- The New Rules with Alan Pentz
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- China's Long Peaceful History
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Let’s dive in…
Sometimes you have to listen to the other side of the story to get a better perspective on what you think. That’s what happened for me listening to a recent podcast from the newsletter ChinaTalk last week.
In the latest pod, ChinaTalk’s Ilari Mäkelä interviews David C. Kang, the Director of the Korean Studies Institute at USC, about his new book Beyond Power Transitions. Kang makes a good case that we in West have a much different lens on history than other regions of the world, especially Asia. We are shaped by the history of Ancient Greece and Rome and the modern Westphalian system that settle the 30 Years War in Europe.
China and the East have a much different history. The larger and settled societies of Asia rarely fought wars and when they did, they tended to be with nomadic people’s from their West. Kang says:
It’s not that East Asian countries never fought — they did, sometimes fiercely — but the nature of those wars and the dynamics of territorial disputes were very different from what we see in European history.
Because of European history, territorial expansion, violent power transitions, and power grabs are often seen as inevitable and universal aspects of human nature. But in East Asian history, those types of interactions are not the norm.
What kinds of power transitions do we see in Asia, then? This is a central question my co-author Xinru Ma and I explore in the book. Most people try to squish European historical frameworks onto Asia, asking if China today is most like Athens, Sparta, or Bismarckian Germany. We challenged that approach. Why not start with Asian history and see what parallels emerge?
His point is that our version of Great Power Politics doesn’t necessarily apply to Asian cultures and I take the point. He goes on to say that the long European history of warring against neighbors doesn’t apply neatly to Asia:
By all accounts, Korea, Japan and Vietnam should have been terrified of China. But they weren’t building walls to protect themselves. Instead, they developed remarkably stable relationships with China — and with each other.
Now, in a way, this shouldn’t be surprising if we allow ourselves to move away from what “should” happen based on the European example. We have a bunch of countries — some are bigger, some are smaller, but they all have similar goals. A shared understanding emerges, and I mean that literally. They could all understand each other because they all wrote with Sinitic scripts. The Japanese originally wrote only with Chinese characters (kanji), and then invented syllabaries based on modified Chinese characters.1
Kang also emphasizes that most regime change in this region, with notable Mongol exceptions, came from internal instability rather than foreign invasion. That’s to some extent still true today as many point out that the People’s Liberation Army of China was built more to protect the Communist Party from the people rather than to project power beyond China’s borders.
There’s a limit to how far you can take this argument. Of course Japan invaded multiple Asia countries, most notably China, in the 1930-40s. China invaded Vietnam in the 1970s and fought border wars with the Indians and Soviets and took large chunks of territory from others (Xinjiang and Tibet).
That said there is a long history of these countries coexisting peacefully and we should pay attention to it. Our competition with China won’t play out like the Cold War with most countries on one side or the other.
There will be times when we cooperate with Japan to curb China and India will refuse to play along and potentially vice versa. Our struggle with China will be more nuanced and countries like Vietnam, the Philippines, Korea, and others will maintain closer ties to China than West Germany did to the Soviets.
Our policy making should account for this history. But one lesson that is parallel from the Cold War until now is that this struggle will likely resolve when one system or the other implodes. China’s long history of peace with its Eastern neighbors is coterminous with its history of internal divisions. We need to keep both lessons in mind.
Keep learning,
Alan
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