Sun Tzu and the Rise of China: Why Taiwan Is Being Forced Back to the Mainland, the Fall of Hong Kong and Other Collected Essays

By Southern Jameson West

Herein the writer discusses the present rise of China from looking at a specific critical statement made by Sun Tzu in his ancient treatise The Art of War. The writer builds on this one particular quote in such a way as to obtain a synthesis for why Mainland China needs so desperately to bring back Taiwan back into the fold. Mainland China has for decades claimed that Taiwan is a renegade province and nothing more. Mainland China hopes and works desperately on a round-the-clock daily basis in order to try to convince the rest of the world that this in fact is the case. Because of the mainlands unceasing rhetoric, often the rest of the world isnt aware of the true state of affairs (as on the contrary all Chinese in the world are) that in fact Taiwan, because of its democratic and open society, it therefore is an absolute threat to the state security of mainland China.
In fact, many of Taiwans open policies date back to the Japanese control of Taiwan from the years of 1895 until the end of WWII. This fact is something that mainland China refuses to officially accept and will without hesitation vehemently deny. However everyone who knows even some history and has travelled to Taiwan and spent time there can easily figure out. The writer has seen it for himself.
Systemics and reductionism are discussed as part of the analytical framework of this synthesis using Sun Tzus theory as per several noted writers on the theories of International Relations. Mention will be made of how this present mainland policy has in fact seriously eroded the once very sound infrastructure that was once the fundamental social fabric and framework for Hong Kong, leaving many Hong Kong people in serious doubt for their future.
Ultimately, all of this gets put on the front door of the U.S.A., whose position in the world, is by this very policy further under an even greater threat. Can China out-flank the USA in places such as the Pacific and continents such as Africa? The outcome remains to be seen. But this book will try to consider many of the possible scenarios.
Notwithstanding, what also gets mentioned is the concept of Entropy in trying to analyze international political activity. Certain concepts such as the entropy of mixing are use to speculate that historical events cannot easily be stopped once political momentum and policies are put into place. The power of the coalition in game theory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Aug 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482832891

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Contents

The Main Essay

The Background Notes

Asia Pacific Issues - Anschlusss: China’s Invasion of North Korea

Globalization, Random Walk and Entropy

Is it Really the End of History?: Nietzsche vs. Hegel.

Strategic Studies and Waltz’s Neo-Realism: A New Kind of Epistemology

Deception in Modern Warfare: What The Books Don’t Tell Us: Speculations,

Paper on Modern Warfare: The Foundations of War: What the Textbooks don’t and can’t tell you

Security Issues and The Myth of Social Constructivism: Term Paper

Strategic Coercion, Game Theory and U.S Foreign Policy in The J.F.K. Administration and The C.I.A.

Bretton- Woods, The Cold War, Uncertainty, Exchange Rate Stability and Ergodicity.

Coarse graining, universality, statistical mechanics and peace treaties

Strategic Coercion in The Cancer Industry

Dedicated to All Those Who Live on Encircled Ground

Why Taiwan Is Being Forced Back To the Mainland:

Sun Tzu and the Rise of China

Preface-Beijing’s Hang-up:

Taiwan’s Democracy & Boltzmann’s Equation

(The World is just an Entropy Meat Grinder………….justice is just an illusion, spell it uncapitalized)

A lot of political activity can be broken down to the Prisoner’s Dilemma game theoretical construct wherein we rat out our counterpart. Thus, the first big mistake for any scientist to make is to trust all the other scientists that are in some way connected directly or indirectly in any kind of what could be taken to be controversial research…Galileo was ratted out then coerced, Gordon Gould’s patent on the laser was stolen….the list of good scientists with good discoveries ripped off is endless.

Sometimes it is difficult to be able to exactly predict what really will happen in International Affairs because one often really doesn’t know what all the various undercurrents are that are set out to be clandestine and much less what they are doing and how they are interplaying and of course where that evolution will eventually be taken. In this preface I am hoping to introduce as many of my pet catch-words as possible for how I think political theory should be described. Of course I take full responsibility for that. Then there is the notion of prisoner’s dilemma in science: to rat out the competition/enemy/adversary. Ultimately that evolutionary course as mentioned above will always result in a positive increase in the entropy of the system being considered: that of humanity here on Earth. Some use the term New World Order, some might use the term Globalization. However they are described the law of entropy always applies. Boltzmann’s equation for Entropy applies not only to physical systems but social science systems as well.

When I was asked to write something about Sun Tzu and his theory of war I really had no idea where I was going and the write-up that I eventually did fell well below the mark according to what my masters /advisors claimed they had required of me. What I had done was to simply try to interpret everything Sun Tzu was saying without really focusing on any one specific quote that Sun Tzu had made. (In spite of this one of my critics at the time however said that he had enjoyed reading what I had written even though what I had written was dismissed as having no new knowledge. I was somewhat grateful for his comments. I still am. But I am of course unforgiving.

Another fault of mine in the social sciences which I was never criticized for directly but was politely ignored for was my insistence to always try to talk about Entropy and thermodynamics at every juncture of my political analysis. Entropy is of course connected to Information theory and I had always liked to dabble in it whenever I wrote my essays for essentially the same crew who had criticized my Sun Tzu effort. But never mind that for now, what comes next is the crunch of what the whole essay I am to give you herein is all about.

My advisors taught me absolutely nothing about game theory much less investment banking. One cannot have wars without finance. Yet one of my professors of modern war was incensed when I suggested to him that the study of investment banking finance was what his textbook on modern war was sorely lacking. He was so incensed that he asked me outright in class if I thought I was God. Wars have throughout history all needed investment bankers. Even Sun Tzu alludes to this. Much as they pretended to love Sun Tzu, they never seemed to really be able to understand the concept of deception in war as is mentioned right at the beginning of The Art of War. Daniel Ellsberg’s writing on the Pentagon Papers is rife with examples of how deception (against Congress and the U.S. people) was constantly used before and during the War in Vietnam. Vietnam of course was truly a modern war. Taiwan profited on that war as well. Now of course the tables for Taiwan have turned.

The use of prisoner’s dilemma in war and human relations is omnipresent. In fact the concept of prisoner’s dilemma is at the very root of Kenneth Waltz’s notions on the hierarchy of structure and how structures are preserved in preference to individuals. The survival of organizations always trump that of the individual. When the going gets tough the individual who is seen to be a threat to the group as a whole is ratted out.

In the last while the extensive research work of some very great social scientists has come to my attention. I can’t talk too much about that here unfortunately, but in covert ops there are always some people in the op who end up getting sacrificed. All social science still can be determined in so far is all human affairs whether they be peace or of war follows the law of Entropy. The flow of information also follows such a law: The so-called Shannon entropy.

Then there’s the muckraking. A fantastic way of finding out about conspiracies in politics; prisoner’s dilemma was clearly seen during the Watergate affair.

Taiwan’s government during the past decade or so has suffered an erosion of its sovereignty in certain ways which no doubt it thinks really don’t matter. That is the issue of foreigners who study in Taiwan. Twenty five years ago all student visa for foreigners were issued in Taipei, no however all foreigners who want to study in Taiwan have to be processed in Hong Kong. A Reduction of sovereignty? Absolutely. But also China is trying to prove to the world and itself that it controls Taiwan. Again, China uses each of its people at home and especially abroad as little/big voices for the implementation of its foreign policy; kind of like campers in the wilderness of foreign affairs each Chinese has been charged with the task of making sure that all foreigners understand the true party line.

An essential question might be:

What are the forces that determine social science or political events in the world and what is the nature of the laws that describe these same events?

Most of the China watching that has been and is still reported in the media is somewhat of an illusion. Much like the Viet Nam conflict that was to engulf the U.S.A. China’s strategies are set out to engulf the world, their strategy cannot so easily be talked about for prime time TV. Who wants to hear that China is out to take over the world? That is what they want and that is certainly what is in their minds. It’s all written down in Sun Tzu.

The mess that is now Hong Kong, especially the Hong Kong airport which used to be a traveler’s oasis in the Far East is now a bloody nightmare. Everything that was once reasonably managed is now a city which is more like some kind of terrorist camp of sorts. And the Hong Kong people are now having to pay a cash tax on every air ticket that they buy. Passengers bound for Taiwan from Hong Kong travelling on airlines owned or semi-controlled by Chinese interests are subject to sometime impolite questioning on the part of their ticket and check-in agents at the Hong Kong airport. All in the name of Beijing’s desperate desire to be seen as the one who exerts total control of Taiwan’s foreign affairs. And at the same time the Taiwanese are going nuts watching the current protests which have been happening in Hong Kong against what the people there claim is Beijing’s heavy handed dealing with what they believe are their rightful aspirations for autonomous rule; which of course was promised to them in the 1997 handover agreement. Hong Kong has fallen and will continue downward if only because the British who originally invented Hong Kong no longer rule it. This is simply the result of the natural increase in the entropy of any political system: from order to disorder then later perhaps to equilibrium; perhaps. Perhaps war.

The mainland sees Taiwan’s democracy as a threat to its status quo of power not only in Asia but in the Chinese community worldwide. This then connects with Sun Tzu’s statement about closing the gaps Taiwan is the gap. Beijing is desperate. The deterioration of certain kinds of important social infrastructure that had been put in years ago by the British in Hong Kong is now quite evident. One example is the wrecking of colonial buildings.

But since mainland China has a much greater population compared with most other countries it is able to create a greater amount of entropy in information and movement than what can be otherwise easily handled by the West. Hence Sun Tzu’s idea of taking an enemy city intact, what Beijing hopes to do is in this way take the world intact. (one of Sun Tzu’s famous little dictums) And especially China wants to take the U.S.A. intact hoping that its magnificent 5th-column of Chinese students in the U.S.A. as well as China-Town will be up to the job. After all they are all quite proud of the fact that the USA did most of the fighting against the Japanese during WWII. That is also one reason why the USA won’t give up the Pacific without a fight. So much for idealism in America. But then I can understand that. It’s the other side that I can’t.

A lot of social scientists say that physics can’t explain social phenomena, but I disagree. Entropy and the change in entropy expresses societies and their interactions perfectly. It is rather that probably many social scientists don’t know what it is and don’t know how to apply the concept. Globalization is a process that is rife with examples for which to apply the concept.(I’m sure a lot of think tanks have known this for years, but they’re not talking.) One only has to read a few pages on any good book in physical chemistry that talk about what a spontaneous process is and one can soon get the drift of what is implied.

On the Ruse of The Fallacy, and The Illusion of Academia vs. The Men in Black

More than any other modern illusion the most prevalent one is that of the notion of Academia. That somehow having that Ph.D. means that in almost every case it is reasoned (quite wrongly of course) that that Ph.D. really knows what’s really going down in this world of ours. Nothing could be in reality farther from the truth. Academicians do not rule the world it is rather the billionaires soon to be trillion-airs who really decide the fate of nations and certainly they do not do it for some kind of moral high-ground that the moms and dads of the world spend their millions to send their babies to college to learn those lofty high morals of such guys like Plato who started all that Academic style which is strong on style but awfully weak on substance. Like I could drive C-130’s through the holes in the logic of a lot of those who philosophize on China-which is and will be our greatest adversary ever faced in history. These so-called friends of China in the 1970’s were in fact a total sham. Words like naivety and stupidity were rampant. But who was playing the tune? Nixon, and his White House buddies. Where are they now?

This world of ours grinds down human beings like hamburger. That is truly more to the reality of a thing than certain kinds of philosophical platitudes offered by the rank and file social scientist. There is no reason for what happens in the world, just like a president (in today’s world at least) is not really solely in charge. Anarchy is NOT what states arbitrarily choose it to be. Nor has it ever been and nor could it never be. There are irrevocable boundary conditions that must always apply.

However, China and the Chinese seem to go for the academic paradise of the ivy-league. That is nothing to them could be better than getting a college degree from some place like Harvard University. They too follow the same fallacy so rampant in human affairs. Like LBJ’s reference to the Harvards. At the same time having nothing but contempt and disdain for the academic way". Machiavelli versus Plato.

Nuclear War is not a question of if but simply when. (and it won’t be televised)

On Systemics vs. Reductionism

One of the big drawbacks of the Nazi regime was its insistence on the reductionist approach, which is epitomized in its policy of racial purification. Clearly it was an incorrect policy in that it did not maximize the possibilities for the total possible work that could have been done had a systemic approach instead been used. That is, that all races and creeds could be acceptable in order to preserve the state. This is where America has proven strongest and where China will inevitably fail as did the Nazis in Germany. It is a waste of time to figure each individual out, let them as individuals instead join the various teams available in government and let each organization work with them. That would be the systemic approach. And that is and always has been a hallmark of the American way. Systemics versus reductionism is a dichotomy that is seen all through the social sciences. China fails mainly because it’s a reductionist system and it is on encircled ground. The power of the coalition in game theory.

On the Possible Anschluss of North Korea.

If China were to expedite an Anschluss of North Korea then the U.S.A.’s presence as a peace-keeper in the whole region would be redundant. What keeps the U.S.A. vital in the China theater is non-other than North Korea. This situation is simply self-evident. There are those with the primary knowledge. There are those like the writer who have only secondary. Nevertheless North Korea is the wild card in this game.

The Mixing of Different States

Again related to the Entropy of mixing dissimilar substances it’s all pure Physical Chemistry. How is it that Nobel Prize winning physicists and chemists when they have cancer simply trust their physicians who know very little about electrons, protons or for that matter polymers? More needs to be done on the analysis of Sun Tzu in terms of whether or not each statement in the test relates to a systemic view or a reductionist view. Some are clearly reductionist like the encircled ground quote, but some are not such as taking the city intact which involves a quasi-static clandestine type of takeover. MH 370.

I could go on and on with this preface, but I think I’ll end it by saying thank you to my publishers for their kind patience in this whole affair.

Thanks again……and the Future Remains Yours…….

…..Southern Jameson West

July 2015

p.s. It seems that I did solve the problem of my peanut allergy.

THE MAIN ESSAY

Sun Tzu and The Rise of China:

Why Taiwan is Being Forced Back to The Mainland, The Fall of Hong Kong.

By Southern Jameson West

Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult-at least I have found it so-than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood.

Charles Darwin, On Natural Selection…………1859

With many sovereign states, with no system of law enforceable among them, with each state judging its grievances and ambitions according to the dictates of its own reason or desire-conflict, sometimes leading to war, is bound to occur. To achieve a favorable outcome from such conflict a state has to rely on its own devices, the relative efficiency of which must be its constant concern.

Kenneth N. Waltz……….

Man, The State, and War………..1959

The Chinese don’t have strategy, they just have behavior

Edward N. Luttwak

People go to war, because they want to go to war, then they look for the reasons.

Daniel Kahneman interviewed by Charlie Rose

"One Person Can and Should Make The Difference

J.F.K.

Abstract

Let us assume China is in Encircled ground as defined by Sun Tzu.¹

Central to this whole thesis which seeks to explain Sun-Tzu’s strategy and how it accounts for China’s rise is the refutation of the Pareto Condition as advanced by Arrow. ² Mention is also made of the work done by Kahneman and Tversky ³ which refutes the long held belief that actors are necessarily deciding by way of utility as postulated by Von Neumann and Morgenstern.⁴

The ideas of Sun-Tzu reductionist in part, are analyzed in the light of the rise of China. They are however found to apply not only to China but in fact to the rest of the world as well. From the point of view of Sun-Tzu’s analysis China will have an even harder time in its rise to being the world’s number one power than the U.S.A. et al. will have in containing the country Napoleon called: The Sleeping Tiger.

The writer paraphrases Sun Tzu with the ideas of Neo-Realism.

Introduction

How The Term Rise Should Be Defined: How Sun Tzu is going to Tell Us What that Rise will look like. How the days of Social Constructivism are Over.⁵ Will China Undertake to take on Risks/Costs and Commitments? 6(Sutter)

The Fundamental Assumption of This Thesis: China itself is in Encircled Ground.(Sun Tzu)

We assume in this thesis that China is in encircled ground which is defined in Sun Tzu’s analysis as follows: Now if I am in encircled ground, and the enemy opens a road in order to tempt my troops to take it, I close this means of escape so that my officers and men will have a mind to fight to the death.⁷

(see the conclusion at the end of the thesis)

Joe Biden with his recent diplomacy in Beijing is providing that escape route for all Chinese to take. This proposal was answered the next day in The South China Sea where a Chines warship deliberately took a collision course with the USS Cowpen.

Agency versus Structure and The Pareto Condition (Why groups prevail and individuals don’t)

Perhaps the term rise could be defined in terms of the changing patterns of decision making and international outlook as described by Sutter(⁸).p.39 Ultimately the ideas of Sun Tzu are to be used to try to predict what China’s Rise will look like.

(October 1966)………On the flight back to Washington a week later, as we got near the end of the journey, McNamara called me to the rear of the plane, where he was standing with Bob Komer, who was still special assistant to the president coordinating Washington efforts on pacification. McNamara said, Dan, you’re the one who can settle this. Komer here is saying that we’ve made a lot of progress in pacification. I say that things are worse than they were a year ago. What do you say?"

I said, Well Mr. Secretary, I’m most impressed with how much the same things are as they were a year ago. They were pretty bad then, but I wouldn’t say it was worse now, just about the same.

McNamara said triumphantly, That proves what I’m saying! We’ve put more than a hundred thousand more troops into the country over the last year, and there’s been no improvement. Things aren’t any better at all. That means the underlying situation is really worse! Isn’t that right?

I said, Well you could say that. It’s an interesting way of putting it.

Ten minutes later we were on the ground, and McNamara was descending the ladder with us behind him……there was an arc of television lights and cameras set up at the spot the plane had taxied to. In the center of the arc there was a podium covered with microphones. McNamara strode over to the mikes and said to the reporters, Gentlemen, I’ve just come back from Vietnam, and I’m glad to be able to tell you that we’re showing great progress in every dimension of our effort. I’m very encouraged by everything I’ve seen and heard on my trip….⁹

………Daniel Ellsberg: Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and The Pentagon Papers (Chapter 9: Losing Hope)

No Top Leader is Really Totally In Control-Nor

Can They Be One Leader Being In Control is An Illusion It is

The Structure That is in Control: The Big Structure is

The People’s Liberation Army.¹⁰ Sutter p. 48

When Sun Tzu said: All war is based on deception he didn’t just mean the deception one presents to the enemy, he was also referring to the deception created by the false communications in the very systems in which we all serve, war or not.¹¹

Agency versus Structure will be the conceptual framework used for our analysis. That is Reductionist versus the systemic. Where Agency is reductionist and structure as being systemic. Often we find that Sun-Tzu is both, reductionist in some of his ideas while systemic in others. ¹² The Pareto condition¹³ which is a reductionist effect, neglects the interactive effects in a group, an organization or even a state, where privately individuals will have one preference but when they are put in their active group will have quite another opinion. These are the structural effects of one system or gang interacting with another system or gang. Individual opinions then do not count.

I cannot for example as Sun Tzu puts it, make myself invincible; To do that I would have to have perfect knowledge of my enemy and perfect knowledge of the future.

Mearsheimer develops this in his talk.¹⁴

In the last three decades China has experienced a rapid growth in economic, political and military power. The questions of course arise are such as: 1) Can China sustain this growth? How will China sustain this growth? And if this growth is sustained indefinitely, what will the expense to the rest of the world cost? What conflicts and difficulties will ensue and with which states?(presumably the U.S.A. in the Pacific as is now happening in the regions of the East China and South China Seas) Will these conflicts inevitably escalate or can they perhaps be somehow circumvented and thus curtailed or reduced to favorable levels? If these conflicts cannot be successfully resolved, then what? Will China be able to go the distance in becoming the number one power in the world? Or could it be once again the world will simply pass China by?

Sun-Tzu postulates that extended wars are the undoing of a state, yet history shows that extended wars are the rule, not the exception. Why is this so? The Pareto assumption that if everyone in any given group individually prefers situation a (say peace) to situation b(say war), then the whole group taken as a whole will prefer the same. (Pareto’s condition is clearly reductionist in nature)Yet we will see from the work of Ellsberg on Vietnam that this is not so. ¹⁵ And it may well be that Sun-Tzu’s theory in fact will not determine the benchmarks of China’s rise but rather it will be systemics instead.

Using Sun-Tzu’s analysis we hope to supply some kind of illumination on these questions. However it will be noted that from a conceptual Framework analysis that Sun-Tzu in many places is a reductionist theory. In this thesis we are going to use the work of Mearsheimer to illuminate new possibilities which we see as quite pertinent to the game of "predicting what China will do.

This work of Mearsheimer¹⁶ is further embellished by adding an appendix to this thesis which relates Neo-Realism to strategy by preserving the hierarchy in nations.

Note: In so far as Sun-Tzu is reductionist in those places (choosing the right generals), Sun-Tzu’s theory cannot be expected to yield credible results, and the strucuralist/systemic view must prevail. Sun Tzu cautions against prolonged wars¹⁷ yet history teaches us that prolonged wars are in fact the rule not the exception.; if Sun Tzu is correct how can this then be. It will be argued that extended wars are the result of the interaction of systems that is systemics. Which is just the opposite view of the Pareto Condition. ¹⁸

Table of Contents

Abstract

Introduction

Research Objectives: Motivation and Purpose of This Study

Research Scope: Scope and Limitations

Conceptual Framework: Sun-Tzu…. Reductionism versus Systemics

1) Hypothesis: The Basic Assumptions at Work-Postulates of Neo-Realisms

Methodology (The Study of Method)

Literature Review:

2) Chapter Organization Arrangement:

3) Summary of The Conclusion: Sun-Tzu as a Reductionist

4) Criticisms of The Analysis Herein:

Chapter One:

Chapter Two:

Chapter Three:

Conclusions:

Bibliography

Research Objectives:

Motivation and Purpose of This Study

It has been observed that Sun Tzu’s most telling remark is his reference to Encircled Ground. (¹⁹) This statement more than any other describes China’s desperate attempt to gain its National Policy Goals. ²⁰ This statement is primary in predicting how China has behaved to "outside