From the late 19th century up to World War II, Americans were seized with the idea of transforming China into a Christian, capitalist America on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
The word
“plastic” pops up again and again in American statements about China from that
era. China is “plastic” in the hands of “strong and capable Westerners,”
announced President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. “China has become plastic after
centuries of rigid conventionalism,”declared Selskar M. Gunn, a vice president
of the Rockefeller Foundation, in May 1933.
But from
the beginning, Americans were also afraid that China — or the Chinese — would
change them, too. In 1870, following the Civil War, Congress limited
naturalization to whites and blacks. Later, the United States tried to
inoculate itself against the influence of the Chinese by banning many of them
from America’s shores. Starting with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the
U.S. Congress passed a series of racist immigration laws which would not be
significantly modified until World War II, when China was an ally in America’s
fight against Japan. It looked bad for the US to deny Chinese the right to
travel in America while Chinese under American command were dying on Asian
battlefields.
Then
came the Cold War, and instead of changing China, Americans sought to quarantine
it. Fear of China in the United States was at a fever pitch in the years
following the Korean War as Chinese were portrayed in American films,
magazines, and books as possessing magical powers to brainwash average
Americans. U.S. economic and diplomatic sanctions on China were far more
onerous than they were on the Soviet Union. After a while, the impracticability
of such isolation became pretty obvious. Even Frank Sinatra weighed in during
an interview with Playboy magazine in 1963, calling for “Red China” to be given
a seat in the United Nations. “I don’t happen to think you can kick 800,000,000
Chinese under the rug and simply pretend that they don’t exist,” Sinatra
declared.
In the
1970s, when the United States re-opened its relations with China, the pendulum
swung back again. Americans reached into their toolkit and, surprise, pulled
out the same tool they had used before: The U.S. launched a second campaign to
remake China in its image. On January 24, 1980, Congress granted
most-favored-nation trading status to the Communist regime, cutting tariffs on
Chinese goods to the same rate offered to America’s friends and allies. MFN had
been reserved for countries with free-market economies and basic political and
civil rights, including the right to emigrate. In 1980, China met none of these
criteria.
Although
there was probably a good geopolitical argument to make for granting China MFN,
the Carter administration was compelled to justify its decision by appealing to
America’s idea of its higher purpose in China. Beijing deserved MFN status
because, Americans were told, China was on an unstoppable march to a market
economy with free and fair elections. As Representative Bill Alexander, a
Carter supporter from Arkansas, told the House on January 24, 1980, the day MFN
was approved, “Seeds of democracy are growing in China.”
This
paternalistic attitude that we could change China persisted, in its second
instantiation, for about 40 years. Significantly, this idea’s evil twin — a
fear of China changing us — became less pronounced. American certainty that
influence ran down a one-way street appeared in statements from the National
Security Council and the State Department, which, no matter the political party
or administration, were littered with expressions such as “shaping” or
“managing” China’s rise. This self-confidence loomed large in the debate over
China’s admittance to the World Trade Organization in 2001. Robert Rubin,
secretary of the treasury under President Bill Clinton, told Congress that
China’s accession to the WTO would “sow the seeds of freedom for China’s 1.2 billion
citizens.”
I heard
this mantra— China is becoming a normal nation! China wants the same thing as
us! We are changing China! — non-stop during the decades I spent in China from
American diplomats, positive that we would turn China into a more liberal country,
and blithe to any worries that China could transform us.
So now
we come to the brouhaha over an October 4th tweet by Houston Rockets general
manager Daryl Morey expressing support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.
Underlying the firestorm caused by one opinion from one guy in Houston is a
broader worry that what America considered its historical mission in China –
bringing free-ish markets that would lead to freer people — has failed. But not
only that.
Even as
policy makers fret that China’s government immunized itself from the baleful
influence of Western values, they see that it has begun to turn the tables and
is exporting its ideology around the world. In short, China has begun to shape
and manage us, not the other way around.
When Morey
sent out a tweet that included an image saying, “Fight for freedom, stand with
Hong Kong,” China’s government girded itself for a battle with the National
Basketball Association. State-owned television and the Chinese internet giant
Tencent suspended broadcasts of preseason NBA games. A slew of Chinese
companies announced that they were putting sponsorships with the league on
hold. China Central Television issued a statement calling for severe limits on
freedom of speech. And Geng Shuang, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, suggested that he expected the NBA to follow the playbook of
other corporations and kowtow. “The N.B.A. has been in cooperation with China
for many years,” he said at a briefing last week. “It knows clearly in its heart
what to say and what to do.”
The
NBA’s playbook mirrored that of other organizations that have gotten sidewise
with Beijing. Initially it waffled. Then NBA Commissioner Adam Silver put out a
statement supporting Morey’s freedom of speech. But in its Chinese-language
statements the NBA sounded significantly more apologetic than in its English
ones. This is a tried and true formula. The Chinese language is the first level
of encryption. Who cares if you sound spineless in Chinese when you’re stalwart
in English. What’s worse, other leading voices in the NBA sought to muddy
Silver’s message. Prominent NBA coaches, Gregg Popovich and Steve Kerr dodged
questions on the issue. Rockets stars James Harden and Russell Westbrook, who
make a considerable amount of money in China through the sales of merchandise
and shoes, announced on Twitter: “We apologize. We love China.” On Sunday,
LeBron James said he thought Morey wasn’t “educated” on the situation.
But even
the NBA’s half-hearted nod to Western values is more than most international
corporations can muster. When it comes to dealing with China, the league is the
exception that is validating concerns about China’s growing ability to do to
the developed world what the developed has failed to do to China.
One reason
that the NBA is different, of course, is that unlike normal businesses, where
China can play competitors off one another, no one can vie with the league.
Especially not the alternative, which in China’s case would be the Chinese
Basketball Association. Despite massive investments and the fact that the CBA
is now led by former Rockets’ star Yao Ming, the CBA is a joke, proffering bad
basketball in arenas with no heat. China’s national team, which is comprised of
CBA all-stars, might not even make it to the 2022 Tokyo Olympics after its
dismal showing at the FIBA World Cup over the summer.
For a
clearer picture of the influence China wields, look no further than a ruckus
that unspooled simultaneously with the NBA imbroglio. Last Sunday, Activision
Blizzard, an e-gaming company, banned a professional Hearthstone player from
the game’s lucrative pro league for a year and forced him to forfeit $10,000
after he said “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times,” in an interview
about his tournament wins. Chung Ng Wai, who uses the handle “Blitzchung,” also
donned a mask, which has become a symbol of the protests, before he was hustled
from the podium.
What’s
stunning (or pathetic) is that Activision Blizzard made this decision – citing
“damages to the company's image” — on its own, apparently without direction
from Beijing, an indication that the firm, like many others, has internalized
Chinese values. Activision Blizzard makes a lot of money in China where gaming
has become a national pastime to a generation of young men. Blizzard has a
partnership with Chinese tech company Netease and Tencent owns five percent of
its parent company.
Blizzard
Activision is just one of many corporations that have bent to Chinese whims,
perceived or otherwise, in recent years. Corporate heavyweights such as
Marriott, Cathay Pacific, MUJI, Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, United Airlines,
Swarovski, Mercedes Benz, Gap, Apple, Google, and Leica have all been targeted
by either the Chinese Communist Party or by Chinese netizens for perceived
slights. And slight they were indeed. Last week, Tiffany & Co. killed an ad
that showed Chinese model Sun Feifei wearing a Tiffany ring on her right hand,
which covered her right eye. Chinese netizens claimed the advertisement could
be interpreted as showing support for Hong Kong’s protesters, many of whom hide
their faces with masks. Go figure.
Responses
by multinationals to China’s wrath have resulted in real world consequences for
innocent workers. In March 2018, Marriott International fired a low-level
social media employee from Omaha after he "liked" a tweet about Tibet
that offended the Chinese government. In September, Cathay’s CEO Rupert Hogg
resigned because China opposed how Cathay had handled its employees who
participated in demonstrations in Hong Kong.
Hollywood,
ground zero of China’s success at managing the developed world, has not
released one major movie with a Chinese villain since 1997. In one film, the
2012 dud Red Dawn, editors actually swapped out Chinese baddies for North
Koreans in post-production.
Although
Facebook remains banned in China, its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has been craven
in his efforts to return Facebook to the good graces of the Chinese Communist
Party. Zuckerberg has pulled publicity stunts such as jogging through thick
smog on Tiananmen Square. He has learned broken Chinese. At a White House
dinner in 2015, Zuckerberg even had the gumption to ask Chinese President Xi
Jinping, to give an honorary Chinese name to his unborn child. Xi turned him
down. The one big U.S. tech company that has stayed in the China market has
been LinkedIn; the price has been aggressive censoring of speech.
As for
Google: For years, it worked hard to grow its business in China. But following
a series of hacks that targeted political dissidents who used Gmail, Google
left the country in 2010. Still, the lure of the China market proved so
irresistible that Google's management launched a secret program called Project
Dragonfly to create a censored search engine for China. Only after protests did
Google shelve the program. Wasn’t Google’s motto, “Don’t be evil?”
In April
1868, a delegation of Chinese officials visited the United States. Among them
was a Manchu Mandarin named Zhigang who authored one of the first Chinese
travelogues describing a visit to the West. Zhigang wrote reams on American
shipbuilding, steel mills, microscopes, and printing presses. Zhigang also had
an insight about the resilience of American values that his successors in
Beijing understand today. In America, he noted, “the love of God is less real
than the love of profit.” Or as the straight-shooting Jason Whitlock said on
the Fox Sports show Speak for Yourself the other day, “Quit faking the funk …
When China tells you to shut the hell up, everybody shuts the hell up.
Everybody loses their courage when there’s money on the line.”
***JOHN
POMFRET was the Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post from 1997 to 2003
and is the author of The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and
China, 1776 to the Present.