标题: Book Review on Rush Doshi, The Long Game [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 8-21-2021 08:44 标题: Book Review on Rush Doshi, The Long Game 本帖最后由 choi 于 8-21-2021 11:35 编辑
David Wilezol, Asia First, Then the World; Beijing seeks to blunt American order in Asia, build dependence on China throughout the region and expand its dominance globally. Wall Street Journal, Aug 10, 2021, at page A13 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the ... e-world-11628547372 https://fbkfinanzwirtschaft.word ... rst-then-the-world/
(book review on Rush Doshi, The Long Game; China's grand strategy to displace American order. Oxford Univ Press, 2021)
Note:
(a) "To Mr Doshi, a former Brookings Institution scholar now on the president’s National Security Council"
(i) Rush Doshi. Brookings Institution, undated. https://www.brookings.edu/author/rush-doshi/
("Rush Doshi was the director [Showing a photo of white man, Doshi's personal website says he is the FOUNDING director, that his Chinese name is 杜如松] of the Brookings China Strategy Initiative and a fellow in Brookings Foreign Policy. He was also a fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai [蔡中曾: father of 蔡崇信] China Center and part of the inaugural class of Wilson China fellows.")
(ii) "The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Asia Program, in conjunction with the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, [establishes] Wilson China Fellowship" (quoting Wilson Center's website) whose inaugural )ie, first) (Mar 1,) 2021- (Mar 1,) 2022 fellows number 25. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/wilson-china-fellows
(samples: Ling Chen [陈玲; assistant professor of Johns Hopkins; PhD in political science from Johns Hopkins, MA of the same from Univ of Toronto, BA from PKU]; Diana Fu [obviously not born in China, as she does not have a Chinese nam; Associate Professor of Univ of Toronto; "D.Phil. in Politics and M.Phil. in Development Studies with distinction from Oxford University, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar" Univ of Toronto's Web page]; Juliet Lu [postdoc at Cornell; PhD in environmental science from UC Berkeley, BA from Oberlin College in 2008; "I am a political ecologist who focuses on the implications of China's growing investments in land and other resources across the world": her personal website]; Austin [Horng-En 王宏恩] Wang [male; assistant professor, UNLV; PhD in Political Science from Duke, MA in Public Administration and BS in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University]; Audrye Wong [黄韵琪; assistant professor, USC (2021- ); PhD in Security Studies (2014-2019), MA in Public Affairs (2016), and AB in Public and International Affair (2013), all from Princeton: her personal website]; [Jiakun] Jack Zhang [no Chinese name because 复旦大学首届全球青年学者论坛 in 2018 used the English name with "Jiakun Jack" in a Chinese-language Web page; assistant professor, University of Kansas (Lawrence); Fulbright Fellow, US Department of State, Feb 2015-Jan 2016; PhD in political science from UC San Diego (2012-2018); BA from Duke (2007-2011)] )
(iii) The Hindi surname Doshi in India means " 'hawker selling cloth' in Gujarati [a state on northern border of Bombay], from Persian dush 'shoulder' + the agent suffix -i (because the cloth was carried over the hawker's shoulder)." Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford Univ Press.
(b) Chinese Websites identify Rush Doshi as "印度裔美国人." It is unclear whether one or both parents are Indian. In this photo, he looks like Indian:
Rush Doshi. Institute for China-America Studies (ICAS; a think tank based in DC and whose Executive Director is Nong HONG 洪农, a woman whose permanent appointment is with 中国南海研究院), undated (under the heading "Special Projects" > "Biden Administration International Affairs Personnel Tracker") https://chinaus-icas.org/biden-a ... l-security-council/
("Dr Rush Doshi joins a relatively lengthy list of Brookings foreign policy experts who have joined the Biden administration. Before joining Biden's National Security Council as Director for China, he was director of the Brookings China Strategy Initiative and a fellow in Brookings Foreign Policy, focusing his research on Chinese grand strategy and Indo-Pacific security issues. He has had a close working relationship with Kurt Campbell, serving as his Special Advisor while Campbell was CEO of the Asia Group [a consultancy based in DC]")
There is no indication that Doshi was affiliated with ICAS. Incidentally Doshi was a Fulbright Fellow in Yunnan, China for one year.
(c) "In the wake of American outrage over the Tiananmen Square slayings, America’s striking victory in the Gulf War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the ’90s‑era CCP assessed that the United States had become its greatest external threat. In response, China pursued what Mr. Doshi describes as a strategy of 'blunting' American power. Resolutely following paramount leader Deng Xiaoping's maxim 'hide capabilities and bide time,' the CCP eschewed premature strategic moves that would rattle the West—like building an aircraft carrier. Instead, the Party solidified its domestic power and defensive military capabilities. That explains why it created the world's largest stockpile of sea mines (useful for stopping American ships) rather than construct amphibious assault vehicles (for an invasion of Taiwan)."
Note all in past tense, likely referring to policies under former presidents Jiang and Hu.
(d) "As the U.S. felt the geopolitical shocks of the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis, General Secretary Hu Jintao sensed an opportunity to create a new era of 'multipolarity 世界多极化.' * * * The CCP now aggressively tries to shape a 'community of common destiny 共建人类命运共同体' * * *"
(e) "Mr Wilezol is the founder and president of the communications firm Seventh Floor Strategies [based in DC]. He served as chief speechwriter to the US secretary of state from 2017 to 2021."
Wilezol first worked with Secretary Tillerson then Secretary Pompeo from 2017-2021. The "secretary" is singular -- I would use plural -- perhaps because that was and is the job title: "Chief Speechwriter to the Secretary" of State.
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In 1998 a former People’s Liberation Army basketball player turned businessman, Xu Zengping, purchased the Varyag, a never-completed Soviet aircraft-carrier hull rotting in a Ukrainian shipyard. Publicly, Mr. Xu played a free-spending tycoon hoping to repurpose the ship as a floating casino. He was in fact the front man for a Chinese military acquisition. The previous year, a Chinese Navy vice admiral had asked him to be the go-between in Beijing’s attempt to obtain the Varyag. In the words of Mr. Xu, “he held my hand and said, ‘please do me a favor—go and buy [the carrier] and bring it back for our country and our army.’ ”
After months of booze-soaked negotiations with Ukrainian businessmen, Mr. Xu and his Beijing-backed shell company walked away with the Varyag, its engine technology and the vessel’s 45 tons of blueprints for $120 million. But China didn’t begin converting the hull into an operational carrier until 2009.
Why was China so secretive about this acquisition, and why did it delay so long in making its new prize seaworthy? The answer lies in how Chinese Communist Party leaders thought the world would view a Chinese aircraft-carrier program, according to Rush Doshi’s compelling book “The Long Game” (Oxford, 419 pages, $27.95).
To Mr. Doshi, a former Brookings Institution scholar now on the president’s National Security Council, “Beijing’s ultimate objective is to displace the US order globally in order to emerge as the world’s dominant state by 2049.” Mostly by dissecting 30-plus years’ worth of CCP speeches, statements, reports and other communiqués, he’s meticulously laid bare the Party’s methodical advance toward global supremacy. China watchers craving a broad understanding of the Party’s geopolitical thought and actions won’t be disappointed.
The author’s arguments rest on a scrupulous parsing of these texts—many of them among the dullest political communications on Earth. A speech like General Secretary Xi Jinping’s 2017 Party Congress address—a 30,000-word, 3½-hour affair—might seem to be merely an act of dictatorial self-glorification. But Mr. Doshi correctly appreciates that in China, where the Marxist-Leninist CCP “sits above the state, runs parallel to the state, and is enmeshed in every level of the state,” high-level Party statements are authoritative policy directives with true meanings that run far below the semantic surface.
Thus he conveys how the CCP’s senior leaders have spent decades in quiet pursuit of Chinese international primacy. In the wake of American outrage over the Tiananmen Square slayings, America’s striking victory in the Gulf War and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the ’90s‑era CCP assessed that the United States had become its greatest external threat. In response, China pursued what Mr. Doshi describes as a strategy of “blunting” American power. Resolutely following paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s maxim “hide capabilities and bide time,” the CCP eschewed premature strategic moves that would rattle the West—like building an aircraft carrier. Instead, the Party solidified its domestic power and defensive military capabilities. That explains why it created the world’s largest stockpile of sea mines (useful for stopping American ships) rather than construct amphibious assault vehicles (for an invasion of Taiwan). Economically, “China’s pursuit of permanent Most Favored Nation status as well as World Trade Organization accession were meant to tie American hands with respect to economic leverage.”
As the U.S. felt the geopolitical shocks of the Iraq War and the 2008 financial crisis, General Secretary Hu Jintao sensed an opportunity to create a new era of “multipolarity.” A more confident CCP adopted what Mr. Doshi calls a “building” mentality, especially in the Asia‑Pacific region. The CCP now aggressively tries to shape a “community of common destiny,” which Mr. Doshi takes to mean “an Asia where others are dependent on China economically and divorced from US alliances militarily.” Mr. Hu calls on international leaders to “steadily promote the diversification of the international monetary system”—that is, weaken the U.S. dollar. And in 2012, a decade after towing it into Dalian, China finally commissions the souped‑up Varyag as the Liaoning.
Today, as “building” yields to “expansion,” Mr. Xi is leading the country toward what he calls the country’s “National Rejuvenation”—a full recovery from the “century of humiliation” Western powers imposed on China before 1949. Mr. Xi has theorized since 2017 that Brexit and President Trump’s distaste for multilateralism left the world ripe for Chinese hegemony. That’s proven to be a miscalculation, given how the Trump administration broke from decades of toothless China policies and pushed for democracies to band together against the CCP threat. No matter who occupies the White House, our age, says Mr. Xi, is one that will see “China moving closer to the world’s center stage,” and Mr. Doshi adroitly documents the general secretary’s drive for a China-led world order built on Beijing-style techno-authoritarianism.
It all may seem hopelessly gloomy, but Mr. Doshi reminds us that the U.S. retains significant advantages for countering China’s ambitions: an open and innovative society, true alliances and powerful economic, technological, and military resources. So, too, should accommodationist policies be discarded: “Beijing’s behavior bodes ill for a grand bargain and for efforts to achieve sustainable cooperative spirals.” What he doesn’t acknowledge is that the Trump administration initiated many of the policy directions he advocates.
Moreover, stopping the Party from vaulting China to sole superpower status will likely entail more whole-of-society boldness and sacrifice than most American leaders are comfortable admitting in public. It would have been good for Mr. Doshi to explore the ways ordinary Americans may have to bear the costs of victory: Is decoupling from certain trade relationships merited? Should American universities refrain from trading crucial STEM knowledge for Chinese cash under the guise of academic exchanges? He doesn’t say. Nevertheless, President Biden is lucky to have Mr. Doshi and his rigorous thinking in his camp, because it’s clear the CCP intends to play the long game even longer.
Mr. Wilezol is the founder and president of the communications firm Seventh Floor Strategies. He served as chief speechwriter to the U.S. secretary of state from 2017 to 2021.