Proto-Protestantism: Asian Tensions and the Clash of Empires: Trump, Xi and the 19th Congress of the CCP

06 December 2020

Asian Tensions and the Clash of Empires: Trump, Xi and the 19th Congress of the CCP

Has Xi extended his power or has he been rebuked and curtailed by elements within the Beijing bureaucracy? It depends on how you read the 19^th Congress and interpret its events.

Clearly on a war trajectory with the United States with the flashpoints being Taiwan and Hong Kong, one could argue that Xi's plans have been limited or restrained. The generals are resistant to his plans which would result in inevitable confrontation. No one doubts that Beijing could wound the American military – perhaps even inflict some stunning losses but ultimately the Chinese military thinks the cost would be too great. And for Xi, that would mean the end of his rule. And thus one interpretation was that this Congress represents a rebuke of Xi's aspirations.

And yet on the other hand Xi's maneuvering suggests a consolidation of power within the bureaucracy. In other words he's bit by bit setting himself up for more autonomy, for more comprehensive control which will become manifest in the near future. As master of the Beijing bureaucracy he won't easily be stopped.

The stated objectives are nebulous, examples of bureaucratic speak. Basically Xi's goals and the standard by which he will be judged involve returning the Chinese economy to its growth status – though a more tempered, realistic and long-term or sustainable structure. The days of hyper-growth in the 1990's and early 2000's are not likely to return and were unsustainable given that China has moved beyond its mere sweat-shop phase wherein its main commodity was cheap labour sold to Western finance capital. It still has such economic platforms and sectors but at this point Beijing has moved beyond this as the OBOR project demonstrates.

And Xi must continue to strengthen China's military vis-à-vis the threat of the United States and (though not clearly elaborated) the OBOR project will effectively demand the expansion of Chinese military interests on the international stage. This is the beginning of its new trans-regional empire and a break with pre-Xi policy. We can expect to see more Chinese military bases appear across Eurasia and Africa. Nations want to protect their investments. Whether this is empire-creep or by design, OBOR's vast infrastructure development and investment will mean that China will want to protect its interests and secure stability. The West will call it imperialism – which it is, but at the same time the Americans and others have been hostile to the label when it's applied to themselves. They decry Beijing's increased meddling in other nations and in their political manipulations but again the hypocrisy cannot be overstated – China has simply learned from the example set forth by Britain, France, and especially the United States.

With trouble brewing in Hong Kong, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and Xinjiang you can be sure Washington and its regional allies will do all they can to pour fuel on those fires. The most convenient and perhaps the cheapest way to bring Xi down will be by means of inner convulsion and turmoil – chaos leading to the destruction of his mandate is something many analysts expected to happen and something Beijing feared. This is also why (in part) Xi has introduced near totalitarian means of social control by the utilisation of 21^st century technology. Pernicious to be sure, the context is never really explained by Western media. Xi isn't just seeing things or dreaming up internal enemies. They're real and the Chinese leadership knows it. This is why it's all the more dangerous and theologically dubious when you have Chinese Church leaders allying with these same subversive elements and binding themselves to China's external enemies. They destroy the testimony of the Church in the process and invite sometimes severe clampdowns which can hardly be labeled as persecutions tied to the preaching of the gospel. And as the WSWS article points out, these realities allow Beijing to simply blame all dissent on outside influences even if it isn't true. China has enough of its own internal problems. It doesn't need the US to stoke them. One is reminded of the DNC narrative regarding Russia – as if everything in the United States was just peaceful and unified until the Russians came along and ran their Facebook ads. It's self-serving propaganda.

On another level it's laughable when one hears the rhetoric coming out of the West regarding the imposition of Han culture and the Mandarin language on Chinese minority communities. It's really no different than Western nativist and Right-wing impulses that have and continue to appear within the US context. The problem is most Americans don't know their own history or have deliberately chosen to whitewash it.

In a move that shocked some, the US has shifted its posture toward the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) which has a political wing that is already openly backed by Washington. The al Qaeda affiliate was in October 2020 taken off the US terrorist list which sends a strong signal to Beijing and if past is precedent we can expect the US (with help from India and others) to begin a new and aggressive campaign of moving these fighters into Xinjiang and backing them with money and weapons. This won't be the first time either. This is also why many in the US power structure do not want to see a US withdrawal from Afghanistan. It can serve as a base for these activities, a hub for the pipeline running guns, money, and fighters into China by means of Central Asia. Normally Turkey would be playing a central role in such a move but US relations with Erdogan are at a nadir and so it's unclear as to what level he will participate – though in this case Turkey's larger geopolitical and economic interests coincide with the policy. While Washington and Ankara may clash over other issues, their military and intelligence sectors will probably collaborate when it comes to this.

Vice President Biden's 2011 trip to Mongolia was also noteworthy as Washington has (since the Bush II administration) attempted to cultivate ties with Ulaanbaatar – a onetime Soviet satellite and now strategically positioned nation vis-à-vis China. The US has been forced to tread carefully as to not anger Beijing but one would expect Washington's moves to become more overt as they will certainly seek the militarisation of Mongolia – a threat to both Russia and China.

Indeed the US has been exposed as attempting to set up dissident Mongolian political movements based in Japan and India – aimed not at Mongolia proper but the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. These are clear signals that they intend to make trouble for China's vast arid province that stretches from Xinjiang to Siberia.*

The country as well as the larger Mongolian region (which includes the Chinese province) could easily become a flashpoint, a centre for a new proxy conflict. At present Washington, Beijing and Moscow continue to wine and dine the landlocked nation and Beijing is determined to suppress all nationalist expression within its Inner Mongolian province.

Trump has certainly horrified the American Establishment and Atlanticist strategists. His dumping of the TPP alliance was viewed as catastrophic and has proven a considerable boon to China and yet opposition to Beijing remains strong in some sectors – and Trump's posture was viewed as aggressive and working to functionally curtail Beijing's influence. And yet not a few analysts and thinkers believe Trump's views have hurt American regional prestige and influence – despite the obvious street-level support as expressed in places like Hong Kong, Vietnam and elsewhere. Trump hasn't actually done much of anything to restrain Beijing and his administration's policy with regard to Taiwan has in fact made the geopolitics of the region that much more dangerous. Nevertheless the mere fact that his rhetoric has equated China with being scheming and evil (though these are largely empty and symbolic gestures) has earned him considerable points on the Asian street.

Some of the commentary is interesting. The 1990's myth that capitalism would automatically bring democracy to places like China, Russia, and regions of Africa has proven naive and patently false. These were the dreams of pie-in-the-sky Western academics who so thoroughly believed their own propaganda they missed the lessons from history and the need for a context in which Classical Liberalism can develop – if that indeed is the goal. Others hoped that capitalism would produce social unrest and it would ultimately bring down the CCP but instead we've seen the development of a hybrid Authoritarian or Party Capitalism – a strange twist and historical reminder of what emerged in places like Germany and Italy during the interwar period.

The strangest place from a historical perspective remains Vietnam. One would think the magnitude of US crimes in their country (and region) from the end of World War II to the mid-1970's would continue to foster hatred but history tells the Vietnamese that China represents the greater and more immediate threat. The fact that Washington and Hanoi are now functional allies should generate some serious reflection within the United States. There was certainly some bitterness and resistance to Bill Clinton's diplomatic recognition of the nation in 1995. Twenty years after the fall of Saigon many veterans of the war were left wondering what it was all for? And rightly so. And by the 2000's many came to realise that Vietnam was being changed more by Starbucks, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Western finance than all the efforts of the US military. Vietnam emerged as an authoritarian capitalist society not unlike China in some respects but one Washington is eager to do business with. The fact that a mere twenty years after the end of the war the nations were moving toward alliance exposes the utter futility and waste of the regional war – which cost millions of lives. Most Americans focus exclusively on the 58,000 American dead and some will focus on wider questions of US policy with regard to war tactics, political corruption, and issues such as POW's left behind. And yet what the US did to the larger region was simply put – a case of mass murder. The Vietnam War was a tragedy on so many levels.

Are Asian memories short-lived? I don't think so but somehow they've turned the page and by the dawn of the 21^st century the Vietnamese ruling class realised that history was rearing its head and the threat was coming from the ancient enemy – China. The brief but brutal 1979 war they fought over Vietnam's invasion of Cambodia (and ouster of the Khmer Rouge) signalled that China has retained its historical interests in the larger Indochina sphere. The conflict was in part directed toward the Soviet Union (Vietnam's closest ally at the time) but as with all the side conflicts in the Cold War there were also strong historical elements at work.

Japan, a US satellite since 1945 has appreciated aspects of Trump's policy but there are also strong calls to re-militarise and for Japan to re-assume its historic regional role. China will certainly respond to this but in Western media it will be viewed and presented as Chinese aggression. Very few Americans are aware of what happened in China during World War II and the fact that China lost over 20 million people – a number only comparable to Russian losses on the Eastern Front. As Russia was the meat-grinder for the Nazis, China played the same role vis-à-vis Imperial Japan. The US won the Asian War in military terms but the heaviest cost (by far) was paid by China. Japanese militarism (at one time sponsored by the US) led to wars over Taiwan in the 1890s and in Manchuria and Korea in the early 20^th century as China was broken and fragmented. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and thus years before either Hitler's invasion of Poland or the attack on Pearl Harbor, China and Japan were involved in the Second Sino-Japanese War which merged with the larger World War II framework.

For China, Japanese re-armament is immediately connected with its militarist history and it's simply unacceptable to Beijing. Again the parallel is found with Russia and its angst over NATO expansion to the East. Because the history is either not known, understood, or outright denied and refused in the West – the reactions of both Beijing and Moscow on these particular points are easily misunderstood and spun by Western academics and figures within news media.

Xi is clearly an authoritarian and as Christians we view him as an enemy of Christ and the Church. But at the same time his actions are not illogical or even necessarily rash. It's all part of a larger puzzle. The tragedy is that political Christianity and its heretical and corrupt leadership has entangled the Church in this mess and at this point in time I see no way for the Chinese Church to extract itself from it. And thus, it behooves us to understand what is happening from all angles. Xi and the CCP are the pivot around which the region rotates and yet the US is still trying to retain its central role – one that has for all intents and purposes slipped away from them.

Trump isn't solely to blame for this as the process began under Bush II. However, Trump accelerated it and that's why despite the tariffs, Beijing was actually pulling for Trump to win the 2020 election. His incompetence and chaos are breaking the American-dominated global order and leaving a wide chasm that China and others are quickly filling. Despite Trumpist rhetoric to the contrary, Biden has a much more aggressive record when it comes to China.

This is the nature of the contest and yet there are a lot of peripheral issues and history also at work. A failure to understand this will mean a failure to understand the region and its events – something painfully on display when consuming Western media and even (shamefully) Christian media when it comes to China.

Do Asians outside China support Trump and the larger US policy? Some do, but it's complicated and their support is not isolated. It's connected to wider geopolitical and historical considerations and a failure to grasp this or report it, is to misrepresent the nature of the regional struggle and tensions.

But one thing is clear – America is angling for conflict and China is preparing for it. Elements within both power structures view the conflict as inevitable and as China expands its global footprint, the potential for wider conflicts and escalation only increase. China's expansion is viewed as aggression and yet history again tells us the pattern they're following is largely the one they learned from the British, Americans and others over the course of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Only when we can understand and morally condemn Western imperialism can we (with any integrity) also condemn what China is doing. But in doing so we must also condemn the actions and machinations of nations like the United States which do not act on the basis of morality but only to maintain the status quo – to retain their hold on the lands and interests they have stolen or taken by force in previous generations.

All that said, stability is preferable to conflagration. The decline of US power is nothing to lament in moral terms but practically speaking –though the longstanding Western-dominated order has resulted in suffering and millions of deaths – a war with China would like result in something worse.

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*Outlets such as the BBC report on the troubles in Inner Mongolia but conveniently ignore the outside influences. Their goal is to make Beijing look bad as well as any Western journalists who challenge the Atlanticist-NATO narrative regarding geopolitics and the many proxy wars that are currently being fought.