From a historical perspective, the Chinese were never a martial nation.
The Chinese culture is sedentary, as opposed to the border 'barbarian'
tribes' pastoral culture.
Chinese settle down and take roots in the land, whereas the nomadic tribes in
it periphery needed pastures for their herds, and had to constantly on the move
for greener and better pasture. For this reason they resented the Chinese with
frequent raids on their farms, plundered and pillage, rape and murder, then
razed their cultivated lands so that there would be grasslands for the nomads'
herds.
Sometimes the nomads allowed the Chinese to stay put, because when food was
scarce, they consider these Chinese cultivated lands their granary by pounding
down in their swift horses and skill archery scare the daylight out of the
Chinese.
At the same time the Chinese paid tributes or bribes just to be left alone.
With this background one sees the reason why when China had a population of
180 million, it was insufficient to withstand the martial nomadic Mongols and
Manchus, each with their two or three million inhabitants. John King Fairbank
added another factor to why the Chinese complacency in the face of marauding
border tribes which he termed "culturalism". Fairbank wrote:
'Thus Chinese xenophobia was combined with a complete confidence in cultural
superiority. China reacted not as a cultural subunit, but a large ethnocentric
universe which remained quite sure of its cultural superiority when relatively
inferior in military power to fringe elements of its universe. Because of these
similarities to and difference from nationalism, we call this earlier Chinese
attitude "cultralism," to suggest that in the Chinese view the significant unit
was really the whole civilization rather than the lowest political unit of a
nation within a larger cultural whole.'
Our view than is that though conquered by smaller nations like Mongolia and
Manchuria, it relied on its cultural superiority and the Chinese way of life to
conquer them by a process of Sinicisation, or assimilation.
But the US is too powerful and more resistant to Sinicise. It would be in the
interest of the Chinese to see their culture intact by resisting the Americans
to the finish, for to be defeated would mean the end of the concept of
Chineseness when China would be carved up into different states under the US.
For a short term hit and run war with conventional weapons, the US may have
the initial advantage. But in a protracted war, the US will be sucked in and
become weaker.
Unless the US wants to have 'assured' victory, nuclear option seems to be the
path. But then the US will also destroy itself and the world along with it.
My assessment is that the US, with prudence and hindsight, will not want to
get into a war with China, notwithstanding its military and economic strength.
Lau Guan Kim
Singapore
2004-01-14
