Prisoners of Geography Read online

  A few outside observers thought the post-war years might bring liberal democracy to China. It was wishful thinking akin to the naive nonsense Westerners wrote during the early days of the recent ‘Arab Spring’, which, as with China, was based on a lack of understanding of the internal dynamics of the people, politics and geography of the region.

  Instead, nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-shek and Communist armies under Mao Zedong battled for supremacy until 1949, when the Communists emerged victorious and the Nationalists withdrew to Taiwan. That same year Radio Beijing announced: ‘The People’s Liberation Army must liberate all Chinese territories, including Tibet, Xinjiang, Hainan and Taiwan.’

  Mao centralised power to an extent never seen in previous dynasties. He blocked Russian influence in Inner Mongolia and extended Beijing’s influence into Mongolia. In 1951 China completed its annexation of Tibet (another vast non-Han territory), and by then Chinese school textbook maps were beginning to depict China as stretching even into the Central Asian republics. The country had been put back together; Mao would spend the rest of his life ensuring it stayed that way and consolidating Communist Party control in every facet of life, but turning away from much of the outside world. The country remained desperately poor, especially away from the coastal areas, but unified.

  Mao’s successors tried to turn his Long March to victory into an economic march towards prosperity. In the early 1980s the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping coined the term ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’, which appears to translate as ‘Total control for the Communist Party in a Capitalist Economy’. China was becoming a major trading power and a rising military giant. By the end of the 1990s it had recovered from the shock of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, regained Hong Kong and Macau from the British and Portuguese respectively, and could look around its borders, assess its security and plan ahead for its great move out into the world.

  If we look at China’s modern borders we see a great power now confident that it is secured by its geographical features, which lend themselves to effective defence and trade. In China the points of the compass are always listed in the order east–south–west–north, but let’s start in the north and move clockwise.

  In the north we see the 2,906-mile-long border with Mongolia. Straddling this border is the Gobi Desert. Nomadic warriors from ancient times might have been able to attack south across it, but a modern army would be spotted massing there weeks before it was ready to advance, and it would need incredibly long supply lines running across inhospitable terrain before it got into Inner Mongolia (part of China) and close to the heartland. There are few roads fit to move heavy armour, and few habitable areas. The Gobi Desert is a massive early warning system-cum-defensive line. Any Chinese expansion northward will come not via the military, but from trade deals as China attempts to hoover up Mongolia’s natural resources, primarily minerals. This will bring with it increased migration of the Han into Mongolia.

  Next door, to the east, is China’s border with Russia, which runs all the way to the Pacific Ocean – or at least the Sea of Japan subdivision of it. Above this is the mountainous Russian Far East, a huge, inhospitable territory with a tiny population. Below it is Manchuria, which the Russians would have to push through if they wanted to reach the Chinese heartland. The population of Manchuria is 100 million and growing; in contrast, the Russian Far East has fewer than seven million people and no indications of population growth. Large-scale migration south to north can be expected, which will in turn give China more leverage in its relations with Russia. From a military perspective the best place to cross would be near the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok, but there are few reasons, and no current intentions, to so do. Indeed, the recent Western sanctions against Russia due to the crisis in Ukraine have driven Russia into massive economic deals with China on terms which help keep Russia afloat, but are favourable to the Chinese. Russia is the junior partner in this relationship.

  Below the Russian Far East, along the coast, are China’s Yellow, East China and South China seas which lead to the Pacific and Indian Oceans, have many good harbours and have always been used for trade. But across the waves lie several island-sized problems – one shaped like Japan, which we shall come to shortly.

  Continuing clockwise, we come to the next land borders: Vietnam, Laos and Burma. Vietnam is an irritation for China. For centuries the two have squabbled over territory, and unfortunately for both this is the one area to the south which has a border an army can get across without too much trouble – which partially explains the 1,000-year domination and occupation of Vietnam by China from 111 BCE to 938 CE and their brief cross-border war of 1979. However, as China’s military prowess grows, Vietnam will be less inclined to get drawn into a shooting match and will either cosy up even closer to the Americans for protection or quietly begin shifting diplomatically to become friends with Beijing. That both countries are nominally ideologically Communist has little to do with the state of their relationship: it is their shared geography that has defined relations. Viewed from Beijing, Vietnam is only a minor threat and a problem that can be managed.

  The border with Laos is hilly jungle terrain, difficult for traders to cross – and even more complicated for the military. As they move clockwise to Burma, the jungle hills become mountains until at the western extreme they are approaching 20,000 feet and beginning to merge into the Himalayas.

  This brings us to Tibet and its importance to China. The Himalayas run the length of the Chinese–Indian border before descending to become the Karakorum Range bordering Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. This is nature’s version of a Great Wall of China, or – looking at it from New Delhi’s side – the Great Wall of India. It cuts the two most populous countries on the planet off from each other both militarily and economically.

  They have their disputes: China claims the Indian province of Arunachal Pradesh, India says China is occupying Aksai Chin; but despite pointing their artillery at each other high up on this natural wall, both sides have better things to do than reignite the shooting match which broke out in 1962, when a series of violent border disputes culminated in vicious large-scale mountain fighting. Nevertheless, the tension is ever-present and each side needs to handle the situation with care.

  Very little trade has moved between China and India over the centuries, and that is unlikely to change soon. Of course the border is really the Tibetan–Indian border – and that is precisely why China has always wanted to control it.

  This is the geopolitics of fear. If China did not control Tibet, it would always be possible that India might attempt to do so. This would give India the commanding heights of the Tibetan Plateau and a base from which to push into the Chinese heartland, as well as control of the Tibetan sources of three of China’s great rivers, the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong, which is why Tibet is known as ‘China’s Water Tower’. China, a country with approximately the same volume of water usage as the USA, but with a population five times as large, will clearly not allow that.

  It matters not whether India wants to cut off China’s river supply, only that it would have the power to do so. For centuries China has tried to ensure that it could never happen. The actor Richard Gere and the Free Tibet movement will continue to speak out against the injustices of the occupation, and now settlement, of Tibet by Han Chinese; but in a battle between the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan independence movement, Hollywood stars and the Chinese Communist Party – which rules the world’s second-largest economy – there is only going to be one winner.

  When Westerners, be they Mr Gere or Mr Obama, talk about Tibet, the Chinese find it deeply irritating. Not dangerous, not subversive – just irritating. They see it not through the prism of human rights, but that of geopolitical security, and can only believe that the Westerners are trying to undermine their security. However, Chinese security has not been undermined and it will not be, even if there are further uprisings against the Han. Demographics and geopolitics oppose Tibetan independen
ce.

  The Chinese are building ‘facts on the ground’ on the ‘roof of the world’. In the 1950s the Chinese Communist People’s Army began building roads into Tibet, and since then they have helped to bring the modern world to the ancient kingdom; but the roads, and now railways, also bring the Han.

  It was long said to be impossible to build a railway through the permafrost, the mountains and the valleys of Tibet. Europe’s best engineers, who had cut through the Alps, said it could not be done. As late as 1988 the travel writer Paul Theroux wrote in his book Riding the Iron Rooster: ‘The Kunlun Range is a guarantee that the railway will never get to Lhasa.’ The Kunlun separated Xinjiang province from Tibet, for which Theroux gave thanks: ‘That is probably a good thing. I thought I liked railways until I saw Tibet, and then I realised that I liked wilderness much more.’ But the Chinese built it. Perhaps only they could have done. The line into the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, was opened in 2006 by the then Chinese President Hu Jintao. Now passenger and goods trains arrive from as far away as Shanghai and Beijing, four times a day, every day.

  They bring with them many things, such as consumer goods from across China, computers, colour televisions and mobile phones. They bring tourists who support the local economy, they bring modernity to an ancient and impoverished land, a huge improvement in living standards and healthcare, and they bring the potential to carry Tibetan goods out to the wider world. But they have also brought several million Han Chinese settlers.

  The true figures are hard to come by: the Free Tibet movement claims that in the wider cultural Tibetan region Tibetans are now a minority, but the Chinese government says that in the official Tibetan Autonomous Region more than 90 per cent of people are Tibetan. Both sides are exaggerating, but the evidence suggests the government is the one with the greater degree of exaggeration. Its figures do not include Han migrants who are not registered as residents, but the casual observer can see that Han neighbourhoods now dominate the Tibetan urban areas.

  Once, the majority of the population of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang were ethnically Manchurian, Mongolian and Uighur; now all three are majority Han Chinese, or approaching the majority. So it will be with Tibet.

  This means that resentment of the Han will continue to manifest itself in rioting such as that of 2008, when anti-Chinese Tibetan protestors in Lhasa burnt and looted Han properties, twenty-one people died and hundreds were injured. The authorities’ crackdown will continue, the Free Tibet movement will continue, monks will continue to set themselves on fire to bring the plight of the Tibetans to the world’s attention – and the Han will keep coming.

  China’s massive population, mostly crammed into the heartland, is looking for ways to expand. Just as the Americans looked west, so do the Chinese, and just as the Iron Horse brought the European settlers to the lands of the Comanche and the Navajo, so the modern Iron Roosters are bringing the Han to the Tibetans.

  Finally the clock hand moves round past the borders with Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (all mountainous) before reaching the border with Kazakhstan, which leads back round north to Mongolia. This is the ancient Silk Route, the trade land bridge from the Middle Kingdom to the world. Theoretically it’s a weak spot in China’s defence, a gap between the mountains and desert; but it is far from the heartland, the Kazakhs are in no position to threaten China, and Russia is several hundred miles distant.

  South-east of this Kazakh border is the restive ‘semi-autonomous’ Chinese province of Xinjiang and its native Muslim population of the Uighur people, who speak a language related to Turkish. Xinjiang borders eight countries: Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.

  There was, is and always will be trouble in Xinjiang. The Uighurs have twice declared an independent state of ‘East Turkestan’, in the 1930s and 1940s. They watched the collapse of the Russian Empire result in their former Soviet neighbours in the ‘Stans’ becoming sovereign states, were inspired by the Tibetan independence movement, and many are now again calling to break away from China.

  Inter-ethnic rioting erupted in 2009, leading to over 200 deaths. Beijing responded in three ways: it ruthlessly suppressed dissent, it poured money into the region, and it continued to pour in Han Chinese workers. For China, Xinjiang is too strategically important to allow an independence movement to get off the ground: it not only borders eight countries, thus buffering the heartland, but it also has oil, and is home to China’s nuclear weapons testing sites. The territory is also key to the Chinese economic strategy of ‘One Belt, One Road’. The road is, oddly enough, a sea route – the creation of an oceangoing highway for goods; the belt is the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ – a land-based route formed from the old Silk Route, which goes straight through Xinjiang and will in turn connect down southwards to the massive deep-water port China is building in Gwadar, Pakistan. In late 2015 China signed a forty-year lease on the port. This is part of the way in which ‘the belt and the road’ will be connected.

  Most of the new towns and cities springing up across Xinjiang are overwhelmingly populated by Han Chinese attracted by work in the new factories in which the central government invests. A classic example is the city of Shihezi, 85 miles north-west of the capital, Ürümqi. Of its population of 650,000, it is thought that at least 620,000 are Han. Overall, Xinjiang is reckoned to be 40 per cent Han, at a conservative estimate – and even Ürümqi itself may now be majority Han, although official figures are difficult to obtain and not always reliable due to their political sensitivity.

  There is a ‘World Uighur Congress’ based in Germany, and the ‘East Turkestan Liberation Movement’ set up in Turkey; but Uighur separatists lack a Dalai Lama-type figure upon whom foreign media can fix, and their cause is almost unknown around the world. China tries to keep it that way, ensuring it stays on good terms with as many border countries as possible in order to prevent any organised independence movement from having supply lines or somewhere to which it could fall back. Beijing also paints separatists as Islamist terrorists. Al Qaeda and other groups, which have a foothold in places like Tajikistan, are indeed attempting to forge links with the Uighur separatists, but the movement is nationalist first, Islamic second. However, gun, bomb and knife attacks in the region against state and/or Han targets over the past few years do look as if they will continue, and could escalate into a full-blown uprising.

  In early 2016, local government officials said that the de-radicalisation effort had ‘markedly weakened’ the nascent Islamist movement. However, given that the Turkish Army said it had arrested 324 suspected jihadists from Xinjiang en route to Syria in 2015, that seems unlikely.

  China will not cede this territory and, as in Tibet, the window for independence is closing. Both are buffer zones, one is a major land trade route, and – crucially – both offer markets (albeit with a limited income) for an economy which must keep producing and selling goods if it is to continue to grow and to prevent mass unemployment. Failure to so do would likely lead to widespread civil disorder, threatening the control of the Communist Party and the unity of China.

  There are similar reasons for the Party’s resistance to democracy and individual rights. If the population were to be given a free vote, the unity of the Han might begin to crack or, more likely, the countryside and urban areas would come into conflict. That in turn would embolden the people of the buffer zones, further weakening China. It is only a century since the most recent humiliation of the rape of China by foreign powers; for Beijing, unity and economic progress are priorities well ahead of democratic principles.

  The Chinese look at society very differently from the West. Western thought is infused with the rights of the individual; Chinese thought prizes the collective above the individual. What the West thinks of as the rights of man, the Chinese leadership thinks of as dangerous theories endangering the majority, and much of the population accepts that, at the least, the extended family comes before the individual.

  I once
took a Chinese ambassador in London to a high-end French restaurant in the hope they would repeat Prime Minister Zhou Enlai’s much-quoted answer to Richard Nixon’s question ‘What is the impact of the French Revolution?’, to which the prime minister replied ‘It’s too soon to tell.’ Sadly this was not forthcoming, but I was treated to a stern lecture about how the full imposition of ‘what you call human rights’ in China would lead to widespread violence and death and was then asked, ‘Why do you think your values would work in a culture you don’t understand?’

  The deal between the Party leaders and the people has been, for a generation now, ‘We’ll make you better off – you will follow our orders.’ So long as the economy keeps growing, that grand bargain may last. If it stops, or goes into reverse, the deal is off. The current level of demonstrations and anger against corruption and inefficiency are testament to what would happen if the deal breaks.

  Another growing problem for the Party is its ability to feed the population. More than 40 per cent of arable land is now either polluted or has thinning topsoil, according to their Ministry of Agriculture.

  China is caught in a catch-22. It needs to keep industrialising as it modernises and raises standards of living, but that very process threatens food production. If it cannot solve this problem there will be unrest.

  There are now around 500 mostly peaceful protests a day across China over a variety of issues. If you introduce mass unemployment, or mass hunger, that tally will explode in both number and the degree of force used by both sides.

  So, on the economic side China now also has a grand bargain with the world – ‘We’ll make the stuff for cheap – you buy it for cheap.’

  Leave to one side the fact that already labour costs are rising in China and it is being rivalled by Thailand and Indonesia, for price if not volume. What would happen if the resources required to make the stuff dried up, if someone else got them first, or if there was a naval blockade of your goods – in and out? Well, for that, you’d need a navy.