John Robson: China’s gloomy future

John Robson: China’s gloomy future

John Robson, National Post
Thursday, Jul. 23, 2015

China's future may not be so bright. AFP PHOTOSTR/AFP/Getty Images

There’s been a steady stream of worrying news out of China as of late: aggressive economic and military action in disputed waters, lies about its gold reserves, a crackdown on human rights lawyers and now a university librarian caught stealing paintings and substituting crude fakes. It won’t end well.

Perhaps you do not regard all these developments as equally serious. Or even connected. But they are. Because they all point to a regime suffering an excess of self-confidence in the short run, while facing ominous problems in the long run. And as Edward Luttwak noted in his 1983 book, The Grand Strategy of the Soviet Union, this combination promotes reckless adventurism.

Years ago I was very struck by Luttwak’s comparison between the Brezhnev-era U.S.S.R. and Germany right before the First World War, both of which had a big military edge over rivals that were gaining on them economically. Hence, as the Kaiser fatefully put it in the summer of 1914, “It’s now or never.”

Now I fear China is in that situation. Why, though, should the Chinese leadership be pessimistic about the long run? Most Western pundits and politicians take the Saruman view that, “a new Power is rising. Against it the old allies and policies will not avail us,” but “We may join with that power.”

Hardly glorious even if prudent. But there are three main reasons why I doubt the east wind is prevailing over the West.

First is the clumsy belligerence of Chinese policy, which, like the Kremlin’s, tends to force other nations to huddle together for protection.

Second is the brittleness of tyrannies, whose rulers have no real idea what’s going on inside or outside their own borders because people are terrified to speak the truth.

Third is the extraordinary hollowness of the Chinese economy. China produces an impressive volume of goods, of higher quality than the Soviet deluge of shoddy steel, cement and oil in their doomed effort to bury the West. But it is not what it seems.

The environmental costs have been ruinous. Subtract them from GDP and China’s numbers go from spectacular to dismal.

Moreover, the miracle has been achieved by converting the populace into little more than slave labour. “China” is rich, but its people are poor. And aging: especially because of the draconian “one child” policy, China faces a demographic catastrophe it lacks the resources to cope with. Do not be hypnotized by numbers that are frequently bogus anyway. China probably had the world’s largest GDP in 1800 and it did them little good.

Finally, speaking of bogus numbers, there is the pervasive problem of fraud. To be sure, there is dishonesty everywhere; witness Ashley Madison. But a tradition of commercial fraud in China has been worsened by decades of dehumanizing communism, followed by crass materialism. From melamine in milk, to copyright violations, to massive official corruption, to exploding light bulbs to contaminated drywall, China’s economy is built on dirty sand. Not to mention its state-run banks laundering black-market money and stonewalling Western investigations, most recently over billions of euros smuggled out of Italy.

It might seem appropriate here to heed the maxim that if someone wrongs you, do not seek revenge, just sit on your porch and one day and your enemy’s funeral will pass by. (I am certain I read it somewhere as originating in the Far East but cannot now find the reference.) But the problem is the short-term optimism.

China has been throwing its weight around in lots of ways and in lots of places lately, from threatening Britain with an investment cutoff because Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama, to telling us what to call Mount Everest. (“Qomolangma” in case you care to kowtow.) And 20 years of double-digit increases in military spending give it considerable weight to throw around. When Japanese authorities objected to unilateral Chinese oil and gas exploration in the East China Sea, China’s defence ministry, revealingly, responded: “This kind of action completely lays bare the two-faced nature of Japan’s foreign policy and has a detrimental impact on peace and stability in the Asia Pacific region.” It is the language of a bully looking for a fight. Like the belligerent response when China’s pervasive cyber-hacking is publicly mentioned.

One might seek limited comfort from the thought that because tyrannies hide the truth from themselves, the overlords in Beijing may actually think time is on their side, as many Western pundits believe and, to some extent, Brezhnev and his cronies did. But I think they feel rumblings and their inability to get a precise handle on anything from pollution to corruption makes them more rather than less uneasy.

If you find this portrayal overwrought, let me lay down a marker. When the Chinese regime gets cozy with Islamists, be ready for trouble.

That sort of thing doesn’t end well.

National Post