What moves China on a global stage - Howard French

Howard French

Explaining China's position on a global stage, that is the underlying purpose of Howard French's book Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power. As an emerging world power, we need to understand China, in a similar way we now understand the US, Britain, Russia and other current and past global powers, he explains to the South China Morning Post. "Tianxia" is the key concept to understand.

The South China Morning Post:

China’s story just happens to be intimidatingly vast and complex, which partly explains French’s decision to filter its history through a central concept: tianxia, an ancient Chinese cultural concept that gives his book its title. The literal translation of the word is “everything under heaven”. 

What tianxia means in practical political terms, French writes in the book, is “China’s tribute system”. 

“Tianxia emerges as a paradigm for China’s geopolitics from a correct sense that it is vastly larger and, for most of its history, vastly richer than any neighbouring state,” French explains during our conversation. “Out of this flows an ideal, from the Chinese perspective, that order can best be established in our neighbourhood by a situation whereby the neighbours defer to us.” 

In the most technical sense, deference is expressed through a highly ritualised series of ceremonies: embassies dispatched to pay obeisance to the emperor; the adoption of the Chinese calendar and language. In broader policy terms, tianxia combines carefully deployed “sticks” and “carrots”. French points to historical evidence to argue that China uses inducements first and force only as a last resort: the Sino-Vietnamese war of 1979 is an example. Carrots include access to Chinese trade, to its potentially vast market, and to what French describes as “patents of authority. China essentially legitimates local leaders by endorsing them”. On this basis, “a harmonious pattern of coexistence can endure in the region. One could say only on this basis”. 

Although the current leadership is careful not to invoke tianxia explicitly, French argues that it explains much of China’s international diplomacy. Everything Under the Heavens devotes considerable space to unpicking Beijing’s forthright claims to territory in the South China Sea, which have made several nations uneasy. In 2013, the Philippines took China to an arbitration tribunal in the Hague to invali­date Beijing’s territorial claims. At the heart of the South China Sea dispute is the “nine-dash line”, under which China lays claim to 90 per cent of the area. On July 12 last year, the tribunal ruled in favour of the Philippines. 

“China didn’t say, ‘You are infringing upon tianxia’, but that’s very much what was going on,” French says. “[China says] ‘We control those waters. You should get with the programme and defer to us.’”

More in the South China Morning Post.

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China's search for global power - Howard French

Howard French

Howard French, author of Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power explains at the Pulitzer Center how China is searching for power at an international stage, and how the global power might change its relationship with Hong Kong and Taiwan.

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China's political thinking on the move - Howard French

Howard French

China is inching up as a world power, and author Howard French of Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power  finds it about time to dive deep into what moves the country's political thinking, says the Irish Times in a review. French: " “China will wish to restore itself to the pinnacle of affairs in East Asia.”

The Irish Times:

Digging deep into history, French shows how China’s belief in its authority over tian xia or “everything under the heavens” informs its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea, which have brought it into conflict with nearly all of its neighbours, many of whom have historically been tribute states to dynastic China. 

To understand China’s foreign policy, it is necessary to understand how deeply feelings of “inside” and “outside” run in the political thinking of successive dynasties and governments. 

Hard times for China have always followed periods of “inside disorder and outside calamity” and French combines wide scholarship with the instinct of a dogged reporter to show how the current government under Xi Jinping is set on ensuring this doesn’t happen again. 

Beefing up its military prowess in the past years, the question is what will China do with its new powers? At the very least, French argues, “China will wish to restore itself to the pinnacle of affairs in East Asia.” 

China has built islands and military aircraft ready on remote reefs to back its claims to most of the South China Sea, through which one-third of the world’s maritime trade passes every year. Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei each have competing claims with China.

More in the Irish Times.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Countering China's narrative on its globalization - Howard French

Journalist Howard French's book Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power is reviewed by the Globe&Mail. Key argument: French counters the Chinese narrative of a benevolent force, unlike the greedy Western colonizators. And on Trump: “When two emperors appear simultaneously, one must be destroyed.”


The Globe&Mail:

French’s account, not surprisingly, runs counter to the official Chinese narrative. Admiral Zheng He, a Muslim eunuch who led a Chinese armada to Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and the east coast of Africa, is lauded in China as an unconventional explorer. Unlike his Western counterparts, whose voyages were marked by greed, violence and conquest, Zheng, the story goes, was an ambassador of Chinese benevolence. The reality, as French reminds us, is that Zheng’s massive ships were actually troop carriers, whose menacing arrival conveyed a distinctly different message about the nature of the Chinese deal on offer. 

Modern China continues to proclaim this theme of benevolent internationalism, something French challenges with numerous examples. The most chilling is his account of the Chinese navy’s 1988 massacre of flag-waving Vietnamese troops on the disputed Johnson Reef in the South China Sea. The Vietnamese protest is captured on a grainy YouTube video that is suddenly interrupted by Chinese naval gunfire. When the smoke clears, the Vietnamese are, shockingly, gone. It’s worth noting this happened just a year before the Chinese military perpetrated another massacre, this time of student protesters in Tiananmen Square. Nei luan, wai huan. 

China is clearly in the midst of a new period of exuberance and expansion, and, as French makes clear, this inevitably involves friction with the two powers, Japan and the United States, that have come to dominate its neighbourhood over the past 200 years.

In recent decades, Japan, seduced by the lure of the China market and by the friendly pragmatism of previous (and needier) Chinese leaders, played down territorial disputes as it helped to rebuild China. The tables have since turned. All things Japanese are now demonized by China, which evokes past Japanese aggression as it steadily encroaches on the rocky outcroppings that mark the beginning of the Japanese archipelago. 

Even more worrisome is China’s growing rivalry with its most formidable adversary, the United States. China is rapidly acquiring the weapons and technology to make it highly risky for the U.S. Navy to operate in the western Pacific, an ambition furthered by China’s construction of military airstrips on artificial islands in the South China Sea. French ominously quotes another Chinese aphorism: “When two emperors appear simultaneously, one must be destroyed.”

More in the Globe&Mail.

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China's gunboat diplomacy, past and present - Howard French

Howard French

How do China's current global efforts to expand its power, link to its past as a world might? Journalist Howard French explores in his new book Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power the historical roots of China's position as a world power. From ChinaFile.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? 

Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form. Are you interested in more stories by Howard French? Do check out this link.

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China´s Twilight Years - Howard French

Howard French

While many analysts expect China to grab chances when the US is changing its global position, eminent China experts Howard French sees the opposite is happening. With a shrinking and aging population, China´s power is diminishing, he argues in The Atlantic. While the US have chances.

Howard French:

Under President Xi Jinping, China has until very recently appeared to be a global juggernaut—hugely expanding its economic and political relations with Africa; building artificial islands in the South China Sea, an immense body of water that it now proclaims almost entirely its own; launching the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, with ambitions to rival the World Bank. The new bank is expected to support a Chinese initiative called One Belt, One Road, a collection of rail, road, and port projects designed to lash China to the rest of Asia and even Europe. 

Projects like these aim not only to boost China’s already formidable commercial power but also to restore the global centrality that Chinese consider their birthright. 

As if this were not enough to worry the U.S., China has also showed interest in moving into America’s backyard. Easily the most dramatic symbol of this appetite is a Chinese billionaire’s plan to build across Nicaragua a canal that would dwarf the American-built Panama Canal. But this project is stalled, an apparent victim of recent stock-market crashes in China... 

Not so long ago, conventional wisdom in China held that the country’s economy would soon overtake America’s in size, achieving a GDP perhaps double or triple that of the U.S. later this century. As demographic reality sets in, however, some Chinese experts now say that the country’s economic output may never match that of the U.S. 

With American Baby Boomers entering retirement, the United States has its own pressing social-safety-net costs. What is often neglected in debates about swelling entitlement spending, however, is how much better America’s position is than other countries’. Once again, numbers tell the story best: By the end of the century, China’s population is projected to dip below 1 billion for the first time since 1980. At the same time, America’s population is expected to hit 450 million. Which is to say, China’s population will go from roughly four and a half times as large as America’s to scarcely more than twice its size. 

Even as China’s workforce shrinks, America’s is expected to increase by 31 percent from 2010 to 2050. This growing labor supply will boost economic growth, strengthen the tax base, and relieve pressure on the Social Security system. At the same time, Americans will continue to enjoy a substantial advantage over the Chinese in terms of per capita income. This advantage in wealth will continue to underwrite U.S. security commitments and capabilities around the world.

More in the Atlantic.

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Developing a new China story - Howard French

Howard French (right)

Journalist Howard French, author of the forthcoming book Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Powerdiscusses with Jeff Wasserstrom China´s mindset as a geopolitical power and its problem to reinvent itself in developing a new, true Chinese story during the upcoming era of US president Donald Trump.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more strategy experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Do check out this list.

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China´s aging crisis: guns vs canes - Howard French

Howard French

The world´s most populous country is facing an unprecedented crisis, as its population ages fast, tells former New York Times Shanghai-bureau chief Howard French to PBS. The fast rising demand for social security, health care and a diminishing work force, will narrow down China´s economic expansion in the near future. The aging crisis not only shows the immense failure of the one-child policy, it will also force the country to become more welcoming to much-needed immigrants.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

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How a shrinking population will hit China - Howard French

Howard French

China´s demographic problems might stop its economic development in its tracks, writes author Howard French in the Atlantic.  Not only can China not deal with its aging population, "some Chinese experts now say that the country’s economic output may never match that of the U.S."

Howard French:

Recent events may well provide a preview of this reality. When Xi Jinping announced last year that he was slashing China’s armed forces by 300,000 troops, Beijing spun the news as proof of China’s peaceful intentions. Demographics provide a more compelling explanation. With the number of working-age Chinese men already declining—China’s working-age population shrank by 4.87 million people last year—labor is in short supply. As wages go up, maintaining the world’s largest standing army is becoming prohibitively expensive. Nor is the situation likely to improve: After wages, rising pension costs are the second-biggest cause of increased military spending. 

Awakening belatedly to its demographic emergency, China has relaxed its one-child policy, allowing parents to have two children. Demographers expect this reform to make little difference, though. In China, as around the world, various forces, including increasing wages and rising female workforce participation, have, over several decades, left women disinclined to have large families. Indeed, China’s fertility rate began declining well before the coercive one-child restrictions were introduced in 1978. By hastening and amplifying the effects of this decline, the one-child policy is likely to go down as one of history’s great blunders. Single-child households are now the norm in China, and few parents, particularly in urban areas, believe they can afford a second child. Moreover, many men won’t become fathers at all: Under the one-child policy, a preference for sons led to widespread abortion of female fetuses. As a result, by 2020, China is projected to have 30 million more bachelors than single women of similar age.

“It really doesn’t matter what happens now with the fertility rate,” a demographer at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences told me. “The old people of tomorrow are already here.” She predicted that in another decade or two, the social and fiscal pressures created by aging in China will force what many Chinese find inconceivable for the world’s most populous nation: a mounting need to attract immigrants. “When China is old, though, all the countries we could import workers from will also be old,” she said. “Where are we to get them from? Africa would be the only place, and I can’t imagine that.”

Much more in the Atlantic 

 Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form. 

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My problems with Obama´s Nairobi speech - Howard French

Howard French

Author Howard French, of China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa explains in Foreign Policy what President Obama did not mention in his Nairobi speech. Obama did not really get the fast development of Africa, and has ignored the continent.

Howard French:

The continent has famously seen a huge boom in the presence of Chinese people and business interests — both trade and investment — in the last decade or so. Less well-publicized, but just as real, many African countries are drawing interest from a wide variety of other foreign governments and business people, including nontraditional partners like Turkey, Vietnam, Russia, Malaysia, and Brazil. During this same period, the American presence on the continent has flagged, and numbers measuring U.S. economic engagement have stagnated. Obama himself spent less than 24 hours in sub-Saharan Africa during his first term, and put off what will likely be regarded as his most important visit to the continent until late in his second term.By contrast, China’s top leaders - either its president or prime minister — have been visiting Africa on a near-annual basis. 

The relative newcomers to the African economic scene are drawn by a sense of great opportunity. For starters, economic growth in Africa as a region is roughly on par with Asia’s, and perhaps even a tad faster. The continent’s population is booming in ways that suggest even greater strengthening of these trends ahead. Over the next few decades, for example, no other part of the world will have as many people of prime working age. 

Already, no other part of the world is urbanizing faster. Contrary to widespread perception, Africa’s recent economic growth is increasingly driven by services and, to a lesser but still important degree, by manufacturing. This translates into less dependence on the traditional pillar of natural resources, which have a poor record of driving development and generating widely shared wealth. 

By sticking so closely to an old-fashioned script, Obama squandered a unique chance to explain the changing realities of the continent to the American public. Over the short term this probably entails less American investment, which is, to be sure, a loss for Africa. It also means that fewer American business people will think of Africa as a place for trade and investment, which represents a continued loss of markets for the U.S. economy.

More in Foreign Policy.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

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What is China looking for in the South China Sea? - Howard French

Howard French

China´s endeavors into the South China Sea has both flabbergasted and worried its neighbors. Journalist Howard French looks for the Guardian into the efforts, and comes with an explanation: overcoming the humiliations of the recent past, is an important theme. The struggle of an upcoming superpower.

Howard French:

It would be wrong to conclude that the Chinese position merely consists of cosmological bluster, even if it is true that there is plenty of that. Beyond the often glorified and euphemised imperial past, when neighbours reputedly prostrated themselves before the emperor in order to enjoy the privileges of trade, China draws on far fresher sources of motivation. Beijing’s attitudes toward the South China Sea, like much of the country’s behaviour as an emerging superpower, is bound up in an entirely modern Chinese obsession: overcoming the humiliations of the recent past. 

Since Sun Yat-sen, the early-20th-century founder of the Republic of China, every modern leader has harboured dreams of restoring the country to the position it enjoyed before imperial China was ripped asunder by Britain (and France) in the opium wars, and then trampled by Japan in a series of degrading wars that began in the 1890s. For Chinese leaders of the 20th, and now 21st century, that means restoring lost territories: most obviously Taiwan but also the Diaoyu islands. Just as important are the rights China is convinced – or has convinced itself – it deserves to the South China Sea. 

Sun’s successor, and Mao Zedong’s greatest historical rival, Chiang Kai-shek, began keeping a diary in 1928, in which he created a daily entry under the heading Xuechi, meaning “avenge”, or “wipe clean humiliation”. It came to include everything from venting about the need to destroy the “dwarf pirates”, which is how he often referred to the Japanese he was at war with, to the need to eventually create textbooks that would inculcate his ideas about the people’s duty to restore China’s size and glory. One entry reads: “Recover Taiwan and Korea. Recover the land that was originally part of the Han and Tang dynasty. Then, as descendants of the Yellow Emperor, we will have no shame.” Nationalism in China, which has swelled around these kinds of sentiments, has become a vital tool for the Communist party leadership. Yet officials have sometimes stoked these feelings in such a crude manner that it has become a hindrance to their freedom of action, and potentially even a threat to their own survival. When the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, said in June, for example, that any retreat by Beijing from its South China Sea claims would not be forgiven by future generations, he might as well have said that the country’s leaders could not get away with compromise on these issues. 

But there is an even more recent imperative at work in Beijing’s calculations than the matter of overcoming the humiliations of the last two centuries, and its name is the US. Today, it is that country and not Europe or even Japan, which is seen as the main obstacle to Beijing’s regional ambitions. There is simply no way for China to reign supreme in the South China Sea so long as the US has a free run of the western Pacific. Even more than cowing its neighbours, China’s island-building strategy would seem to have the US navy as its primary focus.

There is no way for China to rule the South China Sea so long as the US has a free run of the western Pacific

The waters off Hainan, near the Yalin navy base, where China maintains its nuclear submarine fleet, are notoriously shallow, scarcely 10 metres deep in many places, making it easy to spot submarines on their sorties from the island. By establishing a number of man-made island positions in the Spratlys, China seems to be pursuing a number of complementary goals. The first is reducing the ability of the US fleet to operate with impunity throughout the region. It is frequently noted that China’s tiny new islets would be impossible to defend in a conflict, but that is to miss the point. By establishing radar and maritime acoustic arrays throughout the South China Sea, along with surveillance flights of its own, Beijing will improve its real-time information, or situational awareness in the region and enhance its ability to engage enemy combatants before they can approach the Chinese mainland. As noted, with its deep surrounding waters, a place such as Fiery Cross might also serve as a convenient way station for China’s submarines. 

It may turn out that the encounter with the US Poseidon surveillance aircraft recorded by CNN was more than passingly revealing about China’s ambitions for its newly built islands, and about the geopolitical contest that will unfold around them. Under Unclos, which China signed in 1996, and the US has never ratified, artificial islands built atop submerged features such as the reefs flown over that day do not entitle a country to territorial rights – and yet, there was the presumed voice of a Chinese soldier telling the Americans to go away. 

From declaring that it will not abide by any Unclos ruling against it, it would not be such a large step for China to depart from Unclos altogether – particularly since the US has never joined – and insist that its new positions in the South China Sea be given a wide berth by others, in the surrounding waters and in the skies overhead. Such a decision would be risky for China in terms of the image it would like to project as a peaceable and constructive rising power, but challenging it would be risky for others, not least the US. 

On the eve of a recent tour of the region, where he attended an annual Asian security conference in Singapore, the US defence secretary Ashton Carter vowed to frustrate any Chinese efforts to limit the movements of American vessels in the South China Sea. “The United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world,” Carter declared in Pearl Harbor. And to this, he joined another vow. “We will remain the principal security power in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come,” he said. Unsurprisingly, in China, people have begun to take a different view of the future. “In 10 years, our GDP will be bigger than the US, in 20 years our military spending will be equal to the US,” said Shen Dingli, one of China’s most prominent international relations scholars, who I met in Washington. “Thirty to 40 years from now, our armed forces will be better than the US. Why would the US defend those rocks? When you have power, the world has to accept. The US is a superpower today, and it can do whatever it wants. When China is a superpower, the world will also have to accept.”

More at the Guardian.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you looking for more political experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Check out this recent list.  

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Misguided fears for Chinese influence in Africa - Howard French

Howard French

When it comes to China and Africa, much of the framing is done according to out-dated myths. Author Howard French of China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa tries to dismantle some of those misguided relics from the past for the Washington Post.

Howard French:

There is no question that one must try to disaggregate more when dealing with this topic. One of my starting goals in undertaking this project was simply trying to unravel the mystery of how so many Chinese ended up in Africa in such a relatively short period of time. I learned very quickly that almost none of this could be explained in authoritarian, command economy terms, where the state, at some central level, drew up a master plan that said “By year X, we need to have a million Chinese in Africa,” and set about rounding them up for resettlement here and there. The working title I proposed for my book, in fact, was “Haphazard Empire,” and that is because I quickly learned that for all of the planning and ambition of the Chinese state, lots of things quickly began to unfold in these relationships that had little or nothing to do with any set scheme or blueprint. Personally, one of the richest veins in my reporting was to discover how vigorously Chinese from different parts of that country compete with each other and regard each other with suspicion, stereotypes and resentment, and beyond that I was surprised to learn just how common it is for Chinese on the ground in Africa to look askance at their own state.

More in The Washington Post.

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US try to overtake China again in Africa - Howard French

Howard French

The United States are rethinking their Africa policies, and at the core of that process is the position China has gained at the fastest growing continent, writes journalist Howard French, author of China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa, in Foreign Policy.

Howard French:

There is one country that has not failed in its imagination about Africa in the last decade or so, and it happens to be the leading global competitor of the United States: China.". 

And it is China’s booming interests in Africa, and the appetite for African business that has been created in its wake in any number of other middle or rising powers — countries from Brazil and Turkey to Malaysia and Vietnam — that underscore the second major objection to the Smith appointment. 

Africa has 1.1 billion people today. By the middle of this century, it will almost certainly count over two billion. By the end of the century, Africa will astoundingly have between three and five billion people. The continent is presently urbanizing faster than any other part of the world. Its GDP is growing at least as fast as Asia’s – though few Americans have noticed. Its middle classes are already larger than India’s. Here, one finds irony in the way China has pursued an ideological competition with Washington in Africa, portraying itself as the non-judgmental foreign power that won’t get involved in other countries’ internal affairs, least of all questions of democracy. 

The United States has paid an enormous price to its credibility in Africa for its readiness to preach about democracy with states that are deemed relatively insignificant, while making little public fuss on the subject with long-favored authoritarians and deeply corrupt petro-states like Angola and Equatorial Guinea. Meanwhile, it has utterly failed to understand Africa in terms of its immense upsides, as a place of tremendous opportunities. In economic matters, Washington has made little effort to compete with China and other outside powers in Africa — something that most Africans would greatly welcome and which would be beneficial to all.

More in Foreign Policy.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

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Why ´60 Minutes´does a poor job on Africa - Howard French

+Howard French 

Author Howard French of China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants Are Building a New Empire in Africa is leading a campaign against the famous US news program ´60 Minutes´ and how they cover Africa. From the Humanosphere. One major problem: they mainly ignore local people.

The Humanosphere:

Not a single Liberian was quoted in the 15-minute segment. The report managed to reduce the people affected by the crisis “to the role of silent victims,” said French. In reality, the experience of Liberians and people living in Guinea and Sierra Leone was much more than Ebola victims. 

“Liberians not only died from Ebola, but many of them contributed bravely to the fight against the disease, including doctors, nurses and other caregivers, some of whom gave their lives in this effort. Despite this, the only people heard from on the air were white foreigners who had come to Liberia to contribute to the fight against the disease,” according to the letter. 

The other two reports cited were about wildlife in South Africa and Gabon. French says that people of black African descent “make no substantial appearance in either of these reports.” Taken together, the three reports are viewed as evidence that Africans are marginalized to people who have things done to them, rather than do things themselves. This disempowering style is inaccurate and tells an entirely incomplete story, the letter argues. 

French has an extensive history of reporting from the African continent. He led the bureaus for the New York Timesin China, Japan, West and Central Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. His books and reporting have garnered awards and high praise. And he is a vocal critic of reporting on Africa.

More in the Humanosphere.

Howard French is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

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