Diplomacy with Chinese Characteristics, 2
A boar, a fungus, plus more whisky and shot glasses
Throughout the Pacific, sharks’ and whales’ teeth are the most prestigious gifts between men and often form the centerpiece of their necklaces. Tongans wear them that way but, as gifts, prefer the tusks attached to a handsome, live boar whose offspring will themselves become gifts.
[Part One is here.]
In the early 2000s I was living on a remote Pacific Island when a neighboring chief, returning from the coronation of the King of Tonga, stopped by and told us about the ceremony. He said local chieftains presented a dozen fine boars at the royal dais but the thirteenth, an enormous animal, got a gasp from the audience. Standing as tall as a man’ shoulder, the Chinese Ambassador’s 800 lb. red boar brandished not one, but two pairs of magnificent, perfectly formed tusks. “We in the Islands have ever seen such a thing,” he marveled “They must have searched China for it. To us, the honor lies their the effort. That shows respect”.
Branding
In the suburbs of Goroka in Papua New Guinea, housewife Zaka Abori grows mushrooms using Juncao technology. "Growing mushrooms with Juncao not only provides food for my family, it also increases my income - my dream before the Chinese experts arrived". Abori earns 15,000 kina, $4,240, seven times the average annual income of families growing coffee and vegetables in the Highlands. China Daily Global. 2023-10-20
In 2018, when President Xi visited PNG for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, every tree and lamppost was adorned with his image and children waving Chinese flags lined his progress – while other heads of state got a group photograph. Western media immediately assumed that China had somehow bought branding rights to the conference, but the true story is more interesting, and a useful case study of diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.
As Provincial Governor1 of Fujian from 1999-2002, Xi had encouraged a unique agricultural technology, Juncao fungus cultivation, developed by researchers at the local agricultural university. Juncao, an herbaceous plant, makes an excellent substrate for cultivating medicinal and edible fungi. Seeing its promise for remote communities, Xi took it to Papua New Guinea, where he opened the first overseas demonstration base for Juncao.
Today, says Virginia Baunke, an Ag. major at Goroka University, "I know farmers who make a living using Juncao and a model farm in my university has adopted the technology. Overall impression by locals using it is awesome”. And that’s how Xi Jinping got branding rights to the 2018 APEC Conference in Papua New Guinea.
Two glasses and a bottle
Ten years ago, in Thailand, rampant corruption resulted in a peaceful military coup but Thais were unconcerned. This was the fifth takeover in recent memory and the ousted Prime Minister was a slippery billionaire Goldman Sachs front man who looted the nation’s assets and summarily executed thousands poor Thais2.
The general, by contrast, was an old-fashioned patriot3, rather stiff as professional soldiers tend to be, and a very straight shooter. But he was politically naive and his bluntness with the media fueled Western media’s ‘anti-democracy’ narrative and scandalized the nation’s power brokers. To make matters worse, Washington was so eager to punish him for ousting their puppet that the US Ambassador led Bangkok street demonstrations demanding his overthrow.
Two-glass diplomacy*
The General, unnerved, retreated to his country home to calculate his chances of political survival and, two days later, there was a knock at his door and who should be
standing there with a bottle of whisky and two shot glasses but Wen Jiabao, Prime Minister of China, a polished speaker who lectured at Harvard and Oxford and easily bested Fareed Zakaria.
Wen brought a quarter century of political experience on the local, national and international stages – and his checkbook.
By the time the two had finished (presumably, the bottle, too), the General had a sound constitutional strategy to prevent foreign meddling, had sold a hundred thousand tons of unsalable, aging rice left by the previous government, and funding for a high speed rail line connecting Thailand to China4 and, thence, to Russia and Europe. But it was Wen’s parting gift that won the General’s heart: “How many tourists would you like each year and how much would you like them to spend?”
Eighteen months later, the media storm had passed, the rice was gone5, the national coffers were replenished, work had begun on the railway, and Chinese visitors provided two thirds of Thailand’s tourism revenues.
*This account is simplified, for obvious reasons. However, the key events happened as I describe them.
Governor of Fujian 1999 - 2002. Governor and CPC party chief of Zhejiang, 2002 - 2007. As Shanghai party secretary in 2007, Xi cleaned up after massive financial scandals rocked the city.
A Thai friend told me that his cousin, who had lost his farm, walked 12 miles to borrow $7, then walked back to his village where he was shot as a drug dealer because the local police chief had not made quota.
Apart from being videoed during the Covid lockdown at an illegal dance club stuffing banknotes down girls’s bras (which was totally cool with the Thai public).
It should be finished next year.
Blended into livestock feed.