Niall Ferguson Displays His Dickishness on U.S.-China Relations

2009-07-04

A nice bit of reporting by David Brooks in the New York Times. Brooks attended one of those intelligentsia meetings (this one was the Aspen Ideas Festival — I wonder if Tom Friedman was there?) where China policy was discussed.

Luckily for the reality-based community, Jim Fallows was there providing counterpoint to Niall Ferguson, who was apparently representing the batshit neocon community.

Now, I haven't liked Ferguson for some time now, notably because of his neo-imperialistic ideas post 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq war. Even so, I've always respected the man's intellectual chops. Sad to say, he comes off as a major douche according to Brooks's reportage.

The agent provocateur was Niall Ferguson of Harvard. China and the U.S., he argued, used to have a symbiotic relationship and formed a tightly integrated unit that he calls Chimerica.

I think I've already written about Ferguson's use of this ridiculously trite term "Chimerica". For some reason, that term annoys me to no end, most likely because the term itself has absolutely no scholarly value, and I do not find it particularly descriptive. I assume that Ferguson's use of "Chimerica" is a sad attempt to gain even more popular fame by coining a term ("The World is Flat" anyone?).

The frictions are building [between China and the U.S.] and will lead to divorce, conflict and potential catastrophe. China, Ferguson argued, is now decoupling from the United States. Chinese business leaders assume that American consumers will never again go on a spending binge. The Chinese are developing an economy that relies more on internal consumption.

The two major schools of thought on US China relations these days are divided by the inevitability of conflict. I tend to agree with those who see conflict as entirely avoidable, while others such as Ferguson look forward to another bipolar, Cold War-ish future. I believe Ferguson's views, as are those of many other folks who grew up and received their professional training during the Cold War, are simply out of date and inapplicable to present situations, insofar as they assume that China will operate in the same manner as the old Soviet Union. Ferguson and his ilk would never, of course, admit that they are using a Cold War framework, but I think it's pretty clear.

Chinese officials are also aware that the U.S. will never get its fiscal house in order. There may be theoretical plans to reduce the federal deficit and the national debt, but there is no politically practical way to get there. Depreciation is inevitable and the Chinese are working to end the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.

As usual, China's moves in this area, which are entirely reasonable from a realist point of view, become sinister and scary when described by the American neocon and/or the American exceptionalist crowds. Just because the US dollar has been the world's reserve currency for so many years, this does not mean that God has so ordained this situation and that it can't be changed in the future as the global economy matures.

Chinese nationalism is also on the rise. The Internet has made young Chinese more nationalistic. The Chinese are acquiring resources all around the world and with them, willy-nilly, an overseas empire that threatens U.S. interests. The Chinese are building their Navy, a historic precursor to expanded ambitions and global conflict.

I think Ferguson assumes a bit too much here. I know a fair amount about China, and at least can say that I have grown up here along with the Internet (I arrived here in 1998). That being said however, I would not profess to know with any certainty that the Internet has been the cause of an increased level in nationalist sentiment.

I think it's accurate to say that blogs and BBSs reflect a lot of nationalistic opinions, many of which are certainly negative from my point of view. One might even argue that these opinions have become more frequent in the past two years, perhaps beginning with the run-up to the Olympics last year. However, I don't see the causal link between the Internet and nationalistic views. Perhaps Ferguson is a China BBS troll or something, and is up on the local scene, but I tend to doubt it.

I'm going to call bullshit on this one and assume that Ferguson is incorrectly assuming that an increased incidence of nationalist opinion posted on the Internet somehow suggests causation. It's just a medium for expression, not a mind control device. Would Ferguson argue that newspapers and pamphlets caused the American Revolution as opposed to being a major means of facilitating revolutionary ideas?

Think of China, Ferguson concluded, as Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany in the years before World War I: a growing, aggressive, nationalistic power whose ambitions will tear through pre-existing commercial ties and historic friendships.

Once again, Ferguson is looking backwards (okay, he is an historian) in an attempt to find a match between present-day China and a modern, strangely enough European, historical analog that can help us to predict China's behavior in the near term. It just so happens that his example is a country that was responsible in a number of ways for launching everyone into a global war (I would have expected him to use pre-World War II Japan, particularly with respect to natural resources/energy policy).

I suppose Ferguson has a detailed argument as to why pre-World War I Germany is a good fit, and I'd really like to hear the evidence because I tend to believe the assumptions underpinning the alleged similarities are bullshit. Then again, going up against Ferguson with respect to modern European history is probably a losing battle.

James Fallows of The Atlantic has lived in China for the past three years. He agreed with parts of Ferguson’s take on the economic fundamentals, but seemed to regard Ferguson’s analysis of the Chinese psychology as airy-fairy academic theorizing. At one point, while Fallows was defending Chinese intentions, Ferguson shot back: “You’ve been in China too long.” Fallows responded that there must be a happy medium between being in China too long and being in China too little.

Enter Ferguson the dick, and not a smart one either. Challenging Fallows's opinion on the intentions of the Chinese by questioning his objectivity as a Beijing resident is a low blow, and certainly not something one would expect from an academic type. I do like Fallows's response, though.

If one were to use the logic implicit in Ferguson's statement, my two years in Washington DC during the Bush administration would have made me much more sympathetic to the US government than I was when I arrived there in 2004 from Beijing. The reality of course is that two years in DC during the Bush era drove me to the point where I was actively in support of impeachment. Perhaps I needed another year to rid myself of all that residual Chinesey sentiment.

Some of the officials interviewed by Fallows believe the U.S. is following unsustainable fiscal policies that will lead to decline, but they view this with frustration, not joy. Fallows doesn’t know what the future will hold, but he believes that Chinese officials still see the dollar as their least risky investment. Domestically, China will not turn democratic, but individual liberties will expand. He agreed that China and the U.S. will dominate the 21st century, but he painted the picture of a more benign cooperation.

Here's the main issue. Ferguson is a neocon, an idealist, a supporter of Western/American exceptionalism — however you want to describe this point of view these days. I used to be much more of an idealist than I am today (although my views came from the left, not the right, politically). After two years of grad school and, more importantly, seeing how idealism could lead to some really bad shit when put into practice (thanks to the Bush administration), I drifted a bit towards the realist camp.

Perhaps Ferguson cannot recognize China's profoundly realist worldviews for what they are because he personally left realism behind several years ago. Without acknowledging the possibility that we do not live in a zero sum game world and that China's realist outlook could actually lead it to adopt cooperative, or at least benign, international policies, I guess it's not surprising that Ferguson sees an inevitable struggle within "Chimerica."

More important though, and his specific views notwithstanding, there is no excuse for being a dick. Despite his solid rhetorical comeback, Jim Fallows is no doubt too much of a gentleman to call Ferguson out directly on this behavior. I have been in arguments before in the past about U.S.-China relations where my "loyalty" has been called into question. In addition to "loyalty" to a specific country being entirely irrelevant to any policy argument, bringing the issue up is a sign of rhetorical weakness. To summarize: hyper-nationalists are assholes.

For all my American readers out there who aren't dicks, happy July 4!

Tags: U.S.-China Relations