On the End of an Error — Day Ten of Jianying Zha & Katō Yoshikazu’s New Decameron
Spectres & Souls
Vignettes, moments and meditations on China and America, 1861-2021
The following exchange between Jianying Zha查建英 and Katō Yoshikazu加藤嘉一 comes at the end of the final chapter of Freedom Is Not Free — A New Decameron, the record of a conversation between the two writers, one from China, who is an American, and the other from Japan, who has been a long-term resident of China. Their discussion took place in Beijing over a ten-day period in August 2018, the text of which was revised and updated in 2020, prior to publication. A translation of the introduction to the Zha-Katō dialogue appeared in China Heritage under the title ‘Adieu, China!’. We subtitled that translation ‘Jianying Zha’s Long Farewell’ (see China Heritage, 10 November 2020). As Jianying remarked therein:
As recently as ten years ago, I never would have imagined that my feelings about China would end up where they are today. Yet, to be perfectly honest, although I had to go through a process of grieving to arrive at this point, I also feel as though a burden has been lifted. There’s a famous expression that sums up my emotional state perfectly, it’s ‘a tangle of sorrow and joy’ [悲欣交集]. Over the long years since I took up American citizenship in 1992, I’ve experienced a deep-seated, yet hard-to-describe, sense of guilt. It was as though I had somehow betrayed my family, or that I was weighed down by an unrequited debt, one that I carried over from my old home.
Three decades have passed in what seems like the twinkling of an eye, and now here I am wondering if I haven’t just been going around in circles, emotionally and intellectually ending up in exactly the same place I found myself after the Fourth of June [in 1989]. Aren’t I that person again, one who [following the 4 June Beijing Massacre] was completely dispirited and at a loss?
Though now there’s a difference, and that’s because I can proudly tell my old self from thirty years ago that I have travelled a path that I chose for myself and I’ve done what I wanted to do. And, in the process, I really feel that I have said what I can and I have written what I could. No matter how limited my abilities or modest my accomplishment, there is one thing about which I am absolutely clear: I haven’t betrayed myself nor have I sold out my conscience. That, in itself, is something.
So, I say: Adieu, China! You are no longer mine, and I am no longer yours.
As we previously noted, Freedom Is Not Free 《自由不是免費的——新十日談》, Jianying Zha and Katō Yoshikazu’s ‘new decameron’, is a rare work in that it offers from Beijing an open and heartfelt exchange between two engaged cultural figures about the state of China, the Sino-American conundrum, the future of East Asia and how their own lives have been and still are intermeshed with all of these issues. In what we have frequently referred to as Xi Jinping’s ‘Silent China’, this conversation adds to our account of what is known in modern China as the ‘Independent Spirit and the Mind Unfettered’ 獨立之精神，自由之思想.
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I am grateful to Jianying for granting me permission to translate and publish the following discussion, one that focusses on the United States of America during what would turn out to be the dying throes of the Trump administration.
This translation is a chapter in Spectres & Souls, the 2021 issue of China Heritage Annual. In the chapters of this series, which will appear throughout the year, we posit that many of the spectres and shades, as well as the enlivening souls and lofty inspirations, that assert themselves both in China and the United States in 2021 present an even more compelling aspect when considered in the context of the 160-year period starting in 1861. In late 2020, we prefaced the series with four interconnected chapters:
Zha Jianying 查建英 in conversation with Katō Yoshikazu 加藤嘉一
新十日談：自由不是免費的 第十日
Translated & annotated by Geremie R. Barmé
Katō Yoshikazu (Katō):
The only time I’ve ever heard you swear was when you said, ‘We are America, bitch!’ What did you mean?
Jianying Zha (Zha):
Actually, it’s not my line at all. I was quoting the title of an article that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly by a journalist who’d interviewed a senior official in the Trump White House.
They’d said that the Trump Doctrine [as it related to US engagement with the world] could best be summed up in the line ‘We’re America, bitch’.
The best distillation of the Trump Doctrine I heard, though, came from a senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking. I was talking to this person several weeks ago, and I said, by way of introduction, that I thought it might perhaps be too early to discern a definitive Trump Doctrine.
“No,” the official said. “There’s definitely a Trump Doctrine.”
“What is it?” I asked. Here is the answer I received:
“The Trump Doctrine is ‘We’re America, Bitch.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.”
It struck me almost immediately that this was the most acute, and attitudinally honest, description of the manner in which members of Trump’s team, and Trump himself, understand their role in the world.
One of the original meanings of ‘bitch’ is ‘female dog’, although it has long been used as a pejorative term when speaking about or abusing a woman as ‘a whore’. It’s egregiously chauvinistic, but it’s also used when the speaker wants to denigrate someone or something that they think of as being weak, inferior or subservient.
‘Trumpism’, be it in regard to its overweening posture or actual policy settings, is summed up as ‘USA First’, the US is Number One, capo dei capi. We’re the strongest and the toughest and if you bitches don’t behave yourselves, we’ll show you just what’s what. In Beijing slang you’d say something like:
‘Listen up, you fuckers, the Boss Man is back in town, so get down on your knees!’
Trump was outraged by what he thought of as the weakness of the Obama administration. Once he took office, he made a big show of pulling out of alliances and dissolving agreements [with other countries]. He was convinced that everything Obama had done only served to make Americans feel bad about themselves; all those painstaking negotiations with other countries demonstrated nothing so much as American weakness. [According to Trump,] Obama’s was a presidency in retreat; it was one during which he constantly admitted fault. In the Syrian conflict, for example, although the Assad regime had clearly crossed the red line set down by Washington [to the effect that the US would take action against Damascus if chemical weapons were deployed against Syrian civilians], still Obama didn’t react. Trump believed that this was a betrayal of what America is all about.
[Note:On 20 August 2012, Barack Obama used the phrase ‘red line’ when referring to the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war. He said: ‘We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.’ At the time, John McCain, Obama’s political opponent, observed that the red line was ‘apparently written in disappearing ink’.]
The line ‘We’re America, Bitch’ is an example of a quintessentially crude and bullying machismo. It proclaims, in effect, that, first and foremost, our enemies should fear us; we don’t need them to like us, let alone love us.
America has always presented two contrasting realities. On the one hand, its army is the best on the planet, its military budget the largest. Then, on the other hand, American soft power — its ideals of freedom and democracy, its openness and inclusivity, its leading universities and popular culture — are the envy of the world. The ‘America First’ approach promoted by Trump is about brute force pure and simple, not soft power.
Some of the hawks in the Trump administration remind me of people like Donald Rumsfeld during the era of Bush fils. [Note:That is, George W. Bush, 43rd President of the USA, who is referred to as ‘Baby Bush’ 小布殊 in Chinese.] After 9/11, the Bush administration hankered for revenge and obsessed about lashing out. It set its sights on invading Iraq. I’ll never forget Rumsfeld on TV, with that eternally knotted brow and a dark expression of foreboding. What was the upshot of it all? A brutal military action that merely served to stir up a hornet’s nest.
Trump seemingly moved in the opposite direction; he couldn’t quit alliances or withdraw troops fast enough. Strategic withdrawal aimed at consolidating one’s forces as opposed to embarking on military ventures in every direction is a policy that doubtlessly has its merits. If truth be told, many Obama-era policies were aimed at just such a recalibration, a strategic falling back. But, despite all of his claims, to me Trump seems to mirror the hawkish attitude traditionally found among Republicans — a simplistic and brutish understanding of the world that invariably results in unilateral acts of bellicosity. That’s what seems to be coming to the fore again.
Americans often describe the Republicans as being the country’s stern ‘Daddy Party’, compared to the softer ‘Mommy Party’ of Democrats. As a result, American political life is supposedly a complementary admix of the two. Nowadays, although many Republican elders might find it difficult to stomach Trump’s crazy ways, and despite the fact that they are repelled by his moral turpitude, they recognise that when it comes to economic policy and a raft of social issues his behaviour is still well within the bounds of their conservative tradition. As for China policy, he not only has the support of the Republicans, even the Democrats are now favouring a more hard-line approach. As things presently stand, China might be the only policy area in which there is relative bipartisan agreement. Trump thinks China has always taken advantage of the United States and made fools of its leaders; now it’s time to show the ‘bitch’ just who’s boss.
Katō:
You’re right, the most significant, and perhaps the only, point of agreement in Washington — one shared by the two main political parties, as well as by the two houses of congress, the administration and the various think tanks — is a determination not to be soft on China any more and the need to reiterate demands that the People’s Republic abide by the rules of the global system. Trump wants China to learn a lesson; he wants Beijing to be both intimidated as well as compliant. As for the Chinese authorities, they are being tested as to how they respond to a drawn-out trade conflict with the United States in ways they simply haven’t experienced at any point during their recent economic transformation. It’s a test that involves numerous variables. It seems to me that the China strategy that’s evolved during the Trump presidency will continue after [the presidential inauguration on 20] January 2021. What do you think?
Zha:
I agree. No matter who wins the election [in November 2020], the US-China relationship won’t be going back to status quo ante the Trump era. Perhaps the most significant achievement of the Trump presidency will be that America has now jettisoned all pretence in its dealings with the Communist regime.
According to that article in The Atlantic [quoted above], the senior White House official who summed up the ‘Trump Doctrine’ as ‘We’re America, Bitch’, had direct access to the president and his thinking. When the journalist asked the official to expand on the subject, he said:
‘Obama apologized to everyone for everything. He felt bad about everything. [President Trump] Doesn’t feel like he has to apologize for anything America does.’
Moreover, a friend of the new president described the Trump Doctrine succinctly:
‘There’s the Obama Doctrine, and the “Fuck Obama” Doctrine. We’re the “Fuck Obama” Doctrine.’
‘Of course,’ he said, laughing. ‘The president believes that we’re America, and people can take it or leave it.’
Superficially, the song ‘America, Fuck Yeah!’ bristles with American machismo but, in actual fact, it’s a parody, a satire of the obnoxious bullying temperament of the Americans.
Although the chief baddies in the movie are a dictator [Kim Jong Il] and the terrorists, it also makes fun of a raft of soft-headed leftie Hollywood entertainers, as well as lampooning the braggadocio of knuckle-dragging American ‘cowboy heroes’. Both groups are blind to the result of their saviour complex, both have repeatedly made an absolute mess of things.
The people behind Team America: World Police [Trey Parker and Matt Stone] are also the creators of South Park, a modern cartoon classic. They spare no one in their send ups, including themselves, be they corporate ‘masters of the universe’ or politicians, liberals or conservatives — they have the lot in their sights.
An [October 2019] episode of South Park [titled‘Band in China’] lambasted the American corporations that kowtow to Beijing in their craven pursuit of the China market, as well as NBA stars and Hollywood producers. There’s lots of similar programs that ‘take the piss’ in America; they include shows familiar to Chinese viewers such as House of Cards [a feeble American remake of a BBC original]. In the States, both audiences and the government are used to such satires, they’re part and parcel of American’s ‘cultural confidence’ [to use a term promoted by Xi Jinping, who champions Chinese cultural confidence].
On Wednesday [2 October 2019], “South Park” released an episode called “Band in China,” which featured the clueless Randy Marsh, the most prominently featured parent in the show, detained in a Chinese prison and labor camp for trying to sell the marijuana he grows on his Colorado farm to what he thinks will be a large, untapped market in China. Meanwhile, his son, Stan, battles with a film producer over the script for a biopic about his death metal band as Chinese advisers request rewrite after rewrite to appease the government’s strict content standards.
“For this movie to really make money, we need to clear the Chinese censors,” the producer tells Stan. “You gotta lower your ideals of freedom if you wanna” do business in China, he adds, punctuating the joke with a graphic metaphor.
In a scene at the beginning of the episode, several NBA players, including one wearing a Houston Rockets jersey, and recognizable Disney characters — including Elsa of “Frozen” and Thor of “The Avengers” — fly to China as brand ambassadors to entice Chinese viewers to tune in to their American programming. Randy goes to extreme lengths to satisfy the Chinese officials and regain his freedom, eventually strangling Winnie the Pooh, another victim of the country’s suppression of speech. His son rejects the censors’ demands, boldly proclaiming that he cannot sell his soul to make money in the Chinese film market.
“It’s not worth living in a world where China controls my country’s art,” Stan eventually tells the producer as he abandons the biopic.
When you say that satire and self-mockery are ‘part and parcel of American “cultural confidence” ’ it brings to mind that term ‘Great Power’. Maybe great powers really do need a kind of latitude and broad-mindedness.
But, allow me to change the subject: I know that Trump is from New York and that there’s a Trump Tower in Manhattan. As a New Yorker yourself, can you say something about Trump’s presence in the city?
Zha:
Let me say right up front that, even though Trump Tower is smack in the middle of Manhattan [on Fifth Avenue, between 56th and 57th Streets] and, although I’ve passed by many times, I’ve never been inside. I have zero curiosity about that gaudy golden monolith.
But your question brings to mind a story I did for The New Yorker back in 2005. It was an extensive profile of Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, the Beijing husband-and-wife real estate developers. I called the piece ‘The Turtles’ [海龜懟土鱉, a reference to the fact that Pan was a local boy while Zhang had returned to China after studying overseas]. Though, when I got my print copy of the magazine, I discovered that on the cover the title had been changed to ‘The Trumps of Beijing’ [Note: in the magazine itself, the title remained unchanged].
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It’s an anecdote that highlights a couple of things: in the first place, it is an indication of the prominence of the Trump name in New York, long before he ran for president. The Chinese are familiar with many famous Americans; though not many Americans know any famous Chinese; some know the names Mao and Deng but no one else, let alone people like real estate developers or entrepreneurs.
Secondly, for New Yorkers, the name Trump conjured up the image of a practiced self-promoter even then. His story has always only been about business and his name was always a brand that evoked a particular lifestyle and kind of taste. In my New Yorker profile, I said that those upcoming Beijing developers were canny and knew how to play to the media and package themselves so they could sell their properties at a premium. Not only were Pan and Zhang expert at all of that, they’d even thought about producing a show like Trump’s The Apprentice. I guess, that’s why the editors of The New Yorker thought the pair had something of the Donald J. Trump about them.
Katō:
I get it. Though I’d note that in this ‘New Era of Xi Jinping’ even the most famous and influential Chinese entrepreneurs like Pan Shiyi are trying to keep a low profile. To my mind, their political acuity and adaptability reeks of rank opportunism.
Zha:
You’re spot on, of course. Moreover, who’d ever imagine that opportunists like that would show any mettle? They know how to trim their sails to the prevailing winds. China’s entrepreneurs are infinitely more faint-hearted than Trump.
My understanding is that Trump’s reputation in New York has never been particularly stellar. He grew up in Queens, a borough in which housing is cheaper than either Manhattan and Brooklyn. As a result, it has a high concentration of middle- and lower-middle class immigrant families. Although Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, his father was a developer of relatively low-rent real estate projects in Queens; he never managed to expand into Manhattan. Trump’s dream was to get into the Manhattan market by building luxury developments for the wealthy. Trump Tower was one such project. But, he actually achieved what he’d set out to do; he’s even ended up as president of the United States. Isn’t that the ‘American Dream’?
The problem though is that New Yorkers are all familiar with the stories about Trump’s father — from his questionable character to the underhand way in which he amassed his wealth. For example, I have an old family friend who’s a classic New York Jew. His father was in construction materials and, at one point, he was a supplier for Trump père. My friend delighted in sharing all the sordid details of the elder Trump’s boundless chicanery. One time, he said, his dad was so furious with the way he was being cheated that he shoved the old bastard into a corner and threatened to beat him up.
[Addition:On that occasion, friend’s father (the supplier) had delivered a large batch of plumbing supplies to Fred Trump’s building site. Then, under the cover of darkness, Trump Senior had his people move them to another site, reported that a ‘theft’ had taken place, collected compensation from his insurer and, to top it off, refused to pay the original supplier. — Zha Jianying.]
There’s far more scuttlebutt about the son: diddling customers, padding accounts, tax evasion, employing undocumented immigrants, welching on bills… Then there’s the string of bankrupt casinos and the endless law suits, not to mention the sex scandals. If all the stories and reports are true, Trump can only be described as a dyed in the wool thug.
Frankly, the New York real estate world has long been home to unbridled corruption, as well as being a haven for the mafia. Trump wasn’t the only slimy creature dwelling in that particular swamp. Apart from all that, those with serious money, people who tend to be fairly low-key, like Michael Bloomberg — someone who is far richer than Trump — always found his self-promotional antics to be on the nose. To them, Trump is a windbag par excellence, a completely unreliable operator.
Add that to the fact that the New York elite is remarkably snobbish. Not only was Trump a questionable character, even worse was the fact that he is so tacky, with taste that reeks of kitsch. He is nouveau riche himself and what’s more he builds ostentatious palaces for his fellow wannabes so they can flaunt their money. For the well-heeled and cultivated denizens of New York, such plutocratic newbies lowered the tone — they move in to glistening towers built in the luxury neighbourhoods of Manhattan in the mistaken belief that they were part of the real New York. In fact, they have nothing to do with the actual spirit of the city and their presence only serves to push up real estate prices. In the process, they trash the true quality and ambience of the place.
Speaking of ambience, that reminds me of another Trump Tower — the one he plopped down in the heart of Chicago. Buildings in downtown Chicago are noted for their modernist elegance but there, smack in the middle of those soaring exemplars, is a skyscraper that advertises itself with a massive ‘TRUMP’ emblazoned on its side. You can’t miss it; it’s typical of Trump’s overwhelming narcissism — ‘Forget taste, I only care about being seen!’
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Source: WikiCommons
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Lots of commentators have observed that although Trump doesn’t read, he has accumulated a wealth of experience as a ‘street brawler’: he’s crafty and decisive, and he has an endless appetite for pursuing his aims. He wasn’t a bad looking young man and he exuded a certain roguish charm. Regardless, he’s loathed by the intelligentsia of New York. The mere mention of the name ‘Trump’ at any literary gathering invariably leads to a furious outpouring — a stream of snide remarks and much rolling of eyes. It’s as though America has woken to find itself trapped in a nightmare, they cry, and it feels like it’ll never end. On those occasions, you’ll virtually never hear a good word about him, let alone any even vaguely objective assessment of the man.
New Yorkers never imagined that one day Trump would end up as their president. He got very few votes locally and, since no one really regards him as being part of New York anyway, no one feels any pride in the fact that he was elected. Throughout his presidency The New York Times, The New Yorker, along with most local media outlets have been consistently critical of him. There are frequent anti-Trump protests near where I live at Washington Square Park and on any given day you’ll find someone there selling anti-Trump badges. There’s also this musician who turns up with a piano once a week carrying a sign that reads ‘Down With Fascism!’.
The driver of a cab I recently took to JFK [Airport] spent the whole trip railing about Trump. He said, sure America has plenty of problems—the rich are greedy and there’s too many people on welfare—but Trump is the last person who’d ever be able to do anything about it. The only thing he cares about is himself. As I was getting out of the cab, he turned to me and said:
‘I’m a Jew, so you can believe me when I tell you that I know a Nazi when I see one.’
So, New Yorkers see Trump in a very negative light. Some have really gone off the deep end as a result. Following the news of Trump’s victory in early November 2016, the editor of the The New Yorker [David Remnick] published an editorial titled simply ‘An American Tragedy’.
The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism. Trump’s shocking victory, his ascension to the Presidency, is a sickening event in the history of the United States and liberal democracy. On January 20, 2017, we will bid farewell to the first African-American President—a man of integrity, dignity, and generous spirit—and witness the inauguration of a con who did little to spurn endorsement by forces of xenophobia and white supremacy. It is impossible to react to this moment with anything less than revulsion and profound anxiety. …
All along, Trump seemed like a twisted caricature of every rotten reflex of the radical right. That he has prevailed, that he has won this election, is a crushing blow to the spirit; it is an event that will likely cast the country into a period of economic, political, and social uncertainty that we cannot yet imagine. That the electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world of vanity, hate, arrogance, untruth, and recklessness, his disdain for democratic norms, is a fact that will lead, inevitably, to all manner of national decline and suffering.
— David Remnick, The New Yorker, 9 November 2016
Katō:
Thank you. There seem to be two main schools of thought about Trump. One argues that if someone like Donald Trump can be president then the American Dream is in serious trouble. The opposite view contends that the American Dream is alive and well precisely because a businessman like Trump was elected president. As an American citizen, what do you think?
Zha:
Though I’ll probably be criticised for being a fence-sitter, I think there’s merits on both sides of this divide. One of the underlying features of the American Dream is that a person can make good by dint of their own effort, and regardless of their background or race. They can even aspire to become president. Both Obama and Trump’s presidencies are evidence of the broad spectrum of possibilities that still exist in America today. One was an outstanding person from a half-African immigrant background who boasted academic accomplishments, the other is a deeply flawed political newcomer who happens to have a unique kind of acumen.
The America Dream has been in a critical state for decades as the country has witnessed a decline in mobility, increased class stratification and exacerbated inequalities. Trump is the first president in American history who has had no previous political or military experience, yet these are among the factors that made him electable in the first place. Many Americans are sick and tired, not to mention mistrustful, of slick professional political hacks, establishment elites and interest groups that have grown fat on outsourced production and globalisation. That’s why so many voters went for an ‘outsider’, even if the candidate was an obstreperous nut job like Trump. [Note:In the 2016 presidential election, only 55.7% of the electorate turned out to vote. Trump won with 304 of the 538 electoral votes, although Clinton won the popular vote by a margin of 2,868,686 votes.] Trump wasn’t a politician cast in the usual mold; he promised to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington and during the campaign he played up his status as a non-establishment figure.
Katō:
When Trump became president I thought of the former Japanese prime minister Koizumi Junichirō. Despite his reputation as a maverick, Koizumi was from a family of politicians and his son, Koizumi Shinichirō, Japan’s thirty-seven year-old Minister of the Environment, seems destined to be prime minister in the future. But in his political career the father, Junichirō, was a lone wolf who steered clear of factional politics; he even championed the slogan: ‘Overthrow the LDP!’ [that is, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party of which Koizumi was himself a member]. Trump’s assault on Washington reminded me of that old Japanese political slogan. What’s different in Trump’s case is that he really is a political outsider; it’s impossible to think of any Japanese equivalent. Of course, Japan too has been experiencing a wave of populism, commercialisation and politics-as-entertainment not all that dissimilar from America. It’s disturbing to see more and more retired athletes, entertainers and even singers contesting parliamentary elections solely on the basis of their popularity.
But Trump really has the thickest hide of them all, and it’s impressive that he’s been able to get this far despite the relentless pressure on him from the media, the judiciary and the Democratic Party. It really is quite something! At the same time, as a Japanese, of course I feel that Trump is completely unreliable; he’s a profoundly flawed character. That such a ‘disabled individual’ could ever become president highlights the stark differences between America and Japan.
But I’m interested to know whether your opinions of him have changed since his inauguration?
Zha:
They have. I should preface my remarks by emphasising that my diastase for Trump’s style remains unaltered and I’m opposed, no, disgusted by much of what he says and does. However, I must admit that his uncanny sense for mass sentiment informs both his thinking and his aggressive behaviour. The shockwaves that his mere presence have sent out highlight a raft of issues; they’ve shaken many people out of their complacency and forced them to reflect on many sobering American realities. I can’t condemn all of his policies and actions out of hand. There have been some achievements along with the egregious failures.
Prior to Trump’s election in November 2016, I had a vague foreboding, a sense of the mounting grievances felt by many right-leaning Caucasians in the country. During a discussion about the rise of Chinese nationalism at a symposium on China organised by The New Yorker in December 2015 [and hosted by The Asia Society], I observed that: ‘Nationalism is also on the rise in the United States.’ David Remnick, editor-in-chief of The New Yorker, was in the chair, and he shot me a look of puzzlement. He asked me whether I meant the Republicans or Obama? I responded and said something to the effect that: ‘Obama is blamed for not being nationalistic enough. I’m talking about the right wing, including conservatives like Donald Trump who are giving voice to right-wing sentiment. They feel that Obama is too weak.’
Trump had only recently announced that he was going to be a contender in the presidential race and it’d be another six months before he won the Republican nomination. Since, apart from other things, we were discussing ‘nationalism’ at that ‘The New Yorker on China’ symposium, that’s the word I used rather than the expression ‘American populism’. What I was referring to was the evident change in national sentiment, the revival of a kind of American nativism.
[Note: The discussion on nationalism in China and the USA can be found at 47-55 minutes. The exchange between Jianying Zha and David Remnick occurs at 48-49 minutes.]
Katō:
There’s no doubt that we have been witnessing what you could call the ‘contending nationalisms’ of China and the United States. It’s evident in the bilateral trade war, disagreements over Hong Kong and in the friction over COVID-19. Feeding off each other, the disparate nationalisms of China under Xi Jinping and America under Trump are now locked in a kind of vicious cycle.
Zha:
Back then [in late 2015], however, I hadn’t put all that much thought into these issues. In particular, I couldn’t imagine that Trump would ever win the election, though I got the feeling that he might get the Republican nomination. I watched all of the debates and I was struck by Trump’s undeniably powerful stage presence, his ability simply to steamroll over all the other Republican candidates. It never occurred to me that he’d eventually go on to defeat Hilary Clinton. I was repulsed by Trump from the get-go — all of his grotesque, incendiary remarks, not to mention the smears targeting Clinton. One thing I found to be particularly unforgivable was that, in one of the televised debates, he had the gall to describe the 1989 Tiananmen protests as a ‘riot’ 騷亂 sāoluàn, a term that has an even more negative connotation than ‘turmoil’ 動亂 dòngluàn, the pejorative expression used by Chinese officialdom. Adding insult to injury, he referred to the repression of June Fourth [1989] as evidence of the strength of the Chinese government, and contrasted it with the relative weakness of America. What absolute garbage! And that wasn’t the first time he’d ever spoken about June Fourth; he’d said similar things back in the 1990s. At the time I thought to myself: this guy will do absolutely anything to win; the only thing that he cares about is brute force.
Katō:
So true. Trump will do anything to promote himself and gain an advantage. It’s something you can see in the way he’s handled such issues as the US-China trade conflict, the Chinese students studying in America and Hong Kong. When it comes to Hong Kong, there’s no evidence that he has any interest in human rights and freedom; he’s also completely ignorant about the history and role of the ‘one country, two systems’ governance framework. He’s just using Hong Kong as a bargaining chip in his dealings with Beijing.
There’s an old saying that ‘good intentions often lead to bad consequences’ but, in the way Trump has dealt with China maybe we could say that ‘evil intentions might have positive outcomes’.
Zha:
Sure. In his recently published memoir [The Room Where it Happened, June 2020] John Bolton, a former National Security Advisor in the Trump White House, reported a number of China-related Trumpisms that are further evidence that the man has zero interest in Chinese human rights, unless of course they can be used as a pawn in the larger contest between the US and China.
Bolton’s revelations show that not only was Trump willing to praise Xi Jinping to the skies during trade negotiations if it might give him a slight edge in his efforts to be re-elected, but that he was also happy to sell out the freedom and rights of Hong Kongers and the Uyghurs in Xinjiang without a thought [Note:Bolton reveals that Trump remarked to Xi that the concentration camps in Xinjing were ‘the right thing to do’]. As for commemorating June Fourth, that doesn’t even rate a mention. And Taiwan? One of Trump’s favorite comparisons was to point to the tip of one of his Sharpie [markers] and say, ‘This is Taiwan’ then, pointing to [the Resolute desk in the Oval Office where he worked] he’d add, ‘This is China.’ It’s a powerful image — Trump probably wouldn’t care if the tip of his marker was ground into dust if only the Great Leader Xi Jinping agreed to buy a few more tonnes of American soybeans.
Having said that, I do agree that ‘evil intentions might have positive outcomes’. The Great Game between major powers is a complex one and US foreign policy isn’t simply the outcome of what any given president might want. There’s a number of hawks in the Trump administration who really do care about human rights in Hong Kong and China, including Young Turks like Matt Pottinger. [Note: See, Josh Rogin, ‘The Trump administration had a China strategy after all, but Trump didn’t follow it’, The Washington Post, 15 January 2021.]
Politicians are generally pretty relentless when they debate each other, but Donald Trump’s animus is extreme, he’s simply more vituperative and abusive than anyone else. It’s said he was a brawler at school and there’s even a story that he once gave his music teacher a black eye. Nowadays, words are his weapon of choice. During the presidential campaign [of 2015-2016] Trump came up with nicknames for all of his opponents, be they Democrats or Republicans. They were, without exception, vulgar and insulting; it was completely unprecedented. He’d verbally abuse opponents at his rallies and he regularly used misogynistic language to denigrate women. A friend of mine who attended a Trump rally in a conservative part of north Florida said that he had heard for himself the racist and sexist ways Trump slandered Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Words like ‘nigger’ and ‘bitch’ featured in chants like ‘Throw the nigger out!’ and ‘Lock up the bitch!’. Trump’s election rallies also saw physical clashes, something Trump praised. This too was unheard of in the history of modern American presidential campaigns. Such norm-breaking behaviour made the 2016 election particularly heinous.
Following Trump’s victory, many of his opponents, including many of my friends in New York, felt traumatised and were overwhelmed by feelings of anger and defeatism. They’d lash out at anyone who supported him, so much so that it seemed like borderline hate. Yet, at the same time, they were reluctant to detect any fault in themselves and that’s something that worries me profoundly. No matter how you see it, Trump won nearly half of all the votes cast and he was elected legitimately. This is the first time in many years that something like half of the American electorate [that is, poor whites who felt increasingly disenfrancised as a result of globalisation — Zha] has been taken seriously; until now their anger has generally been ignored.
Trump is a wily operator who was able to sense all the pent up frustrations out there and he was able to express himself adroitly via the new social media platforms. His tweets might be composed in something that’s little better than primary school language, but those outbursts resonate powerfully with large numbers of everyday voters. He follows [what Mao called] ‘the mass line’. He held rallies in many places that Clinton never went, in particular the neglected and de-industrialised areas of the country. He ‘goes down to the grassroots’ [to use another Chinese Communist expression] and knows how to channel the voices of people who have long felt alienated. He speaks in a plain and emotive language that enables him to ride roughshod over everything. It’s in stark contrast to the carefully crafted, rational and well-argued speeches of Barack Obama. So, the more the various elites despised him, the greater his appeal among his rough-and-ready supporters. To them he was as familiar and appealing as a crusty old neighbour who didn’t have much education. Trumpistas were saying in effect: Yeah, we like to see the rantings of this loudmouthed character as he spits in the face of all the elites. What a blast! Confronted by such raw emotions, rational argument pales in comparison. Added to all of this is the fact that the sense of grievance had been building up for years.
Trump’s presidency has been a wake-up call for the American establishment. Trump ‘groked’ on exactly the things that they’d been ignoring.
Katō:
Indeed. Trump and Xi Jinping also share a few things in common, in particular their willingness to do whatever it takes to shore up their reputations and consolidate their gains. It’s interesting that, despite the sorry state of the US-China relationship overall, the two leaders have not stooped to engaging in mutual recriminations nor have they engaged in personal attacks. Perhaps it’s proof that they share certain traits in common.
Zha:
They’re ‘partners in crime’. Trump has publicly praised Xi Jinping as the great leader of the Chinese people and, according to Bolton, Xi had remarked in discussions with Trump that he hoped they would continue to work together in the future [beyond Trump’s first term].
[Note:When, in early March 2018, Xi had the Chinese Constitution revised to allow him to stay in office indefinitely, Trump said: ‘He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday.’ His supporters at a fundraiser in Florida where he made these remarks responded with cheers and applause.]
Apart from Xi there’s a host of other questionable characters with whom Trump enjoys a chummy relationship: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the British PM [Boris Johnson], the president of Brazil [Jair Bolsonaro] and the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi … These ‘macho types’ are like a mutual admiration society; there’s enough of them to form a club.
Katō:
I’m now willing to admit that, despite my personal distaste for Trump, I actually hoped he’d win in 2016. I felt he’d bring about long-term change. Just like Koizumi had observed, only America can overthrow America.
The electorate was sick and tired of the merry-go-round antics of the establishment and the dilatory policies of the elite, be they in the form of a Hilary Clinton or a Barack Obama, and regardless of whether they were Republicans or Democrats. They weren’t voting for Trump so much as hoping for a different future. They didn’t care whether Trump was a thug or a gentleman, they just wanted to upset the status quo.
There’s no doubt that America is at a cross roads. The Trump presidency offers the establishment, as well as America more broadly, an opportunity to rethink things. But the problems are at the very top, in the national system itself and major changes need to be made. From a long-term perspective the Trump ascendancy offers an opportunity for the American Dream to be reimagined. I’d even dub the Trump presidency a ‘break-through transition’.
Zha:
Certainly. Trump’s presidency has definitely been something of a ‘wake-up call’. Even though it’s been an ‘over correction’, at least it’s better than just letting things slide into a morass. In this regard alone, Trump’s victory will be seen as a profoundly significant moment in American history.
Above all, I’ve been particularly aware of the impact Trump’s rise has had on the Sino-American relationship. It’s also one of the reasons why my view of him has changed over time. He’s sounded the alarm about China not only in the United States, but globally as well. He has transformed the kind of American China policy that has been in place during all administrations for nearly half a century, from Nixon to Obama. Over time, that policy has been called various things like ‘engagement’, ‘cooperation’, ‘accommodation’ and a ‘negotiated relationship’. You could sum it up as having been a strategy that employed relatively moderate and friendly means to encourage China’s ongoing reform and opening up. The flaws of that approach were becoming increasingly evident. Actually, things had been changing from the time of Obama’s second term as part of a general reset of America’s post-9/11 strategy, starting in the Middle East and then involving Asia. Obama and [Secretary of State] Clinton called it a ‘pivot to Asia’.
The new strategy was expressed through a series of moves: joint military exercises with Australia; the deployment of the THAAD missile system in South Korea; an enhanced alliance with India; as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. When it came to China, however, Obama took a softly-softly approach expressed more in terms of measured and courteous discussions, the upshot of which was that China played him for a fool. He was repeatedly frustrated, be it in regard to trade policy, the militarisation of the South China Sea or ongoing cyber attacks [on US networks]. Trump saw what had been going on and declared that he didn’t believe what the Chinese said and that he wouldn’t engage with the PRC in the same way. Remember, as soon as he was in office he took that call from [Taiwan president] Tsai Ing-wen? At the time, many people put it down to the fact that Trump was a political novice who had no international relations nous. Events have proven that he was prepared and briefed, and that he had an overall policy goal to get tough on China.
The ongoing trade war has shaken the kind of complacency in China that had been built up over the decades as a result of their dealings with previous US administrations. Some of my old ‘liberal’ friends in China support Trump because they feel he has the Communists by the ‘short and curlies’. They believe that Trump and his advisers ‘get’ China and that they know just how to engage with it, as well as how to put it in its place. I tend to agree, at least in terms of Trump’s China policy. The attitude of the China hawks in the Trump administration could be summed up in one line:
‘Listen, punk, the boss man is back on the scene, so just try me and see what I’ve got in store for you!’
Genteel types will never get the better of street toughs. Sometimes in life, when you’re dealing with a hustler, you need a hustler on your side; a lout can only be put in their place by a bigger lout. Trump really has something of the mafia boss about him; even the advisers he surrounds himself with look like a gang of Sicilian mafiosi — I just about laugh out loud whenever I see Mike Pompeo or Rudy Giuliani on TV. But, then, the Communists are hardly a push over. Does anyone think they can be trusted?
Many economists are highly critical of the tactics that have been employed during the trade war. In particular, they argue that tariffs are an out-of-date policy approach that hurts your side nearly as much as the enemy, with only limited practical effect. But then, what are the actual long-term interests of the American and Chinese people? Should American corporations and consumers for the sake of securing certain short-term gains [such as corporate profits and made-in-China cheap goods] simply put up with the numerous systemic trade inequities that exist, as well as with China’s overall lack of reciprocity, transparency and a plethora of behaviours that ignore the rules of the game? Isn’t opening the door to a surveillance state like China determined to achieve hi-tech parity really a threat to US security? What does an increasingly robust China model mean for the world and humanity itself? Such questions are not only about business profitability, they relate to such basic issues as freedom, democracy and fundamental personal dignity.
Candidates in previous presidential campaigns alway said they’d get tough on China but, once they were in the White House they’d quickly start making concessions to the business lobbies both in China and the US. Up to the present moment, Trump has pretty much done what he said he’d do. It’s certainly made people sit up and pay attention. On the surface, it looks as though he’s only about business calculations, but behind that there’s also a steely view related to basic ideas and rules. I’m generally in favour of trade negotiations that are undertaken on the basis of equality, and I support an approach that is tough about rules and values.
I believe that all of this is actually also in China’s long-term interests. For some time there’s been what Ezra Vogel has called a certain ‘arrogance’ in China and the country is now learning some of the valuable lessons that it missed out on in the past. Trump is actually giving China some hope. Faced as it is with a range of serious issues it would be self-defeating for China not to be confronted by some a country that could stand up to it and simply say ‘No!’
Zha:
That’s why people are talking about China now having to confront a period of ‘forced’ or ‘imposed reform’. Unfortunately, Trump has also been a harbinger of fracture and alienation, be it in America itself or in relation to the European Union, as well as for the whole Western world. In America there’s been a complete split between the Trumpists and those who oppose him, just as the mainstream media has bifurcated. Similarly, American’s relations with its allies are ruptured and testy. In China there are various schools of thought about all of this and my friends have been at loggerheads for some time. There’s no sign that anyone is willing to walk back from their entrenched positions.
Katō:
From your perspective, is there any evidence that the Democratic Party has been engaged in a serious stocktaking since Trump’s inauguration?
Zha:
I believe that there has been a measure of reflection in the Democratic camp, but it’s impossible to say how sincere it’s really been. Overall, it doesn’t seem to have resulted in anything particularly meaningful. The Democrats are convinced that they occupy the moral high ground, just as they believe that the forces of justice and progress are on their side. They instinctively reacted by denying Trump’s legitimacy and since then they have attacked him tirelessly. This highly emotive response has simply gone on far too long.
There’s also been a split within the ranks of the Democrats and some people have become increasingly ‘left wing’. Emotions are running particularly high among the young. That’s why, for example, the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, a twenty-eight year-old Latina in New York, over the incumbent Democrat [Joe Crowley] came as such a shock to the establishment. In the 2018 mid-term elections, a number of young minority candidates [subsequently known as ‘The Squad’], won in other states and have now joined Congress. There’s a view that this trend reflects the increasing numbers of ethnic minorities in the electorate, one that is relatively left-leaning and progressive.
I’m concerned about what this kind of progressivist leftism may mean in terms of practical politics. I’ve long had reservations about ‘identity politics’ on university campuses, and I’m no fan of the fostering of ‘tribalism’ or anything that smacks of intolerance, mental narrowness, hyper-sensitivity or the simplistic labeling of people. To me such narrow-mindedness is bad across the board, be it on the left or the right. Of course, one appreciates that during any social movement it’s hard to avoid a tendency to over-correct, but I’m not convinced that economic or social issues can be meaningfully addressed by extremist posturing; at most it will only serve to exacerbate the existing divisions in American society. But, then again, for their part moderate Democrats haven’t come up with any solutions either. Both parties are controlled by an establishment that occupies a fixed position; no one is willing to sacrifice what they perceive as being their own interests.
Katō:
Trump’s first term is nearly over. Do the Democrats have any positive policy initiatives to offer?
Zha:
Although my observations are fairly limited, frankly, from what I’ve seen of the Democratic platform, there’s not much worth discussing. The problems are endemic and virtually intractable, added to which are a host of new issues created or highlighted by the coronavirus pandemic. The sense one gets from the media is that Trump is not only seen as having failed to deal with the pandemic, it continues to ravaging the nation unhindered while the economic outlook is increasingly gloomy. The international image of America has suffered. Even if Biden wins, given his age he’ll probably be a one-term president. If, as a transitional figure, he can restore some overall sense of balance and tamp down the feverish tensions that Trump has exacerbated both domestically and on the international stage, he’ll be doing pretty well.
In it, the author offers an impressive re-consideration of the issue of wealth distribution. A slogan of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement of 2011 was ‘We are the 99% and the 1% are exploiting us!’ This article points out the fallacy of such a view, and the writer provides a number of examples and an array of statistics to show that the upper-middle class in America (which includes most well-educated leftists) doesn’t belong to the majoritarian 99%, rather they form an upper echelon of the 9.9%. In fact, they are the direct beneficiaries of the present American system and, over the years of globalisation, they have increasingly benefitted from the resulting windfall. They are enmeshed with the establishment and are in part responsible for the increased stratification and inequalities of American society. Many of them are also long-term supporters of the Democratic Party and there’s no sign that they have been reflecting on their role in the present situation.
The meritocratic class has mastered the old trick of consolidating wealth and passing privilege along at the expense of other people’s children. We are not innocent bystanders to the growing concentration of wealth in our time. We are the principal accomplices in a process that is slowly strangling the economy, destabilizing American politics, and eroding democracy. Our delusions of merit now prevent us from recognizing the nature of the problem that our emergence as a class represents. We tend to think that the victims of our success are just the people excluded from the club. But history shows quite clearly that, in the kind of game we’re playing, everybody loses badly in the end.
Getting rid of Trump isn’t going to solve anything. Redistribution — how many things can you resolve by taxing the 1% more heavily? Would the upper middle class support dealing with some of the problems if you increased taxes on the 9.9%? They might be happy to attack the super wealthy, but they don’t want to deprive themselves of anything or have their interests impinged upon.
In that case, do people really think the broad-based outrage of the American poor can be meaningfully dealt with by bringing some traditional industrial production back home? There might be some marginal success in such ‘repatriation’ but, for the foreseeable future, most manufacturing jobs will stay in China or migrate to places like Vietnam where labor costs are low. Every corporation operates according to a profit motive so, no matter how hardline Trump might be, he can’t just order businesses to relocate to America. With the national debt already astronomically high, how many more tax breaks and subsidies can the government afford to give in its attempts to lure back businesses? Anyway, do you really think America will welcome back polluting, low-skill and backward industries?
The future is in AI and hi-tech industries, and that’s the nub of Sino-American competition. It’s also why American blue-collar workers are in a bind when trying to find gainful employment. So, how do you deal with their need to find work? Do you do what Andrew Yang says and hand out a living wage [the so-called ‘freedom dividend’]? People have proposed a UBI (universal basic income) in the past; now there’s also talk of UBC (universal basic capital), that is everyone gets some money to invest in something. But have any of these innovative ideas got sufficient broad-based backing to be viable?
Katō:
None of these policy proposals seem to be particularly practical; anyway, they won’t ameliorate the profound wealth gap in America today. From my own limited understanding, be it at Harvard, MIT or the think tanks in Washington, the basic ideas of the majority of the intelligentsia chime with the existing power structures. This has pretty much remained the case throughout the Trump years. It’s hardly true in this instance that, as Edward Said would have it, intellectuals invariably represent the interests of the oppressed and take a stand against the power-holders — anyway, during my time in the States, I certainly didn’t encounter intellectuals like that.
Zha:
Well put, and it’s a topic worth discussing. My sense is that Said was talking about intellectuals who were on the fringes of the system, those with a strong egalitarian sense who dared to challenge the mainstream as a social avant-garde, like the leading abolitionists and suffragettes of the past, or people like Karl Marx, or Martin Luther King more recently.
In America today the journalists who report on vulnerable communities and the poor, rights lawyers, human rights activists, advocates of consumer rights and the NGOs that fight for immigrant rights or the founders of social enterprises — aren’t they exactly that kind of intellectual? Their ranks include some academics, like the public intellectual Noam Chomsky. No matter how extreme you might think his views are, you can’t help admiring his dogged courage in denouncing Western hegemony and corporate capital. My publisher, André Schiffrin, was also a public intellectual in that mold. He quit a major publishing house and set up his own enterprise so that he could pursue his ideals. He published many books the value of which lay in their contribution to the public debate rather than in their profitability.
Having said that, I do concur with your observations about elite American institutions and think tanks. That’s simply the lie of the land, especially in the case of the departments or groups involved with public policy or economic analysis. They are all far too closely bound up with party politics, the corporate world and the interests of big business. They are located in the heart of the system and that determines the kind of work and analysis that they do.
Katō:
I should add that I have no right to feel any sense of disappointment in the American intelligentsia, though I believe the phenomenon we’ve been discussing is extremely dangerous. It’s a situation in which university professors who are also researchers in think tanks also give policy advice to government. There’s tons of people involved in this kind of ‘revolving door’ relationship with power, and there’s little chance that any of them would say anything to challenge the powers that be.
Zha:
Exactly, and the opposite also holds true. There are plenty of people in both parties who join a think tank, or a law firm or consultancy as soon as they leave government employment. Then there’s those who become commentators on network TV or host shows; some even set up their own media outfits. Take Steve Bannon [Trump’s chief strategist for the first seven months of the new administration], for instance. After he left the White House [in August 2017], he initially turned up as a talking head on various major media programs before he finally got the money together to set up ‘War Room’, an operation that is unabashedly partisan [Note:See here; YouTube banned the ‘War Room’ channel in the wake of the 1/6 Capitol Insurgency]. Most people who appear on his show are rusted on right-wing cheerleaders for Trump.
Since the two major political parties rule in turn, there’s no hope that this ‘ecosystem’ will change any time soon. After all, people don’t become wealthy by working for government, nor is a government job an ‘iron rice bowl’. This kind of political mobility has both negatives and positives. The most obvious flaw in such an arrangement is that it blurs the line between politics and the academic world, and it generates a tangle of interests involving people and their political affiliations. Both independence and neutrality suffer as a result.
Katō:
In the wake of the destructive nature of the Trump presidency surely the intelligentsia has to reflect on the situation. The tired old strategies aren’t going to resolve any of the intractable and recurrent problems that exist.
Zha:
True, though there’s no evidence so far that anyone is moving in a new direction. The two major parties are still at each other’s throats and no one is giving an inch and there’s no sense that the rupture can or will be healed.
Katō:
I believe that this is a necessary process. Perhaps this is just what America needs: a period of transition and disjuncture, even if it is one in which many crazy things happen. Perhaps this is a lesson that the United States has to learn.
Zha:
I agree. It’s necessary. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s better than refusing to recognise the illness. Even if things lurch towards extremes, America might just have to go through this process. Maybe God sent Trump to shock America out of its complacency?
Katō:
Regardless, I’m still of the opinion that Trump was an historical inevitability, something necessary for the future of the country. Moreover, the issue of who will succeed Trump is also of vital importance. Trump has, for the moment, upended the system but if the ‘post-Trump era’ is just a return to the past, it will have all been for nothing.
Zha:
For the moment, the hawks are in charge. Their aggressive mindset is inevitably also being taken up in the commercial and popular realms. The Huawei business and Meng Wanzhou are just the beginning. In terms of hi-tech, some American China specialists are already promoting the view that, just like WWII and the Reagan eras, the federal government needs to increase spending so they can work with Silicon Valley. Confronted by the China challenge, they argue, this is the only way to win the future.
Katō:
I have little doubt that competition between the United States and China in sensitive areas like hi-tech and armaments will remain part of the overall strategic struggle to win the future. Japan needs to prepare itself accordingly.
Zha:
Despite the partisan warfare and the continuing uncertainty of the situation in America, perhaps the only thing we know for sure is that, no matter what comes after Trump, we won’t be seeing a return to the Sino-American relationship of the Obama era.
