There are many measures of a nation's power. Almost all are deeply flawed. The U.S. Commerce Department team that
originally devised the concept of gross domestic product warned it should not
be used as a measure of a nation's true economic health because it was too
limited and left too many factors out. Defense spending only partially captures a nation's military
capabilities because other factors -- like the political will to use force -- are
so crucial to the equation. Resources
are good to have but can be a curse if a nation grows too complacent about
other aspects of their development because of them. Great populations are a potential source of
fantastic power if the people are educated and well-employed and share the
goals of the government but as we regularly see, that is often not the case.
But one unfailingly good indicator of a nation's real
strength is the nature of the enemies or adversaries it fears. Truly great powers do not fear small threats
or, if they come to, they diminish themselves and lift up the small. The United States has illustrated this phenomenon well
as it reorganized its entire national security apparatus to respond to the
threat of hundreds or perhaps a few thousands of largely disorganized terrorists
of limited capabilities, extreme views, and little geopolitical traction.
But however egregious America's over-reaction to the
terrorist threat was and however grotesquely it led to the perversion of our
values and the undermining of our international standing, it seems positively
rational and even ennobling compared to the degree to which China cowers in the
presence of old men, artists, religious sects, and even words. In this, China joins the ranks of other
seemingly "great" powers from Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia that signaled their
fundamental weakness even as they bulked up their armies and posed and postured
on the world stage. Great states and
great men do not fear the little guy so much that they demonize him, outlaw the
expression of his views, or throw him in prison.
Yet that is just what is happening again in China as the
whiff of jasmine from the Middle East wafts through its society. The Chinese were so afraid of words like
"demonstration" and "protest" and even "jasmine" that they monitored and
censored them on the web. They turned
out police at the first signs of unrest. And they have rounded up dissidents.
Among those arrested now is avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei. Apparently the government of the world's most
populous country, the world's second biggest economy, the country that spends
more on defense than all others but one, is afraid of a man who perhaps best
known for an installation at the Tate Gallery in London consisting of a million
hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds. He is a prolific artist and communicator and
has become a thorn in the side of the Chinese regime even after he was one of
the designers behind the famous "bird's nest" stadium that became a symbol of
the country during the Beijing Olympics. But he is also just one man, just an artist. Just as jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiabao is
just one man.
Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to China and likely Republican presidential contender Jon Huntsman saluted both men in an address in Beijing on
Wednesday stating that they, "challenge the Chinese government to serve the
public in all cases and at all times."
That is the kind of challenge any government should relish. It is why governments exist. And for the leaders in Bejing to shrink and
wince and draw back in the presence of these individuals and their ideas sends
a clear message.
Beijing is afraid. They clearly
recognize something that most observers in the world downplay. While Japan may be threatened by the fault
lines on which the island is build, China is built on a volcano. Social unrest seethes just beneath the
surface with hundreds of millions of unemployed, underemployed and otherwise
disenfranchised people -- many very well educated and attuned to the opportunities
they would have elsewhere in the world -- posing a constant threat to the current
government, once revolutionary, now just another ancien regime clinging
to power.
They are afraid of Ai because they know they are smaller than his ideas,
smaller than all those sunflower seeds, all appearing small, all full of huge
potential, straining at their shells and waiting for nature to take its
course. China is big and home to a great
culture. But through its fears and who
it fears it reveals itself to still be a long way from being anything like a
great power.
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