From Chess to Weiqi: The (Re)Shaping of the World
𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐖𝐄𝐈𝐐𝐈: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 (𝐑𝐄)𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐋𝐃
𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒍𝒅 𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒔 𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒉𝒂𝒑𝒆𝒅 𝒃𝒚 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒈𝒂𝒎𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝒘𝒆𝒊𝒒𝒊.
The United States is an island. And that is both its greatest strength and vulnerability. When I say island, I don't mean it in the geographical sense but in a geo-economic sense.
Separated from the Asian and European land mass by two large oceans, the United States has the advantage of being safe from attacks from both sides. That the only way to attack it is from the inside, as 9/11 aptly demonstrated.
From economic sense, this can be a bane. The U.S. has huge oceans that disconnects it from the world's raw materials and markets. South American countries aren't that profitable for its capitalists. Also, South American countries have a tendency to swing to the left. South American countries have a tendency to be anti-American. Furthermore, South American countries are plagued by powerful gangs, which make these markets unstable.
The geographical disconnection of the U.S. to the world's market and raw materials logically entails either a foreign policy of imperialism (which it in the early 20th century) or the diluted version of imperialism - hegemony. The difference between the two is how power is exercised in a material sense: imperialism entails actual territorial administration while hegemony doesn't. Hegemonic tactics include control of the political system of another country. It can be softer forms of control such as funding NGOs or political parties in another country or harder forms, such as military bases. The purpose of these tactics is to ensure that the Hawaii in the 19th century was naked imperialism, which eventually escalated into annexation. The Phililpines began like Hawaii then transitioned to just a subject of U.S. hegemonic powers. This splendid geographical isolation of the U.S. predisposes it to retain its position as the preponderant sea power in the world. It has to project its naval power to every corner of the planet in order to ensure continued access to raw materials and markets. A weakened navy is detrimental to an island like the U.S.A. Comparable situation was the United Kingdom, which dominated the seas before the United States did.
When the U.K. retreated from the summit of power after the British empire disintegrated because of the rise of nationalism in its colonies and economic competition against other imperial powers, the U.S. replaced it. The transition became solid after the U.S. remained the most predominant industrial power after World War I and II, its industries largely unscathed from the destruction of both wars because of its geographical isolation.The unrivalled economic position of the U.S. allowed it to largely dictate the contours of the world's political and economic order, while at the same time maintaining its power to conduct unilateral actions against other countries. The other rivals of the U.S. in the 20th century, Japan and the Soviet Union, both collapsed. Japan did because of imperial overstretch. Its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity plan was nipped in the bud by 1) other imperial powers present in Asia - UK, France, the Netherlands, and the United States; and 2) the wave of nationalist movements in Asia. The Soviet Union collapsed largely because of internal economic issues.
The Soviet Union was such a large conglemeration which it cannot sustain, specially because its military competition with the United States became a relentless leaking faucet. After World War II, the Japan problem of the United States was resolved through its military occupation of the Empire of the Sun, preventing Japan from launching any independent course of action in the world stage. After the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 90s, it was reduced into its successor State - Russia - which effectively made it an essentially landlocked country, until Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, giving it access to a warm water port.
China's rejuvenation is a challenge to the United States. China is a continental power. Its market integrated to most of the world's economies by land, specially with its Belt and Road project, which makes sea trade routes just a logistical option rather than the only one. China's rejuvenation is premised on its own history of collapsing several times and resurrecting afterwards, learning from the mistakes of preceding Chinese governments. China is a civilization that reinvents its self within the needs of the time. And it has done that over and over again for millennia. China as a sea power is a product of its history, a lesson it learned from the Opium Wars of the 19th century, with enemies entering China because of lack of defense of its near-seas.But the real source of strength of China is its long history of being a united country for millennia. In 1974, Chinese farmers accidentally stumbled upon the legendary burial site of Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di in Xian, China. Emperor Qin is the first emperor of a unified China. Before 1974, his burial site was largely thought to be a myth because it was not found. The discovery of his burial site (of the famous Terracotta warriors) materially integrated the history of China's long story of being a unified country.
Every collapse of China is followed by a self-strengthening phase which fuels its subsequent rejuvenation. The current rejuvenation of China is nothing new in its history, it is just another form of its resurrection. Rather than form, this rejuvenation we are witnessing is different from the others in terms of substance because in this version of China's rejuvenation it is the strongest version of China: the most educated Chinese population in its history, the most technologically advanced, the most industrially capable, having the most complete industrial system in world history, and the country that is major trade partner to about 130 countries, its market integrated to an overwhelming number of economies. All this China achieved without committing the folly of imperial Japan and winning a Great Power war like what the United States did. Furthermore, China avoided the economic follies of the Soviet Union. It is easy for China to avoid the imperial overstretch problem of Japan because it can afford to have a high degree of self-sufficiency, unlike the Empire of the Sun, which has to rely on external resources.
China is internally rich in resources, having the most reserve critical strategic minerals as the EU once reported. It has almost resolved its perennial problem of lack of arable land per capita, thus ensuring its food security issue. China's history of balancing centralization and decentralization makes it poised to avoid the Soviet Union problem. Furthermore, China having a deeply rooted history, a continuous language base that unites the story of its generations, give it a profound base for a unity that is hard to break and eliminate. In writing about the difference between Rome and China, historian Samuel Adshead credited the rejuvenation of China after every collapse for having a huge population collectively committed to recreating China. This collective consciousness owes to China's experience as a country unified by a long history of cultural integrity, facilitated by a continually-used language that has told that story.
Internally, China will always retain absolute advantage within its market. That's why foreigners seeking access in its market will have to be contented with relative advantage. This is a logical consequence of China learning from its history when it was partitioned by Western powers. China has long believed that foreigners are ungovernable. China's external strategy is relative advantage rather than absolute domination. China has learned from the history of previous powers that seeking absolute advantage is the fastest way to tragedy.
This external strategy is opposite that of the United States. The U.S. has to retain absolute advantage, both internally and externally.Internally, because its local industries cannot compete well when it allows access to its market. Relative advantage of foreigners in the U.S. can easily snowball to absolute advantage of foreign products because goods from outside can outcompete U.S. products through price and because U.S. consumer market is smaller than China to accommodate too many competitors that could outprice American industries. And as a democracy, its population will demand killing foreign competition. Hence, imposing tarrifs will always be in the toolkit of American leaders in order to correct the situation to satisfy the demands of the voters.
Absolute advantage is an external strategy of the United States because it is an island. It needs to dominate every economies and to control economies it has by employing hegemonic tactic of direct or indirect political control. The U.S. pressuring its allies to ban semiconductor exports to China, and sabotaging the Nordstream gas pipeline to Germany from Russia are chief examples of that tactic.To use a strategic game metaphor, the U.S. is playing chess, while China is playing weiqi. In chess, pieces are clear - there are clear pawns, bishops, rooks, horses..etcetera. China is playing weiqi with the United States. In weiqi, the pieces are the same. The game isn't limited by time. It's more complex than chess. In chess, the game is played with a predetermined course of development on the board. In weiqi, the game is played spontaneously in every part of the board. For the US to win, it must drag China into playing chess. The area where chess is possible is in the South China Sea region. For China not to lose, it must remain playing weiqi. Thus, for China, the game is played everywhere else. Among all the world's regions, it's only in East Asian and, to some extent - South Asian regions where China's military is a relevant actor. This is because the Indo-Pacific region is being turned into a chessboard by the United States. But China's military is not present in other regions - Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.
These are three regions traditionally dominated by the West's military power. China presented itself as a different actor. It's hard for the West - specially the one being led by the United States - to decouple its economic statecraft from military statecraft because, for the West - order-building has always been political order-building. The West has continued its civilizing mission — and this time civilised meant "liberal democracy." They want to turn every corner of the world into an image of the West. And political order is established by military power.For China, order-building is economic-connection building; it wants to connect other economies to its own. That's why it doesn't matter to China what political ideology an economy has. What matters for China isn't ideological alignment but economic exchange. And the prospect of gaining access to China's 1.4 billion market and complete industrial system are offers these economies find hard to refuse. The world order is being reshaped by the transition from the game of chess to the game of weiqi. In chess, to win the other must lose. In weiqi, that's not the case.
As Muriel Barbery once said: "One of the most extraordinary aspects of the game of [weiqi] is that it has been proven that in order to win, you must live, but you must also allow the other player to live. Players who are too greedy will lose; it’s a subtle game of equilibrium, where you have to get ahead without crushing the other player."
The U.S. as a long-time chess player that its must make its rivals collapse in order for it to win. China doesn't play that game externally. China had the opportunity to hasten the collapse of the United States during the 2008 U.S. financial crisis. The story was told by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Paulson said that Chinese leaders once told him that Russia was encouraging China to dump billions of dollars worth of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. If it happened, the U.S. financial crisis would have been much more severe. If the story were true (Russia denied it did), we all know that China didn't follow Russia's advice. Thus, for China, winning is not tied to the death of its rivals. Where is it tied then? In its own internal strength: the strength of its economy, the efficiency of its industrial system, and the effectiveness of its government to keep order and stability. Without all of these, China becomes an unattractive destination of talent and capital. China is playing a geo-economic weiqi to U.S. geopolitical chess.
To excel at weiqi, Zhang Yunqi, lists the necessary qualities in a 1991 Internal document of the Chinese Weiqi Institute: "the tactic of the soldier, the exactness of the mathematician, the imagination of the artist, the inspiration of the poet, the calm of the philosopher, and the greatest intelligence. "And all of these require continuous self-cultivation. This self-cultivation is also logically connected to why China doesn't need to lift so much finger to hasten the collapse of its rivals. It knows in its millenia of history and being a keen observant of the rise and fall of other powers that internal follies eventually destroys even the mightiest empires. As Sun Tzu once said, "If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by. "The fastest way to destroy China is to make it transition into an American-style democratic system. Because in that system, even the dumbest leader can rise to the top by virtue of being popularly chose regardless of merit. Once China abandons its meritocratic ladder to power in favor of popular vote, it will lead to its eventual degeneration. So what one must do then with regards to dealing with China? Napoleon's advice centuries ago is worth repeating. About two hundred years ago, Barry Edward O’Meara, the Irish surgeon who extracted the wisdom tooth of Napoleon, published in two volumes 𝑵𝒂𝒑𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒐𝒏 𝒊𝒏 𝒆𝒙𝒊𝒍𝒆, 𝒐𝒓, 𝑨 𝒗𝒐𝒊𝒄𝒆 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑺𝒕. 𝑯𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒏𝒂 : 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒐𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒓𝒆𝒇𝒍𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 𝒐𝒇 𝑵𝒂𝒑𝒐𝒍𝒆𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒎𝒐𝒔𝒕 𝒊𝒎𝒑𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒏𝒕 𝒆𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒉𝒊𝒔𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒈𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒏𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕, 𝒊𝒏 𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒘𝒐𝒓𝒅𝒔.In that book, O’Meara extracted the wisdom of Napoleon in dealing with China, 200 years ago. One of that advice was:“It would be the worst thing you have done for a number of years,” Napoleon said to an Englishman, “to go to war with an immense empire like China, and possessing so many resources.” In assessing the situation, Napoleon didn't hold his tongue: “You would doubtless, at first, succeed, take what vessels they have, and destroy their trade.
”However, such an action will eventually backfire, Napoleon warned: “But you would teach them their own strength. They would be compelled to adopt measures to defend themselves against you.”“If I were an Englishman,”Napoleon told the Englishman, “I should esteem the man who advised a war with China to be the greatest enemy to my country in existence. You would in the end be beaten…” (p. 69, Volume II).“You ought to monopolize thewhole China trade to yourselves,” Napoleon advised. “Instead of going to war with the Chinese, it were better to make war with the nations who desire to trade with them” (p. 234, Volume 2).Napoleon recognised the futility of defeating China. Instead of dominating China, he advised the ultimate goal of dominating the trade with China. One must redirect one’s energy from competing with China towards competing with other nations trading with China. The world is moving towards that direction. The alternative towards that direction is a world of chess, where only one could survive.
Authored by Sass Rogando Sasot