First, Deng Xiaoping and his rise to leadership and reform were both unanticipated and disastrous for the previous generation of hardcore Maoists — Mao’s wife and friends lost out when it came to continuing in their vision of what China should look like, and Maoism as a governing ideology (rather than an abstract socio-political-religious ideology that apparatchiks offer lip service to) is dead. This rise to leadership would have been impossible without the olive branch offered by the US.

Second, it is very easy to fall into the trap of viewing Chinese government and leadership as being historically more far-sighted than others — that is in large part because the source material that we have is almost 100% from the literate Confucian bureaucrats who believed in the Mandate of Heaven, and who wrote history in such a way as to a) instill Confucian values (including respect for authority), b) ingratiate themselves with the dynasts they served under, and to c) write a compelling narrative for a given set of rulers that communicated both points. One will notice that Chinese historical accounts tend to communicate history as long-form novellas of Great Deeds by Great Men; wise decisions that echo through generations — except at the end of the dynasty, where abruptly the ruler deviates from Confucian morality in a significant way and is thus replaced by new rulers, restarting the cycle. Foreign accounts of China, from Marco Polo onwards, noted either the garishness or backwardness of the country.

Third, China is not nearly as unified as it is often portrayed — either historically or in the present day. There has only been one peaceful transfer of power in the history of Communist China (2002), and indeed there are several factions within the Politburo, all with their own competing interests. Most of these factions fatten their purses with the trade that goes through their coastal cities. There was recently quite a scuffle related to leadership transfer, for example. This is to say nothing of regions which do not share the views of the Chinese government, or which otherwise cause trouble (the Mongolian and Turkic populations within China, for instance). A country tends to expand in terms of foreign policy for two reasons: either to “export its internal contradictions”, or because it has already accomplished most of its domestic goals. The former is a characteristic of weak states with low public support, high unrest, and low prestige on the world stage; indeed, Communist China was much more aggressive before it opened up its borders to international trade than after. The latter is a characteristic of strong, stable states strongly supported by its population — think the US during its “imperialist” phase in the late 19th century. China could go towards either of these extremes in the future, but if you’ll allow me a counterfactual, this is also true of a Maoist China — which did, after all, have nukes at the time that they opened up trade and reformed.

The Song Dynasty was conquered by the Mongols and never entered into power after that. The succeeding Mongolian dynasty disintegrated after 100 fruitless years. The Ming, despite having an enormous military and funding sweeping construction projects, brought economic growth to a near-standstill and never took advantage of opportunities afforded by contact with the West and Catholic Jesuit powers. The Qin (last dynasty of China) never modernized or industrialized, it had one of the most entrenched and conservative bureaucracies in the world by this point, and did not take advantage of most of the opportunities offered to it by relatively benign foreigners (like the US) or domestic trends. Most of its important cities were occupied by European powers on a lark. Nationalist China (the replacement for Imperial China) of course was toppled from power in short order and now governs only a small island on the coast of the mainland (Taiwan). Maoist China halved the GDP of the country and liquidated most of its intellectual capital, to say nothing of the other institutions in the country. Far from being far-sighted, China has been shooting itself in the face and reacting (mostly ineffectively) to various crises since at least the Yuan Dynasty. Even now, China’s attempts to annex a poor, agrarian region (Tibet) has gone poorly, and their domestic projects (Three Gorges Dam, housing bubble, overdevelopment, rural modernizations) have been failures outside of the extremely successful partial liberalizations of coastal urban zones.

The “far-sighted” argument can of course also be applied to N Korea, S Korea, Taiwan Japan — perhaps they are all biding their time until the US is weak, at which point they will strike. I don’t think this is the the case: rather, I think that these countries have certain political characteristics and national interests which inform policy, but that political leadership is no more or less far-sighted than our own. Opaque regimes are harder to read than democratic, transparent ones, but that is my reading based on some very short-sighted policy and decision making from China both in the past and in the present.