The China Blueprint: A Biography and China Blueprint
By Brad Good
(Jack Gold, 206 pages, $20)
Novelist Brad Good’s heart is in the right place. He wants the United States to develop a strategy to “reengage” with China in ways that will transform the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into a less dangerous, less evil regime. He calls it The China Blueprint, and it is based on his years living in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, marriage to a Chinese woman, and his psychological portrait of the CCP leadership. He describes it as a political, economic and psychological strategy that is topped-off with “The China Proclamation,” his version of a Declaration of Independence against the CCP. The China Blueprint certainly would make a good novel, but it is not a realistic geopolitical strategy for dealing with China.
[I]t is understandable that he seeks retribution against the villainous CCP, but he should stick to writing novels.
The first half of Good’s book is about Good — his move to Hong Kong in 1986, his study of Mandarin, his move to Taiwan in 1987, his travel to Beijing in 1988, his education in the U.S. and abroad (Middlebury College, University of Chicago), back to Hong Kong in 1993, Singapore in 1995, then back to the United States (Los Angeles), back to China in 2017, after which he began dating a woman named “Manman,” eventually marrying her. The couple experienced COVID lockdowns in Shanghai, they traveled to Dali and Yunnan. In the meantime, he had become a successful novelist.
The couple moved to Los Angeles, gambled in Las Vegas, and settled in Austin, Texas. Manman got a job at Google. Good worked on his fourth novel — a thriller set in China, and made some good investments. Good’s latest novel, however, began to cause turmoil in their marriage because it negatively portrayed the CCP, which endangered Manman’s family in China. Their marriage became a victim of the CCP. She moved out of their Austin condo, and he left for Taipei, Taiwan.
That is the biographical journey that led Good to write The China Blueprint. The CCP wrecked his marriage, so Good wants to wreck the CCP. It is certainly worth wrecking, as long as you don’t start World War III. Good cites the many evils perpetrated by the current CCP leadership — indeed, they form the “Internal Aggressions” and “External Aggressions” of “The China Proclamation,” just as Thomas Jefferson listed the abuses of King George against the colonists in the Declaration of Independence: the repression of free speech; imprisoning dissenters; crimes against humanity committed against Falun Gong practitioners and Uyghurs; the forced abortions of 400 million babies; censorship; the cultural genocide of Tibetans; ubiquitous state surveillance of citizens; denial of religious liberty; facilitating fentanyl trafficking throughout the world; theft of intellectual property; facilitating the worldwide spread of COVID; aggression in the South China Sea; unfair trade practices. It is a damning indictment.
It is Good’s strategy that causes one to pause. It is largely a strategy of psychology designed to target what he perceives as the CCP’s greatest weakness: its desire not to be humiliated. He writes: “The China Proclamation will humiliate China. It delegitimizes China’s leadership and will remind both the leaders and citizens of its past” (the “century of humiliation”). This will be “global humiliation” because Good believes that all or most of the countries of the Western world will sign the Proclamation and work together to humiliate the CCP. That might make a good (no pun intended) novel, but it is just that — fiction.
The CCP is Not the British Parliament
We are not dealing here with King George and a British Parliament, as ruthless as they were at times. We are dealing with the hardened criminals of the CCP leadership. Proclamations and press releases (which Good refers to endlessly) are not going to transform these Lennist-Maoists. And the Western world will not follow the U.S.-lead in lockstep, as Good imagines it will.
Good would add to the humiliation, the closing of our embassy in China, the removal of CCP-connected Chinese students from the United States, the embargo of goods made in China, financial sanctions against the CCP leadership, increased Chinese immigration into the U.S. for non-CCP Chinese, the filing of lawsuits against China for fentanyl deaths, prohibiting Chinese ownership of land and assets in the U.S., and revoking birthright citizenship for Chinese babies born in the U.S. All of these “initiatives” will be announced to the world in press releases to further humiliate the CCP.
Good’s “blueprint” would make for a good novel (perhaps even a movie), but it lacks the gravitas and realism of, for example, George F. Kennan’s containment strategy or James Burnham’s strategy of liberation — which combined brought about the fall of the Soviet Union. It is a shame what happened to Good’s marriage, and it is understandable that he seeks retribution against the villainous CCP, but he should stick to writing novels and let real strategists figure out how best to deal with the CCP.
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