Why Xi S Visit Was Met With Silence From Commentators

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“There are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests.” - Lord Palmerston
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s recent three-day visit comes at a time of extraordinary geopolitical upheaval in the world, bringing to mind an old Malay proverb.
“Gajah sama gajah berjuang, pelanduk mati ditengah-tengah” (when elephants fight, the mousedeer die in the middle).
Yes, Xi’s visit was planned well in advance of the “tariff war”, but make no mistake, sooner or later, our US$500 billion economy will be caught up in a brutal and bruising trade war between the United States’ US$29 trillion economy and China’s US$18 trillion economy.
ADSHow do we walk the tightrope? How will we pull off the balancing act? How will we maintain our permanent interests? An understanding of Chinese history, politics, and culture could prove immensely useful in these difficult times, but our academia and our mainstream media have said little so far. Why?
Chinese President Xi Jinping inspecting an honour guard at Istana Negara on April 16Perhaps our academia is content with knowing China through the narrow lens of Malaysian history and politics, ignoring the fact that seven million Chinese Malaysians are only a subset of a much larger whole. As a Singaporean politician put it succinctly about the Mainlanders: “We are their relatives but not family.”
Or is our academia silent because there are no China experts in their ranks, having vacated this difficult field to our racist politicians and preachers who say the darndest things about the “other”, the Chinese included, while our mainstream media remains cautious lest they be seen as an unpatriotic fifth column.
This may partially explain why recent cases where the crescent moon was missing on several Jalur Gemilang are a bigger issue to a section of our society than Xi’s visit.
China lays bare our failures
Come on! Let’s get real. There are only two types of gaffes: a politician accidentally telling the truth, and then there is human error. And now, there are even errors induced by the use of artificial intelligence. I am old enough to tell you I have seen enough upside-down flags to make me wonder whether I was seeing things.
But I suspect the real reason why China’s meteoric rise as an economic powerhouse and Xi’s visit has not been accorded the scholarly attention it deserves is a simple one: it will lay bare our faultlines and the failure of many of our government policies, including our own mini-version of former Chinese communist supremo Mao Zedong’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward”. Just ask former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad for more details!
Let’s be honest, mired in patronage and corruption, our Vision 2020 became an abject failure. Once an Asian tiger, we are now prone to purring and preening like a kitten.
We are not just stuck in the middle-income trap; we are hellbent on spreading the tentacles of the Mahathirian kenduri state by first destroying our education system and then the competitiveness of our economy.
In contrast, starting from a low base, the Chinese are now global leaders in many fields in a mere 40 years through relentless toil, sacrifice, effort and discipline. They put their noses to the proverbial grindstone, learning from the rest of the world even as they struggled to put food on the table.
Yes, the rest of the world had its own agenda in setting up shop in China, but that’s another story.
China’s rise is not luck
I can hear the detractors say China’s success is due to the World Trade Organization, copying on an industrial scale, being a one-party propagandist state (as though we were not one for 22 years) and unfair trade practices, and that their products are subpar even as they have become the world’s largest exporter.
Yes, there is some truth in all of this, but we haven’t even gotten into their cultural and civilisational values.
Like taking personal responsibility for one’s actions. As the Chinese say, “He who blames others has a long way to go; He who blames himself is halfway there; He who blames no one has arrived”. Or that “real gold is not afraid of fire”.
We can go on and on, but the point is this: life is a competition, whether we like it or not, for we humans have inherited the trait of looking over our shoulders.
And competition creates wealth. But because we live in a modern world, this competition must be healthy, not deadly. We must have laws to ensure a level playing field and to make sure no one is exploited. They must be enforced without fear or favour.
Which is why Deng Xiaoping was humble enough to come a-knocking to our shores in 1978.
Quietly set aside was the brutal guerrilla war waged by the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) from 1948 to 1960 and beyond. The MCP was founded in 1931 at the behest of the Comintern and with the support of the Chinese Communist Party.
It was also at about this time that renowned historian Arnold Toynbee famously wrote that Malaya was destined to become “a Chinese province by peaceful penetration”.
Deng then visited Singapore, where the “Old Master”, Lee Kuan Yew, showed him the ropes. He also did not hesitate to tell Deng that Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia and the disposal of the autogenocidal Pol Pot regime notwithstanding, Asean was deeply suspicious of China’s support for communist insurgencies.
The late Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan YewTwo years later, Deng quietly shelved his support for them after a quick invasion of Vietnam to “teach little brother a lesson”.
Breaking with millennia of tradition
Deng, acutely aware that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had let the people down, decided to make a massive U-turn. The CCP will set them on the road to capitalism! This is easily the grandest contradiction in all of communism as an ideology.
His call that “To get rich is glorious” resonated with the Chinese people. He didn’t have to tell them to work hard and take risks. These things came naturally to them, a people who had suffered much and had more games of chance than any other race on earth.
All this was a far cry from 1793 when the British Macartney Mission arrived in Emperor Qian Long’s court in Peking with the aim of ensuring “acceptance of a treaty of friendship and alliance” by impressing the Chinese with the “wisdom and justice of the King of Great Britain”, “the wealth and power of (our) country”, and “the genius and power of her people”.
Included in this embassy were botanists, a philologist, a physician, mechanists, artists, and musicians, all “highly educated products of the Age of Reason” and carefully chosen, including sophisticated scientific instruments.
In short, the Brits knew that the Chinese had missed out on the Industrial Revolution and were still an agrarian society with some innovation thrown in here and there.
The Industrial RevolutionEmperor Qian Long responded to this arrogant offer in an edict: “Swaying the wide world, I have but one aim in view, namely to maintain a perfect governance and to fulfil the duties of the state: strange and costly objects do not interest me… As your ambassador can see for himself, we possess all things. I set no value on objects, strange or ingenious, and I have no use for your country’s manufactures”.
His response reflected the structure of Chinese society for millennia. On top of the pile was the emperor enjoying the mandate of heaven; next came the scholars and officials; and then the farmers, followed by the artisans and craftsmen. At the bottom were the traders and merchants who were regarded as tricky and unethical.
How things have changed! Now we also know why the durian farmers of Raub are the true Musang kings.
The years passed, and the mass of China remained isolated until Deng opened it up to the world. And like so often in the past, the West made the mistake of assessing the capabilities of the Chinese when they were at a low point.
It took a fair-minded person like Bertrand Russell, who lectured in China for nine months in 1921, to correctly assess that though they had missed out on industrialisation, Chinese civilisation has many virtues, including harmony, benevolence, and innovativeness.
After not taking up the first offer to trade in 1793, China under Deng was now carrying out the historical process of transforming her ancient civilisation into a modern industrial state with unprecedented vigour and energy. She modernised in double quick time to the astonishment of the world.
Thirty years on, China’s present feud with the US over trade and tariffs signals its preparedness to take a lead role in world affairs. 
The battle ahead is not between capitalism and communism. China, the new capitalist power, has outshone the old ones at their game. More than ever, China believes its vision for an orderly world and a harmonious society is the correct one.
After seeing photos of students in Putrajaya bidding Xi farewell, I cannot resist quoting the English translation of the opening lines from “Taking Leave of Cambridge Again”, written in 1928 by the modern Chinese poet Xu Zhimo:
Softly, I am leaving,
Just as softly as I came;
I softly wave goodbye
To the clouds in the western sky.
-Mkini
MURALE PILLAI is a former GLC employee. He runs a logistics company.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.

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