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TOC | Summary | Foreword | Two | Three | Four | Five | Notes | About the Author Notes 1. According to a 1993 International Monetary Fund report, by using the Purchasing Power Parity method—not the regular exchange-rate method—China’s GNP was already the third-largest in the world. 2. Arthur Waldron, “Eight Steps toward a New China Policy,” Orbis 41, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 77. 3. Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with China (New York: Norton, 1997), 70. This estimation of China’s military budget, though, is questionable. For a recent plausible study on China’s military expenditure, see Wang Shaoguang, “Estimating China’s Defence Expenditure: Some Evidence from Chinese Sources,” China Quarterly, no. 147 (September 1996): 889–911. 4. Quoted in Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996). 5. Warren I. Cohen, “China’s Strategic Culture,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1997, 104–105. 6. The evidence the authors use to form their conclusions is, however, questionable. For example, the book quotes a General Mi Zhenyu, vice commandant of the Academy of Military Science in Beijing, to support the book’s main thesis. According to the authors, Mi claims in a book entitled The Megatrend in China that “[As for the United States] for a relatively long time it will be absolutely necessary that we quietly nurse our sense of vengeance. . . . We must conceal our ability and bide our time.” However, nowhere in the book can I find the statement as quoted. 7. A statement made by former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle, quoted in The Washington Post, May 18, 1997, C4. 8. I believe that “Central Kingdom” is a more accurate translation for “Zhong Guo” (China) than “Middle Kingdom.” While the term “Middle Kingdom” does not have the meaning that China is superior to other peoples and nations around it—it is simply by chance that China is located in the middle in a geographical sense—the term “Central Kingdom” implies that China is superior to any other people and nation “under the heaven” and thus occupies a “central” position in the universe. 9. This certainly was the case when Mao and other top-level leaders made the decision to enter the Korean War. I have argued elsewhere that, in addition to defending the safety of the Chinese-Korean border, Mao made the decision to dispatch Chinese troops to Korea to promote revolutionary China’s international prestige and reputation, to promote an “East revolution” that would follow the Chinese model, and to promote the domestic mobilization that would enhance the CCP’s new regime at home. See Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 10. For a convincing discussion of China’s military downsizing in the 1980s, see Wang, “Estimating China’s Defence Expenditure,” esp. 909–11. 11. See, for example, Tian Zengpei et al., Gaige kaifang yilai de zhongguo waijiao (“Chinese Diplomacy during the Age of Reform and Opening to the Outside World”) (Beijing: World Knowledge Press, 1994), 2–4. 12. It should be pointed out that from Beijing’s perspective, Tibet and Taiwan are both parts of China’s territory, and that the problems concerning them, therefore, are not foreign policy issues, but belong to China’s internal affairs. 13. For a Chinese view of the issue, see Tian et al., Gaige kaifang, chapter 11. 14. A revealing recent example of this priority concern is a widely noted book written by a group of young Chinese scholars and policy practitioners, Xu Ming et al., Guanjian shike: Dangdai zhongguo jidai jieyue de 27ge wenti (“Crucial Juncture: Twenty-seven Problems that Are in Urgent Need to Be Solved in Contemporary China”) (Beijing: China Today Press, 1997). These twenty-seven problems are: international strategy, social system, ideology, sustaining development, market economy, distribution of national resources, finance, population control, food production, state-owned enterprises, peasants, unemployment, science development strategy, political system, environment, rural economy, regional division, small township development, floating population, social classes, ethical crisis, education, cultural shock, literature crisis, arts, the young generation, and increasing crime rates. 15. Thomas J. Christensen, “Chinese Realpolitik,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 1996, 46. 16. This is the theme of an officially endorsed popular song in the PRC. 17. For an excellent discussion of the historical and philosophical origins of the moral crisis in China, see Ci Jiwei, Dialectic of the Chinese Revolution (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994). 18. In a broader sense, this is not just a question involving the relations between the mainland and Taiwan. This is also a question with implications involving, to name a few of the most obvious, Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. If Taiwan is to achieve independence in accordance with the principle of self-determination, these areas, all of which are now the PRC’s “autonomous regions,” may also, at least in theory, ask for their own opportunity of self-determination. 19. Xu Ming et al., Guanjian shike, 64. 20. Beginning in the early 1980s, with the collapse of the “People’s Commune” system of local governance in China, a new “Village Residents Committee” system was adopted in the country’s rural areas, according to which village residents directly elect village officials. By 1996, about 90 perent of Chinese villages had adopted this system, which many areas have modified to elect officials at the district and county levels as well. For a more detailed discussion, see M. Kent Jennings, “Political Participation in the Chinese Countryside,” American Political Science Review 91, no. 2 (June 1997): 361–72; Wang Xu, “Grass-Roots Democracy in Rural Areas of China: Mutual-Empowerment of State and Society,” Ershiyi shiji 40 (April 1997): 147–58; Minxin Pei, “‘Creeping Democratization’ in China,” Journal of Democracy 6, no. 4 (October 1995): 65–79; Susan Lawrence, “Democracy, Chinese Style,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 32 (July 1994): 61–68; Kevin O’Brien, “Implementing Political Reform in China’s Villages,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 32 (July 1994): 33–59. 21. See, for example, CCP General Secretary Jiang Zemin’s report to the Fifth Plenary Session of the party’s Fourteenth Central Committee, “Correctly Handling Several Important Relationships in Building Socialist Modernization,” People’s Daily (Beijing), October 9, 1995. See also Xu Ming et al., Guanjian shike, esp. 224–25. 22. See “Mao Zedong’s Handling of the Taiwan Straits Crisis of 1958: Chinese Recollections and Documents,” (trans. Chen Jian, Li Xiaobing, and David Wilson), Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. 6-7 (Winter 1995/96): 208–18. 23. This was most explicitly demonstrated by Beijing’s handling of President Jiang Zemin’s official visit to the United States in late October 1997. Indeed, this visit was given such a priority that the CCP leaders even decided to move the date of the party’s Fifteenth National Congress from early October to mid-September so that the convening of the congress would not in any way conflict with Jiang’s U.S. trip.
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