The Hundred-Year Marathon by Pillsbury
Ref: Michael Pillsbury (2016). The Hundred Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace Americas as the Global Superpower.
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Summary
Chinese hawks (ying pai) are working with the Chinese leadership to mislead and manipulate American policymakers to obtain intelligence and military, technological, and economic assistance. These hawks have been advising Chinese leaders, beginning with Mao Zedong, to avenge a century of humiliation and aspire to replace the US as the economic, military, and political leader of the world by the year 2049 (the 100th anniversary of the Communist Revolution). This plan became known as “the Hundred-Year Marathon.” It is a plan that has been implemented by the Communist Party leadership from the beginning of its relationship with the United States. The goal is to avenge or “wipe clean” (xi xue) past foreign humiliations. Then China will set up a world order that will be fair to China, a world without American global supremacy, and revise the U.S.-dominated economic and geopolitical world order founded at Bretton Woods and San Francisco at the end of World War II. The hawks assess that China can only succeed in this project through deception, or at least by denial of any frightening plans.
Fuxing zhi lu: “the road to renewal.”
From the outset of relations, the Chinese planned to use the Americans as they had used the Soviets—as tools for their own advancement, all the while pledging cooperation against a third rival power. This was how the Marathon was conducted throughout most of the Cold War—China using the Soviet Union’s rivalry with America to extract Soviet aid and then, when that faltered, shifting to the Americans by offering to help against the Soviets.
One central thesis of this book depends on growing evidence that PRC War hawks have successfully persuaded the Chinese leadership to view America as a dangerous hegemon that it must replace.
Chinese hawks assert that the coming decades will be filled not with wars and territorial conquest but rather with struggles over economics, trade terms, currency, resources, and geopolitical alignments (the new Warring States Era).
China has traditionally characterized as hegemons only foreign powers with which it has highly antagonistic relationships.… [Its] leaders believe that the fundamental drive of the United States is to maintain global hegemony by engaging in the shameless pursuit of “power politics,” often disguised as a quest for democratization.… [Its] strategic assessments and public portrayals of U.S. power are shaped by the view that U.S.-style democratic liberalism and the U.S. presence and position of power in the Asian periphery threaten the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power.
Some internal PRC briefings seek to answer the question “What is the most important foreign policy challenge our nation faces in the next decade?” According to the notes obtained by the U.S. government, the expert’s answer was, “How to manage the decline of the United States” (guanli meiguo shuailo).
“The Rites of Zhou prescribed a four-to-one military superiority to enable the emperor to enforce the All-Under-Heaven system.” In other words, after China wins the economic Marathon and develops an economy twice as large as America’s, China’s new status may have to be protected through military force.
In sum, if the China dream becomes a reality in 2049, the Sinocentric world will nurture autocracies; many websites will be filled with rewritten history defaming the West and praising China; and pollution will contaminate the air in more countries, as developing nations adopt the Chinese model of “grow now, and deal with the environment later” in a race to the bottom in food safety and environmental standards. As environmental degradation expands, species could disappear, ocean levels will rise, and cancer will spread. Some international organizations will not be able to step in as effectively as they can today because they will be marginalized. Chinese state-owned monopolies and Chinese-controlled economic alliances will dominate the global marketplace, and one of the world’s mightiest military alliances may be controlled by Beijing, which will be able to easily outspend the United States on military research, troop levels, and weapons systems.
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False Assumptions about China
ENGAGEMENT BRINGS COMPLETE COOPERATION
CHINA IS ON THE ROAD TO DEMOCRACY
CHINA IS A FRAGILE FLOWER
CHINA WANTS TO BE—AND IS—JUST LIKE US
Americans love to believe that the aspiration of every other country is to be just like the United States.
CHINA’S WAR HAWKS ARE WEAK
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Nine Elements of Chinese Strategy
The nine principal elements of Chinese strategy, which form the basis of the Hundred-Year Marathon, include the following:
Induce complacency to avoid alerting your opponent.
Manipulate your opponent’s advisers.
Be patient—for decades, or longer—to achieve victory.
Another lesson from the Warring States period is that success requires extreme patience. American businesses live by quarterly reports, U.S. politicians operate on short election cycles, and successful stock market strategies may be based on trading conducted in a single day. Yet the stories of the Warring States period’s rising challengers teach that victory is never achieved in a single day, week, or year—or even in a decade. Only long-term plans spanning hundreds of years led to victory. Consequently, it’s not uncommon for today’s Chinese leaders, who automatically serve two ten-year terms, to make plans that span generations and to set goals that will not be achieved for a half century or more.
Steal your opponent’s ideas and technology for strategic purposes.
As of 2011, while the United States spent nearly 5% of its GDP on its military, the Chinese spent only 2.5% of theirs. The Chinese strategy has been to forswear development of global power projection forces and to maintain a curiously small arsenal of nuclear warheads, perhaps numbering fewer than three hundred. Instead of trying to match America plane for plane and ship for ship, China has invested heavily in asymmetric systems designed to get the biggest bang for the buck. The Chinese have pioneered antisatellite technology, developed the means to counter stealth bombers, invested heavily in cyber intrusion, and built missiles costing a few million dollars that can sink a $4 billion American aircraft carrier. The missile price was so low—and the capability so high—because the missile may have been based on stolen American technology.
A recent USG report from the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive describes China as “the world’s most active and persistent perpetrator of economic espionage.” China collects sensitive economic information (including trade secrets, patented processes, business plans, cutting-edge technologies, and export-controlled commodities) to support its domestic industries. It does so by using both traditional and cyber-based methods of collection. China’s use of the latter may be the most robust in the world.
So dramatic is intellectual property (IP) piracy in China that a software company sold a single program in China and then received thirty million requests for an update.
Hacking is central to China’s decades-long campaign to steal technologies it can’t invent and intellectual property it can’t create. A report by the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, led by the former director of national intelligence Dennis Blair and by the former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, found that the theft of U.S. intellectual property likely costs the American economy more than $300 billion per year.
Military might is not the critical factor for winning a long-term competition.
Instead of direct military action, PRC Hawks propose nonmilitary ways to defeat a stronger nation such as the United States through lawfare (that is, using international laws, bodies, and courts to restrict America’s freedom of movement and policy choices), economic warfare, biological and chemical warfare, cyberattacks, and even terrorism.
Assassin’s Mace: a weapon in ancient Chinese folklore that ensures victory over a more powerful opponent.
PRC Hawks call for China to pioneer an “Assassin’s Mace weapons” such as tactical laser weapons, which “will be used first in anti-ship missile defense systems,” and stealth technology for both naval ships and cruise missiles. “Lightning attacks and powerful first strikes will be more widely used,” they noted.5 In addition, the authors listed a host of tactics that would be essential against a superpower like the United States, such as assaulting radar and radio stations with smart weapons; jamming enemy communication facilities via electronic warfare; attacking communication centers, facilities, and command ships; destroying electronic systems with electromagnetic pulse weapons; wiping out computer software with computer viruses; and developing directed-energy weapons.
Wargaming: Whenever the China team used conventional tactics and strategies, America won—decisively. However, in every case where China employed Assassin’s Mace methods, China was the victor. The lessons acquired from these simulations were a driving factor behind the Obama administration’s strategic “Asia pivot.”
Whereas Americans tends to favor direct action, those of Chinese ethnic origin were found to favor the indirect over the direct, ambiguity and deception over clarity and transparency.
China has applied the Zimbabwe model in Asia, Africa, and South America. It has supported dictatorships in Syria, Uzbekistan, Angola, the Central African Republic, Cambodia, Sudan, Myanmar, Venezuela, and Iran. When China’s economy is triple the size of America’s, China’s actions to stifle efforts to resolve conflicts and promote sound governance will be far more influential.
Recognize that the hegemon will take extreme, even reckless action to retain its dominant position.
China expects the United States to behave like an aggressive hegemon eager to retain its dominant position; when the Americans instead promote détente, the UN Charter, and democracy and human rights for all, China gets suspicious. What are the Americans really up to? Perhaps some among China’s moderates and reformists understand America’s good intentions. The hawks, however, see only American deception.
Never lose sight of shi.
Shi: “The alignment of forces” or “propensity of things to happen,” which only a skilled strategist can exploit to ensure victory over a superior force. Humans and nations can interact with each other and change events, but those events have an independent momentum all their own. Shi appears in compound vocabulary terms that mean “to shape a situation,” “to build up military posture,” “to assess the overall strategic political situation,” or “to seek a balance of power.” It is the duty of “the sage”—the rough equivalent of a modern-day statesman or intelligence professional—to perceive shi before the opponent does.
Shi has dozens of translations, such as “shaping” the situation, or “eventuating.” Other translators call shi the creation of opportunity, or creation of momentum. “Unfolding” or “nudging” are also English words approximating the concept.
Establish and employ metrics for measuring your status relative to other potential challengers.
Always be vigilant to avoid being encircled or deceived by others.
Wai ru, Nei fa: On the outside, be benevolent; on the inside, be ruthless.
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US-Sino Relations
20 Jan, 1981- 20 Jan, 1989: US-Sino Strategy under US President Ronald Reagan
Reagan followed the Nixon-Ford-Carter line of building up China—“to help China modernize, on the grounds that a strong, secure, and stable China can be an increasing force for peace, both in Asia and in the world.”
During the Reagan presidency, America’s covert military cooperation with China expanded to previously inconceivable levels. The United States secretly worked with China to provide military supplies to the anti-Soviet Afghan rebels, the Khmer Rouge, and the anti-Cuban forces in Angola.
U.S.-Chinese clandestine cooperation reached its peak during the Reagan administration. Presidents Nixon and Ford had offered China intelligence about the Soviets. President Carter established the Chestnut eavesdropping project. But it was Reagan who treated China as a full strategic partner—albeit in secret.
20 Jan, 1991- 20 Jan, 1999: US-Sino relations under US President Clinton.
Once Clinton was in office, his secretary of state, Warren Christopher, testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “our policy will be to facilitate a broad, peaceful evolution in China from communism to democracy by encouraging the forces of economic and political liberalization.”
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Chinese Economic Regulation
China’s five largest banks hold 50% of all Chinese deposits. In a country of 1.35 billion people, there are just 29 banks owned by the central and local governments, 34 banks in Special Administrative Regions, and two privately owned banks. These 65 Chinese banks contrast with the approximately 9000 privately owned banks in the US. By the end of 2013, China’s central bank had accumulated approximately $3.66 trillion in foreign exchange reserves.
At the heart of Chinese economic policy is a superagency called the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC). It determines state policy for strategic industries and approves major investments, as well as mergers and acquisitions of SOEs. The NDRC has sweeping powers to impose prices for all consumer goods, from bottles of whiskey to gasoline. The NDRC also appears to be the nerve center of Chinese economic strategy.
By 2050, China’s economy will be much larger than America’s—perhaps three times larger, according to some projections—and the world could then be a unipolar one, with China as the global leader. Other scenarios project China and the United States as dual superpowers, and still others predict a tripolar world of China, India, and the United States.
Hu reportedly confided to his closest advisers that it is easier and cheaper to “buy” Taiwan than to conquer it.
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Chinese State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs)
What has accelerated Chinese growth more than anything is not reform at all, but a commitment to subsidizing SOEs, which still comprise 40% of China’s GDP.
SOEs control numerous economic sectors, and are major players in seven strategically important sectors: defense, power generation, oil and gas, telecommunications, coal, aviation, and shipping.
Analysts see China pursuing a nakedly mercantilist strategy of subsidizing key industries and government-guided efforts to acquire ownership of foreign natural resources and energy reserves born of an almost paranoid view that oil and gas are reaching a global peak of production. In their thinking, wars over natural resources are inevitable in the decades ahead, and therefore China must buy resources overseas and stockpile them at home, while denying scarce resources to others.
There is little to no private property in the countryside, either. Even in 2014, six hundred million Chinese farmers still do not own their land.
In the Chinese SOE model, the Communist Party creates the SOE and defines its strategic purposes. These purposes must advance the interests of the state, typically via advancing one or more of the Four Modernizations. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party selects all key SOE managers, many of whom come from the country’s intelligence or military services, and those ties continue as the SOE moves forward. Chinese state banks favor SOEs over private sector firms. With large capital injections, these national champions are encouraged to acquire foreign technology and secure raw materials from abroad. All of these government subsidies, while inefficient and corruption-fostering, give Chinese corporations a huge competitive edge against the West.
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Chinese Environmental Issues
Pollution crosses the Pacific Ocean and accounts for 29% of particulate pollution in California.
A major cause of emissions is China’s reliance on coal, one of the world’s worst air pollutants. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that China burns nearly as much coal as do all other countries combined.
China is still one of the few countries that subsidize coal consumption.
Since the 1980s, China has built ten thousand petrochemical plants along the Yangtze River and four thousand plants along the Yellow River. As a result of these factories and China’s choice to prioritize development over environmental considerations, 40% of the country’s rivers are seriously polluted, and in 20% of its rivers the water quality is too toxic to touch safely, let alone drink. At least 55% of the groundwater in China—and there is not that much groundwater in China—is unfit for drinking. In fact, the wastewater that Chinese factories dump into rivers causes about sixty thousand premature deaths annually. Of course, because of the state’s control of information and its vast network of censors, many Chinese do not even know that their drinking water may kill them.
Due to water contamination in China, much of the country’s fishing industry has moved into the contested waters of the ECS, the SCS, and the Pacific.
China’s more odious practices include the use of dangerous or banned pesticides to increase yields, unsafe antibiotics and hormones to improve livestock and fish growth, and illegal preservatives to increase marketability of semi-processed products. These practices have led to bans of Chinese food products throughout East Asia, the EU, Japan, and the US.
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Chinese Censorship
There are more than one million Chinese employed in the online censorship business. Most of the world’s Internet users are Chinese, but because Chinese government officials monitor and block access to the websites of human rights organizations, foreign newspapers, and numerous other political and cultural groups, Chinese citizens don’t have access to the same Internet that free people do. To be “harmonized” is a euphemism for being censored.
The Chinese government employs legions of progovernment bloggers to tout official points of view, discredit opposition activists, and disseminate false information. Their misinformation makes it challenging for Internet users to distinguish between factual news and government propaganda.
As China’s power continues to grow, its ability to protect dictatorial, pro-China governments and to undermine representative governments will likely grow dramatically as well.
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PRC Ideological Re-education
After the Communist Party seized power in 1949, teams of Chinese historians began recasting China’s history to emphasize that all progress had come from peasant rebellions, what the historian James Harrison had termed “the most massive attempt at ideological reeducation in human history.”
Plans to set up an innocuous-sounding “patriotic education” curriculum. There would be one hundred “patriotic education” bases across the country, new historical monuments, and new museums for national tourism. China’s leaders planned to fund TV and radio programs and films chronicling the “century of national humiliation” that China had suffered at the hands of foreigners, such as Japan and the US. They would claim that the US was out to contain China and that it sought to block China’s return to its former glory. “Our youth and intellectuals fell in love with America in Tiananmen Square,” he said. “That must never happen again. So our leaders will smear you, and seek rejuvenation—an end to humiliation at the hands of the West.” He concluded by saying, “Two birds with one stone.” It is a Chinese as well as a Western proverb. “What are the two birds?”…the USSR and the USA.
An emerging generation of the Chinese people now believes a totally different narrative about the US than the one most Americans know—one that holds that for 170 years America has tried to dominate China. China depicts American national heroes, including Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt, as “evil masterminds” who manipulated Chinese officials and others to weaken China. At least to some degree, this twisted view of history distorts their current vision of Sino-American “cooperation,” with many seeing it as just a passing phase in America’s enduring crusade to destroy China’s rightful place in the world.
At my invitation, three graduate students from China’s National Foreign Affairs University toured the museum with me. They were in training to become diplomats, and they were well educated from the perspective of the Chinese Communist government. They did not, however, know much about the 100,000 Chinese civilians killed by the Boxer rebels, or the role of America’s aid to China in World War II, or the death of twenty million Chinese in Mao’s political campaign and famine from 1959 to 1962, or the death of millions more in a Cultural Revolution that closed the nation’s universities and tore China apart from 1966 to 1976. And although they had heard of the Tiananmen Square protests, they knew better than to talk about them.
US President John Tyler’s signed the Wangxia Treaty; a pro-China compact that established official diplomatic relations, gave Chinese ports most-favored-nation status, and repealed a ban on Americans learning Mandarin. Abraham Lincoln hardly had two minutes to think about China, and the treaty negotiated by his emissary Anson Burlingame was advantageous to the Chinese; it recognized Chinese sovereignty rights that had been threatened by European powers, and it provided the nineteenth-century equivalent of today’s conflict “hotlines” to head off aggression and misunderstandings. In the Boxer Rebellion, the United States was a leader in restraining the abuses of foreign soldiers. Woodrow Wilson made the return of Qingdao to China one of his priorities at Versailles and fought tirelessly—though unsuccessfully—for it. According to Western scholars, Wilson tried his best to return Chinese territory, even risking a Japanese walkout from the peace conference, and extracted a Japanese promise to return the territory, which Japan later violated. Far from seeking to subjugate China, Franklin Roosevelt saved it with American aid and intervention in the Pacific—and by waging war against Japan. Richard Nixon never imagined that his overture to China would spark a nuclear war, and the protests at Tiananmen Square were the product of a Chinese student movement seeking to build a better China, not an American front seeking China’s ruin.
Mao called the treaty “the first unequal treaty signed as a result of U.S. aggression against China.” A launching pad for American manipulation of the Chinese, the treaty opened the door to U.S. “illegal actions to exploit China,” according to the textbooks assigned to Chinese students. Tyler and the Americans chose to “wait at leisure while the enemy labors” (in the words of a Warring States stratagem); they didn’t yet have the power to dominate China, but the United States was willing to bide its time. To Chinese hawks, John Tyler—the accidental and forgettable president most famous in real life as the second half of America’s first famous campaign catchphrase, “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”—was an evil genius, laying the groundwork for America’s plan to assert complete hegemony over Chinese civilization.
At first, it seemed impossible to me that any thinking person in China would believe that American presidents from John Tyler to Barack Obama had all somehow learned the statecraft axioms of the Warring States period and decided to apply these little-known concepts to control China. But then I realized that many in China think of these axioms as universal truths. They know America is the most powerful nation in the world, and they assume America will act as selfishly, cynically, and ruthlessly as did every hegemon in the era of the Warring States. As the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission wrote in 2002, “China’s leaders consistently characterize the United States as a ‘hegemon,’ connoting a powerful protagonist and overbearing bully that is China’s major competitor.”
Chinese leaders to assert that American presidents from John Tyler to Bill Clinton had somehow learned the statecraft axioms of the Warring States and then decided to apply these esoteric concepts to contain China’s growth. This is a radical departure from the reality; in truth, the United States has labored to support China’s sovereignty, to promote Chinese economic development, and to give China a strong place in the global community.
Four main strategies that the Chinese utilize to influence or manipulate the Western media.
Direct action by Chinese diplomats, local officials, security forces, and regulators, both inside and outside China. These measures obstruct news gathering, prevent the publication of undesirable content, and punish overseas media outlets that fail to heed restrictions.
Employing economic carrots and sticks to induce self-censorship among media owners and their outlets located outside mainland China.
Applying indirect pressure via proxies—including advertisers, satellite firms, and foreign governments—who take action to prevent or punish the publication of content critical of Beijing.
Conducting cyberattacks and physical assaults that are not conclusively traceable to the central Chinese authorities but serve the Party’s aims.
The government’s efforts to install tools to police the Internet are collectively known as the “Great Firewall of China.”
“Monitoring is also built into social networks, chat services, and VoIP.”
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PRC Fears
The US war plan is to blockade China.
The US, in their estimation, has supposedly built a blockade system of antisubmarine nets, hydroacoustic systems, underwater mines, surface warships, antisubmarine aircraft, submarines, and reconnaissance satellites.
USA supports plundering China’s maritime resources.
USA may choke off China’s sea lines of communication.
USA seeks China’s territorial dismemberment.
USA may assist rebels inside China.
USA may foment riots, civil war, or terrorism inside China.
USA threatens aircraft carrier strikes.
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DIME: US & China
STEP 1: DO NOT ACCEPT CHINA AT FACE VALUE
Know what the opponent is trying to make you think about his nature; do not accept appearances at face value.
STEP 2: KEEP TRACK OF YOUR GIFTS
Every year, a small fortune of American tax dollars is being spent to aid China’s rise.
To compete in the Marathon, Congress should enact an annual reporting requirement of all agencies and departments of their assistance to China.
STEP 3: MEASURE COMPETITIVENESS
The White House should provide Congress with an annual report that includes trends and forecasts about how the United States is faring relative to its chief rivals.
STEP 4: DEVELOP A COMPETITIVENESS STRATEGY
Hughes has put forward a number of promising policy proposals to remain competitive. These include collaboration between the U.S. private and public sectors to increase competitiveness; fiscal and monetary reform; technological innovation; the creation of a lifelong learning culture; and increased U.S. civilian research and development.
STEP 5: FIND COMMON GROUND AT HOME
STEP 6: BUILD A VERTICAL COALITION OF NATIONS
The UN is far from perfect, but it is the only political institution in the world with essentially universal membership. It is also the only forum in the world where any nation can come to all other nations to discuss and cooperate on issues such as health, labor, telecommunications, finance, security, and trade. This cooperative web supports our international political order, but its chief virtue—universal membership—may not survive in a world dominated by China.
STEP 7: PROTECT THE POLITICAL DISSIDENTS
STEP 8: STAND UP TO ANTI-AMERICAN COMPETITIVE CONDUCT
According to some estimates, >90% of cyber espionage incidents against the USA originate in China.
STEP 9: IDENTIFY AND SHAME POLLUTERS
2013: “Airpocalypse,” when the air pollution in Beijing and other cities in China reached forty times the level that the World Health Organization deems safe.
STEP 10: EXPOSE CORRUPTION AND CENSORSHIP
STEP 11: SUPPORT PRODEMOCRACY REFORMERS
The U.S. State Department should fund more projects to promote the development of the rule of law and civil society in China, including efforts to provide legal and technical assistance, to reform criminal law, to improve legal adjudication, training for elected village officials, and to support the independence of judges.
STEP 12: MONITOR AND INFLUENCE THE DEBATES BETWEEN CHINA’S HAWKS AND REFORMERS
The hawks see every American action as if it were a move on the wei qi board, with the goal of encircling China and neutralizing its threat.
“The greatest danger we have is overestimating China and China overestimating itself. China is nowhere near close to the US. So this magnification of China which creates fear in the U.S. and hubris in China is the biggest danger we face.”-Joseph Nye (Harvard Political Scientist).
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Misc Quotes
“This Chinese empire “values order over freedom, ethics over law, and elite governance over democracy and human rights.””
“Confucius, fit nicely with the Darwinian concepts of which the Chinese had become enamored: “There cannot be two suns in the sky.” The nature of world order is hierarchy. There is always one ruler at the top.”
“Of the fourteen imperial dynasties, ten have each lasted longer than the entire history of the United States.”
“Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.”-Aristotle.
“The right of all Americans to chart the course of their own destiny is sacrosanct.”
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Chronology
2013: “Airpocalypse,” when the air pollution in Beijing and other cities in China 40x the level that the WHO deems safe.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
2009: China and Taiwan sign an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement to normalize economic relations between the two countries.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
2007: China enacts an anti-monopoly law, but its SOEs are exempt from its terms. Rather, the law is primarily directed at foreign companies trying to acquire native Chinese businesses.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
2007: China uses a ground-based antisatellite weapon (one that they could someday use against American satellites), to destroy a Chinese weather satellite out of orbit.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
2003-2005: Chinese Cyberattack “Titan Rain” strikes hundreds of USG computers.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
2001: China and several other Asian countries developed an organization that they viewed as a potential counter to NATO—the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO’s members are China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
2001: China joins the WTO.
Among the key messages China sent then were that the SOEs would be phased out, free market policies would be forthcoming, China’s currency would not be manipulated, China would not accumulate large trade surpluses, and America’s innovations and intellectual property would, of course, be respected.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
China would borrow the best techniques from the West to develop stock and debt capital markets, a mutual funds industry, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, currency markets, foreign participation, an internationalist central bank, home loans and credit cards, and a burgeoning car industry—all with the active tutoring from institutions such as the World Bank and private firms such as Goldman Sachs.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
Friday, 7 May, 1999: During NATO Strikes on Serbia, two B-2 bomber crews lifted off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Knob Noster, Missouri, bound for the Serbian capital of Belgrade. The airmen dropped five JDAM bombs on what was labeled as “Belgrade Warehouse #1.” The target data, provided by the CIA, had been checked and double-checked. But the calculations proved to be woefully—and tragically—wrong. The bombs hit the southern side of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade at midnight, killing three of its employees.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
Mr. White said that China would see this as no accident, but as a probe by the hegemon of a rival who had asked the weight of the cauldrons. “They will see it as an American warning and test of China’s resolve,” he told me.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
Li Lanqing, the vice premier, stated, “In the future, direct confrontation between China and the United States will be unavoidable!” He put forward the idea that President Clinton ordered the bombing to “throw a stone to probe the path” to “ascertain the strength of China’s reaction to international crises and conflicts; to ascertain the voice of the people, the stance of public opinion, and the government’s opinion, and the measures it will take.”-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
15 Apr- 4 Jun, 1989: The Tiananmen Square Protests (aka the Beijing Protests, the ’89 Democracy movement); over seven weeks, students were joined in the square by approximately a million protesters demanding free speech, a free press, less corruption, and more government accountability. They held up copies of the Declaration of Independence and built a “Goddess of Democracy” that was three stories tall.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
In an effort to explain what had happened, internal Party memoranda depicted the protests as purely the result of a U.S.-orchestrated psychological operation intended to overthrow the Party. The ever-paranoid Deng came to believe this false claim, writing that the United States had “started running all the propaganda machines to agitate, to encourage, and to enable China’s so-called democrats, the so-called dissidents who are, in fact, scum of the nation.” Deng became convinced that the US had tried to bring down the Chinese Communist Party.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
The Tiananmen incident led to the collapse of the liberalizing trends of Chinese governance.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1989: The Soviets announce they would leave Afghanistan.
Mar, 1986: China Initiates Program 863, the National High-Technology Program; a major effort by China to overcome shortcomings in its national security through the use of science and technology. The ongoing 863 Program encompasses development of dual-use technologies, with both civilian and military applications, including biotechnology, laser technology, and advanced materials.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
Mar, 1986: The Reagan administration assists China’s development of eight national research centers focused on genetic engineering, intelligent robotics, artificial intelligence, automation, biotechnology, lasers, supercomputers, space technology, and manned spaceflight.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1984: US Representative Charlie Wilson (TX) drums up $50 million to increase support for the rebels in Afghanistan. Crile reports that the CIA decided to spend $38 million of it to buy weapons from the Chinese government.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1982-1989: the Sino-American Cambodian program was run out of Bangkok, with the support of the Chinese, the Royal Thai Army, Singapore, and Malaysia.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1982: US President Reagan signs NSDD 12 inaugurating nuclear cooperation and development between the United States and China, to expand China’s military and civilian nuclear programs.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1981: US President Reagan signs National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 11, permitting the Pentagon to sell advanced air, ground, naval, and missile technology to the Chinese to transform the PLA into a world-class fighting force.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1979: The Carter administration grants China most-favored-nation status as a U.S. trading partner.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
17 Feb- 16 Mar, 1979: Sino-Vietnamese War; China launches an offensive into N. Vietnam after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia which ended the Khmer Rouge; ~25,000 are KIA on each side.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
31 Jan, 1979: during his visit to the US, Deng and Fang Yi, director of the State Science and Technology Commission, signed agreements with the USG to speed up scientific exchanges.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1978: US President Jimmy Carter signs Presidential Directive 43, establishing numerous programs to transfer American scientific and technological developments to China in the fields of education, energy, agriculture, space, geosciences, commerce, and public health.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1978: After replacing Mao (and visiting Singapore), PRC President Deng begins formulating a strategy for economic growth; as Deng put it, that “technology is the number one productive force” for economic growth.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1975: Helsinki Accords.
1973: Moscow directly warns Nixon that the USSR would use force if the US went beyond pure diplomacy and actually formed a military relationship with China.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
Feb, 1973: US SECSTATE Kissinger and PRC Premier Mao meet in Beijing. The meeting included an explicit security promise, based on finding a way that the United States and China could cooperate that would at best deter Moscow and at least get the Soviets’ attention. Kissinger told the Chinese that Nixon wanted “enough of a relationship with [China] so that it is plausible that an attack on [China] involves a substantial American interest.”-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
Feb, 1972: Mao sits face-to-face with Nixon.
Jul, 1971: US SECSTATE Kissinger secretly travels to Beijing opening US relations with the Peoples Republic of China. Since then, U.S. policy toward the People’s Republic has largely been governed by those seeking “constructive engagement” with China to aid its rise.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
Nixon did not first reach out to China; instead, China, in the person of Mao, first reached out to Nixon.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
Spring, 1969: Mao summoned four hawkish army marshals who wanted to end China’s decade of passivity and instead to stand up to the threat of the Soviet Union—Chen Yi, Nie Rongzhen, Xu Xiangqian, and Ye Jianying. These marshals summed up the American strategy toward the Soviet Union and China in a Chinese proverb of “sitting on top of the mountain to watch a fight between two tigers.” In other words, they believed America was waiting for one Communist country to devour the other, and they thought in terms of ancient lessons from the Warring States period.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
2 Mar- 11 Sep, 1969: The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict is fought between PRC and Soviet Forces in Manchuria. The conflict ended in a ceasefire after ~60-70 are KIA on each side.
1967: The PRC detonate two H- Bombs without warning within days of each other near the Soviet Border.
20 Oct- 21 Nov, 1962: Sino-Indian War is fought over a disputed Himalayan Border. China withdraws to its “Line of Actual Control (LAC);” ~1,000 KIA on each side.
1959: India grants asylum to the Tibetan Dali Lhama; angering the Chinese who consider Tibet part of China.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1959: The Tibetan Uprising.
1957-1961: Some 30 million Chinese perish due to famine; without sparrows as predators, locusts ravaged harvests—and this was compounded by severe droughts.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1950s: China begins supplying North Vietnam with weapons, supplies, and military advice.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1921: Founding of the Chinese Communist Party.
4 May, 1919: The May 4th Movement occurs in retaliation for the Chinese Governments weak response to the Treaty of Versailles, which allows Japan to retain territories in Shandong that had been surrendered by German. The demonstrations sparked nationwide protests and catalyzed modern Chinese nationalism and helped to found the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
1844: US President John Tyler’s signs the Wangxia Treaty; a pro-China compact that established official diplomatic relations, gave Chinese ports most-favored-nation status, and repealed a ban on Americans learning Mandarin.-100 Year Marathon by Pillsbury.
1839: The First Opium War; the Royal Navy laid waste to Chinese ports over a trade dispute with the Qing dynasty.
208: Battle of Red Cliff aka the Battle of Chibi; Northern Commander Cao Cao with one million troops arrayed along a river is defeated by a vastly outnumberd Southern Force led by Zhuge Liang positioned on the other side of the river. Zhuge Liang orders the assault to begin that night. Because of the wind and the iron hoops linking the boats, the northern fleet is quickly engulfed in flames. The hegemon had been humiliated. The long series of deceptions destroy Cao Cao, who had commanded the largest military force in China. He is bested by the machinations and deceptions of a smarter, almost superhuman sage—one who detects windows of opportunity and disguises his intentions.
The battle is written about in China’s most popular novel, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
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