The Dragon Awakens

"When China awakes, it will shake the world."
The iconic words of Napoleon, supposedly uttered during what may not have been the worst decay of the corrupt and ultimately historic Qing dynasty - for its momentous crumbling rather than its well precedented and rather predictable rise - are still being realised, and the questions mounting as adjoining predictions of the decline of the western sun pretend no longer to ask whether this giant will reach its influence further laps around the globe, but rather what forms this influence will take. And truly, half a century past a vision of a Maoist and the Beijing political model might have been a thing not to fear, but to wail in terror about, while grasping guns in defiance if not for a final stand. But as the compacts of the Maoist formula changed well beyond the 70-30 calculus modestly offered by Deng once the old man's had entered his final stage of rot, the destruction of the Sìrén Bang and the dismantling of outer vestiges of the Maoist regime, within years of the lit de parade which must have been representative to one man's legacy, the enfant terrible to left and right alike that is "socialism with Chinese characteristics" has won further hearts and minds in the mold of its capitalist ethos, and made many question the viability of Western, "leftist" or "liberal" or both (perhaps best, if derisively, summed up by the Chinese expression Báizuǒ, 白左) democracy in favour of the rapid growth and seemingly superior flexibility of Deng's, Jiang's and Hu's authoritarian but - in the Chinese imperial tradition - relaxed and strangely subservient - and thus rather Chinese - take on the "left", as well as orderly and non-autocratic (as for now, we must wait and Xi) management.

The vestiges of this intellectual tendency - or anti-intellectual in the Western, Enlightened mold - may thus turn the tables of those who took for granted, many of whom are still taking or holding this truth for self-evident, that the institutions of once-"red" China will gradually (or dramatically) adapt to Western designs and customs, or at the very least do so more - and in more fundamental ways - than the Western democratic sphere will synthesise with or undergo a exchange with its implied adversary. It can only be condemned with pity, I must say, how this failure of assertion goes against a long and often proud Western tradition of seeing democracy and constitutional government as the practice of working constantly against the slipping tide towards tyranny, and that this transition (for reasons that may mirror those of us, the plebs, but rely on more obvious reasons) seems to be no less true for those we call our leaders.

The Leader, scrutinised by the main keys to his position. That is, if you regard the crown above the sword and the staff of faith. The Gongchandang of China, arguably the largest, most powerful and bloodstained political party in human history, has blurred and annexed all these aspects, and condensed their features in the four high offices of state - all held by the man referred to with the singular "Chairman". For how long, if yet in 2022 or 2027, the post-revolutionary, and post-Tiananmen generations will know.

The march of this colossus, however defined, is perhaps inexorable. And it is certainly one which will affect the coming century, and the one after that, just as the tripolar theatre of the Cold War was forever altered - and in my best judgment determined - by the dragon's crawl to the camp of the eagle, in the twilight of the Maoist debacle. Having asserted the collapse of the notion of an "end of history" in the peculiar Hegelian-Fukuyaman sense that came with the downfall or rather degrading of the supposed other pole and dastardly audacious proposal of a reduction of the geopolitical game to a singularity, if not finally disowned its spirit and promise of inhibition against autocracy and arbitrary rule, the question is whether a bipolar world can emerge again, and whether the competition heralded by the awakening of this formless, giant will be within states, or actors smaller and within states. The careful chess game waged by the Chinese leadership, which only recently acquired a military base in Djibouti, on what was French soil as late as 1977 to support its substantial interests in the region, does not entail a confrontation of equals, and its nuclear arsenal is significantly more limited in projection than its Russian neighbour, and more limited in size than the French one. 

The paradox of a globe predominantly steered and chaired by one never-dwarfed (if not quite overshadowing) military might and one strictly economic superpower one may seem impossible, but the eagle's talons know its foes well and its previous call as the proud bearer of a legacy of universal liberty and unsullied example - if yet sullied by its shortcomings at home, and tempered by early interventions well aware of contemporary counterparts - may just as well be reproduced by the Sun-Deng-Xi notion of republicanism and popular sovereignty as the one reproduced in its twin across the strait. It may as well be capitalism and "the people" under authoritarian governance maintained as by Jefferson's republic, as Jefferson's republic in his own days, and its values, were sordidly divided into enslaved and ostensibly free. And while a march towards such a completion as suggested by the equation, it may well be that the forces commonly subsumed under the spell of liberalism - economic freedom and entrepreneurship - and of liberal values of republicanism, federalism and the rule of law - so useful, in these days, in tormenting its challengers - may well split in ways not foreseeable to those termed the best among us.

Possible, plausible, potent - under the spell of authoritarianism? Half a century ago, we had deemed it impossible. Democracy and capitalism, destined to belong together towards whatever end the century would take. With the 20th century well in the past, we are well past the duty of asking whether solely culture and ethnicity keeps Times Square another 50, or 100 years on, from resembling its equivalent in Hong Kong, or Shanghai? Will liberty be the call of free peoples or, in Mussolini's words, the "putrid corpse" we "buried", while still singing her songs of praise?

Some may, in the mold of the same past, foresee confrontation as inevitable but of any breed - such as that between the American republic and the colonial empires of Western Europe, a subject thoroughly understudied but which continued after the 1812-15 confrontation for over a century until the trembles after Suez and the final reduction of France and Britain into regional power hubs within and foot-in-the-door inside a wider European Community. The future of this community which, while staggering even in its most foolhardy rise and attempt to walk in the world, has already proved precarious without the Marshall doctrine which has clearly survived the Cold War, its division too obvious and grim on the palate to be swallowed. With any rate of invigoration beyond the merely symbolic, or the increased strain reaching for consequences now all too known (and simultaneously unknown). The European Union is not one, but (in this akin to the United States a grammatic misnomer) a "they", and if this concession to the case of the united nationalists of Europe - that this pseudo-continent is too divided to be ruled as one, except by means negated and repudiated by the very existence of this union - then it will be a fine lesson indeed. 

The sprawl of its increasingly polarised politics, with rebellious Syriza, straddling Greece, in one corner, Czech right-libertarian populism that has already spurned much opposition in another, a new FPÖ-ÖVP coalition emerging in Austria on the hope of solidifying its own Alpine promise of Festung Europa, and authoritarianism in Hungary and Poland developed far past the mark that would have permitted entry, the question is not so much whether the call of a federal structure will be established, but whether the arena allowing its mere discussion can be salvaged at all. As for Russia, it is certainly true that the Cold War was won for the west by a tripolar contest, and the realignment of the bear with the dragon has increased the potential of both - but for how long? To conflicting interests, it is possible that a new rivalry will emerge from this partnership of circumstances of this new world order heralded with the reduction of one to a supposed, and humiliating, second tier and the will ignorance of the other. The question of Chinese-Russian relations may be the great question of American diplomacy in the future, and its implications bears as many questions as there are pathways to re-examine the 1972 realignment.

The gerontocracy in its prime. Deng Xiaoping, never chairman (Zhuxi) or either party or the state, can rightly claim a place as one of the five most influential human beings of the very eventful and transformative 20th century. Will he change the world in the next century, as he changed China in his own?

What then are the lessons to learn from history writ in present? First, recognise that Xi means business, and may be the fourth leader in the post-imperial era worthy for his own 思想 (Sīxiǎng) (we would say "-ism", and too often). While the thoughts of Sun Yat-sen, or a bastardised version of the same is flourishing in the nation now known to all but its leaders as Taiwan - for an unseen period of time - but in all essence subjugated by the wheels of history, while the thoughts of Mao are swept aside even more thoroughly, even its political thought being rather a product or copy of what preceded it, the unspoken "-ism" of Deng, until now predominant, may be as much under siege by the winds of history. As for what may replace it, and whether Xi will surpass his two predecessors and make the power and glory his own, all but the kingdom, in name, we must watch and scrutinise all that was "known" about this rising giant, its inner workings of power, its constitution (not in name, but the ever-changing ways of precedence and limitations, its predominant clique and the main contenders according to already-outdated assertions) and then assume, chillingly that a new and more authoritarian state of affairs well may arise, with a far greater strength to its back than the reemerging bear. 

Added to measures of a chilling push for homogenisation and increased authority, the Maoist model may well be heralded to come back, with its reach extended and its name washed clean of the allusions of "red"-ness, now addressed with admiration in spite of the most horrendous past abuses committed in the name of this alleged refinement. This prospect, and the cultural and political implications that may enable its passage must be taken seriously, and the efforts to expand its influence met with the strongest demands and reminders of its record - and beginnings. While China as an inevitable place to play on the world stage, the same is not necessarily true of the faction which has presided over its rise. As so many times before, dynasties rise and fall. Even the republic, whose rise in 1912 may have been thought as impossible (as well as ahistorical) progress, was demolished within a few years, both in name and for every practical purpose it may have been intended, and the poor surrogate that rose from Guangzhou - forged together as much by the Japanese as its own blood-soaked campaign to cleanse the republic from its rivals - was unfit to compete with the increasingly tedious and attractive spell of the Gongchandang. Whether China will still be a "people's" republic within another sixty-eight or seventy years to come will be subject to this less dramatic transition, but also to the natural constraints posed by the people who has been its - sometimes grudging - benefactor, but also counterposed to that greatest of its rivals which still can claim the title of democratic: India. With both popular growth and rule to its advantage, it may well set its northern rival and neighbour on a course to increased Xi-ism or a Deng-ism for politics, equivalent in form (if not in haste) to the development of the remnant "republic" under Chiang Ching-kuo and Lee Teng-hui, which saw the equally nascent and industrious island rise from industrialisation to modernisation to fledging democracy, despite (or thanks to) its many consistent perils. To expect the China once thought derisively as "red" would take that same course, or remain in a cordoned-off space of its much-reduced influence, was ever a lie of convenience. It is time to decide, in Delhi as much as in Brussels, London, Paris and Washington, what sort of partner is desired, and how the basic questions of diplomacy - friendship or enmity, and on what terms - will form the basis of relations with the grand dragon, now not only of the east, but whose breath will be felt across the whole new world it has built, out of convenience and economic factors as much as by a blueprint rubber-stamped with any "thought" or "theory", let alone a deliberate, revolutionary design. For as far as the brand "revolutionary" goes, we may be witnesses to one.

"I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land." Except, of course, by the perfect example for which the author himself would make a self-avowed incarnation. And with its failure to spread wings as it soars, what is the dragon to do now that it has taken flight? Will it - as the American republic in the days of Mr. Clemens - betray tradition for ambition and slither its extensive weight around a shrinking orb? Or retain the secure position of its cave, watchful over growing riches, but perilous to disturb for the fear of harkening sound and fury?