Grant Newsham: Talking With China – Say What You’re Told You Can’t Say
Originally published by AND Magazine.
For years, the idea of speaking forthrightly to China would evoke the admonition from the U.S. State Department and most of the American policymaking class: “We can’t do that. They won’t like it.”
They’d often add, “China has ‘red lines’, don’t you know?”
There are things you are told you just can’t say – questioning China’s political system, Taiwan, democracy, human rights, and China’s ‘development rights’ (challenging China’s right to do anything it wants – legal or illegal — to develop its economy and industry). In short, you can’t mention any of the things that make communist China such a threat to peace and prosperity.
That sort of advice from the ‘experts’ was rampant during the communist Soviet Union era as well.
Remember President Ronald Reagan’s speech at the Berlin Wall’s Brandenburger Gate in 1987 when he slipped in the line: “Mr. Gorbachev… tear down this wall.”
Many of Reagan’s advisors and staff told him: “You can’t say that.”
Even his respected Secretary of State, George Schulz, was opposed.
But Reagan followed his instincts and was proven right.
The recent Trump-Xi summit in Washington, D.C. last month suggests the restraining habits of the foreign policy class die hard.
The D.C. visit included only two fairly short public speeches.
It’s, of course, possible that President Trump was more direct in his private meetings with Chairman Xi. But if the idea is that by showing restraint Beijing will reciprocate, and even change its behavior, you will always be disappointed if decades of experience are anything to go by.
When it comes to the Chinese Communists, if you won’t say it in public – like Reagan did with the Soviets – it’s a win for the communists.
So what should be said in public? A good starting point is not giving an unchallenged platform to Xi’s cognitive warfare, designed to distort history, claim unearned legitimacy, and fracture American alliances.
Correct distortions
First, tell the truth about history. Xi mentioned the Flying Tigers implying the Chinese communists fought together with the U.S. against Japan during World War Two. That is not true. The Flying Tigers fought alongside the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT), which bore the brunt of the fighting, rather than Mao’s Communists, who fought relatively little.
Read more HERE.
