Trump Won’t Win Trade War with China Til’ He Understands Century of Shame and Silk Belt

For some cultures, the most powerful, master emotion is shame and humiliation. And that survival and self-determination is your strength, not your humiliation. Consequently, President Donald Trump will never win his trade war with China until he first understands China’s “Century of Humiliation” and its Belt Road Initiative (BRI). Both of which are not only rooted in China’s rich historical past but, and according to some economists, an even more prosperous future.

Century of Humiliation
China’s Century of Humiliation started in the 19th century, when Britain and France devised an insidious plan to force opium as a currency in exchange for Chinese goods and services. As China tried to confiscate and destroy the opium, two major wars ensued. China lost both. In addition to forgoing Hong Kong and more port cities, China was further shamed into paying millions of dollars of war reparations. Reparations that could’ve been spent on public works projects.

Trump’s first mistake was therefore to call his tariff on Chinese trade goods a “national security threat,” even a war. (Britain and France did the same when authorities tried to confiscate and destroy their opium.) This raised the ire of President Xi and millions of Chinese, evoking a feeling that another foreign power was trying to humiliate them. In other words, the geography of emotion is sometimes greater than even the power of place-let alone economics.

Something else that’s greater to China is the memory of how Britain and France’s opium drug trade drove 400 million people into addiction. As hundreds of opium dens spread across China, some were sold into slavery to pay for opium habits. Prosperity, productiveness, and Chinese innovations, which were far more superior to Western goods, gave way to rampant corruption, severe economic dislocation, and social unrest. It’s something China will never forget.

Neither will China forget those who today, make threats over trade agreements or promise to “retaliate” as Trump just did. The latest being a 25 percent increase on “all” Chinese imports. For China, the problem lies not with them or Chinese goods but American workers and American-made products. It’s not their fault U.S. production is inefficient, or that American goods may be inferior or more expensive. Again, for China humiliation extends to its goods and production.

Decades of Shame
It also extends to memories of the U.S.’s Open Door Policies and Boxer Rebellion. As the U.S., Russia, and Japan entered Britain and France’s need to carve-up China, the U.S. imposed economic spheres of influence and extraterritorial rights to avert war. China not only lost their sovereign rights over trade and resources, but western-styled courts favored Christians and “the foreign devils.” China’s rulers were practically reduced to puppets, the people to underlings.

Again, Trump’s dishonesty over why trade talks broke down after a mutual agreement had been reached is an affront to China’s integrity. So are the times he’s went back on his word or lied about how China pays tariffs directly to the U.S. government. It’s U.S. importers who pay tariffs for Chinese goods and pass those costs to U.S. consumers in the form of higher product prices. For leaders who lie and cause mistrust, China thinks of the “foreign devils” who did the same.

They also think back to the Boxer Rebellion, a time when millions of Chinese rose up to expel the Western powers. Having gained a formidable force large enough to march on foreign embassies which now controlled Beijing, they were lulled into a truce. A truce which allowed more time for and international force of 25,000 troops to show up. Western, Russian, and Japanese troops laid waste to Beijing while killing and executing thousands of Chinese Boxers.

Meanwhile, the long-nurtured values such as respect for rank and acceptance of hierarchy-that is, old over young, male over female, scholar-official over commoner-were no longer emphasized in education or government. Neither was Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism, or the Mandate of Heaven and Middle Kingdom-China’s concept of its own superiority. This went for the civil service exam system. It was as if Year Zero had started, and China had become like “scattered grains.”

China’s Arduous Rise to Ascendancy
The 1919 May Fourth and Self-Strengthening Movements consequently provided a return to more traditional Chinese beliefs and customs. So did Mao Zedong’s Communist and Great Leap Forward, and his Cultural Revolution-even if they backfired. Above all, the Western powers were expelled as a more centralized China took shape. One that could finally be predicted based on its many patterns and ideals from its past. It included precedents for critical change.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s repeated threats of a trade war with China involves its many allies which have been forged through the BRI. Indeed, there are now more than some 60 nations connected infrastructurally with China through a complex maize of superhighways and highspeed rails, electric grids and pipelines, mining industries and manufacturing centers, and port cities and airports. It includes investments and goods and resources which flow both ways.

China’s allies also know Trump’s threats are another sign of a waning empire, an overreaction to its many insecurities. They entail political and economic forces that are corrupt and deteriorating as well. This may then be the century that America falls behind, especially with regards to innovations, technological, productivity, organizational skills, and funding education to improve critical thinking skills. Either way, BRI is China’s answer to America’s nation-building through war.

And then there’s America’s opioid-drug crisis and corporate/state-imposed corruption. Both kill tens of thousands of people each year and costs businesses and consumers billions of dollars. As for China’s espionage or the piracy of patents, not to mention human rights violations, China has only to point to a history of U.S. imperialism and economic exploitation in other countries. This includes backing a Chinese Civil War which cost the lives of millions of people.

America’s Turn?
As more productivity stagnates and American know-how declines, the U.S. may find itself on the losing end of a trade war with China. Indeed, China has already struck back costing farmers billions of dollars in losses. In the meantime, China is dumping U.S. treasury bonds while strengthening their own and the yuan. And then there’s the rising cost of inflation, an increase among some businesses which depend on Chinese made goods and resources, and drop in stocks.

Whatever the future holds for China, it will never be humiliated again. Nor will it ever allow signs such as, “No dogs and Chinese allowed;” or letters like the one from a lieutenant in China’s First Opium Drug War. It read: “It seems quite useless to kill the Chinese. It is like killing flies in July.” Just as its humiliation has forced it to look inward, and will continue to do so, it’s 9,000 milelong coast will force it to look outward, specifically to Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Perhaps Thomas Stevens, the first person to circle the globe on a bicycle, said it best. He wrote: “The history of foreign diplomacy with China is largely a history of attempted explanations of matters which have been deliberately misunderstood.” Warning that, “One needs more discretion than military valor in dealing with China,” he then cautioned against humiliating a waking giant. This may be something Trump may want to consider when dealing with China.

Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John’s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.WN.com. You can read more of Dallas’ writings at www.beverlydarling.com and www.WN.com/dallasdarling.