John Givens begins the discussion with a thought provoking essay that explores the question of why the world, and particularly the United States, has not better prepared for the emergence of China as a global power. This is part two of a series. The first — Is the World Ready for China Risen? — was published this year in China Currents, Volume 21, No. 1.

Suresh Sharma offers a deep historical perspective into the rise of China, positing that no civilization has risen to world dominance for a second time. Is China, which arguably was the world’s leading civilization during the Tang Dynasty, poised to rise to the top again? Sharma offers some conditions that world leading powers have all fulfilled.

Marin Ekstrom examines an aspect of modern China that the leadership in Beijing has sought to close a curtain on: policies in Xinjiang. Ekstrom examines the history of China and Xinjiang and how previously more benevolent policies toward people in that far-flung region have changed for the worse.

Penelope Prime, our managing editor, looks back on her own experience as an academic in Nanjing in the early 1980s and offers comparisons with the present day.

The issue closes out with an interview with William Frazier, an American who has been doing business in China for years. Frazier discusses his work as a Black American businessman in China, including his efforts to promote and make more visible Black entrepreneurs in China. As he says: “The Black community needs to know how to do business in China.”

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This article will ask: If China’s rise was foreseeable, why was so little done to prepare for it? In answering this question, I will stay neutral on the extent to which China’s rise was a threat or an opportunity, whether preparing for it meant readying the U.S. and allied militaries to fight the People’s Republic tooth and nail, more complex but peaceful options of containment, or highly profitable and amiable engagement. I will argue that the rich world failed to prepare for a rising China for two primary reasons. First, it was distracted, certainly by their own domestic issues, but also by troubles arising in other parts of the world, especially the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Russia’s adventurism. Second, as the cost of engaging, containing, and/or combating a rising China became more apparent, so did motivated reasoning that downplayed China’s rise and justified taking little action.

Even if potentially profitable, preparing for the Chinese Century called for huge outlays of resources well in advance of any potential challenge or opportunity that China would offer. While the nature of the threat or opportunity was highly unclear, many investments, such as in Chinese language and country expertise, would have value no matter what shape China’s rise took. In a sense, it was the high probability of China’s rise that has made the rich world’s responses so lackluster. Rather than face that reality and allocate the massive resources necessary to prepare for the rise of China, the West in general and the U.S. in particular preferred China ostrichism: burying its head in the sand, criticizing China, complaining about it not playing fairly economically, inventing reasons it could not compete, and falling back on motivated reasoning to argue that it needed to do little to prepare itself.

Was China’s Rise Foreseeable?

China’s rise has been widely predicted as quick list of the titles of books on the subject makes clear: William Overholt’s The Rise of China: How Economic Reform is Creating a New Superpower (1993); Francis Lee’s China Superpower: Requites for High Growth (1996); Geoffrey Murray’s China: The Next Superpower (1998); Ted Fushman’s China, Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World (2006); Bergsten et al.’s China: The Balance Sheet: What the World Needs to Know Now About the Emerging Superpower (2007); Susan Shirk’s China: Fragile Superpower (2009). In addition to these books, articles with similar titles appeared in publications as diverse as Public Relations Quarterly in 1998, Problems of Post-Communism in 1996, and the Thunderbird International Business Review in 2000, to name a few. Nor was this merely a view held among academics and pundits. A 2011 review of a London kebab shop included the off-topic fear that “China loses patience with the fat and pointless West and just slaughters us all in our beds one bright cold day in April.”¹ By 2011, Pew found that “in 15 of 22 nations, the balance of opinion is that China either will replace or already has replaced the United States as the world’s leading superpower.”² There were, of course, skeptics of China’s rise. Many of the titles listed above pointed out the ways in which China might not continue to rise. But, by 2012 and the debatably failed pivot to Asia, it was clear that China’s rise to superpower status was a highly probable outcome.

The Motivated Reasoning of China Ostrichism

As the scale of China’s growth and influence became clear, it was increasingly evident that it would be expensive to deal with China, whether that meant increasing engagement and both competing and cooperating economically with China or employing more confrontational approaches that might include armed conflict. From the over 5,000 sailors that could be lost on a single aircraft carrier in the Taiwan strait, to the $250 billion price tag of the China competitiveness bill, to the 2,200 hours it takes to become proficient in Chinese, governments and individuals were reluctant to make the investment necessary to prepare for China’s rise. Instead, the rich world preferred to make the increasingly unlikely bet that they would never really need to deal with an authoritarian Chinese superpower. This meant indulging in China ostrichism, of which I identify three types. First, China would democratize and therefore no longer prove a challenge to the rich democratic world. Second, China would stagnate. Third, China would collapse. In the subsequent paragraphs I will consider each flavor of China ostrichism in turn.

The most Pollyannaish school of China ostrichism predicted that China would soon democratize, and this author should admit his own weakness for this line of thinking. In 1998, Chinese dissident Juntao Wang argued in the Journal of Democracy that “most Western observers believe that China will democratize, although they do not expect this to happen anytime soon.”³ In 2011, a Tsinghua University Professor published an article with a colleague from Macau entitled “Why China Will Democratize.” There were good reasons to believe this might be true. Most countries democratize as they grown rich. China’s neighbor South Korea democratized at a per capita income of around $5,000 (in current U.S. dollars) and Taiwan at a bit more than twice that level. A decade ago, when China was just approaching Korea’s level of development and a new generation of leadership was taking over it seemed reasonable to think that medium term democratization was likely. Just a few years later, however, it became evident that Xi was consolidating power and democracy was not the direction that China was headed.

China will stagnate might appear the most reasonable camp of China ostrichism. “If the development model doesn’t change, China will stagnate,” wrote Derek Scissors in 2015 while discussing China’s very real environmental problems.⁴ Yet, this school also seemed prone to be victim of motivated reasoning and debatably even a type of Orientalism that views China as static, undeveloped, and unchanging. Following the financial crash of 2008, pundits and businesspeople increasingly sought to explain why China’s economic model would not allow it to overtake rich democracies. Many settled on the idea that China could not innovate. In 2014, the Harvard Business Review published an article entitled: “Why China Can’t Innovate” and Kerry Brown of King’s College London argued that “The Chinese government under Xi can pour all the money they want into vast research and development parks, churning out any number of world-class engineers and computer programmers. Even with all of this effort, however, China is likely to produce few world-class innovative companies.”⁵ The logical conclusion of this was supposed to be that China would not be able to compete with developed democracies and that its economy would stall at a middle-income level. Yet, in some ways this thinking seems even more wishful than the argument that China will democratize, because the reality was that China had been innovating economically in meaningful ways for two decades. By the time this argument was being made, fairly similar East Asian economies, thousands of small manufacturers, Tencent, Didi, and Alibaba had already proved it incorrect.

The “China will collapse” school of China ostrichism is probably the most perennially popular. Since the economic slowdown, runaway inflation, and massive protests of the 1989-90 era until this year, China’s growth has never dipped below a robust six percent and it has never appeared to be particularly close to collapse. Yet, this has not stopped an endless parade of predictions of China’s eminent demise. The problems these predictions cite generally include some combination of: succession problems, corruption, lack of rule of law, lack of democracy, land expropriations, slowing economic growth, economic overheating, real estate bubbles, environmental degradation, lack of innovation, income inequality, export dependence, a bottomless appetite for natural resources, large numbers of executions, organ harvesting, sex-selective abortions, ghost cities, unemployment, lack of intellectual property protections, the arrest of foreign executives, inflation, and unrest among or the mistreatment of: workers, criminal suspects, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, activists, lawyers, and/or journalists.

In 1996, when Deng Xiaoping’s health was beginning to wane, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy, carried essays with titles such as “After Deng the Deluge” and “Why China Will Collapse.”⁶ In 2012, The Economist declared it a “dangerous year for China,” yet similar analysis shows up every year. In 2008, it was the Olympics, riots in Tibet and the global financial crisis. In 2009, it was the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen and riots in Xinjiang. In 2010, it was Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize. In 2011, it was the Arab spring and Gordon Chang’s prediction that the CCP would collapse because of the inefficiency of state-run enterprises, a reluctance to build a more open democratic society, and non-performing loans. In 2012, it was the leadership handover. The fact that people continued to publish and listen to predictions of China’s collapse show how they want to believe that the “China problem” would take care of itself. If China was truly going to implode, rich democracies would not need to face the challenge its different model presented, and individuals would not need to learn in a world defined by a rising China.

None of these types of China ostrichism was illogical or lacking in evidence and intelligent supporters. The assessments were not foolish or even necessarily wrong. They pointed to real problems in the political and financial systems of the PRC. Indeed, Christopher in 1985 or Overholt in 1993 were making a relatively risky bet in predicting China’s rise. But, around the time of the Great Recession of 2007-2009, the odds would seem to have shifted and, as we have already seen, it was clear that a future with an authoritarian Chinese superpower was at least fairly likely. Hindsight is 20/20, or in Chinese “everyone is Zhu Geliang (a famous strategist) after the fact (事后诸葛亮).” My purpose here, therefore, is not to condemn past failures, many of which are defensible or at least understandable, and more to highlight the issue so we can do better in the future.

A United States Distracted

During the second Bush era, the focus of foreign policy by the U.S. and many of its allies was unapologetically on the Middle East. North Korea was included in the axis of evil, but its nuclear program was allowed to come to fruition while the U.S. addressed Iran’s nuclear aspirations and got bogged down in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Obama administration declared a pivot to Asia, but a lack of deep and energetic commitment to the region was evident. As president, Obama spent all of seven days on three trips to China, two of which were for APEC and G-20 summits. This was equal to the number of times he visited Poland and Canada and fewer trips than he made to Afghanistan, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, France, or Germany. When choosing a secretary of state for his second term, Obama could have made a choice that signaled a commitment to Asia, perhaps naming a person with experience in Asia and maybe even Chinese language skills, but he did not. The Obama administration came in at the moment China’s rise became clear, correctly diagnosed the problem and made the right noises, but ultimately failed to prepare the democratic world for the 21^st century.

Graph 1: Country Mentions in U.S. Presidential and Vice Presidential Debates 2000-2020

The extent to which China has been overshadowed by other international issues is evident from Graph 1, which depicts the mentions of various countries in U.S. presidential and vice-presidential debates since 2000. As is clear, while mentions of China have grown over the past two decades, until around 2020 China was always overshadowed either by issues related to the MENA (Middle East and North Africa, including Afghanistan) or Russia. Given that China received only a single mention in 2000, this is not only a product of the September 11^th attacks, although they certainly exacerbated the situation. By 2012, as China continued to rise and the Iraq war was fading, China looked ready to emerge as the primary issue in U.S. foreign policy. Yet, Russian interference in the 2016 election forced it to take a back seat until it finally emerged in 2020. While it is normal for geopolitical concerns to shift, it was clear that none of the countries dominating attention had a chance of becoming a superpower or competing with China for influence on the shape of the 21^st Century.

Conclusion

It is often claimed that the Chinese word for crises contains the characters for “danger (危)” and “opportunity(机).” This is a common misconception as the second character implies a pivot point, not necessarily an opportunity. This may be a small and subtle point, but it illustrates the lack of attention to and understanding of China by rich democracies during the last four decades. Rich democracies need to realize that China’s rise is not a crisis and cannot be addressed quickly or at the last minute, but that it still could be an opportunity. Careful attention to Asia could pay handsome dividends in both political and economic terms. But, any pivot to Asia needs to represent an abiding commitment to and investment in the region, despite what might be going on in the Middle East, North Africa, Russia, at home, or anywhere else.

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Between 2012 and 2018, a few colleagues and I studied next-generation innovation ecosystems globally. We observed a number of patterns and anti-patterns.¹ Our data and work involved closely studying about 4,500 incubators and accelerators, about 3,000 from the U.S. and the rest from China, Singapore, India, Japan, Chile, Scandinavia among other countries. We saw successes, failures, and mediocre attempts at innovation. Mapping anti-patterns helped us understand why several very successful serial entrepreneurs built great enterprises the first time but then failed in their next ventures.

PATTERNS AND ANTI-PATTERNS

Before the COVID pandemic, I had visited China several times, saw the emerging technology incubation landscape, participated in pitches given by entrepreneurs, observed corporate operations, delivered lectures, and interacted with numerous business, industry, and policy leaders. This gave us further insight into the process of innovation in China.

Rapid digitalization across the world has only further accelerated the pace of innovation, and China is no exception. The number of Chinese innovation hubs has almost doubled in less than three years, despite the COVID pandemic. The global total stands at more than 8,000 and is growing by leaps and bounds.

Innovation is a key element in China’s quest to become the next leading superpower. If China succeeds, the country will pull off something unique: a second rise of a formerly great civilization.

One has to wonder: Why? All the great civilizations of their times — Mesopotamia, Assyria, Egypt, China (until now), Greece, Rome, Persia, Great Britain, the people of the Indus Valley, the Incas, the Vikings, and others — failed to again become a dominant superpower. To be sure, a few impressive renaissances have happened, but no civilization has returned to its former glory. 

The youngest new civilization to emerge on top is the United States. The U.S. has its own unique identity, culture, persona, structure, nation, and way of life. If history is any judge, the U.S., too, will gradually plateau and decline over a period of time.

During America’s rise, especially in the last century, a few other nations — Germany, Russia, and Japan to be specific — have tried to gain supremacy, too, all to no avail, wreaking destruction along the way instead.

EXCEPTIONS CAN MAKE NEW RULES

Against this historical background, China deserves special consideration. Can Chinese innovation, such as it is, push the nation to cultural dominance again? Over the past few decades especially, the Chinese have been rapidly rising and seem to be well on their way to reaching the summit. Remember, China was indeed one of the leading great civilizations at one time. (Scholars point to the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) as the era when China was the world’s leading civilization.)

It makes no analytical sense to conclude that China cannot re-emerge as the world’s leading superpower simply because there is no historical precedent for a second rise. Rather, it is vital to understand fundamental enablers for new economic prosperity, new capital formation, and new advances across the society.

By the same token, the U.S could continue to lead the world if it can figure out ways to sustain the trajectory that made the country the world’s superpower. I offer no predictions, but can suggest some telltale characteristics of great civilizations and outstanding innovative ecosystems:

1. All great civilizations were preceded by and accompanied with the rise of world-class leading universities. Intellectual power came first. 

2. Great civilizations demonstrated an expansive capacity to solve problems in their own original creative ways. They did not use incrementally improvised models, or models that provide slight improvement over existing ones.

3. Great civilizations developed massive pathways and platforms to meld creativity into better solutions. These were flexible and open ecosystems, not rigid and bound physical infrastructure. To be clear, in my view, a good ecosystem is an integrated living and breathing community in which people work, live, and innovate–not one that simply provides decent bricks-and-mortar facilities but does not embed significant elements that foster creativity and innovation.

PARALLELS AND PARADOX 

During my visits to China, friends and colleagues were struck by the parallel between the Japanese experience and the route China currently is taking. This caused these Chinese friends to rethink their country’s current policy direction. I’ll elaborate about the parallel.

Existing China growth models include elements of vertical inspiration from manufacturing and economic models of Singapore and Japan. But historical experience suggests it is virtually impossible to map one’s cultural uniqueness onto others’ models. 

This is why Japan never achieved lasting superpower status in the 20th century. Japan could not exhibit the essential characteristics of great civilizations.

Recalling recent history, one can walk through Japan’s rise from the days of the return of the Meiji in 1876:

• The country embarked on an ambitious mission to rise to the top as a world power. Japanese leaders were inspired by the enviable economic growth in Western Europe and the U.S. spurred by the industrial revolution, just like China today is inspired by earlier U.S. industrialization. 
• Japanese scholars attended Oxford, Cambridge, and many other western universities. Japanese policy makers studied western governance models. Engineers came to study science, technology and did R&D.
• They set up modern manufacturing plants. They improved quality, reliability, and productivity of many western products, but solutions were never their own original creations. It was a great improvisation built on another civilization’s model.    

Japan was able to make better cars, better TVs, and better consumer goods, but when it came to bringing innovative solutions that were transformative to life or industry, the Japanese fell short. Most of the corporations were great Japanese companies. They were enterprises that made awesome products for the world but at the same time were rather limited global companies that happened to have Japanese ownership. 

Likewise, China today is improvising on a western framework. The Chinese are making better social media apps – like WeChat – search engines, supply chain platforms, improved artificial intelligence, and fuel-efficient cars, but there seems to be little that can stick as transformative and original to people’s way of life globally. That may be an inherent limit to how far China can go.

India faces similar problems. In less than one year, India has created more than 30 unicorns (a private start-up worth over $1 billion), but almost all of them are improvised versions of already proven and established western business and market models and do not solve their problems in any original way. Improvisation, yes; but transformative invention or innovation? Hardly. 

POTENTIAL OF UNTAPPED ‘DEEP TECH’ – A DIFFERENTIATOR

One of the areas that U.S currently still has a distinct advantage over all others is its rich backlog of disruptive and transformative, deep technology (or “deep tech”) across all industries. Deep tech typically stems from a large of body of R&D work carried out by world-class universities. China is close in few areas, much like Japan was close in the past, but having organizational capacity to foster creative potential to make global market-driven products is vital.

Furthermore, the U.S has a large number of original R&D centers, labs, and universities capable of changing the game in any industry. The land grant universities have the potential to mature into another level of innovative infrastructure. This phenomenon goes back to the necessity of having leading universities to maintain one’s lead in the future. However, commercializing “deep tech” in the U.S. is still an area where the existing efficiency of venture capital as well as incubation and accelerator ecosystems are grossly inadequate. Regardless, this is one key differentiator that the U.S. cannot permit to fizzle out if it is to sustain itself as an exception from decline. 

In summary, it appears that a key need for a superpower is to unleash its people’s full creativity in original ways. It seems China will have to do much more of this if it wants to be an exception to historical experience.

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These debates inevitably raise such questions as to how China and Xinjiang first established contact, what the dynamics were between the two entities, and what implications this historical relationship has in understanding China and Xinjiang today.

Scholars Hung-Jen Wang and Zhiguang Yin strive to answer these questions in their articles “Traditional Empire-Modern State Hybridity: Chinese Tianxia and Westphalian Anarchy” (Wang) and “Clashes of Universalisms: Xinjiang, Tianxia, and Changing World Order in the 19^th Century” (Yin). Both researchers identify the mid-19^th century as a critical juncture in the development of Sino-Xinjiang relations. Prior to this time period, China’s ruling Qing dynasty designated Xinjiang as a peripheral region. Qing China governed Xinjiang in accordance with the tianxia principle of world order. As long as the region signaled support for the Qing Empire – most vividly demonstrated through the exchange of tribute gifts – the Qing rulers would grant Xinjiang relative autonomy in governing its internal affairs.  However, when imperial European powers threatened to seize Xinjiang and in turn endanger Qing China’s authority, the empire set forth on a new course of action.

In response to threats, the Qing Empire replaced its tianxia-based approach toward Xinjiang with Westphalian sovereignty, or state sovereignty. This Western system organized the world into territorially defined nation-states and called for all subjects of a nation-state to pledge their loyalty to a centralized government. The Qing Empire reflected this philosophical shift by formally declaring Xinjiang as a Chinese province in 1884.

In the modern era, Xinjiang officially has the status of an autonomous region of China, but Wang argues that Beijing’s policies toward the region reflect components of both tianxia and Westphalian sovereignty. The influence of tianxia is evident in terms of how the Chinese state frames Xinjiang’s status as a negotiation that mutually benefits both parties, while Westphalian sovereignty is apparent regarding Beijing’s firm insistence of denying Xinjiang greater independence. Both world order theories have been critical in understanding the historical and present-day intricacies of Xinjiang and China’s relationship, though Beijing’s mass detainment campaign of ethnic Uyghurs in recent years indicates a terrifying shift toward an aggressive manifestation of Westphalian sovereignty.

Historical background: Qing China, Xinjiang, and the shift from tianxia to Westphalian sovereignty

Yin provides in-depth historical background to track how Qing China’s relationship with Xinjiang was impacted by the shift from tianxia world order to Westphalian sovereignty.  He pinpoints 1757 as the earliest and most prominent episode of Sino-Xinjiang interaction in the modern era. In this year, the Qing Empire, the ruling dynasty of China, gained access to Xinjiang after winning a military campaign against the Zhungars, a Mongolian khanate that had controlled the territory (Yin 9).

The Qing Empire established Xinjiang as a frontier area. While the dynasty incorporated Xinjiang into its sphere of influence, it did not designate it as a province of China. The Qing Empire’s restraint toward annexing Xinjiang aligned with the tianxia organizational principle that had served as China’s predominant world-order philosophy for centuries. Rather than focusing on notions of power and coercion, tianxia emphasized shared common values. It served as a system of justice and virtue that strived to promote the collective well-being of humanity (Wang 307). The diversity of peoples who lived under the tianxia system had to prove their allegiance to the Qing Empire and accept the emperor as “the overarching ruler of the empire” (Yin 5). As long as these various groups fulfilled the pledge, they were granted relative sovereignty.  Local leaders could still hold positions of power and influence, and groups were relatively free to express their cultural identities and practices (Yin 5). Ethnic and territorial distinctions were thus less important in the tianxia system so long as subjects upheld their loyalty to the ruling Chinese dynasty.

Another way of examining the tianxia dynamic, particularly in reference to ground-level practices, is to analyze the concept of a “unilateral consensus.” Scholar Yin Jiwu, who first coined the term, defines a unilateral consensus as an arrangement in which “one party or both have a tacit mutual understanding to accept a consensus and a strategy to solve problems” (Wang 302). In this setup, one party has the upper hand in organizing the terms of the deal, which diminishes the bargaining power of the other party. In the context of this case study, the Qing Empire certainly held sway over Xinjiang. Given the Qing Empire’s enormous hold on power, influence, and resources in East Asia, Xinjiang did not have the capacity to refuse incorporation into its sphere of influence. While the Qing Empire compelled Xinjiang to accept its authority, it did not utilize coercion to do so. Furthermore, this arrangement did not comprise a one-sided deal. Both sides offered concessions but received gains in return. Although Xinjiang had to accept its newfound affiliation with the Qing Empire, the region was still granted relative autonomy. The Qing Empire followed suit by absorbing Xinjiang into its domain of influence but also allowed it a significant degree of freedom.

Perhaps the most well-known demonstration of the unilateral consensus was the tribute system. Xinjiang, along with other peripheral regions of the Qing Empire, were obligated to participate in a ritual ceremony in which they exchanged gifts with the Qing Empire (Wang 306). Through the tribute system, Xinjiang used these material displays to symbolically prove its loyalty to the Qing Empire and its adherence to the tianxia system, while the Qing Empire concurrently showcased its commitment to providing for Xinjiang.

The tianxia-based order in Xinjiang operated relatively successfully for about a century. While Qing officials maintained a notable presence in Xinjiang, local elites still held a considerable degree of authority. Furthermore, trade and travel networks between Xinjiang and the Chinese heartland sprang up, promoting economic activity while connecting the Chinese “core” to the Xinjiang “periphery” (Yin 13).

Starting in the mid-19^th century, imperial European powers – most notably Great Britain and Russia – began to encroach upon the territory of Xinjiang. The European powers comprised an unprecedented threat to the Qing Empire – or any previous Chinese dynasties, for that matter. While China had long been the dominant player in East Asia, the European empires possessed the size, technology, and material capacities to challenge Chinese hegemony.

The imperial European powers also adhered an entirely different world order system: the idea of Westphalian sovereignty. As opposed to tianxia, Westphalian sovereignty firmly advocated the notion of a territorially delineated entity controlled by a central government. Westphalian sovereignty primarily advanced the interests of the majority cultural group. Minority groups were still granted certain freedoms of expression but were nevertheless considered subjects of the state. Thus, they tended to have less autonomy and freedom compared to the tianxia system, since they were directly governed under a centralized state (Yin 2). Even the colonies ruled by these Westphalian empires, while not officially part of the nation-state, tended to be governed by officials from the imperial centers. The people living in these peripheral areas had to declare themselves subjects of the empire, as well. Compared to tianxia, Westphalian sovereignty was a substantially more rigid system and more heavily depended on concepts of power and identity.

As the Russian and British empires pursued colonial expansion campaigns, they identified the strategic importance of Xinjiang to their already-acquired territories – in the case of Russia, Central Asia, and for Britain, India. Xinjiang represented an opportunity to expand their respective empires, advance their interests into China, and create a buffer zone against separate colonial territorial campaigns (Yin 15-18). The leaders of the Qing Empire recognized that Xinjiang, despite its affiliation with China, was not officially part of the empire, and British and Russian forces could use its ambiguous status to further their interests in East Asia. In the face of intense external competition, Qing Empire authorities realized they could no longer rely on the loose connections forged by tianxia to secure the empire’s interests.

The Qing Empire faced increasing pressure to protect itself by creating a territorially bounded China that championed national unity. Under these circumstances, ideas of Westphalian sovereignty began to replace tianxia as the dominant view for organizing the world. The Qing Empire experienced a shift in its organizational philosophy: “instead of treating regions occupied by different ethnic groups as independent balancing powers… [the regions needed to] establish their recognition toward the central state and form as border defense against the outside invasions” (Yin 23). The Qing Empire increasingly sought to establish its authority over Xinjiang, culminating in adopting it as a province in 1884. Imperial competition from Britain and Russia signified a transformation in Qing China’s worldview from tianxia to Westphalian sovereignty, as well as a fundamental change in China’s relationship toward Xinjiang.

Modern-day Xinjiang and China: Westphalian sovereignty and remnants of tianxia

From Yin’s perspective, Westphalian sovereignty overtook tianxia as China world order philosophy, and this system remains in place to this day. However, Wang argues that while Westphalian sovereignty fundamentally impacted China’s perception of world order, tianxia did not disappear. In fact, he claims elements of tianxia remain in China’s worldview, and that both notions of tianxia and Westphalian sovereignty have shaped Beijing’s policies toward Xinjiang.

The most notable evidence of the lingering impact of tianxia is the unilateral consensus. As stated previously, a unilateral consensus involves one party establishing a set of rules and expecting the other party to commit to them. This scenario does not necessarily imply that the main party imposes its preferences on the secondary party. Both groups are expected to make concessions, but they both gain benefits in return. From Beijing’s point of view, its key terms and conditions unquestionably evoke Westphalian sovereignty. Xinjiang must remain part of China. However, Beijing also states that it offers the region numerous benefits in exchange, a sentiment that echoes tianxia and the tribute system. Beijing claims that Xinjiang should embrace Chinese nationalism, as the region would enjoy the perks of being aligned with a rising superpower. Beijing has offered promises of economic growth and investment in infrastructure development to materially advance life in the region (Wang 312). In addition, Beijing alleges the establishment of the autonomous region, as well as its rhetoric about the centrality of China’s 56 ethnic groups in shaping the modern nation-state, allow Xinjiang to preserve Uyghur cultural practices and maintain a certain level of sovereignty in its regional governance (Wang 312).

However, Uyghur separatist movements indicate that some parties within Xinjiang are not only unwilling to uphold the tianxia tribute bargain, but also outright reject it. Beijing admonishes this perceived lack of loyalty to China as betraying the terms of the tianxia contract. Uyghur separatism seems particularly egregious to Beijing authorities, as they believe Xinjiang stands to gain from the protection and development of a China governed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (Wang 300). Wang concludes his argument by stating how “co-existing tianxia and [Westphalian sovereignty] thinking can easily lead to confusion in negotiations with Xinjiang, as China tries to use unilateral methods of devolving power and conceding material benefits [tianxia] to encourage Xinjiang to accept a one-China policy [Westphalian sovereignty]” (Wang 326).

From Wang’s vantage point, Beijing’s relationship with Xinjiang is marked by its complexity and cannot be entirely understood through tianxia or Westphalian sovereignty alone. Instead, he argues the dynamics of contemporary Sino-Xinjiang relations can only begin to be comprehended when viewed from the dual perspectives of tianxia and Westphalian sovereignty.

Conclusion

Yin and Wang’s articles offer comprehensive overviews of historical Sino-Xinjiang relations, as well as astute analyses of the tianxia and Westphalian sovereignty world order theories and how they have influenced China’s policies toward Xinjiang. Wang’s claim that both tianxia and Westphalian sovereignty influence China’s policies toward Xinjiang, however, offers a stronger argument for understanding the nuances for most of the modern relationship. Wang’s claim helps regional analysts more comprehensively understand Beijing’s attitude toward Xinjiang. When viewed solely from the standpoint of Westphalian sovereignty, an observer may interpret China’s policies as imposing its culturally “superior” practices onto Xinjiang. However, when analyzing the same issue from the perspective of tianxia, the observer may believe that China has not always tried to necessarily force its preferences on Xinjiang. Rather, in some instances, China has attempted to negotiate with Xinjiang to achieve what it perceives as the most beneficial outcomes for both parties. The lingering influence of tianxia in China’s conduct toward Xinjiang indicates that while the influence of Westphalian sovereignty massively impacted China’s world view, it did not experience a complete break with its past.

While the twin influences of tianxia and Westphalian sovereignty have explained China’s conduct with Xinjiang for most of their historical interactions, Beijing’s most recent course of action in the region has marked a chilling turnaround of its previous stance.

Beijing has come under harsh international scrutiny for its imposition of detainment camps throughout Xinjiang, starting in 2017. An estimated one million Uyghurs have been placed in these facilities, where they have been forced to assimilate to Han Chinese norms by studying Mandarin, proclaiming their loyalty to the CCP, and giving up their adherence to Islamic religious beliefs and cultural traditions (Maizland, 2021). Former detainees have described systemic human rights abuses that have occurred within the camps – including forced labor, sexual abuse, and torture – and international human rights groups have condemned Beijing’s policies as “cultural genocide” (Maizland, 2021).

Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang, along with its increasingly harsh crackdown on ethnic minority rights in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and other provinces in China, signify an extreme commitment toward assimilating the nation according to Han Chinese and CCP ideals. This agenda reflects a hyper-aggressive form of Westphalian sovereignty, in the sense that it aims to rigidly consolidate China’s territorial boundaries and homogenize the populace into one hegemonic ethnic group, even at the expense of erasing China’s rich history of cultural diversity. If this disturbing trend continues, the cultural survival of Xinjiang’s Uyghurs and China’s other ethnic minorities will not only be endangered, but China may also lose the historical legacy of tianxia and its potential impact on inspiring the order of new global societies.

Works Cited

Maizland, Lindsay. 2021. “China’s Repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.” Council on Foreign Relations. March 1, 2021.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-repression-uyghurs-xinjiang 

Wang, Hung-Jen. 2017. “Traditional Empire–Modern State Hybridity: Chinese tianxia and Westphalian anarchy.” Global Constitutionalism 6, no. 2: 298–326.  https://doi.org/10.1017/s2045381717000065

Yin, Zhiguang. 2018. “Clashes of Universalisms: Xinjiang, tianxia, and Changing World Order in 19th Century.” University of Exeter.  https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/32102/Y in%20Clashes%20of%20Universalisms%20Xinjiang%20Revised %20-%20ed.pdf?sequence=2

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Based on my experiences in China over the years, I saw a growing shift toward practicality, but today we see another reversal — to the reestablishment of 体 as primary. Along with that reversal, foreigners’ role in China’s development is also changing. 

Living in Nanjing in the Early 1980s

In 1982, I was one of the early international students to go to China to do research. Graduate students from several countries had already been allowed to study there, and the U.S. followed a few years after normalizing relations in 1979. I was the second or third cohort from the U.S. to be sponsored by the Committee on Scholarly Communications with the PRC.² My project was to analyze Jiangsu Province as a case study of the effect of central policies on local development. Since reforms were so new, I first researched the Mao decades and later extended my analysis to the reform period. 

Data was essential to my project, but it was also problematic. The government classified economic data as a state secret. Some scholars had been detained for having data. A conundrum, indeed. At least I had the U.S. government behind me in this endeavor. My strategy was to create tables with the headings of the information I wanted to collect and have the respective offices fill in the blanks. In hindsight, it was perhaps wishful thinking that this approach would succeed. As it turns out, there was a major effort across China, at all levels of administration, to put together data yearbooks. Because of this, officials did, in fact, fill in (at least some) of my data tables.

Since my focus was Jiangsu Province, I applied to do my research at Nanjing University (Nanda) in Nanjing, the provincial capital. I lived in the university’s foreign compound with about 150 other students and faculty from around the world, some of whom had Chinese roommates. We had heat and hot water several hours a day, and food that was substantially better than the regular university canteens, but life was quite harsh relative to what we were used to.

The Economics Department was technically my host, but they did not invite me to meet with them or any students studying economics at any time throughout the two years I was there. However, I could audit courses, which I did. In the last semester of my stay, I finally met one of the professors. Professor Zhu was responsible for helping me make contact with the officials I wanted to interview in Nanjing and several other cities in the province. Professor Zhu spoke English, as he had worked in international trade, while most other professors did not. I was learning Chinese but needed help with translation during the interview process.

In 1982, western foreigners studying or doing business in China was a new development, allowed to support the leadership’s economic reform efforts. We were treated hospitably and with respect. But there was an underlying tension, perhaps suspicion, that foreigners could contribute to China’s reforms and development, but may also be dangerous. The university administrators were responsible for our well-being and so were careful to keep a close eye on us. Anyone who wanted to visit us had to register and show ID. Our mail was read. Our boxes were opened. If we wanted to travel outside the city limits, we needed to apply to the university and the local police station for permission. Just riding our bikes within Nanjing, we would find signs at the boundaries of the city that said foreigners could not go further.

Daily life was challenging, and our environment was restricted and monitored, but we felt there was a good chance that society would move toward more openness. Unfortunately, the opposite is true today. While daily life in China is quite comfortable for most by now, the signs are that the society is closing again. For example, the universities are under pressure to use textbooks by Chinese scholars, and not those written by foreigners. Authorities monitor classrooms with video cameras, and professors can quickly get into trouble for saying something that questions or counters the Party’s line.

Change and Backlash³

Two incidents occurred while I was in Nanjing that reflected the tensions and disagreements about the changes afoot in those early days: first, the “Spiritual Pollution” campaign and second, a demonstration at Nanda. People desired change, but not surprisingly, they also wanted to choose the reforms that benefited them the most. And China’s age-old dance between importing foreign ideas (用) and finding a Chinese solution (体) was also at work.

The Spiritual Pollution Campaign

The Spiritual Pollution campaign in the early 1980s was a backlash against the dangers of China opening too fast and of adopting ideas that went against the strategy of maintaining stability by the political elites. Today, the pressures on professors, students, and citizens to conform to the leadership’s view of China’s path is reminiscent of these early years. The difference is a new looking back rather than looking forward.

The Spiritual Pollution campaign’s main message was that socialism could not be criticized. Intellectuals were discussing the existence of alienation under a socialist system. Markets may be possible under socialism, but alienation is not. Thus “dangerous” ideas, such as those of Sartre, were to be criticized if discussed at all. People who had written pieces favorable to Sartre, or discussed alienation, were asked to write their ideas anew. Specifically, at Nanda, one professor was criticized for an article he had written on Hu Shih, a well-known Chinese academic who had studied and promoted pragmatism.⁴

While targeted primarily at harmful ideas in intellectual circles, the campaign also touched on areas of laxity and unethical behavior. For example, Party spokespeople and written editorials criticized books and magazines for printing stories about love affairs and other situations deemed “indecent.” Also suspect was long hair, facial hair, and revealing attire. One rumor was that all city workers in Beijing were subject to hair and dress regulations.

It was understood, of course, that a main source of these bad influences was foreigners and their decadent societies. Reforms had meant China had much more contact with the international community, and some of this contact was deemed harmful. Being a foreigner in China, then, raised interesting contradictions. Our dress and culture were indecent (even if desired), but our technology and markets were necessary to modernize China. Ironically, this situation is back in spades in China today.

The most immediate problem for us at that moment was judging whether this campaign was severe enough to cause trouble for the Chinese with whom we associated. Our experience was that the Chinese were not worried—aside from the few targeted intellectuals—and that the campaign did not involve us in their minds. People said that indecency was not desirable in books, magazines, and films, but nonetheless, everyone was informed of the details of the latest “indecent” story. But Chinese friends did not stop seeing us, and on the surface, at least, only the amount of gossip changed.

At the university, however, there were required meetings for students, faculty, and administrators to discuss the message of the campaign. These meetings were reminiscent of the numerous campaigns before. In October 1983, the Foreign Affairs Office asked us if we would like to discuss “spiritual pollution.” We agreed, thinking we could ask what this meant for us and if the restrictions on our contact with Chinese people would increase. Instead, the meeting consisted of a two-hour speech on the question of alienation delivered by a university official in perfect line with recent People’s Daily editorials. By December, after going through the motions, we all — Chinese and foreigners – had forgotten that “pollution” had been a problem.

The Nanda Incident

Another reaction to China’s reforms occurred during three days in May 1984. This event began on campus but eventually involved the provincial government, a central investigation, and the international news media. The catalyst for this incident was the status of Nanjing University, but the key issues were the students’ right to demonstrate and factionalism on campus. Earlier in May, the Ministry of Education chose 10 institutions to receive more autonomy and an extra 100 million yuan each to help them quickly implement their educational reform and improve programs. To the dismay of the university community, Nanda was not among this privileged group.⁵

On May 28, posters appeared on campus criticizing the university leadership for lack of concern for intellectuals and the overall quality of the university. The former university president, Guang Yaming, had been transferred and not replaced, leaving Zhang De, the Party Secretary, in charge. The Party Committee was powerful within Nanda’s administration, and removing Guang gave the dominant party group free rein. One of the confrontations between Guang and the Party Committee had been over the status of intellectuals. To improve the situation of professors in line with current reform policy and compensate them for poor treatment during the Cultural Revolution, Guang wanted to add their years spent in school to their work time to increase the years counted in seniority. Since seniority determined access to housing and other perks, this change would mean professors would benefit at the expense of other university employees. This change was not in the interests of the Party Committee, and they succeeded in getting Guang transferred.

After Guang left, three separate elections failed to fill the position. The students accused Zhang of being instrumental in preventing the election of a permanent, reform-oriented president, and they demanded the return of Guang. According to one account in the Hong Kong paper, Pai Hsing, the Party Committee tried to appease the students by agreeing to meet with them to discuss their proposals, but the students rejected this.⁶ The paper also implied that the students decided overtly to demonstrate their displeasure when the Party Committee asked the Nanjing Armed Police to patrol the campus.

From the beginning, in addition to the university’s status, a key issue was the rights of students to disagree with, and try to influence, the university administration. This aspect of the conflict was reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution, i.e., when the bureaucracy blocks established methods of change, then challenged the bureaucracy. The students drew on China’s Constitution to support their right to demonstrate. The university also drew on the Constitution to argue that the demands for reform were correct but that the students’ method of dissent was disruptive and illegal. The students were to meet formally with university officials and not write posters or demonstrate. This position was repeatedly read over the loudspeaker in the evenings when people would gather. Besides this action, however, the university did nothing directly to stop the activities. The students ignored the instructions and put up many large and small-character posters. The lights on the outdoor bulletin board were left on all night so people could read and discuss them.

By the second day, the criticisms in the posters had moved from generalizations about poor leadership to criticizing Zhang by name, pointing to the influences of “leftism.” The activity and excitement on campus then built quickly. Students wrote more posters and discussed the issues late into the night, and people crowded the streets in the evenings. During these events, international students mingled freely among the crowds.

On the third day, a rumor spread that there was to be a demonstration involving a march from campus to the provincial government buildings about two miles away. The students felt they had met a dead end in dealing with the university and decided to take their complaints to provincial leaders. That evening the number of people on the campus streets swelled to make quite an event. Peddlers were selling spiced eggs and ice cream; people brought their children; and the loudspeaker was repeating its message, apparently to non-listening ears.

Eventually, we heard that people had gathered just outside the gate and began to walk, picking up people as they went. I and a few others rode our bicycles to catch them, but not knowing their route, we went straight to the provincial government buildings and waited. The atmosphere was tense, but no one said anything to us. Minutes later, the marchers arrived. The group was orderly and quiet but was large by then, with well over a thousand people. For a few moments, it seemed there would be a confrontation. Public security was blocking the major intersection, but the group did not slow its pace. Then, just before the group reached the blockade, the police moved aside.

For the next hour, little happened. I was standing in the back on a cement wall overlooking the square. The gates to the government complex opened and closed several times. I heard later that the provincial officials asked the students to send representatives inside, but people were reluctant to volunteer. Eventually, several people volunteered to negotiate, and a meeting between the students and the government was set for the next day. After some time, the crowd thinned out and the demonstration ended.

We never knew whether that meeting took place or not. However, the next day the university abruptly ended all activities relating to dissent on campus. The bulletin boards were now kept unlighted, posters were forbidden, security checked IDs at the university gate, and university officials questioned the student leaders. The incident was over.

Two other things of importance related to the Nanda incident happened. First, during the first two days of activity on campus, the situation was reported by Voice of America; and second, Beijing sent an investigation committee shortly after the demonstration, which further curtailed discussion and increased rule enforcement on campus. Perhaps if the international press had not reported news of the event, Beijing would not have become so directly involved in provincial and university affairs.

On the one hand, foreigners’ knowledge of what is going on may increase the impact of a protest by adding pressure to resolve the issues. On the other hand, officials may fear how foreigners will interpret and report the incident and, therefore, may react by quickly ending the dissent and punishing the Chinese people involved. Another aspect of the position of foreigners in China is that we are all under suspicion of being spies. During this incident, a rumor that Voice of America had reported it during the first two days did not allay these suspicions. Even the foreign community was surprised at how quickly this incident became known beyond the university. As this experience suggests, our presence alone may cause problems of which we are unaware.

We had no way of knowing at the time that student protests would put such monumental pressure on the Communist Party and Chinese government. Early protests like this were precursors to events that led to the violent Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. Such protests are difficult to imagine in Xi Jinping’s China today.

A New Day

Over the period I lived in Nanjing, the restrictions eased slowly, and people were more relaxed about talking with us. More cities were opened to foreign investors and travel, although only certain hotels could host foreign visitors. Over time, China continued to relax restrictions across society. In contrast to the lack of contact with peers at Nanda in the early 1980s, I developed deep friendships over the years and fruitful academic exchanges and collaboration. I traveled alone, with my husband, with friends, and with student groups, visiting every province and region in China. We were free to explore and learn by talking with whom we wanted.

Now, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China’s trend toward opening is reversing – abandoning 用 for a new type of 体. Covid-19 is the most apparent reason for restricting society, but it also provides a convenient excuse. Behind the currently closed borders is a growing narrative that China no longer needs foreign ideas, skills, or capital. Western values are critiqued and rejected, replaced by a mix of Confucian and modern Chinese thought. The term “spiritual pollution” has returned to conversation. The leadership harshly critiques any expression of alienation, such as the “lying flat” trend of young people who talk about doing as little as possible to get by since success, as customarily defined, is so elusive.⁷ Even English is being downplayed after a spectacularly successful push to teach it across the Chinese education system. Moreover, authorities expect Chinese academics to conduct research in support of China’s policies and do it with decreasing collaboration with western scholars.

While economic development continues apace, the range of allowed debate is narrowing, along with individual freedoms as the CCP returns to its Marxist, socialist roots. President Xi talks of pushing China into the next stage of socialism with “common prosperity.” In the past, we heard Chinese people sometimes say the CCP stood for the Chinese Community Party – a reference to a gentler party leading social progress. Today, the Party is returning to sticks over carrots and is increasingly feared. One can only guess that President Xi sees taking the socialist mantel as his way of maintaining his and the CCP’s power for years to come.

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The interview was conducted on Zoom with Mr. Frazier in Shanghai and Dr. Penelope Prime, China Currents’ managing editor, in Atlanta, on March 8, 2022. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PP: Welcome, William! I am so glad you are willing to talk to China Currents about what is going on in your life and business in China. You are initially from Georgia, but you’ve been living and working in China for a long time. Tell us your story about how you came to be doing business in China and living there for so long.

WF: It started when I came here on a study abroad program with the Savannah State University’s China Study Abroad Program in 2000 and 2001. I was doing my master’s in urban studies, which was an exciting time. When I came in 2001, I attended a World Planning Congress at Tongji University in Shanghai. I met a professor there, and we just started talking. He said, you know, if you’re interested in coming back to China to work on a Ph.D., you’re welcome to do that after you get your master’s. I told him I don’t speak Chinese well enough to do a Ph.D. in China. It was just conversation, and I didn’t think anything about it. 

I came back stateside and had a pretty decent local government job working on economic development for the City of Savannah. One thing that we were trying to do was to figure out how to revitalize inner-city neighborhoods by bringing businesses there. Working for the City opened my eyes to many barriers that particularly small minority businesses have, even today. For example, access to the merchandise that they need.

Then, unfortunately, 9/11 happened, which caused me to leave the United States to pursue my Ph.D. in China. The impetus was to ask how is it someone could dislike the United States so much that they would fly two planes into tall buildings? What is going on out there in the world that would make someone that angry at this country? I had to find out what was going on beyond the borders of the U.S., so I sent that professor an email to see if that opportunity was still available to come to study for a Ph.D.

In February, 20 years ago, I moved to China. It wasn’t frightening really, when I moved. I made that leap of faith, despite not knowing anyone over here. I put in about three years of study and was working on my dissertation when several Chinese people asked me if I wanted to learn how to do business in China. I said, well, OK, how would that work out? They said that since I was from America, I could help them understand how to do business in the States, and they could help me do business in China. I thought that I would get the better end of the deal. So, in 2005, I co-founded the start-up company in Shanghai and named it America Direct Import & Export Co. Ltd.

The company was an offshore manufacturing and product sourcing company helping other companies who wanted to figure out how to get stuff from China. But back then, everything was not as it is now, because manufacturing was still in the development stage. As a result, people were getting a lot of lousy merchandise out of China due to poor quality and other challenges.

This experience showed me that Black America not having direct access to many products or services from China hurts its competitive position. So, I try my best to talk to individuals to say this is what you need to understand about China from a different perspective. There are a lot of opportunities here. But unfortunately, it hasn’t resonated yet in the Black American community, but we’re working on it.

PP: What were your early products, and how have they evolved?

WF: I went with what I knew. I made Greek college paraphernalia because I was part of a Greek organization. And then we went into housing by making frameless shower doors, the rods, and the stainless steel shower handles – anything that goes into a bathroom.

Today I’m into three or four different industries, including children’s toys, automatic food packaging machinery, food packaging, and especially aluminum foil food packaging. I have also started doing a lot of digital content marketing for mainland Chinese companies to promote their products and services.

PP: So, you moved into services, moving up the value chain.

WF: Yes.

PP: Do you have employees?

WF: Actually, we are all automated right now. When we started, we built a pretty large staff, but we would lose people every spring festival. People would maybe get married and then not return. I got to a point where I was tired of hiring and retraining people, so I decided to aggregate all this information into a system. Depending on my customers’ needs, I have access to all the past data. I started that process a long time ago. To answer your question, now there are three of us, but we do a lot of outsourcing, for example, for our accounting and taxes. I have been doing this work for so long that I can pick up the phone or send an email and say I need to book a shipment or whatever.

PP: Do you have a partner that you co-invested with?

WF: There was no financial investment but rather a more personal capital investment. My wife and I acquired the company from my previous business partners about eight years ago, so it was a smooth transition.

PP: How have changes in China’s policies influenced your business over time?

WF: One policy in particular that China implemented that has impacted me was that I saw that the domestic market would be the growing trend. I think that started maybe around 2012. That took me back to when I first started. You had a lot of people here who didn’t have the skill level to know how to communicate with foreigners through email composition or telephone conversations. That’s one of the advantages that I had, so I worked with clients to shape their angles when dealing with foreigners. Now that digital marketing is becoming a norm, there is also much to learn. You cannot just post something and hope that someone will buy it. There is much more to it.

Today you need to tell the story behind the product and be more personal with your customers. Being more personal is hard for some people who do not want to be on camera because they are shy or feel they don’t have the right facial features. Telling a story helps me function in that capacity as the markets have gotten more sophisticated but also more customized and personalized.

When COVID happened, that set new ways that foreign trade would happen over here. Even though they did have some trade shows, it wasn’t that many compared to previously, but most importantly, you could see that our business was like 65 percent domestic sales rather than exports. So how then do foreign companies promote themselves now that they’re absent from that old traditional trade show format? How do mainland private companies market their products or services when everything moves digital? In China, this has been a good opportunity for me.

PP: Interesting. So, talk about your project related to Black entrepreneurship and your book about Black American Entrepreneurs in China. How has that evolved, and how does it fit into your business now?

WF: When COVID happened, I had a chance to sit down and think about what to do since outside work was pausing. I was telling myself I was going to write a book for years, but I didn’t know what I would write about or the book’s purpose. So, I thought the easiest way to write a book is to write about me and my experience here. What have I learned in China through all these years that I haven’t heard anyone talk about, or I haven’t read any books about that looked like me? There are many how-to-do business in China books, but I don’t see any Black authors. So, I decided I would write as a Black American living in China. I’ve experienced the process in China, but it’s not known to the Black American community in America. The Black community needs to know how to do business in China.

How to connect industry and culture is the whole basis of the book. I start from the point that many people in Black American communities have home-based businesses. For example, my mother used to make freeze cups at home that we sold as children growing up because of the hot Georgia summers. I used this to start writing my book to explain when you want something manufactured, there are critical aspects you need to consider. The material inputs and end items may differ, but the process is the same. I’m grateful for the opportunity that I had to learn how to do business in China, but at the same time, I see a lot of other organizations or individuals who are missing out. The lack of information is another barrier because I only knew about China growing up from watching Bruce Lee movies and going to Chinese restaurants.

PP: Why did you choose China as your study abroad location?

WF: I was joking with my professor walking down the hall one day and asked him, Dr. Hong, when will you take me to China? He looked at me and said one day, I will take you. I paid his response no attention at the time, and then he came up to me in January of 2000 and said William, I want to put together a study abroad program, and if we do it right, you will get to go to China. And so, we did.

PP: That became a wonderful opportunity. Recently you have been working on your williamdfrazier.com website. Tell us about your website as well as what role it plays in your work.

WF: I started thinking about what I want to leave and what I want to be known for. And when I wrote the book, I thought I better protect my name. So, I registered that domain. Then I started thinking about what I wanted to say on this website. I kept the company website separate because this website is more focused on my personal experience. I decided to use my name branded so that when people search for Black American China, my name would likely come up. And to get more name recognition for my business as well. So, either an individual hears about me through word of mouth or finds me through a search.

PP: Any last thoughts you would like to share with our audience at China Currents?

WF: One thing that is very important that needs to be said, and I’ve said this many times, is that there hasn’t been a prominent Black American organization establishing a representative office in China. The absence of an office is a severe economic problem facing the Black American community. Imagine if they had a Black American Chamber of Commerce in China helping people access sourcing in China directly. And not just in China, but because Shanghai, to me, is like the United Nations of global business. Everybody comes to Shanghai or has some representation in Shanghai that provides avenues to other countries and other companies worldwide that you could develop relationships to expand your market. So, to say this to you, Dr. Prime, you understand, but it goes over their heads when I say this to individuals who don’t see what I have seen. But I continue to work on this and be hopeful.

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