Brief note on the author
Liu Xiaofeng is a Professor in the School of Liberal Arts, Renmin University of China. He was born in 1956 and like most of his age group spent time ‘in the countryside’ in his youth during the mid 70s. He later obtained a BA in Literature from Sichuan International Studies University, an MA in Philosophy from Beijing University and a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Basel in Switzerland.
Professor Liu’s main current areas of research, according to Baidu Baike, include Pre-Qin and Han Dynasty thought, modern day German thought wand political religious philosophy.
I am going to comment on an article by Professor Liu entitled “A Country’s Suffering and Geopolitical Consciousness”. This article was published on the Aisixiang (爱思想) website on 9th February 2021, but was originally published in the Hainan University Journal (2021/1).
Key points in the article
Professor Liu’s main point is that China needs to place more emphasis on geographical education, in particular political geography, starting from the elementary level. He considers that such education has been lacking in China, particularly in comparison with countries like the UK, US, Germany and Japan. He also considers it has been mistakenly treated in China as mainly a branch of the natural sciences, without adequate regard for its historical and political importance. He refers to texts written by several British, Germany and American academics, as well as describing Mao Zedong’s expertise in this area. There are a number of fascinating quotes in the article and I will refer to some of these below.
Professor Liu first mentions the British geography teacher James Fairgrieve (1870-1953), who published a book for secondary students in 1915 entitled “Geography and World Power”. The first Chinese translation of this book was published in Shanghai in 1937. Professor Liu notes that Fairgrieve described the world geopolitical situation as it existed at the beginning of the 20th century. He focused on conflict between the ‘seagoing powers’ (i.e., UK, France, Japan and Italy) and the ‘Eurasian heartland’ powers (i.e., Germany and China). He described the area between these two sets of powers as ‘the crush zone’. He said that if Germany and China could ‘organise’ and ‘strengthen’ themselves, they would transform their status in any conflict with the seagoing powers. Fairgrieve said in relation to China in particular: “China to a large extent occupies a position in which it can control the Eurasian heartland…though it has lost its vitality, it still has a singular importance”. Fairgrieve also said: “China’s political status is extremely interesting, its history is not yet complete and only time can tell us what the final result will be”. [Note: I have translated the quotes from Fairgrieve and other western authors referred to in this post from the Chinese versions of their works used by Professor Liu. It is interesting that Fairgrieve’s book has recently been republished in China, showing continuing interest in the content there, whereas there appear to be no recent editions in English]
Professor Liu also mentions the German geographer Alfred Hettner (1859 – 1941), who pointed out in his book “Geography: Its History, Nature and Methods”, published in 1927, that the British people long ago developed an understanding of geopolitical geography, as almost every household in Britain had connections outside the country. Germans by contrast lacked such understanding, and German education needed to fill the gap.
Professor Liu next mentions the American geographer Saul Cohen (born 1925), formerly a Professor at Hunter College in New York City. Professor Cohen published the textbook “Geopolitics: The Geography of International Relations” in 2009. In that book he refers to the view expressed by James Fairgrieve in his book mentioned above “that China is in an excellent position to control the Eurasian continent”. Professor Liu says this shows that Fairgrieve realised a full 100 years ago that China occupies a pivotal position in the world’s geopolitical order. He goes on to say that it helps to explain why American politicians consider China’s Belt and Road Initiative to be such a threat to their geopolitical interests. He then says that if Chinese people wish to rely on the globalisation of free trade to prosper and secure the right to lead the international order, this must be the preferred approach.
In the light of Professor Cohen’s book, Professor Liu suggests that American geopolitical experts are now worried that China, relying on the fact it has the Eurasian continent at its back, may link up with Latin America countries and sever the US’s ‘southern flank’, while at the same time advancing into Africa. That would put China in a position to ‘block’ the sea-going powers, now including the United States. Professor Liu says that while American geopolitical experts may not admit it, this is why the US has ever since the end of the Korean War maintained its military strategic front line at ‘China’s front door’, and why almost every day American spy planes fly close to the Chinese coast.
Professor Liu concludes this part of his article by saying that the ‘sea going powers’ never imagined that China’s Communist Party would so quickly ‘reorganise’ China and transform a poor and weak country into a ‘powerful and prosperous’ one. He says it is not hard to understand that, once they realise this has happened, the sea going powers, relying on their historical understanding of geopolitics, will immediately perceive that they are facing a crisis (“危险就在眼前”）。
Professor Liu goes on to point out that historically Chinese geographers focussed on China itself and not on China’s place in world geography. Given China’s status as a ‘defensive cultural empire’, its geographers did not develop a ‘global historical viewpoint’. That was different from western empires that focussed on world wide expansion.
Professor Liu next discusses Mao Zedong’s concept of China as an ‘intermediate zone’. Mao first raised this in a discussion with an (unnamed) American reporter in August 1946. The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party were concerned that the Americans and Soviets could be drawn into the civil war then underway between the CCP and the Guomindang under Chiang Kai-shek. Mao worried this could result in China becoming the battleground (i.e., ‘intermediate zone’) of a third World War. To avoid that the CCP must, and indeed could, independently reorganise and strengthen China.
Professor Liu next refers to the American Professor and political scientist Samuel Huntington, whose book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order” was published in 1996. Huntington predicted in that book that a ‘large scale intercultural war’ could erupt in the future between the US and China. Professor Liu says this view did not originate with Huntington himself but came from Andrew Marshall (1921 – 2019), an American foreign policy strategist who was the Director of the US Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment from 1973 to 2015. Professor Liu says that Marshall secretly predicted in the late 1980s that the biggest future strategic challenge to the US would be China’s rise to overtake the then Soviet Union. Professor Liu suggests that this insight on the part of Marshall was due to the fact that the US put much more emphasis on political geography education after the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941.
Professor Liu concludes by pointing out that western scholars created the field of geopolitical studies 120 years ago. In view of that, the Chinese must realise that instead of considering political geography to be a mere branch of human geography, it should be seen as its ‘other name’. He says there has never in history been a type of non-political geography.
My comments on the article
In the light of Professor Liu’s article, it is perhaps easier to understand some current aspects of Chinese and western policy:
- China’s emphasis on the Belt and Road Initiative;
- China’s strict policy of resisting separatism and fundamentalism in Xinjiang, and its apparent attempt to assimilate the Uyghur population despite the damage this is doing to its image in western countries;
- China’s apparent determination to reunite Taiwan with the rest of the country, and the US’s opposition to that;
- the US’s maintenance of large military forces along the coast of China;
- the increasing talk of a new ‘Cold War’ on the part of US politicians and commentators.
Professor Liu’s article is also very timely. On March 5th, 2021, Nikkei Asia published an article entitled “US to Build Anti-China Missile Network Along First Island Chain”. It refers to a document submitted by the US Indo-Pacific Command to Congress that includes the following statements: “The greatest danger to the future of the United States continues to be an erosion of conventional deterrence. Without a valid and convincing conventional deterrent, China is emboldened to take action in the region and globally to supply US interests. As the Indo-Pacific’s military balance becomes more unfavourable, the US accumulates risk that may embolden adversaries to unilaterally attempt to change the status quo”.
Link to original article: http://www.aisixiang.com/data/125059.html
Michael Ingle – michaelingle01@gmail.com
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