Read The Contest of the Century Online
Authors: Geoff A. Dyer
3
THE ASIAN BACKLASH
1
It settled the outstanding land-border disputes:
see M. Taylor Fravel,
Strong Borders, Secure Nation
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008).
2
The mood toward China shifted:
see Joshua Kurlantzick,
Charm Offensive
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2007).
3
“sometimes looked like a French bedroom farce”:
Walter Russell Mead,
Via Meadia
, Sept. 26, 2010 (
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/09/26/in-the-footsteps-of-the-kaiser-china-boosts-us-power-in-asia
).
4
Zheng He’s fifteenth-century armadas:
Louise Levathes,
When China Ruled the Seas
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 20.
5
“China’s neighbors recognized the preponderance”:
David C. Kang,
China Rising
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), p. 50.
6
“Creating a community is easy”:
Parag Khanna,
The Second World
(New York: Random House, 2008), p. 262.
7
exercise in “shock and awe”:
Geoffrey Wade, “The Zheng He Voyages: A Reassessment,” Asian Research Institute working paper no. 31, National University of Singapore, Oct. 2004.
8
“Japan and China now stand at ground zero”:
Yoichi Funabashi, letter,
East Asia Forum
, Oct. 20, 2010.
9
brings together oil, fish, and the potent nationalism:
see International Crisis Group, “Stirring Up the South China Sea (II),” Asia report no. 229, July 24, 2012.
10
“China is not the maker of these problems”:
Jane Perlez, “Political Worries in U.S. and China Color Obama Aide’s Beijing Visit,”
New York Times
, July 25, 2012.
11
“There is no arable land here”:
Patrick Boehler, “South China Sea City ‘Could Become Chinese Business Hub,’ ”
Asian Correspondent
, March 10, 2013.
12
government bureaucracies have overlapping:
see International Crisis Group, “Stirring Up the South China Sea (I),” Asia report no. 223, April 23, 2012.
13
“Grab what you can on the sea”:
ibid.
14
“China’s… ‘blue-colored land’ ”:
Peng Guangqian, “China’s Maritime Rights and Interests,” in
Military Activities in the EEZ
, ed. Peter Dutton (Newport, R.I.: U.S. Naval War College, 2010), p. 15.
15
“core interest”:
“Chinese Military Seeks to Extend Its Naval Power,”
New York Times
, April 23, 2010.
16
publicly declare himself a “Monroista”:
Tereza Maria Spyer Dulci, “O panamericanismo em Joaquim Nabuco e Olivera Lima,”
Anais Eletrônicos do VII Encontro Internacional da ANPHLAC
, 2006.
17
a role somewhat similar to France’s:
David Uren, “Shifting Sands of Diplomacy,”
Australian
, June 2, 2012.
18
“while also preparing to deploy force”:
“US Embassy Cables: Hillary Clinton Ponders US Relationship with Its Chinese ‘Banker,’ ”
Guardian
, Dec. 4, 2010.
19
“we are just an independent arts organisation”:
“Chinese Hack Film Festival Site,”
BBC News
, July 26, 2009 (
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8169123.stm
).
20
“America faces a choice of Euclidian clarity”:
Hugh White, “Power Shift: Australia’s Future Between Washington and Beijing,”
Quarterly Essay
, issue no. 39, Sept. 2010.
21
“the single, stupidest strategic document”:
Greg Sheridan, “Distorted Vision of Future US-China Relations,”
Australian
, Sept. 11, 2010.
22
A caption at the Shaanxi History Museum:
Ross Terrill,
The New Chinese Empire
(New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 45.
23
Hanoi had been “too soft” on China:
“Patriotic Personalities Make Proposals on Defense and Development,”
Vietnamnet
, July 16, 2011.
4
AMERICA’S CHOICE
1
cover story for
The Atlantic
:
Robert Kaplan, “How We Would Fight China,”
Atlantic
, June 1, 2005.
2
“we own the sea”:
CNO’s Sailing Directions, Sept. 27, 2011.
3
“blinding campaign”:
AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, May 2010.
4
in the event of a conflict:
“Joint Operational Access Concept,” Department of Defense, Jan. 17, 2012.
5
“preposterously expensive”:
Greg Jaffe, “U.S. Model for a Future War Fans Tensions with China and Inside Pentagon,
Washington Post
, August 1, 2012.
6
“war limited by contingent”:
Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, “Asymmetric Warfare, American Style,”
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine
, vol. 138, no. 4 (April 2012), p. 1310.
7
In the event of a broader conflict:
see T. X. Hammes, “Offshore Control: A Proposed Strategy for an Unlikely Conflict,” strategic forum no. 278, National Defense University, June 28, 2012.
8
“big, expensive, vulnerable”:
Henry Hendrix, “At What Cost a Carrier?” Center for a New American Security Disruptive Defense Papers, March 2013.
9
“I informed the government”:
“Eleven CEO: Amazing Changes in Myanmar,”
Nation
(Thailand), May 14, 2012.
10
“an explicit American project”:
Henry Kissinger,
On China
(New York: Penguin, 2011), p. 526.
11
U.S. military has reopened links:
Joshua Kurlantzick, “The Moral and Strategic Blindspot in Obama’s Pivot to Asia,”
New Republic
, Nov. 20, 2012.
12
he visited Washington at the invitation of the Johnson administration:
Thant Myint-U,
Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).
5
CHINA’S BRITTLE NATIONALISM
1
China’s pre-Olympics burst of learning English:
Evan Osnos, “Crazy English,”
The New Yorker
, Apr. 28, 2008.
2
posted pictures on the Internet:
“American Woman Gives Domestic Abuse a Face, and Voice, in China,” NPR, Feb. 7, 2013.
3
“The West is central to the construction”:
Peter Hays Gries,
China’s New Nationalism: Pride, Politics, and Diplomacy
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), p. 35.
4
Elgin had been dispatched to China:
Elgin’s time in China is particularly well told in Stephen R. Platt,
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), pp. 25–32, 164–68.
5
“We have often acted towards the Chinese”:
ibid., p. 29.
6
“I am familiar with the history of foreign aggression”:
quoted in Suzanne Xiao Yang,
China in the UN Security Council Decision-Making on Iraq
(New York: Routledge, 2013), p. 218.
7
To mark the 150th anniversary:
William A. Callahan,
China: The Pessoptimist Nation
(Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 38.
8
“It is 1999, not 1899”:
Han Zhongkun, “China, Not in 1899,”
People’s Daily
, May 12, 1999.
9
blind nationalism and anti-foreigner sentiment:
Yuan Weishi, “Modernization and History Textbooks,”
Freezing Point
, Jan. 11, 2006 (trans. available at
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060126_1.htm
).
10
“It would not be an exaggeration”:
Callahan,
China
, p. 28.
11
“youth, internationalism, and violence”:
Rana Mitter,
A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 11.
12
the State Department classified its copy:
Jonathan Fenby,
Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-Shek and the China He Lost
(New York: Free Press, 2003), p. 401.
13
“as familiar to Chinese schoolchildren”:
Paul Cohen,
Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), p. xix.
14
“The humiliations of the past”:
Ian Buruma, “Why They Hate Japan,”
New York Review of Books
, Sept. 21, 2006.
15
“How could Japanese imperialism dare”:
Kirk A. Denton, “Heroic Resistance and Victims of Atrocity: Negotiating the Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Chinese Museums,”
Japan Focus
, Oct. 17, 2007.
16
“It was an extraordinary outpouring”:
Interview with James Miles (
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/20/tibet.miles.interview/index.html
).
17
“The question that now faces China’s leaders”:
Robert Barnett, “Thunder from Tibet,”
New York Review of Books
, May 29, 2008.
18
“simultaneous superficiality and depth”:
quoted in Paul A. Cohen,
China Unbound: Evolving Perspectives on the Chinese Past
(London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 164.
6
SOFT POWER
1
“While our media empires are melting away”:
David Barboza, “China Puts Best Face Forward in New English-Language Channel,”
New York Times
, July 2, 2010.
2
“lost the whole game due to a flaw in its soft power”:
quoted in
Chinese Soft Power and Its Implications for the United States
, ed. Carola McGiffert (Washington, D.C.: CSIS, 2009), p. 13.
3
what he calls “humane authority”:
Yan Xuetong,
Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power
, ed. Daniel Bell and Sun Zhe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011), chaps. 1–3.
4
“battle for the hearts and minds”:
Yan Xuetong, “How China Can Defeat America,”
New York Times
, Nov. 20, 2011.
5
“The Chinese have always prided themselves”:
Wang Gungwu, “China Rises Again,”
YaleGlobal
, March 25, 2009.
6
Zhao Tingyang is more oblique:
see Zhao Tingyang, “A Political World Philosophy in Terms of All-Under-Heaven (Tian-Xia),”
Diogenes
, vol. 221 (2009), pp. 5–18.
7
“to love China, to long for China”:
Interview with Zhang Jigang, trans.
China Digital Times
from
PLA Times
, Aug. 1, 2008 (
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2008/08/interview-with-zhang-jigang-deputy-director-of-the-beijing-olympics-opening-ceremony/
).
8
“If Westerners feel dazed and confused”:
Nicolai Ouroussoff, “In Changing Face of Beijing, a Look at the New China,”
New York Times
, July 13, 2008.
9
“the most serious challenge”:
Ian Buruma, “China’s Dark Triumph,”
Los Angeles Times
, Jan. 13, 2008.
10
“What we are left with”:
Robert Bridge, “America: Drugged Up, Dumbed Down and Crazy Dangerous,”
Russia Today
, June 21, 2012.
11
“Right now, foreigners are awarding Liu Xiaobo”:
Barbara Demick, “Chinese Dissident in U.S. Tells of Harassment, Torture,”
Los Angeles Times
, Jan. 18, 2012.
12
“a cause of a psychological disorder”:
Julia Lovell,
The Politics of Cultural Capital: China’s Quest for a Nobel Prize in Literature
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006), p. 4.
13
“ ‘Mo Yan is a state writer’ ”:
quoted in Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “The Writer, the State and the Nobel,”
International Herald Tribune
, Oct. 12, 2012.
7
“WE ARE NOT THE WORLD’S SAVIOR”
1
If the twentieth century saw fierce ideological battles:
see James Traub, “The World According to China,”
New York Times
, Sept. 3, 2006.
2
“an intense desire among humiliated peoples”:
Pankaj Mishra, “America’s Inevitable Retreat from the Middle East,”
New York Times
, Sept. 23, 2012.
3
“the most significant adjustment to national sovereignty”:
quoted in Lloyd Axworthy and Allan Rock, “The Unfulfilled Promise of UN Protection,”
Globe and Mail
, Sept. 15, 2010.
4
“Syria tells us that the era of humanitarian intervention”:
Michael Ignatieff, “How Syria Divided the World,”
New York Review of Books
, July 11, 2012.
5
she was known as Estela:
Simon Romero, “Leader’s Torture in the ’70s Stirs Ghosts in Brazil,”
New York Times
, Aug. 4, 2012.
6
he presented his Chinese hosts with two documents:
first told in International Crisis Group, “China’s New Courtship in South Sudan,” Africa report no. 186, April 4, 2012.
7
Two Chinese engineers were on hand:
Jon Lee Anderson, “A History of Violence,”
New Yorker
, July 23, 2012.
8
the partition of Sudan was only the start:
see ICG, “China’s New Courtship in South Sudan.”
9
“We are bystanders”:
ibid.