Discussion Draft Posted: "Black Hand [黑手]/ Red List [红名单]: China, Law and the Foreigner ; Mutual Engagements on a Global Scale"

I am happy to circulate a discussion draft of an essay I am preparing for presentation in October. The essay is entitled "Black Hand [黑手]/ Red List [红名单]: China, Law and the Foreigner ; Mutual Engagements on a Global Scale."

The essay considers an issue that tends to be overlooked sometimes in the sometimes mad drive to become or remain an influence leader with impact.  Indeed, the mania, especially among academics and others who peddle ideas for a living, but who serve institutional masters increasingly obsessed with short term data driven "evidence" that "someone out there is listening (actually that someone out there "important" is listening at least as those things are understood through analysis of "correct" data bits). The issue, of of particular importance in the context of cross cultural, and cross political conversations among communities whose long term relationships have neither been entirely equal nor harmonious, touches on the way communication is is projected and received.  China provides an excellent canvas against which these projections can be sharply observed.  More importantly, its canvas is itself a complex and dynamic weave of history, culture, desire and the difficulties of communicating even when one assumes a common language.  But mostly it is about the way in which people tend to serve as cultural projectiles, as well as the way that institutions develop the gloves with which these projectiles may be caught, examined and, if necessary discarded or remade for an entirely different game. 

For China specialists, the focus on the specifically Chinese context might provide something useful. The essay suggests one of the consequences of these discursive tropes in the context of the 2019 situation in Hong Kong.  For students of language and communication, the tropes themselves provides fodder for an inquiry into transposition and context.  And for students of politics, the essay provides a foundation for considering the modalities of communication among emerging new era empires and their imperial centers.

The Abstract and introduction follow.  The essay may be downloaded by clicking this link (English only for the moment).   

Black Hand [黑手]/ Red List [红名单]: China, Law and the Foreigner ; Mutual Engagements on a Global Scale

Larry Catá Backer[1]

Abstract: This essay considers the cultural and discursive tropes, their political and social effects, that have marked the way in which comprehensible mutual engagement between China and foreigner have been constructed. These forms of engagement with the “foreign” has ancient discursive roots in China. It suggests the character of the mutual engagement between China and foreigners (especially foreigners viewed as representatives of equal or dangerous powers) as a form of cultural discourse that reflects an oscillation between caution and utility for which a set of definitive cultural tropes of the foreigner have been constructed with the participation of those foreigners who have embraced or at least utilized these discursive tropes. After an Introduction, Part 2 examines the model through the lens of a 1911 essay authored by Edward Capen, an American protestant missionary. Capen’s report suggests the seven archetypes of the foreigner around which engagement is constructed: (1) the missionary; (2) the expert; (3) the sycophant; (4) the colonizer; (5) the expatriate; (6) the entrepreneur; and (7) the company person (or salaryman). Part 3 then suggests internal and external lessons that might be drawn. Internal lessons are first centered on the challenges for those designated to receive and transpose such knowledge—Chinese scholars who serve as the internal intermediaries for foreign knowledge. The second relates to the mechanics for managing acceptable and dangerous knowledge for intermediaries and for the masses. The external lessons will be more difficult—these center on the consequences of replication of the patterns of Chinese engagement with foreigners when China itself becomes the foreigner. The dangers of the inverse replication of these archetypes is already lurking in China’s Belt and Road Initiative relations. But one might acquire a more definitive sense of those challenges in the Chinese “Black Hand” campaign in Hong Kong in 2019.

1. The Black Hand, the Red List, and the Contextualization of the Foreigner.

One of the most interesting elements of the developing situation in Hong Kong is the move, now several weeks old, by the Central Government authorities to build a very strong case that at the root of the conflicts in Hong Kong are agents provocateurs representing foreign powers.[2] That strategic move was singularly focused not just on any old foreign power--but the one foreign power with which China is currently engaged on multiple fronts in a fight for the redefinition of the relations between them. Of course, I mean the United States. And, then, peripherally, on second order foreign powers—the United Kingdom and the European Union and the G7.[3]

In some respects, Hong Kong offers a crisis form which China may well be tempted to seek advantage. One cannot blame them--the potential benefits are substantial. It provides a basis for legitimacy in intervention, it shifts focus form domestic conflict to foreign manipulation, and it may strengthen China's hand in both its current conflict with the United States over trade and in China's efforts to reshape the tenor and foundation of global international discourse (and China's place in the management of that narrative).[4]

All of this is fair game, one can suppose, within the rules of international engagement that have become the "new normal" since 2014 in the wake of the rise of transforming ideologies driven by the current holders of positions of national leadership in the most powerful states. A new historical era demands conformity to the rules (the "truths" of that era) that are manifested in the historical conditions within which states find themselves (the "facts" form which truth is derived).[5] The Americans have themselves refined this technique for its own new era through the politics of "Russian interference" that has played a dominant role in the politics of discrediting the Trump administration.[6] This is a tool that anyone, then, can use, to their own strategic ends.

This reframing of the character of the protests in Hong Kong that were ignited in 2019 by the efforts to consider an unpopular Extradition Bill from one of domestic disturbance to one of foreign interference requiring the intervention of central authorities has an ancient discursive form. To the ends of this sort of project it has been necessary to identify a plausible foreign adversary, to find character evidence that suggests that this adversary has already engaged in such conduct elsewhere; and lastly to marshal evidence from which local interference might be surmised. But what makes the engagement interesting is that this construction and utilization of the “black hand” must be undertaken in a way that does not reduce the utility of known foreigners whose identities may be included on “white (or red) lists.”[7]

These forms of engagement with the “foreign” has ancient discursive roots in China. But they are at the same time roots that have been tenderly cultivated by those foreign elements that have sought to frame the terms of engagement with China. It suggests the character of the mutual engagement between China and foreigners (especially foreigners viewed as representatives of equal or dangerous powers) as a form of cultural discourse that reflects an oscillation between caution and utility for which a set of definitive cultural tropes of the foreigner have been constructed with the participation of those foreigners who have embraced or at least utilized these discursive tropes.

This essay, then, speaks to the constructions of space established to make somewhat comprehensible mutual engagement between China and foreigner. The mutual engagement was constructed on a national scale during the last imperial dynasty. But its tropes have significant (and inverted) implications in this new era of Chinese power and influence. Where the traditional construct put China at the center of a national approach to engagement with the foreigner, those same tropes may now both constrain and challenge China as it emerges onto the world stage where it may well play the role of the foreigner. In effect. To understand the way that China and foreigners engage, to understand the black hand and the red list, is to understand the challenges and constraints that China may face in as it seeks to play the role of the foreigner in the imperial courts of the global community in which it will necessarily be the foreigner.

Part 2, which follows, seeks to understand the template through the lens of an essay authored by Edward Capen, an American protestant missionary, who in 1911 had produced a report for the American missionary movement in the US about missionary work in China.[8] Capen’s report, in turn, suggests the seven archetypes of the foreigner around which engagement is constructed: (1) the missionary; (2) the expert; (3) the sycophant; (4) the colonizer; (5) the expatriate; (6) the entrepreneur; and (7) the company person (or salaryman). Each is briefly considered.

Part 3 then suggests internal and external lessons that might be drawn. Internal lessons are first centered on the challenges for those designated to receive and transpose such knowledge—Chinese scholars who serve as the internal intermediaries for foreign knowledge. The second relates to the mechanics for managing acceptable and dangerous knowledge for intermediaries and for the masses. In effect it touches on the new era character of “Reform and Opening Up.” To that end the character of engagement is informed by these archetypes as the CCP seeks to extract from this engagement with the foreign those elements necessary for its implementation of the CCP Basic line of socialist modernization—emancipation of the mind and truth from facts approach in the “new era.” The external lessons will be more difficult—these center on the consequences of replication of the patterns of Chinese engagement with foreigners when China itself becomes the foreigner. The dangers of the inverse replication of these archetypes is already lurking in China’s Belt and Road Initiative relations. But one might acquire a more definitive sense of those challenges in the Chinese “Black Hand” campaign in Hong Kong in 2019.

Notes

[1] W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar Professor of Law and International Affairs; Pennsylvania State University. Prepared for the Conference “China’s Legal Construction Program at 40 Years – Towards an Autonomous Legal System?” sponsored by the University of Michigan Law School and Lieberthal Rogel Center for Chinese Studies conference from October 11-13, 2019. My great thanks to Mary Gallagher and Nico Howson. Earlier version of parts of this essay were first delivered at the Conference: “Foreigners and Modern Chinese Law”, Tsinghua University School of Law, Beijing, China, July 9-10, 2016; Organized by Professors Xu Zhangrun and Chen Xinyu.


[2] Statements of the State Council's representatives for the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office the Current State of Affairs in Hong Kong [ 国务院港澳办新闻发言人介绍对当前香港事态的看法 ] < http://www.hmo.gov.cn/xwzx/zwyw/201908/t20190806_21095.html?fbclid=IwAR1xg1LPiQX1RO-lTU6B4pDn3iX73h_G2zW5oBYfndxf2-llMaAjC8Vkp6Q>.


[3] Teddy Ng, Kinling Lo, and Jun Mai, China protests over British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s warning on Hong Kong agreement, South China Moring Post (3 July 2019) < https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3017095/china-protests-britain-over-british-foreign-secretary-jeremy>; Press TV; China ‘resolutely opposes’ G7 statement on Hong Kong < https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/08/27/604602/China-Hong-Kong-G7-statement>.


[4] See, e.g., John Harney and Kevin Hamlin, Trump Linking Trade to Hong Kong Risks Playing Into Xi's Hands, Bloomberg (14 Aug,. 2019) < https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-14/trump-in-praising-xi-links-hong-kong-protests-to-trade-war>.


[5] Xi Jinping, Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Delivered at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (October 18, 2017) < http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2017-11/04/content_34115212.htm>.


[6] Robert S. Mueller III, Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election (Washington, DC: US Dept of Justice March 2019). https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf>.


[7] What China Experts Have to do to get on Beijing’s visa “whitelist”, The Washington Post (5 September 2019) < https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/05/what-china-experts-have-do-get-beijings-visa-whitelist/>.


[8] Edward Capen, “The Western Influence in China,” The Journal of Race and Development 3(4): 412-437 (1913) (merged into Foreign Affairs in 1922)