Sense Hofstede

Category: Opinions

  • In this Cold War, Europe risks becoming the new Asia

    That uneasy feeling in Europe when China and Brazil launch a ‘peace’ initiative on Ukraine that goes against Brussels stated aims? The post-failed-coup worry about South Korean opposition leader Lee Jae-myung’s seeming indifference to Russia’s activities? India just one country happily continuing to engage with Moscow? Europeans are getting a quick lesson about a global lack of concern for their fundamental interests.

    At the airport, ending his state visit to Russia in 2023, Xi Jinping told Vladimir Putin that the world is undergoing ‘epochal change unseen in a hundred years’ 百年未有之大变局. His addition that China and Russia were driving this change together may have been somewhat too optimistic. Donald Trump’s victory is only the latest election outcome showing the democratic world is perfectly capable of tearing itself further apart. Trump’s MAGA party, too, is just one of many eager to drive epochal change. Europe, it seems, risks becoming the arena where these forces will clash.

    Commentators like to talk about a new cold war, mirroring a stalemate between opposing forces during the old Cold War. The stalemate held true for Europe. For the rest of the world, in contrast, the Cold War was decidedly warmer. A full-scale land war in Europe would have been too hideous to contemplate. This helped prevent the conflict turning hot. Tension that could not find an outlet in fortified Europe, however, erupted in Asia, still wobbly on its feet in the midst of decolonisation and development. The Korean and Vietnamese civil wars were only just some of several conflicts that were transformed as a result — without concern for their fundamental interests.

    A similar situation now threatens in reverse. Potential conflicts in East Asia are numerous. But a war between nuclear powers China and the US with Japan around the Philippines, Korea, or Taiwan would be unimaginably extreme.  Now it just so happens, that in a divided and militarily weak Europe there is already an ongoing conflict: Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Not coincidentally, more and more countries from Asia are drawn into the geopolitical maelstrom. In this Cold War, Europe risks becoming the new Asia.

    The splintering West

    Even without belief in the Marxist ‘trend of history’ 历史潮流 on which Xi’s claim to Putin relies, it is clear that world order is changing. Europe increasingly stands alone. There is a non-zero chance that the Americans go the way Orbán’s Hungary. Given the US’ central position and its vast power arsenal, an authoritarian with oligarch friends its helm would have larger consequences for Western unity than European Council summits running late.

    The danger to the liberal democratic community is the greatest it has ever been since communism was contained in the West. Backsliding in the US might hollow out the ‘liberal’ part really quickly across the pond, now the Republic Party has a trifecta. There is also no guarantee this side of the Atlantic will keep it together. Europe is facing its own illiberal forces.

    The liberal global space that anchored the world’s democracies together was fundamentally a Western compact underpinned by US hegemony. The combination of its military, economic, and cultural dominance provided a foundation. The ideology behind ‘liberal democracy’ or ‘international rules-based order’ can be attacked for its flaws and hypocrisies. It did, however, serve to bind the transatlantic community to common political norms and a shared perception of belonging to a common democratic community.

    There has long been talk of the Atlantic growing wider. Ever since the 1980s, talk about the Asia-Pacific has signalled a new direction. The 2003 Iraq War and 2008 financial crises were further moments of divergence. But, perhaps ironically, it was the European Union’s enlargement to include the loyal NATO countries in Central and Eastern Europe that had the biggest structural consequences. It moved the continent away from the Cold War period, when Western Europe perched dependently on the edge of a communist-dominated Eurasia. At the same time, the rise of China draws the US in the other direction.

    The recent US election outcome brings to the superstructure’s surface the Western rupture long presaged by fundamental shifts in the base. MAGA’s authoritarian promises becoming real would be the final nail in the coffin of shared identity. Demographic trends already increasingly tie the US to Asia and Latin America, while linking Europe more closely to its neighbourhood. Now Trump may turn the presidential US into a challenger of European parliamentary democracies’ values and interests, a threat to Ukrainian sovereignty and global democracy. After many years of people writing about multipolarity, the moment for a European pole is there. But Europe is incredibly weak.

    The Indo-Pacific’s globalising interests

    The countries in Asia are growing stronger and more assertive. This means their interests are increasingly global too. This is not just limited to Xi Jinping’s China. Much has already been written about the arrival of North Korean troops on the European battlefield. But it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the fact that the Old World is turning into a stage for Asian power plays.

    Seoul reacts as it sees a more aggressive North Korea receive aid threatening South Korea in exchange for substantive military support to Russia. Much has been written about Iran. Poland is not the only country looking for South Korean weapons. Japan already had territorial conflict with Russia, which helps explain why it is now working to demine Ukraine together with Lithuania, itself punished by Beijing after successful Taiwanese outreach. Above all, China is increasingly clearly on Russia’s side in the war in Europe, in the form of critical supplies and support in international organisations.

    Europe is also subjected to the growing economic contestation in the Indo-Pacific. EU member states’ fight over Chinese electric vehicle factories is just the latest impact of the new reality. Chinese competition is the biggest threat to European industry. However, considering Trump’s transactional and unpredictable approach, The Hague will still think back nostalgically to the days when it only had to deal with Biden’s pressure on Dutch semiconductor industry. Northvolt’s bankruptcy proceedings meanwhile raise the prospect of reliance on Chinese battery manufacturers for what was once the crown of European industry, the automotive sector.

    Dancing On Its Own

    Countries facing each other around the Pacific Ocean have begun to bring their conflicts to Europe. While this is happening, Europe remains not only economically and militarily dependent on the US, but also politically. What is often referred to as ‘initiative’ or ‘leadership’ in international affairs is in fact the White House taking charge of the narrative and direction of the West. In the face of European hesitation, it was the Biden administration’s commitment that forged the suppliers’ coalition for Ukraine, no matter its limitations. Such actions require a vision on the world, on one’s interests and on one’s role in safeguarding those.

    If Europe is to stand on its own, it needs a framework for this ‘leadership’. But where to locate it? The EU’s member states too are submitting to their populist movements while petty commercial and small-p political interests dominate. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s aim for a more ‘geopolitical’ European Commission is admirable. Still, the question offers itself: she and what army? Without defensive initiative, Europe risks becoming a ‘hot’ battleground of the Indo-Pacific’s ‘cold’ war.

    To answer the question of our time, Europe can learn from a continent it once colonised, Southeast Asia. Its newly independent countries entered the old Cold War with fledging states but a strong determination never to be taken advantage of again.  In the 1960s and 1970s they worked on their answer, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean). Their aim was to ensure they could never be played apart again by competing outsiders. Their solutions consisted of an Asean Way of cooperating internally in ways that worked for their political systems while ensuring that no decision about their neighbourhood would be taken without them, referred to as Asean Centrality.

    Europe has the advantage of an already existing European Union. It also has the advantage of a capable central executive in the form of the European Commission and democratic oversight through the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. These are potential locations for the political leadership the absence of which in Southeast Asia hinders Asean’s responses to US-China tensions.

    The ‘EU Way’ of governing needs to be updated for the political reality and imbued with a renewed vision. ‘EU Centrality’ in decisions affecting the future of the continent requires a political idea of the EU’s place and role in a post-Western world and stronger supranational authority to execute it. This vision should not imply equidistance — the original Asean founders, which include two US treaty allies, relied and continue to rely on close military cooperation with Washington DC.

    Both domestic and external politics, however, require a material base of power. For Europe to make up for the breaking apart of the West and the growing pressures from the Indo-Pacific, it needs to have its own economic and military power. That material power needs to be the priority. Only this way the EU can drive its own epochal change and thereby prevent Asia’s past from becoming Europe’s future.

  • In deze Koude Oorlog dreigt Europa het nieuwe Azië te worden

    Op het vliegveld na afloop van zijn staatsbezoek aan Rusland in 2023 vertelde Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 aan Vladimir Poetin dat de wereld een verandering ondergaat ‘niet gezien in honderd jaar’ (百年未有之大变局). Eentje die China en Rusland samen voortdrijven. Dat laatste is misschien wat hoopvol. Verkiezing na verkiezing laat zien dat de democratische wereld zelf al uit elkaar schuift. De overwinning van Donald Trump in de Verenigde Staten is slechts het meest belangrijkste voorbeeld.

    Ook zonder geloof in de marxistische ‘historische krachten’ waar Xi’s uitspraak naar verwijst, is duidelijk dat verhoudingen veranderen. Europa komt steeds meer alleen te staan. Er bestaat de kans dat de Amerikanen nu Orbáns Hongarije achterna te gaan. Een wannabe-dictator met oligarchenvrienden aan de knoppen van het machtsarsenaal van de VS zou een geopolitieke aardverschuiving betekenen.

    Buiten de VS verschuift ook veel – en niet in het voordeel van Europa. Er is al veel geschreven over de komst van Noord-Koreaanse troepen naar Rusland. Maar het is de moeite waard om nog even stil te staan bij het feit dat ons continent steeds meer verwordt tot strijdtoneel voor Aziatische machten.

    Seoel reageert, omdat het ziet hoe een agressiever Noord-Korea in ruil voor militaire steun aan Moskou hulp krijgt die Zuid-Korea bedreigt. Polen is niet het enige land wat uitkijkt naar Zuid-Koreaanse wapens, terwijl Forbes schrijft over mogelijke Taiwanese leveranties aan Oekraïne. Japan had al territoriaal conflict met Rusland, wat helpt te verklaren waarom het nu met het door Peking gestrafte Litouwen werkt aan ontmijning in Oekraïne. Bovenal staat China steeds duidelijk aan de Russische kant in de oorlog in Europa, in de vorm van kritieke leveranties en steun in internationale organisaties.

    Ook op economisch gebied wordt aan alle kanten aan Europa getrokken. Het gevecht van EU-lidstaten om Chinese fabrieken voor elektrische auto’s is slechts de laatste impact van de nieuwe realiteit. Met de transactionele Trump zullen we nog met weemoed terugdenken aan de tijd dat we slechts te maken hadden met Bidens druk op de halfgeleiderindustrie. De landen die rondom de Stille Oceaan tegenover elkaar staan brengen hun conflict naar Europa.

    Commentatoren spreken graag over een nieuwe Koude Oorlog. De oude Koude Oorlog wordt daarbij vaak beschreven als patstelling. Dat klopte voor Europa. Voor de rest van de wereld was het echter een hete, bloedige strijd. De reden dat er in Europa toen niet gevochten werd, was dat een grootschalige landoorlog tussen het Westen en het Sovjetblok te afgrijselijk zou zijn. De spanning die in Europa geen uitweg kon vinden, barstte los in de rest van de wereld. Vietnam was slechts een van de vele theaters waarin de kampen elkaar met scherp bevochten.

    Een soortgelijke situatie dreigt nu in omgekeerde richting. Mogelijke conflicten in Oost-Azië zijn talrijk. Maar een oorlog tussen kernmachten China en VS met Japan rond de Filipijnen, Korea of Taiwan zou onvoorstelbaar extreem zijn.  Nu wil het net, dat in het verdeelde Europa zich al een lopend conflict bevindt – de Russische aanvalsoorlog tegen Oekraïne. Niet zonder toeval bemoeien steeds meer landen uit Azië zich daarmee.

    Europa loopt het risico een strijdtoneel te worden van de Indo-Pacific in deze ‘koude’ oorlog om de machtsbalans in Azië. Onder veel Europese geopolitieke commentatoren leeft nog de vraag of het wenselijk is dat Europa duidelijk partij kiest in het conflict tussen China en de Verenigde Staten. Dat debat gaat onterecht uit dat wij ons in de luxepositie bevinden een keuze te hebben. Dat is niet zo. China en Rusland zijn nooit een optie geweest. Als Trump de sloophamer ter hand neemt tegen een samenhangend ‘Westen’, dan is ook de VS uit de race. De enige keuze is de keuze voor Europa zelf.

    Daarbij kunnen we een les trekken uit de stappen die Zuidoost-Azië ondernam als reactie op de Koude Oorlog. In de jaren zestig en zeventig werkten de landen daar aan het samenwerkingsverband ASEAN. Hun doel was, om te zorgen dat de gekoloniseerde regio nooit weer uit elkaar gespeeld kon worden door elkaar bevechtende buitenstaanders. Europa heeft het voordeel dat er al een Europese Unie bestaat. Ook heeft het nog geen eeuwenlange externe bezetting achter de rug. Laten we dan deze voorsprong gebruiken om onze zaakjes op orde te krijgen en daarmee voorkomen dat het verleden van Azië de toekomst van Europa wordt.

    Een uitgebreide Engelse versie staat nu online: ‘In this Cold War, Europe risks becoming the new Asia’.

  • Distinction between security threat and reprehensible politics essential in Chinese influence debate

    The foreign ‘influence’ activities of the Chinese party-state draw increasing attention in the Europe. From controversies about the FBI’s ‘China Initiative’ in the United States to Australian laws against foreign interference, we can see from other countries that this is an emotional debate with far-reaching personal consequences for those affected by or involved in it. But the problem it touches upon is very real. To deal with it in the right way, we have to take extreme care with defining what we talk about.

    Too much of the Chinese influence debate is framed in terms of national security. ‘Influence’ or ‘interference’ are nebulous terms. Much like words such as ‘terrorist’ or ‘freedom fighter’, their definitions often depend on the perspective of the observer. There is an inherent political element. Therefore, I argue that we have to clearly separate between national security threats emanating from China and the political challenge it represents. Given the nature of the Chinese government and its ethno-nationalism that politics may often be reprehensible. But people who support it need to face a political response to their bad politics, not legal threats.

    Neglected threat

    The People’s Republic of China is a threat that many European leaders have neglected for too long. We do indeed have to worry about the activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in Europe and prepare for more. This ranges from espionage and infiltration to attempts to intimidate European citizens to which Beijing lays claims of loyalty. There is no reason to expect Beijing will comply with international law if it goes against its perceived interests.

    The Party sees confirmation of its own superiority in China’s successes during the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic of 2020, in the face of what it classifies as ‘Western’ failure. At the same time they are acutely aware of the risks stemming from the internal power struggles and decentralised practice of the supposedly unitary Chinese party-state. The official nationalist myth of the Century of National Humiliaton tells patriotic Chinese that the Western powers and Japan continuously seek to diminish China, whereas the legacy of the Self-Strengthening Movement preaches learning from Western and Japanese techniques. These various contradictions lead to a manic schizophrenia that William Callahan calls ‘pessoptimism’.

    A strong ethno-nationalism in a country that has never reckoned with its own imperialist past does not only feed internal oppression, but also demands of loyalty from certain foreign citizens and expectations of regional dominance as a natural right. The way in which Beijing is currently trying to get Australia to its knees shows China does not fear interfering directly in domestic politics to get its way. Europe needs to strengthen both its legal and its political defences against what will likely be the 21st century’s premier expansionist and aggressive power. This course correction, however, is going to be painful.

    Painful turn-around follows perspective correction

    When discussing ways to counter Chinese interference, we need to realise that this will inflict a personal cost on those who promoted engagement. Europeans who over the years have worked to encourage relations with China show resistance. Chinese who previously were treated as dialogue partners are disillusioned. The rules of engagement are changing. It is a nasty surprise for someone who was once invited to ‘explain’ the Chinese system to now be portrayed as a propagandist for oppression. Scientists who made possible European cooperation with Chinese institutes are shocked to discover some now regard them with suspicion.

    This discomfort is understandable. You cannot expect these people to like the transition. However, that is no reason to banish the unpleasant reality of contemporary China from happy receptions and enthusiastic board rooms.

    Changing our perspective to that of the countless victims of China’s aggressive ethno-nationalism, we actually get an entirely different shock. Then you notice the desperate Hong Kong student beaten senseless by the police; a Taiwanese with thousands of Chinese rockets aimed at his roof; a traumatised Uighur who lost her father as her people face genocide; ruined Vietnamese fishers whose boats are sunk by the Chinese coastguard; the Tibetans and ethnic Mongolians whose culture is being erased; and the Chinese student sentenced to six months for a tweet mocking President Xi Jinping. Then you recoil in disgust that we still toast so merrily with the proponents of this horror.

    Security threats and political acts

    The security threats from China are real. Europe should pay more attention to espionage and state-sponsored intellectual property theft. Beijing spreads disinformation. Critics in Europe are threatened by Chinese agents, sometimes with serious consequences for them or their families still in China. Beijing’s embassies in employ staff to control ethnic Chinese. United Front organisations work with Chinese community organisations and student groups to stifle alternative voices and surveil citizens abroad. These are threats to national and personal security that should be countered by governments with legal remedies.

    Some cooperation projects also actively help make the situation in China worse. The involvement of Chinese tech companies such as Huawei and SenseTime in expunging Uighur identity is well documented. Projects such as the cooperation of the universities in Amsterdam with Huawei to improve its ‘smart city’ technologies will actively harm people. There should be professional consequences for the managers and academics who work on this. Human rights legislation and university guidelines should intervene here.

    However, we must also acknowledge that a large part of the problem is a political issue. What United Front-linked organisations and pro-China individuals do is often merely normal assistance to compatriots abroad, or expressions of political support to their country of origin, or the kind of networking necessary to do business in the party-state. These are matters that fall under the freedoms of expression and assembly.

    Much of what happens in that ecosystem is not ‘dangerous’ for Europe itself. A hypothetical professor who interacts with such United Front organisations is not necessarily a danger to the intellectual property of their university. A businessperson who sponsors a booklet on the advantages of the Chinese system is not a ‘spy’. In Australia, New Zealand, and the United States the labeling of such political activities as ‘Chinese interference’ has led to certain people taking the real dangers less seriously.

    Beijing already has the habit of dismissing any criticism of its foreign interference as discrimination. Apart from furthering the actual racism that does play a role in some accusations, declaring certain individuals are ‘Chinese agents’ because of their political activities gives ammunition to this kind of bad faith defence in cases where it does not apply. It also reduces our understanding of what is really happens and thus handicaps our ability to respond to it.

    Answer moral failure with moral condemnation

    Because, the aforementioned hypothetical academic and businessperson do deserve moral condemnation for their political support to the awful regime in Beijing. We need to understand that China is not just a national security threat but also a political threat. Chinese ethno-nationalism, belief in its own superiority, and expansionism make the PRC one of the biggest threats the world—including the people in China—faces this century. To protect ourselves we need to take measures. But those depend on the right diagnosis. The challenge from China is political, too.

    Not all politics we do not understand is immediately evil. It is understandable that members of the Chinese communities in Europe still have an emotional band with the country from which they or their families come. We see the same with Turkish and Moroccan communities. Space should remain for this. Moreover, some political views more prevalent in such communities than in the European mainstream are perhaps uncomfortable. This does not mean they are worse than, say, the quixotic beliefs of Dutch orthodox calvinists.

    Some views, however, are in fact reprehensible politics. Active support for the current Chinese regime should be condemned. We need to ask whether dialogue and exchange with the current People’s Republic is not just of limited use, but also damaging. Treating support for the horrors in China as just another viewpoint only gives more credence to the inhumanity of its politics. However, the response to reprehensible politics should be political as well.

    As there appears nothing left in China to stop the erasure of Uighur identity in its homeland, Beijing’s victims increasingly depend on outside pressure to make any stand at all. This should be a political movement as opposed to a set of legal measures. Inspiration can be found in the Anti-Apartheid movement or the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

    Gatherings of groups praising China’s system are perfectly legal. However, they do deserve to be picketted by protestors. Chinese businesspeople who want to praise genocide deserve a citizens’ boycott. Ties to PLA universities such as those of the much-discussed University of Auckland professor Gao Wei have been misinterpreted and are often symbolic. But that does not mean such academics should avoid student protests or banners on campus denouncing their symbolic complicity and the administration’s appeasement.

    Portraying everything as a national security threat is damaging and ineffective. The battle is political. It has to be fought. We cannot legislate it away.

    This piece is based on an earlier Dutch post I wrote on the same topic.

  • Fretting over systemic tension while ignoring the substantive reasons for worry: China is run by people not by ‘forces’

    Recently, a friend attended a conference on Sino-American relations in Singapore. He perceptively remarked that, amid all the talk of rising tension, no one seemed to dare to mention why countries around the world are getting wary of China. Although there are plenty of reasons to highlight systemic causes for tension between a declining United States and a rising China, I argue here that the stress on the systemic can turn into a pretext not to have to talk about the substance.

    We can find enough Chinese academics who anxiously remark on the risks of structural tensions as Beijing grows more powerful in a world hitherto dominated by the Washington consensus. The problem here is that many of the answers that this kind of analysis suggests in response to the question posed by a resurgent PRC consist of encouraging various forms of temperance and self-discipline. But this view treats the development as natural and something to be managed by virtuously restrained behaviour. Such an approach is obviously in the interest of the rising power. It also conveniently excuses the scholars from having to seriously engage with the reasons why, not just the US, but many different countries are rather wary of China these days.

    Because, there are plenty of substantive reasons to be scared of China under the Chinese Communist Party, reasons that go beyond systematic tension. Beijing is currently ruled by an authoritarian regime that continually stresses the importance of strengthening the control of the Party over ever greater parts of life. China runs concentration camps in Xinjiang that hold more than one million Uighurs and other muslims in an effort that can be described as cultural genocide. The CCP regime has not only refused to denounce its totalitarian past, but is bringing back historical lessons from the Mao period as its oppression continues to expand nationwide. In economics and international trade, it applies different rules to Chinese and to foreign firms. Abroad, Beijing maintains its irredentist ambitions, with a list of territorial claims not limited to Taiwan, the South China Sea, and large parts of India. At home, the Party hones an aggressive and entitled nationalism, fed by revanchist narratives of National Humiliation.

    Many people have good reasons to be scared in the prospect of a more powerful China, beyond fearing for their relative power.

    China’s nationalism brings us to a second point. For all the systemic causes that might compel China to expand its role in the world, it also stems from policy. No matter if you dress it up as ‘peaceful rise’, there is a contradiction when Beijing claims to want to maintain and protect the current international system and at the same to want to ‘democratise’ the international system by offering the miracle concept of a community of common destiny for mankind. Regardless of the content, regardless of the claims that it is not revisionist, there is an active policy in place whose goals cannot but include an aim to change the international system. China’s behaviour is not merely passive, there is an active element to it. It does no good to cover up this agency.

    Sacrificing the Uighurs on the altar of your grand theory might make you an admirably restrained realist, but it turns international politics into an abstract game of chess. For too many Chinese and Americans who live in ‘Chimerica’, the main problem seems to be to suppress the ‘irrational’ squabbles between both sides. But, in the battle for humanity there is not such an abstract thing as chess. At the same time, an obsession with the systemic tension of the ‘power transition’ lets nationalist Chinese International Relations scholars get away with too much. It allows them to naturalise China’s ‘rise’. By stressing the American or Western responsibility to not be too anxious about China, they avoid having to deal with the unpleasant reality of the current regime in Beijing. Instead, they get to place the onus of restraint on the ‘West’. But China is a country too, with its own agency.

    When we discuss the ‘Rise of China’, it is easy to fall into tropes and abstractions. Let us not forget that in the end, the world is made up of people. We should care about their suffering and our analysis should concern their actions. Systems shape the people, but people also shape the system.

  • The question of banning Chinese ‘academics’

    Twitter today lit up with condemnation and partial praise over a report in the New York Times about the growing number of Chinese academics banned from the United State and having their long-term visas cancelled by the FBI. This is understandable, as innocent Chinese-Americans have been swept up by espionage paranoia in the past, and the West in general has a history of racial profiling. Without knowing who exactly have been targeted by the FBI, though, it is impossible to judge the programme as it is implemented. Still, I think there is plenty of justification to change our attitude towards at least some of the supposed academics from the People’s Republic.

    As a leninist party-state, a lot of things in China are not what their name claims. The party newspapers are not newspapers, but devices to steer the party machine. Courts do not function truly as part of a truly independent judiciary, but as part of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s mechanism of ‘stability maintenance’ (维稳 wéiwěn). Similarly, although China has genuine universities with genuine scholars, a large number of ‘academic’ institutes are anything but that.

    The marxist epistemology that the CCP still instills in all its members through mandatory training and retraining holds that there is no objective opinion, but that power determines who holds sway over commanding heights of public discourse. To secure the PRC’s sovereignty, the Party actively strives for ‘discourse power’ (话语权 huàyǔ quán) in the world. Propaganda outfits such as CGTN and China Daily are a part of that, but so are think-tanks and academic institutions. It is naturally right that Western scholarship should not be the only thing defining China, and quality academic work would also increase China’s soft power. With that, nothing is wrong. But in this case the Party sees a zero-sum game, one where it needs to replace what it regards as threatening scholarship with discourse that supports the CCP’s hold on power.

    Albeit within the narrowing constraints of Xi Jinping’s New Era, real academic work does take place. There are genuinely interesting people in Chinese educational institutions whose ideas Western countries such as the United States are missing out on when they do not engage with them. Even when these academics write work that argues for the current political system, these exchanges are fruitful and help deepen mutual understanding (although we should not exaggerate the impact on world peace of a group of academics in a conference room).

    That said, not all people that in the PRC carry the label of ‘academic’ do in fact engage in scholarly work. An example is the person mentioned in the New York Times article, Zhu Feng. He is the Director of the Centre for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea at Nanjing University. The title is classic leninist newspeak: of course the myriad South China Sea institutes found across China in recent years are anything but collaborative. These organisations have been set up with a clear goal as part of the CCP’s battle for discourse power: provide a case for the PRC’s control over the South China Sea, dressed up in academic clothing. This is not scholarship, this is propaganda work.

    There are of course people—also outside China—who provide badly argued cases for Chinese policies that are difficult to support, but are still independent academics. It is difficult to decide when someone turns from an academic into a propagandist who dresses up as an academic. That is no reason not to make an attempt, however. Because part of the CCP’s struggle for discourse power consists of the struggle for legitimacy in the eyes of the world. This is something that we—the world—have to give them. There is a reason why Xinhua hires white Westerners to do its English-language propaganda. People who work for such obvious factories of fabrication as the South China Sea Centre do not produce scholarly work. They do not even try to; they work backwards from what they are supposed to prove. But by treating them as academics anyway, we give the impression that we do think of their propaganda as scholarship. Thereby we strengthen the Party’s discourse power.

    It is not necessary to ban these people. Unless they are actively engaged in foreign influence campaign—such as Huang Jing was accused of in Singapore—these talking heads are not a threat. But they also do not deserve to be treated as academics. That would in fact be wrong, for it legitimises their propaganda. Therefore, if they have been given invitations or long-term visas on the condition that they are academics, those should be cancelled. After all, they are not.

  • The Need for Reparations

    To this day, the evil of colonialism has not sunken in. The exhibition on Thomas Stamford Raffles in the Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) in Singapore on the occasion of the bicentennial of the 1819 founding of the British colony has provided an opportunity for reflection. I was inspired by posts and remarks from Faris Joraimi and Alfian Sa’at, who have pointed out the absurdity of turning the question whether Raffles was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ into an academic debate about the truth of his observations of the Malay Archipelago. To me, this shows that the curators lack the right attitude to the past. How come that its morality is so often reduced to an academic debate? I argue that colonialism has not been laden with the right symbolic meaning.

    Europe’s healing after the Second World War was made possible by Willy Brandt’s famous genuflection before the Warsaw Ghetto monument. The mental state that this symbol signifies was one of trepidation and awe before the enormity of what happened. There has never been a comparable gesture towards Europe’s former colonies, in spite of the enormity of an evil no length of railroads can diminish.

    The meaning of colonialism to Europe still does not reflect the monstrosity of what was done. When properly appraised, colonialism should appear terrifying, indeed making you fall to your knees. Instead, we talk about damage done to economic welfare, political rights, societal structures. Apologists bring up development and institution-uilding. Yet no one in the mainstream brings up the sheer evil of the dehumanisation and destruction of communities and identities that comes from the colonial project’s imposition of a racial hierarchy of exploitation.

    I cannot imagine European commemorations of the Second World War leading with legal analyses of the illegality of Germany’s invasions, or the deleterious effect of the War on intraregional trade. These academic questions are important and deserve to be discussed. However, when the War comes up in public ceremonies it is to reflect on the evil humans can do. The Resistance museums in Europe often aim to let their audiences contemplate the suffering and difficult moral choices that hallmark such periods in history. Exhibitions such as the one in the ACM would not be possible had enough opprobrium been attached to Raffles’ project. No one can imagine a curator gleefully pointing out Dr Mengele’s biological inaccuracies as they lay out the man’s gruesome medical ‘experiments’.

    I have written before that if Europe wants to come ‘back’ to the international stage, it has to realise that not every non-Western country will be jumping for joy. But our lackadaisical attitude towards colonialism also hurts our humanity. Facing the tragedy of the Second World War teaches us a powerful moral lesson. Reflecting on colonialism would be an act of humanism. What is needed is a symbolic project to change the meaning of colonialism in the public debate. This cannot be a one-off ‘sorry’ at a press conference. It has to be a process that changes European societies’ attitude.

    Reparations are a difficult subject, not in the least because trying to express centuries’ of damage to communities—which often no longer exist, or only in modified and amalgamated form—in monetary terms would be a useless and insulting exercise. It also should not be an attempt to simply buy off remorse. Japan’s trouble with its neighbours is an example that imperialist history cannot just be dealt with that easily. However, in order to change the meaning of colonialism in Europe it would be of tremendous symbolic importance.

    Paying reparations would be a difficult and long process. That is precisely what would make it suitable to change the symbolic meaning of colonialism. Willy Brandt’s knee-fall did not stand on its own. It was part of broader cultural movement to restore Germany’s moral position. Some sort of investigation would be required in order to establish what amount of reparation would be owed by what European country to what community. This would be an ideal chance for these countries to listen to affected communities—in public hearings—to hear the harm done to them. The reparation process would occupy public debate and drive home to European (and non-European) audiences the gravity of the crimes of colonialism. Final ceremonies to hand over the amounts would be ideal occasions for humbling gestures. More practically, many former colonies now also have to deal with ageing populations and I am sure their retirement systems could use a boost to provide a dignified old-age for the people many of whom used to live under colonial rule.

    Facing humanity’s worst moments, it is necessary to stand in awe before the depredations. Emotion—also displayed by the two Singaporeans mentioned in the opening—is an essential part of this, is a reason on its own. Colonialism’s symbolic meaning needs to recognise the tremendous hurt that formerly colonised communities still have. Faris Joraimi writes about his despair at the loss to the Malay community that was the sinking of Raffles’ plundered manuscripts, and his unease at the Riau-Linga-Johor regalia now unceremoniously on display in a Singaporean museum. Recognising this despair is recognising the humanity of the people that were harmed by colonisation. If the plunder of Europe’s synagogues were still on display in Berlin’s civilisational museums, we would recognise the hurt. It is time to empty the British Museums of our continent in trepidation of our capacity for evil.

  • It’s not ‘just’ a social construct: pessimistic about change

    ‘Social construct’ is a favourite bogeyman of the anti-PC brigade. These daring, freethinking spirits see dangerous relativism lurking behind this widely-accepted social science concept. The problem is that they generally do not understand what a social construct is. They are not alone: even many people dabbling on the more extreme side of ‘social justice’ seem to not fully grasp what it consists of. Social constructivism leads in fact to a rather pessimistic worldview, one with rather conservative expectations of change. Social constructs pinpoint really existing things, and structure and actors work together to keep them in place.

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  • The laziness of Critical Theory

    Critical approaches have done great work in social sciences, adding greatly to our collective insight. However, some scholars have taken the useful viewpoint it brings and turned it into a simplistic replacement of all other social science. For these critical theorists, mere deconstruction has replaced all other scholarship. The notion that all knowledge is premised on power has led the most publicly visible parts of Critical Theory down a path of taking apart all that came before without offering anything in return. However, we still live in this world and it does not go away just like that.

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  • Before Europe Can Come Back, Does It Need A ‘Kniefall’?

    For large numbers of peoples in the world, the decline of Europe meant their liberation. On his recent state visit in China, President Macron confidently stated ‘France is back. Europe is back.’ It is good for the European Union to stake out its own place in the world and develop an independent foreign policy. However, when we Europeans build this future, we have to grapple with the fact that, for many in the world, ‘imperial’ Europe does not refer to imagined ‘EUSSR’ horror scenarios the eurosceptics love to conjure up—but to imperial Europe, coloniser of much of the world.

    The process of decolonisation is only a recent one, more recent than the horrors of the Second World War. Many African and Asian colonies only got their independence in the 1960s and 1970s. In East Asia, the Sultanate of Brunei became fully sovereign in 1984. Hong Kong lost its Crown Colony status as short ago as 1997. Liberation from European overlordship was often paid for dearly, with incredibly costly wars, both in terms of people killed and physical destruction. The Indonesian Revolution (1945–9), the Algerian War (1954–62), and the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–74) are only a selection. These bloody struggles were merely the closing episode to centuries of oppression, exploitation, and genocide. Europe—unlike settler colonies such as the United States—benefited from the physical remoteness of the violence in that it can keep it separate from its societies, but that ‘colourblindness’ has also desensitised it to the fact that for the formerly colonised the brutalities are all too salient still.

    Before its neighbours would allow Germany to play a leading role again in Europe after the atrocities of the Second World War, the country had to follow a long path of atonement. Without the movement in the 1950s and 1960s that forced the Federal Republic to deal honestly with its past, Germany today would not only have been an entirely different country, but its eventual reunification would have been in question. The most powerful symbol of this atonement was the 1970 genuflection by Chancellor Willy Brandt (the Warschauer Kniefall) before the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It mattered tremendously that the leader of West-Germany fell to his knees in the face of millions of death, not just because it symbolised accepting collective guilt, but maybe even more so the fact that it demonstrated a common European understanding of these past deeds as monstrous crimes.

    The Holocaust and other nazi aggressions are unequivocally accepted as extreme crimes against humanity, by Germany and by its former victims. This fact reassures those countries, because this shared judgment means that a reformed Germany can be engaged without fearing that it will do the same again. (On a side note, this fact is also why the current Polish meddling with the common narrative is so potentially dangerous.) There does not exist, however, such a common agreement between Europe and its former victims on its past crimes.

    During the campaign for the 2017 French presidential elections that ended with him in the Palais de l’Élysée, Emmanuel Macron was ferociously attacked by the centre-right contender after Macron had admitted France that had committed crimes against humanity in Algeria. Opponent François Fillon claimed that France should not be blamed for ‘partager sa culture’, sharing its culture. UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson saw no issue with reciting imperial poet Rudyard Kipling while on an official tour of a Buddhist temple in Myanmar, and has in the past suggested the recolonisation of Africa. There is no universal agreement in Europe about the fact that in scale of destruction and intensity of violence colonialism in a certain view went far beyond what the Holocaust has done to Europe. There is certainly not a shared narrative with its former victims.

    In a speech on the Dutch history in what since 1945 is Indonesia, the Dutch Prime Minister stressed the need for a common history before one can move forward. A similar motive underlies flagging attempts to write an ‘East Asian’ history textbook with Chinese, Japanese, and South Korea involvement. However, passively waiting for such agreement to spontaneously arise will not do. The Warschauer Kniefall is an example of how grand gestures can contribute to a closer understanding. Perhaps former European colonisers should start considering symbolic ways to move towards recognition of the perspective of the colonised. Until then, these countries should not be surprised if the West’s Rest is not jumping for joy at the thought of a European revival.

    Europe can proudly proclaim to be back on the world stage, but currently it would do so unaware that to others this would sooner bring back nightmares than cause jubilation.

  • Avoiding Yellow Peril amid PRC infiltration

    With legislation introduced in Australia’s parliament which Prime Minister Turnbull has explicitly said is meant to counter Chinese interference, the efforts of Beijing to shape the world have been brought to the fore like they haven’t in quite some time. Across the Western world, governments and companies are realising that behind Chinese acquisitions and investment might be a conscious influence-building agenda that transcends economic rationale. The accusations that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) depends on projects that are economically not viable seem less important now. Sri Lanka’s inability to pay back loans led to it handing control over the Chinese-built Hambantota port to Beijing. The power China has over Venezuela and Zimbabwe has been in the press as well.

    However, the creeping global influence of the regime in Beijing should not lead us in the West to condemn ‘the Chinese’ en bloc. The West has a long history of ‘Yellow Peril’ narratives and while addressing the very serious issue of Communist Party of China (CPC) abusing the openness of Western countries we should take care to distinguish between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and ‘the Chinese’. Already, reports by Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) about the danger of Chinese infiltration has led to some unease in the Chinese community in Australia. Not all ethnic Chinese are a threat. Reporting should take care to reflect this.

    This might be even more necessary because often the first target of PRC overseas operations are overseas Chinese communities. Every PRC embassy has an officer for Overseas Chinese Affairs (华侨事务 huáqiáo shìwù, shortened to 侨务 qiáowù) who concerns themself with bringing the local Chinese community in line with the CPC. This includes ensuring joyful flag-wavers whenever Chairman Xi Jinping or another Chinese leader makes a foreign visit, but also organising angry nationalists to, for example, shout over pro-Tibet demonstrations and allegedly to beat up demonstrators. It moreover includes overseeing Chinese Scholar and Student Associations (CSSAs) that keep tabs on Chinese students and impel them to inform on each other. Often, the poorer students are encouraged with financial rewards to do so. Lastly, it tries to keep the local business community in line.

    Chinese embassies have this power because of the enormous economic importance of China, especially to Chinese business communities that distinguish themselves based on their ties to the PRC. Perhaps it were these business interests that made ethnic Chinese businessmen in Kuala Lumpur in 2015 happy to welcome the PRC ambassador to tour Petaling Street after Malay riots. Recently, the Chinese ambassador even accompanied an MP of opposition party DAP on house visits. Ambassador Huang’s remarks about anti-Chinese racism and separate remarks declaring the safety of ethnic Chinese a national interests of the PRC only fuel racists in UMNO who still see the ethnic Chinese as foreigners under foreign tutelage.

    The year 2016 saw the PRC’s claim of ownership over ethnic Chinese wherever they live in the world also hit Singapore. Various issues—including the remaining military links of the Republic with Taiwan and its pro-international law stance in the South China Sea—had been grating Beijing for a while, and it was probably this older unhappiness that caused such an outburst that year. Talking to people at Peking University, I got the impression that the root of this cause is the supposed ‘Westernisation’ of the Singaporeans, who are losing their Chineseness—no matter that the ancestors of ~25% never had any ‘Chineseness’ to begin with. When Lee Kuan Yew passed away in March 2015, on the Chinese internet several nationalists saw it fit to call him a 汉奸 (hànjiān), traitor of the Chinese race,  for selling out ‘his’ Chinese to the West.

    Increasingly, as the CPC turns to traditional culture as its source of legitimacy, Beijing has to present itself as the guardian of Chinese civilisation. In a speech to overseas Chinese I have looked at earlier, Chairman Xi Jinping implied that their Chinese heritage ought to lead ethnic Chinese to staunchly support the ‘motherland’ and with that of course the Party. In Chinatowns across the world, Chinese businessmen with links to the PRC take over papers and Chinese schools. A granny who has read her local Chinese-language news for decades suddenly finds her trusty source of news following the Party line, no matter that she herself might actually have fled from that Party. Chinese community organisations abroad are reminded by the local qiáowù official where their business interests lie and need not much further instruction.

    The danger of ‘infiltration’ is then much more serious and much further along already for ethnic Chinese communities across the world. This has real-life consequences, especially when ethnic Chinese find themselves in PRC (or Hong Kong) jurisdiction. Australian citizen permanent resident, professor Feng Chongyi, discovered this as he was barred from leaving the PRC, but we can also see this in much more severe punishment for ethnic Chinese businessmen who find themselves in trouble with the law as compared to other businesspeople with foreign nationalities.

    That we have to deal with this issue is clear. As the CPC refines its methods, we will see more stories like the current Australian saga pop up. However, it is essential that we do not chalk this off to interference by ‘the Chinese’. It is true that Beijing seeks to mobilise overseas Chinese communities—in the case of Australia the PRC embassy in Canberra shockingly threatened the government to instruct the Chinese community to vote against the Australian Labor Party—but by talking about the Chinese  as one monolith we only give the PRC the ownership it wants. What we need to do is recognise the experiences of ethnic Chinese around the world, since they have battled with this issue for much longer.

    The Century of National Humiliation narrative that shapes Chinese nationalism bemoans the loss of Chinese dominance. This is said to have  not only lead to the lamentable loss of geographical bodies, but also to the humiliating loss of human bodies. Rejuvenation or restoration (复兴 fùxīng), the core of Chinese ambition, would in the eyes of nationalists include restoration of Chinese control over ‘Chinese’ bodies. Other countries thus have to spend more attention to protect those among their citizens who happen to be of ethnic Chinese descent. This requires distinction between the country and the civilisation.