01
General
The countries with large territories and occupy a dominant position in regional geopolitics are the anchors of world stability.
02
Europe
In the 19th century, Austria was the capital of the Austrian Empire (1804~1867) and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867~1918), and its Prime Minister Metternich was a key figure in determining European politics at the Congress of Vienna after Napoleon's defeat. But by the 20th century, it had become a tiny country that needed to be found with a magnifying glass on a map. In 800 A.D., Charlemagne unified the conflicting Europe, and its historical contribution was similar to that of China's Qin Shi Huang, but in less than half a century, the unified Europe was divided into three by Charlemagne's three grandsons who "sold their fields without distress" in 843 A.D. with a paper "Treaty of Verdun"[1], which not only laid the prototype of Italy, France, and Germany, but also buried a broken foundation that was extremely difficult to repair in the geopolitics of the European continent. This, in turn, provided the natural geopolitical conditions for Europe's millennia-long war and for the eventual growth of the British island nation on the edge of the European continent into a world power.
Europe is the most fragmented zone of world geopolitics. With the exception of Russia, Europe is the region with the fewest marginal buffers between major powers compared to other regions. Germany and France share borders, overlapping security zones, close economic centers, and equal strength on both sides, showing a state of symmetrical checks and balances. France's borders are directly adjacent to Spain and Italy, and the latter two are sufficient to form a quasi-symmetrical counterbalance to the former. Historical experience shows that without compensation from the vast number of colonies, the national strength, especially the national strength of the great powers, will be offset by the symmetry of their strength, and the degree of offset will be proportional to the degree of symmetry of the forces of the two sides and the degree of proximity of the borders. Compared to other land continents, the European plate ——— is the region with the least combined forces——— regardless of its total productivity. This is in line with the principle that "the greater the angle between two forces, the smaller the resultant force" [2]. The modern colonial expansion of European countries was more about easing the pressure between countries, and this internal squeeze made Europe the source of two world wars in less than half a century.
The geopolitical characteristics of Europe do not allow it to carry industrial civilization for a long time. Europe was still mired in uninterrupted wars in the 17th ~ 18th centuries, and only the Ottoman Empire and the Chinese Empire had this kind of world influence to inherit human civilization. So much so that the American historian Hung Huarun said: "This is enough to make any sober observer of the time predict that these [European-author] countries will soon be exhausted by internal friction, and that the more unified empires of the Middle East and East Asia (loosely referred to as 'Asia,' 'East,' or 'East') will become the decisive force for world affairs for a long time." [3] It was only due to the emergence of the geopolitical plate of the United States of America, the main geopolitical plate in North America, that European industrial civilization was inherited. From Washington to Lincoln, the task of nation-building and unification was completed, and then it continued to expand, eventually making the United States a country that occupies the dominant geopolitical plate in North America. This laid the foundation for the transmission of Western civilization to North America, which originated in ancient Greece. The United States has learned from the experience of Europe and resolutely does not allow the main geopolitical plate of the United States in North America to split.
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[1] In 843 AD, the three grandsons of Charlemagne of the Frankish kingdom signed a treaty at Verdun to divide the territory. It was stipulated that the eldest grandson, Lothar (c. 795~855), inherited the title of emperor and received the title from the lower Rhine River to the south through the Rhône River valley to central Italy; Charles Le Chauve (823-877) took possession of the area west of the Eskaw and Maas rivers, and called it the Kingdom of West Francia; Louis (Ludwig der Deutsehe, c. 804-876) took part of the area east of the Rhine and became known as the Kingdom of East Francia.
[2] "The greater the angle between two forces, the smaller the resultant force; When the angle is 180, that is, when the direction of the two forces is opposite, the resultant force is the smallest, which is equal to the difference between the magnitude of the two forces, and its direction is the same as the direction of the larger force. Zhang Shizhong, Lin Shuhe, eds., Physics, Shandong University Press, 2004, p. 12.
[3] See Kong Huarun, ed., Wang Chen et al., The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations (II), Xinhua Publishing House, 2004, p. 1.
03
China
Faced with the same incident, the Chinese are much luckier. In 403 BC, King Weilie, the son of Zhou Tianzi, officially divided Han, Zhao, and Wei as princes, which led to the division of the country and the disputes between the warring states. Fortunately, in 221 B.C., this chaos was established as a unified rule by King Yingzheng of Qin, and China thus had the status of a major power that has hitherto been unshakable in Asia. [1] In the 20th century, the Japanese valued Britain's experience of manipulating the continent by exploiting the fragmentation of European geopolitics, and in the 40s they divided China into a Europe-like fragmentation. Fortunately, the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Zedong led the Chinese people to achieve national reunification again in 1949.
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[1] Mao Zedong attached great importance to this contribution of King Yingzheng of Qin. In 1964, when Mao Zedong met with foreign guests, he said, I approve of Qin Shi Huang and disapprove of Confucius. Because Qin Shi Huang was the first to unify China, unify the written language, build a wide road, and not create a country within a country, but use a centralized system, and the central government will send people to various places, change every few years, and do not use the hereditary system. In 1973, he wrote to Guo Moruo in the poem "Reading the 'Theory of Feudalism'": "Persuade the monarch to scold Qin Shi Huang less, and the cause of burning the pit should be discussed." The soul of the ancestral dragon is still dead, and the scientific name of Confucius is Gao Shizhen. Xue Zeshi, "Listening to Mao Zedong's History", Central Literature Publishing House, 2003, pp. 83, 77.
04
The political significance of the strategic buffer zone in the northern hemisphere
In contrast to Europe, the vast buffer zone between the geographical plates of China, Russia, India, and the United States, the political centers, has enormous political significance. For example, Russia's Siberian region, which is far away from the country's political and economic center of gravity, China's Tibet, Qinghai, and Xinjiang regions, India's northern region, and the Pacific Ocean, which is separated by the United States and Asian countries, all provide a broad buffer space between the powers of the Asia-Pacific powers. More advantageously, there are numerous communities of small states with fragmented regional characteristics around each of these large countries. For example, the Central Asian countries and Mongolia between China and Russia, and Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Myanmar between China and India all play a more effective role as a buffer for Asia-Pacific politics than Europe. More importantly for China, China's eastern borders are also embellished with small countries with the same broken characteristics, which to a considerable extent cushion the strategic pressure from the United States on eastern China, as in the case of the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
05
UK and Japan
If Charlemagne, who almost unified Europe in 800 AD, could have contributed to Europe as much as China's Qin Shi Huang, then his sin of ruining Europe's future three grandsons would not be less than China's Wang Jingwei. The Treaty of Verdun, which divided Europe into three in 843, laid a deeply fractured foundation for the continent's geopolitics, which in turn provided the natural geopolitical conditions for Britain, a small island on the edge of the continent, to eventually grow into a world power. This can be countered by the historical results of China's dominant plate in Asia, which makes it impossible for the island nation of Japan to grow into a world power like Britain, and Japan's successive attempts to dismember China. History shows that regions with fewer large-scale international wars are regions with major geographical plates, such as Asia and the Americas.
06
India and China
The South Asian dominant continental plate of modern India was unfortunately the result of a century of British occupation. Historically, most of India's ancient "Great Wall" were built in China, and there are hundreds of such "countries" in the country, and the territory circled is not as large as a county in China. The only Great Wall in China stretches in the northern part of the country. If the Treaty of Verdun in 843 AD caused Europe to have a "crushed calcaneal fracture" at the beginning of its growth, then India at the same time has been staggering with a "crushed pelvic fracture". Comparing Europe and India, China's territory for thousands of years only had a contraction of its frontiers and no internal organic fission. Unlike modern India, modern China has only suffered external injuries, which are indecent but do not hurt the fundamentals.
07
The United States and China
As long as we read the US national security assessment report that is released every few years and compare the US strategic report with similar reports from other countries, we cannot but say that the US development model and its absolute dominant position in North America have made the United States a country that will always regard the world's major powers as its opponent. This is a fortunate misfortune for the United States, because the United States has created itself and is forced to maintain a huge but never-to-be-insufficient defense spending, which is where the fragility of American national security lies. This vulnerability has led to the fact that the United States is always burdened by the world, and it is unable to "dig deep holes, accumulate grain, and not seek hegemony." For this reason, after the United States got rid of European oppression through World War II, it entered the Korean War and the Vietnam War; The 9/11 attacks were followed by the protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The luxury of the U.S. development model, and the global security goals it sets out on it, requires global resources to make the security of the world's critical maritime lanes the absolute focus of its strategy. These corridors are spread across the world's oceans, securing the United States with a huge flow of world resources and profits to nourish the large domestic middle class. As a result, it is virtually impossible for the United States to have more resources to support land targets far from sea supremacy.
If we use the term "fragmented plate" to summarize the geopolitical characteristics of Europe, then we can summarize the geopolitical characteristics of Asia as "relative to the main plate" in contrast to the "absolute main plate" of North America. Due to China's special geographical position as the center of Asia, the term "relative subject center plate" is used to summarize China's geopolitical characteristics in Asia.
Compared with the almost "naked" geopolitical characteristics of the United States, China's geopolitical position is in the best state of "long-sleeved dancing": the Korean Peninsula is protected by the northeast and the Indochinese Peninsula is blocked by the southeast. When New China was born, the Korean War and the Vietnam War were originally aimed at China, but as a result, China opened its bow up and down the Korean Peninsula and the Indochina Peninsula, and fought with the United States for more than ten years, and Chinese mainland's "body" was not damaged and insisted on economic construction. The "shock-absorbing" effect of China's neighboring countries on China is the natural superiority of China's geopolitics over the United States. In Asia, there are two large countries in the southwest and northwest of China, Russia and India. The western part of China and the open space in the eastern part of Russia have provided a broad buffer space between China, India, and Russia, and the conditions for "shock absorption" are relatively sufficient.
The impact of the absolute dominant plate position of the United States in North America on its development is twofold: On the positive side, the United States is like a swan in a warm ocean, there are no land neighbors in North America that pose a threat to the United States, and there are the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean outside North America. As a result, the United States is free to formulate and implement its national strategic goals as long as its national strength permits. If it is precisely because of the fragmented characteristics of the geopolitical plate of the European continent that Britain has become the world hegemon, then it is the absolute dominance of the United States in North America that has enabled the United States to replace Britain as the world hegemon after World War II.
But America's development model is also constrained by its geopolitical position. Today, when mankind is capable of completely conquering the oceans, the status of the United States as the absolute main plate has increased the defense costs of the United States on a broader scale. In other words, the two oceans can only block some but not all degrees of security threats. If threats ———such as Pearl Harbor and 9/11" ——— were able to cross the ocean, it would be fatal to the United States, just as the East China Sea protected and ultimately destroyed the Chinese empire in the Middle Ages.
It is precisely because of the development model chosen by the United States and the world it faces that Americans have developed the mindset of considering their national security issues from a global perspective and implementing their national security policies from a global perspective. With the gradual strengthening of human transoceanic capabilities, the United States' ambition to dominate the world has made it more and more pressure on the defense of the two oceans, and the United States is becoming "infinite", so that a "security boundary" (i.e., the boundary of interests) of the United States, which must be constantly expanded, overlaps with the "border security" (sovereignty boundary) of the adversary[1]——— which is mainly manifested in the confrontation between China and the United States on the Taiwan Strait issue in the Western Pacific. What is even more frightening is that in the face of the empty and unobstructed waters of the two oceans, the United States, which has the luxury of using global resources to support it, must occupy key islands scattered in the oceans, and this in turn makes the US security boundary in fact invisibly overlap with the US border security, which is almost a sky-high burden on US national defense.
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[1] "The security of countries entering the process of globalization is the unity of "border security" and "security borders": the former is sovereign security or territorial security, and the latter is the security of interests; The former is finite and the latter is unlimited, that is, the farther the security perimeter, the more secure the perimeter is. Our sovereign security, that is, border security, is a concept of national survival, while development is unlimited in time and space, and it involves not only all regions of the world, but also, if necessary, outer space and deep seas. This gives rise to the concept of a "security perimeter" with regard to development interests. The security boundary is the interest boundary. Where our interests go, our security borders must go, and our military power must go. Zhang Wenmu, On China's Sea Power, Ocean Press, 2014, pp. 68~69.
08
Politicians, visions and their contributions
- The far-sighted contribution of Chinese politicians
Comrade Mao Zedong said: "There is a reason why a nation can survive for a long time in the world, and that is because it has its strengths and characteristics. [1] China's above-mentioned conditions in world geopolitics have made it flexible, and this condition will continue to play a positive role in future developments. So, don't ignore China's 5,000-year-old history. There are few resource-rich countries in the world that have survived for 5,000 years and have always maintained the territory of a great power. Therefore, the world hegemon has always wanted to split China, but it has not succeeded. From this alone, it can be seen that China must be a country with the mandate of heaven, a country with the ability to innovate civilization and the conditions for inheritance. Hegel saw this when he said: "If we compare the above-mentioned countries in terms of their national fortunes, then only the Chinese Empire, through which the Yellow River and the Yangtze River flow, is the only lasting state in the world." Conquest could not affect such an empire. ”[2]
Unlike today's Brzezinski and Kissinger, who love to run around and write thick books, Marshall does not like to show his face, and it is rare to see a single word left by Marshall, let alone an "autobiography". He stood silently behind Roosevelt for a long time to help him plan the world: after dividing Europe and then Asia, the Yalta Secret Agreement[3] betrayed and divided China had Marshall's shadow behind it, and its purpose was nothing more than to divide China's domestic political forces equally and then divide the country, and the division of China was a prerequisite for the Europeanization of Asia. He forced Chiang Kai-shek to draw a line with the Communists on the Great Wall, and when Chiang Kai-shek refused, he supported Li Zongren to come to power and draw a line along the Yangtze River with the Communists, and put pressure on Mao Zedong through Stalin to make this plan possible. Mao Zedong withstood Stalin's repeated persuasions and "suggestions"[4] On July 22, 1958, Mao Zedong said to the Soviet ambassador to China, Eugene: "Stalin's support for Wang Ming's line has caused more than 90 percent of our revolutionary forces to lose. When the revolution was at a critical juncture, he did not allow us to make a revolution and opposed our revolution. After the victory of the revolution, he did not trust us. He boasted about himself and said that China's victory was achieved under the guidance of his theory. Be sure to completely break the superstition about him. What Stalin did to China, before I died, I would have written an article about it and prepared to publish it in 10,000 years. [5], so that there is today's Great China.
In December 1948, Mr. Lei Jieqiong asked Mao Zedong in person in Xibaipo what he thought of "dividing the river and ruling the country"? She recalled:
Chairman Mao smiled, and the laughter was very hearty and infectious. Chairman Mao said that although the positions of the United States and the Soviet Union are different, they have increased pressure on us on this issue from the perspective of their respective interests, and have used their military and political strength to form a kind of international and domestic public opinion and a temporary superficial social foundation. It is a superficial, temporary view of the problem, and the pursuit of "peace" at all costs, regardless of whether it lasts or not. In deciding on major state affairs, we should consider the long-term and fundamental interests of the state and the people. For the sake of a unified new China, the Communist Party of China must look at the essence through the phenomenon, give up grasping the long-term for the time being, and carry out the revolution to the end. If this is not the case, there will be endless troubles in the future. Every time there is a split in China's history, it will take a long time to reunify again, and the people will pay many times the price! It is a matter of the long-term plan of the whole country, and our Communist Party must stand on the stand of the people, see a little farther, and not be influenced by other countries. [6]
In 1948, both India and China were in danger of being divided by countries with foreign support. As a result, Nehru, who had been nurtured by Western-style "democracy", let Pakistan go; Mao Zedong crossed the Yangtze River in 1949 and peacefully liberated Tibet in 1951. At the end of 1950, he resisted US aggression and aided Korea, and in 1953 repelled the Americans. Different leaders, different outcomes: In India, there are currently two atomic bombs targeting each other, while in China there are nuclear weapons under unified management and the Qinghai-Tibet Railway, which has flown to the roof of the world[7]. In this regard, we should thank Comrade Mao Zedong, and in particular, Comrade Mao Zedong for leading the whole party to make the decision of "crossing the Yangtze River and liberating the whole of China" for the Chinese nation under tremendous pressure. On September 22, 1956, Mao Zedong said at a meeting with the delegation of the Italian Communist Party attending the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China:
In 1945, when we were preparing to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek and seize power, Stalin sent us a telegram in the name of their Central Committee, instructing us not to oppose Chiang Kai-shek and not to fight a civil war, saying that if we fought a civil war, the nation would be in danger of destruction. We did not carry out this instruction, and the revolution succeeded. After the success, we sent a delegation to the Soviet Union, and Stalin admitted his mistake. [8]
Similarly, the decisive decision of the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Mao Zedong in April 1949 to cross the Yangtze River under tremendous pressure had a huge and far-reaching impact on the fate of Asia and the world. History shows that the regions where there are fewer large-scale international wars and where civilization has been preserved for a long time are regions with major geographical plates, such as Asia and the Americas. China's reunification in 1949 shifted Asia, as opposed to Europe, from a European-style geopolitical disadvantage of symmetrical fragmentation to a geopolitical advantage with China as the main plate. China's main national geographical plate in Asia has provided Asia with stable geopolitical conditions, which in turn has strengthened the guarantor of world peace.
What kind of leader there is, what kind of destiny the country will have. Seeing the tremendous political and economic achievements made by New China, many years later, Li Zongren also made a deep remorse for his insistence on "ruling the river by rowing the river" with the Communist Party, saying:
If the Americans had given me their full support and allowed me to divide China along the Yangtze River with Mao Zedong, China would have been in the same miserable situation as it is today in Korea, Germany, Laos, and Vietnam. The southern government had to rely on the United States to survive, while the northern government could only rely on the Soviet Union, and neither could achieve true independence except for killing each other. And because China is a large country of 600 million people, she will be in a deeper pain than the small countries mentioned above, and the wounds of the nation may not be healed for generations. If this really happened, what kind of sinner would I have become? [ 9]
Even so, in later history, Mao Zedong was highly vigilant about other countries splitting China. On June 11, 1970, Mao Zedong made the worst estimate of the situation, saying: "It is nothing more than that the north of the Yellow River belongs to the Soviet Union, the south of the Yangtze River belongs to the United States, and the United States and the Soviet Union divide China. ”[10]
If we compare the history of the three grandsons of Charlemagne in Europe in 843 A.D., which brought constant turmoil to Europe after the Treaty of Verdun divided the European continent into three, we will realize that the implementation of China's self-defense counterattack against Vietnam in 1979 and its victory were of far-reaching significance to the peaceful development of China and Asia, and to the stability of the whole of Asia. Otherwise, the current strategic balance among all countries in the South China Sea will be disrupted, and not only the Zhongsha Islands, Nansha Islands, and even the Strait of Malacca will not have the stable situation that we have today, and the difficulty for us to resolve the Taiwan issue today will also greatly increase.
2. The contribution of the United States from Washington to Lincoln's vision
Comparatively speaking, due to the existence of China and its surrounding small broken countries, Asia has the regional characteristics of "relative geopolitical main plate". Since the United States does not have a small peripheral broken country, North America has the regional characteristics of an "absolute geopolitical main plate". If we think of the geopolitics of North America at the beginning of the founding of the United States, which presented a far more fragmented geographical history than Europe, then we cannot but be impressed by the governing ability and farsightedness of American leaders from Washington to Lincoln, and as Chinese, we cannot but have an iron-blooded determination to safeguard China's unity.
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[1] Mao Zedong, "Conversation with the Dalai Lama" (March 8, 1955), Selected Writings of Mao Zedong on Tibet's Work in Tibet, edited by the Literature Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the China Tibetology Research Center, Central Literature Publishing House, China Tibetology Publishing House, 2001, p. 113.
[2] Hegel, translated by Wang Zaoshi, Philosophy of History, Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House, 2001, p. 117.
[3] The full name is "The Agreement between the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain on Japan", which is a secret agreement between the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain on the conditions for the Soviet Union to participate in the war against Japan. On February 4~11, 1945, at the critical moment when Hitler's Germany was about to collapse and the victory of the anti-fascist World War II was in sight, the heads of the United States, the Soviet Union and Britain, F. Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill held a meeting in Yalta, the Crimean Peninsula of the Soviet Union, and reached a series of agreements and understandings on major issues such as ending the war and arranging post-war world politics. On February 11, the heads of state of the three countries signed the Yalta Secret Agreement on the Far East. The main contents of the agreement were: the Soviet Union would take part in the war against Japan on the part of the Central Powers within two or three months of the surrender of Germany and the end of the war in Europe, on the following conditions: (1) the status quo in the Mongolian People's Republic should be maintained. (2) the rights and interests lost by Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 must be restored, i.e., the southern part of Sakhalin and all adjacent islands must be returned to the Soviet Union; The commercial port of Dalian must be internationalized, the Soviet Union's superior rights and interests in the port must be guaranteed, and the Soviet Union's lease of Port Arthur as a naval base must be restored; The Eastern Railway and the South Manchurian Railway should be jointly operated by a Soviet-Chinese joint venture, the superior rights and interests of the Soviet Union should be guaranteed, and China should retain full sovereignty in Northeast China. (3) The Kuril Islands were to be handed over to the USSR. See Wang Shenzu, He Chunchao, and Wu Shimin, eds., Selected Materials on the History of International Relations (Mid-17th Century-1945), Law Press, 1988, p. 868.
[4] For these Stalin's suggestions for "persuading peace", see Liu Yanzhang, Xiang Guolan, and Gao Xiaohui, eds., Stalin's Annals (People's Publishing House, 2003, pp. 727~728).
[5] See "Conversation with Soviet Ambassador to China Eugene" (July 22, 1958), edited by the Literature Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong's Collected Works, Vol. 7, People's Publishing House, June 1999, p. 393.
[6] ""The Public Eternal and the Private for a Time"—An Interview with Lei Jieqiong, Party Literature, No. 3, 2011, p. 108.
[7] The Qinghai-Tibet Railway is a Class I railway connecting Xining in Qinghai Province to Lhasa in Tibet Autonomous Region, one of the four major projects in the new century of China, the first railway to the hinterland of Tibet, and the highest and longest plateau railway in the world. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway was completed in two phases, the first phase of the project started from Xining City, Qinghai Province in the east, to Golmud City in the west, started construction in 1958, and was completed and opened to traffic in May 1984; The second phase of the project, from Golmud City in Qinghai Province in the east to Lhasa City in Tibet Autonomous Region in the west, started on June 29, 2001 and was opened to traffic on July 1, 2006. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, President of the People's Republic of China, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Director of the Central Financial and Economic Commission, presided over the third meeting of the Central Financial and Economic Commission on the afternoon of October 10 to study the issue of improving the mainland's ability to prevent and control natural disasters and the planning and construction of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway. "Vigorously Improving the Mainland's Natural Disaster Prevention and Control Capacity and Comprehensively Starting the Planning and Construction of the Sichuan-Tibet Railway", People's Daily, October 11, 2018, page 1.
[8] The Literature Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, ed., Mao Zedong Annals (1949~1976), Vol. 2, Central Literature Publishing House, 2013, p. 631.
[9] Li Zongren's dictation, Tang Degang's memoirs, Guangxi People's Publishing House, 1980, pp. 949~950.
[10] Chen Jin, "Reading Mao Zedong's Notes", Life, Reading, New Knowledge, Joint Bookstore, 2009, p. 185.
[7] "Memoirs of Li Zongren", Guangxi People's Publishing House, 1980, pp. 949~950.
