"The past is speaking quite loudly in the present," observed Orville Schell, Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. Schell was commenting on the powerful influence that past events and former leaders have on the current "China model," and the way that China is perceived by others.
Schell, who has been following events in China for more than 40 years, first went to China in 1975. "It was unthinkable then to imagine the changes we have seen," he said. It was just three years later, in 1978, that Deng Xiaoping became the leader of China. With remarkable speed, Deng redefined "what it meant to be Chinese." It was Deng, according to Schell, who pioneered the China model. "He exploited and encouraged economic reform while discouraging political reform." There was a growing sense at the time that "we were all on the same path and moving in the same direction," Schell said, describing the 1980s as "an extraordinarily open and liberal period." Everything changed though with the violent crackdown following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. According to Schell, the lesson the Communist Party took from those protests was "never again."
Schell described Xi Jinping's very different leadership style. "He wants to be a big leader," said Schell. What matters to Xi more than anything else is that China "become great." Xi's China Dream is not about the individual, but about "the restoration of a great nation," said Schell. To become great, Xi believes that China must project itself. "That's what we see in China's exploitation of its natural resources, in its reaching out to Africa, South America, and other regions," said Schell.
One of the ways that China is projecting itself these days is by asserting its rights within the nine-dash line, which Schell described as a "giant cow udder all the way to Indonesia." As it "scoops up all of the islands of the South China Sea," China is challenging the countries of Asia and the United States, "This is ours. What are you going to do about it?" According to Schell, as a result of this "aggressive" and "truculent" behavior, China "does not have a single ally in Asia except perhaps for North Korea," noting that even North Korea does not fit in China's scheme of a new world order.
Many Asian countries are now appealing to the United States for help, putting it in a delicate situation. "Obama feels that the U.S. must do something," said Schell. "I think he's right." The U.S. has bilateral security arrangements with a number of these Asian countries that increase the pressure on it to respond. Schell described the current relationship between the U.S. and China as "a pretty dangerous situation." Reflecting back on previous periods in U.S.-China relations, Schell noted that for many years the two countries shared an interest in opposing the Soviet Union. This was combined with a belief in the U.S. "that reform would lead China to be more open." Schell said that he thought that China was no longer on the road to anywhere, but had arrived at the place where it wanted to be.
Schell said that China and the United States have no choice but to find a way to work together. Despite this, however, he was not optimistic that they would do so. He did see one opportunity for the two countries to cooperate: on climate change, a global issue that cannot be solved by a single nation. "As the two largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world, if the U.S. and China can't come together on this," said Schell, "there won't be a solution."
Watch a short interview with Schell and the full lecture below.
Orville Schell made his remarks at a public lecture on November 26, 2015 hosted by the School of Public Policy at Central European University.