Product Description

Hegemon is as timely as today's headlines about Chinese efforts to influence U.S. elections and steal U.S. nuclear secrets. But it is also a masterful work of scholarship that reinforces Steven Mosher's reputation as one of our most thoughtful and provocative China watchers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #642746 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-31
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 189 pages

From Amazon.com
To understand modern China, writes Steven W. Mosher, one must understand that country's ancient sense of self. For 48 of the last 50 centuries, China has had the largest population and the most advanced economy in the world--and the Chinese know it. They have always viewed themselves as "culturally superior to other peoples," writes Mosher, an expert on China and author of A Mother's Ordeal. The Chinese also possess a self-identity dependent upon the concept of what Mosher calls "the Hegemon": "the non-Western notion that the premier goal of foreign policy should be to establish absolute dominance over one's region and, by slow extension, the world." All the feel-good talk coming out of Washington about "strategic partnerships" and "most-favored-nation status" are woefully naive, says Mosher. The Chinese, he writes, believe they are in "a worldwide contest with the U.S. to replace the current Pax Americana with a Pax Sinica." In other words, they want nothing less than to displace the United States as the world's sole superpower.

Mosher debunks what he considers to be the most pervasive and harmful myths about China: the notion that democracy is inevitably in its future, that market forces will advance freedom, that exposure to American culture will lead to change, and that technological developments such as the Internet will propel reform. In short, he firmly opposes all the rosy scenarios embraced by Congress and the Clinton administration. This is a provocative book--and one the Chinese government surely won't welcome, given its deep suspicion and frequent reference to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Neither will many American elites, who come in for a severe beating: "It is a scandal that most former secretaries of state (beginning with Henry Kissinger), most former national security advisors (also beginning with Kissinger) and most of their senior deputies have gone into the China trade subsequent to their government service, often without even allowing the passage of a decent interval before beginning to cash in." Mosher wants Americans to make a more cold-eyed assessment of a country he believes is not a friend, but a threat. --John J. Miller

Customer Reviews

Mosher's Propaganda - Resentment toward Chinese
As a Chinese-American, Mosher completely misunderstands the Chinese. I honestly believe he's a paranoid of the Chinese, and considering that their 1.6 billion population makes up 19% of the world - I can understand his feeling.

I can't however understand nor accept his complete misunderstandings of Chinese culture.

Middle Kingdom refers to the fact that China is located between Russia and southern Asia, namely India. It does NOT refer to the fact that China is the "center of the world, the universe". Even if it did, the Europeans thought the same. This is just one example of many of Mosher's misinterpretations of Chinese expressions, leaping to conclusions, many of which can be applied toward Europeans in history as well.

And most if not all of Mosher's recent references to "evidence" of Chinese Culture to dominate the world comes from Government documents, extreme militarists, or directly from the Communist Party. Although Mosher lived in China in the early 1980s or 1979, he obviously hasn't been there recently. None of this "dark culture" that Mosher speaks of is in THE PEOPLE.

Most of China's people are poor and rural and certainly not represented by the views of those in Mosher's book. I honestly believe that right now, they'd care more about money, wealth, and security in their own lives than Chinese hegemony abroad.

Just because President George Bush led the United States to war, would it be intelligent to say that any and all Ameircans are warmongers and that none of them are Pacifist?

No.

Despite Mosher's fallacies, I must say that this book is rather entertaining and hilarious to read. But I have a rather strange sense of humor.

Still-Timely Peek Behind the Curtain of Hegemony
"Hegemon" is interesting, readable, but fundamentally dishonest. The ostensible theme, as indicated in the subtitle, is "China's plan to dominate...the world." But what Mosher actually makes a case for is not China's goal to become a world-dominating hegemon itself but rather Chinese opposition to the current reality of the United States' actually being hegemon of the world.

It is only in a final footnote that Mosher openly reveals his agenda: "We need make no apology for striving to maintain America's global primacy, the chief threat to which is the emergence of China..." (p. 183). However, throughout the book the underlying theme is that China is pursuing the path of evil whenever the Chinese refuse to accept their proper position of subservience towards the United States. In his introductory chapter, he condemns China for its desire, in Mosher's words, to "oppose and undermine the current Pax Americana" (p. 9). On the same page he approvingly quotes Zbigniew Brzezinski for condemning China for attempting to "peacefully defeat American hegemony."

And yet, despite these clear acknowledgements that the actual current world hegemon is the United States, Mosher defines "hegemony" as "the non-Western notion that the premier goal of foreign policy should be to establish absolute dominance over one's region and, by slow extension, the world" (p.2). To seriously believe that this is a "non-Western notion" one would not only have to ignore the current status of the United States but also the historical behavior of numerous Western political leaders from Alexander the Great to Napoleon to Adolf Hitler. Mosher knows better.

What Mosher does actually succeed in demonstrating is that China has historically been the dominant power in East Asia and that most Chinese expect and hope that it will once again achieve that pre-eminence within its own region. In his fifth chapter, "The World Map of Hegemony," he explores in great detail various speculative hypotheses as to how China might expand its dominance in eastern Asia. As to any possible world-wide reach, however, Mosher restricts himself to two brief sentences, merely suggesting vaguely without argument or evidence that somehow China might someday seek to "extend its reach into the Middle East and Africa. Like the Soviet Union at its height, it might even seek satellites in the Americas" (p. 113).

That's it. That is Steve Mosher's entire case that China has a plan to "dominate...the world." The careful reader will search in vain for any discussion anywhere in the book that presents any evidence at all that China seeks dominance outside of its East Asia heartland.

I will not mention again the factual errors which other reviewers have pointed out. I did find it amusing that Mosher attributes an incident between China and England which occurred, Mosher says, in 1792 during the reign of the English King George III, to the Kangxi emperor: even casual students of Chinese history know that the Kangxi emperor, one of the most famous of later Chinese emperors, ruled in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, dying in 1722, seventy years before the incident Mosher mentions.

This would be like placing the American Civil War in the Presidency of George Washington. Mosher relies on the utter ignorance most Americans have of Chinese history to pass off his shoddy scholarship as serious knowledge of China.

Why did Steve Mosher do this? He briefly mentions his own mistreatment at the hands of the Beijing regime twenty years ago: he clearly has a personal axe to grind. And, of course, the Communist regime, in its Maoist phase, was one of the most murderous governments in human history, surpassing even Hitler. And, although the current regime is an enormous improvement over Maoist totalitarianism, it nonetheless still engages in serious violations of human rights.

But none of this explains outright lying. The truth, I fear, is that Mosher has chosen to align himself with the dominant elite in the United States which is determined to maintain and expand the current American world hegemony at any cost.

After the 9/11 terrorist atrocity, the public exposure of the neo-conservative weapons-of-mass-destruction scam, and the escalating quagmire in Iraq, it seems almost quaint to focus on the risk posed by China to the American world empire. But the issue is, in truth, still timely. Despite the fear of Islamic terrorism, the Iraq adventure demonstrates the fact that no Moslem regime actually has the military strength to withstand the American military in a direct confrontation.

In the long-term, only China has the strength and resources to thwart America's drive for unchallenged world domination.

Eventually, the Mideast situation will cool down, the neo-conservative fanatics who plotted the Iraq debacle will fall from power, and the more sober wing of the American establishment will regain control of American foreign policy.

At that point, we can expect more propaganda of the sort fabricated by Mosher, trying to convince the world that anyone who resists American hegemony is really the true danger to world peace.

The lies will only be believed in the U.S., but they will no doubt strengthen American resolve to defend its hegemonic position.

The fundamental interest of Mosher's book lies not in the information it provides which, given his slipshod scholarship, is nearly worthless. Its real interest lies in the peek it provides into the propaganda techniques that will be used to maintain and expand the imperial power of the American hegemon.

A caricatured society as bogeyman
Mosher's appallingly two-dimensional representation of China sufferes from consistent used techniques that are outright bad. Shoddy evidence is used to support his "hegemon" thesis, which is badly constructed in its own right. That deserved its own review, as does his use of "evidence."

Chapter 1 relies on torturously selective and parsed quotes, unconfirmable and vague anecdotes, and outright cliches. He also relies on the use of personification ("China" this; "China" that) to characterize a huge country with a linguistically, ethnically, and culturally diverse population. His most clear effort is to conclude that China's resentment of US policy is demonstrative support for his thesis that China is the Hegemon. Most countries resent a thing or two about the US, so one can see right off the bat how insufficient that is.

Chapter 2 begins his attempt to use an astoundingly self-serving journey through Chinese history to characterize what he absurdly calls China's "cultural DNA." The despotic Qin First Emperor is the model on which the rest of his thesis implies, detailing the Emperor's internal (Legalism) and external policies as the framework within the conclusions of the book are then cast.

Chapter 3 treats Mao's approach to politics and his understanding of history and the Legalist tradition; with Maoism cast as hegemonism (the COMINTERN, for instance). He begins referring to Mao as "Emperor" as a way to show continuity of the PRC with China's imperial past.

The weakest section of the chapter is emblematic of the weakness of the book: Mosher's hapless attempt to stylize Mao's military campaigns as ultimately hegemonistic are stretches of the imagination that rely on anecdote and selective history. It takes two to fight a war, and Mosher has a void in place of the motivations of other countries and the context in which many conflicts took place. Ultimately, border conflicts do not a hegemon make. Perhaps the "bloody borders" have more to say about China's numerous neighbors and vague territorial demarcations after WWII, then about China.

Mosher attempts to frame all Chinese strategy as implicitly hegemonistic, while providing no evidence of continuity. Instead, he kidnaps Sun Tzu in these crucial moments, and attempts to imply that the absence of any discernable strategy implies it exists; a technique worthy of Michel Foucault. The constant painting of Chinese strategists as ten-feet tall is coupled only by a few parsed quotes from low-level speeches and a single Defense White Paper. Mosher selectively takes Chinese propaganda as literal declarations, when anyone who has read much propaganda from the PRC, USSR, and North Korea knows how comically overblown it always is.

In Chapter 4, Mosher attempts to frame Deng as a internal Legalist, and so concludes that his external motivations are therefore purely hegmonistic. His evidence is China's bellicoisty towards Taiwan --which is infinitely complex-- and Mischief Reef. Mosher posits the Mischief Reef facilities as credible installations. Anyone who has seen pictures of them know them to be highly vulnerable structures with poor defenses that could be erased in about two-seconds. Their purpose is more symbolic, and the recent multilateral attitude of China towards the South China Sea does not go far in confirming Mosher's point.

Page 75 begins his quagmire into "Great Han Chauvinism." There is no doubt that nationalism is increasingly used in China as a tool for legitimacy, but there is little evidence --and Mosher certainly provides none with his selective quotations-- that it is premised on Han ethnicity. Quite the contrary, really. That is why by Page 82 he is busily changing the subject to China's military modernization and the Cox report. That report's credibility has suffered greatly since its publication; and it is Mosher's only real attempt at empirical grounding.

Chapter 5 is a return to the Qin paradigm, and begins the most absurd discussion on China's path to hegemony. Since the book has so far done absolutely NOTHING to demonstrate China-as-Hegemon, his three scenarios are implausible ruminations, bad anaologies, and argument from possibility, rather than any measure of probability. His whole strategic argument is that China is a threat to the US; the threat to Taiwan is really to an "isolated" Taiwan, which it is not (101-2); therefore an absence of the US is the greatest danger. Yet the absence of the US is used to support a conclusion that the US is threatened. It makes no sense.

On 102 he continues the bad immediate inferences by using the '79 China-Vietnam war as indicative of hostile intentions (hence a threat to Taiwan), AFTER he had already drew out how decisively China had been knocked around in that war. That conflict was a failed land invasion against an isolated peasant-based regime; hardly support for the likelihood of an amphibious invasion against a modernized military supported by the US!

On 105 he again presents Mischief Reef as a viable military installation. By 106-7, he is positing that border diputes are a calculated strategy, rather than an outcome of complicated relationships and bad policies. He then uses that to support a conclusion of "the ideological justification for Beijing's intervention in the affairs of neighboring states is the unquestioned superiority of the Chinese way of life." That is a VERY questionable conclusion, given Mosher's decisive lack of support. Pages 110-11 present a bizarrely pessimistic understanding of Korea, given China's (albeit inconsistent) involvement in stabilizing the Korean peninsula. Page 112: "Taiwan is increasingly anxious not to offend China;" hardly a resounding demonstration of hegemony. By 114-15 he is theorizing on the possiblity of China forging an alliance with Russia deeply ignores bilateral history he himself points out; then he posits a Chinese alliance with JAPAN! Such implausible notions ("emphasizing their cultural affinities" Is he joking?) are presented contrary to the good sense of Japanese policymakers, let alone the history between the two countries. One has to wonder why he works so hard at attempting to confirm his pessimisms with such logically contorted theorizing.

Mosher significantly never discusses the behavior of other states and the effects on China. Proliferation and nuclearization are significant issues, yet Mosher is trapped by using anecdotes and bad analogies that are typically thirty of more years old. He seems incapable of assessing China's intentions and capabilities vis-a-vis those of other countries. Such a limited scope is mind boggling given the complexity of his topic.

His most plausible treatment is of the demographic expansion into Siberia and elsewhere. This however, hardly justifies his advocation of NMD, outright containment and confrontation, and paranoid hedging. The modernization of China's military is indeed strategically troubling for the US, but not indicative of a trend to be Hegemon that goes back to the Qin. Instead, China's rise is more indicative of industrialism and the remnants of Twentieth Century international power politics. China's current modernization is far more emblematic of China's weaknesses than it is of their strength.

This book is a poor basis --on so many levels-- on which to form conclusions of China's motivations and intentions.