George Washington: Role Model for China

China’s global rise can also be traced back to the principles embraced by America’s Founding Fathers. They advocated military isolationism and economic self-interest.

The U.S. and China seem bent on a confrontational course. Whether it’s the Dalai Lama, Google, military defense policy or the strength of China’s currency, each side accuses the other of risky, irresponsible or downright offensive behavior. It’s reasonable to expect that geopolitical power shifts will never take place without a certain amount of tension between the two main players. But it’s surprising how little the American public realizes the extent to which China is following America’s history; that the Beijing government is openly following the values of two of America’s Founding Fathers, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, far more than they follow the teachings of Marx, Engels or Mao.

Stephen Richter, publisher and editor-in-chief of The Globalist, tells us that, in his farewell address of 1796, after two terms in office as president, George Washington enunciated a useful maxim that the communist Chinese still value: “Beware of foreign entanglements.” The intent of this advice is clear: The fledgling American republic had to maximize its own economic potential by building productive relationships with all other nations. At the same time, it had to avoid the costly, unproductive quagmire of military-political alliances in the Old World.

The effects of this strategy are elementary. America is quick to assume that China wants to expand its military power across the globe in the same way that the United States has. But this assumption is, in all probability, a faulty estimation of what China’s leadership is up to.

That’s not to say the People’s Republic wouldn’t be interested in a power shift, but China doesn’t pursue that goal with conceited gunboat diplomacy. China chooses a much more elegant approach — and concentrates on achieving success in a few important areas.

Just consider the railway lines and superhighways China is currently helping build in those African nations rich in natural resources — help that those countries were promised over and over by their colonial masters for the past 120 years.

Five decades of developmental financing by Washington’s World Bank also failed to bring that dream to reality. Nothing changed until China re-emerged on African shores after a centuries-long absence.

China’s strategy of appearing as a friendlier, gentler nation in this part of the world fits in perfectly when compared with the United States, seen in many places (and not just in the Arab world) as a nation of plunderers who may have noble intentions but seldom deliver on them. In this way, China has a much larger margin of error on the world stage.

China’s political leaders see not only George Washington as a sort of Founding Father [to China], but they also greatly admire Alexander Hamilton. Not only because he ably dealt with the fledgling nation’s finances as the first Treasury Secretary, but also because of his brilliantly visionary “Report on Manufactures.”

In that report, Hamilton vehemently advocated changing the former agrarian nation into a bastion of industry. In his opinion, the creation of government subsidies for manufacturing, the regulation of trade and the judicious use of science and technology were all necessary. Those are precisely the challenges — and the solutions — which China’s leadership deals with on developmental issues. Shining new skyscrapers, eight-lane highways, bullet trains connecting many cities; China recognizes that its real challenges lie elsewhere. Namely, China needs to catapult its agrarian society, still largely bogged down in the 18th century, into the 21st century — and it has to do that within the next two decades.

But there is one gigantic difference between the two situations: The total population of the United States in Hamilton’s day was only 4 million people. Today’s China has a rural population alone of over 750 million. Many of them are on the verge of a mass migration to the cities. In view of all this, it’s astounding how little Americans realize that their main competitor is embracing the virtues and principles of two of their most admired political figures. And the Chinese will try to keep that a jealously guarded secret. In Beijing’s opinion, it can only be to their strategic advantage that America’s politicians today continue to ignore the timeless advice given by Washington and Hamilton.

It’s a strange world, isn’t it?