In ancient China a map of the world was drawn and labeled The Middle Kingdom. In their view China was located in the center of the world. All of the other people of the earth constituted a peripheral outer ring of lesser beings. Like all other cultures which lack a universal concept of morality they spent little time worrying about the needs of others. When the Confucians Taoists and missionary Buddhists did promote a highly moral and universal systems of thought they were eventually criticized officially altered or repressed. This is of course most true of Chinas present single-party dictatorship. It allows for no questions of morality to curb its appetite for expansion.
Moral questions are recognized only to the degree that they either help or hurt Chinas Marxist agenda. The same can be said of other forms of totalitarianism. In Radical- Islam lying to an infidel is permitted if it aids in the spread of Islam. Hitler was once asked about following the Golden Rule his basic answer was it could be followed after National Socialism had defeated all its enemies. It has not been by accident that Western Civilization was the first to abolish the trade in slaves the first to promote universal suffrage International Law the Geneva Convention the rights of women and the first to make sustained efforts at promoting global human rights. The history of the West since the late Middle- Ages has been an almost continuous effort at social and political reform. The fusion of Judeo-Christian values and Greco-Roman rationalism and science is a potent mix a powerful catalyst for reform.
Chinas record is the antithesis of this process. It seeks world hegemony not democratic reform and human rights. More importantly for the U.S.A. it seeks to replace us as the only world Super-Power. Its militarization of the East China Sea its Belt and Road efforts to spread its economic and military reach throughout the world are about supremacy and world dominance. If China becomes the only Eight hundred pound gorilla in the room the world will be forced to play by the rules which they establish and there is nothing in their past history or present behavior to suggest that they will act according to anything but their own narrow national interests.
They see us as a greater but declining power. They see us as a nation committing cultural self-genocide a nation where Identity Politics is fracturing our national unity and weaking our national resolve to defend our interests and the interests of our allies. They are playing Chess and we are playing Checkers. They are engaged in what Michael Pillsbury calls The Hundred Year Marathon...
Hitler and Stalin gave us plenty of warnings of their aggressive intent but our weak willed well intentioned politians of that day almost gave the world away. Chamberlain was played by Hitler and FDR was played by Stalin. Americas Left-Wing writers and actors loved Stalin until he finally annihilated or imprisoned most of their beloved Communist Party. Give China credit for using a more intelligent and subtle strategy than either Hitler or Stalin. It is a strategy that patiently lines up all the dominos before tipping over the first one.
Where are the Churchills Trumans and Reagans of today? Where are the astute and courageous political leaders not mired in a pit of relativistic morals or Political Correctness. Where are the leaders we need to sound the Fire bell in the night. Chinas long term policy is like their famous ...water torture drip by drip in multiple small steps over a long period of time they plan to undermine a gullible West. They view time as our enemy and their friend. Liberals are fond of saying that they are Not Judgmentaland especially so when dealing with non-Western cultures. Their rush to prove how tolerant and non-creedal they are makes them easy prey for a culture that is exactly the opposite: Fanatically nationalistic and extremely ethnocentric. When it comes to holding on to their power Tiananmen-Square is the rule not the exception.
Our answer must not be disengagement or Isolationism. Our rule must be to engage where it is in our interest. We must continue to call attention to their naked aggression and their disrespect for the right of others. The world must know who they are regardless of their rhetoric. We must play the long game as we did during the Cold War. We must practice the policy of Containment while hoping in the distant future to their anti-human system wither on the vine. It is Ironic that just when we must face this peril a growing percentage of young Americans are willing to elect a Socialist president. Ironic too that China the last great Communist state is committed to State-Capitalism. They see its dynamic power to create wealth while Americas unwise and poorly educated youth only see its abuses.
What saved the West from Soviet domination and nuclear war was the wealth of the West and the poverty of the Soviet Union. China does not intend to make the same mistake. It plans to use State- Capitalism and defeat the West at its own economic game but what China is not willing to do is allow social and political reforms which will endanger the Communist Partys monopoly on state power.
William D. Howard is a freelance writer who had a long career as an educator. He holds degrees in philosophy and history and has traveled widely in over 40 countries.
