Response to Readers' Questions (The Diplomat)

China Power blogger Jiang Xueqin answers readers’ questions on China’s economy, the Wukan protests and why things are looking good for Shanghai.

Matt Walters (LinkedIn):
What is your view concerning the recent protest movements in Wukan? Do you feel such incidents were just an isolated event or more of what’s to come?

“Wukans” have been happening throughout most of Chinese history, even in seemingly stable and prosperous times. Wukans happen because local officials run villages as their own personal fiefdoms, and because much of the wealth in the Chinese economy is generated by exploiting powerless and uneducated peasants in one way or another.

While Wukan-like incidents have been happening all over China for years now, Wukan generated a great deal of Western media attention partly because it tied into the Arab Spring paradigm, and partly because more and more Westerners are questioning China’s stability. While the Communist Party has managed to defuse the Wukan stand-off this time, there are bound to be many more Wukans in the future with much bloodier results.

And there’ll be many more “Wukans” because peasants just don’t matter. It’s really the urbanites who hold negotiating power with the Communist Party in China, and the urbanites hate the peasants even more than they hate the Party. Much of this is just self-interest (the countryside feeds the cities), and there’s nothing that scares the urbanites more than the idea of enfranchised peasants.

Jennifer Watkins (LinkedIn):
What do you think of this week’s visit by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping? Do you think relations with America will move forward with this apparent emphasis on personal relationships?

Vice President Xi Jinping’s visit to America had many goals, foremost among them to show to the inner Communist Party that he’s capable of representing China on the world stage, to continually engage America with the “peaceful rise” narrative, and to reinforce the importance of Sino-American engagement to a Chinese domestic audience. While there’s been a lot of heated discussion of Chinese nationalistic rhetoric and military maneuvers, the inner Party is pragmatic enough to realize that, for better or worse, China is too dependent on America economically to damage the Sino-American relationship. While Americans will probably pester Xi with specific questions that he can't answer (like the Syria veto), Xi would prefer if his actions speak for themselves, like the fact that he’s visiting Iowa and emphasizing his American ties.

Sanjay Khabra (Facebook):
The financial news media talk about China being threatened by a property bubble bursting. Is this unfounded or based on some truth? How would the Chinese government respond if a property bubble burst with the possibility of slowing growth?

With good reason, Westerners (such as China economist Nicholas Lardy) have been saying the Chinese property bubble market is about to burst since the late 1990s. And today, real estate prices have reached so high they’re beyond the reach of most middle class Chinese. But while middle class Chinese are frustrated, middle class Chinese who’ve seen the value of their real estate drop (most recently in Shanghai) cry bloody murder, and take to the streets. At a macro level, real estate is financed by bank lending, and so real estate prices are tied to the entire health and stability of the financial system.

Now if you’re a Western economist or anyone with any common sense, this situation is frightening. But people sometimes forget that the Chinese economy isn’t a free market system – it’s still a command economy in which the state controls bank lending, and real estate companies are usually arms of local governments. Because of the interference of the state, bubbles can reach a more greater unsustainable level than in free market economies, where bubble bursts are healthy corrections of the economy.

So the short answer is no, the Party won’t permit the real estate bubble to burst because the consequences would be unpredictably grave. The Party would rather just print money, which is what it’s effectively doing now.

Patrick Chang (LinkedIn):
You’re often scathing about the state of education in China, and actually China generally. Is there anything you see day to day that makes you feel at all optimistic about China today?

With my writings, I aim to inform the reader as to the general situation in China, and because of China’s structural issues I’m necessarily bleak. China is, and has been for a long time, an unmanageable behemoth: It’s much too populated, too poor, and too diverse to govern effectively using a monolithic bureaucracy.

And China’s economy is mainly dependent on the few (city folk) exploiting the cheap labor of the many (peasants), which causes a great deal of political, social, and cultural tensions. These two reasons – the use of a monolithic bureaucracy to maintain national unity, and the continued economic exploitation of the peasantry – mean that China lacks the structural capacity to become an open, innovative, and progressive economy and society. My education articles are meant to offer a specific instance of this nationwide reality.

That said, I’m optimistic about certain cities in China, such as Shenzhen, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao, Dalian, etc. These are relatively well-functioning, well-organized, high-performing cities with a highly-educated middle class. Their future prospects are very bright, irrespective of what happens to the rest of the country. These cities are already showing glimpses of democratic tendencies and a fledging creative class.

Why Jeremy Lin Matters (The Diplomat)

One writer who must be excited right now about basketball team the New York Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin is Michael Lewis, America’s best writer of non-fiction. In his book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, Lewis profiles the Oakland Athletics’ general manager Billy Beane, as he stole unseen stars from wealthier teams by exploiting baseball’s prejudices; unlike the rest of baseball, Beane wasn’t interested in good looking athletic players who either hit homeruns or struck out nobly, but in smart players who got on base. In The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, Lewis uses the inspiring rags-to-riches story of a poor homeless African-American high school player to explain how football strategy and tactics have evolved over the years.

And at long last, with the arrival of Jeremy Lin onto the world stage, Michael Lewis can complete his sports trilogy.

Lewis’s book would begin with last Friday, when basketball’s best player, Kobe Bryant, and his Los Angeles Lakers side waltzed into Madison Square Gardens. Having just heard of “Lin-sanity,” Bryant’s both bemused and annoyed. He’s heard how six days before, Lin, a player who slept on his brother’s couch and whom the Knicks were debating whether to pay minimum wage, scored 25 points against the New Jersey Nets, lifting the Knicks to a rare win and himself to instant Internet fame. And then Lin led the Knicks to victory against both the Washington Wizards and Utah Jazz, scoring over twenty points in both.


That’s all Hallmark movie-of-the-week nice and sweet, but now Lin and the Knicks must play against Kobe Bryant, who has led the LA Lakers to five NBA championships. And the Knicks haven’t beaten the Lakers since 2007. Plus the Knicks are missing their two star players.

So when Lin played the best game of his life, scoring 38 points against the Lakers, leading his team to a 92-85 win, even Kobe Bryant had to acknowledge Lin was no longer an Internet sensation, but a star: “Players don’t usually come out of nowhere. If you can go back and take a look, his skill level was probably there from the beginning. But no one ever noticed.”

The 6 foot 3, 200 pound, 23-year old Lin’s story is truly remarkable. He’s the first Harvard graduate to play in the NBA in almost sixty years, and he’s the first American of Chinese or Taiwanese ancestry to play in the NBA. And his five games of averaging 20+ points make his the best start in NBA history. So Bryant’s implied question “How come nobody noticed Lin’s star potential?” would be the focus of Michael Lewis’s book, not just looking at how basketball players are born and bred, but also looking at the often ignored Asian-American community, and how Lin’s ascent promises to forever transform the Asian-American identity.

Kobe Bryant is right in that Jeremy Lin had the skills to be a superstar all along. As a high school senior, Lin captained Palo Alto High School to a state championship, and was considered the best high school player in California. He hoped to play at UCLA or Stanford, but no college offered him an athletic scholarship. He got stuck at the professional athlete’s idea of a ghetto called Harvard, where he set Ivy League scoring records. Upon graduation, no NBA team drafted him, and when he signed with the Golden State Warriors, many speculated it was a publicity stunt, as Jeremy Lin had a large and loyal following among the local Asian-American community. He bounced from one NBA bench to another before ending up on the bench of the Knicks and sleeping on the Manhattan couch of his brother, a dental student at New York University. The Knicks were about to cut Lin when injuries and hopelessness called him off the bench against the New Jersey Nets.

So why didn’t anyone notice Jeremy Lin before?

The first answer is that sports teams often aren’t good at figuring out who’s really good, as Michael Lewis illustrated in Moneyball and as Malcolm Gladwell argued in his New Yorker article, “Game Theory.” Both Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell make the same point: That professional baseball and basketball teams overvalue individual performance statistics, and undervalue statistics that show an individual’s contribution to team success. As he’s demonstrating with the New York Knicks and has previously demonstrated with Palo Alto High School and Harvard, Jeremy Lin is an excellent leader, ball passer, and court strategist, but he lacks the flashiness of an Allen Iverson, whom Gladwell considers one of basketball’s most over-rated players.

The second answer is complex and murky: That Lin was discriminated against because he was Asian-American.

As Michael Lewis reminds us in Moneyball, professional athletics discriminates against most people, especially those who are short, fat, or pitch underhand, irrespective of their actual ability and talent.

What’s interesting here is how Lin’s success could alter the way Asian-Americans are perceived and how they perceive themselves.

While Lin is the quintessential American underdog story of hard work and tenacity, passion and persistence conquering all it wasn’t an Asian-American story until Lin came along. Cultural prejudices against Asian-Americans tend to be stubborn and persistent because they happen to be mostly true: Many Asian-Americans excel in school without showing passion or curiosity, and become professionals where they demonstrate little initiative or creativity.

When college recruiters saw Lin play, many were probably thinking “He’s a scrawny Asian-American kid” and some may have been thinking “Does he have the passion and drive to excel at the game, or is he just playing us so that he can get a full scholarship to come to our school, drop out of the program to focus on his grades, and then end up as an investment banker?” And Lin probably didn’t articulate his love of the game because he also has those stereotypically Asian-American traits of humility, forbearance, and reticence.

As Lin’s recent performances prove, he must passionately love the game, which permitted him to stay focused and work hard, despite the cultural discrimination and his lack of genetic gifts. And that’s what makes him such a compelling story to people all around the world, whether they be basketball fans or not.

Lin will undoubtedly have some bad games now and then, but he’s already proven he can play in the NBA, and he will undoubtedly finish with a great first season that will herald a great professional career. But his historical significance will be how he’s a cultural pioneer, breaking barriers and prejudices, and transcending the limitations of his sport, his identity, and his time.

Jeremy Lin has made all Asian-Americans and many East Asians proud. And for young Asian-Americans who are silently and secretly battling their individual aspirations against parental demands and cultural expectations, Lin has finally given them a voice, and forever changed their world.

Michael Lewis, if you’re reading this: Get started on the book now.

Avoiding US-China Cold War (The Diplomat)

In 1971, U.S. National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger visited China to negotiate a “world shaking” alliance between the two Cold War adversaries. Since then, he has continued to help manage the Sino-American relationship, most notably in the aftermath of the June 4 crackdown, when Kissinger is said to have negotiated a deal that permitted the dissident Fang Lizhi, who had sought sanctuary in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, to flee to the United States, thereby resolving a potentially explosive political impasse.

In his new book On China, Henry Kissinger offers a framework for future U.S.-China relations by looking back at China’s diplomatic history, starting from 1793-4, when the Qing empire rebuffed Britain’s Lord George Macartney’s attempt to establish a diplomatic relationship. Back then, Britain, like the United States today, was a missionary power, intent on spreading the gospel of Christianity and free trade. But China back then saw itself as it sees itself today: The Middle Kingdom, the glorious sun that tributary states must revolve around in order to receive its light.

Kissinger explains the difference in Western and Chinese diplomacy and geo-political strategy with two board games. Westerners play chess, positioning its power on the board, striking at the enemy with logic and planning. Chinese play Go, a game in which winning requires encircling your opponent.

To understand how differently these two games are played, consider Kissinger’s first visit to China to negotiate with Premier Zhou Enlai what would later become the Shanghai Communique. Kissinger came to China with a timetable and talking points, but Zhou preferred that Kissinger visit the Forbidden City, and extend his stay. Whereas Kissinger hoped to achieve his diplomatic mission quickly and directly, Zhou surrounded Kissinger with flattery and personal attention to break down his defenses.

Since that fateful rite of passage, Kissinger has continued to advise Chinese and American Presidents, and by writing On China no doubtKissinger hopes current and future policymakers can benefit from his understanding of Chinese thinking. And as a policy book, On China demonstrates how Kissinger has mastered the games of both chess and Go so that he can communicate effectively to both his Chinese and U.S. foreign policy audiences.

For China’s current and future policymakers, Kissinger reminds them of Mao Zedong’s disastrous diplomacy, in which the Great Helmsman managed to surround and almost strangle China by alienating the Soviet Union, the United States, and India while debilitating China’s industrial capacity and ability to wage war.

To criticize Mao Zedong, Kissinger first surrounds him with obsequious praise before turning Mao’s own words against him.

In 1958, Chairman Mao ordered the shelling of Taiwan’s offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, deliberately provoking the United States, which had treaty obligations to defend Taiwan. And why play such a dangerous game? Here’s Mao’s reported reasoning for his actions:

“[T]he bombardment of Jinmen [Quemoy], frankly speaking, was our turn to create international tension for a purpose. We intended to teach the Americans a lesson. America had bullied us for many years, so now that we had a chance, why not give it a hard time?”

When Khrushchev sent his Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko to Beijing to calm down his impetuous ally lest he start a nuclear war, Mao explained to Gromyko how China and the Soviet Union could destroy the Americans, albeit at the cost of hundreds of millions of Chinese lives:

“I suppose the Americans might go so far as to unleash a war against China. China must reckon with this possibility, and we do. But we have no intention of capitulating! If the USA attacks China with nuclear weapons, the Chinese armies must retreat from the border regions into the depths of the country. They must draw the enemy in deep so as to grip U.S. forces in a pincer inside China…Only when the Americans are right in the central provinces should you give them everything you’ve got.”

Kissinger contrasts Mao Zedong’s foreign policy with that of Deng Xiaoping, but careful to not disrupt the cosmic Communist unity that Chinese leaders so cherish, he first explains that Mao’s Cultural Revolution had paved the way for Deng’s economic reforms: “Mao destroyed traditional China and left its rubble building blocks for ultimate modernization.”

In contrast to Mao’s vengeful pride, Deng practiced a pragmatic humility, traveling to the West to solicit for technology and expertise to help modernize China, an act that Mao would have interpreted as treason. Kissinger avoids quoting “brilliant” Mao’s famous aphorisms, but does quote Deng’s 24-character statement on how China ought to manage international affairs: “Observe carefully; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.”

For Kissinger, China’s fragile geo-political and economic situation can be directly linked to Mao’s violent idealism, while China’s strategic alliances and economic rise can be credited to Deng’s modest pragmatism. That’s a very strong message to China’s current leadership, who are witnessing a revival of Mao Zedong rhetoric in the Chinese military, as exemplified by Col. Liu Mingfu’s book China Dream.

For American policymakers, Kissinger directly cautions them to ignore Chinese nationalistic rhetoric (just as Zhou Enlai once cautioned Kissinger to ignore Mao’s rhetoric). For Kissinger, Communist Party leaders are first and foremost Chinese strategists who practice Realpolitik: “China’s strategy generally exhibits three characteristics: meticulous analysis of long-term trends, careful study of tactical options, and detached exploration of operational decisions.”

Kissinger believes that by building diplomatic institutions (what he calls the “Pacific Community”) China and the United States could avoid another Cold War; The Qing’s rebuff of Lord Macartney is a history that must not repeat itself.

Chinese Students Paying U.S. Tuitions (New York Times blog)

http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/how-chinese-students-pay-u-s-tuitions/

by Mark MacDonald

Rendezvous recently poked around the issue of Chinese high school students doctoring their applications to gain admission to U.S universities. Surveys and anecdotal evidence suggest that more than half of all Chinese students will have faked something in their admission packets.

What we were unable to explore in our original piece, however, was how these students and their families finance their American college educations. U.S students amass debt, of course, but educational loans in China are virtually unheard of.

“I’m always surprised by how indifferent Chinese parents are to costs,’’ said Jiang Xueqin, the deputy principal of Peking University High School, one of China’s s premier schools. He helps students and their families with their study-abroad plans, and he wrote to us at length about the contours of this highly nuanced issue.

“Most of our parents are indeed well-connected and wealthy,” Mr. Jiang said, “although it’s extremely unclear how much money they actually have. A government official in Beijing may officially make 5,000 yuan a month’’ — about $790 — “but there’s no way that he’s only making that much money.”

Tuition at Mr. Jiang’s high school is nearly $12,700 a year, he said.

Many upwardly mobile Chinese families, especially those who have adhered to the state’s one-child policy, have been saving for years to pay for college. If they’re still short, they might sell their apartment, and extended family members might kick in.

Of Mr. Jiang’s 43 current students, only one has explicitly told him that she cannot afford overseas study. So she’s looking for a scholarship.

Foreign students are highly prized (and heavily recruited) by budget-challenged public universities in the United States because the foreigners typically pay much higher tuition fees than in-state students.

At the highly ranked University of Michigan, for example, an incoming freshman from Shanghai is charged nearly $38,000 in annual tuition and fees, while a kid from Kalamazoo will pay less than $13,000. Add in books, travel, room, board and the occasional 2 a.m. pizza, and the Chinese student will be well over $50,000.

Mr. Jiang noted the tension that often arises when it becomes clear that the Chinese (or other foreign students) are paying far more than their in-state counterparts.

“The locals think that the Chinese are rich foreigners, while the Chinese think they’re paying for the lazy locals to go to school,’’ Mr. Jiang said. “This disparity also leads to a mentality among Chinese students that they are ‘purchasing’ the American university degree.”

So why do Chinese parents spend so much money?

“While there’s a minority of parents who think an American education superior, I think most see an American college degree as a luxury goods item — they want the ‘face’ value of an American-educated child. This study-abroad phenomenon is also benefiting from a herd mentality.”

At Mr. Jiang’s school, the parents look most closely at the rankings by U.S. News & World Report.

“They’re usually aiming for a top 50 school,’’ he said. “The really prestigious brands in China are Harvard (every parent’s dream school), Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, and Wharton.

Mr. Jiang also mentioned a new trend he’s seeing — “a growing consensus within China that Chinese students who’ve studied abroad and who return to China are becoming a social problem.’’

“They return with limited English and limited marketable skills, yet they also have high expectations,’’ he said.

“As well, while they really don’t fit in America, they have also developed habits and ways of thinking that don’t permit them to integrate back into Chinese society easily.’’

Does China Have a Soul? (The Diplomat)

The New York Review of Books blog has posted an Ian Johnson interview with Zhang Ping (who writes under the name Chang Ping), one of China’s most daring writers whom the Communist Party previously hounded out of reporting from China.

The piece is worth reading for both the interviewee and the interviewer.

Inspired by Liu Binyan to become a journalist, Chang Ping has a career that shares many similarities with that of his role model. But there’s one major difference. Liu, with his journalistic exposes of the inept Communist Party political, economic, social, and moral management of China, inspired a generation of disaffected youth to carry the intellectual flame.

By the late1990s, when Chang Ping came into prominence at Southern Weekend, a Guangzhou-based newspaper famed for its investigative journalism, the Party had begun to buy out China’s intellectual class so successfully that it could easily persecute those who couldn’t be bought out – individuals such as He Qinglian, Ai Weiwei, and Chang Ping.

Chang Ping now lives in Germany, but is attempting to start a new media organization to effect change in China. Unfortunately, as was the case with Liu and He, Chinese intellectuals tend to fade away once in exile.

For China watchers, Johnson needs no introduction, as he’s the most intellectual of Western reporters working in China today. In much of his recent reporting, Johnson spends a lot of time sipping tea with exiled Chinese writers or meditating with Daoist masters. And I think he does so because he seeks enlightenment on a question that must gnaw at all China watchers: Does China have a soul?

This question must sound embarrassingly racist or, given China’s economic trajectory, increasingly irrelevant. But it’s also China’s most important question because the flip side of this question is: Does China have a future?

We are often blind to these questions because we are so focused on economic data, which we faithfully believe to reveal the reality of China to us. But GDP growth, consumer spending, and stock market ups and downs don’t tell us the level of individual happiness or the strength of social cohesion. Economic data may tell us that China is more prosperous and powerful today than at any time in its history, and that’s true. But what’s also true, if you crisscross China talking to elderly Chinese, is that China was more honest and happy back in the Mao Zedong days than it is today.

It’s obvious from his reporting that Johnson would rather trust his own eyes than economic data. He’s interested in China’s intellectual and spiritual state – or what Chang Ping calls “the civic spirit” – because that’s what reveals a nation’s “emotional intelligence,” China’s ability to absorb the shock of the inevitable economic downturn, and China’s will to hold together when the economic glue fades.

The United States is facing a tough economic storm now, but no one doubts that the American people share “civic spirit” and are all invested in the nation’s democratic soul, as is so eloquently outlined in Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence” and Abraham Lincoln’s speeches. And that’s why most can be confident that this current recession will only make America leaner and stronger in the end.

On the other hand, the European Union has no unifying ideas and values, and that’s why the possibility of a Greek default, no matter its impact economically, could begin the process of the EU’s political death.

Within the Party’s inner sanctums, the nation’s soul is very much a concern. Consider President Hu Jintao’s speech calling for China to expand its cultural power both abroad and at home: The Communist Party is desperate for a unifying vision to unite the Chinese people for the economic tough times ahead.

Ironically, a nation’s soul and cultural unity comes from the same poets and philosophers, its thinkers and writers (individuals such as Liu, He, Ai Weiwei, and Chang Ping) that the Communist Party has persecuted. The United States soft power – its vision of individual freedom and empowerment that animates both Disney movies and Special Forces troops operating in the world’s most far-flung corners – developed its power and force through generations of open and honest and vigorous debate over its soul.

Does China have a soul? We’ll only know once the China edifice starts crumbling. If it doesn’t have a soul, then China may very well fall into the abyss. If it does, whether it be a previously hidden intellectual or religious tradition, it will naturally rise to the challenge.

Johnson is now scouring China for what could save the Communist Party, or what could possibly come after the Party and ultimately save China. And that’s why his reporting, while neither trendy nor topical, is certainly urgent and necessary.

Why U.S. Needs a China Threat (The Diplomat)

The Atlantic correspondent Robert Kaplan is one of America’s most influential geo-political thinkers, if not the most influential. He’s the author of numerous books and policy articles informed by his extensive travels to the most chaotic parts of the world, and even more extensive reading of philosophers and poets of the human condition. He sits on the Defense Policy Board , which advises the Pentagon, and has worked as a consultant to the U.S. military.

In other words, what he thinks has geo-political implications. So what does Kaplan think of China?

It’s clear from his reporting that the U.S. military considers China the number one threat in the Pacific Ocean, which Kaplan calls “America’s private lake.” In his book Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground, Kaplan embeds on a destroyer, inside a nuclear submarine, and on a bomber, and what impresses him most is neither the technology nor the power of the military, but the passion and dedication of the soldiers, seaman, and pilots, and the experience and authority of the sergeants and corporals, who are the heart and soul of the U.S. military. While never made explicit, America’s fighting men and women are always learning, collaborating, and preparing themselves for their new enemy: China.

And, for Kaplan, it’s not just the Pacific where the interests of the United States and China will collide.

Kaplan’s most recent book is Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and Future of American Power, which argues that the Indian Ocean is now the nexus of globalization, and thus the center of gravity for geo-politics: Through the Strait of Hormuz, oil is delivered through the Strait of Malacca to fuel the world’s most dynamic economies.

In Monsoon, Kaplan travels to major ports along the Indian Ocean littoral, some of which are being built by Chinese money and labor. Kaplan envisions the Indian Ocean as a major source of conflict between India, which is expanding vertically, and China, which is expanding horizontally. And where they meet is resource-rich Burma, where China is constructing roads to connect its southwest to Burma so that it can break into the Indian Ocean and secure a new route for energy supplies.

As a writer, Kaplan can sometimes be edgy and passionate, but he’s above all careful and nuanced. It can sometimes be hard to catch what he’s saying, but here’s what I think is the subtext of Monsoon: China’s ambition is to become a two ocean blue-water navy, and thus a true global superpower. To accomplish that, China must “Finlandize” the southeast countries of Burma, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, as well as take Taiwan back into its fold so that it can finally break into the Pacific. The United States ought to counter by shifting its focus from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific region, and work with the democracies of India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesian, and Australia to balance undemocratic China.

But Kaplan presents very little evidence as to why and how China threatens U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific. He does not visit China for his book, and so can’t see for himself how China may soon be too overwhelmed with environmental degradation, financial mismanagement, and social unrest to concern itself with the seas. And he himself is a canny enough thinker of military matters to know that the Chinese military, even if it were to surpass the United States in number of ships and submarines, lacks the U.S. military’s democratic culture, spirit, and purpose which make American fighting men the best in the world, and the U.S. military machine the most flexible and resilient.

So why does Kaplan consider China a threat? Perhaps it’s because he spends so much time with U.S. military officials that he’s adopted their China paranoia? But I think there’s a deeper psychological reason why Kaplan sees China as a threat: Because he, like so many other American intellectuals, understand deep down that the real threat to America is America itself, that the United States is amusing itself to death with Jersey Shore, Facebook, and the Superbowl.

And, as Kaplan argues passionately and eloquently in his essay “The Dangers of Peace,” which closes his book The Coming Anarchy, it’s this state of lethargic complacency that makes nations shallow and stupid, and which also creates the conditions for catastrophic war:

“After the Napoleonic Wars, many decades of peace in Europe led to rulers who lacked a tragic sense of the past, which caused them to blunder into World War I.

“The solution for such trends is simple: struggle, of one sort or another, hopefully nonviolent. Struggle demands the real facts, as well as real standards of behavior. While governments lie in specific instances during wartime, war ultimately demands credibility, whereas long periods of peace do not; with no threat at hand, lies and exaggerations carry smaller penalties. Struggle causes us to reflect, to fortify our faith, and to see beyond our narrow slots of existence.”

And China is the ideal villain for the United States to struggle against: It’s so big and omnipresent, so aggressive and undemocratic that Hollywood couldn’t have cast a better villain.

Just as nostalgic as the U.S. military for the Cold War, Kaplan is essentially predicting a new Cold War between China and America, and a new existentialist threat that will force the United States to come together and teach its students math.

That’s a romantic idea from a writer who has dedicated his career to questioning the practicality and purpose of romantic ideas.

Here are the closing words of Kaplan’s 1994 book The End of the Earth: A Journey into the Frontiers of Anarchy: “The more I saw of the world, the less I felt I could fit it into a pattern. No one can foresee the precise direction of history, and no nation or people is safe from its wrath.”