China the long view

When I was living in Saigon in the late 1960’s, one of my more interesting acquaintances was a Chinese gentleman named Sam Wan. Sam had been a colonel in Chiang Kia Shek’s Kuo-Min Tang Army and had repaired to Taiwan when the People’s Republic ran them out of mainland China. Sam had reemerged as the president of a company known as RSEA (Retried Serviceman’s Engineering Agency) a quasi governmental agency of the government of Taiwan, which worked as a contractor for USAID in Vietnam. Although Sam was always trying to co-opt me in an effort to secure leverage in negotiations, held at arms length he was a source of great insight into how Chinese view time and problems, how Chinese think as t were.

My breakthrough in understanding came through our discussions, (usually over lunch or drinks) was what was then being called “the two China” problem. Chiang, offshore on Taiwan still insisting he and his were the legitimate government of China while the apparent reality was Mao and the “little red book” people were quite obviously in control.

Although questions of “face” not easily dismissed in that part of the world, played a part in keeping the controversy alive, there was another undercurrent which seemed to mollify some concerns about the potential for crisis. Sam counseled me not to be over concerned about the saber rattling or other issues, saying in effect that you in the west are too eager to have a resolution to the problem, that we cannot deal with ongoing conflict. He said confidently that it was a Chinese issue, not a world issue and that it would be solved in a Chinese way -- in Chinese time.

This was my first realization that Chinese do indeed have a long view of time, and that patience and the passage of time are very useful ingredients in problem solving. He would say, after all we are both Chinese (and that is vastly more important than the west realizes ) and we will solve this temporary difficulty in the Chinese way.

What I then thought was Sam’s groundless overconfidence has during the last 40 years proved to be essentially correct and has provided me with a different insight (damned near a third eye) when viewing China’s role in world affairs. It seems from the Chinese viewpoint, and their long view that they are usually less concerned about immediate results (although not of appearances) and have a great ability to manifest less concern about short view or intermediate objectives. A dynamic issue, one that seems to change quickly bothers them less than the west. China has by training and tradition been willing to play a waiting game rather than act precipitously. Their view on ambigious or unclear situations is therefore usually to wait until the fog lifts.

This, in turn has me thinking about the current problems with North Korea, with their on again, off again nuclear projects and their missile development. As part of the so-called six power talks concerning North Korea’s activities and potential for disruptive behavior , the U.S., Japan and of course South Korea, seem most agitated while China by contrast seems somewhat less concerned China, of course has all of the economic leverage imaginable to bring Kim to heel, and a military force capable of overrunning Korea in a weekend. Yet China is quiet with respect to its view of North Korea’s activity.

I have begun to suspect that China is most willing to use North Korea’s unpredictable behavior as a stalking horse, using its twists and turns to smoke out U.S. and western intentions and attitudes without itself committing to any plan of action or course of conduct to reign in the North Koreans. Apparently China does not regard them as as much of a threat as do we, since in the short view North Korea is little more than a pebble in the Chinese shoe.

This in turn is a useful clue in measuring Chin’s policies in other parts of the world, less interested in short term problems, able to deal with an unstable dynamic and wait out developments before committing to a policy or an involvement.

Our inclination is to resolve problems in the shortest possible time by the most expeditious means at hand. China is content to wait and we should understand that as a tactic, not an indication of disinterest. It explains, to some extent, their seeming disinterest with Iran (for the moment), their aggressive commercial interests in Africa and South America. “The long view”