Page 1 of
2 The new
politics of Sinophone Asia By
Charles Horner and Eric Brown
In l987, it
became legal for Taiwan's opposition parties to
contest elections, eventually to the highest
level. The president of the Republic of China
(ROC) is now directly elected and, last January,
in the most recent of five consecutive contests,
the incumbent, Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang, was
re-elected. He was inaugurated on May 20.
This should be one of many reminders that
there have been in fact two polities that have
been contesting for control of "China" since the
end of the last imperial dynasty in 1912. One of
them, the Republic of China, now a polity of 23
million citizens, has been confined territorially
to the island of Taiwan since 1949. For much of
its history, many have assumed that the republic
on Taiwan is destined for extinction. Indeed, the
real fear of being swallowed up
by the mainland has
helped fuel a popular desire in democratic Taiwan
to become entirely separated from it.
Yet,
after more than 60 years the contest between the
far bigger regime on the Asian continent and the
regime on the island continues, albeit in a form
far different from the brutal civil war that
convulsed China for decades. Indeed, in 1979, it
took another turn, as the People's Republic of
China (PRC) embarked on a radical transformation
of its economy and, therefore, in its relationship
to the world in general and to Taiwan in
particular.
This is but another chapter in
the long and complex relationships between a core
China, that is, the society and polity on the
Asian mainland, and a peripheral China, that is,
the many societies and places that have come to
comprise what we today call "Greater China".
These interactions have had important
consequences across the centuries and, today, that
relationship has entered yet another phase, which
could well overturn the conventional wisdom about
the future of PRC-ROC relations and China as a
whole. Indeed, it is now possible to imagine that
the PRC's many internal problems have made its
future more than problematical, while the ROC's
successes in dealing with the political and
economic challenges of modernity have made it a
compelling model for political reforms on the
Chinese mainland.
While President Ma is
into a new term in office, the centrally planned
political transition in the People's Republic of
China isn't going nearly as smoothly. The lead-up
to the change in Party leadership slated to occur
in November 2012 has been racked by scandal at the
highest levels.
In a widely publicized
gambit, the Chinese Communist Party purged Bo
Xilai, a member of its Politburo and an aspirant
to power even greater than that. Bo had become
famous as the Party's man in Chongqing, a huge
metropolis of more than 30 million people and the
core of a booming economy in the western part of
the country.
In the Western press, Bo had
routinely been described as populist, flamboyant,
and charismatic, and also as an advocate for
reviving a version of pre-1980 "left-ism" as a way
of coping with the many problems that had arisen
in China in the past 30 years. Those who
engineered Bo's removal from power simultaneously
began a guerrilla public relations campaign to
discredit him and, through well-placed leaks to
eager Western media, spread a lurid tale of
intrigue, venality, sex, and even murder. Some of
it may even have been true, but no one really
knows, and no one probably ever will.
The
purge of Bo Xilai is now fodder for analyses of
many kinds. There is indeed more to think about
than just the highly personalized struggle for
power that exists at the highest level of China's
Communist Party. Bo's rise and fall suggest that
we also need to look more closely at the
substructure of power within the country and that
we try to gain a better appreciation of the many
ways in which the New China of the past 30 years
has scrambled many preexisting notions about the
way things work there.
Which China is
China? In the first place, "China" is more
than just the People's Republic headquartered in
Beijing. It can more usefully be understood as a
Greater China that includes the mainland, Hong
Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and a farther diaspora of
Chinese speakers, principally in Southeast Asia,
but also around the world. This is not a new
phenomenon. The various parts of this world have
been interacting for centuries and, especially in
the 20th century. The most important deep
relationship within the Sinophone world is the one
that has developed between the "Sinophone core" on
the Asian mainland and a "Sinophone periphery",
that is, the many Chinese societies and
populations on the margins of the two Republics -
the Republic of China of l912 and the People's
Republic of 1949 - which have been the competitive
heirs of China's last imperial dynasty.
Each of the people and places on the
Sinophone periphery has its own historical
connection to China "proper". Singapore and Hong
Kong were British colonies for a long time; the
former is now independent, the latter since l997 a
unique part of the PRC. On Taiwan, large numbers
of people long disputed the very idea that they
were "Chinese" at all and the democratic polity
that has been institutionalized there since l987
has allowed that once-repressed sentiment to
become a wholly legitimate and very potent
political force.
There are also dynamic
Chinese communities in maritime ports and trading
towns throughout the Greater Pacific region. Two
of the most important thrive within the
predominantly Muslim countries of Malaysia and
Indonesia.
The ongoing interrelationship
between the Sinophone periphery and the Sinophone
core has been a very powerful, albeit often
underappreciated, force in driving the history of
today's PRC and the Chinese-speaking world
at-large. Indeed, since the late 19th century, if
not earlier, the Sinophone core has drawn
repeatedly on the Sinophone periphery for
political ideas and political energy. In overthrowing the Qing
dynasty, Sun Yat-sen's republican movement had
relied on the patriotism and money of Chinese
outside the country. Chinese who lived outside the
Republic of China also played a role in
institution-building and reform post-1912. Later
on, Chinese outside the country also contributed
important political and financial support to the
Republic of China's resistance - when that
government still controlled part of mainland China
- against Imperial Japan during what is known in
Asia as the Great Pacific War.
The Sinophone periphery's demonstrated
power to make and un-make the political order on
the Asian mainland helps explain the PRC's
obsession with it and its desire to control it.
Indeed, the creation of a Beijing-centered New
Sinophone Order wascentral to the PRC's strategic
vision over the last half of the 20th century -
and it remains so in the 21st.
Yet the
periphery, however "Chinese" it may be, presents
major challenges to the PRC's grand ambitions. The
periphery's many successes in politics and
economics have given it a legitimacy all its own,
one that more than rivals the legitimacy of the
PRC itself. Indeed, in the things that seem to
matter the most in today's world, it is the PRC -
widely heralded as the world's next great
superpower - that has become Sinophone Asia's
trailing indictor. How has this happened?
Clash of themes Discussion of
the future of Asia has become a noisy cacophony as
the sounds of "Rise and Fall" compete to be heard.
The major theme, prominent for at least a decade,
is still heard loud, but no longer clear: the 21st
century will be the "Chinese Century"; the PRC
will dominate the world; the South China Sea will
become a PRC lake; Latin America and Africa will
be integrated into the Chinese mega-economy; the
PRC's method of political economy - the "Beijing
Consensus" - will supplant the "Neo-Liberal
Consensus;" a new, PRC-centered order will take
shape in Asia and then spread to the world beyond.
But another orchestra, consisting mostly
of enterprising journalists who report about
actually existing China, has been sounding another
theme. Every day, they add a blizzard of new notes
to the score and they step up the music's tempo.
Like any great symphony, the tension is building
and the crash of a crescendo seems imminent.
Thousands of riots; violent protests
against government actions; a demographic calamity
of too few women and too many old people; public
health problems of every description;
environmental calamities; endemic corruption; a
crisis of confidence in the political leadership
that the leadership itself publicly acknowledges;
a military buildup directed only secondarily
toward foreign antagonists but primarily against
the Chinese people themselves.
Makers of
national strategy around the world would, of
course, prefer but a single, dominant, theme, the
better to get in line. But it is within Sinophone
Asia, not in North America or Europe, where the
argument about the future of China will be
settled. Two generations ago, the world concluded
that the great struggle over China's modern
incarnation had been resolved when the communists
routed their enemies. But the 21st century has
begun with a renewal of that struggle and, once
again, the victor is in doubt.
Periphery to the rescue When Mao
Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China
in l949, he did so on behalf of all Chinese: "The
Chinese people have stood up," he said. But by the
time of his death in 1976, Mao's policies had
brought Chinese society on the Asian mainland to
ruin. The rise of China that we see today began in
l978 with the repudiation of the Maoist model that
had held sway between l949 and Mao's death.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
