a stronger U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific; close cooperation with American allies to create a democratic united front in the realms of technology, economics, and diplomacy; and a homeland revitalization program that heals partisan divisions, centralizes domestic policymaking, builds up U.S. infrastructure, increases immigration, and invests in scientific initiatives, all for the sake of maintaining long-term technological, economic, and demographic advantages over the Chinese. Will a grand strategy designed to unseat or outlast Xi accomplish what the anonymous author hopes it will? Will a grand strategy designed to unseat or outlast Xi accomplish what the anonymous author hopes it will? Only if Xi is the actual source of Beijing’s dangerous behavior. But is there is no compelling reason to believe this is actually the case. As the expert Rush Doshi has shown, almost all of the foreign-policy initiatives thought of as characteristic of the Xi era actually began under the presidency of Hu Jintao. The period from 2008 to 2009 was a key turning point: The 2008 Olympics were China’s coming-out party to the world, a party that coincided with the immolation of one Western economy after another in the Great Recession. After the events of those two years, no Chinese leader was willing to accept a second-place role in a Western-built order. Beijing would move toward a stronger, more self-confident strategic course. Xi did not create this assertive diplomatic and economic strategy so much as rebrand it as a central plank in his own personality cult. China’s return to stricter authoritarian controls also predates Xi’s presidency. The unrest that rocked Tibet in 2008 and the Urumqi riots of 2009 convinced many in the CCP that a more coercive and less accommodationist approach toward China’s minorities was needed. The 2011 Wenzhou bullet train crash demonstrated to the party leadership that they had lost control over the Chinese internet; the contemporaneous Arab Spring reminded them of the potential consequences of their lost control. The Charter 08 dissident manifesto showed party leaders that they were losing important parts of the intelligentsia to Western ideas about rule of law, democracy, and universal human rights, and it convinced them that these ideas (and those who proposed them) posed a threat of “Westernizing and dividing China.” The result of all of this was a firm decision to crack down and regain control over Chinese society—one that came to fruition under Xi, but where key decisions predated him. The words “social management” were elevated to a key phrase in the 12th Five-Year Plan—a year before Xi took the stage. The labyrinth of prisons and reeducation camps in Xinjiang, the crackdown on minority languages, the attacks on religious practice across China, the construction of a digital surveillance state, and the birth of a sophisticated social media censorship and propaganda regime were all born out of that decision. Behind that decision lay the larger shift in the balance of power between the United States, China, and the latter’s regional neighbors. Former leader Deng Xiaoping’s guidance to “hide brightness, cherish obscurity” (sometimes translated as “hide and bide”) was a temporary expedient fit for a specific “period of strategic opportunity” when China’s comprehensive national power was too weak to compass anything but internal economic development. But even in those decades—which “The Longer Telegram” sees as the model for proper Chinese behavior—Chinese leaders expressed incredible discontent with the existing liberal world order, perceived this order as an existential threat to their continued rule, and proclaimed that it was China’s eventual destiny to forge a political model superior to liberal capitalism. Xi did not force these ideas onto an unwilling CCP. Rather, the party willingly gave Xi awesome power so that he could realize these ideas. To be sure, there may be widespread discontent with the ferocity of the anti-corruption campaign or misgivings about the Xi personality cult among CCP elites. But it would be a mistake to view personal fear of Xi as meaning a total rejection of the party’s authoritarian modernization program. Removing Xi from power would not end China’s internal oppression. It would not cause the party to view pastors, imams, historians, journalists, and lawyers who work outside state orthodoxy as anything but a threat. It would not end the atrocities being committed against the Uyghur. It would not reclaim Hong Kong’s lost liberties; end the campaigns of subversion, bribery, and coercion in Western countries; or dismantle artificial island bases in the South China Sea. All of these policies stem from decisions that began before Xi came to power or could only be reversed at terrible cost—financial or reputational—to the party. The painful and partial repudiation of Maoism in the early 1980s only occurred after the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were inflicted on the party elite themselves. Nothing comparable has happened to China’s current leaders; were Xi to die tomorrow, they would have no compelling reason to retreat from the policies that have defined the last two decades of Chinese statecraft. Nowhere are the limitations of this approach clearer than in Taiwan, which remains the most likely flash point between the United States and China. Beijing’s claims and threats against Taiwan predate Xi by decades. The CCP justifies autocracy by claiming that the party is the only force able to “rejuvenate the Chinese nation” and restore China’s ancestral honor; every leader of the party has identified the “reunification” of Taiwan and the mainland as part of this goal. For two decades the Chinese military’s modernization plan has centered on the requirements of a cross-strait conflict. Beijing’s current bellicosity on this front follows the flat fact that the prior strategy of winning the Taiwanese over through peaceful market integration has failed. Removing Xi from power would not change Taiwanese attitudes toward the People’s Republic of China, nor would it reverse the growing gap between the Chinese military and Taiwan’s armed forces. The problems posed by Taiwan’s defense point to the second great flaw in “The Longer Telegram”: a failure to come to terms with the limitations facing American political leaders. The problems posed by Taiwan’s defense point to the second great flaw in “The Longer Telegram”: a failure to come to terms with the limitations facing American political leaders. The author argues—in an endnote!—that America must “develop … a plan that provides Taiwan with sufficient military capacity to deter a PRC attack,” without discussing the obstacles that stand in the way of doing so. These include a morale problem in the Taiwanese armed forces, a crisis in Taiwanese manpower, a mismanagement of the Taiwanese conscription and reservist systems, crushing failures in logistics, basic gaps in training, a military brass and domestic industrial complex overly attached to shiny toys, poor civil-military relations, and a bitterly partisan political class that has trouble developing or exercising control over military strategy. Deterring a Chinese attack on Taiwan requires thinking through why the Taiwanese themselves have failed to make many of the reforms necessary for their own long-term survival. It requires U.S. leaders to figure out what—if anything—American statecraft can do to change not only the calculations made in Beijing but also those made in Taipei. This point extends past Taiwan. “The Longer Telegram” urges its strategy to be “implemented nationally, bilaterally, regionally, multilaterally, and globally,” describing treaty allies as “no longer optional but crucial” to American success. Very little is said about how the United States will convince these crucial nations to play their assigned part.
