I was among the first people to provide intelligence to the White House favoring an overture to China, in 1969. For decades I played a sometimes prominent role in urging administrations of both parties to provide China with technological and military assistance.
I largely accepted the assumptions shared by America's top diplomats and scholars, which were inculcated repeatedly in American strategic discussions, commentary, and media analysis.
We believed that American aid to a fragile China whose leaders thought like us would help China become a democratic and peaceful power without ambitions of regional or even global dominance.
Every one of the assumptions behind that belief was wrong—dangerously so.
The error of those assumptions is becoming clearer by the day, by what China does and, equally important, by what China does not do.
For four decades now my colleagues and I believed that "engagement" with the Chinese would induce China to cooperate with the West on a wide range of policy problems. It hasn't. Trade and technology were supposed to lead to a convergence of Chinese and Western views on questions of regional and global order. They haven't. In short, China has failed to meet nearly all of our rosy expectations.
Take, for example, weapons of mass destruction. No security threat poses a greater danger to the United States and our allies than their proliferation. But China has been less than helpful — to put it mildly — in checking the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
China has certainly changed in the past thirty years, but its political system has not evolved in the ways that we advocates of engagement had hoped and predicted. The idea that the seeds of democracy have been sown at the village level became the conventional wisdom among many China watchers in America.
My faith was first shaken in 1997 when I was among those encouraged to visit China to witness the emergence of "democratic" elections in a village near the industrial town of Dongguan. While visiting, I had a chance to talk in Mandarin with the candidates and see how the elections actually worked. The unwritten rules of the game soon became clear: the candidates were allowed no pubic assemblies, no television ads and no campaign posters. They were not allowed to criticize any policy implemented by the Communist Party nor were they free to criticize their opponents on any issue. There would be no American-style debates over taxes or spending or the country's future. The only thing a candidate could do was to compare his personal qualities to those of his opponent. Violations of these rules were treated as crimes….
In what appeared to be a forthright exchange of views with Chinese scholars, we were told that China was in serious economic and political peril — and that the potential for collapse loomed large. These distinguished scholars pointed to China's serious environmental problems, restless ethnic minorities and incompetent and corrupt government leaders — as well as to those leaders' to carry out necessary reforms.
I later learned that the Chinese were escorting other groups of American academics, business leaders and policy experts on these purportedly "exclusive" visits where they too received an identical message about China's coming decline. Many of them then repeated these "revelations" in articles, books and commentaries back in the United States.
Yet the hard fact is that China's already robust GDP is predicted to continue to grow by at least 7 or 8 percent, thereby surpassing that of the United States by 2018 at the earliest, according to economists from the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the United Nations. Unfortunately China policy experts like me were so wedded to the idea of the "coming collapse of China" that few of us believed these forecasts. While we worried about China's woes, its economy more than doubled….
Nathan Leites, who was renowned for his psychoanalytical cultural studies, observed:
Chinese literature on strategy from Sun Tzu through Mao Tse-tung has emphasized deception more than many military doctrines. Chinese deception is oriented mainly toward inducing the enemy to act in expediently and less toward protecting the integrity of one's own plans.
Over time I discovered proposals by Chinese hawks (ying pai) to the Chinese leadership to mislead and manipulate American policymakers to obtain intelligence and military, technological and economic assistance. I learned that these hawks had been advising Chinese leaders, beginning with Mao Zedong, to avenge a century of humiliation and aspired to replace the United States as the economic, military and political leader of the world by the year 2049 (the one hundredth anniversary of the Communist Revolution).
This plan became known as "the Hundred-Year Marathon.” It is a plan that has been implemented by the Communist Party leadership from the beginning of its relationship with the United States.
The strength of the Hundred-Year Marathon, however, is that it operates through stealth. To borrow from the movie Fight Club, the first rule of the Marathon is that you do not talk about the Marathon. Indeed there is almost certainly no single master plan locked away in a vault in Beijing that outlines the Marathon in detail. The Marathon is so well known to China's leaders that there is no need to risk exposure by writing it down. But the Chinese are beginning to talk about the notion more openly — perhaps because they realize it may already be too late for America to keep pace.
I observed a shift in Chinese attitudes during three visits to the country in 2012, 2013 and 2014. As was my usual custom I met with scholars at the country's major think tanks, whom I'd come to know well over decades. I directly asked them about a "Chinese-led world order"— a term that only a few years earlier they would have dismissed or at least would not have dared to say aloud. However this time many said openly that the new order, or rejuvenation, is coming even faster than anticipated.
I was told — by the same people who had long assured me of China's interest in only a modest leadership role within an emerging multipolar world — that the Communist Party is realizing its long-term goal of restoring China to its "proper" place in the world. In effect they were telling me that they had deceived me and the American government. With perhaps a hint of understated pride they were revealing the most systematic, significant and dangerous intelligence failure in American history. And because we have no idea the Marathon is even under way, America is losing.
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2-2-15 The Chinese strategic deception program was launched by Mao Zedong in 1955 and put forth the widespread misbelief that "China is a poor, backward, inward-looking country. And therefore the United States has to help them, and give away things to them, to make sure they stay friendly," Pillsbury said in an interview. "This is totally wrong."
The Chinese strategy also is aimed at gaining global economic dominance, he says, noting that China's military buildup is but one part. The combined economic, political and military power is seeking to produce China as a new global "hegemon" that will export its anti-democratic political system and predatory economic practices around the world.
In the interview Pillsbury, currently director of the Hudson Institute's Center for Chinese Strategy, said new details contained in the book were cleared for publication by the FBI, CIA and Defense Department, including details of formerly classified presidential directives, testimony from previously unknown Chinese defectors, and alarming details of writings from powerful Chinese military and political hawks.
The book also discloses for the first time that the opening to China in 1969 and 1970, considered one of the United States' most significant strategic gambits, was not initiated by then-President Nixon's top national security aide Henry Kissinger. Instead Pillsbury shows that it was Chinese generals who played the United States card against the Soviet Union, amid fears of a takeover of the country by Moscow….
The (6 Chinese) defectors disclosed details of "what China is trying to do to America in what they call the 100-year marathon," Pillsbury said. …
Pillsbury's book, The Hundred Year Marathon, reveals new details of secret CIA cooperation with China in covert action programs in Afghanistan and Angola as well as nearly $1 billion worth of weapons transfers during the 1980s. The covert support for China, along with a continuing flow of U.S. technology and intelligence for the past 45 years, were once among the U.S. government's most closely guarded secrets….
Chinese hardliners promoted the book of Col. Liu Mingfu, The China Dream that is the inspiration behind current Chinese leader Xi Jinping's increasingly Maoist policies. Other writings by hawks reveal a future China-dominated world will that values "order over freedom, ethics over law and elite governance over democracy and human rights.”…
China's "assassin's mace" weapons—missiles and other exotic arms—are being built to defeat satellites and knock out aircraft carriers, using high-tech arms, including electromagnetic pulse weapons….
Reagan agreed to sell six major weapons systems to China but required that continued aid be conditioned on China remaining unaligned with Moscow and liberalizing its communist system. The arms transfers were halted after Tiananmen….
China will undermine the United Nations and World Trade Organization to
"delegitimize" the U.S.-led world order in order to promote its global system.
An internal secret briefing for Chinese officials discussed China's most
important foreign policy priority as "how to manage the decline of the United
States," revealing that China is working against U.S. interests in supporting
rogue states and selling arms to America's enemies.
https://www.businessinsider.com/top-china-analyst-beijing-has-been-duping-the-us-since-mao-2015-2 and
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/23/cia-worked-china-intelligence-against-russia/
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Ralph D. Sawyer (shown) did undergraduate study in philosophy, the history of science, and electrical engineering (AI/computers) at MIT. His graduate studies were in history and Chinese language at Harvard University; further Chinese language study at the Stanford Center in Taipei.
Sonshi.com: One of your most outstanding works we feel was your translation of the Seven Military Classics (which includes Sun Tzu). Please share with our readers how the book came about.
Sawyer: Commencing Chinese studies just when the Vietnam War first escalating, I was astonished to find that the Chinese military writings were not only unstudied, but actually disparaged, even vehemently deemed irrelevant to China's historical tradition and great culture. (The misperception that China has no military history, that the civil always controlled the martial, and that battles and wars were fought with the idea of "preservation" -- even though records such as the comprehensive Tzu-chih T'ung-chien show millions perished and the infrastructure was ravaged -- was as fervently held then as today.)
While initially pursuing my inquiry into comparative psychological conceptions and the role of strong emotions as conceived in early Chinese thought, I discovered that the classic military works preserved the most intriguing material, particularly the sections focusing on the psychology of warfare, manipulating the enemy, and the doctrine of ch'i, and therefore focused upon them.
After pondering the intriguing contents for some twenty years, I decided to present these early texts to a wider audience, not necessarily as a counterbalance to Sun-tzu, but to show that Chinese military thought had not become moribund after Sun-tzu's initial impetus and defining conceptions.
Of course the Seven Military Classics are really the quintessential expression of Warring States military thought since the Questions and Replies, while clearly reflecting the evolution of practices and technology over the intervening centuries, particularly the cavalry's development as the component force primarily entrusted with executing unorthodox tactics, in many ways constitutes a critical review of classical doctrine.
Sonshi.com: From your experience, are Sun Tzu's principles truly being applied in the marketplace? If so, how well?Sawyer: Commencing Chinese studies just when the Vietnam War first escalating, I was astonished to find that the Chinese military writings were not only unstudied, but actually disparaged, even vehemently deemed irrelevant to China's historical tradition and great culture. (The misperception that China has no military history, that the civil always controlled the martial, and that battles and wars were fought with the idea of "preservation" -- even though records such as the comprehensive Tzu-chih T'ung-chien show millions perished and the infrastructure was ravaged -- was as fervently held then as today.)
While initially pursuing my inquiry into comparative psychological conceptions and the role of strong emotions as conceived in early Chinese thought, I discovered that the classic military works preserved the most intriguing material, particularly the sections focusing on the psychology of warfare, manipulating the enemy, and the doctrine of ch'i, and therefore focused upon them.
After pondering the intriguing contents for some twenty years, I decided to present these early texts to a wider audience, not necessarily as a counterbalance to Sun-tzu, but to show that Chinese military thought had not become moribund after Sun-tzu's initial impetus and defining conceptions.
Of course the Seven Military Classics are really the quintessential expression of Warring States military thought since the Questions and Replies, while clearly reflecting the evolution of practices and technology over the intervening centuries, particularly the cavalry's development as the component force primarily entrusted with executing unorthodox tactics, in many ways constitutes a critical review of classical doctrine.
Sawyer: As the ancient Chinese classics point out, the values and forms of behavior appropriate to the civil and the martial never intersect. The ultimate purpose of the latter is to brutalize, conquer, slay, and exterminate; direct action to achieve these purposes is not only permissible, but absolutely required. Executives may speak about eliminating their competitors, even try to think of ways to subvert them, but it in actual practice the battle remains solely for the consumer's mind. It is waged by creating and manipulating perceptions rather than direct attacks.
Nevertheless, while stressing the informational aspect Sun-tzu provides a means for conceptualizing every sort of conflict and contest, if not most life tasks. When I reflect upon discussions at virtually every level over the past decades throughout Asia, even though superficially saturated with Confucian vectors and supposed concepts of virtue, my impression is that much thinking has been fundamentally affected and oriented by Chinese military concepts. The initial reaction, the primary response, of most people across the spectrum of positions normally reflects a traditional, martially influenced and oriented mindset. Some of these first (or "knee jerk") responses are appropriate, others wildly inappropriate.
The thrust of Sun-tzu's thinking is to control external perception, shaping the enemy's view, with deception being the most ballyhooed technique. Although his teachings are constantly and incorrectly reduced to this simple principle, creating misperceptions in your competitors can be advantageous and is frequently attempted through disinformation, yet fraught with the danger of contaminating the marketplace. (Examples of successful manipulation commonly seen in Asia, where people follow each other's activities with great intensity, might be leaking "secret" information about a change in research or marketing direction, a new product emphasis, the abandonment of items with strong sales potential, or shifting of personnel assignments.)
In more direct confrontations ranging from real estate transactions through gang wars and personal vendettas, Sun-tzu's admonition to manipulate the enemy can and has been frequently implemented, but many instructions are clearly inappropriate apart from the crisis of combat. Conversely, perhaps the most important are those devoted to self-realization, emphasizing knowledge and assessing all aspects of the market and competitors, as well as those crucial to business in general, such as command and control, motivating all the participants, and unifying one's "forces."
Sonshi.com: Sun Tzu said, "[Spies] are a ruler's treasures." You wrote the Tao of Spycraft, a book much discussed on the Sonshi Forum. Would you mind giving us some insight into this topic?
Sawyer: The chapter on spies being the last in the extant book has prompted suggestions that it was not from Sun-tzu's hand, but the contents are remarkably consistent with the views expressed in the other chapters, particularly within a historical context which saw the practice of intelligence gathering become crucial to the survival of individual states.
Moreover, it well coheres with his conception of efficient warfare and the requisite thrust to the detailed knowledge of the enemy upon which all plans and action, military and political, must be based. (Please note that I am again emphasizing the ruthless prosecution of efficient warfare rather than the efficient prosecution of ruthless warfare, the latter being a concept attributable to Sun Pin.) Particularly when enemies are ready to pounce and exploit every opportunity, whether created by victory or defeat, disproportionate resources must be allocated to the acquisition of critical information.
From inception Sun-tzu's agents were not merely passive collectors, but highly motivated seekers who actively penetrated the enemy's environment and key administrative structures. Moreover, many were tasked with the primary work of creating disaffection and disseminating false information, both for immediate effect and to achieve the ideal of being "formless." (This amorphousness causes the enemy to misdirect and dissipate their resources in a multitude of directions, creating broad weaknesses that can be discovered by clandestine agents and exploited both diplomatically and on the battlefield.)
Intelligence activities have long de-emphasized human agency even as disinformation has come to be considered politically incorrect, critics apparently believing that transparency will reveal U. S. motives to be benign even as people are terrified by our awesome power. In consequence, it's often said that we are expert in counting tanks and hard targets but lack a penetrating understanding of the enemy's intent or even their contemporary culture. This results not just from the elimination of agents gathering essential military secrets, but also large numbers studying all available sources of information to understand the enemy's culture and perceive shifts in intent. (Of course the latter is so nebulous as to cause heated interpretive arguments, whereas missile site configurations are basically self-evident.)
Sun-tzu's insight is increasingly crucial in this age of cyber information, yet ironically over the centuries in both China and the West the craft of intelligence gathering, even the tasks of analysis, have not only been disdained, but condemned as inappropriate and unrighteous, as if the battle between states is a football game bounded by rules, a well-defined playing field, and referees, forgetting that the losers merely get bad press whereas extinction awaits those who flail about ignorantly in the real world.
Moreover, clandestine activities continue at a pace unimaginable just decades, not to mention centuries ago, practiced extensively on the Orient's home ground through a wide variety of methods, many dependent upon exploiting women and pleasure. https://www.sonshi.com/ralph-sawyer-interview.html
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In this century we have seen a five-pronged attack on our youth which has blunted the ability of generations to defend freedom. This attack, supported by the media and the educational system, comes through drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sugar and rock music. If current trends continue, the next generation may not even be capable of bearing the flame of freedom in America. God forbid!
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