The Foreign Service Journal, June 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2021 33 outside China. International nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) began setting up operations in China, even as home- grown NGOs were promoting environmental, charitable and social causes. Religions, including Christian churches in places like Zhe- jiang province, were adding millions of converts. There was an explosion of academic exchanges, with thousands of American and other Western scholars presenting at conferences in China on business, political, and technical and scientific topics. Eventually, all this proved too uncontrollable for Beijing’s leaders; but at the time it seemed that such activities were toler- ated, even welcomed, for China’s development. 5. Acknowledging International Norms. Beginning some 40 years ago, China began a tentative, though never warm, embrace of international legal and political norms. The Chinese put human rights protections into their constitution and profes- sionalized their legal system. They signed existing international conventions. Prompted by business concerns, they tightened up contract law and established legal studies programs based on Western models. At the behest of the United States, in particular, they set up specialized courts to deal with cases of intellectual property theft. The Chinese also began to hold elections broadly at the vil- lage level and began “experiments” with wider district elections. They began holding public hearings on local issues and, before implementing new regulations, put proposed policies out for public comment. No one commented more than U.S. entities, and their comments often changed the policies substantially. Reviving a revered historical practice, ordinary citizens were allowed to petition local, provincial and national leaders for redress of grievances. Party membership was greatly expanded to include former “enemies of the state,” such as business own- ers and landlords. And the president of the country was limited to two five-year terms, leading in 2002 to the first peaceful and willing transfer of power in China’s history when Jiang Zemin gave up control of the country to Hu Jintao. During Hu’s terms in office, his Premier Wen Jiabao publicly looked forward to the day when China would enjoy greater democracy. Another peaceful transfer of power took place in 2012 when Hu turned over the reins to Xi Jinping. Xi has since pulled back many of these political and legal reforms, promot- ing instead greater personal and Chinese Communist Party con- trol; but he was not expected to, and nothing forced him to do it. Indeed, in a move no one foresaw, Xi has set himself up as ruler for life, apparently turning back to imperial China—where there are only loyalists and traitors—as a guide for governance in the 21st century. Forced assimilation of the Uyghurs became so brutal that the United States judged it violated the U.N. geno- cide convention. Toleration for political differences in Hong Kong was ended, casting a deep chill on hopes for peaceful reunification with a willing Taiwan. And military capabilities that could have been promoted as reasonable protection for Chinese assets are now used to intimidate in the South China Sea and elsewhere. Disappointment of Our Own Making If only things had turned out differently! Yet our disappoint- ment is of our own making. With now-clear hindsight, we can see that the idea that the West was going to adopt China into its ranks was fanciful. China’s rise is China’s story, not ours. You do not have to be in China very long before you learn how proud the Chinese are of their long history and deep culture. Even if the “5,000 years” of history they often claim is hard to document, what is well documented is certainly impressive. What if the Roman Empire and its control of most of Europe had continued until today? What if Latin had more native speakers than any other lan- guage, and Roman poetry and philosophy had been written and matured for more than 2,000 years? From the Chinese perspective, that would be comparable to what China and its culture are today. That such a nation was humiliated for a hundred years before 1949—forced to legal- ize opium for the profits of foreigners, allow foreign militaries almost free rein within its borders and be “carved up like a melon,” in the words of Chinese historians, by Western colonial powers—leaves the Chinese with a powerful imperative today: Regain China’s place in the world and the respect it is due. Our expectations for China’s future were wrong and hubris- tic, but Beijing’s current expectations for its own future may turn out to be wrong, too. History is like that; there is nothing inevitable about it. Was our engagement of China during the past 50 years a mis- take? No. Had we not embraced the Chinese nation, anticipated the best and welcomed its people to our land and our values, but instead obstructed China’s development despite its great promise in so many areas, history would have judged us very harshly. Still, it is a different world now. As the Biden administration contemplates how we might best deal with a newly powerful and emboldened China, we should remember the ways in which our engagement has united us, not only what now divides us. n