“At the Edge of Empire:” Communist Idealism, Disillusionment & Leaving China

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, HOST: Well, as market jitters in the U.S., the shockwaves are being closely watched in China, calculating how changes in the stock markets and the White House could affect the future of the world’s second largest economy. China’s economic leadership has been built atop decades of communist authoritarian rule. And few people have experienced this transformation as closely and personally as author Edward Wong. In his book, “At the Edge of Empire,” he chronicles how his family and the nation grappled with the political evolution that paved China’s path to global ascendance. He joined Walter Isaacson to discuss his latest work.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Edward Wong, welcome to the show.

EDWARD WONG, AUTHOR, “AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE” AND DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Great to see you again, Walter.

ISAACSON: I want to read a sentence from near the beginning of your new book, and you say, when I was in my 20s, father showed me a small black and white photograph of himself that I’d never seen before. He placed it in my hand as we sat together in the living room of my childhood home outside of Washington, D.C. It had been taken in China in 1953. His eyes glimmered, and skin had none of the lines of age. He wore a plain military uniform and a cap. I ran a finger over a darkened spot in the center of the shadow there. Father said, that’s where the red star had been. A symbol of the People’s Liberation Army. This starts you on this journey finding out about your family and how it’s interwoven with Chinese history. Tell me how that propelled you.

WONG: Well, when I was in my 20s, I started getting much more interested in China. I went to study Mandarin in Beijing. I took courses in Chinese history and politics in grad school. And so, I thought at the time, I learned a little bit more about what my parents have been up to during these great years of upheaval on their Mao’s regime. I learned that my mother fled China fairly early age because they were landowners, the communists persecuted them. My father had a much more complicated history and he started telling me a bit of that. He told me about how he had served in the army and he eventually fled to Hong Kong. Now, I knew some of the general contours of that. But it wasn’t until after I finished a long tour in China for The New York Times, I was there from 2008 until the end of 2016, and then moved back to Washington, that I really started probing deeper into his story, because it was only after living in China and going to many of the places where my parents had lived, where my father had served in the army, in the Northeast of Manchuria, in the Northwest, in Xinjiang, that I could understand the context for the questions that I wanted to ask him. And so, I probed deeper into how and why he had joined the army and also what he did out there as part of this military occupation of Xinjiang that Mao ordered from the very beginning of communist rule.

ISAACSON: You talk about your father and his brother and his subtitle is a family’s reckoning with China. Your father’s brother, Sam, goes the other way, leaves China. Why was that and how’s that reflected — they’re both still alive today. How’s that reflected in their outlook?

WONG: Sure. Sam got a scholarship when he graduated from high school, right before the Chinese Civil War ended, Walter, right before 1949, when the communists took over. And he decided to go back to Hong Kong, where he had been born and then go from there to America. He — part of the irony of the story, of course, is that he eventually becomes an engineer for the U.S. military, first in the army, and then for decades in the Navy. Whereas, my father went in the opposite direction. He graduated from high school in Southern China a few years after Sam. And instead of going to Hong Kong, where he had been born and forced to leave during the Japanese occupation, he decides to go to Beijing instead. And the reason for that is because he had become enamored of the communist revolution. He thought that Mao was authentic in wanting to bring change to China and wanting to transform China and put it on par with Britain and with America at the time. And he thought that the communist could unite China and make it strong while the nationalists had failed because of corruption in their government, because of their mismanagement, because of their poor economic policies. So, my father really believed that he could help build China into a stronger nation. And that’s when he went to Beijing, took part in a military parade, also parade of students and workers in front of Mao in Tiananmen Square in 1950. And then, very shortly afterwards, signed up to join the new air force in order to fight the Americans on the Korean peninsula.

ISAACSON: But they send them off to Xinjiang Province, up Kashgar as a city (ph). I remember being in Kashgar once, and they use the great Chinese phrase, the heaven is high and the emperor is far away. In other words, they’re not — they’re on the edge of empire. And of course, that’s what your book’s title is. What is it about China that has all these edges of empire, including where your father was sent?

WONG: You know, one of the themes I wanted to really bring out in the book was that, in a way, China is defined by these frontier regions. And they’re not really frontiers when you think about it. The areas of Xinjiang, the Tibetan areas, they make up a third of China. And when you think about it, China really is the last of the big Eurasian empires to survive. The British, the Ottomans, the Russians, they all fell apart because of the world wars. China, on the other hand, was able to reconstitute itself as an empire under the communists when Mao took over. And then, when he sent troops into Xinjiang, into Tibet to occupy those regions, my father was in the vanguard of those troops being sent out in the early ’50s. He became part of that military occupation. And in my assessment of this, much of the rule of the communist party is defined by this idea that they have to hold on to the empire. They have to make sure that doesn’t fall apart. One of the main narrative tracks of the book is contemporary China from 2008 onward and the rule of Xi Jinping and how that’s changed under him. And I say in the book that one of Xi’s big fears is what happens to Soviet Union, and he’s — he talked about that privately with President Biden in a dinner in 2011 in China. He’s talked about that in private speeches with communist party officials. I dug all that out for the book. And when he talks about that he has in his head this idea of the Soviet territories, like the Central Asian territories, really leaving the empire. And I think he has a great fear of that in China. And so, the increasing use of force and paranoia and the idea of China as a state that must maintain internal security is ever present for Xi because of this.

ISAACSON: You talk about your father marching through Tiananmen Square where the troops being reviewed by Mao Zedong. And then, of course, when you go to China as a correspondent for The New York Times, you’re there. You see the same thing. You watch the troops. Did you hearken back to your father’s experience? And you use in the book a wonderful phrase about a Mobius strip of your family’s history and China’s intertwining.

WONG: Yes, I mean, that really struck me. I’ve seen a military parade twice now in Tiananmen Square where Xi presiding over at both times. And, of course, you’re struck by the physicality of it, Walter. You see these long lines of troops, of all the armored vehicles, of even the ballistic missiles that they roll out.

My father obviously saw something on a smaller scale. But I did feel that there is a certain echo of history here. I really felt when I stood there, oh, my father must have been just a few yards or a few 100 yards away from me, and actually in the parade, march in front of Mao, just like these troops are doing, wanting to see some sort of sign of approval from the great leader, all acting out of patriotism or nationalism, and I really felt that sense there in Tiananmen Square. So, I feel like a lot of the feelings of China becoming a stronger nation, of the nationalism that courses through many Chinese citizens and through the City of Beijing today, it has their foundations earlier, much earlier in the Mao era.

ISAACSON: So, you think there’s a direct line from Mao to Xi Jinping?

WONG: I do think that. I think she himself sees that I think he has proclaimed himself a core leader, just like Mao and Deng Xiaoping were considered core leaders. And he sees himself as a guardian of the legacy of the communist revolution and of the party’s power. I think he sees that more sharply than some of his predecessors. He comes from red royalty. He’s a princeling. His father was one of Mao’s compatriots and was a senior leader in the communist party, even though for a certain period he was persecuted by Mao. And I think Xi sees himself as the guarantor of all that.

ISAACSON: So, your father wants to join the communist party. He’s excited when it seems like a possibility. He’s been part of the People’s Liberation Army. And yet, he doesn’t get selected to join the communist party. And that’s a hinge in the book, where he sort of gets disillusioned. What happened?

WONG: The roots go back to when he was in Manchuria, hoping to go with the Air Force into Korea to fight the Americans. And instead, he gets sent to Xinjiang, as you pointed out. And he suspected something was up at that time. He suspected he was being sent into exile. Then in Xinjiang, over six years or so, he wins the confidence of military commanders. He gets a chance to go back into interior China to study engineering. He wants to build military aircraft for the country. And he’s got a pending application to be a party member. Some senior officials in Xinjiang have recommended that he be allowed to join the party, and he has high hopes for doing that. Then he discovers through conversations with other officials that they still don’t trust him. He has something in his background dossier, and he realizes it’s because he comes from a merchant family that lived in Hong Kong. He was born there in the British colony, and his brother, as you know, had gone to America to study there. And so, the communists suspected this about his background. At the time in Maoist China, there was hunts for subversives. There were campaigns against counter revolutionaries. And you never knew who might be cast under this shadow of suspicion. And so, my father realized there’s something structurally wrong with that — with the party, that someone like himself, who had made all these sacrifices for the party and for the army, could not be trusted. And I think he realized that because of this dynamic of power and of fear and suspicion, that he would never be trusted. He also experienced the great famine that happened when Mao instituted his disastrous economic policies under the Great Leap Forward. 30 to 40 million Chinese died during that period. My father fell ill, as did his classmates. And those along with a few other factors, like Mao’s purges of military commanders, then spurred him to make a flight to Hong Kong. He realized he had no future in China. That China was heading in the wrong direction at the time. Mao had kept his grip on power for too long, and he needed to get out of the country.

ISAACSON: Partway through the book, Reinhold Niebuhr, the Protestant theologian, sort of pops into your mind, I think. And you do a reflection on how Niebuhr looked at America’s perception of its own innocence. And you also say that struck you about China as well. Explain that to me.

WONG: Yes, I think there are a lot of parallels between America and China. I think this is one thing that many Americans miss, even once analysts in Washington, for example, I think that both countries see themselves as great powers. And I don’t mean just the leaders, I mean, the leaders and the citizens. They see themselves as powers that have something to give to the world and that the world should accept that and appreciate it as well. And I think Americans feel strongly that way. They — America, as you know, has a certain missionary zeal in its foreign policy. It wants to spread democracy in the world. We see that as recently as Biden, who’s framed his foreign policy as democracy versus autocracy. They say they don’t want regime change in other countries. But at the same time, when you look at all the rhetoric that comes out of American leaders and policymakers, they would prefer it if other countries adopted democratic systems and certain norms. I think China isn’t trying to impose its exact political system on other countries, but it would like other countries to accept certain things that China is giving it. I think China believes its economic system might be better than that of many other countries, including the United States. I think it feels that if other countries adopted its vision of economic performance of trade, and to a certain degree of politics, then those countries would benefit. And I think neither country sees the negative consequences that could result from trying to persuade or impose these policies on other nations.

ISAACSON: What does China feel, its leadership, and maybe even its people, about the possibility of Donald Trump being president again?

WONG: That’s a complicated question. I don’t — I’m not in the heads of the leaders, but I have spoken to some Chinese scholars and analysts who are close to the party and close to some decision makers. They say that there is a feeling that Trump being head of the United States will be better for China’s interests in the long-term. And they say this because when they look at what Biden has done, they see that Biden has strengthened the military alliances of the U.S. around Asia. They feel that there’s a policy of containment now that Biden has been pushing. And they — and also, Biden kept the tariffs that Trump imposed on China in place while also starting a new policy of trying to restrict very sensitive high-tech components to China, semiconductors, advanced semiconductor tooling equipment, things that all countries need in order to make the next great technological leap. And so, China sees this policy of what they call containment as much more cohesive in the Biden administration than was under Trump. Now, they had no love for what Trump did. Trump, of course, imposed tariffs, started this trade war, and they — there was much anxiety about that. But I think they see that as a lesser problem than the more holistic policy that Biden has started. And they also think that Trump cannot strengthen America’s alliances in the same way that Biden has done. In fact, if anything, they think that Trump erodes America’s alliances and sows distrust among American allies in the U.S. And I think they feel that benefits them in the long run.

ISAACSON: Xi Jinping has embraced a nationalism and an authoritarianism in order to rule China with more power. But we’ve also seen that around the world. This seems to be a trend, whether it’s Putin or Orban or many others, we even see that a bit in the United States. To what extent do you think this is a trend, and what do the Chinese think about that?

WONG: I do think that there is momentum right now in the world for rethinking of democracy and of whether authoritarianism is the way to go for many of these countries. I mean, it goes back and forth. Walter, we’ve seen, for example some setbacks to the far-right in recent elections in Europe. But I also think that in the U.S., we’re now grappling with this idea of, you know, whether certain authoritarian ways of governing might be better than messy democracy. And I think you see this not just in the push and pull between the Republicans and the Democrats, but if you look at polling among millennials, you see a lot of them say, for example, democracy isn’t necessarily that important to the governance of the United States. I think a large part of it is an erosion of our memories from the mid-20th century, Walter, that there’s a — as the older generations fade away younger people forget the wars that were fought in the 20th century and of the rise of authoritarianism. I do think that China does present, to a certain degree, a model for some people because of the economic boom that the communist party has managed to oversee in China. And the fact that the party, oftentimes, in recent decades, has seemed adaptable. We have to admit that, that it has been able to pick and choose policies and put in place ones that have allowed the country to grow, even as it maintains this repressive security state in many parts of China, especially in the western regions, as we talked about. And one example is the recent zero-COVID policy that Xi adopted. It was very strict. People took to the streets in order to protest it, and then Xi immediately dropped it. It’s amazing. Like he just turned around. Many analysists, including here in the U.S., were skeptical he would drop that policy. They said it was a personal policy to seize. But instead, as soon as he realized that pressure built a certain point, he immediately reversed course and went the exact opposite direction. And I think that that’s an example of this adaptation that we see in the communist party and that type of policymaking might have appeal to some people in other parts of the world.

ISAACSON: Edward Wong, thank you so much for joining us.

WONG: Thanks a lot, Walter.