Unless you want to argue that the Chinese rulers somehow have access to ethnic memories passed down through the generations, how is that long view advantage possible?
Anyway, the Chinese are debating a grand strategy:
China has yet to formulate a true “grand strategy” and the question is whether it wants to do so at all, or whether it wants to develop more and more concrete individual strategies, such as the indigenisation of its economy, the modernisation of its army, and the build-up of its blue-water navy, just to name a few. Many strategies do not equal one grand strategy but, taken together, they can reveal the broad strategic direction in which China is heading.
Wait. What? They didn't have one already? Huh. It's almost as if they are like anybody else. Otherwise they'd already have a grand strategy, no?
But isn't it a problem to figure out a Chinese grand strategy when China is run by a political party that elevates their rule above all other objectives, and doesn't neatly divide domestic and foreign policy?
I think that China's long history just allows them to hang on to historical grievances for way too long and not that they have genetic wisdom.
Is that long memory really better than America's and Britain's ability to get over the whole British colonial rule/revolution and two wars in only about a century to become close allies since then?
