Have Americans Been Duped by an Elitist “China Fantasy”?

 If Americans revered veteran Asia correspondents the way China’s Communist Party reveres its revolutionary founders, former Los Angeles Times Beijing Bureau Chief would be justly hailed as an “Immortal.” In the 1980s, Mann penned Beijing Jeep, a hilarious account of American Motors’ ill-fated foray into the Middle Kingdom — for my money, still the best book ever written about American business’s tortured romance with modern China. In 1999, he followed with About Face, a narrative of US – China relations since Nixon that manages to be scholarly, insightful and a great read all at once. He’s also written Rise of the Vulcans, a best-selling portrait of the foreign policy advisors who counseled George Bush to invade Iraq. All three works are narrative journalism at its best: exhaustively reported, thoughtfully organized, cleverly written.

In his latest China book, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression, Mann trades narrative for commentary. As its subtitle suggests, “Fantasy” is a harangue against the complacency – indeed, the complicity - of American elites in the face of China’s rise. Opinion leaders of all stripes come in for condemnation: politicians, diplomats, scholars, business executives and other journalists. The gist of Mann’s complaint - summarized this recent piece in the LA Times - is that, wittingly or not, America’s leaders have constructed “an elaborate set of illusions about China, centered on the belief that commerce will lead inevitably to policy change and democracy.”

Mann divides these illusions about China’s future into two broad categories. The “Soothing Scenario” holds that economic development will gradually and inexorably lead China towards a more open, free-wheeling political system resembling Western democracy. The “Upheaval Scenario” sees China hurtling towards cathartic collapse, after which it embraces a more democratic political system or, perhaps, slips into a long period of policy gridlock and economic stagnation along the lines of the “lost decade” in Japan. For both scenarios, the implied outcome is benign: a) China keeps growing and becomes more like us; or b) it fails to become more like us, stops growing and therefore ceases to matter.

Mann doesn’t buy either vision of China’s future. He conjures a Third Scenario in which China keeps growing, and the Communist Party keeps its grip on power. “What if, twenty-five or thirty years from now, a wealthier, more powerful China continues to run by a one-party region that still represses organized political dissent much as it does today, while at the same time, China is open to the outside world and indeed deeply intertwined with the rest of the world through trade, investment and other economic ties?” he asks.

Mann doesn’t consider China a looming military threat. Indeed, he scoffs at the notion the US and China are destined for war, arguing that America’s defense machine has at least a 25-year lead over China’s. Even so, he says Americans should be troubled by the notion that China will remain authoritarian as it grows. Authoritarian regimes tend to be unstable, he warns, especially when trying to resolve issues of leadership succession. Also, an authoritarian China would undermine America’s global leadership by offering material and ideological support for other dictatorships.

Mann is in top form when dissecting the “Lexicon of Denial,” his term for the myriad rhetorical techniques employed by US elites to belittle anyone who would question the wisdom of “engagement” with China. He has particularly harsh words for US CEOs, whom he charges with seeking to “minimize the core issues of repression of dissent and China’s one-party political system” in order to “conduct as much business as possible with China.”

But in the end, “Fantasy” comes up short. Excluding notes, index and acknowledgements, the entire book is 112 (very small) pages; you can get through it in less time than it takes to plow through a survey in the Economist. At this length, Mann can’t possibly do justice to the arguments he means to refute. Instead of presenting a robust version of the claim that open and competitive economies create natural pressures for open and competitive political systems, “Fantasy” throws up a row of straw men, topples a few and merely pokes at others. Mann may well be right about the probability of a Third Scenario. But he never really builds the case for why that should be so.

More frustrating, though, is that Mann fails to explore the implications of his own arguments. On page 109, for example, he raises the ominous idea that, unless America does something now, two or three decades hence, it will be “too late”:

By then, China will be wealthier and the entrenched interests opposing democracy will probably be much stronger. By then China will be so thoroughly integrated into the world’s financial and diplomatic systems…that there will be no international support for any movement to open up China’s political system. Sometimes, in dealing with China, sooner is better than later…

But what, exactly, could the US do to forestall the entrenchment of China’s Communists? Slap tariffs on Chinese imports? Forbid US firms from investing in China? Boycott the Olympics? Invade Beijing?

In the book’s last three pages, Mann acknowledges the ‘what is to be done?’ question — then ducks it entirely, falling back on the nostrum that “a detailed list of policies can emerge only after we rid ourselves of the delusions and false assumptions upon which our China policy has been based.”

Well, sure. I’m all for rigorous debate, and getting rid of delusions. And it’s hard to disagree with Mann’s contention that China — and the world — would be better place if the planet’s most populous nation were more democratic. But the notion that the US has the political or economic leverage to force that transition? Hmmmm. Now, there’s a fantasy.