Thread by @PLMattis

I’m taking this seriously because this argument is being used inside and outside gov’t., so this is going to be a thread. I care less about what direction policy goes (OK, I have preferences) than I care that the US approach is based in reality. 1/30

https://twitter.com/shifrinson/status/1259109990406795264

If you want to argue party congress & plenary documents, certain kinds of speeches & essays are cheap speech, then you must make the argument. Dismissing them challenges established scholarship on how the CCP functions. A WP is cheap speech, not a party congress work report 2/30

Dismissing docs as “cheap talk" has three problems.
(1) Its a warped view that “most China scholars” dismiss policy docs
(2) The process for key party docs matters and is more substantial than say a State of the Union speech
(3) Domestic “propaganda” often is policy guidance 3/30

"Most China Scholars..." is an appeal to authority that is useless w/o citing people.

Every analyst I know who focuses on PRC/CCP policy recognizes a clear hierarchy of documents/statements that signal how authoritative they are. 4/30

Any characterization of "Most China scholars" that puts Alice Miller, Paul Godwin, @CNA_org China Studies, @AndrewSErickson, @CCPWatch, Tim Heath, @sinopsiscz, @Anne_MarieBrady, @jmulvenon, David Shambaugh, etc. on the outside is a pretty misguided view of China-watching. 5/30

Saying “hawk” w/ intent to discredit is just an excuse to not to read. You want to make that case for @robert_spalding fine, not entirely fair but OK.

For @Anne_MarieBrady, that's calumny. At most, she is pro-NZ and wants people to see reality. Same for @RollandNadege 6/30

Do the research they did, or at least read Dan Tobin's 104 footnotes & sources therein and see where you end up: uscc.gov/sites/default/…

As for authority & documents, see, for example:
ndupress.ndu.edu/Media/News/Art…

Finklestein's chapter in files.ethz.ch/isn/48426/Righ…

7/30

On to (2), how party docs get written makes them more substantial than many Western equivalents, such as the US National Security Strategy and State of the Union Address. The prep for a party congress shapes what the central party-state bureaucracy does for months on end. 8/30

The party congress exists—especially in today’s more institutionalized form—to formalize what already has been established as policy, per Wu Guoguang (who actually did participate in one): cambridge.org/core/books/chi… 9/30

The process requires inputs from across the party. The support requests for the writing process—overseen from the highest levels—shapes how the gov’t acts, what cadre do day-to-day, and then delegates must endorse the report. 10/30

This is a much more in-depth process than the coordination than any US Gov’t policy document. And it is repeated for five-year plans as well as special initiatives. Other less authoritative docs translate the ambitions into action. 11/30

For a good discussion of how this works, see, Tim Heath’s book on the implication of the party’s shift to being a “governing party”: amazon.com/Chinas-Governi… 12/30

Which is a good transition to (3), an average party secretary wields a lot of power w/in their sphere, but they do not necessarily get a lot of direct guidance. And even if they did get direct guidance, would/should they trust their superior? 13/30

They have to rely on their interpretation of signals from the center to decide how to conduct themselves and be sensitive to political winds. (The Party Schools have classes on how to do this). 14/30

The propaganda for party officials is less about rallying them around the party and more about policy. The CCP provides a lot of top-down direction; however, there is room for a lot of policy experiments. 15/30

This was the case even under Mao, and that legacy lives on. amazon.com/Maos-Invisible…

There is a lot of room for initiative w/in rough guidelines, but the consequences for stepping outside the accepted politics are high.

16/30

Trying to get the millions of party members to move government in the desired direction is not a trivial problem. A certain amount of transparency is necessary, so everyone knows roughly what they are supposed to do. This is why "party-building" is 1 of the 3 magic weapons 17/30

You can disagree about how to interpret the party documents, but they cannot be dismissed as they were so cavalierly done here: afsa.org/american-diplo…

And here: csis.org/events/are-us-…

18/30

The consistent message from the party is that there are three main objectives:

(A) Comprehensively modernize China w/ CCP in charge
(B) (Re)Unify China
(C) Make China powerful globally

All present here: xinhuanet.com/english/specia…

19/30

I’m not sure how one can avoid taking these objectives seriously, because we see the consequences of the Party’s aggressive pursuit of these objectives nearly every day at the moment.
20/30

For (A) one need only look at Made in China 2025, Military-Civil Fusion, focus on industrial capacity like shipbuilding, China Standards 2035, recent five-year plans, etc.
21/30

For (B), unifying China is more expansive than territorial control: it involves transforming people into model citizens of which the party approves, like in #Xinjiang It was not enough own #HongKong, the party needed to make the city politically harmless to the party-state.
22/30

(C) The party’s stated aim is to reframe international relations and global governance in particular ways at odds with UN principles, ICCPR, and UDHR. It is trying to reshape global information flows to reinforce its influence.
23/30

On global order: Melanie Hart's study: americanprogress.org/issues/securit…

Liza Tobin @TXNatSecReview: tnsr.org/2018/11/xis-vi…

And @RollandNadege

On information flows: @rosenbergerlm article in foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

And @He_Shumei at @ASPI_ICPC: aspi.org.au/report/enginee…

24/30

Given the number of examples under each (A), (B), (C), why shouldn’t we take the CCP’s stated aims seriously? Why are we mirror-imaging a democratic system onto a Leninist party-state rather than trying to understand it on its terms? 25/30

Just because the CCP’s ambitions seem to exceed their grasp at the moment doesn’t mean one can dismiss their ambitions. Today’s capabilities do not excuse avoiding the party’s ambitions for tomorrow.
26/30

Whether we compete or cooperate, accommodate or confront, no policy will be sustainable if it does not squarely face the reality of what the CCP wants for China and the world. This is the baseline of where we should be in our knowledge. 27/30

We need to be able to deal with China as it is, not with what we want it to be. For many years, we had a growing gap between our assumptions and the day-to-day reality of US-China relations. A policy break was inevitable, because we did not want to face facts. 28/30

Now that we are picking up the pieces, the least we could do is make sure that our knowledge rests on firmer foundations, that we are not trying to learn about what we are facing on the fly. This is the starting point, not the answer. 29/30

So, again, what has the CCP done to not be taken seriously? It has created and acted on detailed policy road maps for the last 3+ decades. The Party takes their documents seriously, why can’t we?

@orvilleschell @JohnDelury saw the consistency in 2014: penguinrandomhouse.com/books/161758/w…
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