This month, China hit the world headlines with two events that could change the perception of its role and place in the global system in either a negative or positive way.
The first event was the summit of the so-called Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) that brought together heads of state from 10 member nations plus another 10 wannabe members.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was among the first category, along with Indian Premier Narendra Modi, his Pakistani counterpart Shehbaz Sharif and a string of Central Asian "stans" plus Iran. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and North Korean leader Kim Jun-un were in the second category.
Western pundits saw the summit in Tianjin as an attempt at building a rival pole of power to challenge the United States and its European and Japanese allies.
They played the old tune of "a new multipolar world system," forgetting that in using the geographical metaphor, one can't have more than two poles.
Let us think out of the box and suggest that the Tianjin summit may turn out to be an example of applying the old Nixon Doctrine in a new context. The Nixon Doctrine was designed to create a new world order in which ensuring peace and security would no longer be the sole responsibility of the United States.
Under it, the US would remain committed to all its treaty obligations, notably via NATO, CENTO and SEATO, but would no longer intervene in other military conflicts with boots on the ground.
As a spin-off from that doctrine, the US imagined the creation of several "cores of stability" around one or two locally powerful nations to keep peace and security in their respective regions. Under that system, the nations included in the "core" would also be able to sort out their own differences and avoid military conflict that might lead to intervention by outside powers.
Well, the SCO under Chinese leadership could well develop into such a "core" without necessarily threatening the Western powers or Japan.
All SCO members have long-standing territorial and political disputes with deep historic roots.
So if the SCO, thanks to Chinese mediation and leadership, succeeds in sorting out those sources of tension and conflict, shouldn't Tianjin be hailed as a good example of the Nixon Doctrine in action?
A careful reading of Chinese President Xi Jinping's speech and the communiqué issued after the summit shows that China is in no way committing itself to offering military support to any SCO member that might embark on aggression against other nations. In other words, China sees the SCO as a restraining mechanism rather than a cheering chorus for expansionism and aggression.
The second event, the huge unprecedented military parade in Beijing, is also seen by many Western pundits as a sign of Xi's belligerent intentions. According to that reading, Xi wants to unseat the US as the sole guarantor of what is left of a crumbling world order.
However, a rival reading may be possible.
By showing its newly gained military might, China may well be applying for a seat at the high table. Isn't the French military parade of July 14th each year bigger than what Xi put on in Beijing? Hasn't Russia smiled with its military teeth each year in celebrating victory in World War II? Do we need to mention the military parade that President Donald Trump organized on his birthday? When a two-bit despot like Kim Jong Un is allowed his own parade, why should anyone begrudge Xi for having a bite of that apple?
The Beijing parade had a much deeper message. Xi presented it as an homage to China's role in "defeating fascism" in World War II, thus, for the first time, joining the narrative that propelled the US, USSR, Britain and China before the Maoist regime, and France into the five leaders of the new world order via the United Nations.
In other words, Xi is forgetting the amnesia imposed on China under Mao Zedong, with his notorious slogans "destroy the old to build the new" and "forget the past and imagine the future." For Mao, the regime he created in 1949 was a meteor without a past, hitting the world in its trajectory.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was designed to "wipe out the memory of the past."
Yao Wenyuan, a theoretician of that revolution, saw Communist China as "a new horn child" with no memory of what its ancestors did. Thus, pigtails were banned, Ming vases smashed, calligraphy forbidden, classical Chinese music silenced, poetry shunned as a relic of feudalism and old buildings replaced with Stalinist beehive-like blocs.
More importantly, Buddhism was repressed and Confucius transformed into an enemy of the people.
Under Mao, China's role in creating the League of Nations and later the United Nations was also forgotten, because those events happened before the Communists seized power.
Also forgotten was the heroic war that China waged against Japanese aggression before and during World War II, because that happened under Kuomintang nationalist leadership.
Maoists were not the first revolutionaries to try to inject amnesia into societies they dominated. The 18th century French revolutionaries, too, changed the calendar to start counting the time from Year 1, that is to say the time they seized power.
Xi is trying to end China's amnesia by reminding his people and the world that China didn't start with the 1949 Maoist outburst. He is trying to reclaim China's place as a major power, whether we like it or not. It is up to others to see it as a rival, a competitor, a partner or an enemy. A nation without a memory is far more dangerous than one that remembers its family story.
A word of warning, however: if mismanaged and used for nursing old resentments, historical recall could be as dangerous as amnesia.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.
Gatestone Institute would like to thank the author for his kind permission to reprint this article in slightly different form from Asharq Al-Awsat. He graciously serves as Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
