Fraternizing with the enemy

BEIJING – It was under the awning of a Beijing gas station that the grand, immaterial theories of international relations both began to make sense and sound ludicrous to me.  

The previous few weeks had been a steady stream of bad news for any American who hopes to return to Beijing in peace: the discovery of a hidden Chinese computer surveillance network, GhostNet, a scuffle between reconnaissance ships in the South China Sea, the unguarded remarks of a senior party official about “well-fed foreigners” with nothing better to do than cast blame on others, etc.

Your political science textbook could tell you all about the potential conflicts between rising and established powers, but if you have any power of observation, the writing is on the wall.  

On my bedside table is “Unhappy China,” which gives a rather succinct explanation of the prevailing mood. The book was recently published over here and is selling wildly in bookstores everywhere, despite criticism from the Chinese Communist Party as being too nationalistic.

Its premise is that the West could never accept Chinese power, which is unfortunate (for the West), because China is best able to lead the world. After all, they’ve been doing it for several thousand years, minus the last 200, according to the book.

But sitting in a car along with some other classmates, I realized precisely who I was looking at: friends who once made me macaroni and cheese because they knew how much I missed it. Friends who like French and Spanish music, some of whom have a dance class in 30 minutes (but will probably be late). These friends are also supposed members of America’s horde of adversaries.

When we talk about the inevitability of conflict over the world’s scarce resources, it’s easy to sound glib about the usage of broad, national power. What’s less easy is to imagine the people on the receiving end who, when given names and attributes, cease to be recognizable as “them.”  

To many of my classmates at Beijing University, I was also part of “them” when I first arrived. People I’d met had been exposed to just enough American culture to hit that perfect compromise between a wholly skewed view of what the United States is actually like and a sureness that their opinions were correct.

It was a fitting complement, given that many student visitors to China exit the plane with a list of the Chinese Communist Party’s crimes already written out, unsure how the society functions but certain it needs to change. Once you spend a little time getting to know people, not just slogans, “them” begins to dissolve into names.  

Then the insatiable Chinese desire for resources (soon to be as insatiable as our own) isn’t 1.3 billion people with a thirst for oil, but people you’ve met on the way to work or to class, who stop to put some gas in the tank.  

Funny how your rivals often turn out to be just like you.