How Communist China Does Your Thinking for You

Chinese psychological warfare is sometimes so successful that its targets seem to have battered spouse syndrome—excusing away PRC actions that are in fact harmful, and even blaming themselves for having caused it. Former assistant secretary of defense Professor Joseph Nye typified that approach in his 2013 New York Times article “Work With China, Don’t Contain It”: “When I worked on the Pentagon’s East Asia strategy in 1994, during the Clinton administration, we rejected the idea of containment for two reasons. If we treated China as an enemy, we were guaranteeing a future enemy. If we treated China as a friend, we kept open the possibility of a more peaceful future.”

Internalize this idea, and it’s easy to convince yourself that if China is acting like an enemy, it must be something America is doing wrong. This approach is still common currency among the so-called China Hands—that tight-knit and self-protecting coterie of China whisperers who try to ensure they are the only ones deemed worthy to explain China.