The Return of the Middle Kingdom

China Daily has touched on a reality the United States should've started preparing for under the Nixon Administration. Instead the American public dismisses Nixon's Presidency citing the Watergate Scandal and maybe justly placing Richard Nixon's Presidency in the Hall of Mediocrity with a big asterisk. A really big asterisk. Ironically, Nixon knew what he was doing with China. Sort of. The logic behind opening relations with the Middle Kingdom was sound. At the time, they only had 750 million people which is about half of what they have today. They had developed and tested a nuclear bomb and the PRC had replaced the Republic of China on the United Nations Security Council. Since then, US-Sino relationship development has been shelved and ignored so long it would make Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull seem premature.

We had fought one direct war with China in North Korea and then an indirect war with them in Vietnam. The cold war didn't end with the Vietnam War and it didn't end with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it got colder. Nixon knew that opening relationships with China was only the first step in courting a stable relationship with them. Ping-pong and pandas marked the beginning of a cultural exchange in the 1970s and then an exchange of scholars and businesses tightened our bond. The governments however remain at odds over territorial issues like Taiwan even though our opening of relationships with the PRC was dependent on the United States acknowledging that the conflict over Taiwan should remain an internal Chinese issue. They would not accept anything other than a direct acknowledgment of this and Nixon gave it to them.

So what's different about our relationship with China today? Technologically, the landscape has changed with companies like Google and Microsoft but since Google has proven itself to be incompatible with what the Chinese believe to be acceptable media practices, like preserving the strength of the government, the relationship suffers. In fact, between Google and the rising power of social media including blogging websites, Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, China might appear to be technologically irrelevant.

Then there's the issue with Taiwan. Most Americans don't think twice about calling Taiwan an independent nation but you'd have a hard time making friends with that kind of talk in Beijing. In fact, if you went to Tiananmen Square to talk about that with the Chinese you'd probably end up getting into an argument with someone who celebrated reunification as a holiday. Maybe. So then what else is new?

How about the economic "collapse" that's plummeted the United States' economy into the act between "A New Hope" and "The Empire Strikes Back". Not only is our economy doing less than stellar, the Chinese own a sizable portion of our debt. I'm not an economist but I think that means that if we start to pay it off the Chinese are going to benefit too. Should we be worried? Will there be a war? The Chinese are less devious than they're made out to be in the media. The nuclear bombs they developed were only made because we wouldn't take them seriously. The Chinese put on a good show, just think of the Olympics, and the extravagant 60th Anniversary of the PRC in 2009.

So where does the relationship go from here? It depends on how much our leaders know about the history of US-Sino relations. There is a logical progression which appears to be growing economic and educational and cultural ties, but don't expect that the governments should embrace each other because of those ties. Check out what the Chinese are saying in the English version of their People's Daily article.