How do you say Lebensraum in Chinese?
Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, China, December 1st, 2013
Salaroche

How do you say Lebensraum in Chinese? According to Google Translate, in Pinyin Chinese Lebensraum means something like Shēngcún kōngjiān, or 生存空間 in simplified Chinese. In English it can be best translated as “living space”.

By itself the term may sound harmless, or even beautiful, but historical implications add certain ominous shades to it, as Lebensraum was an idea deeply ingrained in NAZI ideology. If history is to be trusted, Lebensraum foreign policy unfolds incrementally. In the NAZI case, first came the militarization of the Rhineland in early March 1936, which was basically a test of resolve Hitler exerted over France and England.

This move may be somewhat comparable to China’s recent establishment of its new ADIZ zone, except that, contrary to what the French and the Brits did regarding Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the US didn’t just sit and watch as China did as it pleased. Still, the new ADIZ looks to some of us like a first step for eventually taking over the Senkaku islands. And once the Senkakus fall on China’s hands, what will they want next?

In the NAZI case, after the Rhineland militarization, their next Lebensraum step came in March 1938, when Germany annexed Austria to the Reich. This was done with the full support of Austrian Chancellor Arthur Seyss-Inquart and the consent of a good majority of Austrians who happily went along with it.

Then came October of the same year, when UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, naively caved-in to Hitler’s demands and basically handed him then-Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland on a silver platter. Hitler, of course, went ahead and took the whole country. From that point on it was just a matter of months before, in line with their Lebensraum policy, the NAZI army took Poland (September 1939), thereby setting WWII in motion.

Hitler’s Lebensraum policy was based on the perception that Germany was geographically too small for it to grow and develop to industrial self-sufficient degrees similar to those of the United States. Germany, Hitler thought, needed for its survival much more living space than it had at the time. Lebensraum, therefore, needed to be enlarged by any means, particularly toward the East, where Hitler thought inferior races dwelled.

But China’s expansionist designs would defer from those of NAZI Germany in one very important way: China is the third largest country in the world, even larger than the United States. China doesn’t need to acquire any extra land to ensure its long term survival. Why, then, is it so hawkish regarding a handful of pebbles located in the middle of the East China Sea? Because of the natural resources alleged to exist in the islands’ perimeters?

That may well be one of the reasons for their recently declaring the new ADIZ area and rules, but there’s much more to that risky move than the natural resources involved. China may be in need of Middle Eastern oil as much as the rest of the world is, but China’s soil is otherwise not poor by any measure. It actually contains some of the rarest and most coveted minerals in the world. Why, then, make such reckless move now?  

No doubt the Chinese government has a Lebensraum foreign policy in mind, but it’s definitely not of the NAZI sort. China’s Lebensraum is more a question of nationalist pride than anything else. They want more territory so that their huge nationalist ego can continue to expand. Having been beaten and exploited by foreign powers for centuries, China now wants to loudly claim its membership in the superpowers’ club. And for reasons of historical and geographical immediacy, it wants to start first exerting the might of its newly acquired status over Japan.

During its imperial incarnation, Japan committed war crimes of all sorts in the area and some of the worst were perpetrated in China. The whole Pacific Rim neighborhood hasn’t forgotten any of that, and the Chinese, along with the South Koreans, still have very vivid unpleasant memories of those years.

And if to that we add the fact that Japan has never wholeheartedly expressed any remorse for their crimes, we obtain the very sensitive situation presently unfolding in the area. Particularly given the new nationalist thrust Shinzō Abe, Japan’s Prime Minister, has been injecting into Japan’s political blood stream.

But the chances of Obama playing the Chamberlain or Daladier to the Chinese government’s expansionist designs are quite slim. He will definitely have to walk a thin red line between diplomacy and deterrence, but he’s not blind to history’s teachings. Still, I would advise him to make no mistake, China has clear expansionist ambitions in mind and the “Communist” Party is well aware that their grip on power will last well into the mid-21st century. This means they know they have time to go slicing their immediate neighborhood in a slow, premeditated, and methodical way as they please, unless the US and the rest of the democratic world stops them.

The Obama administration has to make sure that, out of the President’s trademark idealistic nature, the US doesn’t project weakness on the China Seas’ theater. His advising US commercial airlines to abide by China’s new ADIZ rules, for example, as cautious and rational as such advise may have been, still sent the wrong message to China: that bullying works, even if only partially.

But, all in all, China’s increasingly assertive international stance is not surprising. Newly acquired economic power usually goes hand in hand with increased military assertion abroad. China’s rise as the second, and soon the first, economy in the world should normally entail a subsequent rise in military might.

Fortunately for most of us, China is still years behind the US in military technology and still behind the US in terms of R&D. Just take a close look at America’s USS George Washington, the flagship of the 7th fleet, stationed in Okinawa, Japan, and then compare it to China’s sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, and you’ll see what I mean.

Still, as most successful boxers eventually learn, it’s always wise not to underestimate your rivals’ capabilities. Along these lines, it would be wise for Obama to recall Teddy Roosevelt’s trademark foreign policy slogan: “speak softly and carry a big stick”.

Human nature hasn’t changed much (if at all) since the early 1900s, but a slight modification to Teddy’s slogan is in order. In these early 21st century years it would perhaps be wiser to speak loudly, so that everybody knows you're coming, thereby having enough time to reflect and avoid trouble, but the part about carrying a big stick remains the same.

Salaroche