How would Chinese Grand Historians rate Bolton’s Memoirs?

History is being unveiled real-time today, not as fact, but as entertainment.

John Bolton’s sensational book that reveals chaos in the White House is living history published only nine months after he stepped down from the powerful insider position of National Security Adviser to President Trump. Thanks to US freedom of information, we enjoy living history on real-time basis, rather than Chinese dynastic history that can only be released after the death of the last emperor. Strictly speaking, official secrets cannot be declassified until 50 years after the events.

In this age of instant gratification and monetization of political service, no one can wait that long.

Getting Bolton revelations, Trump tweets and CNN daily, we need to read older histories to put our present chaotic age in proper context. Bolton, for example, belongs to the generation of elite national security experts who see history within the Greek Thucydides (431-404 BC) tradition, defining war as driven by “fear, honour and interests”. He still sees history from the Western-centric world-view. British empire poet Rudyard Kipling’s phrase, “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet” set off the myth that the West developed its own path to hegemony absent any influence from the East. Western historians forget that their sources of Greek philosophy and science came via Arab libraries in Alexandria, Istanbul and Islamic occupation of Spain (711-1492 AD).

Having longer and more painful history, Asians see the world as interactively reflexive. In a world bound by global climate change and human networks, Eurasia and America are inextricably entangled together. You cannot see East-West rivalry in absolute, zero-sum “we are good - they are evil” terms. The worst evils are done with good intentions but good can come out of bad events and historical mistakes. By painting people who disagree with America as “evil”, the US may have created enemies where there were only critics or competitors. The result is that the US has blundered into one war after another without any good exit plans. Bad American leadership creates huge global collateral damage.

Given the intense conflict between US and China, how should Bolton’s tell-all memoir be viewed by Chinese historians?

It is no coincidence that Western history has been linear and cyclical in thinking, because the American empire is more of an outward expansion of European culture that then spanned the globe through dominance of the seas, air, space and today cyberspace. Geographically, the United States is guarded by the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, with no military threats from its northern neighbour Canada nor the smaller Mexico in the South. No one can rival her nuclear armory and hardware.

In contrast, China is geographically bound by the deserts to her West and North, as well as mountains and jungles in the South. Throughout history, she faced invasions from the North hordes or internal civil wars and rebellions. It is no wonder that Chinese history is insular, making Chinese philosophy more systemic and inward looking because the Chinese elite saw the contention of power around the central plains, dominated by the capital and around the emperor as centre of power in the central kingdom. Trumpian White House politics as described by Bolton and other million-sellers (Bob Woodward’s Fear and Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury) are instantly recognizable by the Chinese as palace politics between son-in-laws and daughters, an inner circle and outer networks of kinship, alumni, class or creed.

How would today’s events be judged by the classic works of two Chinese Grand Historians, Sima Qian (145-86 BC) and Sima Guang (1019-1086 AD)? Sima Qian wrote his monumental “Records of the Historian - Shiji” because he offended the Han Wudi (Military Emperor 157-87 BC) and was given the choice of death or castration. He chose the latter in order to finish his masterwork which covered Chinese history from the early beginnings to early Han. The book comprised 130 chapters and half a million characters, full of famous stories that still come alive in their telling for almost every child in China.

Sima Qian was brilliant in his description of how different emperors, officials, warriors and businessmen operated, with keen observation of character and values (good, bad or evil) that shaped policy, events and history. John Bolton would be rated as an ambitious official, confident of his abilities and willing to make allies and enemies alike in the snakepit of palace politics. Because he was sidelined by the powerplay, he chose to expose his former boss as “not fit for office”. Reading his memoir, you can almost smell how his friends and rivals knifed him backwards, sidewards and digitally.

In contrast, almost exactly 1,000 years later, the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) historian Sima Guang was more a politician than historian. He was senior minister (but powerful because he was also teacher) to the young Emperor Yingzhong. The emperor became enamoured by Sima Guang’s contemporary political rival Wang Anshi (1021-1086), famous in history for attempting a comprehensive reform that failed. Having competed and lost the policy battle for reforms, Sima Guang retreated to write an official history that spanned China’s history from the Warring States period (475 – 221 BC) to 959 AD, which marked the end of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdom period (907-960 AD). China’s history is an unending cycle of fragmentation and unification, held together by a Confucian bureaucracy that was simultaneously a boon as well as a corrupt bane. But the system has endured and outlasted invaders, rebels and reformers alike.

Sima Guang’s Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government (Zizhi Tongjian) took 19 years to complete and contained 294 volumes and 3 million characters (six times the size of Records of the Historian). What was special about the Comprehensive Mirror is that it is a teaching manual for the emperor and his ministers, with case studies of both successes and failures in governance, politics and personnel management. History is seen as a mirror to reflect on the past, so that the emperor would be able to recognize how to deal with the complexities of the present. Western historians see this book as a text of what happened in each dynasty, whereas Chinese emperors and bureaucrats learn the art of governance by reflecting on its lessons from many failures.

A thousand years later, Wang Anshi’s bold but failed reforms still resonate in Chinese reform history. Wang Anshi was not an academic, but an experienced mandarin who realized that the Song Dynasty faced a perennial problem central to any empire – internal decay versus external threat. Facing continuous attacks from the Northern Mongols (who later succeeded in pushing the Song Dynasty south and then conquering China, forming the Yuan Dynasty, 1271-1368 AD), the Song government faced an impossible fiscal and governance problem that haunted even the mighty Han Emperor a thousand years earlier. If you maintained a large standing army (or built a Great Wall) you face both huge fiscal expenditure and debt that is unsustainable. If taxes were too high, the people suffered. Worse, a standing restless army can easily engage in coup d’etat as had happened during the An Lushan rebellion (755-763 AD) in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD).

Wang Anshi promised reforms in tax and money that were revolutionary in their time. He advanced loans to peasants to buy seed and plant crops, collecting the debt with interest after the harvest. He loaned state assets to merchants to raise revenue, restructured land taxes and tried to reform the military by creating locally financed militia. Exactly like today, the court was split between the reformers and the anti-reformers. Sima Guang was also reformist, but disagreed with Wang Anshi in terms of philosophy and method. A staunch Confucian, he understood the other contradiction in Chinese governance – officials are either loyal or competent, but rarely both. In his view, reforms can only be conducted with the right people in place. Picking the right people before Policy is implemented is critical to success. The best policies executed by bad officials end up with worse outcomes.

By Sima Guang’s standards, Bolton would be classified as competent but not loyal. All empires operate by taking it, making it or faking it. The Roman and British empires expanded by taking new colonies to pay for their expenses. The British empire grew through the Industrial Revolution, then advanced to become the largest trading empire, but then exhausted its resources through two World Wars. Then London stepped up as a global financial centre, “faking it” through finance and services by riding off the power of its former colony as well as the inability of continental Europe to get their act together.

Today, as the United States struggle with growing debt and military and welfare burden, her toxic mix of corrupt politics, captured institutions and outmoded thinking in a multi-polar age makes her uncertain and insecure. From the Grand Historian’s perspective, America is facing her own internal decay versus external threats. To deal with these complex issues, the urgent and existential issue is clearly reform, but if you have both disloyal and incompetent officials in place, together with huge inequalities in society and warring politics, internal decay is probably more threatening than any external rival.

In short, if you can’t make success, then you fake it by declaring victory and move on.

In Sunzi’s Art of War strategic terms, whether you win depends on your rival (making mistakes), and whether you lose depends on yourself (making more blunders). This means that given America’s overwhelming military, technological, financial and wealth edge, the game is for America to lose, not for China or anyone else to win. Whether Trump or Biden (both in their 70s in an age of millennials) is the right leader to make the crucial internal reforms, that is for American voters to decide in November.

History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme and also turns on a dime. We are truly in the moment of history when we need better rear mirrors and Grand Historians.