A Dinner in Tokyo

Tokyo by Night

I had a delightful dinner in Tokyo last night with three, highly educated young professionals.  In order to provide a candid account of the dinner, I’m providing them with pseudonyms to protect their confidentiality.  All are in my profession of public affairs consulting, so they are very tuned into political issues, both in their home countries and throughout the world.

Ping is a young Chinese woman who was educated in the United States and is a specialist in food safety communications.  Peng is a young Chinese man educated in China and who used to work for the government in an economic ministry.  Both live and work in Beijing.  Franz is a German living and working in Brussels whose specialty is financial services.

I starting things off gently by posing the proposition, “Mao Tse Tung, good or bad?”  While I had always considered Mao despotic but generally a positive force in Chinese history, I recently read a book, Out of Mao’s Shadow, that enlightened me as to the vast numbers of people who had died as a result of his politicies like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.  I was anxious to hear what some native Chinese people thought.  Both Ping and Peng acknowledged he was ultimately a negative influence on China, Ping more so than Peng.  Peng said he had good motives, but used the wrong tools and he regretted the isolation that China endured for most of his reign.

When I referenced the deaths he caused, they both acknowledged the facts and indicated that Mao is not revered as he once was.  True, but I pointed out his  picture still looms over the Forbidden City.  He was probably responsible for more deaths than Adolph Hitler, yet you don’t see pictures of Hitler in public in Germany.  At this point, Franz jumped in and pointed out that the difference is that Hitler lost the war and Mao won the revolution.  He noted mildly that, had Hitler won,  his  picture would be everywhere.  What a chilling thought.

We then ranged into a broader discussion of the current state of Chinese politics and its role in the world.  As an American, I believe my countrymen, those few who actually give it any thought, see China in very one-dimensional terms.  They believe it’s a totalitarian dictatorship that is utterly impervious to public opinion.   My view  is more nuanced, but I had to admit that my beliefs that the Chinese government was getting more  responsive was shaken by the 15 year prison term recently issued to the leader of the petition drive that sought to make China more democratic.  Interestingly, while they acknowledged the harshness of the sentence, they both were also critical of the protester.  “He crossed the line,” Ping said.  According to her, the government will tolerate a fair amount of protest,  certainly more than most Americans think, but there are some issues that are off limits.  They include challenges to the rule of the Chinese Communist Party and challenges to the territorial integrity of  China, i.e. Tibet, Taiwan and Xinjiang in the West.  I got the sense that both Ping and Peng were supportive of these kinds of protest movement, but think that protesters should not be stupid about it.

The other topic that generated quite a bit of conversation was America’s role in the world.  I gave my view that the U.S. government lacked humility under the Bush administration, notwithstanding his promise to conduct a “humble” foreign policy.  I gave my paean to humility as an undervalued quality.  Risking an image as a “self-hating” American, I noted that we had a lot to be embarrassed about in our national history, the slaughter of the Indians, the internment of the Japanese, etc., so we needed to be careful about lecturing other countries about human rights.  Here’s where Franz jumped in and revealed himself to be a closet Neocon.  He said that, in the late 90′s and early 00′s, the United States had a right to be arrogant and, in fact, as the only superpower left standing, had a responsibility to seize the moment to try to settle some accounts around the world, including Saddam Hussien in Iraq.  At which point, I punched him in the nose.

Not really.  In fact, it was a delightful discussion, conducted withi unfailing mutual respect.  Very thought provoking and constructive.  So much so that I wrote this post mostly so I  wouldn’t forget it.