unthinkable only a few years earlier. One leading academic told me of a discussion with some of his military counterparts in which Hu had been attacked by name for being soft on Japan. “Arrogant people with a lot of ego,” the academic described them.
I got the full force of this worldview when I went to visit Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu. I wanted to meet Liu because a few months earlier he had caused something of a sensation when he published his first book,
China Dream
, a nationalist tract that called for the country to build a military force to rival and compete with the U.S. In his book he argued that the U.S. and China were embarking on a “marathon contest” for global leadership. Having spared no efforts to contain the rise of the Soviet Union and Japan, Liu argued that the U.S. would “fight a third battle to retain its title” against China. His book became a best seller both on the mainland and in Hong Kong. One large Chinese newspaper ran serializations of
China Dream
for a whole month. Yanghe, a company which makes one of the country’s best-known brands of liquor, ordered ten thousand copies to give to its clients. “The chairman described it as a textbook for patriotism,” Liu told me, not a little immodestly.
Liu lives in a complex of residential buildings reserved for military personnel, just along the road from the Defense Ministry’s huge building in central Beijing. Foreigners are not supposed to enter the compound, he said on the phone, so I should wear a woolly hat and keep my head down when passing through the gate. In the end, the car drove in without any problems at all, the guard airily waving us through. Insidethe compound, there were few signs of insecurity, but plenty of esprit de corps. There was a well-tended running track, and a theater that put on shows of revolutionary songs at the weekends. It was midmorning, and the exercise area was full of pensioners doing stretches on a series of yellow machines. A lithe fifty-year-old with dyed black hair and the rank of a senior colonel, Liu now teaches at the National Defense University, where he gives lectures on Marxist theory and U.S.-China relations. Liu said that on the very day he launched his book, in 2010, Barack Obama gave a speech saying that the U.S. would never be number two in the world. “It was such a coincidence. As an ordinary military man, I argue loudly that China should try to be the number one, should race to be the champion country,” Liu said.
A few months before we talked, a Chinese admiral called Yuan Youfei had caused a good deal of consternation at a high-profile U.S.-China summit when he launched into a long diatribe attacking the “hegemonic” U.S. According to American officials present, Yuan accused Washington of plotting to encircle China and treating Beijing as an enemy. Liu Mingfu said he agreed entirely with Yuan’s analysis. For Liu, the Chinese leadership faces a stark choice: either China develops the military capacity to challenge the U.S., or it will be forever bullied by its larger rival. “For China, a runner-up who does not want to be a champion is not a good runner-up,” he told me. “But the U.S. wants a mini-NATO to contain China.” As we talked in his flat, his wife sat next to him, eating sunflower seeds from a plastic bag and nodding vigorously every time he made a forceful point. A few weeks before, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett had visited Beijing to encourage Chinese entrepreneurs to do more for charity. “Chinese people enjoyed seeing the civilization of Gates and Buffett. America should send more cultural and peaceful ambassadors like that,” Liu told me. “But, instead, the American aircraft carriers make 1.3 billion Chinese people see America’s hegemony and barbarism.” As I was leaving, he gripped my hand firmly. “You British are reasonable people; Germans are very reasonable,” he said. “But the Americans?”
Since the first Gulf War, in the early nineties,
I got the full force of this worldview when I went to visit Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu. I wanted to meet Liu because a few months earlier he had caused something of a sensation when he published his first book,
China Dream
, a nationalist tract that called for the country to build a military force to rival and compete with the U.S. In his book he argued that the U.S. and China were embarking on a “marathon contest” for global leadership. Having spared no efforts to contain the rise of the Soviet Union and Japan, Liu argued that the U.S. would “fight a third battle to retain its title” against China. His book became a best seller both on the mainland and in Hong Kong. One large Chinese newspaper ran serializations of
China Dream
for a whole month. Yanghe, a company which makes one of the country’s best-known brands of liquor, ordered ten thousand copies to give to its clients. “The chairman described it as a textbook for patriotism,” Liu told me, not a little immodestly.
Liu lives in a complex of residential buildings reserved for military personnel, just along the road from the Defense Ministry’s huge building in central Beijing. Foreigners are not supposed to enter the compound, he said on the phone, so I should wear a woolly hat and keep my head down when passing through the gate. In the end, the car drove in without any problems at all, the guard airily waving us through. Insidethe compound, there were few signs of insecurity, but plenty of esprit de corps. There was a well-tended running track, and a theater that put on shows of revolutionary songs at the weekends. It was midmorning, and the exercise area was full of pensioners doing stretches on a series of yellow machines. A lithe fifty-year-old with dyed black hair and the rank of a senior colonel, Liu now teaches at the National Defense University, where he gives lectures on Marxist theory and U.S.-China relations. Liu said that on the very day he launched his book, in 2010, Barack Obama gave a speech saying that the U.S. would never be number two in the world. “It was such a coincidence. As an ordinary military man, I argue loudly that China should try to be the number one, should race to be the champion country,” Liu said.
A few months before we talked, a Chinese admiral called Yuan Youfei had caused a good deal of consternation at a high-profile U.S.-China summit when he launched into a long diatribe attacking the “hegemonic” U.S. According to American officials present, Yuan accused Washington of plotting to encircle China and treating Beijing as an enemy. Liu Mingfu said he agreed entirely with Yuan’s analysis. For Liu, the Chinese leadership faces a stark choice: either China develops the military capacity to challenge the U.S., or it will be forever bullied by its larger rival. “For China, a runner-up who does not want to be a champion is not a good runner-up,” he told me. “But the U.S. wants a mini-NATO to contain China.” As we talked in his flat, his wife sat next to him, eating sunflower seeds from a plastic bag and nodding vigorously every time he made a forceful point. A few weeks before, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett had visited Beijing to encourage Chinese entrepreneurs to do more for charity. “Chinese people enjoyed seeing the civilization of Gates and Buffett. America should send more cultural and peaceful ambassadors like that,” Liu told me. “But, instead, the American aircraft carriers make 1.3 billion Chinese people see America’s hegemony and barbarism.” As I was leaving, he gripped my hand firmly. “You British are reasonable people; Germans are very reasonable,” he said. “But the Americans?”
Since the first Gulf War, in the early nineties,
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