Four China Strategy

An Open Message to 36 Key Persons plus anyone Who Cares about U.S. China-Policy(News Release or Executive Summary)Club of Remy (clubofremy.org) and Fusion Media in Washington DC launched their first documentary film “Why Do We Need a Four-Chinas strategy”, surprised by some U.S.-China experts. “Two-China (the Mainland PRC and the Taiwan ROC) are already a headache for us, how come you come up four?”The presenter in the film, an independent research scholar Dr. Jason Hu, founder of the Club of Remy, explains:  Viewing from the perspectives of Cultural Gene hypothesis and self-organizing system theory, it is very likely that a society may have two (or even more) sets of conflicting Cultural Genes, or two systems of values, operating at the same time driving two competing self-organizing processes.

Specific to Chinese society, the two major sets of values can be identified:

1- The first set of dominating values can be traced back to 2000 years ago, formed in Qin and Han dynasties, with a core of tyranny and general worship to power and trickeries as the main rules of the game, sugar-coated with the pro-hierarchy Confucian chicken soup. This value set has been oppressing new ideas, and has eliminated possible innovations and progresses in Chinese society.  Name it the Dragon Cultural Gene set.

2- The second set of values came from the mainstream civilization, universal values entering into China from the days of Xu Guangqi about 400 years ago.  (“Mainstream civilization” is defined as having a richer cultural gene pool formed by long-term exchanges and integrations in various regions of the planet earth.) Name it the Panda Cultural Gene set.

Washington policy-making communities usually divide themselves as either Dragon Slayers or Panda Huggers according to their views about China. Their mistake is to perceive China as either a dragon or a panda only. The truth is that they are both right in part because they only saw part of the truth. During the time when this documentary is made, both Panda Huggers and Dragon Slayers wrote opening letters to President Trump and expressed their views and concerns.  Hu’s point is that both the dragon and the panda exist in Chinese society at the same time as competing for self-organizational processes, so the two fractions of Washington policymakers should work together instead of trying to cancel each other’s efforts.

The dragon and the panda are symbols distinguishing cultural value orientations. Consider the geographical and political institution divisions between PRC/Mainland and ROC/Taiwan, the United States actually faces Four-Chinas or four different Chinese dreams: the PRC Panda, the ROC  Panda, the PRC Dragon, and the ROC Dragon. They are four groups with different mentalities and different goals.  Thus, if the U.S. policy towards China is to be effective, it must respond to those four forces with four sets of strategies coupling with them respectively. This is the “four-Chinas-strategies” suggested by Hu. This new strategy must also be built on in-depth reflections of the previous U.S. China policies. The purpose of this film is to start brainstorming and discussion on this topic.

The film starts from mentioning two influential books (" Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America " and "The Hundred-Year Marathon – China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower") and two films (The Chinese National Defense University’s “Silent Contest” and Peter Navarro’s “Death by China)”. The focus question is raised with quotes from Michael Pillsbury, Kiron Skinner, and Newt Gingrich, who all emphasized that the US policy toward China needs to be updated, perhaps with a new way of thinking.

Hu advocates that it is time for a paradigm shift:

1- To use “mainstream civilization” vs. “local periphery culture” conceptual framework to replace “West” vs. “East” conceptual framework;

2- To use “innovation-driven, free-spirited society” vs. “winner-take-all, hierarchically-oriented society” identifiers to replace “Capitalism” vs. “socialism/Communism”;

3- To use the "universal value set" vs. “local regional value set" perspective to replace "political and military conflicts between two governments of PRC and ROC" perspective.

Thus, instead of being trapped by the fuzzy idea of "the clash of civilizations" or by the dilemma of multiculturism,  we can see more clearly the direction of our civilization progresses and act more effectively confronting the threats to us.

The film tries to explain cultural genes and self-organization phenomena with examples. It lists the prominent figures from the Chinese history whose ideas coined the Dragon Cultural Genes and the Panda Cultural Genes. It also introduces the concept of Chinmunism that captures the essence of the CCP as a crossbreed from the Dragon Genes and the Communist Genes, thus having characteristics that are different from the former USSR-Type communism, thus needing different strategies to deal with.

For the currently high-profile Chinmunist strategy of the “One-Belt-One-Road,” Hu used the words from Professor Chong-pin Lin to capture its essence: "To dominant East Asia without firing a bullet".  Hu warns that if the madness of the Dragon Gene is allowed to grow without confrontation, and if the world, unfortunately, fell into chaos and wars, then the CCP driven by the Dragon Gene logic will chase something like “One-Oasis-One-Lake”, more intimidating than “One-Belt-One-Road”,  which will be a huge nightmare comparable with the forecast by Wang Lixiong’s novel “The Yellow Peril”(also known as “The Tidal Wave.”)  Here, “One-Oasis” would be the large area in Southeast Asia that still looks green on the ecological map – from the not-yet-deforested areas of southern China all the way to Indonesia; the “One-Lake” would be the entire South China Sea, as an inner lake after they conquer the eight smaller countries in that area by force, similar to the Mediterranean Sea once was the inner lake of the Roman Empire.  Since Emperor Qin around 200 B.C. was able to destroy his six neighbor states and unified them into one big country, would another modern emperor produced by the Dragons Gene, armed with nuclear weapons plus AI, play that game once again? Hu strikes the bell of alarm and hopes that his warning to become a self-defeating prophecy to prevent such a nightmare from happening.

On the other hand, If the Chinmunist CCP collapses as anticipated by many, and if there are no new constructive forces ready for the reconstruction of a new China, human civilization will suffer from huge disasters for sure.  The film introduces eight different “what-if” scenarios as envisioned by eight authors for the purpose to remind people about the troubles ahead once CCP is gone.  Hu strongly suggests that the strategy of “peaceful evolution” proposed by John Dulles in the 1950s is still not outdated but needs to be updated, with “four-Chinas-strategy” as a possible candidate.

If all the progressive forces in the world can unite themselves into a stronger alliance, they can effectively stop the growth of the evil dragons and at the same time facilitate the peace-loving pandas to build a new, harmonious, democratic, and civilized China to truly join the global village. With the "Four-Chinas- strategy,” it would be a natural process to normalize diplomatic relations with the Taiwan/Republic of China, Asia's first republic born in 1911. The current Constitution of the ROC has been effective for quite some time. It can be applied to the Mainland after CCP is done. If Mr. Seven Bannon can build a leadership school in Europe to defend the conservative value system, why not we the people who care about China's destiny build a school overseas or in Taiwan for future young leaders for a new China?

The film ends with Brahms’ Requiem performed by the Taipei Philharmonic Orchestra, dedicating the message to a list of 36 key persons who are working on new policies to deal with China effectively, plus anyone who cares about this topic and invite the audience for more discussion.

Thanks for all the sources of video clips and images adopted from the Internet, their authors please contact us in case there is any copyright issue for this non-commercial-non-profit film for educational purpose.  The main content of the film is researched and narrated by Jason Hu, editing is done by Dahang Wei, the translation of the poem “To the Hero of the WWIII” is contributed by Ellen Tang. Other members of Club of Remy, Grace, and Leif Jacobsen helped to film in earlier stages, even their footage is not used for this version of the release.