Conversation Starter: Stan Grant wrote this interesting article on future relationships with China: “Despite what Joe Biden says, we’re not approaching a Cold War. China is not the Soviet Union, for one thing” The guts of his message is that: “China learnt well from Western powers. It has embraced multilateralism and global norms. The international order has underwritten China’s rise. Xi Jinping himself has presented China as a champion of globalization and multilateralism at the very time when America under Donald Trump was withdrawing from it.
The Rand Corporation think tank pointed out in a study in 2018 that there is nothing straightforward about China’s role in the world. China’s engagement with the global order, it says, is a “complex and contradictory work in progress. China sees “multilateral institutions as important, if not essential, for the achievement of its interests”.
This post provides a starting point for a conversation about dealing with China.
DETAILS:
In the past I have been a player of both chess and Go. So I was interested when Stan said: “If the West sees global politics as a chess game, the Chinese see it as Wei-Qi, or Go. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger summed it up: “If chess is about the decisive battle, Wei-Qi is about the protracted campaign.
China wants to wear us down. As the rules of Wei-Qi point out, it is about “breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting”. This concept is known as shi — creating a strategic advantage. Why would China overthrow an order when it can successfully work within it?”
Key points about chess: Chess uses a variety of pieces that are allowed to make different moves. The game starts with all the pieces on the board in the position prescribed by the rules. The players take turns at moving one piece with enemy pieces being “killed” when an opponent moves a piece to the place where an enemy piece is sitting. The game is won when the winner “kills” the opposing king.
WWI was something like a game of chess with the opponents in contact grinding each other down. The aim was to crush the enemy or convince them that they would be destroyed if they did not surrender.
Key points about Go: One of the players starts with black pebbles, the other white. At the start of the game there are no pebbles on the board. The players take turns to place pebbles on the board. Pebbles are not moved once placed. Pebbles/groups of pebbles are lost and removed from the board when they are surrounded in a particular way by enemy pebbles. The game is won by controlling most of the board. In many cases the final killing off of a group of pebbles is deferred while other groups of pebbles are attacked.
At the start of games it is common for players to start by spreading their pebbles over the board instead of getting into direct conflict. Once these direct conflicts start players may increase their chance of winning direct conflicts by linking with pebbles located somewhere else on the board.
Signs of Go influencing Chinese strategies? Think Chinese:
• Investment and loans to Pacific Islands and other countries that increase Chinese influence?
• China’s belt and road initiative?
• Buying or setting up business in other countries that depend on sales to China and/or parts etc. produced in China.
Your thoughts?