China on Their Minds

China is on their minds. 

Princeton professor Rory Truex writes in the New York Times that the American right, in particular, has gone a bit overboard in its effort to oppose China. 

And then, Anne Applebaum has written an endless article in The Atlantic wherein she argues that in the great civilizational clash between democracy and autocracy, the American right, especially MAGA Republicans, are on the side of foreign autocracies, at the expense of all the democratic ideals that Applebaum holds dear.

Truth be told, Truex does have a point. Some of our congresspeople have gone a bit overboard in their effort to sanction all things Chinese.

America’s collective national body is suffering from a chronic case of China anxiety. Nearly anything with the word “Chinese” in front of it now triggers a fear response in our political system, muddling our ability to properly gauge and contextualize threats. This has led the U.S. government and American politicians to pursue policies grounded in repression and exclusion, mirroring the authoritarian system that they seek to combat.

It’s not just about TikTok and the Confucius Institutes:

When you are constantly anxious, no threat is too small. In January, Rick Scott, a senator from Florida, introduced legislation that would ban imports of Chinese garlic, which he suggested could be a threat to U.S. national security, citing reports that it is fertilized with human sewage. In 2017, scientists at McGill University wrote there is no evidence that this is the case. Even if it was, it’s common practice to use human waste, known as “biosolids,” as fertilizer in many countries, including the United States.

Or else:

Last summer, several Republican lawmakers cried foul over the “Barbie” movie because a world map briefly shown in the background of one scene included a dashed line. They took this as a reference to China’s “nine-dashed line,” which Beijing uses to buttress its disputed territorial claims in the South China Sea. According to Representative Jim Banks, this is “endangering our national security.” The map in the movie is clearly fantastical, had only eight dashes and bore no resemblance to China’s line. Even the Philippine government, which has for years been embroiled in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, dismissed the controversy and approved the movie’s domestic release.

One suspects that the anxiety derives from the fact that we are afraid we will not be able to compete effectively against China in the world markets. Otherwise, our methods are less than inspiring. If you will permit me an indulgence, we are fighting like girls. 

As David Goldman often remarks, the only way to compete against China is to outproduce them, not to sanction them.

In the meantime, it is sad to see Anne Applebaum waste so many words to denounce MAGA Republicans as aspiring pro-Chinese and pro-Russian autocrats. Given that much of her article involves exposing the Russo-Chinese propaganda machine, one is slightly taken aback to discover that she is promoting Democratic Party propaganda. 

It does not make her a very serious thinker. 

Anyway, Applebaum sees the world divided into democracies and autocracies. The latter, she thinks, are waging a propaganda war against democracies. These autocratic governments reject democratic elections, reject human rights, reject feminism, reject free speech and freedom of the press. Worse yet, they reject trans rights.

Strangely, Applebaum does not distinguish between autocracies. And she fails to acknowledge that China’s record economic growth occurred, true enough, in the absence of free elections, but was produced by free enterprise reforms. 

There is more to life than propaganda. Countries around the world are looking to China as a model of development because it has produced economic development. True enough, China has acted as though democratic reforms would compromise its economic successes. You can argue the point, but you should not say that it is all propaganda.

Applebaum suggests that we are losing the propaganda war. And that we should vote for Democrats. It is as dumb as it sounds. The West has been falling behind the East, but the reason seems to lie in our embrace of too much liberal democracy, to our detriment.

Feminism has certainly contributed to a slew of broken homes. The slew of broken homes has produced a mental health crisis among America’s children. 

And then there is transmania. We are engaged in an appalling failure to distinguish men from women, boys from girls, and expect everyone to embrace delusional beliefs as realities. 

Oh, and our great liberal democracy is currently awash in anti-Semitism, not from the right, but from the political left.

About that Applebaum has nothing to say. 

If we want to export liberal democracy we need to show that it works over here.

About that Applebaum has nothing to say.

How many countries would be happy to replace their autocrats with a senile demented, albeit, elected old fool. How many would want to have, as his backup, a certifiable imbecile.

And when it comes to free expression, even in our great liberal democracy, some expression is freer than others. America is no longer a paragon of free speech.

Abigail Shrier made the obvious points on The Free Press yesterday:

Punishment is meted out swiftly and mercilessly, and with no consideration for free speech principles, any time Confederate flag flyers are posted, any time students hold culturally insensitive themed frat parties, any time colleges uncover student use of the N-word while in high school (or even a word in Mandarin that sounds like the N-word), or even when students or faculty make the familiar conservative argument that affirmative action sets black students up to fail. Rinse and repeat and repeat.

Rather than whine about Chinese or Russian propaganda and about autocratic, and masculinist cultures, we would do better to produce a liberal democracy that actually works. 

Whereas Applebaum seems to think that relations between nations involve a power dynamic, where one side plies the other to its will, a more constructive approach sees that it’s about emulating success. If we are failing as a civilization, other cultures are not going to want to become like us. 

If our democracy elevates mediocre non-entities to positions of great authority, people around the world will notice. And will be more inclined to embrace autocracy. 

If our democracy does not respect differences of opinion, and especially if it seems to have adopted cancel culture from a failed Chinese experiment-- the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution-- the world’s people will not take our plaints about free expression seriously.

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