{"id":30691,"date":"2018-11-22T14:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T13:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libmod.de\/?p=30691"},"modified":"2020-03-28T02:45:51","modified_gmt":"2020-03-28T01:45:51","slug":"didi-kirsten-tatlow-on-late-orientalism-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/didi-kirsten-tatlow-on-late-orientalism-in-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Cultural Relativism and Power Blindness: Some critical obser\u00adva\u00adtions on the state of Germany\u2019s China debate"},"content":{"rendered":"
Foto: Shutter\u00adstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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For decades, Sinol\u00ado\u00adgists who were largely blind to China\u2019s expansive power politics have dominated Germany\u2019s political advice circles, culti\u00advating an image of China that our author calls \u201cLate Orien\u00adtalism\u201d. Shaped by roman\u00adticism, it struggles with a difficult question: How to deal with a rising, anti-democ\u00adratic superpower?<\/h2>\n

<\/p>\n

Beijing, April 1986: As the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine melts down, Russian students at our Chinese university experience a major loss of authority. They avoid fellow students from the Soviet satellite countries of Eastern Europe, and seem embar\u00adrassed in the company of students from capitalist societies, like Hong Kong, where I\u2019m from. I ask a Hungarian friend, Balazs, why. \u201cThey can\u2019t tell us what to do any more\u201d, he says. Until then, the Russians were at the top of a communist student hierarchy barely visible to outsiders. From that moment they begin to fall. <\/p>

\"Portrait<\/p>\n

Didi Kirsten Tatlow<\/a> is a Berlin based journalist. From 2003 to 2017, she reported from China for newspapers such as The South China Morning Post and The New York Times.<\/p><\/div>\n

But Balazs doesn\u2019t think that the Soviet Union is the problem, anyway. He\u2019s more concerned about the country where we are all studying. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has launched economic reform that\u2019s happening at a cracking pace \u2013 without any political reform. \u201cAn optimist is someone who believes that the Russians are coming,\u201d he says. \u201cA pessimist is someone who thinks that the Chinese are coming.\u201d Balazs is a pessimist, but he knows what he\u2019s talking about. Soviet troops marched into his country in 1956. And history would prove him right: The People\u2019s Republic of China, founded in 1949, is today older than the Soviet Union was when it broke up five years after Chernobyl.<\/p>\n

Late Orien\u00adtalism as an Extension of the Colonial Tradition<\/h2>\n

Unlike Balazs, students from West Germany and elsewhere in Europe studying with us at the Beijing Language Institute (today the Beijing Language and Culture University), had a different, dreamier vision of China, one arising from their idealist Enlight\u00adenment tradition. They studied liter\u00adature, philosophy or tradi\u00adtional Chinese medicine, not technology, trade or western medicine, as students from Eastern Europe or devel\u00adoping nations did.<\/p>\n

This gener\u00adation of sinol\u00ado\u00adgists dominated policy advice circles in Germany for decades and is influ\u00adential today in decisions made by business, state govern\u00adments and the federal government. Their view is one I dub \u201cLate Orien\u00adtalism\u201d: Strate\u00adgi\u00adcally blind, its roman\u00adticism hides the reality of China\u2019s will to power.<\/p>\n

The Late Orien\u00adtalists don\u2019t under\u00adstand that a party-led China could one day become so strong, perhaps already is, that it can challenge democ\u00adratic norms throughout the world, for example by inter\u00adfering in an intrans\u00adparent manner in open societies, changing inter\u00adna\u00adtional organi\u00adza\u00adtions to suit its interests, or, in the case of Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, isolating entire countries and regions.<\/p>\n

The Late Orien\u00adtalist argument goes like this: Yes, there are problems with China, but the criticism is often the product of western stereo\u00adtypes. China is not under\u00admining the west, that\u2019s a false perception, perhaps even a sign of the resur\u00adgence of a \u201cYellow Peril\u201d attitude that in the past incited racism against people from East Asia. Cultural differ\u00adences, no matter how carefully formu\u00adlated, should not be mentioned, as that\u2019s racist. Concerns about the open society are preju\u00addiced and exaggerated. The tougher, more critical stance emerging today in Australia and the United States, for example, cannot, should not, be applied to Germany as the situation here is \u2013 somehow \u2013 different.<\/p>\n

The irony is that while Late Orien\u00adtalism seeks to deflect and correct western ignorance and arrogance, in reality it repro\u00adduces it by under\u00ades\u00adti\u00admating the Chinese party-state\u2019s will to power. That renders it blind to how the party is furthering its interests. The party exploits this: Point out the influence of party-led Chinese student organi\u00adza\u00adtions in western univer\u00adsities and one should expect to be denounced as anti-foreigner, even racist, by the organi\u00adzation in Beijing.<\/p>\n

Important: Nothing I write is aimed at the ordinary people of China. The debate is about the party-state, its function, and how it seeks to manip\u00adulate and dominate.<\/p>\n

Mao Mania among the \u201968 Gener\u00adation: Was it the Work of the Domestic Security Agency?<\/h2>\n

The roots of Late Orien\u00adtalism lie partly in the personal biogra\u00adphies of today\u2019s Sinol\u00ado\u00adgists. First encounters with China for those growing up after World War II mostly arose from a position of great physical distance to China. Often, it was small things that awoke a lifelong fasci\u00adnation in a country that seemed so different. A map. A pair of chopsticks brought back by a traveling relative.<\/p>\n

Others believed that they\u2019d found in Chinese communism an alter\u00adnative to Soviet and Eastern European communism. In reality, Chinese communism was at least as brutal as the European versions, just less acces\u00adsible for non-Chinese. Mao exercised a powerful attraction for many of the maturing Sinol\u00ado\u00adgists seeking an alter\u00adnative to the capitalism of the United States. Only later would we learn that allegiance to Mao was in part the creation of Germany\u2019s very own domestic security agency<\/a> that was attempting to counter the influence of the Soviet Union here \u2013 a massive historical irony.<\/p>\n

Germany must conduct difficult but necessary debates about China\u2019s techno\u00adlogical, economic and security strategies, and develop its own strategies to manage these. Herein lies a problem: In Germany, strategic thinking has been viewed with suspicion since the end of World War II, and sinol\u00ado\u00adgists are little inter\u00adested in it. As James Binde\u00adnagel and Philip Ackermann at the University of Bonn wrote: \u201cLacking full sover\u00adeignty during the Cold War and strug\u00adgling with its history of nation\u00adalism, militarism, and Nazism, Germany developed a strategic culture that was passive, timid, morally uncom\u00adpro\u00admising, and dominated by feelings of guilt.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

A rising gener\u00adation of sinol\u00ado\u00adgists has recog\u00adnized the problem yet their influence is limited, occupying as they do junior positions in insti\u00adtu\u00adtional hierar\u00adchies. Berlin\u2019s still undeveloped think tank culture offers few positions for influ\u00adencing public debate. And younger researchers suffer from the growing overspe\u00adcial\u00adization of academia \u2013 the public may not under\u00adstand them.<\/p>\n

The Reality: Chinese Interests at the EU Negoti\u00adating Table<\/h2>\n

The CPC, however, does have a strategy \u2013 using the global trade system and free market \u2013 achieve\u00adments of liberal modernity \u2013 to further its goals. By now, according to media reports, it is in a position to conduct large-scale surveil\u00adlance over other, sovereign states, via doctored microchips, smart\u00adphones and other technologies. Today, China is Germany\u2019s biggest economic partner, yet Germany is only number six on China\u2019s trading list. Other countries, such as India, are in similar situation, yet there people hold lively debates about the political conse\u00adquences of economic depen\u00addency on China. It\u2019s a realization that is only slowly dawning in Germany, though its depen\u00addency on China\u2019s market is plain for all to see. Volkswagen, for example, now sells almost half of its cars in China.<\/p>\n

As the problem creeps ever closer, it\u2019s narrowing our room for maneuver to defend our democ\u00adratic values in an increas\u00adingly connected world. An example: By 2021, China will own 67 percent of the Greek port of Piraeus. Last year Greece, in a first for an EU country, blocked a critical, joint EU statement on human rights in China, at the United Nations\u2019 Human Rights Council. We should expect this trend to deepen \u2013 today, Chinese state-owned companies have invested in 13 European ports and own about 10 percent of all of Europe\u2019s container port capacity. Ten years ago that figure was about one percent.<\/p>\n

Europe is a network of open societies. We must expect that one day Chinese interests will sit at the negoti\u00adating table in Brussels.<\/p>\n

I think Balazs would have under\u00adstood these devel\u00adop\u00adments very well. But somehow, it all feels far away, here in Germany, where few China experts seem willing to draw conse\u00adquences from the fact that defending liberal values requires more than just being understanding.<\/p>\n

\"Textende\"<\/p>\n

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