Today's communist China is, of course, not the same as it was during the rule of the foreign Manchu dynasty. However, the cultural foundation of this vast country has much deeper roots than our prejudices, which prevent us from asking some important questions.
Russia pushed into China's arms
One of these is the question of who is actually the winner of the current war in Ukraine. It will definitely not be the West, which has been ridiculed, defeated, and is now only looking for a way out. Ukraine is destroyed. Is Russia the winner? It will achieve its goals and enforce them to a certain extent, but it will remain weakened.
For example, because the West has effectively driven it into China's arms with its policies, something that has always been feared in Russia. The characters in Clavell's novel were afraid of the country with which they shared a 5,000-kilometer border. Their “Monroe Doctrine” was based on the principle that they either had to dominate it and turn it into a vassal state or prevent it from becoming a colony of a foreign superpower. Without this, Russia would not be safe; it would run the risk of being caught between East and West and having to fight on two fronts.
Today, the opposite is true: Russia is more within China's sphere of influence than vice versa.
Looking at the matter from a cost-benefit perspective, the real winner of the current war is the Middle Kingdom. And that without participating militarily (although it helped Russia free itself from the consequences of sanctions and import the necessary components).
It has gained Russia as a source of cheap energy resources, which Chinese industry urgently needs. Until now, Europe in particular has benefited from Russia's natural resources, but for moral reasons it has forbidden itself to do so and left this treasure to China. It is no secret that China does not want a quick victory for Russia (it is not yet exploiting the full potential of the war and Russia), nor a victory for the West (a defeat would weaken it).
At the same time, it has spread its cards in all directions. It trades with both Russia and Ukraine and is even the European Union's largest trading partner – although the presence of a European statesman at a major Chinese event is considered a crossing of the “red line,” which is more typical than strange for the current EU.
So how is it possible that China “won” the war without using weapons? It has done nothing other than what it has been doing for centuries. And it is Clavell's novel that allows us to view its atypical power politics from a bird's eye view.
Conquering the world – without weapons
It's not that China has no ambitions to conquer the world. In the Chinese mindset at that time, there was no place for imperial military conquests of the enemy. The Europeans came to conquer militarily, with cannons and fleets, and at least at sea, China could not oppose them.
As early as 1841, when the novel is set, the Chinese considered themselves the oldest civilization in the world. The Europeans regarded them as barbarians who stank, wore ugly clothes, and were vulgar and coarse. Compared to Chinese culture, which had already developed sophisticated poetry over thousands of years, the Europeans actually seemed like uncouth louts to them.
They despised European food and eating habits when they had to watch Western sailors with blood from half-raw meat running down their greasy faces (of course, the Chinese must be forgiven for a certain cognitive bias, as they were dealing with English “food” here).
Clavell describes the thinking of the local rulers and the long-standing goal of the Middle Kingdom—the civilization of the barbarian world, its enlightenment and unification under a single government that believed in its cultural destiny to rule the world. But they did not want to achieve this goal with the help of armies—that was not their strong suit, nor was it their style.
The Chinese were self-confident because of the solid strength of their civilization, which is five thousand years older than the European one. They discovered the wheel, paper money, and many other inventions centuries before darkness reigned in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. This also gave rise to Chinese self-confidence.
Clavell's characters had to understand this two hundred years ago if they wanted to get along with the Chinese, trade with them, and negotiate with them. For a Chinese person, time does not mean days or years, but generations. Dirk Struan, a hard-nosed Scottish businessman, had to understand many of the Chinese's tricks if he wanted to be successful in this environment. Chinese merchants or local officials, corrupt mandarins, were not interested in short-term profits, but in securing the long-term future of entire generations.
They still use this tactic today. They know that time is on their side.
The connection between China and the world
Dirk Struan was one of those who understood the enormous potential of the connection between East and West. English traders like him believed that trade was stronger than war and alone could secure peace. He believed that this huge country, whose market potential was needed by the most populous country in the world, industrial Britain, would develop together with Europe and enrich each other, as both sides had something to offer each other.
However, trade at that time should not be imagined as a discipline for gentlemen. Trade in China is ruthless and belonged to hardened and courageous men who risked their lives. Without trade, however, hell would return – a state in which brute force and the heaviest whip reign supreme. Trade ensures peace. The humble may not gain any land, said the devout Protestant Struan, but at least they will be protected by laws and rules that allow them to live according to their beliefs.
Business in China was not particularly moral. The trade in opium (i.e., drugs) was prohibited, but Great Britain supported and covered it up because it balanced the negative trade deficit. China had enough of everything and therefore demanded that the British pay for tea and cotton with silver. So the British had to find something that China didn't have, and that was opium. Poppies did not thrive in China, so the British cultivated them on a large scale in the Indian colonies. According to Struan, who was one of the most important smugglers, without opium, England would not have been able to balance its trade deficit and the British Empire would have collapsed.
China is untameable; you can trade with it, but you cannot rule over it.
Dirk believed that Europe and England in particular could civilize China, but he knew how difficult that would be. It is telling that he could not explain the principle of the Christian God to his Chinese lover Mejmej. Mejmej considered Jesus Christ a barbaric god, as he had come with the barbarians. Moreover, he was young, having been born less than two thousand years ago. For the Chinese, this was not enough to believe in him (their deities were many times older).
However, China accepted the European “barbarians” with great restrictions because it wanted to trade with them. It offered the largest consumer market in the world (estimated at 300 million at the time) and reserved the trade monopoly and strict rules for itself. For example, Europeans were not allowed to penetrate the interior of the country, and small ports or isolated cities in the interior (Portuguese Macao) were designated for trade.
The Europeans were able to subjugate China militarily, but the Chinese did not even attempt to defend themselves militarily. They believed that their culture had the upper hand from the perspective of millennia. Chinese traders were ruthless and devilishly cunning. Struan had to learn to negotiate with them in order to keep up with their cunning.
Today, we know how this struggle ultimately ended. It was not the West that civilized China, but rather China that gained more and more economic power in its region, while more and more smaller Asian countries were drawn into its orbit by the appeal of its enormous economic base. And it is succeeding in doing so without weapons.
Where does China's future lie?
The conference in Beijing brought together representatives of the major powers that have strong reserves of raw materials and can be self-sufficient. In contrast to Europe, which is dependent on them.
We don't like to see this, as we only consider what has emerged in the West to be civilization. But – for better or worse – a completely alternative civilization is emerging in China and its wider “neighborhood,” which has everything at its disposal and is developing and growing stronger despite the communist dictatorship.
It has everything in abundance, great economic power, and its competitors are more dependent on it than vice versa. It has no interest in war, but knows that in the new geopolitical reality, in which the unipolar era of a single global hegemon has come to an end and no new model of international order has yet emerged, a major war could break out. China does not yearn for war, but it is preparing for it, knowing from history that its rival resolves every conflict with bombs. This may work in the short term, but in the long term, only trade can help in competition with an increasingly powerful superpower. Two hundred years ago, we knew this in Hong Kong. Today, we no longer know it.
As the meeting in Shanghai showed, China now has more partners than the West in demographic terms. The connection between China and Russia, the energy superpower that supplies China's rapidly growing industry with energy, is a disaster for the West. We don't want to see it because we caused it through our own mistakes, which we cannot even admit due to our empty moral concepts.
Russia and China are now joined by India, which is again thanks to American “policy,” which views these countries as enemies because they were not willing to submit to them.
These three countries are largely self-sufficient. In the past, they had to bow to pressure from the powerful West, which at that time may have had a certain moral legitimacy. Today, all that remains of the West is arrogance that is not backed by real power. And they know it. They have resilient economies that are difficult to overcome. For the proud West, they were not opponents until they became bigger and stronger than the West itself.
The West will continue to believe that it can subjugate them with military force and impose order. That is why it does not have to take them seriously. But those days are long gone.
