A return to De Gaulle's 'eternal China'
By David Gosset
One repeatedly attributes to French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte a statement that
he probably never uttered and which has become an inept cliche: "When China
awakes, the world will shake." However, in a press conference on September 9,
1965, president Charles de Gaulle did pronounce a more nuanced and accurate
view: "A fact of considerable significance is at work and is reshaping the
world: China's very deep transformation puts her in a position to have a global
leading role."
Indeed, the Chinese renaissance modifies the world's distribution of power in a
gradual and peaceful process which does not entail abrupt discontinuity or
violent disruption.
On January 27, we will celebrate the 45th anniversary of the
establishment of diplomatic relations between France and the People's Republic
of China (PRC). From a French perspective, the full recognition of the
Beijing's government was, above all, the decision of De Gaulle, one of France's
greatest statesmen and a colossus of the 20th century world politics.
Days after the 1964 announcement, Time magazine commented the new situation in
a very stimulating article on French diplomacy from Richelieu to De Gaulle
which reflected very well the global echo and significance of the event:
As
a nation, France has seemed to be dying all through the 20th century … Yet last
week the impossible had apparently come true, and France was once more a mover
and shaker in world affairs ... To cap his nation's re-emergence as a world
power, De Gaulle recognized the communist regime in Beijing as the government
of China, brushing aside protests from Washington that the move would seriously
damage US policy in Asia.
In the geopolitical context of the
1960s, De Gaulle's judgment upon China was truly visionary and a perfect
illustration of his ability to discern the fundamental historical trends from
perhaps more spectacular but less consequential events.
His exceptional acumen and strategic mind were not only at the origin of a
special relationship between Paris and Beijing, but the spirit of his
groundbreaking decision remains a reference to guide the future of the
Sino-French cooperation. It should certainly be seen as a source of inspiration
to go beyond the unnecessary and sterile Sino-French tension which have
regrettably marked 2008.
Only members of the Soviet bloc immediately recognized the new Chinese regime
in 1949. Although Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland established relations with
China one year after Mao Zedong had proclaimed the birth of the PRC on
Tiananmen Square, France was the first among the major Western countries to opt
for diplomatic relations with Beijing at the ambassadorial level.
But when Lucien Paye, who had been minister of education, was given the honor
to be De Gaulle's first ambassador in China, the 15-year-old People's Republic
was not only in an ideological battle against the American-led Western world,
but it was also at odds with its two gigantic neighbors, India and the USSR.
The American president, Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, adhered to a policy of
systematic containment and actively supported the massive American military
intervention in Vietnam in order to stop what he feared to be the expansion of
communism. Furthermore, in 1962, India clashed with the People's Liberation
Army over border disputes in the Himalayas, and in another sign of a
Sino-Soviet split, Nikita Khrushchev tended to back the Pandit Nehru in its
complex relations with China.
Due to the preeminent American position in the post-Second World War global
configuration, former US president Richard Nixon's opening to Beijing in the
70s was a geopolitical watershed of the highest importance. Commentators often
expand on the American triangular diplomacy which used the options offered by
the rivalries between Beijing and Moscow, an ironic American application of the
Chinese strategy of "using the foreigners to subdue the foreigners"(yi yi zhi yi).
The former secretary of state Henry Kissinger conceived and masterfully
orchestrated this foreign policy shift, but Nixon's national security advisor
acknowledged the French General's foresight: "Interestingly enough, the leader
who had first perceived the opportunities inherent in a Sino-Soviet split was
the old man of European diplomacy, De Gaulle", wrote Kissinger in Diplomacy.
In the 1960s, isolated on the international stage, China was also facing an
internal crisis of considerable magnitude. In 1958 the central government
wanted to accelerate the country's industrialization in a "Great Leap Forward".
It was an enormous economic failure, a fall backward, which generated a tragic
human disaster. With Peng Dehuai's courageous disapproval of the movement at
the Lushan conference, but also Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi's legitimate
criticisms of Mao's radical policy, the ruling communist party was seriously
divided.
It is in this context that at the end of 1962, Mao Zedong composed a poem in
"regular style" (lushi), Winter Clouds, the title of which
encapsulated his perception of the imminent dangers looming over China. In it,
the Long March's old commander boldly referred to the hostile foreign forces
with metaphors: "Only heroes can quell tigers and leopards and wild bears never
daunt the brave".
In the midst of circumstances which might have deterred less confident
characters, De Gaulle demonstrated his sound resolution. On January 31, 1964,
in the Elysee Palace, he explained his decision to recognize Beijing in a press
conference attended by hundreds of journalists. De Gaulle, affectionately
called by the French people "le Grand Charles", was a prodigious speaker served
by great rhetorical skills - he had written six books before he began his
famous memoirs - and had an imposing stature and a unique charisma.
The 1965 press conference contained his views on China, but is also a memorable
moment of Gaullian dramaturgy which is well described in the Time article
already mentioned: "More than 1,000 newsmen, diplomats and officials were
perched anxiously on a sea of spindly gold chairs when at the stroke of 3pm the
raspberry-red curtains parted and De Gaulle lumbered to the podium."
However, the theatrical appearance should not distract from the rich content of
De Gaulle's presentation. His reasoning was solidly based upon two pillars
which are also two distinctive features of Gaullism: a long-term view and the
effort to take into consideration, beyond transitory events or relatively
short-lived phenomena, more permanent realities.
The French statesman began his conference with demographic and geographic
facts. "The great Chinese people", the largest on earth, inhabit a very vast
country, "compact but without unity", which, "spans from Asia Minor and
Europe's marchlands to the immense Pacific coast and from the freezing Siberia
to the tropical regions of India and Tonkin". De Gaulle comprehended the
implications of China's size and considering "the weight of evidence and
reason" decided that one has to work with the Chinese leadership. Long-lasting
solutions to any serious problem in Asia or even in the world depends on the
active and constructive participation of China.
Then, De Gaulle introduced the keystone of his thinking about the Chinese
world: China is not a nation or a nation-state, but fundamentally is a
civilization, a "very unique and very deep civilization".
Of course, France's early recognition of the PRC was a political gesture with
geopolitical motives. By recognizing Mao's government, Paris signaled to both
Washington and Moscow that France intended to deploy an independent foreign
policy. Paris was also well aware that China's goal was to become an
independent international actor. It was on October 16, 1964 that Beijing
detonated its first nuclear weapon at the Lop Nur test site. One year earlier,
neither France nor China signed the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which aimed to
limit the arms race. De Gaulle believed that a multipolar configuration would
be more conducive to sustainable equilibrium than either unipolarity or the
dangerous bipolar structure. For some, De Gaulle's politics of grandeur were
unacceptable.
On February 7, 1964, Maurice Couve de Murville, De Gaulle's foreign minister,
was on Time magazine's cover with a felicitous backdrop, the "Gazer" by
Watteau, a 18th century French painter known for his chinoiserie, a
subtle allusion to De Gaulle's China policy. In the following issue, Time
published a letter from one of its readers which gave an idea of the strong
emotion triggered by France's new stand: "Thank you for putting Couve de
Murville's picture on the cover of last week's Time magazine. This will enable
thousands of people like me to tear it up, burn it, or even step on it. How
dare France call Taipei the government of Formosa and recognize Mao's Beijing
as the government of China?". At the opposite of such reaction, it was reported
that when Zhou Enlai heard the news of the recognition while on a visit in
Africa, he cried to the French Ambassador in Sudan: "Bonjour, bonjour, comment
allez-vous?", and recalled that he had been a student in Paris many
years ago.
However, by entirely reducing De Gaulle's decision to politics one is missing a
fundamental component of Gaullism.
When he referred to China as a civilization, De Gaulle transcended the usual
geopolitical calculations and he took into account a more essential reality. De
Gaulle wanted to see the French administration working with another foreign
government but, more fundamentally, he wanted France to be in a position to
cooperate with a more permanent human construction, the Chinese civilization.
De Gaulle was so focused on the idea of permanency that he spoke of an "eternal
China" which is "conscious and proud of an immutable perennity". Even though it
makes great sense to think about China as a civilization and certainly not as
another Asian nation-state, the mention of China's immutability is either a
rhetorical excess or a mythical representation.
Revealingly, De Gaulle's most remarkable link with Asia and arguably one of his
most influential sources of information on China, was not a diplomat or a
businessman, but a powerful writer, who served the French president during his
10 years in power as minister for cultural affairs. Andre Malraux, an
incarnation of the engaged intellectual, commentator and actor of the 20th
century major crises, combined an encyclopedic erudition with the traveler's
experience of the world's diversity. When young, he explored Cambodia, and
through his life he remained curious about the Asian continent's transformation
and followed China's metamorphosis. In Man's Fate, a novel which takes
place in Shanghai in 1927, he vividly portrays several characters, depicts
their existential dilemmas, and one of them is even killed in a failed attack
against Chiang Kai-shek.
For De Gaulle, Malraux was not only another member of the French government
but, as he wrote in his memoirs, "this brilliant friend, fervent about
exceptional destinies". Malraux's intellectual representation of the Chinese
world and De Gaulle's understanding of the historical and cultural dimensions
mutually reinforced each other.
In 1965, De Gaulle asked Malraux to visit China as his personal envoy. In
Beijing, on behalf of the French president, Malraux had conversations with Chen
Yi, the Chinese foreign minister who had been commander of the New Fourth Army
and the first mayor of Shanghai after 1949, but also with Zhou Enlai and Mao
Zedong. Malraux published the content of his discussions in his Anti-memoirs.
It is an epic narrative where strong historical forces test and forge
extraordinary lives as much as powerful human wills shape history. Malraux sees
Mao as the "Emperor of bronze" and he announces in an oracular tone that "300
hundred years of European energy are fading while the Chinese-era begins". He
also attributes to Mao these intriguing words: "I am alone … or just with few
faraway friends: please convey my regards to the General de Gaulle."
De Gaulle and Mao never met but Malraux noticed that they had in common the
same extraordinary "inner aloofness". In the "White House Years", Kissinger
drew also a parallel between the two figures. Talking about Mao he wrote: "I
have met no one, with the possible exception of Charles de Gaulle, who so
distilled raw, concentrated willpower."
Malraux did not only influence De Gaulle's perception on China but he had also
an impact on the way Nixon approached his journey to Beijing. Before his trip
to China in February 1972, the American president invited the 71-year-old
French writer to the White House. In his memoirs, Nixon remembers: "I asked
Malraux again what came after Mao. Malraux replied: 'It is exactly as Mao said,
he has no successor.' What did he mean by it? He meant that in his view the
great leaders - Churchill, Gandhi, De Gaulle - were created by the kind of
traumatic historical events that will not occur in the world anymore".
In his dramatic press conference, De Gaulle consistently referred to history.
On the Chinese state, he hyperbolically declared that it is "more ancient than
History". But an analysis which comprehends the ancient past does not have to
exclude a perceptive approach of the more recent events. It is with a genuine
empathy that De Gaulle reminded his audience of China's painful adjustment to
modernity over the past one hundred years. And the Chinese people's sentiment
of humiliation when they had to suffer the violent Western ambition and
domination. This shock between the Western modernity and the Chinese tradition
explains why the PRC will do whatever it takes to reach the material
development necessary to avoid the repetition of foreign interference or
intrusion. Its legitimacy depends on its capacity to consolidate China's
sovereignty and to preserve the country's unity.
De Gaulle concluded his presentation with another remark about what he called
the "affinities" between France and China. Indeed, French and Chinese
intellectuals, being animated by the same curiosity to understand each other,
have been linked for centuries by a mutual attraction. But affinity envelops
also the idea of similarity. Despite all the differences between France and
China, it is meaningful to observe that they share a very singular high esteem
for culture.
Though the world has changed considerably in the past 45 years, De Gaulle is
still a source of inspiration. His vision and resolute action put the
Sino-French relationship on a special trajectory. Today, this relationship has
to contribute to a strong Sino-European synergy, a prerequisite to a more
balanced global governance. 2008 ended regrettably by an unnecessary quarrel
between Beijing and Paris but the tension, so contrary to the usual mutual
respect and friendship between the two capitals, will not last.
However, when the current French president does not act in the spirit of his
illustrious predecessor, one should not be surprised by China's reaction, which
is hitherto more about psychology than politics or geopolitics. China's
disappointment with Paris is proportionate to her well-grounded expectations
about the Sino-French relationship, and Chinese society can not be indifferent
to what is perceived as sudden tactless and provocative maneuvers. It would be
a strategic mistake for Paris to deliberately persist to affect a capital of
trust accumulated over decades, and it is now time to return to policies and
actions conformed to a truly special relationship.
If, in a world threatened by various forms of disorder, French and Chinese
constructive forces are, taken separately, extremely helpful, from the United
Nations to the financial market, from the laboratories to the universities,
their cooperative joint effort is indispensable.
French, European but also Chinese leaders have to reflect again upon De
Gaulle's decision to recognize the People's Republic of China. It is an
invitation to consider China as a living civilization and a co-architect of the
21st century global equilibrium. In its highest expression, Gaullism is the
effort to act according to permanent realities. In that sense, its relevance
remains in the midst of changes and despite all the noise of superficial
posturing.
David Gosset is director of the Academia Sinica Europaea at China Europe
International Business School (CEIBS), Shanghai, and founder of the Euro-China
Forum.
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