WHAT YEAR IS CHINA LIVING IN?

One of the big reasons behind our lack of understanding in dealing with China is confusion over the times we are all living in.

While no one doubts the USA is living in the year 2006, China is living in many different years, spread over five or six centuries.

The USA has a strong central government, functioning reasonably well in 2006. The 50 states are not threatening revolution or secession.

China has a relatively weak, uncertain central government which struggles to control its far-flung provinces and autonomous regions. Throughout its 4,000 years of history, the most powerful Emperors had great difficulty controlling their regional and local mandarins, who often opted for rebellion and revolution. Beijing's attempt to reduce pollution prior to the 2008 Olympics has failed in the face of accelerating development promoted by provincial officials. When Beijing attempted to reduce economic growth to 7.5 percent, the provincials ignored the central government and powered ahead to a 10.1 percent gain. The Party's birth control policies are largely ignored in rural China.

Actually, Beijing closely resembles Washington in the year 1860, when the states were preeminent, the central government secondary. As early as 1815, Thomas Jefferson had claimed that the states had the right of secession, and encouraged both Virginia and Kentucky to exercise that right. The overwhelming majority of West Point graduates cast aside their loyalty oaths to the Union and joined the Confederate armies when the Civil War broke out. In the 1860 Republican nominating convention, all four Republican candidates (Lincoln, Seward, Chase and Bates) referred to Washington as "the general government." In their minds, the various states were the "central" governments.

America's 2006 agriculture thrives on 15 percent of the world's arable land, producing enough to feed the USA, supply growing ethanol needs and export great quantities of foodstuff to the world. With fewer than eight million people engaged in farming, the USA's major farm problem is over-production.

China's agriculture is functioning in a 16th century mode. With only seven percent of the world's arable lands, China's 650 million farmers cannot produce enough on their small plots to feed its 1.3 billion people. With an energy crisis looming, and water problems building, Beijing confronts a growing food problem.

In 2006, the USA leads the world in research and development and, as a result, has great interest in protecting its intellectual property rights. The USA's legal system is effective in protecting such rights domestically.

But China is trailing in R&D and, as a result, allows its capitalists to steal the intellectual property rights which fuel economic growth. When it comes to patents and intellectual property rights, China is actually living in the early 19th century -- a time when American companies commonly stole such rights from European companies. And we ignored our own patents and refused to protect them from theft.

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793, jump-starting our industrial revolution. His 1794 patents should have made him a very rich man. But he almost became a pauper, victim of all the companies which stole his patents and produced their own cotton gins. Corrupt legislatures and weak courts were uninterested in patent enforcement in those days and John Marshall had yet to come on the scene to make the U.S. Supreme Court an effective branch of government. Whitney later invented the first mass production system for muskets. Refusing to get into another patent mess, he built a musket factory instead. He finally became rich as a manufacturer, and observed, "When a patent becomes too valuable, it doesn't benefit the inventor." Which is why America's R&D patents are so valuable to China and so vulnerable to piracy. With a 2006 legal system as weak as the U.S.'s 1794 version, Beijing could not eliminate patent piracy even if it wanted to.

In the year 2006, the USA tends to show great respect for its powerful, white-collar thieves. Sympathetic judges and juries award slaps on the wrist for our "civilized" criminal class. Many alleged crooks, like Health South's Richard Scrushy, use their allegedly stolen wealth to outflank the justice system. Scrushy overcame his three dozen fraud and money laundering charges by spending big on Birmingham, Alabama TV -- portraying himself as a born-again Christian. By evangelizing all over the landscape, he won a sympathetic jury.

But major white-collar criminals in China suffer 14th century justice, now known as "a bullet in the back of the brain." China estimates that 4,000 of its rogue capitalists have stolen about $50 billion and escaped overseas, the vast majority going to the USA. When one crook was recently caught, the USA refused extradition unless Beijing promised not to execute him. Two former Chinese bank presidents have been caught and indicted in the USA. Both wisely refused extradition to China, thus avoiding a bullet in the back of the brain.

It isn't only rogue capitalists who find themselves in Beijing's line of fire. Corrupt Communist officials can receive harsh sentences as well. Tian Fengshan, former Chinese Minister of Land and Resources, was sentenced to life in prison for accepting about $500,000 in bribes. A comparable U.S. official might have received four or five years at a "Club Fed."

In 2006, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued a report warning of China's threatening military build-up. His quadrennial report suggested that China should be spending less money on its military because this constitutes a threat to neighbors like Taiwan, South Korea and Japan -- and U.S. leadership in the Pacific.

But President Hu Jintao is living to some extent in several past centuries when great Chinese Dynasties were destroyed by foreign invaders and border wars. The Mongols destroyed the Jin Dynasty and established their own under Kublai Khan in 1279. Border wars with the Arabs sapped China's strength, causing the Tang Dynasty to collapse. The Manchus overran China, destroying the Ming Dynasty and establishing their own in 1644. The Western powers invaded China in the 19th century, with the British attempting to destroy a whole civilization by forcing it into drug addiction with English opium. Japan wrought terrible atrocities on the Chinese from 1932 to 1945, trying to destroy China and its people. With that kind of history, President Hu probably feels his military build-up is defensive in nature, designed to protect China's borders and coasts from foreign invasion.

With the USA defense budget approaching $500 million and China's at about $65 billion, a neutral observer might have trouble deciding which budget was offensive and which was defensive.

If the United States had been invaded as many times as China, we would probably understand Beijing's attitude a little better.

China's current actions can be easily understood and predicted in the 21st century by anyone who studies American history. By comparing historical American developmental periods to China's current state of development in similar areas, we can achieve greater understanding of China's motives, actions and future direction.

Unfortunately, our government, people and schools display very little respect for history. We do not seem to comprehend what George Santayana meant when he said, "Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it."

Sadly, our culture's dismissive attitude toward the value of history is found in the popularity of the expression, "That's history."

(click here for a printable version of this article)