after death. Achilles shows bravery by going to war and killing Hector, although he knows this will inevitably result in his own death.
Composed around 700 BC, the
Iliad was to influence and inspire generation after generation of Westerners—from ancient Greeks and Romans to modern Europeans and Americans. Even today, the story of the
Trojan War is still one of the first and favourite stories Western children learn to read.
In fact, the central theme of the Iliad
is
the glorification of war.
War was something young men had to do as descendents of their family. They fought because their fathers fought and their children will fight as they have fought, like Hector and Andromache wish for their son Astyanax. Fighting also had its place in religion, with war being the method to be in a god’s presence, to interact with gods personally, to win their favour or, in Diomedes’ case, who himself is just a mortal, to even fight them. Warriors are “servants of the War-god Ares,” and battle is depicted as “the War-god’s deadly dance.”
War booty is constantly mentioned, and it is the cause of Achilles’ absence from the battlefield. Soldiers seem to have plenty of women at their hands, their cups filled with wine that is in constant supply to the army and feasts celebrated on a daily basis as oxen are sacrificed to the deities. Above all,
battle is the place “where men win glory,” with the ultimate ambition being
kleos,
fame that stays with you after death. Achilles shows bravery by going to war and killing Hector, although he knows this will inevitably result in his own death.
Composed around 700 BC, the
Iliad was to influence and inspire generation after generation of Westerners—from ancient Greeks and Romans to modern Europeans and Americans. Even today, the story of the
Trojan War is still one of the first and favourite stories Western children learn to read.
By contrast, in China, one of the first and favourite stories children learn to read (and recite) is “Yu the Great Taming the Waters”
(大禹治水, dayu zhishui).
It tells of ancient China being ravaged by a flood from the Yellow River. Yu's father, after being appointed by the emperor to tackle the problem, failed miserably because he tried to build higher banks to contain the waters. Learning from his father's lesson, Yu instead led the flood waters into the sea by removing obstacles to it, which he achieved by dividing the country into nine prefectures and delegating specific responsibilities to them. And in carrying out his task in thirteen years, he passed his home three times but never went in to greet his wife and children. In the end, the flood waters were tamed, agricultural fields expanded, and people all over the country could again live a peaceful life.
The story is told in the Shang Shu
(尚书, “the Book of Documents”), China’s earliest narrative. The book begins with Yao who became emperor at the age of twenty and was extolled as the morally perfect sage-king because of his human-heartedness and diligence. In his old age, he realised that his own son was not good enough to succeed him and therefore looked around for the best man available.
He was recommended a humble bachelor named Shun. Shun’s father was stupid; his stepmother deceitful; and his half-brother arrogant. Yet he lived in harmony with all of them.
On the strength of this recommendation, Yao gave Shun two of his daughters in marriage to observe his behaviour. Impressed by his virtue, Yao passed the throne to Shun and, before he died, told Shun “to impartially adhere to the middle way”
(允执厥中,
yun zhi jue zhong). During his reign, impressed by Yu’s qualities, including his success in taming the flood waters, Shun decided to pass the throne to Yu and, before his death, told Yu the yun zhi jue zhong.
It tells of ancient China being ravaged by a flood from the Yellow River. Yu's father, after being appointed by the emperor to tackle the problem, failed miserably because he tried to build higher banks to contain the waters. Learning from his father's lesson, Yu instead led the flood waters into the sea by removing obstacles to it, which he achieved by dividing the country into nine prefectures and delegating specific responsibilities to them. And in carrying out his task in thirteen years, he passed his home three times but never went in to greet his wife and children. In the end, the flood waters were tamed, agricultural fields expanded, and people all over the country could again live a peaceful life.
The story is told in the Shang Shu
(尚书, “the Book of Documents”), China’s earliest narrative. The book begins with Yao who became emperor at the age of twenty and was extolled as the morally perfect sage-king because of his human-heartedness and diligence. In his old age, he realised that his own son was not good enough to succeed him and therefore looked around for the best man available.
He was recommended a humble bachelor named Shun. Shun’s father was stupid; his stepmother deceitful; and his half-brother arrogant. Yet he lived in harmony with all of them.
On the strength of this recommendation, Yao gave Shun two of his daughters in marriage to observe his behaviour. Impressed by his virtue, Yao passed the throne to Shun and, before he died, told Shun “to impartially adhere to the middle way”
(允执厥中,
yun zhi jue zhong). During his reign, impressed by Yu’s qualities, including his success in taming the flood waters, Shun decided to pass the throne to Yu and, before his death, told Yu the yun zhi jue zhong.
What is "the middle way"?
"Middle" (中,
zhong) is to remain serene before the stirrings of joy, anger, sorrow or pleasure; "Harmony" (和,
he) is to express the emotions in proportion to the circumstance.
Thus, "Middle" is the great foundation for all under heaven; "Harmony" is the grand path for all under heaven. When "Middle" and "Harmony" are attained, Heaven and Earth will be at rest and all things will be nourished and will grow.
- Confucius, 500 BC
What is "all under heaven"?
"China is a continental country. To the ancient Chinese, their land was the world." And they have used expressions, such as "all under heaven" (i.e. "all beneath the sky") and "all within the four seas" to denote their world, i.e. their land.
"From the time of Confucius until the end of the 19th century, no Chinese thinkers had the experience of venturing out upon the high seas."
- Fung Yu-lan, A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, p. 16.
The mother of all misunderstandings about China
China = "the Middle Kingdom" = "the Centre of the World" = the Ambition to "Rule the World"
If the Chinese did not like war, why did they write The Art of War?
If you actually read The Art of War, you will find that the book is not about fighting and death. Instead, it stresses the evils of war and its great drain on the people so that the major aim in war is not the physical destruction of the enemy through massive bloodletting, but victory without engagement:
"Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting. The highest form of warfare is to attack the enemy’s strategy; the next, to attack its alliances; the next, to attack its armies; the lowest form of war is to attack cities. Siege warfare is a last resort… The skilled strategist defeats the enemy without doing battle, captures the city without laying siege, and overthrows the enemy state without protracted war."
In essence, contrary to the Iliad, the Art of War
is about life.
“A ruler must never mobilise his men out of anger; a general must never engage in battle out of spite,”
says Sun Tzu because of the destruction war can bring about:
"Anger can turn to pleasure; spite can turn to joy. But a nation destroyed cannot be put back together again; a dead man cannot be brought back to life."
How different are the above words from the ancient Greek inspiration to stare death in the face every day!
Guided by Abstraction versus Living from Intuition
"For more than four thousand years the Chinese have lived in the same area," said John K. Fairbank
Both Alexander the Great and the First Emperor conquered a world, but why is Alexander the Great the most well-known hero in the West while the Chinese people have only regarded the First Emperor as a villain?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great is the most well-known hero in the Western world. Even in North America, which Alexander did not conquer, there are nearly two dozen cities and towns named Alexander or Alexandria. By the time of his death in 323 BC, at the age of thirty-two, Alexander had travelled to the furthest reaches of the known world (across 22,000 miles or across America eight times from Alexandria, Virginia to Alexander Beach, Washington) and conquered an empire of more than two million square miles that stretched all the way from the River Danube in Europe to the Indus of what is now Pakistan. He had led his army across mountains, deserts, rivers and seas, and he had won victory after victory against impossible odds. And he did all this in little more than ten years!
It is therefore easy to see why he soon picked up the nickname by which he is still known today: “Mega-Alexandros”, which is Greek for “Alexander the Great”.
The First Emperor
The “First Emperor” (Shi Huangdi) was the title chosen by the thirty-eight-year-old ruler of the Qin state after he, in a sudden hectic decade, led his state to annex one by one its six remaining rival states, ending the Warring States period and uniting China as one single country in 221 BC. With a population of twenty-one million, the empire of the First Emperor covered an area of one and a half million square miles, extending for a thousand miles westward of the pacific shore and from the deserts of the north to the lush lands south of the Yangtze River.
To defend against the invasion of nomads from the north, the First Emperor decided to incorporate a number of walls already existent along some of the former states’ northern frontiers in one continuous bulwark. Accomplished in little over ten years—just before he died in 210 BC, the end result was the Great Wall, a prodigious feast, over 2,500 miles long, across mountains and semi-desert.
Given the First Emperor’s parallel so far with Alexander the Great, you may be tempted to think that the people of China must have regarded him as a hero. But the exact opposite has been true: there has been a heroine, a steadfast young lady called Meng Jiangnu (孟姜女), associated with the Great Wall. The story goes:
"Soon after their marriage, Meng Jiangnu’s husband was confiscated to work on building the Great Wall, and the couple lost contact with each other for nearly a year. When winter came, she was worried that her husband might not be wearing enough clothing. So she made winter clothing and decided to take it to him. It was a very long journey, and she had to endure danger and countless hardships. But when she reached the Great Wall, she was told that her husband had already died of hunger and exhaustion and had been buried under the Great Wall. She cried and cried bitterly for days. And while she wept, sections of the Great Wall suddenly collapsed and her husband’s bones appeared amidst the rubble.
News of the collapse then reached the First Emperor who was on an inspection tour of the Great Wall. Attracted by the beauty of Meng Jiangnu, however, the Emperor asked her to become a concubine of his. She said that she would agree only if the Emperor held a proper funeral for her husband. At the end of the funeral, she told the Emperor: “You are a cruel tyrant to the people. Now that you have murdered my husband, how dare you ask me to become a concubine of yours?” She then held her husband’s bones in her arms and jumped into the sea."
Today, we find the Temple of Meng Jiangnu on a little mountain called Fenghuang Shan, four miles east of Shanhaiguan Pass at the very eastern end of the Great Wall. Inside the front hall, we find a coloured sculpture featuring Meng Jiangnu, with her expression revealing her grief and indignation and two maidens standing by her sides. On the two pillars by their sides, there is a couplet:
“How can the Qin First Emperor rest in peace while the construction of the Great Wall has produced such grievances? Meng Jiangnu is not dead because her loyalty bas been engraved on every stone through the ages.” Above her sculpture, there is a plaque, inscribed with four Chinese characters, wan gu liu fang, meaning
“an eternal good name”.
Although only a legend, people have admired Meng Jiangnu’s love for her husband and her rebellious spirit through the ages. The Temple of Meng Jiangnu at Shanhaiguan Pass had been built before the Song dynasty and repaired in the Ming dynasty. The walls inside the front hall are inscribed with poetry, letters, and calligraphy, including words of commemoration by Qing emperors Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang. Many temples in the name of Meng Jiangnu also exist in other parts of the country, and she has been remembered in poetry, folk songs, and plays. Even the story itself has evolved; Wilt L. Idema’s timely book Meng Jiangnu Brings down the Great Wall
brings together ten versions of this most popular Chinese legend.
Why had the Qin ruler been able to unite China but unable to become a hero of the people?
This is most thoroughly explained in an essay entitled 过秦论 ("On the Failings of the Qin"). A classic to this present day, the essay was written by scholar-official Jia Yi in the early days of the Han dynasty (206 BC - AD 220), which succeeded the Qin dynasty established by the First Emperor.
By looking at the rise and fall of the Qin over a space of some one hundred years, Jia Yi identified
the perils of the ruler having blind faith in the use of force to achieve personal ambitions while ignoring the people’s wishes for peace and stability, with 仁义不施而攻守之势异也 (“the situation has changed from conquering to governing but benevolence and righteousness are not exercised”) becoming the most important motto for any ruler throughout the 2,500-year Chinese history.
The Han dynasty has often been compared to the Roman Empire, but the contrast between the two societies cannot be starker.
The Colosseum in Rome
The Zhaojun Tomb, Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China
The Han dynasty was contemporaneous with the Roman Empire and has often been compared to it. For example, the
Cambridge Illustrated History of China says: "Han and Rome both had strong governments that expanded geographically, promoted assimilation, and brought centuries of stability to the central regions. Both managed to deal with enormous problems of scale, ruling roughly similar numbers of people over roughly similar expanses of land. Both developed bureaucratic institutions, staffing them with educated landowners. Both invested in the construction of roads, defensive walls, and waterworks. Both were threatened by barbarians at their frontiers and often used barbarian tribal units as military auxiliaries."
Yet,
“Roman society and culture were always militaristic,” says renowned historian J M Roberts, with
the omnipresence of the amphitheatre being “a standing reminder of the brutality and coarseness of which Roman society was capable.” From the time of Augustus, the army was a regular long-service force, where the ordinary legionary served for twenty years, four in reserve, and he more and more came from the provinces as time went by. ForRome became a self-perpetuating military machine: through treaties that gave a share of all war gains to her defeated or allied cities or communities, Rome had a huge supply of troops for its army.
More conquests gave more troops, which gave more ability to conquer, expanding Roman rule from a small city in central Italy to an empire extending from Armenia and Mesopotamia in the east to the Iberian Peninsula in the west, and from the Rhine, Danube, and British Isles in the north to Egypt and provinces on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. Although trade and roads helped to draw most of Europe into a single empire, “it was in the camps of the legions that the heart of the empire lay,” with the expansion of Rome and her allies being likened to “a criminal gang: as long as the gang keeps stealing, everyone gets a share in the takings; but stop and the gang falls apart.”
The Han Dynasty
Despite the Great Wall, the Chinese were always under the aggressive attacks of the Xiongnu from the north, as vividly described by Sima Qian in the Shiji
(“Historical Records”), a work written about a hundred years after the construction of the Great Wall:
Everything about them seemed to be the opposite of the Chinese: they had no written language, family names, or respect for the elderly; they had no cities, permanent dwellings, or agriculture. Where the Xiongnu excelled was in warfare, for their men could all ride and shoot and would raid without hesitation: “When they see the enemy, eager for booty, they swoop down like a flock of birds.”
In the winter of 200 BC, the Han founding emperor Gaodi led an army to expel the Xiongnu but ended up being outnumbered and surrounded by the latter at Baideng, a place near today’s Datong, Shanxi province. The siege was only relieved seven days later after messengers were sent to bribe the wife of the Xiongnu leader Maodun Chanyu. Realising that the Han was not strong enough to confront the Xiongnu, Emperor Gaodi then embarked on a policy of “peace through marriage” (和亲, heqin), which involved sending a princess to marry the Xiongnu leader (sounds a mad idea after the Baideng escape) and giving him massive gifts of silk, grain, cash and other foodstuffs each year.
This conciliatory policy would stay in place for the next seventy years, but the peace secured was an uneasy one. Periodic humiliation of appeasement and gifting aside, the Han borders were still frequented by Xiongnu raids. In 166 BC during Emperor Wendi’s reign, 100,000 Xiongnu rough-riders reached a point less than one hundred miles from his capital, Changan. It was only after the accession of Emperor Wudi in 141 BC that other approaches were explored.
Above all, the plain failures of the conciliatory policy prompted Emperor Wudi to decide to take the offensive. Fortunately for him, the Han had by then had sufficient economic recovery. Not only was he able to appoint younger generals, such as Wei Qin and later Wei Qin’s nephew Huo Qubin, to recruit and train up soldiers, the Han also had an ample supply of warhorses for cavalry. In 127 BC, Wei Qin retook the fertile Hetao region (i.e. the Ordos Loop—the characteristic “n” shape that the Yellow River takes round the city of Ordos in Inner Mongolia, which forms parts of modern Shaanxi, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia) from the Xiongnu. Six years later, nineteen-year-old Huo Qubin expelled the Xiongnu from the Hexi Corridor, a long thin tongue of land above the Tibetan Plateau and below the Gobi Desert, with four commanderies established corresponding to modern Wuwei, Zhangye, Jiuquan and Dunhuang of Gansu province.
During 115–60 BC, the Han and the Xiongnu competed for influence beyond Dunhuang, over the Tarim Basin oasis states (modern Xinjiang) as the Xiongnu had used them as a source of supplies since the Han-Xiongnu war began. In the end, the Han brought most of these small oasis states into tributary submission and established the Protectorate of the Western Regions in 60 BC to deal with the region’s affairs. To flank the Xiongnu on their eastern border, Emperor Wudi also sent troops into northern Korea and established commanderies there. Meanwhile, in the south, Emperor Wudi reacted to border encroachments by sending out troops from 111 to 109 BC, and eventually turned the small kingdoms of Minyue (modern Fijian), Nanyue (modern Guangdong, Guangxi and North Vietnam) and Dian (modern Yunnan) into tributary states—thereby expanding the sphere of Chinese influence to the coastline for the first time.
Although the tribute system enabled the Han to secure peace with neighbouring states, Emperor Wudi’s large military campaigns had exhausted the national treasury and left his people poor—also reasons why he was “often accused of Legalist tendencies.” Poverty turned his people into bandits and thieves that ran rampant all over his empire. Late in his reign, Emperor Wudi began to regret the offensive approach he had taken towards border incursions. Perhaps most down-heartedly, despite earlier successes, Han campaign against the Xiongnu in Wuyuan (present Wuyuan County, Inner Mongolia) in 90 BC ended in disaster: not only was the Han army defeated, its commander Li Guangli even surrendered to the Xiongnu altogether.
Thus, when Sang Hongyang (the official in charge of finance) proposed in 89 BC that the Han should send soldiers to settle in Luntai of the Western Regions by engaging in both agriculture and defence, Emperor Wudi rejected it by issuing what is known to history as the "Repentance Edict of Luntai" (轮台罪已诏). “Only recently, somebody proposed that we raised an additional daily poll tax by 30 qian to be used for defending the frontiers. But this is to make the life of the old, the vulnerable, the lone and the orphan miserable,” the Edict states. “Now, it is proposed that we settle soldiers in Luntai, which is over a thousand li to the west of Cheshi. In our attack on Cheshi a while ago, although we won, thousands of our soldiers died as a result of the lack of food supply over the long distance.
I could not bear to think of somewhere even further west!” He went on to say in the Edict:
The most urgent thing for now is to forbid tax increases, return to the root occupation that is agriculture, and reward horse-raising only to compensate the losses in horses—enough to defend against raids by the Xiongnu. … Since accession to the throne, I have done much that is arrogant, causing misery and suffering to the country (天下, tianxia)—which I now profoundly regret. From now on, if anything causes suffering to the people or exhausts the resources of the country, we should not do it!
With Tian Qianqiu, who was in favour of resting the troops and the people and promoting agriculture, appointed as the new Chancellor-in-chief, and upon his recommendation, several agricultural experts made important members of the administration, this then was the turning point for the Han:
Emperor Wudi “committed the errors that had led to the fall of the Qin, but avoided the disastrous fall of the Qin.”
Emperor Wudi died two years later, but his successors maintained these policies. Inevitably, these policies (and the internal chaos caused by usurper Wang Mang) would encourage the Xiongnu to return so that by the second half of the first century, most states in the Tarim became allies of the Xiongnu again, and with their help, the Xiongnu began to raid the Hexi Corridor. It was in this context that there emerged Ban Chao (班超) from a historian’s family, who tired of literary pursuits and vowed to retake control of the Tarim. Chinese historical book records the following words of his: “A brave man has no other plan but to follow Fu Jiezi and Zhang Qian’s footsteps and do something and become somebody in a foreign land. How can I waste my life on writing?”
In 73, at the age of 41, he was dispatched with a small force. By playing on the internal dissensions among the states, he somehow succeeded, and soon turned them into tribute states again. In 91, he was made Protector General of the Western Regions, and did not return home until shortly before his death in 102. (It was also from the Tarim that in 97 he sent Gan Ying (甘英) as an emissary to Da Qin—presumably the Roman Empire. But after reaching the shores of the Persian Gulf and hearing scary tales about the sea, he abandoned his mission and returned to China, reporting that “the sea water is salty and cannot be consumed.”)
The story of Ban Chao would later only be remembered as “throw away your writing brush and join the military” while Fu Jiezi (who single-handedly killed the king of a small state in the Tarim in 77 BC to avenge his killing of a Chinese envoy under the influence of the Xiongnu) was to remain mostly obscure. They would, of course, have become celebrated heroes in the Western tradition, but just like the story of the legendary Meng Jiangnu, it was the story of another heroine that was to become part of the Chinese psyche: Wang Zhaojun (王昭君), one of the four China’s ancient beauties.
In 33 BC, when a Xiongnu Chanyu requested to become an imperial son-in-law to cement the relations of Han and his Xiongnu state, the emperor granted his request. However, unwilling to honour the Chanyu with his only daughter, the emperor asked for volunteers from his harem and promised to present her as his own daughter. Knowing that she would be wandering on the steppes, sharing a felt tent with her wild chieftain and drinking the hated fermented mare’s milk, Wang Zhaojun volunteered to go. During her life, she gave birth to a boy for the Xiongnu Chanyu and, following the local tradition, to two girls for his successor, and also taught the local people how to weave and farm. She became a very beloved in the Xiongnu and secured peace for the region for over sixty years.
After her death, she was buried by the Dahei River nine kilometres south of Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, and today the Zhaojun Museum has been built around her tomb, which has been nicknamed “Green Mound”, referring to a phenomenon that in autumn, when grass and trees wither, those plants on the cemetery mound continue to prosper. On the top of the 33-metre mound, there is a small pavilion, within which we find a stele, with one side being inscribed with a portrait of hers and the other side with the words “Great Virtue” (大德, dade). In addition to the world’s only museum of Xiongnu culture, we also find, shortly after entering the Zhaojun Museum, a monument inscribed with a poem of the late deputy president of China Dong Biwu, written in 1963:
The name of Zhaojun has been known for a thousand years,
Peace-through-kinship between the Xiongnu and Han was high wisdom.
So many poets have expressed their own sentiments through Zhaojun,
But no amount of writings can express the true spirit of her story.
Indeed, beginning from poet Shi Chong in the third century, some 700 poems and 40 plays and folklores have been written by more than 500 famous writers to celebrate Wang Zhaojun. Some poems are written to describe her emotional struggling, while others focus on her physical beauty. But the poem by Tang poet Zhang Zhongsu in the late eighth century beautifully captures the peaceful scene in the border region rendered by her marriage:
The angel is married today;
The Xiongnu becomes peaceful.
Metal weapons are turned into ploughs;
The grassland is covered by countless cows and sheep.
In 1961, after visiting the tomb, the late modern historian Jian Bozan wrote a poem to celebrate the spirit of goodwill to bridge different cultures, even at the expense of one’s own interests, as embodied by Wang Zhaojun:
The achievement of Han Wudi had entered the history book,
But it owed to beacon fires along the ten-thousand-li Great Wall.
Thus, how could it compare to the music produced by the lute?
For no whistling arrows had since been heard of for fifty years!
What a contrast if we now look at the Western tradition: the Trojan War was fought because of the beauty of Helen!
Medieval Europe was the product of conquest, colonisation and Christianisation, while the Chinese, captive, took the victors captive.
The most famous piece of calligraphy in Chinese history by far is the Record of Orchid Pavilion Gathering, written by Wang Xizhi in 353 (see right). He has been regarded as the "sage of Calligraphy".
Part of its fame is based on the story of how nearly three centuries later it got into the hands of the Tang emperor Taizong, one of the greatest rulers in China history.
Upon getting it, Taizong had many copies of Wang Xizhi's caligraphy made, but the original, we are told, he treasured so much that he had it interred with him in his grave.
The most famous piece of calligraphy in Chinese history by far is the Record of Orchid Pavilion Gathering, written by Wang Xizhi in 353 (see right). He has been regarded as the "sage of Calligraphy".
Part of its fame is based on the story of how nearly three centuries later it got into the hands of the Tang emperor Taizong, one of the greatest rulers in China history.
Upon getting it, Taizong had many copies of Wang Xizhi's caligraphy made, but the original, we are told, he treasured so much that he had it interred with him in his grave.
Europe: The Power of the Sword
Jesus (Matthew
10:34-39)
"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.
Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it."
The Process of Conquest, Colonisation and Christianisation
“Christianity is the only major religion to have as its central event the suffering and degradation of its god,” says Bamber Gascoigne on a 1977 Granada television series on the history of Christianity. It was after the Resurrection—and because of it— that the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth came to believe that he was the Son of God. “Whether they were right or wrong is a matter of opinion; something that you can no more prove than disprove.” All that matters, in terms of history, is that those first Christians believed that Jesus was God and that those who dedicate their lives to him could experience his supernatural power and eternal life.
Thousands of early Christians died for their new religious belief as they refused to attend the public ritual of making sacrifices to Roman gods (including the emperor)—the official religion for the sake of good luck. Yet, the public executions seemed to have reinforced the faith within the Christian community and stimulated curiosity and admiration among pagan onlookers. “If the Resurrection had been a fiction, the argument ran, the apostles would not have risked their lives for it,” said Henry Chadwick in his classic work The Early Church. As a result, Christianity had spread widely not only in towns but also in the countryside.
Still, it was due to the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine during his campaign against the invading barbarians, i.e. the Franks, near Autun in 311 that Christianity turned the crucial corner from heresy to orthodoxy. Before the battle, he allegedly saw a vision of a cross of light in the sky bearing the inscription, BY THIS SIGN THOU SHALT CONQUER, and immediately swore to worship the god of the Christians. Constantine duly won the battle on the occasion. Since 324, all Roman emperors, except Julian for three years, had been Christian.
Although women were among the first to be attracted to Christianity due to greater opportunities for community and welfare support, the means by which Christianity spread across Europe was generally “top-down”. When a non-Christian ruler was converted, he would be baptised along with his household and subjects. Clovis, king of the Franks, having married to a Christian Burgundian princess, on the eve of a battle promised that he would be converted if his wife’s God gave him victory. As a result, on Christmas Day, 496, he was baptised at Rheims, along with some 3,000 of his warriors. In much the same way, Christianity got established in England in 597.
By 1300, through conquest, marriage and colonisation, Frankish nobles had been established as the lords and power-brokers of practically every kingdom in Europe. The most enduring resistance was among the west Slav peoples of Poland and the eastern Baltic, but with the Lithuanian monarchy converting in 1386 in exchange for the Polish crown, the whole of Europe, with the exception of Granada in southern Spain, was finally brought into the Christian church.
But the spirit of the Latin-Frankish expansion is best expressed in the Crusades that began in 1095. The Crusader armies were a polyglot of nationalities and languages, but they were all led by families descended from Frankish nobility and thought of themselves as one people united in blood and religion. Like the Greeks and Romans, these Frankish leaders believed in the glory of war: “they did not stand on a hill and direct their men into battle; they strapped in their armour and led the charge.” Yet, Christianity also added a moral dimension to the idea of the glory of war.
“We shall slay for God’s love,” said one popular slogan of the crusaders.
Every death, on either side, would please God, as expressed by St Bernard of Clairvaux who stormed around preaching a crusade to the east, and became the most influential monk in the entire medieval period: “A Christian glories in the death of a Muslim because Christ is glorified. The liberality of God is revealed in the death of a Christian because he is led out to his reward.” In case any Christian wondered what the “reward” would be, Bernard spelt it out with the following powerful words in 1128:
"Rejoice, brave warrior, if you live and conquer in the Lord, but rejoice still more and give thanks if you die and go to join the Lord. This life can be fruitful and victory is glorious yet a holy death for righteousness is worth more. Certainly ‘blessed are they who die in the Lord’ but how much more so are those who die for Him."
In the Iberian peninsular, the clash of arms between Christians and Muslims that began in the early eighth century was transformed into a crusade as successive popes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries accorded to Christian warriors willing to participate in the peninsular wars against Islam the same crusading benefits offered to those going to the Holy Land. But it was not until the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella that Christian Spain found a new unity, leading to the Christian conquest of Granada in 1492.
Almost instantly, the same process began to be extended to the rest of the world. Later in that year of 1492, Columbus set sail westward in the service of Ferdinan and Isabella, not only to find a shorter trade route to the far East or lands rich in gold, but to convert more infidels for Christ. “It would be a new crusade, along the same old lines—with that well-tried and powerful blend of courage, cruelty, idealism and greed,” said Gascoigne on his TV programme The Christians.
China: The Power of the Brush
Mencius
King Hui of Liang: 'How may the world be at peace?'
Mencius: 'When there is unity, there will be peace.'
King Hui of Liang: 'But who can unify the world?'
Mencius: 'He who does not delight in killing men can unify it.'
(Mencius, Ia, 6)
"Treat the aged in your family as they should be treated, and extend this treatment to the aged of other people's families. Treat the young in your family as they should be treated, and extend this treatment to the young of other people's families."
(Mencius, Ia, 7)
The Cycle of Unity-Disunity-Unity
It is amazing to think that Wang Xizhi's calligraphy not only represented the highest level in the art of writing with a brush but also is readily readable today to educated Chinese, while the modern form of English writing did not occur until a thousand years later. Even then, few English people today can read the writing of Geoffrey Chaucer, the "father of English literature".
The age Wang Xizhi lived in was already one of disunity, following the 400-year-unity achieved by the Han. According to Mencius, if a ruler lacks the ethical qualities that make a good leader, the people have the moral right of revolution. In practical terms, a new dynasty began with a clean slate. It had few commitments, and its prestige or strength was sufficient for it to gather more than adequate funds for its immediate needs. With the passage of time the imperial family grew larger and greedier, the official classes became used to luxury. Ever-increasing demands fell, ultimately, on the one group of people without influence, the peasants. When the system had deteriorated so far as to be intolerable, the peasants finally rose in rebellion.
Yet, given the perpetual threat from beyond China's northern frontier, peasant rebellions were almost always an invitation for invasions by the nomadic tribes. In 316, a great invasion of the nomadic peoples swept into China, causing the unstable Chinese court that emerged after the Han to flee south, so that from 316 to 589, while Chinese dynasties ruled at Nanjing over the south, the north was divided between the barbarian states - called the Sixteen Kingdoms - founded by the invading nomadic peoples.
Since these barbarian states were established on the principle of the tribal confederation, in which a supreme chief exerted authority through success in battle and the booty that he distributed to his followers, members of diverse tribes or lineages followed whoever was militarily successful so that any serious defeat or the death of the chief led to a rapid collapse. As such, none of them was capable of uniting the north, let alone conquer the south - despite the latter's lack of a strong army.
Although the period has been called the "Age of Confusion", there was one certainty: the art of Chinese writing and Chinese literature not only flourished but also acquired new forms. This was natural in the south, but in the north, the Chinese language did not die out, or become transformed, as happened to Latin, but continued very little affected by the languages of the invaders. This was undoubtedly because the north of China was the most populous area, had the oldest tradition of civilisation, and was the real stronghold of Chinese culture at that time.
The barbarians were unable to change this, unlike the western European barbarian invaders who changed the languages and character of the old western Roman provinces. On the contrary, the overwhelming Chinese majority absorbed the invaders and soon taught them Chinese ways and converted them into Chinese. As soon as this transformation had reached the point where there remained no obvious difference between a man of nomadic ancestry and one whose descent was from pure Chinese, the last reasons for separation disappeared. Thus, in 589, the new Sui dynasty reestablished the united empire.
Like the Qin, the Sui was short-lived because of the border wars launched by Wendi's second son, Yangdi. Replacing the Sui dynasty was the Tang dynasty, which was established by the Li family. Although Chinese on the father's side, the Li family had intermarried with the noble families of Tartar ancestry. As such, early Tang emperors, in particular, Taizong , succeeded in not only regaining the Tarim basin but also in pushing beyond Pamirs .
But for more than 600 years, the Tang and the succeeding dynasty Song would be renowned for fully developing the power of the brush. Famous for his enlightened government, Tang Taizong was also a great patron of literature, personally editing the histories of the previous age of division, establishing schools and the imperial academy. His calligraphy, an art much admired in China, is still reproduced as the model for school children.
The founder of the Song deliberately fostered the idea of a civil service based on talent alone so that in the early Song period all the best writers of either prose or poetry, with at the very most three exceptions, held senior posts in the administration. Su Dongpo, for example, can be taken as typical of the best elements of the Song dynasty. He was a fully rounded gentleman proficient in all the arts, When in office, he was fearless in speaking his opinion.
The concentration on the brush inevitably led to a situation, whereby the profession of solider had become despised and was to remain so for many centuries. Despite resisting the constant attacks from the Khitens and Jurchens from the north ever since its founding in 907, the Song was conquered by the Mongols in 1279.
Yet, the years of barbarian occupation had made little lasting difference to China. Confucianism had been made more rather than less attractive by those ninety years in the wilderness. The seizing the throne by a Chinese peasant in 1368 was in itself a pleasant echo of the founding of that most spectacular of the early dynasties, the Han.
Early Ming China's ships were by far the most advanced in the world, but why didn't the Chinese conquer Europe? Instead, Europeans conquered America.
Named after the “greatest explorer” of the Arab
world,
the
Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai is dubbed “the world’s largest themed shopping mall”. The single level mall is divided into six zones, each reflecting the architecture of the regions that Ibn Battuta visited.
In the China Court, there
is a display, on the right, that suggests the relative sizes of Admiral Zheng He’s “treasure ships”
of the early 15th century and Columbus’ flagship, the Santa Maria—representative
of the ships used in Portuguese and Spanish maritime voyages later in the
century.
In the China Court, there
is a display, on the right, that suggests the relative sizes of Admiral Zheng He’s “treasure ships”
of the early 15th century and Columbus’ flagship, the Santa Maria—representative
of the ships used in Portuguese and Spanish maritime voyages later in the
century.
Inward-looking Ming China
Zheng He's Voyages
Of all the civilisations of premodern times, none appeared more advanced, none felt more superior, than that of China. Consider just two facts: Its considerable population, 100-130 million compared with Europe's 50-55 million in the fifteenth century; and its greatest seagoing fleet in the world
- in 1420, the Ming navy was recorded as possessing 1,350 combat vessels, including 400 large floating fortresses and 250 ships designed for long-range cruising. (The U.S. Navy today has only 430). Some of them were five times the size of the ships being built in Europe at the time.
To impress Ming power upon the world and show off China's resources and importance, the emperor Yongle sent the Treasure Fleet, under the command of the eunuch admiral Zheng He, on seven epic voyages through out the China seas and Indian Ocean, from Taiwan to the Persian Gulf and distant Africa.
The Treasure Fleet was vast - some vessels were up to 120 metres long. (Christopher Columbus's Santa Maria was only 19 metres.) A Chinese ship might have several decks inside it, up to nine masts, twelve sails, and contain luxurious staterooms and balconies, with a crew of up to 1,500, according to one description. On one journey, 317 of these ships set sail at once.
What then was Zheng He's goal? It was to disseminate the virtues of the Chinese emperor and forge friendships with neighbouring countries - and not to conquer, occupy and colonise them. The fleet carried Chinese silk, porcelain and lacquered goods abroad, and brought home, as tributes to the emperor, spices, herbs, rhinoceros horns, pearls, precious stones and rare woods. It was kind of trade but because the Chinese emperor wanted to show generosity and kindness above all, the expeditions cost the Ming dynasty much more than they brought in.
During the seven expeditions between 1405 and 1433, force was only used three times for three different reasons.
On the first expedition, Zheng He's forces managed to capture Chen Zuyi, a notorious Chinese pirate who had been terrorising the sea routes between the islands of what is now Indonesia. Five thousand pirates were killed in the battle, and Chen Zuyi was taken back to China and beheaded.
On the island of Java and in northern Sumatra, the Chinese accidentally got involved in a local civil war after landing on the shores of a rival tribe. Later, in Ceylon, after a local warrior refused the Zheng He's friendly gesture and sought to plunder his Treasure Fleet, Zheng He managed to seize him and took him back to China, where he was pardoned by the emperor and returned home.
The Aftermath
Three years after the final voyage in 1433, an imperial edict banned the construction of seagoing ships; later still, a specific order forbade the existence of ships with more than two masts. Zheng He's great warships were laid up and rotted away.
The reason for this decision was natural: the threat of the nomads from the north. Apart from the costs involved in maintaining a large navy, the Confucian code dictated that warfare itself was a deplorable activity
and that armed forces were made necessary only by the fear of barbarian attacks or internal revolts. In other words, defence on land was all that was required.
No wonder that by 1644, China was again conquered, this time, by the vigorous Manchus, a nomadic tribe based to the east of the Mongols.
The European Conquest of America
Christopher Columbus' Voyages
"Christopher means 'bearer of Christ', but for millions of American Indians he was the bearer of death,"
says David Reynolds in his bestseller America, Empire of Liberty. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore at the Bahama Islands, the Arawak Indians ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. But what Columbus wanted was one thing:
gold. He sailed to what is now Cuba, then to Hispaniola, where bits of visible gold in the rivers, and a gold mask presented to Columbus by a local Indian chief, led to wild visions of gold fields.
In his report to the Court in Madrid, he asked for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need... and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."
As such, his second expedition was given 17 ships and more than 1,200 men, and the aim was clear: slaves and gold. In 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred dies on route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town. Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."
In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death. As the only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams, they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.
Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armour, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, and infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.
When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labour on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.
The Aftermath
What Columbus did to the Arawaks of the Bahamas, Cortes did to the Aztecs of Mexsco, Pizarro to the Incs of Peru, and the English settlers of Virginia and Massachusetts to the Powhatans and the Pequots.
Upon establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630, governor John Winthrop created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a "vacuum". And to justify their use of force to take the land, the Puritans appealed to the Bible, Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."
Thus began the history of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. Two and a half centuries later, the U.S. was to dominate the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast.
Father Matthew Ricci's observation of Ming China
"Before closing this chapter on Chinese public administration, it would seem to be quite worth while recording a few more things in which this people differ from Europeans. To begin with, it seems to be quite remarkable when we stop to consider it, that in a kingdom of almost limitless expanse and innumerable population, and abounding in copious supplies of every description, though they have a well-equipped army and navy that could easily conquer the neighbouring nations, neither the King nor his people ever think of waging a war of aggression.
They are quite content with what they have and are not ambitious of conquest. In this respect they are much different from the people of Europe, who are frequently discontent with their own governments and covetous of what others enjoy. While the nations of the West seem to be entirely consumed with the idea of supreme domination, they cannot even preserve what their ancestors have bequeathed them, as the Chinese have done through a period of some thousands of years."
China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583 - 1610 (New York: Random House, 1942), pp. 54-55.
"Before closing this chapter on Chinese public administration, it would seem to be quite worth while recording a few more things in which this people differ from Europeans. To begin with, it seems to be quite remarkable when we stop to consider it, that in a kingdom of almost limitless expanse and innumerable population, and abounding in copious supplies of every description, though they have a well-equipped army and navy that could easily conquer the neighbouring nations, neither the King nor his people ever think of waging a war of aggression.
They are quite content with what they have and are not ambitious of conquest. In this respect they are much different from the people of Europe, who are frequently discontent with their own governments and covetous of what others enjoy. While the nations of the West seem to be entirely consumed with the idea of supreme domination, they cannot even preserve what their ancestors have bequeathed them, as the Chinese have done through a period of some thousands of years."
China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci: 1583 - 1610 (New York: Random House, 1942), pp. 54-55.
Newtonian astronomical instruments were "strange objects" in the eyes of Qing emperor Qianlong, China's wisest ruler.No wonder Qing China was conquered by nations of the West in 1900, including the USA.
The Rise and Fall of the Manchus:1640's - 1840's
The Manchus had owed their rise to a system of military organisation called the Eight Banners. Every man was enrolled in a Banner, had the duty ti serve in war and the right to rations from his Banner. This organisation was kept intact after the conquest, and the Bannermen (旗人 in Chinese) became the common name for Manchus. The Bannermen were settled around Beijing to protect the capital, and also in large garrisons, each with its own inner walled city, in principal provincial capitals. They were forbidden to engage in commerce or agriculture, serving purely as military and civil officials. This law was designed to keep them as a reserve military force ready to save the dynasty in case of rebellion.
The first Manchu emperors also undertook extensive wars along the norther frontier, and also to the north-west. Under Kangxi and his two successors, Yongzheng and Qianlong, all Mongolia was reduced to Manchu rule; the great region of Xingjiang, which China had not controlled since Tang times, was conquered and made into a Manchu province; Tibet was invaded and brought under Chinese suzerainty; Korea and Annam (norther Vietnam) were tributaries, as was Burma and even Siam (northern Thailand). Late in the eighteenth century, the armies of Qianlong invaded and conquered Nepal. The Chinese Empire had never been so extensive nor so populous.
Yet, these frontier wars should be seen as a continuation of the Manchus' nomadic martial spirit rather than as something inherent in Chinese cultural tradition. In fact, it was the latter that was to rapidly sinicise the Manchus. Although, to keep their own language alive, the Manchu Emperors wisely established the rule that all official documents had to be written in both languages, inscriptions were in two scripts, in practice, because of their education was centred on Chinese works of history and philosophy, Manchu would soon become virtually a dead language.
Kangxi conciliated the intelligentsia with his genuine love of Chinese literature and the commissioning of vast histories, including the History of the Ming, compilations and dictionaries. Everyday, he read extracts from the Chinese classics, and practised calligraphy and painting. His grandson, Qianlong, kept him as a model: he rose at 6 am, ate at 8 am and 2 pm, each meal only lasting 15 minutes. In the morning Qianlong dealt with official business, in the afternoon he read, painted or wrote verse. He was a good calligrapher and is credited with over 42,000 poems.
With peace established within the region of China itself, and the nomad enemies conquered and pacified, there remained no wars to wage. For nearly a hundred and fifty years, until the end of the eighteenth century, there was practically unbroken peace in the provinces of the Empire, a situation which had not been seen since Tang and Song times. So successful, so powerful at home, so rich and so self-satisfied were the Manchus that when, in 1793, Lord Macartney brought the best England could produce at the time, including Newtonian astronomical instruments and top-end English weapons, to Qianlong, the latter dismissed them by writing to King George III:
"There is nothing we lack... We have never set any value on strange or ingenious objects, nor do we need any more of your country's manufactures..."
However, the perceptive Lord Macartney could see that behind the facade of the magnificent court and the venerable Emperor Qianlong, then in his eighties, there was weakness and decay. Indeed, above all, the army began to decay; for the idle Bannermen, drawing rations, but doing no work, became slothful, useless parasites, who even lost their military skill as a long peace gave them no opportunity to use it. A land people, whose warrior Emperors had experience of war only in the vast inland regions of northern Asia, the Manchus also neglected the sea and its possible dangers.
The European nations seemed far away and in the eighteenth century were preoccupied with their own was and quarrels. Although the British were then conquering India, the Manchus seem to have ignored the implied threat to their own Empire. All these things were to come about within a generation of the death of Qianlong, and his successors were to pay dearly for this failure to move with the times.
Qing China Besieged by Western Nations:1840's - 1890's
"We have the power in our hands, moral, physical, and mechanical; the first, based on the Bible; the second, upon the wonderful adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon race to all climates, situations, and circumstances... the third, bequeathed to us by the immortal Watt. By his invention every river is laid open to us, time and distance are shortened."
Macgregor Laird wrote the above words in 1837, after he led an expedition into the interior of Africa, by the River Niger, in the steam-vessels that his family shipbuilding company Birkenhead had built. Two years later, the company built Nemesis, which was to determine the outcome of the Opium War between Britain and China during 1840-1842. The Nemesis left Portsmouth on 28 March, 1840, and was the first iron ship to round the Cape of Good hope. By the time she reached Macao on 25 November, 1840, the war had been going on, desultorily, for five months. If the tension between China and Britain was commercial in origin, its persistence was a consequence of the state of military technology.
At sea, Britain was invincible and could destroy any Chinese fleet or coastal fort. China, on the other hand, was a land empire with few interests beyond her shores and few cities along her coasts. As long as the Europeans were incapable of pushing their way inland, China was invulnerable. The steamer, with its ability to navigate upriver and attack inland towns, ended the long Anglo-Chinese stalemate. During the British attack on Canton (Guangzhou) in early February 1841, the Nemesis entered the inner passage, a labyrinth of narrow shallow channels that paralleled the main channel of the river, a place where no foreign warship had ever dared venture. While approaching Canton from the rear, she destroyed forts and junks at will and terrorised the inhabitants.
As the British victories in capturing Canton and, subsequently, Xiamen, Dinghai, Jinghai and Ningbo on the east coast in 1841 did not persuade the Chinese to sue peace, the British decided to strike at the Grand Canal - the jugular vein of China - the principal north-south route along which boatloads of rice from Sichuan province were sent to feed the population of Beijing, the capital. In June 1842, the Nemesis , towing the eighteen-gun Modeste, led the British fleet in the Yangtze, firing grape and canister at the Chinese crafts, which fled. The Nemesis and her sister Phlegethon
thereupon chased the fleeing boats, captured one junk and three paddle-wheelers, and set the rest on fire.
In July 1842, the British fleet reached Zhenjiang, at the intersection of the river and the Grand Canal. This time the court at Beijing realised its precarious situation and a few days later sent a mission to Nanjing to sign a peace treaty. Stem had carried British naval might into the very heart of China and led to her defeat.
China's signing of the Treaty of Nanjing with Great Britian in 1842 was, however, only the first of a series of crushing defeats she had suffered at the hands of Western powers:
1856-1860: The Arrow War (or the Second Opium War).
In the mid-1850s, while the Qing government was embroiled in trying to quell the Taiping Rebellion, the British, seeking to extend their trading rights in China, found an excuse (the Chinese boarding of the British-registered ship Arrow) to renew hostilities. The French decided to join the British military expedition, using as their excuse the murder of a French missionary in the interior of China in early 1856.
In October 1860, British and French forces captured Beijing, and plundered and then burned the emperor’s Summer Palace.In an outhouse on the palace grounds, the British found eighteenth-century manufactures in mint condition, including two English-made carriages, astronomical instruments, an English shotgun, and two howitzers engraved with "Woolwich 1782". They had all been gifts for the Qianlong Emperor from King George II, presented by Lord Macartney in 1793.
1884: The Sino-French War.
China was defeated at sea, and the great Fuzhou shipyard, which was built with French aid, was demolished.
1894-1895: The Sino-Japanese War.
China was defeated at sea and on land by Japan, which had newly embraced Western imperialism.
1900: The Boxer Catastrophe.
China was defeated by an Eight-Nation Alliance, including the USA.
The Encounter of Natives and Newcomers: 1640's - 1840's
The land John Winthrop declared as legally a "vacuum" was of course not a vacuum at all. In fact, the European colonisers confronted extensive, complex, and long-established native societies from the very start. The Indians, John Winthrop said, had not "subdued" the land, and therefore had only a "natural" right to it, but not a "civil right". A "natural right" did not have legal standing. The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
The Puritans lived in uneasy truce with the Pequot Indians, who occupied what is now southern Connecticut and Rhode Island. But they wanted them out of the way; they wanted their land. And they seemed to want also to establish their rule firmly over Connecticut settlers in that area. The murder of a white trader, Indian-kidnapper, and troublemaker became an excuse to make war on the Pequots in 1636.
The English developed a tactic of warfare used earlier by Cortes even more systematically: deliberate attacks on noncombatants for the purpose of terrorising the enemy. Francis Jennings described Captain John Mason's attack on a Pequot village on the Mystic River:
"Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same and with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective."
So the English set fire to the wigwams of the village. By their own account: The Captain also said, We must Burn Them; and immediately stepping into the Wigwam... brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwam on Fire." William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation, describes John Mason's raid on the Pequot village:
"Those that scaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatchte, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fryer, and sente there of, but the vicotry seemed a sweete sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie."
As Dr Cotton Mather, Puritan theologian, put it: "It was supposed that no less than 600 Pequot souls were brought down to hell that day." The war continued. Indian tribes were used against one another, and never seemed able to join together in fighting the English. A ffotnote in Virgil Vogel's book The Land Was Ours
(1972) says: "The official figure on the number Pequots now in Connecticut is twenty-one persons."
Forty years after the Pequot War, Puritans and Indians fought again. This time it was the Wampanoags, occupying the south shore of Massachusetts Bay. Their chief, Massasoit, was dead. His son Wamsutta had been killed by Englishmen, and Wamsutta's brother Metacom became chief. The English found their excuse, a murder which they attributed to Metacom, and they began a war of conquest against the Wampanoags, a war to take their land. They were clearly the aggressors, but claimed they attacked for preventive purposes. When it was over, in 1676, the English had won, but they had lost six hundred men. Three thousand Indians were dead, When Metacom was captured, colonists displayed his severed head as a grim trophy of war.
The colonial period, in short, began a tragically persistent pattern of native peoples decimated by conflict, new diseases, and the relentless advance of white settlements. When the English first settled Martha's Vineyard in 1642, the Wampanoags there numbered perhaps three thousand. There were no wars on that island, but by 1764, only 313 Indians were left there. By 1800, the US Indian population stood at about 600,000, a pathetic remnant of the estimated 2.2 million on the eve of European colonisation.
"Manifest Destiny" and US Expansionism:1840's - 1890's
In 1845, as Mexico and the United States disputed their border, John L. O'Sullivan, A New York editor, proclaimed that it was
"America's "manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions".
"Manifest Destiny" was a slogan that captured the public imagination, signifying America's God-given right as the instrument of liberty and progress to occupy all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. As Mexico capitulated, the United States acquired some half-million square miles, including the present states of Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. California, its population swollen by 1848 gold rush, entered the union in 1850. Within a single lieftime, a nation of thirteen states along the Atlantic coast had become a continent power, stretching from ocean to ocean.
With that, the "Manifest Destiny" crowd began to dream of an overseas empire. There was more than thinking: the American armed forces had made forays overseas. A State Department list, "Instance of the Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad 1798-1945" (presented by Secretary of State Dean Rusk to a Senate committee in 1962 to cite precedents for the use of armed force against Cuba), shows 103 interventions in the affairs of other countries between 1798 and 1895. A sampling from the list, with the exact description given by the State Department:
1852-53: Argentina.
Marines were landed and maintained in Buenos Aires to protect American interests during a revolution.
1853: Nicaragua.
To protect American lives and interests during political disturbances.
1853-54: Japan.
The "Opening of Japan" and the Perry Expedition. [The State Department does not give more details, but this involved the use of warships to force Japan to open its ports to the United States.]
1853-54: Ryukyu and Bonin Islands.
Commodore Perry on three visits before going to Japan and while waiting for a reply from Japan made a naval demonstration, landing marines twice, and secured a coaling concession from the ruler of Naha on Okinawa. He also demonstrated in the Bonin Islands. All to secure facilities for commerce.
1854: Nicaragua.
San Juan del Norte [Greytown was destroyed to avenge an insult to the American Minister to Nicaragua.]
1855: Uruguay.
U.S. and European naval forces landed to protect American interests during an attempted revolution in Montevideo.
1859: China.
For the protection of American interests in Shanghai.
1860: Angola,
Portuguese West Africa. To protect American lives and property at Kissembo when the natives became troublesome.
1893: Hawaii.
Ostensibly to protect American lives and property; actually to prompote a provisional government under Sanford B. Dole. This action was disavowed by the United States.
1894: Nicaragua.
To protect American interests at Bluefields following a revolution.
Thus, by the 1890's, there had been much experience in overseas probes and interventions. Calls for empire were echoing through the halls of Washington. "I firmly believe that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary for our defence or essential for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it," said Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut in 1894.
To become a world power, the U.S. built a world-class navy. A gung-ho Theodore Roosevelt was put in charge of it, and he said in 1897 that "I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one." The next year, taking a fancy to several Spanish colonies, including Cuba and the Philippines, the U.S. declared war on Spain. Rebel armies were already fighting for independence in both countries and Spain was on the verge of defeat. Washington declared that it was on the rebels' side and Spain quickly capitulated. But the U.S. soon made it clear that it had no intention of leaving, with Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana declared in 1900:
"The Philippines are ours forever... and just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets... the Pacific is our ocean."
During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the US sent 1,200 marines to China as part of the "China Relief Expedition" from eight Western nations, i.e. Britain (and British India), United States, Australian, Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan.
Perhaps the most ironical way of demonstrating the Chinese's lack of martial spirit is the fact that many Beijing citizens volunteered to assist the forces of the Eight-Nation Alliance in the latter's taking of Beijing City on 14 August, 1900, as vividly shown in this background photo.
America's Addiction to War
Since its founding, the U.S. has been at war with some other country for all but 30 years.
The United States started out as 13 small and vulnerable colonies clinging to the east coast of North America. Over the next century, those original 13 states expanded all the way across the continent, subjugating or exterminating the native population and wresting Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California from Mexico. It fought a bitter civil war, and came late to both world wars. But since becoming a great power around 1900, it has fought nearly a dozen genuine wars and engaged in countless military interventions.
Today, the U.S. maintains the largest and most powerful military in history. U.S. warships dominate the oceans, its missiles and bombers can strike targets on every continent, and hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops are stationed overseas. Every few years the U.S. sends soldiers, warships and warplanes to fight in distant countries.
"Many countries go to war, but the U.S. is unique
in both the size and power
of its military and its propensity to use it."
Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War
by Andrew J. Bacevich
For the last half century, as presidents have come and gone, the basic edifice of U.S. national security policy has remained unchanged:
- A worldwide military presence;
- Armed forces configured not for defence but for global power projection; and
- A penchant for interventionism, whether overt or covert, anywhere at any time.
"Is America Addicted to War?" Foreign Policy, April 4, 2011
by Stephen M. Walt, Professor of International Relations at Harvard University
The top 5 reasons why we keep getting into foolish fights:
1. Because We Can.
"When you've got hundreds of planes, smart bombs, and cruise missiles, the whole world looks like a target set. So when some thorny problem arises somewhere in the world, it's hard to resist the temptation to 'do something!'"
2. The U.S. Has No Serious Enemies.
"Because the American homeland is safe from serious external dangers, Americans have the luxury of going abroad 'in search of monsters to destroy'."
3. The All-Volunteer Force.
"By limiting military service only to those individuals who volunteer to do it, public opposition to wars of choice is more easily contained. Could Bush or Obama have kept the Iraq and Afghanistan wars going if most young Americans had to register for a draft?"
4. It's the Establishment, Stupid.
"Foreign-policy thinking in Washington is dominated either by neoconservatives (who openly proclaim the need to export 'liberty' and never met a war they didn't like) or by 'liberal interventionists' who are just as enthusiastic about using military power to solve problems, provided they can engineer some sort of multilateral cover for it."
5. Congress Has Checked Out.
"The vaunted system of 'checks and balances' supposedly enshrined in our Constitution simply doesn't operate anymore, which means that the use of America's military power has been left solely to the presidents and a handful of ambitious advisers."
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
by Stephen Kinzer
"Regime change" did not began with the administration of George W. Bush but has been an integral part of U.S. foreign policy for more than one hundred years."
Starting with the toppling of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, America has gone through three eras of regime-change:
1. The imperial era, when Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, and Honduras were brought into the U.S. orbit.
2. The Cold War era, when the CIA deposed governments in Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, and Chile.
3. The invasion era, when American troops overthrew governments in Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The American Way of War
by Eugene Jarecki
1. The government jerry-rigs a system that can manufacture any intelligence result
it seeks by cherry picking data.
2. Once a case for war is made, the military-industrial complex
kicks into high gear, making massive preparations, which in turn increase the gravitational pull toward war, essentially making it a self-fulfilling prophecy."
"Strong Borders, Secure Nation"
"China has been more likely to compromise and less likely to use force in its border disputes." - M. Taylor Fravel, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science, and Director of the MIT Security Studies Program
As China emerges as an international economic and military power, concerns that China might be prone to violent conflict over territory are overstated, according to MIT political science professor M. Taylor Fravel.
In the first comprehensive study of China's territorial disputes, Strong Borders, Secure Nation contends that China over the past sixty years has been more likely to compromise
in these conflicts with its Asian neighbours and less likely to use force
than many policy analysts assert, theories of international relations predict, or scholars of China expect.
"China has used force in a minority of its disputes, not to pursue broad expansion but to defend the claims it has maintained since 1949."
"China has used force in a minority of its disputes, not to pursue broad expansion but to defend the claims it has maintained since 1949."
Overview of China's Land Border Disputes (1949-2005)
Disputed area
Size (square km)
Compromise
Use of Force
Burma border
1,909
Y (82%)
-
Nepal border
2,476
Y (94%)
-
India border
~125,000
Y (74%)
Y
North Korea border
1,165
Y (60%)
-
Mongolia border
16,808
Y (65%)
-
Pakistan border
8,806
Y (40%)
-
Afghanistan border
~7,381
Y (100%)
-
Russia border (eastern)
~1,000
Y (48%)
Y
Bhutan border
1,128
Y (76%)
-
Laos border
18
Y (50%)
-
Vietnam border
227
Y (50%)
Y
Russia border (western)
N/A
Y (No data)
-
Kazakhstan border
2,420
Y (66%)
-
Kyrgyzstan border
3,656
Y (68%)
-
Tajikistan border
28,430
Y (96%)
-
Abagaitu and Heixizi along Russian border
480
Y (50%)
-
Adapted from M. Taylor Fravel, Strong Borders, Secure Nation, pp. 46-47. "Compromise" refers to the proportion of disputed territory China relinquished.
The Korea War, 1950
The Background
Since the beginning of the 20th century, Korea had been a part of the Japanese empire. After World War II it was divided in half along the 38th parallel, with the Russians occupying the area north of the line and the United States the area to its south.
By the end of the decade, two new states had formed on the peninsula: in the south, the anti-communist dictator Syngman Rhee; in the north, the communist dictator Kim Il Sung. Neither dictator was content to remain on his side of the 38th parallel, however, and border skirmishes were common.
The War
Phase 1 (25 June - 8 October 1950): China's avoidance to intervene in the Korean War and America's actions to set China as seemingly the final target of its imperial encirclement. The war began at dawn on 25 June 1950 when North Korea launched a large-scale attack on South Korea across the 38th parallel, following a series of clashes along the border. The US reacted promptly, with President Truman ordering US ground forces to join sea and air units in support of South Korea.
At the time, China was primarily concerned about American action in the Taiwan Strait and less interested in the fighting on the Korean peninsula. The Chinese media referred to the Korean war as a "civil war" or "war of national liberation", indicating that the fate of the war remained in the hands of the Korean people.
Despite the U.S. intervention, North Korean troops had been able to make rapid advances, and, by early August, had the American-South Korean forces pinned down in the Pusan perimeter around the southeastern extremity of the peninsula.
Fighting against North Korean forces on the battlefield aside, the US also took actions that suggested that China was the final target of its imperial encirclement. Only two day after the outbreak of the war, Truman ordered the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Taiwan Strait. He also designated Vietnam and the Philippines to receive increased US military aid.
On 1 August, General MacArthur visited Taiwan, kissed Madame Jiang's hand, conferred with Jiang Jieshi, praised him and promised military coordination against China, with three American jet squadrons sent to Taiwan. Naval Secretary Matthews and Major General Anderson also talked about "preventive war", the strategic importance of Taiwan, the desirability of forcible reunification of Korea. This was echoed, on 10 August, by the statement of US delegate Warren Austin before the UN Security Council that the US government had decided to reunify Korea under UN (i.e. U.S.) auspices.
China's growing concern about the war was heightened by US border violations in late August. On 27 and 29 August, US B-29 bombers entered Chinese airspace in the northeast and strafed railway installations and the population. For the first time China lodged strong protests with Secretary of State Acheson and with the Security Council. These protests were followed by nationwide demonstrations against U.S. provocations. Chinese press expressed apprehension that the US might spread the war to China.
China's fear that the war might spread to northeast China was reinforced by the situation on the battlefield in Korea. At the end of August, when the final North Korean offensive to liquidate the American-South Korean defence perimeter at Pusan failed. Two weeks later General MacArthur launched his daring and successful landing at Inchon, and rapidly eroded the resistance of the North Korean forces, while the U.S. Eighth Army drove north from the Pusan perimeter.
On 25 September, three days before the UN forces recaptured Seoul, via Indian Ambassador Panikkar, governor of Beijing sent China's warning signal to the U.S. with the message that China would intervene in the war if U.S. forces crossed the 38th parallel. "The Chinese did not intend to sit back with folded hands and let the Americans come up to their border," Panikkar wrote in his memoir. The governor even spoke of Beijing's calculations of the costs and risks of stopping the Americans:
"We know what we are in for, but at all costs American aggression has to be stopped. The Americans can bomb us, they can destroy our industries, but they cannot defeat us on land... They may even drop atom bombs on us. What then? They may kill a few million people... China lives on the farm. What can atom bombs do there? Yes, our economic development will be put back. We may have to wait for it."
In a formal speech on 30 September, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai pointed out that the Chinese people wanted a peaceful environment for national reconstruction, one free from external threats. But he warned that "if the American aggressors take this as a sign of the weakness of the Chinese people, they will commit the same fatal blunder as the Nationalist reactionaries {who had been driven to Taiwan a year ago]. He declared that "the Chinese people absolutely will not tolerate foreign aggression, nor will they supinely tolerate seeing their neighbours being savagely invaded by imperialists."
But on 1 October, South Korean troops pushed over the 38th parallel in pursuit of a disintegrating North Korean army. That night, Zhou summoned Panikkar to a meeting and stressed that if American forces invaded North Korea, China would intervene in the war." It is apparent that at this time China was apprehensive about the crossing of the parallel by the US Army, not by the South Korean Army.
China's warnings were meant to deter US troops from advancing beyond the 38th parallel, but on 7 October the first American forces crossed it. The next day, General MacArthur issued an ultimatum calling upon Pyongyang to surrender unconditionally. In this critical situation, Chinese leaders finally reached the decision to respond with force to the American advance.
Phase 2 (14 October 1950 - summer 1951): China entering the war to check the advance of American forces toward the Yalu River and to force the Americans to reconsider their goal of total victory in Korea.
Although Mao Zedong issued the order to "march speedily to Korea and join the Korean comrades in fighting the aggressors" on 8 October, it was not until between 14 October and 16 October when about 50,000 Chinese troops moved secretly into Korea under the guide of "Chinese People's Volunteers". If the U.S. had acted under the guise of the "UN", calling its troops "people's volunteers" by China was undoubtedly to suggest the lack of official interest in a war with the United States.
On 19 October, UN forces took Pyongyang and speedily crossed the Chong Chon River, 40 miles below the Yalu. On 26 October Chinese units attacked South Korean units 40 miles south of the Yalu and on 2 November attacked American units, with two South Korean divisions and an American regiment annihilated. Then followed the famed "waning period" from 7 November to 26 November when the Chinese broke off contact with the enemy to signal peaceful intentions: their objective was not a decisive effort to destroy the UN forces in Korea.
Meanwhile, the Chinese diplomatic emphasis shifted as they sought to justify their decision to enter the war. At the UN Security Council, Wu Xiuquan emphasised the linkage between Taiwan and Korea, detailing how Japan, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam were part of the master plan of invading China. He reasoned on 24 November that "if Americans could cross the Pacific Ocean to fight in Korea and encircle China, then there was no reason why China could not cross the border to defend her neighbour against imperialist attack."
On the same day, however, General MacArthur announced the start of an offensive to "end the war", allowing American troops "home by Christmas". But it was instead to mark yet another turning point in the conflict. The next day, about 180,000 Chinese "volunteers" attacked. A shocked MacArthur told Washington: "We face an entirely new war." He ordered a long and humiliating retreat - performed in sub-zero temperatures - which took the troops below the 38th parallel by the end of December.
As Chinese troops unleashed a renewed offensive, the allies were forced to withdraw south of Seoul in January 1951. Here, in the relatively open terrain of South Korea, the UN troops were better able to defend themselves. After a few more months of fighting, the front eventually stabilised in the area of the 38th parallel, ending the active phase of the war in Korea by the summer of 1951 as neither side wished to escalate the conflict any further.
However, because of the two sides' differences in how prisoners of war should be dealt with, it was not until July 1953 when a ceasefire agreement was finally reached, with Korea remaining divided into two hostile states at the 38th parallel. By then, more than a million combat casualties had been suffered on both sides and more than 1.5 million civilians had lost their lives.
The Aftermath
All of Chinese troops left North Korea while US troops remained in South Korea to this day.
References
Max Hastings, The Korean War
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987).
Bevis Alexander, Korea: The First War We Lost
(New York: Hippocrene Books, 1986)
Melvin Gurtov and Byong-Moo Hwang, China under Threat
(Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1980).
David Rees, Korea: The Limited War
(London: Macmillan, 1964).
Allen Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu
(New York: Macmillan, 1960).
The Sino-Indian Border War, 1962
The Background
The first years of both newly united China (1949) and independent India (1947-1950) were marked with turbulent events, and it was not until the mid-1950's that Chinese and Indian leaders began to realise that they were far apart in their understanding of the border between the two countries.
Using the device of a parliamentary question, India's first prime minister Nehru affirmed that the frontier from Bhutan eastward had been clearly defined by the McMahon line. Beginning in September 1951, however, China kept sending India the signal that the boundary in Tibet had not been formally demarcated and that China had not accepted the McMahon alignment as India's northeastern boundary. In 1956, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai met Nehru in New Delhi and suggested that China did not recognise the McMahon line, but was willing to maintain the status quo in the eastern sector of Tibet, thereby revealing China's intention not to cross the line.
In the western sector, China regarded the Aksai Chin plateau, the area from Karakoram Pass in Xinjiang to Kongka Pass in western Tibet as a traditional Chinese artery linking Xinjiang and western Tibet. In neither the meeting to negotiate a 1954 trade agreement involving Tibet nor his talks with Zhou in 1956, did Nehru raise the Aksai Chin boundary issue. However, in October 1958, when a map controversy developed over the entire border, India, for the first time, officially claimed legal ownership of some 12,000 square miles of the Aksai Chin in a note to the Chinese ambassador in New Delhi.
Later in 1958 and early in 1959, India made repeated claims to 12,000 square miles of the Aksai Chin area. At this time China took a relatively conciliatory line, with Zhou writing to Nehru on 17 December 1959, suggesting that China urgently needed a period of long-term peaceful construction and that the Chinese did not want to create tension because it would "dissipate and divert the Chinese people's attention from domestic matters." In dealings regarding border disputes with neighbouring countries, Zhou suggested "friendly consultations" that would take into account "both the historical background and the present situation."
Elaborating on Zhou's letter, Chinese foreign ministry wrote to the Indian Embassy in Beijing on 26 December 1959:
"China is still very backward, economically and culturally, and needs decades or even over a hundred years of arduous efforts to overcome such backwardness... in order to attain the great goals of peaceful construction, the Chinese people are in urgent need of a long-term, peaceful international environment."
China's Decision
After signing border agreements with Burma and Nepal in April 1960, Zhou Enlai offered Nehru a package deal: China would agree to Indian control of the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA, defined in accordance with the McMahon line) in return for India's acceptance of China's possession of Aksai Chin. This offer was partly based on the successful Burmese precedent, where China had accepted the McMahon alignment in the far north in return for Burma's concessions of some areas contiguous with China.
However, taking earlier Chinese conciliation as weakness, India became increasingly aggressive and nationalistic and turned down this offer. It took the position that neither the McMahon line nor India's claim to Aksai Chin was subject to negotiation and that China's withdrawal from the disputed area in western Tibet was a prerequisite for talks between India and China.
Moreover, by December 1961 India had set up over 50 posts in Aksai Chin and NEFA. And reinforced by India's successful occupation in December 1961 of Portuguese Indian colony of Goa, Indian Home Minister L. B. Shastri declared in February 1962 that "if the Chinese will not vacate the areas occupied by her, India will have to repeat what she did in Goa."
Meanwhile, the Chinese sent deterrent signals to the Indians by launching limited patrols in the disputed region. This was reinforced by a series of notes to the Indians asking about the reasons for aggressive Indian moves and nationalistic statements in the Indian media and reminding India that the McMahon line was drawn by the British Empire and India should shed its imperialist legacy. In response, the Indian army became even more aggressive, pressing forward in May and June 1962 in the disputed areas, while refusing to acknowledge that there was a border dispute and therefore rejecting the Chinese call for negotiations.
A new Chinese diplomatic offensive, backed by military preparations, was launched in July 1962 but failed by August, when Nehru reported to the Parliament that India had three times as may outposts in the disputed western sector of Tibet as China had and that India had gained control over nearly 2,500 miles of the 12,000 square miles previously lost to China.
According to Chinese protest notes to the Indian Embassy in Beijing, the intrusions by Indian ground troops and motorboats numbered as many as 121 from June 1961 to October 1962, with more than 100 cases occurring from April 1962 to October 1962. Numerous Chinese notes also protested Indian Air Force intrusions into Chinese airspace, citing 431 sorties from April to September 1962.
Throughout the summer of 1962, China increased the severity of its warnings to India. One Chinese document denounced Indian insincerity and implied that military action might be the result by declaring that "India is prepared to play with fire on the border. But those who play with fire will burn themselves. The Indian side should carefully consider the consequences."
In late September 1962, after the Indian rejection of yet another Chinese diplomatic proposal, five Chinese border guards were killed during continued Indian troops' pushing forward. On 11 October 1962, China declared that "if the Indian side does not stop its horses on the cliff, the Indian government must bear the responsibility for the consequences of the casualties and other losses incurred by both sides. This time, there was no mention of peace talks.
The War
On 20 October, 1962, China launched an offensive against the Indian army, with Chinese troops pouring down 100 miles and sopping within sight of the Assam plain. Within four days the victory was so substantial that Zhou Enlai could graciously offer a Chinese withdrawal to 20 miles behind the disputed border line.
After one week a lull fell over the battlefield, but surprisingly for China, India seemed to be unwilling to compromise. Thus came the second Chinese offensive on 18 November, 1962. Within one day, all of the Indian forces had been routed in NEFA. Two days later, China announced a unilateral ceasefire and declared that it would begin withdrawing from all positions within ten days.
Total Indian losses in this rout were 3,000 killed and missing and 4,000 prisoners of war, while China suffered no prisoners taken by India.
The Aftermath
China went ahead and released Indian prisoners of war and all captured war materials to show its generosity and lack of warlike intent.
More broadly, the way China negotiated, fought and unilaterally withdrew suggested the Chinese message to the world that India was not a serious threat and that China did not wish to fight. All China wanted was the status quo, an eminently reasonable request. The war was not fought to show China's strength, gain territory or humiliate India - although all these may have been byproducts. It was fought to prevent a forcible change in the status quo.
The war did not solve Sino-Indian border problem, but armed border conflict has since ceased, with both sides remaining behind the boundary lines of the early 1950's to this day.
References
Melvin Gurtov and Byong-Moo Hwang, China under Threat
(Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1980).
Allen S. Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrence
(Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1975).
Neville Maxwell, India's China War
(London: Jonathan Cape Limited, 1970).
The Sino-Vietnamese Border War, 1979
The Background
Ever since the founding of the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1930, through to its victory in 1975 of unifying Vietnam, China saw itself as playing the role of elder brother to the Vietnamese. Upon its founding in Hong Kong, the Vietnamese Communist Party adopted a platform similar to the Chinese Communist Party. From 1924 to 1945, its leader Ho Chi Minh, later to be regarded as the father of modern Vietnam, spent much time in China, as did many of his followers who went from China to Vietnam.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, China provided important aid to the Viet Minh struggle against the French. During the 16-year struggle to take over South Vietnam and fight the Americans, China provided as much as 10 billion dollars in aid. After the 1965 American bombing campaign in North Vietnam, Vietnam moved much of its industry and military from the Red River Delta to the mountainous areas along and across the border with China. China provided considerable logistic and training support to the Vietnamese war effort and supplies, materials and personnel continually flowed across the Sino-Vietnamese border. China became Vietnam's most dependent ally for, in the words of Mao,
"The 700 million Chinese provide powerful backing for the Vietnamese people; the vast expanse of China's territory is their reliable rear area."
But the rapid change of Vietnam from ally to enemy after its victory in 1975 was very troublesome for China, This state of affairs seemed to stem from the budding Sino-American detente, highlighted by President Nixon's visit to China in 1972. This outraged the Vietnamese, coming during the Vietnam War, as Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai tried to explain in December 1972:
"At the present time it is not proper for us to praise Vietnam highly... as to Nixson's visit to China. Vietnam had some doubt over our [position]. We made explanation [but they] cannot think clearly. [We should] just let them wait and see the development of the facts."
After 1975, the growing Soviet role in Vietnam increasingly alienated the Chinese with 97% of Vietnamese military equipment being Soviet in origin and 60% of Vietnamese trade conducted with the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the building of monitoring systems on the Sino-Vietnamese border and the Soviet use of Cam Ranh Bay intensified Chinese fears of Soviet encirclement. In response, China stopped providing free aid and after 1977 halted loans to Vietnam, rejecting the Vietnamese explanation that Vietnam could be anti-imperialist (anti-American) without being anti-revisionist (anti-Soviet).
China's Decision
An even harsher blow to China came in spring 1978, when Vietnam began the mistreatment and then expulsion of large numbers of its ethnic Chinese. On 23 March, paramilitary forces moved into Cholon, the Chinese quarter of Ho Chi Minh City, and other Chinese districts throughout the country, ransacking and confiscating retail businesses and outlawing private wholesale businesses. Many fled.
When China initially adopted a conciliatory attitude, Vietnam expelled more Chinese. Negotiations failed and two ships sent to transport Vietnamese Chinese back to China returned empty due to a series of disagreements concerning concrete arrangements. The number of "boat people" from Vietnam received in other Southeast Asian countries doubled to 5,000 in April 1978 and then redoubled in October. Meanwhile, almost the entire ethnic Chinese communities of Hanoi, Haiphong, and Quang Ninh Province were forced across the Chinese border, more than 160,000 persons.
China then withdrew its technical experts from Vietnam. In June 1978, China ordered the closure of Vietnamese consulates in China in retaliation for Vietnamese obstruction of its consular functions, and on 12 July closed its border with Vietnam. The three decades of people-people relationships between China and Vietnam were over.
With the closing of the border, there was a subtle shift of attention away from the ethnic Chinese and toward the physical confrontation of the two peoples. A number of violent incidents occurred as Vietnamese guards tried to push the people who had gathered along the border through the Chinese guard-posts. Border clashes rose from a total of 1,625 reported by both sides in 1977 to 2,175 reported by Vietnam and 2,108 reported by China in 1978.
In fact, the border became more a venue for confrontation than a matter of serious dispute, and the confrontation made every disputed hectare a potential war zone because each side would feel obligated not to yield it to the other. Although neither side denied the sovereignty of the other, the precise boundary became the venue and symbol of irreconcilable differences because it was at the border that the two sides must meet, and they disagreed on where it was.
In December 1978, Vietnam seized a number of strategic hills inside China and shelled Chinese villages. The Vietnamese navy harassed and killed Chinese fishermen in the Gulf of Tonkin. From December 1978 until February 1979 there were over 700 border clashes with over 300 Chinese killed.
Still, it was the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia on 25 December 1978 that provided the occasion for China 's forthcoming attacks on Vietnam. An alarmed Beijing responded by denouncing Vietnam's "insatiable, expansionist territorial designs" and affirmed that:
"We wish to warn the Vietnamese authorities that if they, emboldened by Moscow's support, try to seek a foot after gaining an inch and continue to act in this unbridled fashion, they will decidedly meet with the punishment they deserve. We state this here and now. Do not complain later that we've not given you a clear warning in advance."
In February 1979, during his historical visit to Washington, Deng Xiaoping also made clear his desire to punish Vietnam in public. This act, as a violation of the cardinal rule of secrecy in military operations, demonstrated the symbolic and political nature of the forthcoming conflict, which China called "self-defence counterattack".
The War
On 17 February, 1979, Chinese troops crossed the frontier and launched a four-week punitive war on the "small Vietnamese hegemon." Although China massed 300,000 troops on the border, and as many as 700 aircraft and 1,000 tanks, as well as 1,500 pieces of heavy artillery, the 80,000 troops that China actually committed were met by 75,000-100,000 Vietnamese border and militia troops. China entered Vietnam at fourteen different points along the 480-mile long entire border and captured the provincial capitals of five of the six border provinces.
It was a bloody war, with casualties estimated at 25,000 Chinese and 20,000 Vietnamese dead. Nevertheless, it was a limited action. Neither side used air power, and China announced its withdrawal within hours of attaining its last and most important objective, the occupation of Langson in the heart of the Red River Delta, on 5 March, and the withdrawal was completed by 16 March.
The Aftermath
Border conflict continued for the next decade, though negotiations were held at the same time. This was a period of neither war nor peace. Neither side felt the need to negotiate seriously, but neither was willing to leave the table or walk out of the room. The negotiations did, however, seem to help limit the border conflicts.
The turning point came after Vietnam withdrew its troops from Cambodia in 1989, with bilateral relations normalised in 1991. In 1992 the two sides initiated a system of talks and discussion relating to the border disputes. It was highly structured and extensive, consisting of talks at expert, government, and high levels.
On 30 December 1999, the two sides signed a Land Border Treaty, and on 25 December 2000, signed an agreement on the delineation of the Gulf of Tonkin.
References
Brantly Womack, China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Gerald Segal, Defending China
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).
Bruce A. Elleman, Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795-1989
(London: Routledge).
Long-held Disputes in the East and South China Seas
Sino-Japanese dispute over Sekkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea
Ties between China and Japan have been strained from time to time by a territorial row over a group of eight uninhabited islands and rocks in the East China Sea, known as the Senkaku islands in Japan and the Diaoyu islands in China.
Download Ivy Lee and Fang Ming's Article
Japan's Position
- Japan says it surveyed the islands for 10 years in the 19th Century and determined that they were uninhabited. On 14 January 1895 Japan erected a sovereignty marker and formally incorporated the islands into Japanese territory.
- After World War II Japan renounced claims to territories and islands including Taiwan in the Treaty of San Francisco, but the Nansei Shoto islands were not included - they were returned to Japan in 1971 after a period under US trusteeship.
- Japan says China raised no objections to the San Francisco deal. And it says that it is only since the 1970s, when the issue of oil resources in the area emerged, that Chinese and Taiwanese authorities began pressing their claims.
China's Position
- Islands have been part of its territory since ancient times, serving as important fishing grounds administered by the province of Taiwan.
- Taiwan was ceded to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895, after the Sino-Japanese war.
- When Taiwan was returned in the Treaty of San Francisco, China says the islands - as part of it - came with it.
- China also cites the Cairo and Potsdam declarations, under which Japan was ordered to return territory taken from China.
Recent Flashpoints
- On 7 September 2010, a Chinese fishing trawler collided with two Japanese Coast Guard patrol boats in disputed waters near the islands. The collisions occurred after the Japanese Coast Guard ordered the trawler to leave the area. After the collisions, Japanese sailors boarded the Chinese vessel and arrested the captain Zhan Qixiong. Japan held the captain until 24 September. Each country blamed the other for the collision.
- In September 2012, the Japanese government purchased three of the disputed islands from their "private owner", prompting large-scale protests in China and bringing SIno-Japanese relationship to "ground zero" level since the two countries normalised their diplomatic tie in 1972.
- On 23 November 2013, China set up the "East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ)", covering the Senkaku Islands. Japan and the US protested, but China responded by saying that if other nations, including Japan and the US, can set up ADIZs, "why cannot China?"
The primary evidence that the Japanese government cites as forming the "legal basis" for its claim over the disputed islands is its Cabinet Resolution adopted on 14 January 1895. Read on its own, the Cabinet Resolution sounds flawless, or even watertight. Yet, from the whole process by which it was arrived at, Japanese scholars, such as Inoue and Murata, as well as Chinese scholars all conclude that it was the result of Meiji Japan’s plan to incorporate the disputed islands, started in 1885 and not realised until the Sino-Japanese War—the “appropriate time” they had waited for ten years.
There are three further reasons why supporters of the Chinese claim conclude that Meiji Japan actually “stole”
the islands from China.
- The Cabinet Resolution only mentioned two of the islands belonging to the disputed islands chain while leaving others beyond the scope of the incorporation.
- International law requires “some formal act” that “announces” Japan’s incorporation of the islands, but the Cabinet Resolution of 1895 was never notified to any concerned states, such as Qing China, and was not disclosed to the public “until more than half century later in March 1952, when it was included in Japan Foreign Affairs Documents, Volume 23.” According to supporters of the Japanese claim, the promulgation of Imperial Decree No. 13 on 5 March, 1896 formally completed the incorporation process, and yet, as revealed by Shaw, “nowhere in the decree could any reference to the disputed islands be found.”
- The “national markers were never placed on the islands following the Cabinet Decision of 1895 but instead were belatedly erected almost seventy years later on 10 May, 1969 by the mayor of Ishigaki city in response to heated controversy over the islands’ ownership”.
"The near universal conviction in Japan with which the islands today are declared an “integral part of Japan’s territory” is remarkable for its dis-ingenuousness. These are islands unknown in Japan till the late 19th century (when they were identified from British naval references), not declared Japanese till 1895, not named till 1900, and that name not revealed publicly until 1950...
The formal Japanese position - that there was no dispute - rang hollow from the outset. Japan handled the crisis in a characteristic and revealing way, by seeking first of all to escalate it from a bilateral dispute over borders to a security matter involving the United States."
From Gavan McCormack, "Small Islands - Big Problem: Senkaku/Diaoyu and the Weight of History and Geography in China-Japan Relations, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 1, No. 1, 3 January, 2011.
The South China Sea Dispute
Rival countries have wrangled over territory in the South China Sea for centuries, but tension has steadily increased in recent years. China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei all have competing claims.
What is the argument about?
It is a dispute over territory and sovereignty over ocean areas, and the Paracels and the Spratlys - two island chains claimed in whole or in part by a number of countries.
Alongside the fully fledged islands, there are dozens of rocky outcrops, atolls, sandbanks and reefs, such as the Scarborough Shoal.
Who claims what?
Beijing says its right to the area goes back centuries to when the Paracel and Spratly island chains were regarded as integral parts of the Chinese nation, and in 1947 it issued a map detailing its claims. It showed the two island groups falling entirely within an area marked by the "nine-dash line". Those claims are mirrored by Taiwan.
Vietnam hotly disputes China's historical account, saying China had never claimed sovereignty over the islands before the 1940s. Vietnam says it has actively ruled over both the Paracels and the Spratlys since the 17th Century.
The other major claimant in the area is the Philippines, which invokes its geographical proximity to the Spratly Islands as the main basis of its claim for a large part of the grouping.
Both the Philippines and China lay claim to the Scarborough Shoal (known as Huangyan Island in China) - a little more than 100 miles (160km) from the Philippines and 500 miles from China.
Malaysia and Brunei also lay claim to territory in the South China Sea that they say falls within their economic exclusion zones, as defined by UNCLOS - the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Brunei does not claim any of the disputed islands, but Malaysia claims a small number of islands in the Spratlys.
Scarborough Shoal Standoff:
The product of Hilary Clinton's "pivot" to Asia launched in 2011
The Scarborough Shoal is claimed by both China and the Philippines. On 8 April 2012, a Philippine air force reconnaissance aircraft spotted eight Chinese fishing boats around the shoal. As usual, the Armed Forces of the Philippines decided to send a navy ship to intervene. Two days later, Philippine Navy’s largest warship BRP Gregorio del Pilar, a 378-foot frigate, arrived at the scene and found the Chinese boats within the lagoon. But just as it attempted to arrest the Chinese fishermen, two Chinese maritime surveillance ships arrived, taking positions at the mouth of the lagoon, and therefore blocked the Philippine action. This standoff between Philippine and Chinese vessels would continue until the arrival of typhoon season in mid-June.
Despite the best efforts by the Chinese ambassador in Manila to diffuse the tensions, it soon became apparent that the Philippine government was not really interested in diplomatic negotiations. Instead, it wanted to escalate the tensions. Apart from planning to take the dispute to an Arbitral Tribunal, It called on ASEAN member states to “take a common position against China”, and appealed for US support of its position. Aquino told his audience at a Philippine rally that international attention to the standoff was the Philippines’ “best weapon” against China.
And we find the source of energy for the Philippine actions in the words of Aquina's foreign secretary Alberto del Rosario. Speaking alongside Hillary Clinton on the deck of US warship Fitzgerald in Manila Bay on 16 November 2011, Del Rosario said that Clinton’s visit sent a strong signal on the South China Sea disputes: “[It] attests to the vitality of our alliance, especially at a time when the Philippines is facing challenges on its territorial integrity in the West Philippine Sea.” Three days later, he told the Wall Street Journal
that the Philippines is getting impatient because it needs unfettered ability to explore the waters surrounding its islands for natural resources like oil and gas.
"China can afford to wait 100 years, but we need what we are trying to explore for in the South China Sea for our economic development sooner rather than later."
Q&A on China's Claims
Q1: What is the justification for China's citing the "nine-dash line" in its claims?
Answer: In February 1948, the Geography Department in the Ministry of Internal Affairs published The Administrative Division Map of the Republic of China. On the Map of China and its attached map - The Location Map of the South China Sea Islands
- the Pratas Islands, the Paracel Islands, the Macclesfield Bank, and the Spratly Islands were indicated as being part of the Republic of China's territory. An eleven-dash line was drawn around the above four island groups and the southernmost line was about 4 degrees northern latitude. It was the first that a map marked with the dash line in the South China Sea was officially issued by a Chinese government.
On the Map of China produced after the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the eleven-dash line in the South China Sea appears to follow the old maps. it was not until 1953, after Premier Zhou Enlai's approval, that the two-ash line portion in the Gulf of Tonkin was deleted. Chinese maps published since 1953 have shown the nine-dash line the South China Sea.
Upon the declaration of the nine-dash line, the international community at no time expressed dissent.
None of the adjacent states presented a diplomatic protest. This silence in the face of a public declaration may be said to amount to acquiescence, and it can be asserted that
the dash line has been recognised for half a century.
It is only in recent years that several Southeast Asian countries, which have been involved in sovereignty disputes of the South China Sea, have questioned the juridical status of the nine-dash line.
Q2: What is the justification for China's not acceptting the Arbitral Tribunal's ruling?
Answer: On 12 July 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) released the Tribunal’s ruling that is “overwhelmingly in favour of the Philippines’ claims”, with “Tribunal rejects Beijing’s claims to South China Sea” immediately dominating the news headlines the world over. Yet, the ruling also marked the bursting of the bubble built around the case.
The Questionable Authority of the Tribunal
Many media outlets have referred to the Tribunal as an "UN tribunal", "UN-backed tribunal" or even "international court", but both the UN and its International Court of Justice immediately denied that they had anything to do with the award. Although the award of the Tribunal was printed on the letterhead of the PCA, the latter only provided a secretarial service. Neither is the Tribunal the same as or even part of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Instead, the five judges of the Tribunal of the Philippine case were paid by the Philippines to make a judgement on the Philippine claims.
The Flawed Ruling
Top-notch legal experts, including Antonios Tzanakopoulos, associate professor of public international law at the University of Oxford, Chris Whomersley, former deputy legal adviser for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Sreeivasa Rao Pemmaraju, former Chairman of International Law Commission, Natalie Klein, Professor and Dean, Macquarie Law School, and Stefan Talmon, Director of the Institute for Public International Law, University of Bonn, through their rigorous research papers, have all expressed the belief that the Arbitral Tribunal should never have proceeded with the Philippine arbitration case.
The reason for this lies in the dilemma between the complex nature of the South China Sea issue and the limited jurisdiction of the Arbitral Tribunal. “Questions of territorial sovereignty, status of features and maritime delimitation are inextricably linked; to consider only one element out of these three is unreal and artificial, and worse it risks producing a distorted result,” said Whomersley. According to the International Court of Justice, to which judges ultimately turn to for guidance, “maritime rights derive from the coastal State’s sovereignty over the land, a principle which can be summarised as ‘the land dominates the sea’ … It is thus the terrestrial territorial situation that must be taken as a starting point for the determination of the maritime rights of a coastal State.” Given this principle, it is no surprise that “there seems to be no precedent for an international tribunal to consider the status of a feature when the territorial sovereignty over that feature is disputed.”
The Potential Dangers of the Forced Ruling
In order to proceed with the Philippine case, the Tribunal has dealt dispute settlement based on negotiations almost a death blow by declaring that the 2002 multilateral Declaration of Conduct (DOC) is “not legally binding” and accepting that “the Philippines could resile from the undertakings in a formal document like the Declaration.” In a sense, the Tribunal has sent out a dangerous message to the South China Sea disputants: the DOC that you lot had worked for a decade to achieve is worthless and can be ignored as you wish!
Q3: What is the justification for China's carrying out construction work on a number of features it occupies in the South China Sea?
Answer: From its experience in dealing with the Sino-Japanese dispute over Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, China had also learnt the hard lesson that international law emphasises hard facts, such as “effective occupation”, rather than kind-heartedness. It was only through creating “facts on the ground” in the South China Sea that China could enhance its chances to meet the challenge of the arbitration case—however it may turn out to be. Thus, ahead of the ruling on the case by the Arbitral Tribunal in the Hague, Beijing stole a march and artificially expanded seven features in the Spratlys in 2014 and 2015: Subi Reef, Mischief Reef, Johnson South Reef, Hughes Reef, Gaven Reef, Fiery Cross Reef and Cuarteron Reef. But is China’s reclamation and construction work disproportional?
True, China has reclaimed more land in a space of 18 months than all the other claimants put together over the history of the dispute, but speed and scale are perhaps more a reflection of both China’s current economic muscle and its “great restraint” in the past than anything else. “Until its work on Fiery Cross, China was the only major Spratlys claimant without an airstrip,” says Mira Rapp-Hooper, a former director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative that monitors construction activities in the South China Sea. “Vietnam captured Southwest Cay from the Philippines in 1975, and it has since built a harbour and other facilities there. Malaysia engaged in significant construction and reclamation at Swallow Reef after occupying it in 1983. The Philippines is planning to upgrade an airport and pier on Thitu Island.”
According Andrew Chubb, a researcher in International Relations at the University of Western Australia, the Swallow Reef facilities take up around 0.35 square kilometres, which is only a third of the size of the upgraded Fiery Cross. However, it is still around three times bigger than China’s new islands at Gaven Reef, Johnson South Reef and Hughes Reef, which are around 0.1 square kilometres. “So China’s project may be bigger, but its scale isn’t out of the existing ballpark.” Chubb also noted why China considers the status quo in the Spratlys to be so “unfavourable”: “with the exception of the Taiwan-controlled Itu Aba Island (taiping), from China’s perspective all of ‘its’ genuine islands, and dozens more territorial features, are currently under foreign occupation.” Furthermore, in the past twenty years, China has not physically occupied additional features, while Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam all have.
Even the testimony of David Shear, Assistant Secretary of Defence, before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on 13 May 2015 cannot help but note:
“In the Spratly islands, Vietnam has 48 outposts; the Philippines, 8; China, 8; Malaysia, 5; and Taiwan, 1. All of these same claimants have also engaged in construction activity of differing scope and degree. The types of outpost upgrades vary across claimants but broadly are comprised of land reclamation, building construction and extension, and defence emplacements. Between 2009 and 2014, Vietnam was the most active claimant in terms of both outpost upgrades and land reclamation.”
It was for this reason that Greg Austin wrote the piece “Who is the biggest aggressor in the South China Sea?” for The Diplomat
on 18 June 2015. And his answer was “Vietnam”.
Is China Really the Aggressor in South China Sea?
Revisiting Professor Lyle Goldstein at US Naval War College: "The South China Sea’s Georgia Scenario", Foreign Policy, 11 July 2011.
"Those viewing Chinese "aggression" as the impetus for current tension might reasonably be asked why Beijing has only six outposts in the Spratlys (compared with 29 occupied by Vietnam), why Beijing is one of the only claimant states not currently pumping oil out of the South China Sea, and why the largest island in the Spratlys archipelago is actually occupied by Taiwan. In fact, China's policy in the South China Sea has been largely reactive in both present and historical circumstances, which indeed explains a good bit of the incoherence of China's present policy. China has settled the majority of its border disputes peacefully and is largely relying on unarmed patrol cutters to enforce its claims in the South China Sea -- clearly a sign that it does not seek escalation to armed conflict.
And how would the situation look if roles were reversed? What if China had a defense treaty agreement with Venezuela (not to mention bases in Canada) and was vigorously pursuing annual military exercises with Cuba while offering to mediate various resource disputes in the Carribean? Washington probably wouldn't look too kindly on such activities.
The brutal truth, however, is that Southeast Asia matters not a whit in the global balance of power... Washington must avoid the temptation - despite local states cheering it on at every opportunity - to overplay its hand. The main principle guiding U.S. policy regarding the South China Sea has been and should remain nonintervention. Resource disputes are inherently messy and will not likely be decided by grand proclamations or multilateral summitry. Rather, progress will be a combination of backroom diplomacy backed by the occasional show of force by one or more of the claimants. In fact, Beijing's record of conflict resolution over the last 30 years is rather encouraging: China has not resorted to a major use of force since 1979."
The single biggest cause of tensions in the East and South China Seas:
US Intervention.
US Intervention.
What Can Americans Do?
Avoid "us versus them" thinking, and learn from ancient Chinese wisdom on harmonious living - among yourselves and with other nations.
The Arrogance of PowerJ. William Fulbright, former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
"We could see evil in others, but not in ourselves:We see the Viet Cong who cut the throats village chief as savage murderers but American flyers who incinerate unseen women and children with napalm as valiant fighters for freedom... we see the Viet Cong as Hanoi's puppet and Hanoi as China's puppet but we see the Saigon government as America's stalwart ally... we see China, with no troops in South Vietnam, as the real aggressor while we, with hundreds of thousands of men, are resisting foreign intervention."
"It is neither the duty nor the right of the United States to sort out all of the world's problems."
We see the Viet Cong who cut the throats village chief as savage murderers but American flyers who incinerate unseen women and children with napalm as valiant fighters for freedom... we see the Viet Cong as Hanoi's puppet and Hanoi as China's puppet but we see the Saigon government as America's stalwart ally... we see China, with no troops in South Vietnam, as the real aggressor while we, with hundreds of thousands of men, are resisting foreign intervention."
"Cultivating Our Own Garden"Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, retired from the U.S. Army.
"Americans had for too long subjected their garden to abuse. It seems to me...that our country bristles with imperfections - and some of them very serious ones - of which we are almost universally aware, but lack the resolution and civil vigour to correct. What is at stake here is our duty to ourselves and our own national ideals.
"The proper aim of American statecraft...is not to redeem humankind or to prescribe some specific world order, nor to police the planet by force of arms. Its purpose is to permit Americans to avail themselves of the right of self-determination as they seek to create at home a 'more perfect union.'"
"Singapore's prime minister: Nobody wants a trade war," Washington Post, 18 April, 2018
"We believe trade disputes should be resolved within the WTO framework...
Competition between the United States and China is to be expected. But whether this
competition
takes place within a framework of interdependence and generally accepted international rules makes all the difference.
Ultimately, what is at stake is war and peace,
and the security and stability of the world. The United States, China and the rest of the world have too much at stake."
