THERE’S this memorable anecdote in Mario Puzo’s crime classic, The Godfather, where the mafia don from New York sends his henchman to reason with a Hollywood mogul who is standing in the way of his godson getting a film role perfect for him in every way, except that he has alienated the studio big shot who now hates his guts.
Where words fail, more potent nudges are sometimes needed – in this case, a horse’s head placed in the studio chief’s bedroom while he is asleep, blood and reedy tendons included, did the trick. It persuaded the man that the favour requested, and declined, is serious business. And thus he yields, shouting invectives and threats at the actor and his Italian origins, the consigliere who had reached out to him with the initial contact on behalf of his boss, and the mafia.
But not a word against the Godfather, himself. Genius, writes Puzo, has its rewards.
There’s no special genius, and even less reward, in the acrimonious exchanges that are causing a tailspin in ties between the world’s two biggest military powers and economies.
If anything, it bespeaks dangerous brinkmanship as a once-overwhelmingly dominant hegemon confronts a resolute challenger now picking a cue or two from its own playbook on how to throw weight around.
Nevertheless, the curses the movie mogul held back from uttering came to mind as I checked around the region about the goings-on at the Asean Ministerial Meeting and related meetings with dialogue partners hosted earlier this month by Vietnam.
Perhaps the two warring sides were mildly cramped by the fact that the conference did not take place in a single hall but over video link. Even so, while both the United States and China did robustly put forth their positions, each seemed to be taking care to keep the attacks from getting too immoderate.
Indeed, the rare frisson, according to Asian diplomats privy to the talks, came when China’s Vice-Foreign Minister Luo Zhaohui, standing in for Foreign Minister Wang Yi, dropped an acid comment about “drunken elephants in the room”.
Faint light at the end of the dark tunnel of US-China ties? Maybe not. But then again, maybe.
Some cultures, particularly in Asia, teach their young that even insults have to be measured; if you spit up at a person high above you, the mucus falls back on yourself. If you do that to someone far below you, it is a waste of time to descend so low. Insults have to be exchanged between equals. But most important of all, never insult so completely that the door to a reconciliation is closed forever. Perhaps that’s what we are witnessing.
A real estate and casino mogul before he ran for his first elected office, which happened to be the US presidency, the New York-born and raised Donald Trump, whose most trusted counsel is close family, has ordered his administration to pile on his strategic adversary the most intense pressure seen in a half-century. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has enthusiastically fallen in line, as have his key deputies, including Max Pottinger. Other arms of US government such as the Pentagon have fallen in line as well.
In July, two aircraft carrier groups led by the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan conducted war games in the South China Sea, joined by subsurface vessels and nuclear-armed bombers. Technology links built up over decades are being torn apart like the wanton act of a child and within the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is putting Chinese nationals and Americans of Chinese ethnicity under unprecedented scrutiny.
Trump’s long arm has even snatched Meng Wanzhou, the powerful daughter of the Huawei founder, one of China’s most respected tech tycoons.
Chinese diplomats and media have pushed back, and unfeelingly for a nation where the virus was first identified, sometimes suggesting that the US could learn a lesson or two from Beijing on how to control a pandemic. Also mocked at have been the racial tensions and the rioting that have scarred the US in the wake of the pandemic and the resultant economic hardship.
Nevertheless, through it all, most of the US vitriol has targeted the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not the Chinese nation.
In a landmark speech in July at the Nixon Presidential Library, Pompeo declared that the “free world must triumph over this new tyranny”. At the Asean forum earlier this month, he underlined US “commitment to speak out in the face of the Chinese Communist Party’s escalating aggression and threats to sovereign nations”.
This week, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell began his testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by saying he was there to “discuss the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party to the US and the global order” in three geographical regions, before going on to say that “it is now clear to us, and to more and more countries around the world, that the CCP under general secretary Xi Jinping... seeks to disrupt and reshape the international environment around the narrow self-centred interests and authoritarian values of a single beneficiary, the Chinese Communist Party”.
Just as the US has tried to separate the CCP from the Chinese people, Trump and Xi have been careful to not throw barbs directly at each other.
Indeed, Trump has claimed to have a “tremendous relationship” with Xi and he has described Xi as a “man who truly loves his country” and is “extremely capable”. He has also stressed that the two will be friends “no matter what happens with our dispute on trade”, and he also has spoken of his liking and “great respect” for China. On the other side, Chinese anger seems to be largely directed at Pompeo, rather than his boss.
At a recent panel discussion I moderated for the FutureChina Global Forum, I asked Professor Randall Kroszner, former member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System and who currently serves on the advisory board of the Paulson Institute, which works to promote US-China ties, whether he saw wiggle room for a patch-up after the election.
“Ultimately, there’s an understanding that major economic and military powers need to have connections, need to be able to talk and work with each other, ” Prof Kroszner responded.
“There is a lot of manoeuvring and posturing that’s going on right now, but I don’t think anyone wants to burn any bridges. They want to make sure the bridges are still there, even if there are some blockades now.
“(That said) I don’t see those obstacles being removed right now.”
For now, of course, it does look as though things will get worse before they get better.
In July, the US shifted position on the South China Sea, proclaiming that it held as illegal all of China’s claims outside its territorial waters. This has emboldened some, Vietnam and the Philippines particularly, to be more assertive with China over the South China Sea dispute.
Still, some in Asean suspect a certain fakery in all this, a sense that a lot of the noise coming from the US is mere posturing. There are few illusions about China either.
Indeed, the lull in assertive Chinese behaviour in the South China Sea witnessed in the lead-up to the Asean ministerial meet and forums is generally seen as nothing more than temporary easing of pressure to get a “good meeting”.
Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein spoke for many when he said the South China Sea issue “must be managed and resolved in a rational manner” and Asean has to “look at all avenues, all approaches, to ensure our region is not complicated further by other powers”.
Indeed, some even think Trump is capable of doing a deal with Beijing the week after election day, should he win.
Already, the latest iteration of the TikTok deal is being called by some analysts as a watered-down version of what Trump originally sought to demand, something that had been on the table months ago, although it is not quite clear if China could live with it.
Likewise, it is not lost that China has held back on announcing its own blacklist of US firms – “unreliable entity list” as it is called, although its intentions were announced more than a year ago.
Beijing is said to be staying its hand to both not exacerbate tensions, as well as to wait for the US election results. While the document explaining the unreliable entity list is 1,500 characters long, the attached clarifications are double in length – suggesting much of this is shadow play.
If a deal needs to be made, the Pompeos and Pottingers can always be switched out and more moderate voices brought in; Trump does not shrink from letting people go. Indeed, given that he is said to harbour ambitions about a 2024 presidential run, it might even help Pompeo’s political career
to be made a casualty of a rapprochement with China, so he can distance himself from the deal.
Still, it hardly needs to be said that Trump is capable of busting every code in the book, spoken or unspoken. With the election looming and his own standing in pre-election surveys not looking too promising, he let fly this week at the United Nations, returning to his “China virus” theme, boasting about three US-developed vaccines in Phase III trials, and the unprecedented rearmament of America under his watch. America’s weapons, he declared, “are at an advanced level, like we’ve never had before, like, frankly, we’ve never even thought of having before”.
Judging from Chinese media, Beijing read it for what it was; while made to a global audience, the speech was targeted at the domestic voting public. Nevertheless, it did not go without a response.
An editorial comment in the Global Times on Wednesday reminded Trump that the “hysterical attack on China violated the diplomatic etiquette a top leader is supposed to have”.
In short, never omit to leave that bit of margin for a future reconciliation. — The Straits Times/ANN
Ravi Velloor is associate editor at The Straits Times, a member of the Asia News Network (ANN) which is an alliance of 24 news media entities. The Asian Editors Circle is a series of commentaries by editors and contributors of ANN.
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