I felt I’d come full circle when Sue and I returned to Taipei in 2016 to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary where we’d been married and where Sue had been born. The world is much wealthier today—but apparently not that much wiser. Even in this day of astonishing technology, 10% of the world, some 734 million people, still live in absolute poverty.Footnote 1

But no amount of wealth or sophistication of science will ever eradicate poverty if nations don’t unite to address with precision the causes of poverty—the greatest factor being the endless rhetoric and fear mongering that pits nations and regions against each other in a geopolitical game that perpetuates poverty rather than solve it. I fear we’re no closer now to ending this game than we were in 1976.

CCK Air Base, Taiwan, 1976

I was certain I’d face battle when the Air Force sent me to Taiwan in 1976 but, fortunately, the two sides were wielding not weapons but words. But Chinese have long believed, and as much as possible acted upon, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”

Over time I came to respect the mainland’s restraint. After all, if it didn’t retake Taiwan’s militarily-occupied Jinmen Island, which at 3 miles from Xiamen is so close that with binoculars you can see its soldiers, then it wasn’t likely they’d attack Taiwan 100 miles away. Besides, both sides were Chinese who knew from Sun Zi’s Art of War that “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

Today, 40 years later, the two sides have resolved some differences and exchanges are improving, but they’ve not yet resolved all their differences in part because of interference by the nation that in 1900 proclaimed to the world, “The Pacific is our Ocean.”

When I was in the Air Force, we viewed China as the great threat but ourselves as “Peacemakers”, but the more I learned about our global “police actions”, the more I came to think there must be a better path to peace than constant war, including the CIA’s “Secret War” in Laos that ended in 1975, the year before I was sent to Taiwan. Only in 1997 did the U.S. admit that in eight years they’d dropped 2,756,941 tons of bombs—more than they’d used in all of WW IIFootnote 2—on a tiny nation with less people than we have in Xiamen (the U.S., by the way, had considered dropping a nuclear bomb on Xiamen in 1958).Footnote 3

The more I learned, the more I wondered who was really the greatest threat to peace.

I’m not demonizing one nation and deifying another. I know far too well that every nation, including China, has serious issues. But the West has portrayed China as the “Yellow Peril” for well over a century when in fact it was the victim. China is now too powerful to be a victim but many other nations still suffer extreme poverty because of corruption and wars—many of them so-called proxy wars largely instigated over trade. If we’re to end poverty, we must end war—and recognize that the threat to peace is not China. History suggests, in fact, that China’s deeply rooted Confucian and Taoist values help make it the least likely country to wage war.

Confucian Peace

In 1861, American missionary Robert Samuel MacClay (1824–1907) explained in his insightful “Life among the Chinese” exactly why Chinese since Confucius’ day prefer the pen over the sword:

The soldier occupies the lowest position in the Chinese classification of society, and this arrangement, we think, is in accordance with the true sentiment of the nation on this point. The Chinese do not regard it as at all derogatory to their character to be told that they are deficient in the elements of warlike strength. “We are not a military people,” say they, “we are a literary nation. With us reason, and not force, defines rights and privileges; argument, and not the sword, decides controversies.”

But China’s appeals to reason and morality failed with the West.

Becoming Captain Elliott

I knew nothing about the West’s century of opium trafficking at gunpoint until the mid-1990s, when I played Britain’s Captain Elliott in a TV series about Lin Zexu, who tried to end the opium trade. I was certain the script had to be pure fiction so I researched it. I used Western sources because I didn’t trust the Chinese to be objective. I was horrified to learn that the script in fact downplayed the depravity; real life was far worse. “The British were not truly ‘evil,’” a director told me. People can convince themselves anything is moral if the price is high enough.”

After Emperor Dao Guang’s sons died of opium, he lambasted England as a “Christian nation devoid of four out of the five virtues”. England responded by promising the emperor great wealth if he would only allow opium. The horrified emperor replied:

It is true that I cannot prevent the introduction of the poison; gain seeking corrupt men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat my wishes; but nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people.

The number of Chinese opium addicts grew 50-fold between 1820 and 1835. In typically Confucian fashion, Lin Zexu tried to reason with Queen Victoria, writing a poignant letter to her in 1839:

I am told that in your own country opium smoking is forbidden under severe penalties. This means that you are aware of how harmful it is. So long as you do not take it yourselves, but continue to make it and tempt the people of China to buy it, such conduct is repugnant to human feeling and at variance with the Way of Heaven.

The Way of Heaven is fairness to all; it does not suffer us to harm others in order to benefit ourselves. Men are alike in this all the world over: that they cherish life and hate what endangers life. Your country lies 20,000 leagues away; but for all that the Way of Heaven holds good for you as for us, and your instincts are not different from ours; for nowhere are there men so blind as not to distinguish what brings profit and what does harm….

Lin Zexu’s appeal to morality was fruitless. On April 6, 1843, the Times summed up Prime Minister Robert Peel’s position:

Morality and religion, and the happiness of mankind, and friendly relations with China, and new markets for British manufactures were all very fine things in their way; but that the opium trade was worth to the Indian government £1,200,000….

Lin Zexu finally abandoned appeals to reason and morality and confiscated 20,283 chests of the foreigners’ opium, which took six weeks to destroy. As foreigners gazed at the black smoke rising over Canton, Lin Zexu noted, “I should judge from their attitudes that they have the decency to feel heartily ashamed.”

They were red-faced not from shame but fury, and Britain waged two opium wars. When China refused to legalize opium even after the second Opium War, 4000 British and French troops spent three days destroying Beijing’s 800 acre Summer Palace (but only after looting the priceless objects inside, which UNESCO says are now in 47 museums around the world). China surrendered and legalized opium.

“International Complexities” of Drug Trafficking?

To this day, Lin Zexu is criticized by Western scholars for his “rigid approach which failed to account for the domestic and international complexities of the problem.”Footnote 4 But Lin Zexu’s failure was that he assumed he could reason with amoral adversaries.

When I played Captain Elliott in the Lin Zexu series, the other actors joked during breaks but I was, for one of the few times in my life, sobered and silent. Imagine if today’s Mexican drug cartels marched boldly across the border into the U.S. with literally tons of opium in semi-trucks, and the Mexican military at their back—and accused the U.S., if it objected to the drugs, of failing to take into account the “international complexities of the problem”.

If Mexican drug lords can become billionaires in a decade, imagine how much Western nations made from a century of entire shiploads of opium at gunpoint. America’s first multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor, built his first fortune on China opium trafficking and died with a fortune that would have been worth USD 140 billion in today’s dollars.

By 1900, one fourth of Chinese adults used opium. In 1896, China’s Viceroy, Zhang Zhidong, wrote in China’s Only Hope:

Cast out the poison! The foreign drug is debasing the homes and sweeping away the lives of our people. It is not foreign intercourse that is ruining China, but this dreadful poison. Oh, the grief and desolation it has wrought to our people!

Where Is China?

In 1919, Ellen N. La Motte, the American nurse, journalist and author whose writings were thought to have influenced Hemingway, wrote in Peking Dust:

An American pointed at different colored places on a map of China and said his company would work here, or there, or somewhere else, but each time he was told, “No, that belongs to Britain. No, that is French. Can’t do – that is Russia’s. No, this is Germany’s.” He finally demanded of the Chinese and European officials, “Where the hell is China!”

Western nations carved China into so many spheres of influence that in 1899, Lord Charles Beresford published The Break-Up of China,Footnote 5 which was essentially a catalogue of China’s assets by region, and their benefits for her foreign occupiers.

In my home of Xiamen, our “international police” badges showed the flags of a dozen nations but not China’s flag because Chinese had no rights. Foreigners were immune to China’s laws but Chinese had to obey foreign law in their own country. Yet in spite of this century of occupation and drug trade, Western media portrayed China as the Yellow Peril—the threat to peace and the established order of “free trade”.

John MacGowan (1835–1922), an Irish missionary to Xiamen and author of a dozen books on Chinese history, culture and language, scoffed at the West’s portrayal of China as the Yellow Peril. In 1907, he explained why Chinese love peace—and in so doing he described the Chinese Dream 100 years before it became a buzzword in ChinaFootnote 6:

Some writers have predicted that a day may come when, inspired by a spirit of war, they [the Chinese]will flash their swords in a wild conquest of the West. This is a dream that will never be realized. Both by instinct and by ages of training, the Chinese are essentially a peace-loving people. The glory of war is something that does not appeal to them. Trade, and commerce, and moneymaking, and peaceful lives are the ideals [the Chinese Dream!] of the race. No sooner is a clan fight begun, or a war with another nation, than the air at once resounds with the cry, “Mediate,” “Mediate.” Mediation is in the very blood of the nation, and the man who is a successful mediator is one that wins a golden reputation for himself.

MacGowan proved to be a prophet, however, with the next lines:

What the West has to fear is not the warlike spirit of the Chinese, which has never been a very important factor in their past history, but their numbers.… The Chinese are a strong race, and can live in comfort, and even luxury, on incomes that would mean starvation to American or Australian workmen. The battle of the future with the Yellow race will not be fought on any battlefield, but in the labour markets of the nations that they would invade.Footnote 7

MacGowan had witnessed Chinese business prowess in Xiamen. In 1900, Gulangyu Islet was said to be the richest square mile on earth, and even today the tiny islet has over 1000 mansions. Yet even though Westerners controlled the military, police and customs, the wealth belonged not to foreigners but to the Chinese. The foreigners excelled at hard power and opium sales but little else. The Chinese, however, took advantage of the situation to do business—as their ancestors had done for centuries.

China: Ancient Military Power for Peace

It was during this period [1573-1644] that the Dutch made their appearance by way of Formosa. They took possession of the Pescadores, and landed at Amoy, from whence they penetrated as far as Changchow and Haiting. The Dutch at the time were at war with both the Spanish and Portuguese; their trading-ships went heavily armed, and sailed as much for prizes as for trade.

Denby, 1900Footnote 8

The world is fortunate that China did not follow the West’s example because for well over 1000 years China had the most powerful army and navy on the planet. The great muslim traveler Ibn Battuta (1304–1369), described Chinese ships in Fujian’s Quanzhou harbor:

The large ships have anything from three to twelve sails made of bamboo rods plaited like mats. A ship carries a thousand men, six hundred of whom are sailors and four hundred men-at-arms, including archers, men with shields and crossbowmen who throw naphtha [flaming petroleum].

Decades later, Admiral Zheng He (1371–1433), whose court name was Sanbao, probably inspired the Sinbad legend with his seven great voyages throughout Asia, East Africa and Arabia. On his first voyage, in 1405, he commanded 27,800 troops on 62 ships. The longest ship was 417 ft (Columbus’ longest ship, the Santa Maria, was 161 ft). Zheng He so astonished the nations he visited that many have Sanbao Temples to this day. Some of his ships carried only water, others only rice, still others had silk, tea and porcelain for trade—but all were armed with weapons the like of which the world had never seen.

A Sample of Chinese Military Inventions

4th century BC::

chemical warfare: ox-hide bellows pumped burning balls of dried mustard and other toxic matter – 2300 years before World War I’s mustard gas.

1st century AD::

paddlewheel battleships to navigate very shallow rivers.

9th century AD::

grenades and bombs of gunpowder mixed with toxic substances, like human excrement, wolfsbane, aconite, croton oil, arsenious oxide, arsenic sulfide, ashes, tung oil, and soap-bean pods that produced black smoke to cover movement or disorient the enemy.

10th century AD::

flamethrowers, flares, fireworks, bombs, grenades, land mines and sea mines, rockets and multi-stage rockets.

11th century AD::

watertight compartments on ships (not in the West until the mid-1800s).

13th century AD::

guns, cannons, mortars, and repeating guns.

Fortunately, Chinese used their weaponry for defense, not conquest. Unfortunately, in 1540, Chinese weaponry and methods reached Europe—with devastating effect on the world for centuries.

Art of War or Machiavelli?

China’s greatest advantage, however, was not its innovative weapons but its strategies embodied in the classic The Art of War, which today is studied the world over not just by militaries but also by businessmen, sportsmen or anyone else needing to hone their strategy.

Despite its title, The Art of War warns that war and force are justifiable only when all other alternatives have been exhausted. This is rooted in both Confucian and Taoist morality, which calls to avoid death even for enemies. As Lao Zi wrote:

Violence, even well intentioned, always rebounds upon oneself. Weapons are tools of fear; a decent man will avoid them except in the direst necessity, and if compelled, will use them only with the utmost restraint. Peace is his highest value. If the peace has been shattered, how can he become content? His enemies are not demons but humans like himself. He doesn’t wish them personal harm. Nor does he rejoice in victory. How could he rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

If war becomes unavoidable, however, The Art of War declares that the most important factor in deciding victory is “Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the moral law” (Laying of Plans 4). Only then do other factors like leaders’ abilities and size of army come into play. It is easy to see, then, why Lin Zexu tried to stop the opium trade by appealing to morality and the Way of Heaven, but Lin Zexu failed because Westerners follow not Confucius or Lao Zi but Machiavelli (1469–1527).

Machiavelli, the West’s “Father of Modern Political Science”, taught that morality is irrelevant and the end justifies the means. Murder, deceit and betrayal are acceptable as long as they achieve the goal.

Where Confucius and Lao Zi urged leaders to rule by moral example, Machiavelli wrote in Chapter 17 of The Prince that it was better to be feared than loved. As to military leadership, Machiavelli averred that a prince must use “inhuman cruelty” to ensure his troops’ respect. This is in stark contrast to Sun Zi’s admonition, “Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys; look upon them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death” (Terrain 4).

Machiavelli’s works have been reprinted endlessly and his tombstone is engraved with, “To so great a name, there is no praise great enough.” Today, his tactics are even taught in Western business schools. On July 18, 2018, Monash University Business School published the article, “How a Machiavellian Approach Could Boost Your Career.”Footnote 9

Hope for Change in East and West?

John MacGowan wrote in 1907 that Chinese have always sought peaceful prosperity and peaceful coexistence, but as The Art of War warns, Chinese will fight if they’ve exhausted all other alternatives. Heaven helps us if it comes to that. Let us hope the world will finally heed the words of Fujian’s governor who, on July 4, 1891, toasted Americans in Xiamen:

China, having followed its own principles of advancement during more than 5,000 years, is now compelled to change and move along European channels. It has begun to own steamships and railways. Its telegraph now covers every province. It has mills, forges and foundries like those of Essen, of Sheffield and of Pittsburgh. China is today learning that lesson in education which Europe has obliged her to learn, – the art of killing, the science of armies and navies. Woe, then, to the world if the scholar, profiting by her lesson, should apply it in turn. With its freedom from debt, its inexhaustible resources and its teeming millions, this empire might be the menace, if not the destroyer, of Christendom. No matter what happens, it needs no prophetic gift to know that the 20th century will see at the forefront of the nations of the world, – China in the East and America in the West. Well may we pray that, for the welfare of humanity, their purposes will be as peaceful and upright as today.

Chinese Recorder, Vol. 23, January 1892

The Fujian governor did not need to be a prophet in 1892 to know what lay ahead, and we too need no prophetic gift to see our own future. As Ecclesiastes 1:9 said, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

We will see something new under the sun—peace, and the end of poverty—if change begins in you and I.

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

Mahatma GandhiFootnote 10