President Hu Jintao of China has said that the West is trying to dominate China by spreading its culture and ideology and that China must strengthen its cultural production to defend against the assault, according to an essay in a Communist Party policy magazine published this week.That's a quote from a NYT piece.
Given that jihadis also think that Western culture is assaulting traditional Islamic ways, watch for an alliance of convenience if the Chinese want to act on this worry as an actual national security issue.
But that isn't the really interesting part.
Mead notes in his piece that quoted the Times article:
But geopoliticians as well as students of culture and democracy should pay attention to Hu’s essay. It’s a window into the psychology of China’s leadership at a critical time. The sense of threat, encirclement and danger is real — along with the sense that America is trying to divide, crush and destroy China.
That's interesting. But the fact that the Chinese see us an encircling them--military or otherwise--isn't the interesting part. China has said is much.
Nor is the idea that our nominally (and sincerely) non-threatening strategy assume that eventually our system will appeal to Chinese people that interesting. Other than the Occupy morons, Americans naturally think we're the best (exceptional, even).
No, what is interesting is that the Chinese rulers believe their culture--the center of the world--is vulnerable to our soft power, and that China could be divided on the path to being crushed and destroyed. China likes to project an image of monolithic Han solidarity with only a few Moslems and Tibetans to spoil the ethnic purity of China.
I've noted this possibility myself when noting the difference in thinking about whether China will evolve into a friendly democracy or a hostile autocracy committed to fighting us. Why not both? And more?
With a state both cruel and failing economically, governing a continent-sized population with a history of fragmentation, I don't know why we need to guess which course the government of China will follow. The continent of China is big enough that it could follow all the possible paths. ...
In a country the size and complexity of a continent, many futures are possible.
The Chinese rulers apparently worry that they might yet live through interesting times.
