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One of the days when the Olympic torch was carried through San Francisco in April 2008, Grace Wang, a Chinese freshman at Duke University discovered a gathering of pro-Tibet demonstrators faced with a much larger pro-China counterdemonstration on the university campus ground. Ms. Wang who had friends on both sides tried to get the two groups to engage in a conversation with each other. However, the Chinese students she spoke with didn’t want to hear about any criticism of the Chinese government. The next day, Ms. Wang’s photo appeared on an Internet forum for Chinese students with the words “traitor to your country” written across her forehead. In addition, Ms. Wang’s Chinese name, identification number and contact information were posted, along with directions to her parents’ apartment in Qingdao, a Chinese port city. In the coming days, photographs of the young woman with demeaning text, including ugly rumours were circulated through China’s most popular Webs and for each expansion on the internet, thousands of new insults and derogatory remarks about the woman were added to the mountain of the already accumulated insults. One web-commentator even suggested that Ms. Wang should be burned in oil. Another Chinese patriot wrote to Ms. Wang, “If you return to China, your dead corpse will be chopped into 10,000 pieces.”

Oh, yes, Chinese nationalism these days are well and alive. Two things triggered the current outburst of Chinese nationalism, one was the disturbance of the Olympic torch by pro-Tibet demonstrators and the other were pictures broadcasted by CCTV and other Chinese stations featuring selected scene-shots of the Tibet uprising, which according to CCTV was nothing than “a riot” of the worst kind. Most Chinese protesters had no problem in condoning and justifying Chinese repression in Tibet; indeed, they could not conceptualize any repression at all. Tibet was according to them an indisputable part of China and it was a province that only had benefited from Chinese money, generosity and civilization. When Western media presented a different story, boundless anger was levelled toward everyone who dares to tell any other story than the true motherland story. For many weeks a campaign against CCN and other Western media boiled back and forth on the Chinese internet, where everyone showed his patriotism by introducing new and more compelling derogatory terms about the Western media; this anger was also organized abroad, hence in Atlanta in April hundreds of agitated Chinese demonstrators were waiving Placards in the air, while shouting “CNN liar.”

What was especially striking about the behavior of many of the Chinese demonstrators in foreign cities around the globe was the way by which it resembled mob-behavior during the Cultural Revolution; could it really be possible that no one had learned anything from this dark chapter of Chinese history? Another notable feature was that Beijing unscrupulously encouraged its devotees to demonstrate all-over the free world, while pro-boycott demonstrations anywhere in China would have been beaten-up and arrested. In this way, Beijing used the freedom of the Western world to its own advances but prohibited its adversaries to enjoy the same right in China. Needless to say, this is the kind of opportunism; there is build into the very nature of the Chinese autocratic system. In South Korea, the behavior of pro-Olympic torch demonstrators was particularly rude and violent, as they engaged in throwing rocks, bottled water, steel pipes and sticks against pro-Tibet demonstrators, who they heavily outnumbered.

Chinese demonstrators attack Tibetan protestors in Seoul, South Korea, April 27, 2008.

Certainly, recent events surrounding the Olympic torch and the rebellion in Tibet have potentials of becoming a turning point in history. I tend to agree with Zhengxu Wang, a scholar at the University of Nottingham, when he says that “in essence, the Beijing Olympics, along with the global controversy it has generated, mark not the beginning, but the end of an era.” Yes, there is reasons why it is plausible that we stand in the beginning of a new era in the relationship between China and the world. The rebellion in Tibet and the corresponding debate about the torch has function as a eye-opener and turned global awareness toward the political and moral consequences of China’s rise as a global power. Free trade and cheap Chinese products are nice things but people are begining to wonder whether the political costs of the benefits are not too high? What has emerged in blogs, news-media and worldwide opinion-polls, is an increased scepticism and aversion about the nature of China’s political regime. More and more observers are concerned with the political cost of allowing a harsh authoritarian dictatorship like China to grow into such an important international economic actor. Is the democratic world digging its own grave by facilitating China with FDI, markets-options and international goodwill?

This change in public awareness and concern is by no means restricted to “the Western world,” world-wide opinion polls reveal that the sentiments span the whole globe. As a matter of fact, one of the most outspoken intellectuals against Chinese politics is Ian Boyne from Jamaica and Jamaica is not normally associated with the West in any narrow sense of the term. Mr. Boyne is a prolific writer, who has written in countless international journals spanning the political spectrum from New Left Review to the Cato Journal. Mr. Boyne is particularly concerned with what he consider as Beijing repressive behavior in Sudan and Zimbabwe but he has also offered a more general analysis of the Chinese regime’s nature and politics. In the Jamaica Gleaner, in April 20, 2008, Ian Boyne analyzes the recent events surrounding Tibet and the Olympic torch. “China, he writes, is an increasingly influential Great Power whose scorn of the western human rights tradition is a deep concern to foreign policy analysts. The recent protests in Tibet and the subsequent repression by the Chinese authorities, which sparked the Olympic torch disruptions, could advance the torch of freedom in China. Human rights activists must continue the pressure on China, with the hope that that country can tame its totalitarian impulse. … While the United States has often failed to be true to its democratic rhetoric and heritage, that country has a strong philosophical and cultural commitment to human rights and civil liberties. China is philosophically committed to a set of ideas which are obnoxious to the Western liberal tradition.

By this token, the dramatic events surrounding Tibet and the Olympic Games have given birth to a new global awareness. As a signpost it reflects a new phase of China’s rise, which is moving beyond a sheer industrial exercise and into a process, where its moral and geopolitical implications become more obvious by the day. It has increasingly become clear that China’s growth is much more than an “neutral” exercise in economic development, it has crucial negative implications for the survival of democratic and human rights in the world. As Ian Boyne correct pointed out, China’s authoritarian dictatorship is inherently obnoxious vis-a-vis the fundamental principles of human rights. Indeed, China’s power to harass and obstruct democratic principles can be seen very clearly in the way the German government has avoided to met with Dalai Lama during his recent visit in Germany; it is a concrete example of how China’s economical strenght can translate into political might. Be sure that the harassement of the German government is only a prelude for things to come.

Of course, it is not the first time in modern history, where the democratic world has been faced with an aggressively expanding autocratic regime, we are naturally all aware of the historical processes by which the democratic countries of this world combatted Nazi Germany, Japan Imperialism and the Soviet Union. However, as Robert Kagan has argued in a new book called The Return of History and the End of Dream, the battle with autocratic regimes is not over and democracies in this world need to pull themselves together and actively defend their basic principles. In this way, the idea that China simply would developed into a democracy society through sheer economic development alone is no longer a plausible proposition. Thus, the prolonged hope that China through the mechanisms of a free marked would pass into the orbit of democracy is nothing but a flimsy illusion. Indeed, the nationalistic outboost and various opinon polls indicate that the Chinese population has move significantly in an authoritarian direction. In this regard it is indicative that a new TV series in 23 episodes about the young Chairman Mao, one of the biggest mass murders in World History, has become a big hit in China, especially among university students. The ghoost of totalitarian ideologies is not far away from the Chinese unconsciouss; the government is promoting a rosy, soap-opera-like fairytale about the Chinese past and too many young Chinese is too ready to swallow it. That Mao was a criminal is too hard a reality to cope with: it is easier to live in the lies of a patriotic phantasm. George Santayana, once said, “wisdom comes with disillusion,” but the young Chinese radicals is fixed like junkies on cheap, pseudo-heroic fairtales about their own past. One need to understand that the outbust of Chinese nationalism as it exploded around the Tibet event came from the roots of the young nationalists on the Cyberspace themselves. That is, its was a genuine feeling not simply a government construct. In its own peculiar form, it does indicate that some kind of civic society do exist but a civic society that has internalized the values of their own repressors. Indeed, when one study China today it becomes increasingly clear that the country’s civic-societal paralysis is not so much the effect of regime repression as it is the victim of its own self-repression. The government is feeding this self-repression through CCTV and other tools yet fundamentally, it is a flaw from within; the flaws of nationalist mythologies that paralyze the brain. All true greatness start with a humble but persistent self-criticism but when did you last met a young Chinese nationalist who was self-critical on China’s behalf? The West is different, our hero is Nietzsche but what is Nietzsche saying; he is basically ridiculing the West, telling us that Christianity is evil, that democracy is silly, patriotism is rubbish and so on. In sum, he is telling us all kind of things we do not want to hear. But that is why he is so attractive in the West because he inspires our critical thinking. Where is Nietzsche in China these days? Literally nowhere; indeed if Nietzsche was in China he would be ridiculed, called a traitor, silented and arrested. That’s why China is in a kind of intellectual limbo today, everything deeper is sapped out of the debate either because of a cloroformistic groupthink, or by CCTV and by the police. The problems is not that China doesn’t have great intellectuals; the problem is that they do not stand at chance in China these days. What is particularily noticable about young Chinese nationalists is their obsession about being proud about China, speak about the country’s glory, etc. etc. As if real greatness had anything to do with screaming and shouting about it. Think about it: a person who goes around saying “look how great I am; I am very, very great” is most likely not the most greatest person around. Another trend among young Chinese nationalists is the idea that the world is “out to get them.” For them Tibet is just a plot in a Western conspiracy which only purpose is to weaken and humilitate China; of course, it has nothing to do with human rights; no, no, it is a part of an evil plan by CNN, CIA, the French, the Japanese and who-ever is on the hitlist of evils. And so on. When one look into the current Chinese debates on the internet and elsewhere, one get a sense of a nation still living mentality in the 15th Century or at best fighting the battle of the 19th Century. The worst thing is that they are repeating the same mistakes; then and now, it is the political system, which is the problem; but young Chinese nationalists have taboorized this idea; they can’t even raise the question. Certainly, there exist few brave exceptions in China, some real substantial people but they are depressingly few. One can only wonder what has happen to the spirit of 1989? If the current political regime continues in China, and there is no sign to the contrary, then China will emerged as an authoritarian threat to the democratic way of life and especially to human rights in places such as Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe and Tibet.

New York Times Video about Chinese Cyber-nationalism.

It is not because democracy has bad odds in the approaching struggle. Some of the major powers who determines the socio-political order of this planet are all democracies; they include the US, the EU, India, Japan, Brazil, South Korea and South Africa. Although China is a giant, the major democratics in this world is by combined numbers far bigger; so even if China is big one should not become paralyzed by its numbers. Although the road to democracy is complex and troublesome, the general tendency in modern time has been a stepwise increase of democratic countries allover the world. Yet, with a major autocratic power as China emerging this process can’t simply be taken for granted. Unless democratic countries stand up for their principles and values, they might be in for an unpleasant surprise. Nonetheless, with the exception of China most autocratic states in the world are comparatively weak, underdeveloped or highly troubled places, so even if there should emerge an authoritarian axis under the hegemony of China, it would not be an axis that was terribly strong. Nonetheless, the new authoritarian “brotherhood” is working well already, since China, is selling its advanced censorship systems of the Internet to other repressive regimes of this world. According to Joshua Kurlantzick, “already, China, Russia and Central Asian authoritarian states have issued joint communiqués denouncing the export of democracy, and have begun to protect each other from international forums like the United Nations.” Many has speculated whether there could emerged as Russia-Chinese autocratic alliance? The recent joint statement from Russia and Chína condeming the US missile shield could be seen as an important step in such a direction. However, a strong anti-democratic Russian-Chinese alliance is not very plausible for several reasons. First, Russia is importantly tied to its obligation and trade with Europe and it will have little and no interest in seriously alienating this relationship; moreover and perhaps even more important, Russia and China stand head-to-head in the strategic game about Central Asia, where the interests of two powers are fundamentally opposite.

What Tibet has signified and what the Olympic Games in August most likely will reveal is that the naivity and goodwill regarding China have gone and that a new era of skepticism will emerged. In other words, the rule of the game will change and China’s policy in Tibet, Africa, Cental Asia and elsewhere will become submitted to intensified global attention and counter-measures. At the same time a wave of protectionalism can’t be rule out, especially in the US and such a trend will weaken China’s drive. Another scenario might be that international investment will begin to flow in other directions than China. The most important step will most likely become a new intensified skepticism and criticism of China on the grass-root level of global politics. Whatever the case might be, the relationship between the world and China after Tibet and the Olympics is ripe for profound changes. World opinon brought at least Apartheid to an end, and one can just wonder whether it has other great deads to perform.

The tremendous challenge facing the new President of the US will be to define the US relationship with
China in the years ahead. Although, the struggle against Islamist fundamentalism has been a key focus on the US agenda, there is really no more important issue for the new president than the US’s China policy. Currently, there are many signs that the Chinese-US relationship will go into a new phase. China’s explosive rise as an economic power has begun to reveal its implications in global politics. In the core of China’s rise on the global scene lies an increased discord between the values of an authoritarian regime and the values of the larger world community. China’s growing powers has not only brought enhanced trade and affordable products to the world, it is also placed many multinational corporations, industrial complexes, trade associations and governments under the influence, pressure and dominance of the Chinese government. Currently this power is demonstrated in China’s pressure on the German government to not meet with Dalai Lama. The impact of China’s political power, however, is much more sublime than the question of direct pressure on foreign governments; it is embedded in the way China’s has become structurally integrated in the global business environment. Hence, those who have built million-dollars businesses in China might be refulgent to challenge the system and might comfort it in various ways. What is especially worrying is the way some business enterprises as in the case of Yahoo, Google, Cisco systems, Juniper Network, and Intel get subjugated under the political and ideological standards of China, so they in reality are doing the dirty work for the regime in the name of business, trade and prosperity. Various reports indicate the Western firms are playing an active, hands-on role in censoring information on the Chinese internet. Indeed, China is increasingly improving its capacities to hold various governments hostage within the web of trade-relations that China command. In contrast to expectations, markets-reform has strengthened autocratic structures in China rather than function as a pathway to democratic development. In this regard, it is worth noticing that Quan Li and Rafael Reuveny have argued that openness to trade does not make a dynamic contribution to institutional reforms in autocratic types of societies; indeed, it correlates negatively with democratic institutions in a wide cross-sample of regimes. Actually, Quan Li and Rafael do maintain that FDI is positively correlated with the promotion of democracy but that its effects decline in time. Inspired by the Li and Reuveny’s thesis I will like to raise the following question. The question is whether Western corporations in China at doing more harm than good in regard to the process of promoting democracy? Has multinational corporations undermined the democratic process in China rather than promoting and helping it? Have the multinational corporations in China in reality strengthened the power of the authoritarian regime by building-up its economic foundation? Even if it true that globalization and FDI promote democracy from an overall historical point of view, we need still to explain, why it has failed so utterly in mainland China. In this and in other ways, China’s new self-assured attitude in world affairs and its power to manipulate with trade-relations has placed the question of a more assertive US response to China’s global expansionism on the top list of political priorities. It is in this context that
Tibet and the Olympics might break new ground in changing the world’s awareness and direction.  

Lhadon Tetdong, the leader of the Students for a Free Tibet delivers a message to all Tibetans.

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The new US president will enter the White House at a time, when the international perception of
China is in an important stage of change. Previously, in the last 30 years, the nature of China was seen in the light of peaceful business questions; China was an underdeveloped country struggling to alleviate poverty, attracting foreign capital and building up its industrial capacities. In other words, China was seen as a text-book case for the World Bank’s vision of economic and social development, while at the same time it was appealing as a new market of 1.3 billion consumers. This was the story that was told by scholars and the media and it was a tale about international opportunities and intercultural understanding. It all concurred with China’s own PR story of international harmony and win-win situations.  

For a long time, it was believed that the change of China’s autocratic regime simply was a matter of time and developmental maturization. After all South Korea and Taiwan, and many other Asian countries had once been authoritarian regimes but as they grew and their income-bracket went up, they all became democratic countries in their own right. China it was thought; was just an echo of the same process; it would eventually also turn democratic. The classical assumption since Seymour Martin Lipset was that the growth of an educated, middle class would harbour a democratization process. All what were needed was just a little more time and a little more dialogue. Also, the prevailed idea was that although it was clear that China’s autocratic regime was a peril to its own population, it was really not a matter for international concern. The great civilizational function of business would eventually solve this intermezzo of autocratic stubbornness, since of course everyone knows that trade is promoting democracy. However, the validity of these expectations has increasingly been questioned. The truth is that despite a growing middle class in China, the repressive nature of the authoritarian system is essentially unchanged. After 30 years of reform, there is no sign that China’s autocratic system is changing at all. If anything the governmental control of the internet has only strengthen during the reign of Hu Jintao; while the harassment of dissidents has no end in sight. The genius of the Chinese authoritarian regime is that in contrast to Orwell’s 1948 vision about a futuristic aggressive totalitarian society, the autocratic rulers in Beijing has understood that a half-measured, pseudo-openness with functional markets implications is a much stronger promoter for an authoritarian regime than a “stone-age,” full-scale Stalinist model. By this token, the hope of a “political spring” for China has so far been blatantly disappointed. On the international scene, China has increasingly been exposed by the international media and human rights activists for its political transactions with “client-states” and other actors in the world. Especially, China has pursued an obstructionist policy in the UN Security Council and effectively blocked resolutions that would deal decisively with genocide and abuses by its clients in Sudan and Burma. On the international scene, what is emerging is a China which constantly disregards, and violates human rights in its dealings with autocratic regimes of the most despicable type. Indeed, as David Blair has said, “The harsh truth is that Beijing has become the ally of choice of Africa’s worst rulers.” By this token, recent events in Tibet, Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe have increasingly showed that the nature of China’s autocratic regime is an international problem; it is not simply a matter of “internal affairs.”  When a major state like China remains autocratic, it will eventually challenge basic human rights and democratic values all-over the world.  

Although polls might vary, it is still safe to say that the American public has increasingly begun to take a critical view of China. In an opinion pull from April 2006 conducted by WPO 80% of Americans said that they had an unfavourable view of China’s system of government, while three out of four had an unfavourable view of “how China uses military power and the threat of force.” Americans also take an unfavourable view of the Chinese leader Hu Jintao who ranked even lower than their profound dislike for the Russian president Vladimir Putin. In May 1999, a Gallup opinion poll measuring Americans opinion on China’s position on human rights revealed that a strong majority of 69% declare that China did a “bad job” on the issue. When Gallup back in august 1995 asked American citizens to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 “the level of individual freedom granted to its citizens” by China, only 12% gave a response above 5. In April 2006, when the Americans were polled whether they believed that China in the future would become more democratic, only 24% said that China would become more democratic, while 49% believed it would “stay about the same” and 18% was of the opinion that China would get less democratic. In a poll conducted by CCGA (Chicago Council on Global Affairs) released in October 2006, 47% of Americans view the rise of China economic power as negative while 46% regarded it as positive. However, when it came to the question about China’s rise in military power no less than 75% of the Americans found that it was a negative thing, while only 19% regarded it as positive. In a recent poll by WPO, ten out of 15 Americans said that they did not trust China “to act responsible in the world.” On the issue whether the rise of China was positive or negative, 33% of Americans thought it was negative, will only 9% believe it was positive, while the majority of those asked took a middle position. The declining confidence in China was by no means an US phenomenon, a Pew poll in 2007 show that a favourable opinion about China had drop from 65% to 49% in Britain, from 60% to 47% in France and from 56% to 34% in Germany. According to Pew worldwide polls in the years from 2005-2007 China’s image felt significantly in most countries worldwide, in India a favourable view of China felt from 56 to 46% and in Turkey, it felt from 40 to 25%. In this regard, it is most likely that the Tibet rebellion and the Olympic torch relay have made China’s unfavourable polls even more unfavourable. In general, people all-over the world is increasingly favouring democratic values and fundamental civic rights, despite whatever rumours to the contrary. As Fareed Zakaria said in a recent interview in the Charlie Rose show, the future do not belong to China, “because no one want to live in a Chinese world.” 

No one, not even China can ignore public world opinion, if not for any other reasons, then because the people who are reflected in the world’s public opinion polls are those consumers who are establishing China’s economic might. And although major global consumer-boycotts are rare; the case of the Apartheid regime in South Africa certainly shows that such kind of boycotts (in conjunction with other types of pressures) can be very effective. Polls have shown that China is very sensitive to widespread reports about China’s unsafe food, toxic toothpaste and dangerous toys. A NBC/Wall Street Journal pool in September 2007 showed that 65% of Americans had little or no confidence that food imported from China is safe to eat. In this regard it is significant that various pools from WPO shows that China’s governments policy and the regime’s very nature is at odd with many of the basic values and ideas that are globally shared by most people. For example, an international public opinion pool shows that the majority of people in the world are against that governments limit internet access. A recent pool of Western and Asian countries show a strong public criticism of Chinese policy in Tibet. Recent polls have also show global support for freedom of the press. In these and other basic standpoints, China’s political system and its values stands in strong contrast with worldwide values shared by a clear majority of the world’s population. Indeed, the irony is that the more China increases its economic might, the more it will depend on the global consumers’ ideas and preferences. In reality, China has become more vulnerable, not less vulnerable in this regard. The efficiency of consumer-boycotts is not necessary statistically high but in a brand-obsessed world, companies are ready to go out of their ways to keep their image untarnished and this is also to a large extent true for nations.

One important question is how the American president candidates are viewing the challenge that the US faces in regard to China. In the first Democratic primary presidential debate in 2008, Obama revealed some of his key values on the China issue, when he said: “Obviously China is rising, and it is not going away. They’re neither our enemy nor our friend. They’re competitors. But we have to make sure that we have enough military-to-military contact and forge enough of a relationship with them that we can stabilize the region.” In a strong statement in the middle of March, Obama condemned Beijing’s crackdown on Tibet. “I am deeply disturbed, said Obama, by reports of a crackdown and arrests ordered by Chinese authorities in the wake of peaceful protests by Tibetan Buddhist monks.” Hillary Clinton on her part has on several occasions raised concern that US huge trade-deficit eventually might lead to an “erosion of [US] economic sovereignty.” America’s economic well-being has become too dependent on what happen in China, Ms. Clinton has maintained. In a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, Ms. Clinton has warned against a situation, where foreign countries owe too much of US foreign debt. About China’s role in that regard, Ms. Clinton has said, “As we have been running trade and budget deficits, they have been buying our debt and in essence becoming our banker.” Clinton has also been concerned about what she has called “the erosion of America’s defence industrial base. In her recent campaign in Indiana, she brought concrete focus on this issue by highlighting the case of a company called Magnequench, which once had two factories in Indiana. This company, which was bought by the Chinese, used to make high-performance magnets used in precision-guided weapons. As Ms. Clinton phased the problem in a speech face to face with her voters, “I’m not comfortable with the fact that we now have to buy magnets for our bombs from China.” At a recent interview on the George Stephenopoulos show on May 4, 2008, Ms. Clinton continued this frame of argument and thus stating that “manufacturing is key to the strength of an economy” and that the US government should no longer provide tax incentives and benefits to firms to move operation overseas. 

John McCain’s view on China has been featured a several occasions; his basic policy is cautious yet he tends more often to emphasize the defence of democratic values than other candidates in the race. The US should not oppose China’s emergence as an influential power but the US should maintain a strong military present in East Asia and its alliance with Japan and other Asian countries in an effort to promote American interest and values. In an essay in Foreign Affairs in November 2007, McCain declared, “Until China moves toward political liberalization, our relationship will be based on periodically shared interests rather than the bedrock of shared values.” In a March 26, 2008 speech, McCain argued that China ought “to isolate pariah states such as Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe” rather than comfort and help them. McCain has also said, “When China threatens democratic Taiwan with a massive arsenal of missiles and warlike rhetoric, the United States must take note.” In the same month, McCain denounced China’s crackdown on Tibet protesters and called on China to “ensure peaceful protest is not met with violence, to release monks and other detained for peacefully expressing their views and to allow full outside access to Tibet.” In the courtyard of the French presidential Elysee Palace, McCain added further comments on Tibet stating that the events in Tibet was harmful to “the image of China in the world.” In a statement in March 18, 2008, McCain has assessed, “The unfolding tragedy in Tibet should draw the attention of the entire world. I deplore the violent crackdown by Chinese authorities and the continuing oppression in Tibet of those merely wishing to practice their faith and preserve their culture and heritage. I have listened carefully to the Dalai Lama and am convinced he is a man of peace who reflects the hope and aspirations of Tibetans.” In addition, McCain said that he would not attend the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics if he was President unless China changed its objectionable policies.

It so happens that the Beijing Olympic in August will take place at a time, where the US president election will be in a very crucial phase in one of the months before the election in November 4, 2008. This mean that any major protests or Chinese crackdown in Tibet during the Beijing Olympics or any dramatic events associated with China’s special allies in Sudan, Burma and Zimbabwe will reflect directly into the mood of American voters and therefore directly into the stakes involved in the American President election. The entire world will be watching how China will react and American voters will be in the frontline of those who will take notice. In other words, the possibility that the Chinese Olympics and the US President elections will become directly related will be very high. Indeed, any major public backlash over the Beijing Olympics or events associated with Chinese policies will force both candidates of the US President elections to produce very forceful statements in order not to appear weak on issues in focal eye of nation attention. It is therefore almost inevitable that the US president election during the months of the Olympics will be closely tied to the Olympic event and to the behavior of China during that period. In this way, the Olympics game will most likely be able to shape both China and US future in ways none of the two giant had envisioned or expected.     

Washington’s attitude to China’s rise has long been an ambivalent question and the debate about the issue has been characterized by a peculiar low-key tone, where one have vaguely spoken about “constructive dialogue,” while downplaying the opportunistic sides of China’s behavior. Hence, in a recent article in The New Republic, Joshua Kurlantzick criticized the Bush administration for meagre record of combating human rights abuses in China. It is also symptomatic for the current American mood about China that people are talking about a “post-American world” as if China’s rise was some kind of quasi-fatalistic event. Despite occasional debates about “the loss of jobs” or the need for “intellectual property rights,” not much political passion was invested in the issue. What have been characteristics for US policy on China has been more signified by what has not happen than what actually has occurred. Famous in this regard what Henry Kissinger’s remark that the Tiananmen Square massacre was an “internal affair.” Most observers including Henry Kissinger has considered its rise as “evidently” or irrefutable and the main consensus among politicians in Washington has been a very cautious but still well-intentioned attempt to “engage” China as a stakeholder in the international community rather than contain or confront it. This attitude of wait and see, which has characterizes US’s China policy has been feasible not only because it has nurtured international business interests but because it to an important degree has been replicated from China’s side. China has deliberately shied away from any real confrontation with the US. With a few exceptions like the issue of Taiwan, the Chinese way is what Basil Liddell Hart has termed “the indirect approach.” So far China has attempted to do the easy things and promote its long-term goals through the mechanisms of its economic growth-processes and it has done this with considerable success. Yet, what is crucial in this regard is that the expansion of Chinese political power also implies the strengthening of autocratic and anti-democratic forces in the world.

For various reasons, the world might well be at a cross-road in regard to its interaction with China. The events taken place around Tibet and the Olympics will most likely provide a gateway to a different approach. The declining popularity of China in world opinion might be indicative for the same trend. In this context the focus on China’s human rights might be seen in the light of an increasing awareness about the dark side of China’s success story. By this token, issues like Tibet, Burma and China’s behavior in Africa will not just go away and they will remain as a dark cloud over China’s politics in the coming years. Viewed in a broader prospective this change in political behavior shall be seen in the context of new technologies, new information-approaches, and new organisational structures, which tend to empower civic society as an agency for change. As a matter of fact, there has never been so much global debate on this planet as in the last 10 years primarily thanks to the Internet. It is in this light we shall codify factors such as citizen journalism, blogs and internet videos, which increasingly define a new media reality as tool for well-organized political interest groups, like in the case of Students for a free Tibet. This change in the global communication pattern has sometimes been called “the bloggers democratic revolution” but in its essence, it is not only a change of the pattern of communication but it is also re-codifing the distributed of power in the world.

China’s Olympic Games is increasingly in the spotlight of the international attention. China’s authoritarian praxis has begun to throw a dark shadow over the Olympic events. As the Economist has commented, “Whatever hopes there were that this August Beijing Olympics would be a festival of fun and friendship … are fading fast.” The protests against the Olympic torch have triggered a worldwide debate about the China’s dictatorship, Tibet and human rights. Also China’s politics in Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe and Tibet has come under increased international scrutiny. It has all brought the question about politics, business and moral values into the center of global debate.    

China’s expansive development has been built on a hidden clause; it was built on the refutation of Francis Fukuyama’s basic thesis that the future belong to democracy. In this way, a central tension prevails in the way China has attempted to unlock the capacities of an open modern society while maintaining a harsh dictatorship as its political regime. China is a nation of high ambitions; it is determined to get a “place in the sun.” But in order to achieve it high goals, it will have to facilitate a process of nation-building that is in correspondence with the basic laws of societal development. It is in this regard that the prevailing institutions of Chinese society might pose a serious obstacle. In other words, a major contradiction exists between the demand of socio-technological process that China is pursuing and limitations of its political system. So far, the great economic success of China might have concealed the full implications of that issue but this will change as the developmental process in China is progressing. In this regard, China is “slowly” proceeding from a “traditional” type of standardized manufactory production-system into the orbit of a so-called knowledge based society and the logic of the latter might prove to be quite different from the momentum of the former.  

In this essay, we shall discuss both the moral, political and socio-developmental implications of the schizophrenic division between political structure and socio-economic dynamics that characterize China. On the ethical side, by maintaining a repressive political system, the Chinese are challenging the moral standards of the world, at least that part of the world who is devoted to democracy and human rights. (The postmodernist claim that these standards are particularly “western values” (or “eurocentric,” as the California clique like to call it) are insulting millions of Indians, Africans, Arabs and others who are equally and personally committed to the defence of such values). So far the world has given China the benefit of doubt, since the emerging of free, democratic institutions and factors of human rights have been regarded as a question of time. Yet, there is increasing signs that China is stocked with its harsh, repressive system and as China’s power-position is growing in the world, the conflict between the world’s democratic societies and China will eventually unfold and increase. Through the case of Sudan, Burma, Zimbabwe and Tibet, it has become clear that the democratic world and China do not see eye to eye. More and more international commentators have asked whether China is a responsible stakeholder on the world scene. The issue has also torched the American President election. Barack Obama has said that he is deadly disturbed about the Chinese crackdown in Tibet. In this sense, the Olympics might prove to be the galvanizing moment in this process. Thus, the Chinese Olympics is likely to go down in history as a turning point for international opinion but not necessary in the way the Chinese government had imagined or would wish for. The irony in this regard is that the regime itself has set the stage for the most intensive criticism of the regime’s repressive nature in the last thirty years.    

Yet until recently China has pretended that the nature of its political system had no implication or impact on the Middle Kingdom’s socio-economical and cultural integration into the world. Like in the case of Taiwan, China seemed to have aimed of a concept of the world, in which the future of the world should be characterized by one world but two political systems. The reality, however, is that the globalization of the world is ultimately one, also from a political point of view. For example, people in Burma and Tibet cannot be both free and unfree; in the end of the day, the specific characters of political values make a real difference in people’s life. Certainly, a global world cannot operate on two radical different political principles without ultimately end in a point of disaster. There is no way such an arrangement would be able to work. Yet, so far China’s implicit assumption has been that it is possible to continue the process of globalization under a schizophrenic framework, where it utilizes the benefit of a free market system, while depriving its citizens for political rights. However, the flaws of this assumption have become increasingly explicit, especially revealed through the protests surrounding the Olympic Games and the torch relay. The trouble China is facing in this regard has only begun. Also, what is at stake is much more than Tibet and the Olympics; since, in the core of the matter lies in irreconcilable contractions between the archaic mentality of China’s political regime and the ethical standards of the modern world. Although, the Chinese Olympic slogan speaks about “one world, one dream,” the opposite is most clearly the case, China’s violation of human rights creates a divided world; a world separated by fundamentally different moral values.    

If we look at China latest national record on human rights the record is not encouraging. The claim that
China has become increasingly free needs certainly to be taken with a grant of salt. Indeed, the government’s control and crack down of dissidents has only increased since Hu Jintao took office. Especially, the control of the internet has increase ten fold since then, while, lately events in Tibet have revealed the regime’s real character. Also, Human Right Watch has just issued a 142 pages report, which in details document how the Chinese regime intimidates and harasses lawyers in China. Naturally, in order to introduce elements of a free market-system, China has allowed certain elements of freedom to emerge but they are like carefully placed pearls on a structure that is inherently unfree itself. For the naïve observer, it might seem that China has come a long way toward freedom but a careful look reveals a different picture. Things have become more “open” but openness and real freedom is not the same; a prisoner might be allowed more walks in the garden but it doesn’t change his status as a captive. A helot in Sparta had more freedoms than a real slave but it didn’t mean that he had real command over his life. The Chinese government’s attitude to freedom is characterized by a double-strategy; it allows all kinds of benign freedoms to prevail while the most central freedoms (like political freedoms rights and press-freedom) is repressed and forbidden. Also, China is a country, where there exist no real separation between the political and the juridical system. On the issues, where freedom is most essential for Man, there has been no breakthrough in China, so in the end of the day there is not terribly much to celebrate. (One can only be enthusiastic about the progress of freedom in China if one has a very low opinion about of what the Chinese people actually deserves. If the Chinese people deserve the very best, then there is no reason to be happy). A recent report from Reporter without Borders has shown that China has one of the harshest censorship of the freedom of expression of all country in the world. Reporters without Borders consider China to be one of the least free countries in the world. In the Reporters without Borders Annual World Press Freedom Index of 2005, China ranked as number 159 out of 167 places. Also, China leads the world in capital punishment. In 2004 it was estimated that roughly 90% of all executions in the world took place in China. In year 2008, BBC News announced that China had what it called “the gold record” for executions. Two of the accounts that were punished with death in China was the advocacy of separatism and to help Tibetan refugees over the border. In general, no one in China is allowed to criticize the Chinese government or call for a democratic Chinese republic without facing jail and severe punishment. Chinese people today have the freedom to choose whether they want to eat in McDonald or KFC but the real core of freedom is effectively denied. The same pattern is reproduced in China’s dealing with the outside world. Generally, China is siding with many dictatorships around the world, including that of Burma, where China backed the country’s ruling junta on its bloody crackdown on the opposition. Chinese politics in Sudan and Zimbabwe reveal the same kind of pattern; China is always on the side of dictatorship. It is hardly necessary to mention that all the regimes China is supporting, including Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe, have a terrible record on human rights. It also goes without saying that China had sold weapon to all three regimes. In 2006, Amnesty International characterized China as one of the world’s most secretive and irresponsible arms exporters. China has persistently refused to sign any multilateral agreement in order to prevent weapon to be used for serious human rights violation.  

However, China’s repression of the internet has not stood alone, Western capitalist firms like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google has participated actively (in contrast to their proclaimed values) in facilitating China with its technical tools of repression. Yahoo has provided China with private and confidential information about its users. Yahoo’s information to the Chinese government leads to the arrest of a Chinese journalist by the name of Shi Tao. Yahoo’s action cost a 10 years prison sentence for Shi Tao. In August 28, 2007, Yahoo was sued for its implications in the arrest of Shi Tao and in November the same years Yahoo settled with Shi for an undisclosed sum. The Shi Tao case is not unique; three other intellectuals have been jailed in China as a result of Yahoo’s data transferred to the Chinese authorities. Ever since this event, public perception of Yahoo has change and Yahoo has been hunted by an image-problem. Google on its part has launched a censored version of its international search machine in China. In this way, a critique of China should certainly be supplied by a critic of the ethical standards of many Western firms.  

Indeed, the events surrounding the Olympic torch is revealing for many things. First, the worldwide reaction to Chinese crackdown in Tibet should worry Chinese decision-makers, for two reasons: First, it generally shows that issues of human rights have increasingly become an object for the watchful eye of global observation and in a modern, highly integral world; “internal affairs” become easily an object of global debate. Second, it shows that China’s socio-economic interests are at stake, when political issues become focus of worldwide attention and indignation. Indeed, the Chinese approach for a boycott of Carrefour, which has been circulating among Chinese internet users revealed how fast a political issue can translate into a question of consumer-boycott. Frankly speaking, it is China that will suffer most if it eventually should be faced with world-wide consumer-boycott. Although China has grown enormously, it is ultimately conditioned on international consumer-accept. History shows that global economic tendencies and preferences can go through very drastic changes in comparatively short time. The growth miracle in China is not guaranteed by Angels or divine intervention. In the end of the day, things that are made in China can as well be made in India, the Philippines and Brazil; there is no ultimate logical reason why China should remain the darling of Multinational Corporations and global consumers. However, implausible it might appear in the current moment, such pattern could certainly change. There is really no objective necessity, which deems that China should remain the assemble hub of the world or the focal investment point in the world in the way it has been the case for the last decades.  

One can understand that many Chinese are caught in the middle; they are proud of being Chinese, proud of the country’s latest achievements and they have been looking forward to the Olympics as an occasion, there they could show the best of themselves and the best of the country under happy and joyful circumstances. Most of the Chinese has also been brought up in the belief that Tibet is a “natural” part of China and they are emotionally attracted to the idea of an unified China, in such a way, so any idea about a sovereign Tibet appears shocking and bizarre for them. Submitted to the relentless propaganda from CCTV and other media, they tend to take a narrow, patriotic view of many things. Generally, Chinese people are very refulgent to criticize their government, which might be a case of a misplaced idea of patriotism. For many of them, the Western critique of the Olympics and the rebellion in Tibet came as a blitz from nowhere; they have difficulties to comprehend and understand it. When their government tells them that the criticism of the Olympics is a “Western media smear campaign,” they find it easy to join the bandwagon of such an explanation. This is not simply because of government manipulation but rather because they are mentality inclined to be extremely “defensive” and on guard of any attack of the perceived new national dignity, which they associate with the governments (supposed or real) socio-economic achievements, which give them a football match kind of self-satisfaction. When they watch the selected screenings of the events from Tibet; they will tend instinctively to feel solidarity with those Han-Chinese who were harassed or even killed by the angry Tibet crowd. Naturally, since some of the events in Tibet had elements of ethnic-based brutality, it is clear that the Chinese can find sufficient evidence for their point of view. The Tibetan rebels are monsters and rioters of the worst kind from this version of the story. Whatever, the credit for this point of view, it tends to miss the larger picture. Most rebellions in history have often had some unpleasant sides but it doesn’t mean that they are unjustified. Because some Tibetans have acted violently and committed inhuman acts, it doesn’t justify China’s occupation of Tibet; it doesn’t justify the Chinese blindness toward their own government or justify the Chinese police murders of Tibet protesters in the Sichuan province and elsewhere.  

The Tibetans has not only suffered from Chinese occupation since 1951 but they are worried about the increased inflow of Han-Chinese in Tibet, which they see as a threat to their life-form. They has also experienced that some of the best jobs in Tibet has gone to Han-Chinese. Many Han-Chinese in Tibet function as a better educated upper class, many of whom are there in a rush to make money and the socio-cultural gap between them and the Tibetans are huge. In the socio-economic context of Tibet, the Han-Chinese is the ruling strata, who direct, order and shape the future for the Tibetan masses, who tend to become second class citizens in their own country. Also it is symbolic that most of the workers working on Chinas prestige project, the new Qinghai-Tibet railway were all Han-Chinese, there was almost no Tibetans employed. Since, the Tibetans often was poorly educated and trained, Han-Chinese was brought up to Lhasa, when positions should be filled out. Tibet is in reality a very poor, underdeveloped area characterized by subsistence agriculture and its boosting “grow” is artificially created, since the economy are heavily subsidized from the Central government in Beijing. The economic improvement in the regions is often translated into opportunities for Han-Chinese and not for the local population. Tibetans fear that with the opening of the new Qinghai-Tibet railway more Han-Chinese will flow into Tibet and the Tibetans in the end will become a minority in the own country. Ngawang Woeber, head of a group of former Tibetan political prisoners criticize the new railway the following way, “This railway will have devastating consequences for our people as Beijing tries to overwhelm our population, dilute our culture and exploit our land.” According to several sources Beijing is current trying to relocate 250.000 Tibetans (about one-ten of the population) without their consent under the disguise of a so-called “the comfortable housing program,” where people are supposed to be moved from scattered rural hamlets to new “socialist villages” where they are ordered to built new houses on their own expense (where the government provides loans that only cover one-fifth of the building price); the official explanation from the central government is that these uprooted Tibetans now better can join the benefits of modern civilization while critics highlight that it gives the Chinese police-state a better opportunity to establish a tight control of a part of the Tibetan population that eluded them before. The new “comfortable settlements” will be placed in a uniform pattern of cookie-cutter houses in regular intervals as pearls along a highway. In this and in other ways, the original population in Tibet has been witness to how Beijing is decided everything and they feel humiliated and helpless. In reality, the Tibetans have become passive bystanders to their own future. As a matter of fact, the so-called “modernization” of Tibet is going very fast. Lhasa is hit by a major building boom. Thus, the streets in downtown Lhasa are getting many new stores owned by Han-Chinese, while old historical buildings are demolished. It is all part of speedy modernist transformation designed by Beijing over the heads of the local population. The result has been a growing anger and resentment among the original people of Tibet. Indeed, it is worth recalling that one of the Chinese leaders who have the greatest responsibility for the development in Tibet is Hu Jintao. In this capacity as the former Communist Party chief of Tibet, Hu was directly responsible for the crackdown in early 1989 in Tibet. In 1989, Tibet protesters held the center of Lhasa for three days and the massacre that followed resulted in many deaths, some (unverified) reports speak about several hundreds while Amnesty International mention 60-80 people killed. These people were killed on Hu Jintao’s order, since he posed martial law on the city. The few Han-Chinese there was killed for some weeks ago during the Lhasa rebellion should at least historically be compare with the many Tibetans who was killed on the direct order of Hu Jintao in 1989. In general, the numbers of Tibetans who had died and suffer under Communist rule since 1951 are staggering. It is certainly important to keep all this in mind, when one judge the way CCTV and The People Daily have been focusing exclusively on a few Han-Chinese who was killed during the uprising in March, while proclaiming this as “the truth” of the event. Of course, independently thinking Chinese is entitled to their views of Tibet but they should also try to show human compassion for the Tibet side of the story. Why are the Tibetans so angry? Is it simply because they are monsters or manipulated by Dalai Lama or might there be other kinds of reasons? While issues of “belonging” always can be discussed, it is still safe to said that the Chinese claim to Tibet are very superficial; they have generally no more claim on Tibet than Russia have to Poland or Estonia. Russia have occupied Poland countless of times; does this really make Poland Russian?     

What is interesting is that the Olympics was supposed to become China’s biggest modern propaganda story yet it has already have turned into a major media-fiasco for China. The international community’s good feelings about the Chinese Olympic project are slowly changing from a positive mood to a sceptical and negative one. A new violent protest in Tibet in the middle of the Olympic Games will have disastrous consequences for Beijing’s global image, which already have been significantly damaged. But there is little Beijing can do to avoid new protests, so Beijing are struggling with a propaganda problem that most likely will go from bad to worse. Indeed, it is the first time since the Tiananmen massacre that the Chinese regime has been seriously challenged. The regime has answered the crisis by given free play for Chinese nationalism and to start a smear campaign against the Western press. Yet what has happen in the same time is that China has China-nized the Olympic Games. Its official news-program only show enthusiastic Chinese crowds with Communist totalitarian flags cheering the torch where-ever it goes. In this way, the Chinese Communist media are slowly turning the Olympics into a sheer Chinese, authoritarian celebration, so that even the crowds cheering the torch in Japan are Chinese. Also in Australia was a huge Chinese expatriate population mobilized and stole the center of the cheering but what is the point? Is Australia suppose to be Chinese? It is a strange way to celebrate an international event! In this way, the Olympics are turning into a sheer Chinese nationalistic manifestation, where the rest of the world is only staffage. It is quite a strange way to speak about “One world; One dream.”  Right now the Chinese government might feel the warm from a boost of nationalism from its own people but it might also open-up for strong confrontations during the Olympic Games in front of thousands of international cameras in ways that might multiple the image-damage the Chinese government already have suffered. All this raises some compelling questions. Why participate in an event that already has turned into a Chinese nationalist self-celebration? Why become applauders in a repressive regime’s propaganda-show? What if it was Hitler’s Third Reich and not China who had the Olympics in August? Would the Danish primer still participate in the event “for the sake of sport”?    

The Olympic Games in Beijing and the development in Tibet have been intensively debated in Denmark. It has especially been debated if the Danish government should boycott the opening of the Olympic Games. The Danish situation is the following, half the population is now in support of a boycott of the opening of the Olympic Games in China, while the other half want to attain the Olympics in order to use the occasion for a critical dialogue. Although there might be differences about what tactic that is the best to pursue, there exists an overall strong criticism of China’s abuse of human rights in the Danish population. Also many Danes have voiced the opinion that it was a mistake to grant China the Olympics and that only democratic countries ought to be given the Olympics in the future. In an interesting essay, Lisbeth Knudsen, the chef-editor of the Danish newspaper, Berlingske Tidende has used her blog to condemn China’s horrible human rights record but has at the same time argued that the Danish talk about an Olympic boycott is hypocritical since we are criticizing the Chinese one the one hand while buying Chinese import goods for 6-7 billion dollars annually, while at the same time Danish firms are investing billions of dollars in China. Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen, a prominent member of the Danish radical-left Party “Enhedslisten” has argued that a boycott of the opening ceremony in Beijing is far from sufficient. “Denmark is in need of a much more radical showdown with Denmark’s relation to China and other states that violate the basic human rights of their citizen.” China is a one-party dictatorship, where there exists no legal opposition, she maintains and criticizes the Danish government for what she called double standards, since it let its business relations with China corrupt its moral standpoint vis-à-vis China. The Danish People’s Party, the third biggest party in the Danish parliament, has on their part condemned what they call China’s cultural genocide in Tibet and supports the Tibet people’s rebellion against Chinese repression. One of the leaders of the party, Kristian Thulesen Dahl has strongly appealed to the Danish government to boycott the Olympic Games.      

The real dilemma in the current situation for China lies not only in its increasing confrontation with world opinion on the issue on Tibet, Burma, Sudan and human rights. A fundamental dilemma lies in the inherent contradiction between China’s dream of becoming a “great power” and the socio-cognitive implications of its political regime. The Chinese dream of greatness is undermine by the structural consequences of its own system. In order to understand this issue, we should return to the argument articulated forcefully by Francis Fukuyama in this well-known work The End of History and the Last Man. Fukuyama’s book is based on a basic assessment of Hegel, who claim that freedom is the secret “code” of history. (Anyone interested should read: George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, Cambridge University Press, 1975). Based on various empirical facts about the correlated between political democracy and advanced modern economies, Fukuyama concludes that liberal democratic systems are the natural vehicle for economic and cultural progress in the world. Fukuyama also stresses that it was liberal democratic countries that prevailed in the struggle against Nazism and Communism. It goes without saying that the structural “logarithms” between development, culture and regime forms are hideously complex, and I should be the last to claim that it is a one-dimensional, simple, correlation, yet, some basic factors of world-history and especially the numbers of democratic systems among the most advanced nations of the world certainly provide substance to the argument that there is a strong correlate between democracy (in both its political and social meaning) and the factor of socio-technological development. There might be a few cases like the Third Reich, which appears as some mind-boggling exceptions but the main trend and the key correlate are well established in this case. And on this ground, we should certainly say that Fukuyama’s general argument appear quite valid. What does this mean? This means that it is implausible and most likely impossible that China can reach its full potential under an authoritarian regime. This also raise questions about the structural prerequisites for China’s current development; although the authoritarian regime have been able to prevail by liberating certain aspects of society, it doesn’t necessary mean that an authoritarian political system can mobilize China’s societal capacities sufficiently efficient at a later point in the process. Indeed, one can already question whether the authoritarian regime has been the best platform for China’s development in the last couple of decades. Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator of The Financial Times has presented this issue with a sharp edge, when he wrote an article, where he asked the question: “Why is China growing so slowly?” When Chinese people today are amazed about the speed by which the country has progress since 1978, they might in stead ask themselves the question: How much faster could China have developed if it had been a political democracy? Can an authoritarian regime, like the Chinese really actualize the full potentials of its people? That democracy is much more efficient to establish a balance and harmonious society is clear from one striking example from modern Chinese authoritarian rule. Hence, the regime’s one-child policy has resulted in a major disaster. The outcome of the regime’s one-child policy has resulted in a situation, where there now is 120 Chinese boys for every 100 Chinese girls and indeed, this correlate will only get worse in time. In the worst province in China in this regard there are 157 boys for each 100 girls. This is a failure of the current regime and its politics in a tremendous degree. What is specially revealing in this regard is the current regime’s lack of appropriate action and its stubbornness in regard to admitting that the policy is wrong. This perverted results of the regime’s one-child policy has been known for very long but the government has done nothing about it, they have not challenged the policy, they have not admitted their mistake; they has just continued their basic policy as if they themselves was beyond error and beyond criticism. However, this kind of societal disaster can only happen in an autocratic regime of China’s type and it reveals better than a thousand words, the flaws and the inefficiency of this kind of regime. In a democracy, this kind of disaster would never have happen because the voters would have reacted and voted the politicians of such perverted politics out of office. The Chinese one-child policy disaster clearly shows the superiority of democracy over an autocratic system because an autocratic system lacks the fundamental feedback mechanism, which can counter-act the implications of policy-disasters.  The current regime sees themselves as the guardians of “harmonious” society but how “harmonious” is a society with 120 boys for 100 girls? Indeed, before long there will be 150 million Chinese men without a girl; that is certainly extremely “harmonious.”  

Said by other words, the dynamic of industrial progress is not isolated from the development of civic society and a civic society impaired by the behavior of authoritarian regimes lead not only to less industrial efficiency but also lead to societal disasters like the one-child policy in China. Such societal disasters are not “accidental,” they are an outcome of the authoritarian mentality and it is linked to the way in which authoritarian societies pervert their civil societies. Indeed, the essence of Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis in his famous Democracy in America lies exactly in his brilliant capacity to understand the dynamics of a free civil society as he observed how the emerging American pioneer society embraced a new spirit of citizen participation with a dynamic out of the ordinary. Indeed, the remarkable development of the US, who today is the only real superpower of the world, has certainly vindicated Tocqueville’s original assessment. Indeed, what was true about the developmental potentials of America in the days of Tocqueville is equally true about the developmental logic, which characterizes the modern days’ hyper-advanced society. In the end of the days, the factors that establish the difference between the winners and losers of nation-building remain fundamentally the same. By this token, I would claim that it was the same principles that intrigued Tocqueville, which gave the “primitive” Germanic tribes the upper hand against the Romans during those processes, which eventually turned into the early Middle Ages and that the fall of Rome had a lot to do with the fact that the Roman Empire to an important extent was build on a refutation of such principles.  

From the point of view of this equation, it is rather plausible that China under the current political regime will be unable to develop the sufficient foundation of a modern society that is necessary to facilitate its high ambition about socio-economic development. China’s quest for an “innovative society” wills most likely run into frustration, since China’s civil society will lack that “critical mass” that only a critical and democratic society can provide. China want to become modern but how modern can you become if you are ruled by a police-state. A truly modern person is one with personal and political integrity, a person who can vote, you can argue freely and whose integrity is supported by a web of political and civil rights. In this regard, politically, the Chinese are still in a rudimentary stage; they have no real rights or real political integrity. The reality is that the Chinese are not free citizens in control over themselves and their own destiny; they are control by a political clique, they never have elected and to whom they have no moral or political obligations. In this way, the modern Chinese’s situation is very much like a Helot, since he is the habitant in a society where he is systematically deprived for higher citizens’ rights and prerogatives. But this is not only a social tale; it is also a tale with cognitive functions. In reality, Man is a totality of his social and political life and the political system as a participatory gestalt is an inherent and crucial part of the cognitive institutional processes of any society. If this dimension is lacking no society can function optionally or be able to reach the higher league of international competition. One cannot take the political dimension out of a man’s life without cripple him cognitively. In this way, China’s political regime becomes a stumbling block for its own aim. China’s idea that it can move into modernity while keeping the framework of an archaic autocratic system will eventually prove fatal for the future of China itself. It is highly unlikely that history has any free lunch in that regard.   

China policy and assistance to Africa have in later years got into increased focus of international attention. Africa has become a key element in China’s hunt for energy and minerals, while at the same time the continent has increasingly become a brick in an even higher global game, which the rulers in
Beijing are pursuing. In this essay, I will offer an interpretation of some of the circumstances and elements, which characterized China’s approach in its Africa strategy. In this essay, it will use the term “Africa” as shorthand for sub-Sahara Africa.  

In year 2000 China established a new vehicle in its Africa policy, that is, it established the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) that is an institution controlled by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the purpose of coordinating Chinese political objective in Africa. In 2006 China got one step further in this process at the FOCAC Summit in Beijing in November 2006, China announced the creation of a US$ 5 billion China-Africa development funds, however, even if it is called a “development fund,” it is often simply used to finance the entry of Chinese firms into the African economy. A part of China’s proclaimed plan for its Africa policy is to establish five preferential trade and industrial zones for Chinese business entry in Africa. These zones are proposed to be established in Zambia, Mauritius, Egypt, Nigeria and Tanzania. Money diverted toward these projects is often called “foreign aid” in the Chinese vocabulary.  The type of Chinese aid to Africa has so far taken shape of grants, interest-free loan and concessional loans. By mid-2007, China’s EXIM Bank (Export-Import Bank of China), the main vehicle in this process had financed 300 projects in Africa. The EXIM bank was founded in 1994 and is current the world third largest credit agency. About 80 percent of the banks investment in Africa has been in infrastructure projects such as railways, dams, thermal power plants, oil facilities and copper mines.   

An original stimulus for China’s new interest in Africa is certainly its thirst for energy; indeed, the main bulk of Chinese investment in Africa is investment in various gas and oil projects. It is clear that the key countries of China’s interest in Africa so far have been typical resource-rich countries such as Angola, Sudan, Nigeria and Zambia. However, it is important to realize that China’s interest in Africa is going beyond questions of oil and minerals, however, important these factors might appear in the moment. In this way, Africa has increasingly become an important part of China’s long-term, global positioning game in which oil and minerals are only means to an end. As a part of the overall process, China is incorporating a so-called aid strategy for Africa and has especially focused on various infrastructural projects in Africa. China’s focus on infrastructure is understandable because many of Africa’s resources are difficult to “explore” because of lacking or insufficient infrastructure; if the Chinese want Africa’s resources, they must facilitate Africa with infrastructure. The impact of China in the economic structure of Africa is already crystal clear, China is now Africa’s third biggest trading partner with only the US and France ahead. In 2006, China trade with Africa has more than teen-folded since 1999 and reached a staggering 55 billion US dollars amount in 2007. China increased trade and activities in Africa is also reflected in the number of Chinese companies operating in Africa, in 2007, there was more than 800, almost all of them state-owned companies.   

Let us take a look at some of the concrete cases of China’s Africa pursue. In Ethiopia, China has in particular focused on the construction sector and is said to control 50-60 percent of the country’s road construction. China has also shown interest in the country’s manufactory sector. In Ghana, China has provided various loan aimed at Ghana’s construction and infrastructure sectors. China is particular involved in the construction of the Bui Dam (financed by the China EXIM Bank), a project that is China’s single largest financial commitment in Ghana. It is a project, where also the World Bank is involved. In genocide ridden Sudan, China has allied itself with the ruling government. Indeed, using its veto in the Security Council, China has directly prohibited the United Nation to interfere with the “business” of the Sudan government. China was the only nation in the Security Council who refuse to condemn the Sudan government for conducting genocide in Dafur. China is today by far Sudan’s largest foreign investor and roughly two-third of Sudan’s oil production goes to China. One should also take a note of the fact that the state-owned China National Corporation is the largest stakeholder in Sudan’s main oil producing consortium. Since, 1996, the Chinese held a forty percent stake in the Nile project, which produce the majority of Sudan’s oil. There can be little doubt that Sudan is a key factor in China’s Africa game, hence, in 2007 Sudan was China’s third largest trading partner in Africa after Angola and South Africa. In East-Africa, China is involved in the Unity Bridge project, which is a bridge that eventually will connect Tanzania and Mozambique over the Ruvuma River. The Chinese firm involved in this project is the China Geo Engineering Corporation (CGEC). It is CGEC’s second project in Africa; it first project was the construction of a water supply network in Algeria. In Mozambique, Angola and Cape Verde, China is engaged in building huge sport stadiums. China has also sealed a $9 billion deal with DR Congo; this deal is supposed to be the largest deal of its kind in Africa. The deal gives China access to natural resources (copper and cobalt) for an intensive build-up of Congo’s infrastructure. Angola is the second large oil-producer in Africa. It is reported that China since 2004 have granted Angola credits worth 4.5 billion dollars. China’s loan in Angola is supposed to have funded projects in the energy and water sectors. In Nigeria, one of the biggest oil-producing countries in the world, China has recently agreed to lend Nigeria 2.5 billion in loans. These loans shall be seen in the light of China’s current talks with the Nigeria government in its effort to gain energy exploration rights. Also in March 2007 on the quest of the Nigerian government, China put a communication satellite into orbit, while Nigerian technicians were trained in Beijing. In Gabon, China is particularly involved in the timber industry but is also taking a major shape of the country’s oil-export. In Gabon, China is also working on a gigantic project aimed at developing the country’s massive Belinga iron ore deposit. As a part of this project, China’s operators will build a hydro-electric dam to power it and a railway to the coast, and a deepwater port north of the capital, Libreville, to exporting the ore. In Zambia, Chinese companies are involved in at least 35 aid projects within agriculture and infrastructure development. A part of the investment has focus on building the first Chinese Special Economic Zone in Africa located in the Chambishi copper belt. The work in Zambia’s copper-district is carried out by the Chinese company “Sino Metals.” Chinese firms have apparently also been involved in construction new buildings for the Zambian government. The problem with Chinese investment in Zambia is that they threaten to make Zambia one-dimensionally depending on its copper-production, which is a development the World Bank has urged Zambia to avoid. In the old days, Zambia’s copper-mines were the third largest concentration of copper in the world but the country’s one-sided copper strategy proved fatal in 1975 when the world copper-prices collapse, an event that had devastating consequences for Zambia’s economy.  

Let us turn to another interesting dimension of Chinese investment and aid that has important social and industrial implication for Africa. There are surprisingly few societal spill-over effects associated with Chinese projects in Africa from the point of view of Africa’s own communities. China’s projects in Africa tend to facilitate income for the state (that is, the ruling elite) rather than function as bricks for the build-up of Africa’s societal community. Concerns have also been raised that China extreme focus on oil and minerals in its investments in Africa will tend to sidetrack Africa development and lock Africa into a one-sided, raw material-selling dependency with dire implication for the development of Africa’s general social structure. This issue has naturally always been a problem for Africa but it can be argued that the Chinese tend to reinforce the problem rather than facilitating a solution. Another issue of concern is China’s orientation to environmental problems. As a current example, one can mention that OECD’s Export Credit Group in 2003 adopted some explicit stated environmental guidelines for its loan-policy. This has not been the case for China EXIM bank, which is China main vehicle in its investment policy in Africa. The Bank has not made its environmental guidelines available to the public. Also, as the Merowe project signifies, it is questionable whether and how such guidelines are implemented. Despite the large implications for nature in the region, no independent environmental impact assessment was carried out. As in so many other aspects of China activities in Africa, the actual terms and criteria are shrouded in secret.  

But what is of even greater concern is the question of the general learning-curve for African countries in regard to China’s top-down controlled projects. When China conduct a “development project” in Africa, armies of Chinese workers, architects, welders, electricians, technicians, including doctors and cooks arrives, and the numbers of African workers participating in the protects are either limited or not existing at all. It is true that China has trained thousands of Africans in technical courses in China and it also true that it employ many ordinary African workers in some of its project but nonetheless, when one look at the overall picture, the learning opportunities for Africans in regard to China’s African projects is remarkably low. The Chinese activities are created surprisingly few jobs and learning-opportunities for Africans. As one commentator wrote about China’s project in Gabon, “the Chinese tend to prefer to ship in their own workers rather than employing the local labour force, and CMEC’s offer does not include many jobs for Gabonese people.” The same tones sounded at the Seventh World Social Forum (WSF) held in Nairobi in January 2007, Humphrey Pole-Pole of the Tanzanian Social Forum told Chinese delegate that “Now China is driving our small and medium entrepreneurs to bankruptcy. … You don’t contribute to employment because you bring in your own labour.” The indications are also that China uses little time in including the local community in the shape, problems and the meaning of their projects. Indeed, the activities of Chinese companies are notable for its degree of secrecy. The way of the Chinese tend to operate is behind the scene (within close elite-circles) and not in a participatory dialogue with the locals. Indeed, a recent report about China’s lending practices highlights the extraordinary lack of transparency in China’s dealings. As the report from EURODAD assessed, “loan contracts between China and African countries are not open to public scrutiny. This leaves a lot of power in the hands of a few African leaders.” As a general rule, China’s loan contracts is not available to the parliament, civil society or the media in the country, which future they involve. Indeed, China do not use much time on a dialogue with civil society. As one observer expressed it, “they (the Chinese) don’t waste their time on meetings. They just go ahead and build roads.” The Chinese talk about “strategic partnership” but most of the time they don’t really need any partner at all. It is not because that the Chinese projects doesn’t interfere with the life of the local population; in Sudan a huge prestige project, the Merowe Dam, has lead to the forced removal of the Hambdan people living at or near the site. The struggle over this issue has turned into a nasty conflict and local police and private security forces are now providing 24 hours protection for the Chinese engineers working there. The Chinese call this a “win-win situation,” yet Ali Askan, the director of the London-based Piankhi Research Group offers another interpretation; according to him, “the sad truth is, both the Chinese and the elite partners in the Sudan government want to conceal some terrible facts about their partnership. They are joining hands to uproot people, expropriate their land, and appropriate their natural resources.” The international criticism of the Merowe Dam project has been very intensive, among other things, the project has been criticized for not published its impact studies, that the project on 63 accounts violate the World Bank environmental safeguard standards and that the displaced population has been force into barren desert areas. Also, in recent years many of the community leaders who have opposed the government’s resettlement plans are reported to have been jailed without explanation. Also, it has been reported that Chinese dam construction companies have caused protests when they denied local nomads access to their traditional drinking wells. In this way, the Beijing approach to development undermines some key concepts of what real development is all about. Generally, from a sheer developmental point of view, what is much more important than whether Africa is facilitate with this or that piece of infrastructure is whether important segments of African population actually learn something during the process and are accumulating important technical and civic skills as a result of the process. If these learning processes are absent and comparatively weak; then China’s various projects in Africa might be beneficial (by whatever standards) but deepest down they add very little to the path of real development in Africa. In this regard, the real problem in Africa is not the lack of infrastructure, capital or public service but the general lack of deeply structured absorptive capacities, which in part is reflected in the level of skills but more importantly is the function of a general lack of a stable institutionalization of relevant learning processes of the kind there is relevant in the 21th century.  

Also, real learning processes must penetrate the core structure of civil society if a deeper integrated effect of cognitive institutionalization shall occur but it is typical for China policy in Africa that it deliberate taken little interests and concerns about the cripple nature of Africa’s civil society. (It is typical for China when it is approaching the social question in Africa that it is concerned with instrumental questions rather than with rights and skills, which build up the complete citizen). Its deal with the African rulers is in regard to the outer framework of the production-system, the deeper layer of society is of little interest to the Chinese, indeed, the weakness of Africa civic society is a huge active in the policy China is pursuing in Africa. The last thing China needs in Africa is civic and human rights. The truth is of course that both China and Africa’s rulers share the same basic attitude toward human rights, neither of the two actors have any interest in promoting them. In Africa elite survival does not depend on normal concepts of progress and development but on a predatory exploitation of the countries’ resources with the aim of circulated some of the rent within the rulers’ patronage networks. (This problem in Africa has not been solved through democratic elections since the institutions of democracy in Africa is very fragile and immature and has not be able to change many of “the old ways” of policy on the continent). It is this pattern of predatory policy China is playing into and utilizing. (When China is talking about that it is promoting Africa’s “self-development,” one can only wonder whose self-development they are talking about). China is on the other hand very helpful for Africa’s autocratic rulers. When Angola lost billions of dollars in oil revenues as a function of corruption and misgovernment, the IMF tried to press the Angolan government to accept basic transparency measures as a condition of granting it a loan in 2004. However, at some point Angola’s government suddenly stopped negotiation because they had received a loan offer from China on 2 billion dollars. The Angola case illustrate how China’s Africa policy is facilitating persistent corruption, while reinforcing the structure of Africa’s old-fashioned and highly dysfunctional patronage system. The Angola example is by no means unique, in the case of Sudan, international financial institutions ceased to lent the Sudan government money because of its human rights abuses in Dafur and also as a reaction to a long record of corruptive spending practices. However, China’s EXIM bank was not disturbed by such considerations and has worked closely with the Sudan government on a broad range of oil and hydropower projects. In this way in the case of Sudan, China has efficiently undercut an international effort to pressure the Sudan government into political reforms. 

China is following a so-called “no string attached policy.” Since, Africa to an important extent consists of a system of predatory rulers, “elected” or not, many of whom are “presidents” for life or “liberators” as Mugabe, it is clear for anyone — short of the most political naïve – exactly what the policy “no string attached” really means. Indeed, African leaders can be sure that China will not burden them with questions in regard to human rights, civil society or freedom of the press. Indeed, why should China ask questions in Africa, which they do not want their own citizens to ask?  When China speak about “brotherhood” with Africa, it really means China “brotherly” bounds with the predatory interests of African rulers, a kind of relation which authoritarian China does not consider “alien” or “strange” in the first place. Birds of feather flock together as one says. 

China current trouble with sending weapon to Mugabe is only the tip of the iceberg. China has no restrictions when it comes to sell weapons to Africa’s dictators. China sees Africa as a lucrative market for its military hardware. At the same time, the sale of weapon becomes important elements in Beijing’s overall global strategy. By supporting hardcore dictators, such as the regime in Sudan, Zimbabwe and Nigeria with the weapons and by other means, China built up a system of followers in the UN, which is useful when China for various reason derivate from United Nation’s policy on human rights or need a clientele to support its quest for global power. The restrains that France, Britain and the US shows in the sale of weapon especial the nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) weapons are not restrains that
China accept. Traditionally, China has been a supplier of arms to the regimes in Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, North Korea, Myanmar (Burma) and Thailand but its increase presence in Africa has added many African countries to the list. In regard to Africa, China has sold the Islamic fundamentalist government in Khartoum weapons and $100 million worth of Shenyang fighter planes, including twelve supersonic F-7 Jets. China is today the largest supplier of arms to Sudan. The autocratic government of Mugabe ordered twelve FC-1 fighter jets and 100 military vehicles from China as a part of major weapon-deal in late 2004. In the same year, the Chinese build at major radar system at President Mugabe’s mansion in the Harare suburbs. The US International Broadcast Bureau has also reported that China had provided the Mugabe regime with a radio jamming device that allow the regime to block broadcast of independent news resources like Radio Africa. Perhaps as a special service China has also donated the blue tiles that decorate Mugabe’s house. It is certainly of little surprise that Mugabe calls China his “number one friend.” Indeed, Chinese support for Mugabe has been important for his dictatorships survival.  

Why is China targeting Africa? Naturally, China extreme thrust for energy goes at long way to explain it basic interests. Yet, there are other factors, which might be important for China’s Grand Strategy. If one look on the world from a geopolitical spectrum, Africa is still a highly unexplored territory as far as business interest and investment is concern; no other area in the world is so detached, underdeveloped and politically “virginal” than Africa. (South Africa constitutes a special case in this regard). In any other continent on the globe Chinese political and industrial interests will always face heavily invested interests and strong competition from American, European and Japanese interests. For China to establish themselves in these countries will be an “uphill battle” at least in relative terms. This is not the case in Africa. In other words, if the Chinese leaders looked for a good political “investment object” on the global map, no place is more “obvious” than Africa. In Africa, the resistance to Chinese policy is most benign, the hunger for “aid” is most desperate and the interests of other major powers in the world are only scratchy and weakly established. Indeed, Africa’s weak civil society functions as a guarantee that Beijing will not be harassed by too many “stupid questions” during their operations in Africa. What China can’t get way with in Brazil, Mexico or France, is an easy deal in the extremely corrupt, predatory and fragile African countries. Therefore, no other continent than Africa will give China so much for “so little.” In Africa, China can define its political options almost by will and have a better change to shape the development exact as Beijing would like to see it.

Why did Rome fall? Generally, the ultimate reasons for the fall lied in original flaws in the cultural design of the Roman society. The destruction of Rome was the consequences of a cultural fundament that was painfully inadequate for the societal building it should support. The destruction of Rome was cultural in gestalt but political in manifestation. The cognitive-cultural make-up of Rome was from the beginning one-sided and insufficient. On the operative dimension, these flaws resulted in at least four basic problems. First, within the balance of the Empire’s various “subsystems,” it resulted in disproportional emphasis on power as a factor of social action. Second, Rome was characterized by a too one-sided cultural tradition with an inclination toward the unstable or “neurotic.” There was a strange ambivalence in the Romans attitude to the world; its inhabitans were generally, aggressively “openminded” almost innocently so; yet at the same time the Romans lacked some fundamental absorptive capacities in regard to spiritual and intellectual issues, which made it very difficult for the system to progress into a higher type of human civilization. Third, it resulted in a too one-sided approach to technological inventions; the consequence of which was a relative “stalemate” in the promotion of the general means of production. This problem was also reflected in the way in which the technological advances that originally had marked the Roman army slowly diminished relative to the strength of the barbarian tribes at the Roman frontier. Fourth, it produced a shallow intellectual culture hunting the occult and exoteric; this inclination was particularly notable in the way broad groups became emotionally vulnerable in the socio-political crisis characterizing that last centuries of the Empire’s lifetime. One will see that in opposition to Montesquieu who analyzes Rome from the standpoint of cultural decline; I on my part do not see any deterioration of an original golden age. My argument stresses that it is not “decline” but a fatal one-sidedness in the original cultural matrix of Roman society that is the ultimate cause in the puzzle; Rome was an Empire debased by birth and not simply the victim of a process of decadence. For Montesquieu, Rome was a great project that failed, while I see it as a “great project there never was.” As Talcott Parsons has assessed; Rome never succeeded in building a sufficiently substantial system of cultural-constitutive symbolization. Indeed, what Parsons calls the “unstable welter of exotic cults, sects, syncretistic belief systems, and the religious movements” that characterized Rome was never adequately grounded in the general culture. Since, Rome’s value-system was depending on the “legitimacy” of its power cult; it had no coherent answer to the spiritual needs of its population and was unable to effectively counter-act a hostile ideology in the midst of its system. Indeed, rather than counter-acting it, it was eaten alive. In the end of the line, as Parsons has assessed, the Romans “failed to build a viable societal community.”   

In this way, the cultural institutions of the Roman Empire were relatively underdeveloped (or peculiarly one-sided). The focus of power as the all-embracing social gestalt was notable. Naturally, most societies at the time used large resources on building military machines and generally, it was not unnatural for the Romans to concentrate on military things yet the function of power as a factor of social life grew out of all proportions. The comparisons of Sparta with Rome is illustrative, in Sparta the military specialization went far beyond anything Rome ever did but Sparta’s culture was generally more sane and balanced than Rome’s. Although the Spartans could be cruel and cynical in many occasions, their relationship with power was much more “mature” than in Rome. In other words, the army was all-absorptive in Sparta but it never became a fetish in the way it occurred in Rome. Thus, in Rome, the quest for power and prestige tended to prevail over other values. The mechanisms restraining power-allocation in Rome were insufficient from an early point and its institutions were not able to grow with the challenge. Eventually, the quest for power in Rome broke all social and moral bounds. To kill one’s mother or brother in such a relentless pursue became ultimately a part of the obsession. In this way, power became more than a blunt necessity; it became a desire. In Greece, the army was always a means to an end; in Rome, its institutional symbolism became an end in itself, not only as a metaphor but also as bloody reality, perhaps most notable expressed during the reign of Sulla and the terror he released. The issue here is not the amount of power the Romans commanded but the impact power had on their mental fabric. Indeed, “the strongman” is not measured by the power he controls but measured by the extent power consumes him. The tyranny and extravagance that emerged with Nero was more than the idiosyncrasies of one man. The whole environment around Nero was a bizarre ocean of intrigues, murders and frenzy power-struggle; the fever of power was on everyone’s mind, not only the prerogative of Nero; it revealed the strange unrest of the Roman soul, which only would accelerate as time went by. It was as if a constant neurosis was chasing the Roman establishment and that the culture itself was lacking the necessary structure that could counter-balance the trend toward self-destruction. It all revealled a personality structure that was insufficiently culturally rooted and constantly needed to find “surrogates” and restless “confirmation” to fill out the void of cultural institutionalization.

This collective neurosis was link to the Roman he-man celebration. There was too much Sylvester Stallone in the Roman mentality. Indeed, Roman gladiator-games were a sign of the cult of domination and submission, which went to the core of Roman mentality. It was not accidental that the gladiator-theatres dominated the central urban space in the Roman cities. Indeed, few things are more revealing for the Roman character than its gladiator-games, which not only was cruel and inhumane but even trivial in its actual scene-sequences. In most cases, it was a caricature of a fight, where animals and humans had close to no chance in the first place. The Greek would most likely have regarded such “entertainment” for unworthy but this kind of entertainment went to the core of the Roman elite’s sense of superiority and civic identity. One cannot separate the vulgarity of these games from the Roman psyche. Indeed, during the gladiator-games, the killed were dragged away from the arena as if they were meat-loafs, not even the victims death was regarded as other than a triviality. The gladiator-game was popular beyond any measures, every new Roman colony insisted in having a gladiator-theatre because else they could not consider themselves truly Romans. Ordinary households would be decorated with motifs from gladiator-games; it was a national obsession. The gladiator-games would often have “ticket scalpers,” who would buy up seats and sell them to inflated prices, since people was ready to pay any price to see the game. Intellectual criticism of the gladiator-games was quite rare among Romans; the cruelties committed were generally regarded as self-evident, while the Greek had nothing of that kind. 

Thus, Rome never achieved a sufficiently deep culture; its talents were not only one-dimensionally organized but insufficient in its differentiational forms. Generally, Rome started as a war-machine and Roman culture reflected the emphasis of the instrumental-political mentality, which was “needed” in order to fulfil this role-pattern. Yet, what was crucial in this regard what not the functional specialization of the political subsystem per se but the lack of absorptive cognitive capacities that could raise the nation beyond the limits of a sheer instrumental power-approach. The ancient world in which Rome arose was a violent age, and the success of Rome, which was its organizing capacities became fixed on the key criteria for success, which was military might. The early Romans were primitive, much more primitive than the Etruscans but through the military strenght and rudeness mind, the Romans were able to prevail. Perhaps, this is not an unusual story of that age but what was notable was that the Romans never really went beyond their own original primitive state of mind, although its societal sophistication grew to the skies, the mindset of the people remained strangely archaic.

This lack of cognitive-cultural sophistication seem to be reflected in the way in which the Romans (in contrast to the Greek) was unable to find a sufficient mediating solution to its clash between its society’s major groups and “classes.” The kind of integrative mechanism, which we can observe in the Germanic and Greek societies (and which was related to the factor of “democracy”) was never able to penetrate the core of the Roman society despite many efforts to the contrary. Some would perhaps call it the Roman failure to establish a sufficient pattern of social justice. Despite various attempt to increase public participation, Rome remained very much a rather limited plutocracy. The consequences was that the Romans were unable to utilized the social intelligence of the lower strata in the way in which the Germanic order of the Middle Ages was able to do. The origination of Rome seems to have emerged around a comparatively frozen relationship between lord and serf. In this regard, Frank Tenney is arguing that the separation between patricians and plebeian in Rome had an almost caste-like quality. In this way, the social divide in Rome was not just a later “complication,” it appeared at its very birth.  

Indeed, the way Rome differs from the Greek in the manner of social stratification tell us a lot about the special character of the Roman society. Both Greece and Rome were agarian societies and the key to much of their social order lied in the way land was distributed. This was crucial not only for military reasons but also in regard to the institutionalization of civic society. During the period known of the “tyrannic rule” in Greece, the dominance of the aristocracy was “broken” and this gave way to a subsequent democratization of the Greek city. Hence, in Greece this gave way to the emerging of a sizable middle class not only as a social strata of traders and craftmen but also in regard to the size of farms characterizing the Greek agricultural structure. The famous Greek citizen with real influence on public affair was one of the outcomes of this process. The crucial point in this regard is that this was exactly what did not happen in Rome. As Perry Anderson, Rostovtzeff and other have highlighted what was characteristic for the Roman situation was that the “poor” or “proletarian” masses never was able to “grab the moment,” so that the power of the hereditary nobility (who was the big landowners) never was broken but essential remained in persistent control of the socio-political process despite the various twist and turns of Roman history. Generally, members of those pleberian families who got real, persistent influence would be admitted to the Senate. Yet, it happened rarely as Rostovtzeff explained. Also, the new pleberian senator would be regarded as “a new man” and often treated with contempt and suspiction by the old aristocratic families. It all highlighted the key role of the Senate in the politics of Rome. As Rostovtzeff maintains, “the reel control with internal affairs and foreign affairs belong to the Senate.” Without diminising the role of property, I think that the real factor in the strenght of the noblity was their general socio-cognitive capacities; it is most likely indicative that the first writers of the early Republic described the proletarians as rabble hardly caple of coherent thought. (In this way, “nobility” was much more than a presumtious title; in ancient time it took an extraordinary pool of social factors and economic surplus to establish the necessary rich conditions for persistent cognitive accumulation, which “the best families” represented). This power-correlation corresponds to the dominating position of the Senate, which represented the hereditary nobility; a position, which was as much a question of the accumulation of knowledge as it was a matter of financial wealth. This unbroken prevailence of the hereditary nobility has several effects, one was the limits it placed on the process of democratization in Rome even during the Republican period, the other was the drastic difference between rich and poor in Roman society to a degree unknown in Greece. People might be poor in Greece but as citizens they still had a important stake in the civic-political process (Socrates was certainly not a rich man); in Rome the poor tended to become socially excluded rather than included and the trend only increased in time. Rather than citizens, the urban “proletarians” became consumers of welfare, bread and circus, and so on. They tended to become statists in social life rather than proactive agents. Generally, the freezing of the aristocrats power in the special type of Roman “conservatism” functioned as a lowing of the level of societal differentiation, not only socially but intellectually. Generally, it sidetracked the whole development of Roman as a sufficiently integral community. 

Naturally, the above remarks need to be seen in the right context; the point is not to deny the existence of substantial democratic elements of the Roman Republics political institutions or to ignore the strenght that the Roman solution had in regard to political stability. The Roman Republic was not without a certain solidarity in the earlier stages of its existence. Indeed, Rome with its citizen-army could not have fought its wars without this kind of solidarity. This kind of citizen-army is not to be taken for granted, since Carthage during the Punic wars based its army to a high extent on mercenaries. Also, Rome’s upper classes were fully integrated in military activities, while this was not the case in Carthage. What concern us here is not to deny this kind of solidarity as an important factor in Rome’s history but to evaluate the long-term structural implications of Rome’s political institutions. What concern us here is that the Roman institutions might have been quite operative for each moment of short-term application but it failed, importantly, to serve the long-term build-up of more substantial integrative mechanisms in the Roman society and as an effect the Roman lower classes remain remarkably “proletarized” not only economically (as measured by income-gap) but especially in regard to fundamental cultural and cognitive factors. (One sign was that the archic pagan Roman religion (the ”pop-wisdom” of the masses) never really developed beyond its initial shape, which Rostovtzeff has deemed as remarkably primitive in the first case). It all sidetracked the process of societal differentiation, leaving the bulk of the Roman population in a strange limbo vis-a-vis the long-term development. For a while, this flaw in the integral mechanism of the Empire’s social structure was “covered up” by the use of the poll of multiculturalist intelligence that floaded into the center from all spheres of the Empire. In the end of the day, this “subsitute” for an endogenous intelligence established a superstructure of cosmopolitan ”efficiency” but did not address the deep structural problems (of the infantilization of the Roman underclass), which eventually was a crucial key to the overall collapse. Since the Romans never were able to assimilate the cultures under its regime, the substitute intelligence it received had never optimal conditions for deep institutional integration as factors of social-cultural entities and the input the system received remained fragments in a metropolitan universe. In this way, the ever increasing lower masses (and we are not even adressing the question is enormous masses of slaves) would at best become “clients” in a massive  plutocratic system (which tended to determining the real stake in politics); these clients had legal rights but they never became “citizens” in the more substantial sense that characterized Greece in the best of its periods. This “bias” not only proletarized the status of “the poor” but it debased the general development of Rome’s institutions although it took some centuries before its full implications became blantantly clear for the naked eye. The outcome was the emerging of a Eastern type of bureaucratic machinery, which in decisive moments failed utterly to provide an adequate efficiency because it ultimately was hierachy without substance.     

Octavian, who called himself Augustus, was not an accidental happening in Roman history; it was the logical conclusion of a society, which essence was power and which culture was too weak to facilitate the necessary institutional restrains. The degeneration which was symbolized by Caligula and Nero was just the further surrealistic indication that the force of Imperial power in Rome was marching on its own bewildered path; out of “symmetry” with other social functions. In a modern state Caligula and Nero would have been locked-up in asylums but in Rome, they were the leaders of humanity. But again it was nothing out of the ordinary; it was the logical conclusion of the power-fetishism that penetrated the Roman psyche. In this way, Rome as a societal community suffered from a build-in inflationary fixation with power as a generalized symbolic medium. The impact of this inflationary trend was a perversion of the equilibrium of societal differentiation. Thus, power became the standard to which everything else was reduced as an agent. Especially, more diffuse and intangible factors of culture connected to constitutive-cognitive socialization were generally under-nurtured. The overload of the performance capacities of the political institutions was itself indicative of a cultural-constitutive flaw. The signs that the system was reaching its limits became increasingly manifest and in Rome the key to the issue was the state of the army. As David S. Potter has highlighted “the fact that Marcus could not subdue the Danubian tribes was a more telling indication that something was wrong.” Given the Roman learning-pattern and especially the lack of any persistent solution to the issue of “succession,” Rome’s political institutions could do nothing but fail, as soon as social complexity went beyond a certain point. It was a disaster waiting to happen and not just an unfortunate series of events. However, the Roman political-military machinery was still a fórmidable enemy and its statesmanship was often brilliant. The brilliant side of the Roman institutions was exactly the factor that prolonged the process for so long time. Nonetheless, the power-struggle in Rome reached a point of sheer opportunism; an indication of the extraordinary lack of normative restrains and institutionally counter-veiling mechanisms that had been a persistent problem of Rome’s political culture. A part of the problem was that Rome was a quite “open society,” where cosmopolism and individualism was able to advance as social categories; it established a important dynamic but it also opened Rome to serious structural vulnerability, indeed, the hostility of Christianity was only one case in this regard, the self-serving interests of Germanic mercenaries yet another; the problem was that Rome lacked the deeper cognitive-cultural structure that should have “managed” the challenge of Imperial openness. As we know, the Hellenization of Rome had gone very far; yet, it might be argued that Hellenization of Rome actually camouflaged a cultural void; it made the Roman system appear as much more civilized than it was. In this way, Rome became increasingly multiculturalist under conditions, where its own culture was insufficintly shaped to address those isues of spiritual gestalt that the emerging crisis demanded; this fragmentation of values only deepened the crisis. Rome’s civic order built on ideas of virtue that was not shared by many of the new foreign masses, which swamped into Rome. As these virtues began to decay, Rome had no deeper cultural “treasure,” which could replace it beside a shallow cult of “the Emperor.” Rome had never “argued for its existence” beyond a doctrine of sheer glory and domination. Hence, Rome was mentality unprepared for the rabble-rousing rethoric of large-scale, cosmopolitan discourses.   

Rome had undoubtedly developed very strong capacities to play the instrumental game of war and conquest. At the same time; its cultural identity was very narrowly organized around sensory gain of status and material well-being, while the nurturing of the soul was facilitated through spectacular entertainment. The slogan of “bread and circus” was much more than an accidental saying; it was a very precise description of the basic reward-systems of Roman life or at least an illustrative signification of the key to their mentality. The immanent value of knowledge in the Greek sense was a strange concept for the Roman mind. The Romans knew of reasons but no Reason. Higher intellectual issues were beyond the Romans, unless it was broken down in concrete components or signified as concrete techniques or “real projects.” All this become remarkably clear, when we compare Greek civilization with the Romans; the intellectual sophistication of the Greek was lost on the Romans; their talent was materialist-instrumental, understood within a narrow behaviourist mode; any higher intellectual consideration was, with remarkable few exceptions, generally lost on them. Roman philosophy was never more than a pale reflection of the Greek. Indeed, the Greek was like the Romans excellent and successful soldiers but their culture and social life was never fixated on power in the way it characterized Rome. The Greek had raised a a compelling vision of reflextive, cognitive Man as a totality of infinite values; the Romans were fixed on the ”legitimative” quest of the might of superior domination (with “civilization” and “Pax Romana” as the concrete bonus goods). In Greece, the real challenged of Man lied in the opening of his mind; while in Rome, conquest and superiority was always perceived as physically and concrete. In this way, the concept of science as a cognitive gestalt was millions of light-years from the Roman mind; the Romans built in stone, blood and in factors of domination, the rest was a flash of nothingness in their minds. The Romans’ power was (to a high extent) built on a kind of material consumption of its environment (slaves, tribune, land, etc. etc.); when this process came to a close at the end of their expansion, they ran out of the crude magic of their own superiority and while the Germanic barbarians actually (in their own confused ways) was on a path of learning; the Romans could only wait until the moment, where the cognitive talent of the barbarians turn into some kind of social and military reality (by whatever “bewildred” way or process). The real way, the barbarian won over the Romans was through their cognitive superiority (that is, their capacity for cultural-embedded learning) and not as such through their military virility but it was through their militiary virility that the cognitive factor revealled its ”latent” process in the social matrix of the historical context.  

The Romans borrowed almost all their socio-cultural components from the Etruscans and the Greek without ever being able to really understand or internalize the true sophistication of the two other cultures. The warm, human element of the Etruscan culture was never really replicated in Rome: who was too intoxiated of their own military machinery, as they were intoxiated during the killing-orgies in the Gladiator-games. In almost everything the Romans borrowed from the Greek, there was lacking something essential. One often speaks about “the ancient world” with the implicit connotation that the Roman simply was an extension of Greek culture; nothing can be more deceiving. In the Roman copy of the Greek, there always seemed to lack the higher points of cultural refinement. (Especially, in intellectual issues, the Roman position represented a vulgarization of what had been a Greek point). Not surprisingly, the Romans education was fixed on form rather than substance. What was important for the Roman “intellectual” was rhetoric not thinking. Intellectualism for the Romans was not a calling but placed its focus on poetic entertainment or the mastery of rhetoric as a way to promote one’s power and prestige. (Not surprisingly, Augustine was known as a teacher of rhetoric long before he became a “religious icon”). If one is looking for (the equivalent of) a Plato, Leibniz or a Kant among the Romans, one is looking in vain; the Romans had absolute nothing of that kind. The closest they came to an intellectual deed was to turn Platonism into a vulgar, quasi-religious cult. Indeed, it is very unlikely that the thing which we call “Christianity” would have looked the way it did without the invention of “neo-Platonism.” The intellectual origins of neo-platonism appeared to lie in an attempt to Egypt-orize Plato. The original idea can be traced to an Alexanderian Greek by the name of Ammonius Saccas, who beside his philosophic credentials apparently worked as a dock-worker. It might also be of some interest to notice that some of the other famous neo-Platonists at the time, Porphyry and Iamblichus, both were Syrians; it is clear that neo-Platonism was a result of the increasing Asian impact on the social structure of Rome in the last centuries of the Empire’s history. (In neo-Platonism there is a shift from Plato’s emphasis on Reason and Being into an emphasis on the purification and salvation of the soul; it is not accidental that Plotinus was influence by the doctrines of Persian and Indian philosophers; in reality it turned Plato’s epistemic thinking into a salvationist doctrine about quasi-mystical soul-redemption). It was a part of the process, which Rostovtzeff has described as the increased Eastern influence on Rome. For Montesquieu, Rome was exposed to a wave of immigrants, who lacked any deeper compassion for Roman traditions and values. Indeed, the early Christians regarded Rome as the incarnation of evil. It is naturally indicative that both Paul and Peter according to legend were executed in Rome. In this way, it is true that Christianity was a component of the destruction of Rome but only as a symptom of a much broader trend. The progress of Christianity among citizens of Roman was the sign of an alarming development in regard to the legitimation of the regime, since Christianity openly defied the highest authority. Yet, Christianity was just a component in an increased “dissolving” of the social structure. Its increase popularity correlated with the deterioration of the economy in the third century, which brought society to the brick of chaos. In 235, the year Maximus Thrax became an emperor, bands of brigands and desperate people swept through Italy, pillaging as they went. Christianity was part of this turbulent frenzy of the times. However, the intellectual attraction to Christianity was not necessary so clear-cut as it often have been presented. Indeed, Augustine was very close in ending up as a Manichaean; it was not Christianity but an esoteric desire for mystery religions that was the driven motif of his character. Under other circumstance, he would have written his famous “confessions” as a zealous defence of Manichaeanism. (Indeed, Augustine had zealously defended Manichaeanism and Neoplatonism in earlier stages of his life; what credibility had he as a “unique defender” of Christianity?) The fragile nature of the Roman intellectual ballast made them mentally defenceless in regard to the Eastern supermarket of salvationist “solutions.” In Rome, reason was the first casualty when crisis stroke. Indeed, at the time of Augustine, Rome was a boiling pot of spiritual despair; a kind of stock-market of salvationist merchants buying and selling ideological “security” to a nation in a stage of spiritual panic. Rome became increasingly the catalyst for despotism from the East, not only politically but mentally. In the West it resulted in total collapse, in the East it resulted in another kind of collapse, that is, the fossilization of the social structure.    

Naturally, there are many other factors in the fall of Rome; some scholars have highlighted the economic trouble that the Empire ran into in the end of its reign. Also, Arnold J. Toynbee and Joseph Tainter have both highlighted the Empire’s predatory nature, its irrational waste of economic resources and diminishing marginal return of its general design. In its later stages, Rome became increasingly bureaucatized and began to show the kind of signs associated with the fallacies of state socialism. It is in this regard, we shall understand Bruce Barlett’s statement that “excessive government killed Rome.” I think that a major part of these problems was caused by a fatal inadequacy in Rome’s political administration and its pattern of decision-making. Generally, many of the Empire’s decisions on economic questions in the later stages reinforced problems rather than reducing them. The Government debasement of money was a case in point; it started a chain-reaction of events with disastrous consequences. Hence, when the monetary system collapsed the taxation system collapsed with it. In the case of Rome, one shall recall how intimate taxation was correlated with military expenditures. The result was clearcut; troops went unpaid, supplies could not be purchased and bribes could not be paid to Germanic chiefs. But even worse the industrial structure disintegrated and people began to leave the cities. The harsh counter-measures by Theodosian and others had little effect. However, the exact structure of the economic crisis is still scholarly disputed yet generally, the bulk of economic problems was restricted to the West while the situation in the East was different. Also many of the Roman problems, especially those of the industrial kind, were the outcome of the fact that the Roman never changed the basic premises of their mode of production. The problem was not that various new inventions didn’t exist (at least to some extent), it was rather than they never really appeared on the decision-makers radar-screen. This was also the problem in regard to the barbarian Germanic tribes; in contrast to the Roman society, the German tribes went through very extensive learning-processes. The socio-technological gap between the Roman and the Germanic tribes became importantly reduced as time went by, especially within the question of military technological capacities, which was the decisive “high-tech” capacities of the time. In the end the Germanic weapons was a least as good as the Romans. Also many Germanic people had served in the Roman army and knew its military techniques by heart; when they turned against the Roman army, they were experts knowing everything about the training and techniques of their enemies. Indeed, the invasion of the Germanic barbarians came, there was no clear-cut the socio-technological lead, which the embattled Romans could rely on. The Roman historian Taticus called the Germanic warriors “a nightmare of which their is no awaking.” And in the fourth and fifth centuries this Roman nightmare turned into a full-scale catastrophy.

In sum, the problem of Rome was present at its genesis. Rome succeed by specializing its military-political capacities at the time it was a tiny city-state but this specialization became also a fixation of its cultural-mental development; so the pursue of power as a generalized symbolic media, tended to overrule other aspects of the system’s socio-cultural process of differentiation. The consequences of this perversion of the system’s process of societal differentiation became more and more critical as the Empire grew in scope and became “actualized” at those points in time, when various systemic processes ran into exhaustion or “trouble.” The degeneration Gibbon talk about is in a sense nothing but the manifestations of the increase structurally disjointed gab between the overloaded political system (and its symbolization in the media of power) and the “black holes” left in the social matrix, where a balanced process of societal differentiation was not able to proceed. The effect was not only socio-cultural but also socio-technological and gave the Germanic tribes located beyond the border of the Empire an option to bridge the socio-technological gab at least in regard to operative military battle capacities. In the end, when the barbarian Germanic warriors entered the Empire in horde after horde, they only knocked down the door of a building, which already was weaken by its own immanent pathology and structural limitations.

Even so it took a while for the Empire to collapse; in part it was the consequence of the fact that the Germanic tribes were not a combined, organized invasion army under unified command but a system of independent tribes and groups floating around in a vast area by the function of their own inclinations. In this way, the collapse of the Empire did not occur through “one stroke” but rather through an overlapping series of events of which the fall of Rome to the Visigoth in 410 AD was a particular signficant moment. Also, the Roman army was still (when it functioned) a very tough fighting-machine and was only undermined bit by bit. Also, the Romans were often able to turn one Germanic tribe on the throat of the other; which gave the Empire a breathing-space for a while. However, one of the devastating elements in the process was that the Empire fought a major civil war at a time, when it should have concentrated on pressing back the invaders. The civil war was, of course, nothing than the opportunist behavior inherent in the Roman power-fixation in the moment of its full bloom. (As in the case of Clausewith’s ”total war” thus an outbust of ”sheer opportunism” can only last so long, in the same way that a burning house consume the source of its own burning). The phenomenon was naturally linked to the Roman lack of any real solution of the issue of succession, which meant that this process persistently broke down in sheer chaos. It was however, only the ultimate consequence of a system, where power triumph over any other normative institutions. In the end of the road; the Romans’ love-affair with power was nothing but self-destructive. It all created a process, where the Empire point by point lost the upper hand in dealing with the overall situation.