"It's not paranoia when they really are out to get you" sums up my feelings. I feel that you grossly underestimate how offensive your policies are. The default American policy is to undermine Chinese sovereignty anywhere and everywhere. From funding separatists through your NED/CIA to selling arms to TW. You deliberately undermine us over Diaoyu and the South China Sea. I have never ever seen any America or Western publication of any type even acknowledging the Chinese pov over these territories. Western opinion can be summed up as "China is the aggressor". The fact that Roosevelt promised the Daioyu islands to Chiang Kai Shek in the Cairo conference gets no mention at all. The fact that Ming/Qing/RoC have claimed the SCS is ignored in favour of greedy-china-threatens-peaceloving-liberal-vietnam.

Posted by: mtm | 10/12/10

The Case for Selective Failure

Whole careers and decades have been spent by the West predicting the impending doom of China. But a more senile, rehashed, and tired cliches used to describe the coming demise of China I've yet to read. Such delusional discourses by 'intellectuals' like Terill offer a blinkered world view with self inflicted fantasies not realizing that soon one day when they are swallowed whole into non-relevance will still be hanging onto their illusions like an alcoholic to the bottle.

Posted by: rhoward | 10/12/10

I don't really think that's fair to say that Obama has done nothing on China. Who is it that's been talking up the China threat for this election?

Posted by: David S | 10/13/10

Who will restrain the US? Does Mr Terill welcome setbacks for the US too in order to curb American belligerence?

Posted by: Markus Reisse | 10/15/10

TERRILL article

wonderful, hard-headed article Mr. Terrill

Posted by: JAMES HARRIS | 10/16/10

China

The gian Achilles Heel of China today, which rarely gets mentioned in the press, is its dangerous reliance on low-paid migrant labor. More than 100 million Chinese men and women labor in horrible conditions far away from their homes. If the giant export machine starts to slow, as Terrill says it may, these migrants could be thrown out of work with little to show for their years of sacrifice. Will they simply go home and become peasant farmers again? I don't think so. I think they'll be utterly enraged, feeling betrayed and abandoned by their "proletariat" government. What happens if the export machine drops 20% next year instead of growing another 25%? What happens if U.S. voters finally apply pressure on Washington to halt unfair imports or revalue the Yuan by artificial means to reflect its "true market value"? I'm sure the control freaks meeting in Beijing this week are sweating over these questions. And they should be.

Posted by: Peter | 10/19/10

Peter's Post

They labor under standards we consider "horrible", but compared to the rural China they come from, it is quite attractive. China has diversified its customer base and although they rely substantially on the U.S.A., they are not totally dependent.

Posted by: James Fusscas | 10/28/10

obama not bad this time

ob is talking nice and acting tough. hilary is making the right moves in asia and lining up allies for a stable coalition. the west's proper strategy is to check the hardliners in china and help the reformists to get an upper hand. it has to check its own defeatist elements too.

Posted by: lola | 11/1/10

Still CCP always studies from the failures Chinese ever made.

I think Mr. Ross Terril underestimates the resilience of CCP. CCP always studies from the failures which were pointed out by Mr. Ross Terril. As for the first failure--"For decades before the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, China was beset by foreign encroachment and farmers’ uprisings ...", CCP placed a prime aim, in the past, to setup an army that can defend the country. Dare Japanese invade China again? As for the second failure--"Maoism", which actually should be named anarchism and the Chinese middle class is frightened of, is thrown away 30 years ago. For the third one--"the suppression", which may be an intractable problem for CCP, CCP could deal with it as the author tells--"it could be forestalled by clever Beijing policies." Now CCP learns to deal with the problem at the beginning, instead of when the problem is out-of-control. Mr Ross Terril, however, did make the point. After 30 years' reforms in economical domain which may be hardly potential to dig, like the reform in 1860's, the complexity of Chinese society is becoming out of the CCP government's approach. The government will be more and more finding itself in a situation much the same way a dinosaur sinks in a bog, without a political reform. Will the reform be a success or another failure like the reform in 1898 (WuXu Reform at the end of 19th century). We don't know. But what we know is that the people ruling China are the intellects who learn from the west for decades, instead of the farmers like Mao or the Warlords like Jiang Jieshi. Unlike the farmers or warlords, the intellects in China act under LINES, though maybe the lines are not as high as the western standard or sometimes not so evident. I think the political reform will be introduced by CCP itself due to the situation it is facing in the following 10 years. As for What Ross Terril worries about, the sole leadership of US, I don't think Chinese can challenge it in nearly 50 years due to so many troubles of their own. The CCP is hard to lead its own people, not mention the people all over the world. And considering the history of Chinese, they are inherent isolationists. The only people who can undermine US leadership are US people themselves. As US has an education and research system which leads so much before China, US will recovery soon, even with the bankers. I am an optimist. Who isn't?

Posted by: kilimanjaro | 11/2/10

The Case for Selective Failure

1) China: Fragile Superpower by Susan Shrik ( former Assistant Secretary of state responsible for US relations with China) She provides an insider’s view suggesting that real danger lies else where China's astonishing growth, but in the deep insecurity of its leaders, China's leaders face a troubling paradox: the more developed and prosperous the country becomes, the more insecure and threatened they feel. Chinese leaders have been afraid of its own citizens. I daily/very often browse http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ , the Chinese official party newspaper. Their constant character assassination and attack against Nobel price winner Liu Xiaobo is just one of the latest examples . ( India’s dealing with Arunadhato Roy is shark contrast and matter of pride for the democracy and tolerance in India , She would have been hanged in China, even in China oftoday). Yesterday China sentenced one year camp to lady who made a satire on crazy obsession against Japan in a microblog at twitter ( less than 144 characters ) . If that is a crime most of us would have been in harsher camp in china multiple times for what we have been expressing in our e-mail. Read the story at :http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/asia/19beijing.html?scp=3&sq=expo&st=cse

Posted by: Tushar | 11/23/10

China's labor standards and American agression

Do people forget that just a few years ago China worked to provide basic labor with more rights including things like improved pay and working conditions? What did American and other Western multinational companies do when the Chinese government tried to improve labor conditions? These western mutlinationals protested loudly to their governments and in the press... And do not forget the many western imperialistic aggressions in China: from two Opium wars where the Chinese were forced to accept opium as payment for goods and had their territories and ports become concessions, The Boxer Revolution where Chinese cultural heritage were stolen and ransacked and the CIA's operation ST Circus where Tibetan terrorists were trained in America and sent to Tibet. If I were China I would not trust America... especially with our support for South Korean aggression and selling renegade Chinese territories like Taiwan billions of dollars in weapons and sending our Carrier task forces into Chinese waters in support of South Korea and Japan.

Posted by: Zephon | 1/6/11

Colored rhetoric

Just a few comments that illustrate the point that the way issues are phrased can have a significant impact on how they are interpreted. For instance Terrill states, "Initially, Mao cast his lot with the Soviet bloc, but the “everlasting” Sino-Soviet friendship evaporated within two decades. This was a failure." This sort of snide reference to “everlasting” Sino-Soviet friendship belies the fact that the break-up of the Sino-Soviet relationship was one of China's great successes. Why a failure? The CCP refused to kowtow to the Soviets. If they had their fate would have been no different than that of the Eastern Bloc and there would be no PRC today. Another instance of colored rhetoric that betrays Terrill's anti-China stance. He states, "National social protest interacting with one of these other threats is quite possible, but it could be forestalled by clever Beijing policies." This is simply political rhetoric. Social instability could be forestalled by clever Beijing policies? Why not say social instability could be forestalled by Beijing responding with social and economic policies that meet the needs and demands of it people? Another canard is that 'Maybe it’s no accident that no Chinese has won a Nobel Prize without first leaving China." Well, maybe that’s no surprise because the Nobel Committee is unaware of contributions made by Chinese working in China. My point is that cynical language can easily distort one analysis. There are many such instances in this article.

Posted by: Dennis | 1/12/11

Ross Terrill's The Case For Selective Failure

How much of Terrill’s perspective may come from the fact that he only talks to people in the foreign ministry and think tanks who are more “westernized” and likely trained in “barbarian management”? Is he possibly conveying some sort of a selection bias that undermines his argument? As to marginalized, how does Terrill know that it is not the folks he calls “wise heads” who are the ones on the margins, and instead the more nationalistic actors are the ones who represent what the majority of those in power believe?

Posted by: bill bishop | 2/7/11