We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago on China
Expediency, ideology, greed, and naivete are behind America's China policies
Hawkwind’s 1971 Album “In Search of Space”
People aged 50 and older frequently talk about the changes that have taken place in the US and the world during their lives – many of those changes for the worse. After all, American culture has spread pessimism throughout their lives, including crackpot scientific theories (modern day Malthusianism and anthropogenic global warming), dystopian disaster movies (Soylent Green and The Day After Tomorrow), and end-of the world grifters (Michael Mann and Al Gore) who have parlayed their predictions of doom into fame and fortune.
People marvel that many of the predictions made in books and movies have actually come true – some for better, some for the worse. Consider that people once thought that the Dick Tracy 2-way wrist radios were an impossibility when first introduced in the comic strip in January 1946. Who doesn’t have a smart phone these days? Or, in the 1968 book and movie by the same name 2001: A Space Odyssey, author Arthur C. Clarke’s astronaut was reading news from Earth on a device that Clarke called a “Newspad.” Who doesn’t know about Apple’s iPad and other similar devices these days?
Song artists during the 1960s were caught up in anti-Vietnam War hysteria and chipped in with their own predictions of doom and gloom: Gimme Shelter (the Rolling Stones), Talking World War III Blues (Bob Dylan), and The End (the Doors) are good examples. From the 1980s, there is The End of the World and We Know It (and I Feel Fine) (R.E.M.), and the 1990s produced Testify (Rage Against the Machine).
A more obscure song resonates with those people who believe gross errors of the past have led the human race into a cul-de-sac. The English space rock band Hawkwind recorded We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago in 1971 that predicted a disaster for mankind brought about by unspecified past mistakes. Even the title makes one think, as human history is fraught with errors and mistakes that resulted in manmade catastrophes and wars. The lyrics are apocalyptic:
I think about the things that we should have done before
And the way things are going to end is about to fall
We took the wrong step years ago
Look around and see the warnings close at hand
Already weeds are writing their scriptures in the sand
We took the wrong step years ago
The morning Sun is rising casting rays across the land
Already nature's calling take heed of the warning
We took the wrong step years ago
Pick a topic – any topic – of great importance these days, and that Hawkwind song can be directly applied. Take communist China, for example. Consider all of the past mistakes that have made that have created the largest scourge in human history – the wrong steps consciously taken by “smart people” at the time.
THE WRONG STEPS YEARS AGO
The path of wrong steps taken on the China road is a long one that is littered with the bodies of millions of dead. The motivations behind those wrong steps have included expediency, ideology, greed, and naivete. Here are some of those missteps.
The Dixie Mission. In 1944, FDR established a US Army Observation Group at Ya’an for liaison purposes with Mao’s People’s Liberation Army. As noted here, FDR maintained a false notion that the Nationalists and Communists could reconcile their differences after World War II. The mission sowed uncertainty in the Nationalist Chinese government, as it appeared that the US was hedging its bets on a post-war Chinese government. Clear support for an anti-communist government should have been the crystal clear US China policy.
US Halted Aid to Taiwan. The US stopped providing US economic aid to Taiwan in 1965. While the precedent was set for providing future aid (it is far easier for Congress politically to increase existing aid than to start from zero), there should have been a continuous albeit low level of support provided that could be surged during crisis periods such as the precedent.
The Nixon Doctrine. In 1969, President Nixon announced that “the United States will expect its Asian allies to tend to their own military defense.” While largely intended to “Vietnamize” the ongoing Viet Nam War, for Taiwan, the policy meant a cessation of US Navy patrols in the Taiwan Strait. In retrospect, this laid the groundwork for his and Kissinger’s trip to Shanghai that “opened China” in 1972.
The Shanghai Communiqué. Ironically, just after Hawkwind recorded “We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago,” the Shanghai Communiqué was promulgated by the Nixon Administration in February 1972 after meeting with Chinese premier Chou En Lai to “open China” to the world. The communique also contained these fateful words, which have led to the present-day tensions in the Taiwan Strait as the PLA-Navy daily intimidates Taiwan: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position,”
The Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between the US and the PRC. Promulgated by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, this “second communiqué” contained this naïve assumption: “Normalization—and the expanded commercial and cultural relations that it will bring—will contribute to the well-being of our own Nation, to our own national interest, and it will also enhance the stability of Asia.” In fact, normalization of relations with Red China has done the opposite, as China is now defined as the greatest long-term threat to the US.
The Joint Communiqué on Arms Sales to Taiwan. This “third communique” was issued in August 1982 by the Reagan Administration. It was a gift to Red China, which had sought to eliminate US arms exports to Taiwan since 1949. Undercutting the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, it contained more fateful words for Taiwan: “the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan…, and that it intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution.” This was a terrible error as the PLA’s threats of a cross-strait invasion of Taiwan have dramatically escalated over the past several years. If anything, arms sales to Taiwan should have accelerated from the 1980s onward as a deterrent to the PLA.
China Admitted to the WTO and GATT. China was admitted to the World Trade Organization – the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) – in November 2001. Joining the WTO allowed China to achieve “Most Favored Nation (MFN) status,” which provides all WTO members with the best trade terms given by its trading partners, including the lowest tariffs, the fewest trade barriers, and the highest import quotas (if any). While accruing these benefits of WTO membership, China has since abrogated the terms of its Protocol of Accession in the areas of transparency, uniform application of laws, a reduction in its mercantilist practices through government subsidies, and other commitments made in 2001. And when China needed a little assistance in the congressional reauthorization of China’s most-favored nation status with the US, Sen. Mitch McConnell (RINO-KY) cosponsored S.2277, which removed the requirement that China had do demonstrate progress on human rights after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Another wrong step taken by the international community and the China engagers in the US Senate with respect to China!
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The US and its allies have taken many wrong steps over the years with respect to communist China. The above missteps were largely based on an altruistic but highly flawed diplomacy – the notion that “direct engagement with China” would ameliorate Chinese belligerence and predatory economic practices over time as the communists reaped the benefits of normal trade relations with the rest of the world.
It hasn’t worked out that way, as the communists have exploited international institutions to capture American manufacturing concerns and critical supply chains that have resulted in massive trade surpluses for China that fuel the growth and modernization of the PLA, as well as the expansion around the world of the spiderweb that is Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.
We took the wrong step(s) years ago regarding China! Hawkwind was exactly right.
The end.