"Narcissistic hypernationalism of the kind practiced in China requires a foil, an enemy in whom one can see the dark, fearful shadow of the 'other...' the Chinese people are taught that all China's present-day ills arise from a single source: the United States of America."
-Stephen W. Mosher, Bully of Asia, p. 232
"Western countries never cease their desire to destroy China."
-Jin Canrong, China's Wisdom, p. 224
"China was forced to get involved in the Korean War, and in the end, won the war to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea, brought peace to the Korean Peninsula, meeting the goal of defending the country and protecting People's homes..."
-Zhang Qingmin, China's Diplomacy, p. 20 (emphasis mine)
"The 14th Dalai Lama began to realize that he was no more than a tool in the Western struggle against China."
-Sun Hongnian, Zhang Yongpan & Li Sheng, The 14th Dalai Lama, p. 109
Dr. Christopher Ford, in his notes on the 4th Xiangshan Forum, described China and the rest of the world "sometimes [seeming] to inhabit to inhabit parallel universes of competing facts and historical claims. In particular, the Chinese and non-Chinese participants [seem] to start from radically different starting points on surprisingly basic matters of fact (Ford)." And of all the Chinese Party-State's favorite delusions amid the soup of hyperbole, Nationalist spin, speculation, fairy tales and outright bovine excrement that gets paraded around as "history" in textbooks force-fed to a fifth of the world's population (or which gets recycled as "News" on Xinhua), fewer are more ubiquitous than the notion of a glowering, shadowy, greedy, fearful hegemon on the other side of the world that has been leading all the nations of the world in shameful plots against China since the 19th century.
This hegemon, these myths would have us believe, is jealous of China's "greatness" and constantly scheming to hold onto its power while fearing the loss of that power to the righteous Socialist fury of the Chinese People (who, of course, will be revered and loved by all the world as "liberators" soon) as the "Great Rejuvenation of the Zhonghua Minzu" returns the self-anointed "Central Nation" to its "rightful" place as the center of the world, after which this shadowy imperialist is foretold to be well and truly chastised by the only nation with a "Mandate of Heaven" to lead the world.
That villainous empire's name, as every faithful, devout, well-indoctrinated PRC sla- ...er... I mean "citizen" knows, is the United States of America.
It is this concept, China's notion of the "American-led Anti-China Conspiracy," that forms the entire premise for the 1949 speech "Friendship, or Aggression?" The reality of the relationship between the United States and our infantile protege named China, however, is that the US has been the hand feeding China, the legs carrying it when it was wounded, the fingers sewing its sutures, and the arm defending it from enemies whose rancor it had well and truly earned, since the 1840's.
But oh, tell that to the first emperor of the Red Dynasty, Mao Zedong, whose distorted, delusional and borderline psychotic interpretation of history forms the backbone of China's foreign policy to this day.
The Opium Wars
"The history of the aggression against China by U.S. imperialism, from 1840 when it helped the British in the Opium War to the time it was thrown out of China by the Chinese people, should be written into a concise textbook for the education of Chinese youth."
-Mao Zedong, "Friendship or Aggression." 30 Aug, 1949 (emphasis mine)
In the above-cited speech, the "Great Helmsman" blasts the United States for numerous acts of "aggression" since 1840, each of which is a more surreal twist of history than the one before it. Put simply, there is not a single shred of evidence anywhere on Earth of any US involvement in the First Opium War. Quite the contrary, the United States and Great Britain were never far from the brink of war with each other throughout the 19th century (Wills), and even if the United States had been a purely self-interested, Macchiavellian power, the simple principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" would have compelled the United States, if it saw fit to get involved in the conflict, to side with whatever nation was opposed to its chief rival, Great Britain. The Chinese though (especially Mao) were never the kind to let petty details like reality get in the way of a good "2 Minute Hate."
Though admittedly, while this does belie the notion of American participating in these early aggressions against China, it's hard to claim we had "saved" China...
...yet.
The Unequal Treaties
" The United States was one of the first countries to force China to cede extraterritoriality -- witness the Treaty of Wanghia of 1844, the first treaty ever signed between China and the United States, a treaty to which the White Paper refers. In this very treaty, the United States compelled China to accept American missionary activity, in addition to imposing such terms as the opening of five ports for trade."
-Mao, "Friendship or Aggression."
The U.S. State Department's archived copy of the Treaty of Wanghia (Wangxia in modern Pinyin) is derided by Chinese hawks to this day as "unequal" because it committed such cardinal infringements upon China's sovereignty as compelling China to grant foreigners within the right to rent lodging at inns, or to purchase property, at the same rates as nationals (Article XIX), and permitted foreigners living in China to hire a tutor to teach them the local language (Article XVIII), something which had been a death penalty offense under previous laws (U.S. State Department, Office of the Historian (1)).
I'll refrain from comment on the eyebrow raising question of why such a ban on learning the local language existed in the first place.
Finally, while it's true that this treaty granted "extraterritorial" judicial authority, meaning Americans who committed crimes in China were tried by American authorities rather than Chinese, it is worthy of note that this was China's idea (U.S. State Department, Office of the Historian (1)), and had been their practice for some time. The Chinese even had their own idiom for it: y yi zhi yi, "use foreigners to subdue foreigners (Midler, 154).
Of course, there is a certain irony to be found in China's lingering bitterness over the so-called "Unequal Treaties" in the first place.
For years, the Chinese had conducted their foreign policy through the tribute system, in which foreign powers wishing to trade with China were required first to bring a tribute to the emperor, acknowledging the superiority of Chinese culture and the ultimate authority of the Chinese ruler. Unlike China’s neighbors, the European powers ultimately refused to make these acknowledgements in order to trade...
-U.S. State Department, "Milestones" Part 1
Besides, there were some other neighboring countries that were subject to, or tributary states of, the Qing Dynasty.
-Cao Dawei and Sun Yanjing, China's History, p. 163
China, at this point in history, had never once entered into a treaty with any nation as equals. China's entire foreign policy, from the Qin Unification of 221 BC through the Qing Dynasty, had been built on sovereign/vassal relationships (Chan, p. 5; Cao & Sun, p. 163), with China rather unabashedly and openly declaring themselves to be the rulers of all nations that came into contact with them. To this day, China still insists that it was British Ambassador Lord McCarthy who committed some horrific scandal by daring to ask to trade with China without the King of England first swearing allegiance to the Chinese throne (Mosher, p. 15 & 66). Every agreement China ever entered into prior to the Opium Wars was an "Unequal Treaty." The only difference is China was accustomed to being the overbearing imperialist. And here came the eeeeeeevil Europeans who had the audacity not only to refuse to kowtow to the "son of Heaven," but even went on to do to China what China had done to her neighbors for 2 millennia.
Hey China, meet my friend Karma. I warn you, she's a bitch.
Yet there is another layer of irony in Mao's mouth-foaming about the US's alleged involvement in putting China on the opposite end of the sovereign/vassal relationship from where they were accustomed to being. Not only is it an outright lie to claim the US was involved in the Opium Wars, not only was Mao griping about the US "forcing" China to do exactly what Deng Xiaoping later achieved fame for causing China to do more of (namely opening ports).
The fact remains that the US was the first nation, not "the first Western Power" but the very first nation in all of history to ever, ever sign an equal treaty with China. In 1843, U.S. President John Tyler sent Anson Burlingame to the Qing Emperor with a presidential letter (Chinese Repository, Vol. XIV, p. 542). The result was the Burlingame Treaty, "which sought to place China on a full and equal status in international affairs (Schrecker, p. 9)." This treaty was so favorable to China (even committing the United States to speak on China's behalf to the other Western Powers regarding revising the "Unequal Treaties (Mosher, p. 228)," that the Chinese emperor even asked Anson Burlingame to act as China's special emissary to the US when he went home. This led to the US's "Open-Door Policy" toward China, which was the one and only thing that kept China from being carved up like a roast (Schrecker, 9 - 17; Mosher, 16).
The Boxer Rebellion
Participation in the Eight-Power Allied Expedition to defeat China in 1900, the extortion of the "Boxer indemnity" and the later use of this fund "for the education of Chinese students" for purposes of spiritual aggression -- this too counts as an expression of "friendship."
-Mao, "Friendship or Aggression."
Imagine this. You are the head of a country, and you receive word that citizens of your country, working in an impoverished backwater on the other side of the world as teachers, doctors, and architects building hospitals, are suddenly under attack by violent maniacs swearing to kill everyone they meet who is not a citizen of this third world backwater. You'd send your country's military forces to aid them, right? China certainly insists this is any country's right (and duty). They did in Yemen in 2015 (Associated Press), and multiple times before that (Connolly), and Yan Xuetong, Dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University, has rather flatly asserted that China has the right (and willingness) to use force to confront threats against their citizens abroad in such a situation (Chu, 221).
Well, in 1900, the United States faced exactly that scenario, and the impoverished backwater in question was the "Da Qing Diguo (Great Qing Empire)," more commonly known as "China." A group of Chinese terrorists known as the "Boxers" began slaughtering anyone in their path found guilty of not being Chinese (Rosenberg), and even any of their own countrymen who dared have the unmitigated gall to convert to the "white man's religion (Szczepanski)," never mind the irony of slapping that label on a religion founded by Middle Easterners. The Boxers attacked embassies (Rosenberg, Hickman) (which is enough by itself to justify the 8-Nation-Alliance's military action, as it proves that the host country is incapable of controlling the situation and granting diplomatic protection).
Oh, and did I forget to mention that the Chinese Empress issued a formal declaration of war against the world?
...The day after the Boxers began the siege on foreign diplomats, she declared war on all foreign countries that had diplomatic ties with China.
-Rosenberg, Thoughtco
Yeah... It's a bit hard to call the 8-Nation-Alliance "aggressors" or "imperialists" for sending troops to your country to protect their citizens (which your yourself have said you would do) from death at the hands of your rampaging population who you had lost control of, in a war you yourself declared, don't you think?
But even with legitimate grounds (internationally recognized by the standards of both 1900 and the present day) to send troops into China, it was not the US troops that went on a looting and slaughtering spree. Once we had our people out, we were done. No, the ones who ran around raping, plundering and pillaging were the troops of Germany. And who were the two nations from the Alliance who stood up and pointed their weapons at their own supposed allies in defense of the helpless Chinese civilians (the same Chinese civilians who had been supporting the Boxers only days before)? One of these nations that saved untold numbers of Chinese civilians from being slaughtered was Japan (and oh, the Chinese hate being confronted with that little factoid), and the other was... you guessed it. The "evil imperialist hegemon" herself, the United States of America (Szczepanski).
You're welcome, China.
After the rioting mob was put down by force, the Qing Court (having chosen to side with the mob rather than actually honor the basic protections diplomatic compounds should have) was forced to sign the Boxer Protocol, whose terms included paying an indemnity of $330 million US Dollars (and mind you, those are US Dollars at their 1900 A.D. value). So I suppose China could be bitter at the US for extorting these funds from... oh, wait.
The US waived nearly all of this payment, instructing China to take the amount they owed to us and use it to build a university instead (Midler, 200; History.com staff; Mosher, 228).
Of course, Mao insists that even these actions were "spiritual warfare ("Friendship or Aggression")." Well, I suppose he can be forgiven for that. I mean, surely this university founded by the money that should have been paid to America, became a bastion of Western indoctrination, right?
...Actually, this university, founded with money America had the right to insist on collecting, but which we graciously gave to the underdeveloped Chinese Empire to modernize their primitive society, was called Tsinghua (Griffiths), and it is basically the only university in China that carries any international prestige at all, being ranked 16th in the world currently (Zou).
Meanwhile, the few installments of the indemnity we collected before using the rest to establish the university China has spent decades using as a training center in why to hate us, were used to help a group of Chinese students fulfill what was (and for millions of Chinese, still is) a lifetime dream: the chance to study at universities in the United States (Mosher, 229).
Oh, how dare we?
World War 2
"“When the Chinese people and the Chinese nation were in peril, the United States came to the rescue and asked for nothing in return. The U.S. never occupied a single inch of Chinese territory, never reaped any particular reward.”
-Han Lianchao (Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Instititute), Chinachange
"With US supports, Chinese people won their wars against Japanese aggression."
-Jin Canrong, China's Wisdom, p. 230 (emphasis mine, grammar errors maintained from original source)
This one is so unavoidable that even China's best propagandists couldn't avoid admitting it, though it is worth noting the difference between reality (Han, above) and the Chinese Part-State's version of history (Jin). Given that the Chinese military never once, for a single day, in the entire war, succeeded in retaking any large amount of territory from Japan (Youtube User EmperorTigerStar), the CPC's efforts to downplay the US's role in the Pacific Theater to "support" sound a bit like a fairy-tale princess freshly resced from a tower congratulating herself for slaying the dragon with a little support from a knight in shining armor. While I won't argue too much with Russians who insist the USSR takes the lion's share of the credit for beating Germany, it was the US who beat Japan (Han), with Australian and British support (Wordie). In the "princess and knight" analogy from above, the US was the knight and Australia and Britain were squires.
China wasn't even the horse.
The only unit in the Chinese military that had a respectable record against the Japanese, wasn't even Chinese at all. It was a Kunming-based mercenary unit of American pilots who would later be reorganized into the US 14th Air Force (Han). These mercenaries, known as the "Flying Tigers," were not some random Americans who sauntered off to fight in some idealistic crusade on the other side of the planet. It was FDR who pushed for the creation of this force (Mosher, 229), which was one of a great many things America did to stand up on behalf of the Chinese against Japan's invasion, leading Japan to bomb us at Pearl Harbor for our trouble (Han).
And of course, who was it that dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and ended the war? That would be the US. It is also worth noting that the day Japan surrendered, most of China was still under Japanese control (McGregor, 331), where it would still be today if it were not for the "eeeeevil imperialist machinations" of the US.
The Sino-Soviet Conflict
:..In March 1969, a contingent of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers raided a Soviet border outpost on Zhenbao Island, killing dozens and injuring scores. The incident brought Russia and China to the brink of war, a conflict that might have led to the use of nuclear weapons... A consensus has emerged on both sides that the Chinese leadership prepared for and orchestrated the clash."
-Robert Farley, The National Interest (emphasis added)
Perhaps if Mao's "Friendship or Aggression" speech had occurred 25 years later, his examination of America's dastardly history of aggression against China would have included a mention of the time America nearly nuked China in 1969.
...Eh, wait a minute, that wasn't the US. It was China's supposed ally, the USSR.
And what brought the two pillars of the Communist world to the brink of a nuclear war with each other? Well, it seems the same history teacher who failed to teach Mao how the US had been propping his country up for more than a century, also failed to teach him Hitler and Napoleon's most painful lesson: do not, try, invading, Russia. To give the short version of events, the Sino-Russian border is both long and old, and as a result, there're a hell of a lot of places that have changed hands at least once. One of these is Дамански (Damansky) Island (or, as the Chinese occupiers have renamed it, "Zhenbao Island"), and in March of 1969, the People's Liberation Army attacked a Soviet post on Zhenbao (Farley). The death toll depends on who you ask, but the fact that China was the instigator is so obvious that even CPC Historian Liu Chenshan admits it (Osborn and Foster; O'Neill).
The Soviet response to this was to prepare for a precision nuclear strike against China's fledgling nuclear program, rendering them helpless, and they sent a message to the United States with word of their plan "to wipe out the Chinese threat and get rid of this modern adventurer (Osborn and Foster)." Essentially, America's arch-rival at the time was saying "our issues aside, this maniac is a threat to both of us. If you'll stand aside, we'll get rid of him," and added to the bargain, they were going to deplete a chunk of their nuclear arsenal doing it.
Given the number of times we'd extended our hand to China in the past 129 years, only to have that hand bitten repeatedly, the US should have said "hey, go ahead." Surely, the kind of aggressive imperialist Mao loved to portray us as would have done so, right? Or perhaps even joined in the assault?
So what did the US do?
We informed the Soviet ambassador that if the USSR fired nuclear missiles at China, we would fire retaliatory nukes against 130 Soviet cities (Osborn and Foster; Bolton; Mosher, 229).
You read that right. The United States stood ready to go missile-to-missile, in a WW3 scenario beginning with a large-scale nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union, to protect China from annihilation in a war China started.
And Now, It's 2019
It's been 50 years this year since the Sino-Soviet Border Conflict. The USSR is gone, and now China has been carrying out a systematic campaign against the United States for decades, a campaign which they think has finally brought them to the brink of their long-envisioned dream of re-establishing a Sinocentric World Order. And after almost 180 years of propping China up, America's patience is finally running out. I think the best warning I can give to China is the one I already gave right here in this blog in March of 2018.
"...Contrary to all your vitriol about "U.S. Plotting," the U.S. is actually the only one who has sustained you this far, the only one who gave you any respect after WW2, and on more than one occasion the only one who has saved the CCP from the jaws of utter defeat. But this time, we won't be riding in on a white horse to save your hide, we're going to be leading the charge against you.
The world doesn't want to devastate you, China. America doesn't want to devastate you. We never have. And we've never wanted anyone else to. We've stopped others from doing it more than once, even while you spat in our face.
But you're pushing it. Your toes are hanging over the edge of a precipice, and the rocks at the bottom are sharp. You ought to know because you put them there.
Back down, Xi.
Or be put down.
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