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Orchestration
 Orchestration
China’s Economic Statecraft Across
Asia and Europe

JA M E S R E I L LY

1
 3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Reilly, James, 1972– author.
Title: Orchestration : China’s economic statecraft across Asia and Europe / James Reilly.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2021] |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Contents: Learning China’s history lessons—Orchestrating China’s economic
statecraft—Never let a crisis go to waste : Beijing’s economic statecraft across
Western Europe—Creating a region : China’s economic statecraft in Central and
Eastern Europe—Engaging North Korea—Crossing lines : China’s economic statecraft in Myanmar.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020037920 (print) | LCCN 2020037921 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780197526347 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197526354 (updf) |
ISBN 9780197526361 (epub) | ISBN 9780197526378 (oso)
Subjects: LCSH: China—Foreign economic relations—Asia. |
Asia—Foreign economic relations—China. |
China—Foreign economic relations—Europe. |
Europe—Foreign economic relations—China. | China—Economic policy. |
China—Foreign relations.
Classification: LCC HF1604 .R447 2021 (print) |
LCC HF1604 (ebook) | DDC 337.5105—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037920
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037921

DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197526347.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
 For Reina

with all my love

 Contents

Preface: On the Road  ix

Introduction  1
1. Learning China’s History Lessons  19
2. Orchestrating China’s Economic Statecraft  37
3. Never Let a Crisis go to Waste: Beijing’s Economic Statecraft
across Western Europe  60
4. Creating a Region: China’s Economic Statecraft in Central and
Eastern Europe  89
5. Engaging North Korea  115
6. Crossing Lines: China’s Economic Statecraft in Myanmar  138
Conclusion  162

Notes  175
Bibliography  239
Index  257
 Preface: On The Road

When my wife and I were working for the American Friends Service
Committee in China, back in 2007, we brought a delegation of China’s leading
Africa experts to southern Africa so they could speak directly to African
labor unions, opposition parties, and NGOs, and observe Chinese busi-
ness practices in Africa for themselves. After two long days visiting Chinese
mining companies across Zambia’s copper belt, Chinese embassy officials in
Lusaka shared the following story with me over a late-​night dinner:

A few years ago, a British company was planning to sell its copper mine
in northern Zambia, and a Taiwanese company was planning to purchase
the mine. We encouraged China Nonferrous Metals Company (CNMC)
to purchase the mine instead, despite the low price of copper at the time.
CNMC secured low-​cost capital in China for the investment, while our em-
bassy encouraged the Zambian side to consider the Chinese offer favorably.
The purchase went through, and since copper prices soon rose sharply, this
ended up being a profitable investment for CNMC.

Years later, this episode has come back to me as a striking example of what
I call China’s “orchestration” approach to economic statecraft. In this in-
stance, Lusaka received timely investment into their precarious mining in-
dustry while CNMC secured cheap investment capital and valuable mining
rights as well as the gratitude of the Zambian and Chinese governments. The
deal’s architects were thus justifiably proud of averting a diplomatic embar-
rassment: Taiwanese firms gaining inroads into Zambia, home of the famed
“Tan-​Zam Railway”—​Beijing’s flagship aid project of the 1960s. Most im-
pressive of all, orchestrating this deal required very little time, money, or po-
litical effort by Chinese diplomats.
As this story suggests, the enclosed book has largely been conceived,
researched, and written on the road: indeed, that was an early working title.
My adventures along the way have been supported by numerous individuals
and institutions—​it is a joy to express my profound appreciation to them all.
Apropos for a book on economic statecraft, I’ll start with the bill-​
payers. Major financial support from the Australian Research Council
x Preface: On The Road

(DP150103365) and the European University Institute’s Jean Monnet

Fellowship enabled much of my field research and writing time. Within the
University of Sydney, the Department of Government and International
Relations, School of Social and Political Sciences, China Studies Centre, and
Southeast Asian Studies Centre all provided timely and invaluable support.
As in any book with such an extended gestation period, I have incurred
incalculable debts to the people who have kindly agreed to speak with me
about China’s economic statecraft, guide my field research, host my public
presentations, and/​or suffer through countless earlier drafts. An inevitably
incomplete list must include: Avery Goldstein, Bates Gill, Ben Goldsmith,
Bob Carr, Bob Ross, Brendan Taylor, Chih-​shian Liou, Chris Twomey, David
Shambaugh, Deborah Bräutigam, Evelyn Goh, Ezra Vogel, Graeme Gill,
Jakub Jakóbowski, James Laurenceson, Jane Golley, Jingdong Yuan, Kevin
O’Brien, Li Mingjiang, Mike Glosny, Mike Mochizuki, Philipp Genschel,
Rana Mitter, Ren Hongsheng, Rich Maher, Rosemary Foot, Ryan Griffiths,
Shi Yinhong, Taylor Fravel, Tom Christensen, Ulrich Krotz, Will Norris,
Zhang Cuizhen, and Zhang Qingming. Support by Chen Ourui, Gao Liuang,
Li Junyang, Liu Xiaochuan, and Qi Fei was particularly valuable.
From Madison Avenue, Angela Chnapko has remained a steadfast sup-
porter: her kindness and professionalism are gratefully acknowledged. My
apologies and appreciation to anyone not listed above who has also suffered
through my verbose musing on China’s economic statecraft over the past
decade. Thank you.
Throughout this long journey, my far-​ flung compadres across China,
America, and Australia have distracted, entertained, and sustained me. A strong
shout out to the Warriors: our weekly “old man basketball” kept me sane, if fre-
quently injured, during the long and often painful writing process. My family
in America keeps me close to my roots: my brother Matt, and my mom and
Elaine remain wellsprings of support and encouragement. My Chinese family
provided warm food, good cheer, and strong booze—​a perfect mix for a weary
writer. At home, Nainai remains a pillar of love and kindness.
It is only proper that this book begins with my wife, Wuna. With her,
anything is possible. Our daughter, Reina, has grown up alongside this
book. Watching her do so has been the greatest of joys. To keep a promise
made many moons ago, this book is—​like her mother and I—​lovingly
dedicated to her.
—Coto, Vietnam
—January 15, 2020
 Introduction

National leaders have three main resources to exert influence abroad: money,
military force, and diplomacy. Yet businesspeople, unlike soldiers and
diplomats, generally do not work for the government. Convincing bankers,
traders, and investors to act in ways likely to advance foreign policy goals is
often difficult and expensive.
If any country can cut this Gordian knot, it should be China. With the
Communist Party controlling the “commanding heights” of the world’s
second-​largest economy, China appears ideally structured to use economic
resources strategically to advance its foreign policy goals—​to engage in ec-
onomic statecraft. Yet as this book shows, domestic complications often
hinder Chinese leaders’ efforts to deploy economic resources abroad for stra-
tegic purposes. In the following pages, I describe how China engages in ec-
onomic statecraft, explain why China uses this approach, and identify when
Beijing’s efforts are most effective.
My core premise is that a country’s political economy and collective
beliefs exert a powerful influence upon how it engages in economic state-
craft. Variations in domestic institutions and ideas help explain why different
countries do economic statecraft differently. In China’s case, a Leninist party
retained power amidst its dramatic transition from a planned economy to a
developmental state, sparking one of history’s most consequential surges in
national wealth and power. Chinese leaders today enjoy unchallenged polit-
ical authority over a vast economy. Confident in their government’s capacity
to deploy these economic resources for strategic benefit, Chinese strategists
insist that the Party-​state can and should mobilize an array of commercial ac-
tors to advance key policy goals abroad.
This distinctive combination of ideas and institutions, bequeathed by
China’s modern history, emboldens Beijing’s ambitious approach to ec-
onomic statecraft. Yet leaders’ ambition of retaining a central role for the
Party-​state while relying upon a diverse set of economic statecraft techniques
to advance multiple policy goals is devilishly difficult to implement. Chinese

​ ​
2 Orchestration

policymakers have responded by developing a distinctive approach to eco-

nomic statecraft, best understood as orchestration.
Orchestration theory was created to describe how policymakers iden-
tify subordinate actors who share their basic priorities, and then support
and encourage these agents to act in ways that simultaneously advance both
policymakers’ and their own goals. For Chinese leaders, orchestration offers
an alluring opportunity to advance multiple domestic and foreign policy
goals at modest costs—​as the Zambia example in the preface suggests.
China’s orchestration approach integrates three core elements: the
“nesting” of orchestration tactics within its hierarchical structures; the use
of lucrative “tournaments” designed to attract eager participants while facili-
tating oversight and discipline; and designing economic statecraft initiatives
to maximize interest alignment between central leaders’ foreign policy goals
and the interests of key implementing actors. If implemented smoothly,
China’s economic statecraft requires only a light touch. The Belt and Road
Initiative, described in Chapter 2, is the latest and largest manifestation of
Beijing’s orchestration strategy.
Instead of surrendering political authority to commercial actors, Beijing’s
orchestration approach places Xi Jinping in the conductor’s stand, bolstering
rather than undermining state authority over the economy. Orchestration
thus enables and emboldens China’s distinctive approach to economic
statecraft: maintaining a central role for the state and its constituent actors
in mobilizing a broad array of domestic actors, while relying upon diverse
techniques in pursuit of multiple policy goals.
This book is dedicated to developing and testing my argument. I begin by
surveying relevant literature, introducing my core argument, explaining my
research methodology, and providing an overview of the book. We start, as
I insist my students do, with a definition.

Economic Statecraft

Economic statecraft is when political leaders intentionally use economic re-

sources to exert influence in pursuit of foreign policy objectives.1 It is distin-
guished from commercially motivated actions by its political objectives: the
pursuit of power rather than plenty.2 Ultimately, economic statecraft is an
influence attempt, an exercise of power. Power, according to Weber, “is the
probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position
 Introduction 3

to carry out his own will despite resistance.”3 Dahl is even clearer: power is
when A gets B to do something that B would not otherwise do.4
Economic statecraft encompasses incentives or sanctions that affect the
trade, aid, finance, currency, and/​or assets of the target state. Trade sanctions
limit either exports or imports to/​from the target state, while incentives such
as favorable trade agreements or state purchases expand trade. Foreign aid
can be increased or reduced for diplomatic purposes. Financial statecraft, in-
cluding lending and investment, aims to influence capital flows by expanding
or limiting a target state’s access to capital.5 Monetary sanctions seek to de-
stabilize the value and stability of the target state’s currency through currency
manipulation, fostering and exploitation of monetary dependence, or sys-
temic disruption.6 In rare instances, assets including physical property, secu-
rities, and bank accounts can be frozen or even seized.
Although countries’ efforts to deploy economic resources to exert influ-
ence abroad is one of the most important areas of foreign policy and inter-
national affairs, it remains far less studied than the use of military might.
To date, most experts have focused on asking when, how, and why certain
economic statecraft techniques—​ such as sanctions—​ prove effective in
advancing certain policy objectives. Far less energy has been dedicated to
exploring how domestic factors influence countries’ varying approaches to
economic statecraft, with the important exception of China.
China scholars have delved extensively into the question of how domestic
factors shape the projection of China’s global economic power.7 Zero-​sum
assessments of “China, Inc.” as either coherent or fragmented have been
jettisoned in favor of more nuanced depictions of state–​enterprise relations.8
Intriguing work now explores how China’s domestic economic model shapes
its overseas economic activities and how domestic actors can influence
Beijing’s foreign economic policy.9
While economists have usefully identified economic impacts of Chinese
sanctions, assessing Beijing’s effectiveness has proven more challenging.10
As Kirshner reminds us, sanctions may “work” by having an economic im-
pact but still fail to deliver the desired political outcome.11 Using quantitative
methods to identify a relationship between a country’s economic ties with
China and its policy choices has yielded intriguing, though limited, results.12
Data remains a challenge. While trade levels are generally transparent,
simply measuring the levels of China’s international financing and foreign
aid has proven difficult.13 More promising are recent case studies, which sug-
gest that Beijing is often unable to leverage its wealth for political influence.14
4 Orchestration

Despite this rich and burgeoning field, we still lack an adequate conceptual
framework for understanding how China’s complex domestic structures in-
fluence the practice and effectiveness of China’s economic statecraft. This
book is designed to help fill this gap.

Opening China’s Black Box

Economic statecraft, as a subfield of foreign policy studies, embarks from

a state-​centric perspective. It shares a core assumption with neoclassical
Realism: domestic ideas and institutions shape how rising power affects a
country’s foreign policy. As Gideon Rose explains:

Neoclassical realism argues that the scope and ambition of a country’s

foreign policy is driven first and foremost by the country’s relative mate-
rial power. Yet it contends that the impact of power capabilities on foreign
policy is indirect and complex, because systemic pressures must be trans-
lated through intervening unit-​level variables such as decision-​makers’
perceptions and state structure.15

Realism alone, however, offers little guidance into how these domestic
ideas and institutions actually influence policy outcomes. Drawing instead
on classic works in comparative political economy, such as Katzenstein’s
landmark volume, Between Power and Plenty, shows how domestic factors
influence countries’ foreign economic policies.16 More recent work on “vari-
eties of capitalism,” including “state capitalism,” further illustrate how and
why domestic institutional structures and collective beliefs shape countries’
political-​economic orientations and practices.17
“The ability of political leaders to mobilize domestic resources,” Krasner
explains, “is a function of (a) the structure of the domestic political system,
and (b) the convergence between public and private interests.” Such con-
vergence can be created, Krasner adds, since “the defining characteristic of
a political system is the power of the state in relation to its own society.”18
State effectiveness, Samuels notes, arises not just “from its own inherent ca-
pacity but from the complexity and stability of its interactions with market
players.”19 Applying this logic to economic statecraft, Stein argues that a
stronger state will be better able to implement sanctions than a weaker one,
since “it often takes state power to align private interests with public ones.”20
 Introduction 5

Davis highlights two types of institutional capacity that determine whether

a state can effectively implement a strategy of economic persuasion: (1) the
degree of functional autonomy, coordination, and continuity within bu-
reaucratic process; and (2) state capacity to extract and channel domestic re-
sources to target countries.21
From these perspectives, the Chinese Party-​state appears ideally situated
to engage in economic statecraft. The government literally owns the “com-
manding heights” of the economy, including all major banks and most large
enterprises in key strategic sectors, and enjoys unchallenged and extensive
authority over much of the economy. Yet, having greater authority over more
sectors of the economy may not necessarily result in more effective economic
statecraft. By having to coordinate across a broad segment of the bureaucracy
and oversee a proliferation of economic actors (many of whom are closely
linked to the state), while facing high requirements for effective informa-
tion flow across a complex political-​economic system, large states with more
managed economic policies face a particularly daunting set of challenges in
implementing economic statecraft—​none more so than China.
This set of challenges has traditionally been viewed as a principal–​agent
problem. When a lead actor (principal) delegates authority to a subordi-
nate (agent), the agent’s own preferences, greater access to information,
and autonomy of action limit the principal’s ability to control the agent.
The principal–​agent framework, developed to examine how managers del-
egate responsibilities to workers in modern firms, is grounded in two core
assumptions: divergent preferences between principals and agents, and the
principals’ scarcity of information. The agent can use “hidden information”
to take “hidden actions” unobserved by the principal, resulting in “agency
slack.” As Laffont and Martimort explain: “By the mere fact of delegation, the
principal often loses any ability to control those actions that are no longer
observable.” 22
The principal–​agent framework usefully shows how agents’ diverging
interests, privileged access to information, and autonomy of action can im-
pede principals’ effective monitoring and enforcement. The framework also
highlights how principals rely upon a system of rewards and punishments to
shape agents’ actions and to encourage behavior that advances the principals’
objectives. Such efforts by principals incur transaction costs. Therefore,
principals may prefer to allow agents to capture gains or “rents” from their
own actions instead of trying to identify and punish all undesired behavior.
6 Orchestration

In international relations, the principal–​agent approach has primarily

been used to explore how national governments delegate authority to inter-
national organizations.23 For foreign policy, the framework has been most
widely deployed by European scholars interested in identifying the dele-
gation and oversight challenges generated by the EU’s complex governing
structures.24 In 2007, Bates Gill and I were among the first observers to iden-
tify how a structural principal–​agent problem was constraining China’s eco-
nomic statecraft.25 By 2011, Alden and Large argued that the principal–​agent
dilemma had emerged “at the heart of the problem of developing sustainable
Chinese ties” with developing countries.26
More recently, William Norris has applied the framework to China’s eco-
nomic statecraft by focusing on state control: “the ability of the state to con-
trol or direct the behavior of commercial actors.” “By controlling commercial
actors,” he argues, “states can manipulate the security externalities that result
from international economic interactions.” For Norris, state control is a “pre-
requisite” and is “at the heart of economic statecraft.”27 Norris’s study suc-
cessfully shows that preference compatibility between principals and agents,
and coherence among multiple principals, help explain variation in levels of
state control. However, as his case studies also reveal, having tighter control
does not always make China’s economic statecraft more effective.28
In fact, states often choose not to have tighter control over their agents.
As the principal–​agent framework reminds us, sustaining such controls is
costly.29 For Chinese leaders, maintaining commercial actors’ autonomy
from political influence not only increases their economic efficiency but also
enhances the deniability of a political influence attempt, while helping to
alleviate target countries’ anxiety about Beijing’s political influence. While
Norris is correct that Chinese leaders face considerable difficulties in relying
upon commercial actors to implement much of China’s economic statecraft,
this challenge is best understood more broadly, as a classic problem of “indi-
rect governance.”
In practice, most governance is indirect since “governors” frequently rely
upon third parties to increase efficiency, effectiveness, and legitimacy. Rather
than always seeking tighter control, political leaders rely upon a variety of
strategies to shape third-​party behavior, including their selection of agents,
foreign policy design, and employing varying modes of incentivizing, over-
sight, and enforcement.30 As Fukuyama explains, state leaders tend to grant
greater autonomy to more capable agents whose interests are already aligned
with national leaders’ priorities.31 Certain economic statecraft techniques
 Introduction 7

can ease interest alignment. For instance, encouraging firms to expand trade
or investment is generally easier than trying to restrict them from doing so.
“Where market forces work against negative sanctions they can reinforce
positive ones,” Crumm notes.32 Ensuring coalition cohesion and domestic
implementation of sanctions is also much easier when corporations and
partner governments see their own interests being advanced.33
A number of recent studies have pointed out how China’s domestic polit-
ical economy is structured in ways designed to mitigate the challenges of in-
direct governance. Eaton and Zhang, for instance, explain that maintaining
multiple sovereign wealth funds is “Byzantine by design,” since the resulting
competition enhances Chinese leaders’ control.34 Bell and Feng similarly
argue that Chinese leaders’ reliance upon the People’s Bank of China’s ex-
pertise and bureaucratic position fostered a “reciprocal alliance relationship”
in which “party elites control the strategic direction but delegate parcels of
authority and policymaking to the central bank.”35 Building on these studies,
I argue in this book that China’s economic statecraft is best understood as a
type of “orchestration” strategy.

Orchestration and the Governor’s Dilemma

Strategies of indirect governance, Abbott et al. argue, can be usefully di-

vided into two “ideal types”: delegation and orchestration. In the delegation
approach, “principals select agents according to their governance capabil-
ities with little regard to agents’ governance goals . . . The principal writes
a contract that creates incentives for the agent to pursue the principal’s
governance goals. The stronger the incentives the contract creates, and the
more closely the principal monitors the agent’s behavior through its own
efforts . . . the lower the risk of agency slack.” The principals—​Chinese
leaders—​retain hierarchical “hard control” over their agents, offering only
a “conditional grant of authority.”36 However, Chinese leaders are likely to
find themselves relying upon implementing agents whose goals may diverge
from their own priorities. Relying upon compensation, oversight, and puni-
tive measures to shape agents’ behavior is costly in terms of time, resources,
and political capital.
A more attractive option for Chinese policymakers seeking to imple-
ment their ambitious approach to economic statecraft at modest cost is
to identify implementing agents whose interests are already aligned with
8 Orchestration

policymakers’ goals. In an orchestration relationship, Abbott et al. explain,

“the orchestrator identifies an ‘affine’ third party that sufficiently identifies
with the orchestrator’s governance goals to voluntarily serve as interme-
diary.” By providing conditional support—​both material and ideational—​
the orchestrator strengthens the intermediary while retaining leverage.
Abbott et al. thus define orchestration as the “mobilization of an interme-
diary by an orchestrator on a voluntary basis in pursuit of a joint govern-
ance goal.”37 In an orchestration strategy, the principal (or “orchestrator”)
identifies a like-​minded agent who shares the orchestrator’s basic priori-
ties, and then utilizes a set of incentives and other techniques to support
the agent as it acts in ways that should advance both the agent’s and the
orchestrator’s goals.
Orchestration theory was developed to capture situations in global gov-
ernance when a principal lacks hierarchical controls over agents, and so “can
only influence its exercise through positive or negative inducements.”38 On
first glance, orchestration hardly seems an appropriate concept to describe
governance tactics by the world’s largest Communist Party, particularly
amidst the dramatic centralization of Party authority in the Xi Jinping era.
However, orchestration tactics offer a number of benefits for China’s eco-
nomic statecraft.
Orchestration enables Chinese policymakers to expand their “repertoire
of regulatory, promotional and operational techniques” and to “better match
their activities to their often limited resources, to specific issues and to spe-
cific global settings.”39 Orchestration also helps Chinese leaders extend their
authority. As Alcazar explains in the case of the EU, “self-​aware that its polit-
ical imprint in faraway markets may not always be “fungible,” the EU seeks
to build up its pockets of power and on-​the-​ground performance by working
with proxies.” Even though Brussels, like Beijing, enjoys “parallel and un-
mediated channels to leverage its market size and regulatory reach,” it often
chooses to rely upon “softer and less hierarchical measures to back and prod
intermediaries.”40 Minimizing at least the appearance of their direct control
over Chinese commercial actors and regional authorities enables central-​
level Chinese policymakers to benefit from firms’ expertise, creativity, legit-
imacy, and commitment potential. “Orchestration is less conspicuous” than
delegation, Abbott et al. add, and so misbehavior by such agents is less costly.
“Blame avoidance . . . is facilitated if the governor can deny close association
with the third party.”41
 Introduction 9

For Chinese leaders, an orchestration approach also minimizes the finan-

cial costs associated with incentivizing domestic actors and avoids the politi-
cally challenging efforts of monitoring and punishments. Chinese leaders can
pursue multiple policy objectives by including domestic economic and com-
mercial interests alongside foreign policy goals. Perhaps most importantly,
instead of surrendering political authority to commercial actors, Beijing’s or-
chestration approach bolsters rather than undermining state authority over
the economy. Orchestration thus enables and emboldens China’s distinctive
approach to economic statecraft: maintaining a central role for the state and
its constituent actors in mobilizing a broad array of domestic actors, while
relying upon diverse techniques in pursuit of multiple policy goals.
While attractive, orchestration is not cost-​free. As Abbott et al. explain: “if
principals depend on agents’ intrinsic motivations, they must sacrifice
some behavioral control.”42 They describe this trade-​off as “the governor’s
dilemma:”

Competent agents are difficult to control because their policy

contributions give them leverage over the principal; principal control
impedes agent competence by constraining the development and ex-
ercise of agent capabilities. If a principal emphasizes control, it limits
agent competence and risks policy failure; if it emphasizes competence,
it provides opportunistic agents freedom to manoeuvre and risks control
failure . . . . The problem is that competence and control are inversely re-
lated . . . . The principal thus faces a trade-​off: it can maximize either com-
petence or control, but not both.43

Politics, of course, remains the art of the possible. We would expect

policymakers to pursue strategies of indirect governance designed to cap-
ture the benefits of both approaches while minimizing their downsides.
Orchestration and delegation are, after all, only “ideal types” which “often
overlap in practice” and so are best understood “more as a continuum than
a sharp distinction.” In the real world, Abbott et al. admit, “governance
arrangements frequently combine both approaches.”44 As this book shows,
Chinese policymakers have responded to the governor’s dilemma by de-
veloping a distinctive orchestration approach for implementing economic
statecraft, one designed to maximize their controls over agents while still
capturing the benefits of orchestration.
10 Orchestration

Beijing’s Orchestration Strategy

The easiest solution to the challenges of indirect governance is, as any parent
of a small child knows, to do something yourself. Henriksen and Ponte thus
expect that “successful orchestration trajectories [will] entail the use of plural
governance tools and a combination of direct and indirect instruments—​
together with active participation of the orchestrators themselves.”45
“Governors often mix elements of delegation and orchestration,” add Abbott
et al. “One strategy is to empower agents by formal acts of delegation, but
then rely on soft means of orchestration to support and steer their actions.”46
Alcazar, for example, argues that the EU has pursued a “blended exercise of
delegation and orchestration to collaborate with intermediaries,” and thus
labels the EU a “principal-​orchestrator.”47
China’s “nested” approach to orchestration, the first of its three core
techniques, reflects a similar approach. Top Chinese leaders play a direct
role in designing and implementing many important economic statecraft
initiatives. They also delegate authority to line ministries and government
agencies. Central leaders rely upon a set of coordination and oversight
mechanisms to manage the informational challenges that result from dele-
gating authority to these agencies. In turn, these government agencies de-
ploy a variety of orchestration techniques to encourage participation from
a diverse set of financial institutions, enterprises, and regional authorities
across China.
The most important of these orchestration tactics is when central-​level
policymakers encourage line ministries and financial institutions to estab-
lish investment funds and offer policy support for broad-​based initiatives.
Companies and regional governments are rewarded for successfully pro-
posing and implementing specific projects or “schemes” that fit within these
broad policy parameters. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), described in
Chapter 2, is the latest and largest manifestation of this use of competi-
tive “tournaments” with “prizes” designed to entice and reward agents for
implementing China’s economic statecraft.
As Abbott and Snidal expect, this tactic enables central Chinese leaders
to mobilize participation “by endorsing and supporting superior schemes,
promoting common standards across schemes, and shaping inter-​scheme
competition and collaboration in line with [their] policy objectives.” They
predict that such “effectively-​orchestrated” initiatives “may mitigate the
problems resulting from diverse interests and objectives by bringing the
 Introduction 11

actors together in independent, collaborative . . . schemes.” Relying on “mul-

tiplicity and competitiveness,” this technique “allows for comparisons across
schemes that allow some to be identified as better performing.”48 Moreover,
implementing agents are likely to “provide their own evaluations of scheme
performance,” which provides additional information to central Chinese
leaders about how relative “schemes” are performing.49 The BRI also reflects
traditional Chinese Communist Party governance tactics of allowing local
experiments to emerge before choosing among them.50 Encouraging com-
petition among a large supply of potentially qualified agents strengthens
the authority of Chinese policymakers while making agents more pliable.
Competition among agents, Abbott et al. explain, drives down their “induce-
ment price.”51 This second technique thus facilitates Beijing’s control while
attracting and supporting motivated actors.
At the core of China’s orchestration approach to economic statecraft is
the third technique: Beijing’s reliance upon economic statecraft techniques
designed to facilitate interest alignment among the implementing ac-
tors. By carefully choosing certain types of economic statecraft initiatives
and designing the goals of these initiatives to align with the priorities of
implementing actors, Chinese policymakers are able to entice (or “mobi-
lize”) a broader array of domestic agents to help advance their goals. As a re-
sult, China’s economic statecraft frequently only requires a light touch. Using
techniques and articulating policy goals that enable commercial actors, ec-
onomic ministries, and regional authorities to act in ways that also advance
their own interests is the third core element of China’s orchestration strategy.
This effort to align the interests of multiple implementing actors helps ex-
plain one of the most distinctive aspects of China’s economic statecraft: its
pursuit of multiple goals through a single initiative. Pursuing multiple goals
aligns interests within the government, thus facilitating bureaucratic sup-
port. Given the array of government agencies involved in the design and im-
plementation of China’s economic statecraft, initiatives that make powerful
enemies are less likely to emerge as approved policies or obtain thorough im-
plementation. Economic statecraft initiatives are particularly vulnerable to
bureaucratic resistance, since they are likely to impinge upon multiple areas
of bureaucratic authority. Since economic statecraft requires using economic
resources for foreign policy purposes, the economic-​minded actors that
dominate China’s policy deliberation process will likely insist that any such
initiative also generate economic benefits. To secure their support in policy
design and implementation, economic statecraft initiatives that emerge as
12 Orchestration

central-​level policy are thus likely to be laden with economic goals, alongside
their strategic and diplomatic objectives. These multiple goals reflect the im-
pact of China’s interest-​alignment strategy on its economic statecraft.
In sum, China’s orchestration approach to economic statecraft integrates
three core elements: the “nesting” of orchestration tactics within its hier-
archical delegation structure; the use of lucrative “tournaments” designed
to attract eager participants while facilitating oversight and discipline;
and designing economic statecraft initiatives to maximize interest align-
ment between central leaders’ foreign policy goals and the interests of
key implementing actors. This book is designed to develop and test my
argument.

A Curious Case Selection

Since this book’s core premise is that domestic ideas and institutions exert
a powerful influence upon how a country engages in economic statecraft,
I begin with two chapters examining Chinese ideas and institutions. The first
chapter argues that China’s tumultuous modern history forged a distinctive,
coherent belief system about economic statecraft: what it is, what it can ac-
complish, when it is justified, and how it is most effective. This collectively
held set of beliefs justifies, influences, and sustains China’s orchestration
approach to economic statecraft. The second chapter describes how insti-
tutional structures shape China’s three core orchestration techniques and
denotes several weaknesses embedded within Beijing’s approach.
The next two chapters examine China’s economic statecraft in two
regions: first in Western Europe and then in Central and Eastern
Europe. I conclude with two country-​level case studies from China’s pe-
riphery: North Korea and Myanmar. These cases may appear a curious
choice. My case selection is driven by two sets of logic: the use of most-​
similar and most-​different methods of comparison. Since I am claiming
that China applies a consistent approach to economic statecraft shaped
primarily by domestic factors (ideas and institutions), I have chosen four
cases that are extremely different.
My cases vary along many of the variables traditionally assumed to shape
economic statecraft practices and outcomes: levels of development and re-
gime type, as well as diplomatic affiliation, economic dependence, and geo-
graphic proximity to the “sending” state. Each of the four chapters examines
 Introduction 13

three to four distinct techniques of China’s economic statecraft (my sub-​

cases), including foreign aid, sanctions, state-​guided investment, regional
cooperation, and financial statecraft. The cases encompass participation by
a wide range of Chinese actors, include a diverse set of policy objectives,
and cover the Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping eras. This diversity provides a robust
test for my argument. If we find that Beijing applies a similar orchestration
strategy across so many different instances and over two different leadership
teams, this increases our confidence that China does indeed deploy a con-
sistent approach to economic statecraft shaped primarily by domestic insti-
tutional and ideational factors.
I also hope to identify the factors shaping the outcomes we observe across
my research questions (see below). I therefore have structured my four
cases into two sets of similar, paired comparisons, thus enabling me to focus
on likely key factors while “holding constant” the most likely alternative
explanations for the observed outcomes. Specifically, I expect that variations
in the level of domestic governance capacity within the “target” countries/​re-
gions will likely have the greatest impact upon outcomes across my research
questions (as explained below). I thus compare North Korea with Myanmar,
as they are both small, non-​democratic adjacent neighbors that are highly
economically dependent upon China, though their level of domestic govern-
ance capacity varies greatly. Similarly, the countries of Western Europe enjoy
much stronger domestic governance capacity than their eastern neighbors,
though the two regions share many other important attributes in their
relationships with China.
My case selection also allows us to compare China’s economic statecraft
practices across both Asia and Europe. The scaled diversity of my cases—​
ranging across development levels (from the world’s wealthiest nations to
moderately wealthy to impoverished) and regime types (from stable democ-
racies to newer, more fragile democracies to different types of authoritarian
regimes)—​yields general findings about China’s economic statecraft. Tracing
the trajectory of Beijing’s policy initiatives from their domestic origins
through implementation in diverse contexts around the world also offers
valuable insights into the origins, outcomes, and implications of Chinese
foreign policy practices. The conclusion chapter leverages these case study
findings to offer policy recommendations for countries targeted by China’s
economic statecraft.
14 Orchestration

Research Methods and Sources

Within each case study, my primary task is to identify if Chinese actors

deployed the orchestration techniques that I describe above. Namely, did
Beijing rely upon the “nesting” of orchestration tactics within a delegation
approach; use “tournaments” to attract and reward multiple agents; and
deploy economic statecraft initiatives designed to align the interests of key
implementing actors with central leaders’ foreign policy goals?
If we do observe China’s orchestration in action, was it effective? My ap-
proach to assessing the effectiveness of China’s orchestration approach is
threefold. First, was Beijing successful in mobilizing domestic actors to en-
gage in economic activities in the direction that Beijing desired?52 This is an
easy test: we would expect that Chinese officials would generally be able to
encourage a broad array of commercial actors to rapidly expand investments
and trade with any given country, region, or sector, particularly when
enjoying strong backing from top leaders and aligned with the implementing
actors’ own commercial or bureaucratic interests. Economic statecraft
initiatives designed to bolster bilateral or region-​wide economic ties should
encourage Chinese actors to take steps in this direction.
How do we know that commercial actors were actually influenced by gov-
ernment policy and not simply acting in line with their own interests? Since
I argue that China’s economic statecraft initiatives are generally designed
to align with implementing actors’ own interests, isolating the impact of
policymakers upon commercial actors is particularly difficult. The best
method is careful process tracing, while acknowledging the inherent limi-
tations to any causal claims. It is easier to isolate Chinese policymakers’ im-
pact when they seek to punish a target state by reducing trade, aid, and/​or
investment. My case studies thus also ask: how effective were central leaders
in implementing such reversals?
My second test of effectiveness asks: how coherently was China’s economic
statecraft implemented in each case? Implementation coherence assesses
the degree to which relevant Chinese actors acted in ways likely to advance
(or undermine) Chinese leaders’ foreign policy objectives.53 Coherence is
particularly significant for assessing orchestration approaches to economic
statecraft. Regardless of whether it derives from top-​down “control” or from
utilizing agents’ inherent motivations and “competence,” what policymakers
care about is that the actors tasked with implementing economic statecraft
act in ways likely to advance leaders’ policy objectives. Implementation
 Introduction 15

coherence is best assessed relatively, by comparing over time and across is-
sues and target countries.
My primary expectation here is that Beijing’s implementation coherence
will vary with the intensity of the principal–​agent challenges in a given con-
text. Specifically, problems with implementation coherence are more likely
when Chinese leaders rely upon regional and/​or commercial actors who are
difficult to monitor and have strong economic interests in the target state,
and when the target state has weaker domestic governance capacity.
Three types of problems are most likely to emerge in such instances. First,
we are more likely to see instances of “policy stretching”: when government
agencies, regional authorities, and/​or commercial actors alter the content or
even goals of central-​level policy, such as through lobbying. Indeed, although
both the Myanmar and North Korea chapters document such dynamics,
they were far more severe in Myanmar.
Secondly, situations with more intense principal–​agent challenges are
likely to generate more severe moral hazard problems. Specifically, when
top-​down controls are weaker and commercial interests are stronger, then
wealthy, powerful state-​owned enterprises (SOEs) are more likely to feel free
to act in a fiscally irresponsible manner because they expect they can rely
on state-​controlled banks for financial support regardless of their economic
performance. Indeed, economists have found that SOEs are most likely to
invest in risky environments if the country has strong political ties to China
and/​or high export dependency upon China.54 This suggests that SOEs in
such situations expect Beijing’s support if their risky investments fail.
The third—​and most potent and most likely—​threat to Beijing’s imple-
mentation coherence is enterprise malfeasance. The diversity of Chinese
economic actors, from massive SOEs to nimble private firms to individual
entrepreneurs, helps facilitate China’s rapid and deep expansion into target
economies. However, these actors also uniquely generate a full spectrum
disruptive presence: from massive state-​backed investments by some of the
world’s largest companies through to a surge in inexpensive laborers and ag-
gressive entrepreneurs. Accustomed to operating in a highly competitive en-
vironment characterized by widespread corruption, limited oversight, and
cutthroat competition, Chinese firms going abroad are likely to engage in
predatory business practices with limited attention to political or social risk.
As principal–​agent theory predicts, monitoring these diverse sets of ac-
tors represents a considerable challenge for Chinese officials. “Most times,
we don’t even know how many Chinese companies are involved in a given
16 Orchestration

country,” a former embassy official told me. “We don’t even see them until
they have a problem.”55 While Chinese SOEs spur most Westerners’ anxieties,
in fact private firms are likely to be even more aggressive than SOEs. They
have few obligations to Chinese diplomats or national bureaucracies, relying
instead upon a carefully cultivated local base of support. Successful local pri-
vate entrepreneurs in China must cut corners to prosper. Commonplace acts
such as bribing officials, falsifying contracts, and evading laws are unlikely to
decline as they move far from home.
Effective orchestration requires that officials identify and curtail such
problematic behavior. My third and final measure for assessing effective-
ness is thus: were Chinese policymakers able to effectively identify and alter
agents’ behavior that undermined Beijing’s foreign policy objectives? As
principal–​agent theory reminds us, such responses are unlikely when in-
formation flows are limited or when the principal has become “captured”
by their own agents. This question also helps assess Chinese policymakers’
capacity to learn and adjust as problems emerge. Since orchestration is in-
herently an evolving approach, it demands a high capacity for learning and
adaptation. When problems reach the attention of top Chinese leaders, they
should be able to readjust their approach and perhaps tighten their controls
over agents. This ability to toggle between prioritizing control and compe-
tence is essential for the effective and sustainable implementation of China’s
orchestration approach.
In sum, my case studies are designed to (a) identify if Chinese policymakers
utilized the three core orchestration techniques described above, and (b) as-
sess the effectiveness of China’s orchestration approach. I assess effectiveness
along three lines. First, did Chinese leaders successfully mobilize domestic
actors to engage in economic activities in the direction that Beijing desired?
Second, how coherently was China’s economic statecraft implemented in
each case? I expect that situations with an intense principal–​agent problem
will generate problems with policy stretching, moral hazard, and enter-
prise malfeasance. My third and final test for effectiveness is whether
Chinese policymakers were able to identify and alter agents’ behavior that
undermined Beijing’s foreign policy objectives.
My research for these six empirical chapters draws upon a wide range of
Chinese and English-​language sources: government documents, economic
data, public opinion surveys, media coverage, and scholarly studies. Yet, the
most important sources have been my own eyes and ears.
 Introduction 17

Over the past decade, I have traveled widely along the highways and
byways along which China’s economic influence flows. While living in
Dalian in 2012–​2013, I traveled the entire Chinese border with North Korea
and extensively throughout both sides of the China–​Myanmar border re-
gion. I also draw, indirectly, upon my seven visits to North Korea from
2001–​2009. I traveled along and across China’s borders with Kazakhstan,
Laos, and Vietnam, and through Thailand. Along the way, I conducted nu-
merous interviews with local officials, businesspeople, experts, and residents
in Jilin, Liaoning, Guangxi, and Yunnan provinces, and in Beijing and
Yangon. I began my European research by traveling with my family for six
weeks, overland, from central China to Florence, where I took up my post as
a 2015–​16 Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. Over my
year at the EUI, I conducted interviews and field research in Almaty, Ankara,
Belgrade, Berlin, Bologna, Brussels, Istanbul, Geneva, Lodz, London, Malta,
Milan, Oxford, Paris, Rome, Sofia, Tbilisi, Torino, Trabzon, Warsaw, and
Zagreb.

Conclusion

This book seeks to identify how China engages in economic statecraft, ex-
plain why China uses this approach, and to assess and explain variations
in Beijing’s implementation effectiveness. This is a relatively unique ap-
proach: few studies have asked why a given country practices economic
statecraft in a particular fashion. In the conclusion, I build upon my findings
to suggest several pathways for future scholarship in comparative economic
statecraft. Instead, most studies of China’s economic statecraft assess ef-
fectiveness by comparing target country responses to China’s influence
attempts. Audrye Wong, for example, argues that China’s provision of “sub-
versive carrots” tends to influence target countries with low public account-
ability.56 While my emphasis is different, my conclusion chapter compares
Beijing’s success in achieving its policy goals across all cases, denoting key
policy implications for countries targeted by China’s economic statecraft.
The conclusion chapter also raises the possibility that China’s orchestra-
tion approach is self-​reinforcing. As explained above, orchestration is an
attractive option for China’s leaders due to its potential for delivering mul-
tiple benefits at modest cost. As Chinese leaders rely more heavily upon or-
chestration techniques, they are likely to feel encouraged to engage in even
18 Orchestration

more economic statecraft, fostering an even greater need to utilize a low-​

cost, multiple-​benefit strategy. If my presumptions are correct, we should see
continued, and even expanded, orchestration tactics by China over time and
across regions and issues. Our journey down this long road, however, must
embark more modestly. We begin by returning to the past, as we explore the
history lessons that Chinese strategists draw from their country’s long expe-
rience as both a target and practitioner of economic statecraft.
 1
Learning China’s History Lessons

Even when people think they are striking out in new directions, their
models often come from the past.1
Margaret MacMillan

China’s orchestration approach to economic statecraft emerged out of its long

experience as both a target and practitioner of economic statecraft. From its
earliest days, the People’s Republic faced economic coercion from the United
States and the Soviet Union. Chinese leaders responded in innovative and
ambitious fashion, leveraging access to China’s domestic market to break
the US embargo while distributing foreign aid throughout Asia and Africa
to forge new diplomatic ties. By the late 1970s, the aid program’s burgeoning
costs led Beijing to shift to a more pragmatic approach of ensuring commer-
cial opportunities for Chinese firms. Confronting diplomatic isolation after
1989, policymakers once again leveraged China’s booming domestic market
to secure diplomatic concessions. As China rose to global economic pre-​em-
inence, it began to develop one of the world’s most active and consequential
programs of economic statecraft.
This tumultuous history forged a distinctive collective belief system about
economic statecraft: what it is, what it can accomplish, when it is justified, and
how it is most effective. Chinese experts and policymakers demonstrate con-
fidence that economic resources can be deployed for both strategic leverage
and reassurance, faith that economic statecraft can be deployed in ways that
advantage both China and the recipient country, and a belief that the Party-​
state can and should mobilize commercial actors to advance Beijing’s for-
eign policy goals. They justify China’s pragmatic, ambitious, self-​interested
approach to economic statecraft by skepticism toward Western claims of mo-
rality, identification of China as a developing country, and faith in the over-
riding benefits of economic growth.

​ ​
20 Orchestration

This set of collective beliefs can best be understood as a subset of China’s

Realist strategic culture—​what Alastair Iain Johnston labels China’s “cul-
tural realism.”2 Strategic culture, according to Jack Snyder, is the “sum total of
ideals, conditional emotional responses, and patterns of habitual behavior”
that nations acquire through instruction or imitation over time.3 A nation’s
strategic culture reflects the incorporation of “past learning” into the “collec-
tive consciousness,” and so tends to “set parameters and mental boundaries
within which conscious policy decisions are made.”4 These collective ideas
are not static or uniformly shared; debates and diversity abound. Ideas al-
ways evolve, shaped by historical, social, and political forces. Pervasive cen-
sorship also demands that we treat Chinese-​language sources with caution.
Nonetheless, surveying the rich field of Chinese scholarship on economic
statecraft—​the first such study in English—​reveals a set of overlapping
ideas and assumptions, parallel to the public statements of Chinese leaders
and reflected in policy and practices. Collecting these assumptions under
the umbrella of “strategic culture” offers useful methodological guidance,
yielding unique insights into the ideational foundations of China’s economic
statecraft.
I begin by denoting key “lessons learned” from China’s historical
experiences, before discussing three apparent contradictions in Chinese
conceptions of economic statecraft and exploring justifications for China’s
approach. I conclude by considering how this belief system influences
experts’ views on policy challenges and proposed solutions.

Learning from the Past

Learning reflects the effect of previous experiences and observations on for-

eign policy beliefs.5 As Brands and Suri note, “history—​an understanding,
whether accurate or inaccurate, of the past—​is omnipresent in foreign
policy.”6 Lessons from historical experience are shaped, Levitt and March ex-
plain, “less by history than by the frames applied to that history.”7 Established
concepts, historical analogies, and perceived successes or failures all shape
how policymakers interpret and apply lessons from the past.8 Mao’s decision
to enter the Korean War, for instance, was influenced by his conception of
the threat as US imperialism, derived from his experiences and ideology.9 In
China, learning from the past has always been a deeply political process, typ-
ically deployed by the Party for the “inculcation of doctrine.”10 Under Mao,
 Learning China’s History Lessons 21

injunctions to “learn from the Soviet Union” in the 1950s carried potent po-
litical implications.11 Decades later, Chinese leaders learned another set of
lessons altogether from the USSR, as a state-​led study program sought to
identify the pitfalls causing its collapse.12
While all historical experiences have the potential to influence collec-
tive beliefs, Chinese experts’ writings show that three rounds of historical
experiences with economic statecraft were particularly significant: the geo-
political struggles of the early Cold War era, Beijing’s strategic use of foreign
aid following the Sino-​Soviet split, and China’s leveraging market access in
the 1980s and 1990s.

Geopolitics and Economic Statecraft: The Early Days

Upon coming to power in 1949, China’s new leaders confronted not only an
economy decimated by decades of war and turmoil but also a US-​led mul-
tilateral embargo aimed at crippling the Chinese economy and bringing
down the communist government. Beijing responded in innovative fashion,
reaching out to non-​aligned states such as Indonesia and Egypt, as well as US
allies like the United Kingdom and Japan, by using the lure of the Chinese
market and resources. In 1954, Zhou Enlai promised Japanese Diet members
that China could “open up a few new coal mines to bring about an increase
of [a]‌hundred thousand tons of coal.”13 The two sides soon signed a series
of “private” trade agreements. By 1956 bilateral trade exceeded $126 mil-
lion. Britain’s trade with China also soared, from $35 million in 1952 to over
$200 million by 1957. As a 1957 State Department memo admitted: “to the
simple-​minded, the Commies won and the US lost.”14
Initially, the US-​led embargo rendered China dependent upon economic
assistance from Moscow. In the early 1950s, some 38,000 Chinese technicians
went to the Soviet Union while 11,000 Soviet experts came to China.15 Yet as
tensions mounted between Moscow and Beijing, Chinese leaders grew wary.
Zhou Enlai warned in a 1956 internal meeting that Moscow was likely to
“hold back a trick or two,” and so China should “treat self-​reliance as essen-
tial and foreign aid merely as a supplement.”16 The benefits also declined: by
1956, China’s repayments for earlier Soviet loans exceeded new grants.17
Following the 1960 Sino-​Soviet split and collapse of all Soviet aid, Chinese
leaders had imbibed a powerful lesson on the risks—​and potential power—​
of economic dependence.18
22 Orchestration

Chinese policymakers responded by playing a weak hand in strategic

fashion, directing foreign aid to bolster potential diplomatic allies, most im-
portantly Vietnam and North Korea. Following the 1954 Geneva Accords,
China pledged $338 million in grant aid to North Vietnam over 1955–​1957.19
Zhou Enlai reassured a visiting Vietnamese delegation, “In order to support
you, we do not mind accepting the greatest national sacrifices.”20 China’s
largest aid recipient in the early Cold War era was North Korea. Following
the end of hostilities on the peninsula, China cancelled North Korea’s war-
time debt of 729 million Renminbi (RMB) ($362.5 million) and provided
a grant of RMB 800 million ($400 million).21 China also offered the free
labor of nearly half a million Chinese soldiers.22 The program’s scale was ex-
traordinary, equivalent in 1954 to 3.4 percent of China’s national budget.23
Undaunted, in 1954 Mao Zedong pledged to Kim Il-​Sung that “the Chinese
people will continue to wholeheartedly support the North Korean people in
their just task [of economic development] until their final victory.”24 From
1950–​1970, China provided $614 million in aid to North Korea, just slightly
under Soviet support levels.25 China also eventually turned its trade surplus
into loans that Beijing later forgave.26
Sun Luxi insists that aid to Vietnam and North Korea “helped strengthen
these neighboring countries’ military development, and so therefore
enhanced China’s own national security.”27 Yet diplomatic affinity proved
elusive. Ever since Kim Il-​Sung’s 1956 purging of the “Yan’an faction,” North
Korea has proven “more of a strategic liability and uncomfortable neighbor
than trusted ally.”28 After having been Hanoi’s most generous donor over
the previous two decades, by 1975 Beijing also found itself frustrated by
lingering territorial disputes, Vietnam’s treatment of ethnic Chinese, and
Hanoi’s closeness to Moscow. In response, Chinese leaders deployed eco-
nomic coercion, suspending trade agreements, imposing new trade quotas,
and cancelling aid programs. Taking a page from Moscow’s book, on July 3,
1978, Beijing announced: “The Chinese government was compelled to de-
cide to cut off all economic and technical assistance to Vietnam and bring
back home all Chinese experts who are currently working in Vietnam.”29 The
move was a prelude to Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 decision to “teach Vietnam a
lesson” by instigating a brief border conflict.
Being targeted by first the United States and then the USSR with eco-
nomic coercion early in the Cold War underscored for Beijing both the
risks and the potential influence derived from economic dependence. It also
 Learning China’s History Lessons 23

demonstrated to Chinese leaders the strategic utility of foreign aid, a lesson

they carried forward for decades.

China’s Aid Lessons

China has the world’s most distinctive experience with foreign aid. While
still desperately impoverished, Beijing emerged as one of the globe’s most ac-
tive and consequential aid providers. Amidst its economic reforms and rapid
growth of the 1980s, China became the world’s largest aid recipient. Today,
China has resumed its position as a major aid donor. The lessons Chinese
strategists derived from this tumultuous process continue to shape Chinese
thinking on foreign assistance.30
As the Sino-​Soviet split deepened in the 1960s, Beijing dramatically ex-
panded its aid program, seeking to bolster diplomatic ties with non-​aligned
states by pledging support for nations “fighting against colonialism and he-
gemony” (反殖反霸).31 China was the world’s poorest aid donor; its aid
levels were the highest as a percentage of per capita income. The generosity
was astounding. In delivering a $60 million loan to Cuba in 1969, Zhou Enlai
reassured Che Guevara: “it does not have to be repaid.”32
Instead, Zhou wanted to buy diplomatic recognition. From 1969 to 1970,
China’s annual foreign aid increased 15-​fold. The following year, the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) established diplomatic ties with fourteen aid
recipients. In 1971, Albania proposed that the PRC take up the China seat
in the United Nations (UN). Almost all Chinese aid recipients supported the
proposal, particularly African nations.33 As Mao Zedong trumpeted: “We
were lifted into the UN by our African brothers.”34
In reviewing the heady days of China’s aid program, Chinese scholars tend
to agree that “foreign aid was an important strategic tool for implementing
China’s concept of a peaceful foreign policy.”35 They recognize that foreign
aid played a crucial role in shoring up Beijing’s diplomatic position, encour-
aging countries such as Albania and Mongolia to “at least remain neutral” in
the Sino-​Soviet split while helping Beijing break down the isolation imposed
by Western sanctions.36 Some scholars still praise Mao’s bold use of “eco-
nomics to promote politics” (以经促政) in contrast to today’s more conser-
vative leaders, who use “politics to promote economics” (以政促经).37
Yet, the costs of Mao’s ambition soon became clear. By 1973, official de-
velopment assistance (ODA) spending equaled two percent of China’s GDP,
24 Orchestration

absorbing an astonishing 6.9 percent of total government expenditures—​

25 percent larger than China’s educational budget.38 While acknowledging
the success of Beijing’s “artful application of checkbook diplomacy,” experts
criticize Mao-​era aid as excessive and misguided.39 “The individuals who
designed China’s aid policies primarily considered political and security
interests, but ignored economic interests,” explains a Peking University
professor. “Because of this, China’s true national interests suffered.”40 By
1980, an official State Council assessment denounced China’s aid as “unsus-
tainable . . . particularly in taking on overly-​heavy aid burdens toward cer-
tain countries without considering laws of economics, and wasting a great
amount of resources.”41 A Central Party School article went even further:

In many years, the amount of aid given far exceeded the levels which
Chinese people could afford . . . providing excessive amounts of foreign
assistance negatively influenced China’s own development and the living
standard of Chinese people. It even reached the point when there wasn’t
enough food for Chinese people. Buying food and sending it abroad exac-
erbated famine within China. Many people paid the price with their own
lives . . . this proves that providing excessive amounts of foreign assistance
cannot be sustained.42

As China embarked upon economic reforms, it dropped its aid levels and
began to accept assistance from non-​socialist states for the first time. By 1989,
China had become the world’s largest aid recipient, receiving $2.2 billion that
year.43 Japan quickly emerged as China’s largest bilateral aid provider, pro-
viding 330 billion yen ($1.4 billion) from 1979 to 1984.44 In 1978, the two
countries also signed a “countertrade” agreement whereby China agreed to
buy $10 billion in capital goods from Japan between 1978 and 1985 and pay
for them by exporting the equivalent value of oil.45 Western nations quickly
followed Japan’s example, establishing “compensatory trade” (补偿贸易)
in which the Chinese company first imported foreign equipment and ma-
chinery while paying later with raw materials. As a sweetener, they offered
low-​interest loans and aid projects. As Deborah Bräutigam explains:

China saw all of these tactics as beneficial for China’s development. Japan
and the West could use their modern technologies to exploit natural re-
sources that Chinese technology could not yet unlock. China could pay for
this investment later, with the resources that were uncovered. The subsidies
 Learning China’s History Lessons 25

and aid used by the West and Japan to wrap their naked hunger for China’s
markets meant that China was getting a discount on finance the country
needed for its modernization.46

In the early 1980s, China began to incorporate similar countertrade

agreements in its own aid programs, to swap unpaid debt for equity in former
aid projects, and began issuing aid funds directly to Chinese companies to
build infrastructure abroad, ensuring, in one official’s phrase, “a friendly pro-
ject and a friendly price.”47

Using the Market to Serve the Nation

In the 1950s, Chinese policymakers deployed the lure of their domestic

market to eviscerate the US-​led embargo. This success encouraged a similar
effort two decades later. Seeking to erode US constraints on high-​technology
exports to China, Deng Xiaoping promised his American hosts in 1979 that
expanding economic ties would be “mutually beneficial.” Deng pledged
that China would import food products and advanced technology from
the United States, paid for by exporting China’s coal, nonferrous and rare
metals, and chemical and handicraft products.48 Anxious about the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration responded favorably by
expanding US high-​tech exports to China, marking the onset of a “golden
age” in US-​China–​Japan relations.49
Leveraging market access again proved useful following Beijing’s vio-
lent suppression of the June 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square. As China
once again found itself targeted by an array of US-​led sanctions, Chinese
policymakers returned to an inducement strategy, using the lure of China’s
massive domestic market.50 Once again, Japan was among the first to crack.
In July 1990, Tokyo promised to resume foreign aid to China, dropped
most of its China sanctions, and urged other G-​7 states to follow suit. Deng
Xiaoping responded effusively, praising Japan for its timely willingness to
“send charcoal in snowy weather” (雪中送炭).51 By expanding its aid to
African countries, Beijing also successfully encouraged many of them to ig-
nore the US-​led sanctions.52 This successful use of market leverage and for-
eign assistance to erode the international sanctions “marked a major success
for China’s economic diplomacy,” proclaim Li Wei and Sun Yi.53
26 Orchestration

Experiencing China’s market power encouraged strategists’ interest in

Hirschman’s explanation of how larger countries gain “vulnerability inter-
dependence” over smaller states.54 Chang and Cheng describe “attraction ec-
onomic power” (吸引性经济权) in similar fashion: “the use of incentives
and the established structure of interests to increase the dependence of other
international actors, thus providing economic benefits in order to influence
other actors’ actions.”55 They add:

Offering incentives does not mean simply giving things away. When a
country’s actions conflict with China’s national interests or policies, we can
use our economic power to intervene and influence others’ choices. China
can adjust its regulations over market access as a pointed economic incen-
tive to encourage foreign companies or countries to shift in ways beneficial
for China’s national interests.56

Xue Benhui and Wang Li explain that Taiwan’s “economic marginalization”

due to its dependence upon China “provides an opportunity for economic
sanctions” and creates a “bargaining chip” for Beijing.57 Junhua Wu simi-
larly extols the “psychological impact” of Beijing’s “economic achievements”
in enhancing Japan’s relative trade dependence upon China.58 As Zhang
Xiangzhen explains:

The attractiveness of our country’s domestic market is our most valuable

bargaining chip, but this economic card is not easy to play. Above all, we
have to expand the positive contribution of our imports to the economic
development and consumption levels of the people [in the target country].
At the same time, by deploying other diplomatic chips, we can engage in an
‘exchange of interests’ [利益兑换].59

In sum, China’s modern history bequeathed powerful lessons for Chinese

strategists on the potential leverage derived from economic dependence, the
strategic utility of foreign aid, and the power generated from China’s vast do-
mestic market. These history lessons soon began to shape strategic thinking
on economic statecraft.
 Learning China’s History Lessons 27

Turning Wealth into Power

Chinese academic discussions of “economic diplomacy” (经济外交)

emerged in the mid-​1980s.60 By the 1990s, China’s Japan scholars brought
the term into the academic mainstream, cautiously praising Japan’s pre-​
1972 “people-​to-​people economic diplomacy” toward China, and Japan’s
post-​WWII strategic use of foreign aid to Southeast Asia.61 The concept re-
ceived official endorsement at the August 2004 National Working Meeting
on Economic Diplomacy toward Developing Countries, as Premier Wen
Jiabao lauded economic diplomacy as a “win-​win” (双赢) mode of foreign
policy.62 In his March 5, 2005, Annual Work Report to the People’s Congress
and in an August 2005 meeting of Chinese embassy representatives, Wen
reiterated the importance of economic diplomacy in China’s foreign policy,
firmly establishing the concept in China’s political lexicon.63
Chinese definitions of “economic diplomacy” (经济外交) generally in-
clude the use of diplomatic resources to advance China’s economic interests
and using economic resources to advance foreign policy objectives: two
distinct concepts in most Western scholarship—​including this study.64 For
instance, Song Guoyou characterizes economic diplomacy as “economics
and foreign policy advancing each other,” while Zhang Xiaotong envisions
“mutual conversion between wealth and power” (财富与权力相互转化).65
Zhang uses the term “economic statecraft” (经济外交术) in terms parallel to
this study: “using economic means to advance foreign policy goals.”66 Chang
and Cheng use instead “economic power” (经济权力), defined as “a country
using economic resources to influence external actors’ actions or their pol-
icies.”67 Li Wei similarly defines China’s “financial statecraft” as the use of
financial resources to advance foreign policy goals.68 Despite varying ter-
minology, the tools are familiar. Chang and Li, for instance, include within
“economic diplomacy . . . trade and investment, natural resources, finance,
ODA, economic sanctions, international economic institutions, and other
resources.”69 Commonly cited examples include sanctions, foreign aid,
free trade agreements, infrastructure projects, high-​speed rail, and RMB
internationalization.70
While reflecting China’s diverse historical experience, Chinese
conceptions of economic statecraft remain grounded in pragmatic Realism.
Assuming the fungibility of economic resources, experts fume over Beijing’s
failures “to turn our strengths into results.”71 Beijing’s inability to counter US
pressure on RMB exchange rates in the early 2000s, for instance, revealed
28 Orchestration

that China’s economic statecraft remained “immature . . . insufficient to pro-

tect our national interests.”72 As Zhao Kejin insisted in the Party School’s
Study Times in 2010: “China’s economic advantage has not been translated
into strategic advantage. We still lack a diplomatic strategy that focuses on
increasing our international political influence—​this is a very urgent task.”73
“Six years of the ‘Go Out’ policy has enabled China to accumulate a great deal
of strategic capital,” Zhang Shuguang urges. “We should more actively use ec-
onomic measures to achieve our strategic and political goals.”74
“As China’s economic strength increases, economic statecraft is assuming
ever greater significance within China’s overall foreign policy,” former am-
bassador Ye Hao explains. “China today absolutely has the capacity to de-
velop a comprehensive strategy deploying economic resources to enhance
the power of our global foreign policy and bolster our international influ-
ence.”75 “Although China pursues mutual benefit,” a leading military scholar
insists, “the primary obligation of economic statecraft is to ensure that China
maintains preferential access (自身优势) to strategic resources.”76 As Yan
Xuetong, a leading Realist, announced in 2014:

In the future, China will decisively favor those who side with it with eco-
nomic benefits and even security protections. On the contrary, those who
are hostile to China will face much more sustained policies of sanctions and
isolation.77

Amidst the inevitable diversity of perspectives are three common

assumptions, to which we now turn: confidence that economic resources can
be deployed for both strategic leverage and reassurance; faith that economic
statecraft can concurrently benefit both China and recipient countries; and
a belief that the interests of Chinese enterprises can be neatly aligned with
Beijing’s foreign policy goals. Encouraged by their historical successes,
Chinese strategists remain largely unconcerned by the obvious tensions
within, and across, these three assumptions.

Buying Trust

Drawing on Mao’s diplomatic successes of the 1960s, Chinese strategists

widely presume that economic statecraft can help ease anxieties amidst
China’s rise. Chen Demin explains: “economic diplomacy enables China
 Learning China’s History Lessons 29

to adopt ‘non-​ confrontation’ (非对抗) foreign policies,” thus reducing

“conflicts of interest.”78 Similar to “cultural” and “multilateral” diplomacy, ec-
onomic diplomacy can augment China’s “soft power.”79 By easing regional
anxieties, it also supports the Hu-​Wen regional policy of “view neighbors
positively; treat neighbors as partners” (与邻为善, 以邻为伴).80 As a 2010
editorial notes: “having friends is the foundation for building our great
power foreign policy; if we have friends, then we will have a positive interna-
tional environment.”81
While agreeing that economic diplomacy can promote “friendship”
(友谊) between China and its neighbors, Wang Lijuan insists that eco-
nomic tools concurrently offer strategic leverage.82 China’s economic state-
craft toward the Philippines, for instance, can “peacefully secure access to
natural resources and other key factors of production” while simultaneously
easing diplomatic tensions.83 Zhang Shuguang calls for deploying economic
“weapons” (武器) against major powers while offering incentives toward
smaller, weaker states.84 Fu Xiaoqiang, a scholar affiliated with the Ministry
of State Security, explains that “certain acts by the US . . . have created a situ-
ation in which neighboring countries rely on China economically, but on the
US for security. We plan to use our economic strength in order to break this
stalemate.”85 These experts appear unconcerned with the likelihood of such
economic pressure undermining Beijing’s reassurance efforts.

Doing Good While Doing Well

Chinese policymakers and experts also rarely see a tension between helping
China and helping recipients. For some, Japan’s post-​WWII infrastructure
support and strategic use of aid to promote its exports and investments
into China and Southeast Asia offer a model for how to “promote the mu-
tual development of donor and recipient countries.”86 Diplomats similarly
praise the United States’ Marshall Plan and Japan’s strategic use of postwar
reparations.87 These historical examples encourage policymakers’ confidence
in strategic foreign aid. As Minister of Commerce Chen Deming explains,
China’s foreign aid helps recipients and promotes economic cooperation,
while enhancing Chinese firms’ “international competitiveness.”88 For in-
stance, development assistance bolsters China’s Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI) by making projects more attractive to recipient countries while facili-
tating Chinese companies’ entry into overseas markets.89 Ding Xueliang thus
30 Orchestration

insists that China’s aid recipients should be required to purchase Chinese

products or ensure other economic benefits for China.90
Experts argue that China’s economic statecraft can benefit overseas
recipients while also addressing Chinese problems such as industrial overca-
pacity.91 Zhu Feng sees one of the main tasks of China’s economic diplomacy
as “fostering favorable conditions overseas for China’s domestic indus-
trial development and economic transformation,” an argument echoed by
NDRC Vice-​Chairman Hu Zucai and by Ding Yifan, Vice-​Director of the
State Council’s World Economics Research Institute.92 Cui Shaozhong agrees
that a major task for China’s economic diplomacy is to improve the polit-
ical environment for Chinese investment abroad.93 Given this alluring pos-
sibility of advancing multiple policy goals, such arguments have attracted
leaders’ support. In 2004, President Hu Jintao praised economic diplomacy
as augmenting Beijing’s strategy of “attracting in [foreign investment] and
sending out [Chinese companies]” (引进来和走出去).94 A decade later,
Foreign Minister Wang Yi pledged: “We will vigorously pursue economic
diplomacy, deepen win-​win cooperation with other countries and create
more favorable conditions for the transformation and upgrading of China’s
economy.”95
Designing and deploying economic statecraft techniques that advance
both Chinese and recipients’ economic interests, and that exert strategic lev-
erage while still reassuring nervous neighbors, is already a daunting task. It
appears nearly impossible when we recall that most economic statecraft is
carried out by commercial actors. For most Western analysts, tensions be-
tween commercial actors’ pursuit of profit and the state’s diplomatic object-
ives represent a considerable—​perhaps insurmountable—​obstacle. Yet for
Chinese strategists armed with the confidence of history, such tensions elicit
few concerns.

Enterprises as the “East Wind”

Official Chinese descriptions of economic statecraft downplay potential

contradictions between corporate priorities and foreign policy objectives.
A rosy image of seamless government-​business cooperation emerges, for in-
stance, from a 2013 Xinhua article re-​posted on the central government’s of-
ficial website. Top leaders, it explains, “are the preeminent representatives of
China’s economic diplomacy . . . behind Chinese leaders are the beneficiaries
 Learning China’s History Lessons 31

of China’s economic diplomacy: leading firms and sectors.” Grounded in the

confidence that “the world needs China’s experience, technology, and cap-
ital,” China uses “the logic of the market” to expand ties abroad. “Enterprises
are like an ‘East Wind.’ They are the most important starting point for China’s
economic diplomacy and the most important entities for implementation.”96
Chinese experts generally share this presumption that government officials
and Chinese companies enjoy common interests. “The main reason China’s
economic diplomacy has been so successful,” Fu Yunwei explains, “has been
China’s rapid economic growth, and the close overlap between politics and
economics within China.”97 Xue Lei describes diplomat–​corporate ties as a
“relationship of mutual support and mutual dependence.”98 Close business-​
government cooperation, six leading scholars conclude, are at the “core” of
China’s “unique model of economic diplomacy.”99

Justifying China’s Economic Statecraft

Chinese strategists might believe in the effectiveness of their ambitious ap-

proach to economic statecraft, but how do they justify it? In China, where ide-
ological and/​or moral rationalizations accompany any major policy thrust,
developing a coherent justification for Beijing’s pragmatic, self-​interested
economic statecraft is essential. Three interlocking moral claims, reflecting
China’s collective identity and historical experiences, stand out.

Skepticism of the West

Chinese experts’ justification for their country’s pursuit of “mutual benefits”

through foreign aid is grounded in their Realist-​derived skepticism about
why countries give assistance.100 They repeatedly cite Hans Morganthau’s
1962 argument that national interests drive foreign aid decisions.101 “From
the perspective of Realism,” Tian Dewen explains, “foreign aid is an act of
exchange between a donor country and a recipient country . . . we must pay
particular attention to how aid policy advances the national interests of the
donor country.”102 Commerce Ministry (MOFCOM) researchers add:

For major powers, aid is an important foreign policy tool. While promoting
the social and economic development of recipient countries, it also serves
32 Orchestration

the national interests of the donor country . . . it always has as its primary
goal promoting the donor country’s economy, and particularly promoting
the donor country’s exports and supporting private companies’ investments
abroad.103

Hu Zaiyong contrasts Western countries’ surreptitious pursuit of “polit-

ical goals” through “unconditional foreign aid” with China’s more straight-
forward and transparent “mutual benefits” approach.104 “Western donors,”
Ding and Yang argue, “provide foreign aid with specific strategic, political,
economic, and humanitarian objectives. To achieve these goals, donors set
additional conditions to directly influence the countries in need of aid.”105
A conference report puts it bluntly: the West uses aid as “a tool of economic,
political and military control over recipient countries.”106 For China, the his-
torical lessons are two-​fold: as a recipient country, avoid dependence; as a
donor, Beijing must ensure that its foreign aid advances its own diplomatic
interests.107
Chinese perspectives are widely supported by international scholarship
documenting how aid flows reflect donors’ economic, strategic, and ideolog-
ical interests.108 US aid, for instance, targets strategically important states,
while France and Australia overwhelmingly give to their former colonies.109
Even Sweden’s aid correlates more closely with its trade relations than hu-
manitarian needs.110 Domestic interests, a growing “securitization” of for-
eign aid, and the “aid industry” are also key drivers.111 As one quantitative
study concludes: “OECD members have little humanitarian motivation for
aid giving.”112

China as a Developing Country

In China, aligning new policies with established ideology eases dramatic

policy changes. When Deng Xiaoping was looking to shift foreign aid from
socialist solidarity toward economic pragmatism, he thus turned to the first
of Zhou Enlai’s 1954 Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, “equality and
mutual benefit,” informing a 1974 Politburo working group: “we must en-
sure that both the donor and the recipient country can receive benefits.”113
Proving useful, the rhetoric has endured. In 1982, Premier Zhao Ziyang told
his African hosts that China would continue to prioritize “equality and mu-
tual benefit,” explaining “it is precisely because we have difficulties that we
 Learning China’s History Lessons 33

urgently need mutual help.”114 China’s 2006 Africa White Paper used the
phrases “mutual” or “mutually” twenty times in eleven pages.115
“What stands out,” notes Julia Strauss, “is how consistent the dissemina-
tion of this discourse has been over the last half-​century; flexible enough to
continue to frame changing content and even accommodate quite radical
changes in policy direction.”116 The phrasing also enables China to claim the
moral high ground. As Zhai Dongsheng insists: “The Chinese government
and the Chinese people do not need to look down on aid recipients, using a
‘master’ perspective to understand aid recipient countries and citizens. Our
national perspective is one of equality . . . the relationship is one of equality
and of practical mutual benefit.”117
Beijing’s pragmatic egalitarianism is grounded in China’s collective iden-
tity as a developing country; in Zhou Enlai’s memorable phrase: “poor friends
in the same boat, rowing together.”118 “China is the world’s largest developing
country,” the 2014 ODA White Paper explained, and so “it has endeavored to
integrate the interests of the Chinese people with people of other countries,
providing assistance to the best of its ability to other developing countries.”119
The previous year, Foreign Minister Wang Yi insisted: “China is still a devel-
oping country; this remains a distinctive and guiding element in our foreign
policy.”120 Xi Jinping reiterated in October 2017: “China’s international status
as the world’s largest developing country has not changed.”121

It’s the Economy . . .

Drawing on China’s own experience, policymakers also insist that aid

should prioritize economic growth, and that promoting trade and invest-
ment is often more effective than simply providing aid.122 As Ex-​Im Bank
President Li Rougu told the 2007 World Economic Forum: “The solution
to all kinds of development challenges is to have economically sustainable
growth . . . .Everything should be focused on development, which is the over-
riding need.”123 Experts such as Mao Xiaojing insist that China’s combina-
tion of aid, trade, and investment has fostered sustained economic growth
in developing countries over the past decade.124 Win-​win is possible, agrees
Zhang Cuizhen. “The empirical results prove that China’s aid to Africa is
beneficial to both sides.”125
In aggregate, skepticism toward Western morality claims, self-​
identification of China as a developing country, and belief in the centrality of
34 Orchestration

economic growth provide a moral underpinning for China’s economic state-

craft. Grounded in Realist assumptions and underpinned by faith in the po-
tential for state–​corporate collaboration, these collective beliefs encourage
Chinese strategists in their ambitious pursuit of economic, strategic, and dip-
lomatic objectives through economic statecraft.

Minor Problems and Modest Solutions

One of the most powerful effects of collective beliefs is in shaping how

analysts identify problems and devise solutions. In this case, Chinese experts
define enterprise malfeasance, bureaucratic competition, and aid recipients’
ingratitude for Chinese assistance as minor problems requiring only limited
adjustments. Proposing practical, modest solutions reinforces strategists’
confidence and their underlying belief system.

Enterprise Malfeasance

Many Chinese experts recognize that Chinese firms’ aggressive commercial

expansion has fed anxiety and animosity abroad, as the Myanmar chapter
demonstrates. Yet instead of indicating the need for structural changes such
as sharper state–​corporate distinctions, to most experts enterprise malfea-
sance requires more government involvement. Xue Lei insists: “Chinese
diplomats should provide information, communication, and help with
concerns that these companies face, trying to reduce tensions between
Chinese companies and the local community.” He expects these strategies
will expand China’s access to natural resources while still enhancing China’s
diplomatic and strategic environment.126
Experts acknowledge that Beijing’s strategy of delegating responsibility to
enterprises encourages them to pursue their own interests. “Special interest
groups,” Zhang Shuguang warns, “should stand on the side of long-​term
overall national interests, not just advancing their own interests.”127 Zhang
Xiaotong explains: “one of the greatest challenges China faces in signing free
trade agreements is the strength of opposition or subversion by domestic
interest groups, even reaching the point of making it impossible to reach
agreements on certain trade deals.”128 Song Guoyu also highlights the risk of
“foreign policy being taken over by narrow local economic interests.” Yet his
Another random document with
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cutting in a whale way astern. I expected eventually to be hoisted into one
of the tops and cook aloft. Any well regulated galley is placed amidships,
where there is the least motion. This is an important consideration for a sea
cook. At best he is often obliged to make his soup like an acrobat, half on
his head and half on his heels and with the roof of his unsteady kitchen
trying to become the floor. My stove was not a marine stove. It had no rail
around the edges to guard the pots and kettles from falling off during extra
lurches. The Henry was a most uneasy craft, and always getting up extra
lurches or else trying to stand on her head or stern. Therefore, as she flew
up high astern when I was located in that quarter, she has in more than one
instance flung me bodily, in an unguarded moment, out of that galley door
and over that quarter-deck while a host of kettles, covers, and other culinary
utensils, rushed with clang and clatter out after me and with me as their
commander at their head. We all eventually terminated in the scuppers. I
will not, as usual, say “lee scuppers.” Any scupper was a lee scupper on that
infernal vessel. I endeavored to remedy the lack of a rail about this stove by
a system of wires attaching both pots and lids to the galley ceiling. I
“guyed” my chief culinary utensils. Still during furious oscillations of the
boat the pots would roll off their holes, and though prevented from falling,
some of them as suspended by these wires would swing like so many
pendulums, around and to and fro over the area of that stove.
That was the busiest year of my life. I was the first one up in the
morning, and the last save the watch to turn in at night. In this dry-goods
box of a kitchen I had daily to prepare a breakfast for seven men in the
cabin, and another for eleven in the forecastle; a dinner for the cabin and
another for the forecastle; likewise supper for the same. It was my business
to set the aristocratic cabin table, clear it off and wash the dishes three times
daily. I had to serve out the tea and coffee to the eleven men forward. The
cabin expected hot biscuit for breakfast, and frequently pie and pudding for
dinner. Above all men must the sea cook not only have a place for
everything and everything in its place, but he must have everything chocked
and wedged in its place. You must wash up your tea things, sometimes
holding on to the deck with your toes, and the washtub with one hand, and
wedging each plate, so soon as wiped, into a corner, so that it slide not away
and smash. And even then the entire dish-washing apparatus, yourself
included, slides gently across the deck to leeward. You can’t leave a fork, or
a stove-cover, or lid-lifter lying about indifferently but what it slides and
sneaks away with the roll of the vessel to some secret crevice, and is long
lost. When your best dinner is cooked in rough weather, it is a time of trial,
terror, and tribulation to bestow it safely on the cabin table. You must
harbor your kindling and matches as sacredly as the ancients kept their
household gods, for if not, on stormy mornings, with the drift flying over
the deck and everything wet and clammy with the water-surcharged air of
the sea, your breakfast will be hours late through inability to kindle a fire,
whereat the cook catches it from that potentate of the sea, “the old man,”
and all the mates raise their voices and cry with empty stomachs, “Let him
be accursed.”
One great trial with me lay in the difficulty of distinguishing fresh water
from salt—I mean by the eye. We sea cooks use salt water to boil beef and
potatoes in: or rather to boil beef and pork and steam the potatoes. So I
usually had a pail of salt water and one of fresh standing by the galley door.
Sometimes these got mixed up. I always found this out after making salt-
water coffee, but then it was too late. They were particular, especially in the
cabin, and did not like salt-water coffee. On any strictly disciplined vessel
the cook for such an offence would have been compelled to drink a quart or
so of his own coffee, but some merciful cherub aloft always interfered and
got me out of bad scrapes. Another annoyance was the loss of spoons and
forks thrown accidentally overboard as I flung away my soup and grease-
clouded dishwater. It was indeed bitter when, as occupied in these daily
washings I allowed my mind to drift to other and brighter scenes, to see the
glitter of a spoon or fork in the air or sinking in the deep blue sea, and then
to reflect that already there were not enough spoons to go around, or forks
either. Our storeroom was the cabin. Among other articles there was a keg
of molasses. One evening after draining a quantity I neglected to close the
faucet tightly. Molasses therefore oozed over the cabin floor all night. The
cabin was a freshet of molasses. Very early in the morning the captain,
getting out of his bunk, jumped both stockinged feet into the saccharine
deluge. Some men will swear as vigorously in a foot-bath of molasses as
they would in one of coal-tar. He did. It was a very black day for me, and
life generally seemed joyless and uninviting; but I cooked on.
The Henry was full of mice. These little creatures would obtrude
themselves in my dough wet up for fresh bread over night, become bemired
and die therein. Once a mouse thus dead was unconsciously rolled up in a
biscuit, baked with it, and served smoking hot for the morning’s meal aft. It
was as it were an involuntary meat-pie. Of course the cabin grumbled; but
they would grumble at anything. They were as particular about their food as
an habitué of Delmonico’s. I wish now at times I had saved that biscuit to
add to my collection of odds-and-endibles. Still even the biscuit proved but
an episode in my career. I cooked on, and those I served stood aghast, not
knowing what would come next.
After live months of self-training I graduated on pies. I studied and
wrought out the making of pies unassisted and untaught. Mine were sea
mince pies; material, salt-beef soaked to freshness and boiled tender, dried
apples and molasses. The cabin pronounced them good. This was one of the
few feathers in my culinary cap. Of course, their goodness was relative. On
shore such a pie would be scorned. But on a long sea-voyage almost any
combination of flour, dried fruit and sugar will pass. Indeed, the appetite,
rendered more vigorous and perhaps appreciative by long deprivation from
luxuries, will take not kindly to dried apples alone. The changes in the
weekly bill of fare at sea run something thus: Sundays and Thursdays are
“duff days”; Tuesday, bean day; Friday, codfish and potato day; some
vessels have one or two special days for pork; salt beef, hardtack, tea and
coffee are fluids and solids to fall back on every day. I dreaded the making
of duffs, or flour puddings, to the end of the voyage. Rarely did I attain
success with them. A duff is a quantity of flour and yeast, or yeast-powder,
mixed, tied up in a bag and boiled until it is light. Plum-duff argues the
insertion of a quantity of raisins. Plain duff is duff without raisins. But the
proper cooking of a duff is rather a delicate matter. If it boils too long the
flour settles into a hard, putty-like mass whereunto there is neither
sponginess, lightness, nor that porousness which delights the heart of a cook
when he takes his duff from the seething caldron. If the duff does not boil
long enough, the interior is still a paste. If a duff stops boiling for ever so
few minutes, great damage results. And sometimes duff won’t do properly,
anyway. Mine were generally of the hardened species, and the plums
evinced a tendency to hold mass meetings at the bottom. Twice the hands
forward rebelled at my duffs, and their Committee on Culinary Grievances
bore them aft to the door of the cabin and deposited them there unbroken
and uneaten for the “Old Man’s” inspection. Which public demonstration I
witnessed from my galley door, and when the duff deputation had retired, I
emerged and swiftly and silently bore that duff away before the Old Man
had finished his dinner below. It is a hard ordeal thus to feel one’s self the
subject of such an outbreak of popular indignation. But my sympathies now
are all with the sailors. A spoiled duff is a great misfortune in the forecastle
of a whaler, where neither pie nor cake nor any other delicacy, save boiled
flour and molasses sauce, come from month’s end to month’s end.
In St. Bartholomew’s or Turtle bay, as the whalers call it, where for five
months we lay, taking and curing abalones, our food was chiefly turtle. This
little harbor swarmed with them. After a few hours’ hunt one of our
whaleboats would return with five or six of these unwieldy creatures in the
bottom, some so large and heavy as to require hoisting over the side. Often
the green fat under the callipee, or under shell, lay three inches in thickness.
I served up turtle fried, turtle stewed, quarters of turtle roasted and stuffed
like loins of veal, turtle plain boiled and turtles’ flippers, boiled to a jelly
and pickled. A turtle is a variously flavored being. Almost every portion has
a distinct and individual taste. After all, old Jake, our black boat-steerer,
showed us the most delicate part of the turtle, and one previously thrown
away. This was the tripe, cleansed of a thin inner skin. When the cabin table
had once feasted on stewed turtle tripe they called for it continuously. After
many trials and much advice and suggestion, I learned to cook acceptably
the abalone. The eatable part of this shellfish when fresh is as large as a
small tea saucer. There are two varieties, the white and black. The white is
the best. Cut up in pieces and stewed, as I attempted at first, the abalone
turned out stewed bits of gutta percha; fried, it was fried gutta percha. Then
a man from another vessel came on board, who taught me to inclose a
single abalone in a small canvas bag and then pound it to a jelly with a
wooden mallet. This process got the honey out of the abalone. The remains
of four or five abalones thus pounded to a pulp, and then allowed to simmer
for a couple of hours, would make a big tureen of the most delicious soup
man ever tasted, every drop of which, on cooling, hardened to the
consistency of calves’-foot jelly. When my cabin boarders had once become
infected with abalone soup they wanted me to keep bringing it along. The
Americans do not know or use all the food in the sea which is good.
I was an experimental cook, and once or twice, while cutting-in whale,
tried them with whale meat. The flesh lying under the blubber somewhat
resembles beef in color, and is so tender as easily to be torn apart by the
hands. But whale meat is not docile under culinary treatment.
Gastronomically, it has an individuality of its own, which will keep on
asserting itself, no matter how much spice and pepper is put upon it. It is a
wild, untamed steed. I propounded it to my guests in the guise of sausages,
but when the meal was over the sausages were there still. It can’t be done.
Shark can. Shark’s is a sweet meat, much resembling that of the swordfish,
but no man will ever eat a whale, at least an old one. The calves might
conduct themselves better in the frying-pan. We had many about us whose
mothers we had killed, but we never thought of frying them. When a whaler
is trying out oil, she is blackened with the greasy soot arising from the
burning blubber scraps from stem to stern. It falls like a storm of black
snow-flakes. They sift into the tiniest crevice. Of all this my cookery got its
full share. It tinged my bread and even my pies with a funereal tinge of
blackness. The deck at such times was covered with “horse pieces” up to
the top of the bulwarks. “Horse pieces” are chunks of blubber a foot or so in
length, that being one stage of their reduction to the size necessary for the
try-pots. I have introduced them here for the purpose of remarking that on
my passage to and fro, from galley to cabin, while engaged in laying the
cloth and arranging our services of gold plate and Sèvres ware, I had to
clamber, wade, climb, and sometimes, in my white necktie and swallow-tail
coat, actually crawl over the greasy mass with the silver tureen full of
“consommé” or “soup Julien,” while I held the gilt-edged and enamelled
menu between my teeth. Those were trying-out times for a maritime head
butler.
The cook socially does not rank high at sea. He stands very near the
bottom round of the ladder. He is the subject of many jests and low
comparisons. This should not be. The cook should rank next or near to the
captain. It is the cook who prepares the material which shall put mental and
physical strength into human bodies. He is, in fact, a chemist, who carries
on the last external processes with meat, flour, and vegetables necessary to
prepare them for their invisible and still more wonderful treatment in the
laboratory which every man and woman possesses—the stomach—whereby
these raw materials are converted not only into blood, bone, nerve, sinew,
and muscle, but into thoughts. A good cook may help materially to make
good poetry. An indigestible beefsteak, fried in grease to leather, may, in the
stomach of a General, lose a battle on which shall depend the fate of
nations. A good cook might have won the battle. Of course, he would
receive no credit therefor, save the conviction in his own culinary soul, that
his beefsteak properly and quickly broiled was thus enabled to digest itself
properly in the stomach of the General, and thereby transmit to and through
the General’s organism that amount of nerve force and vigor, which, acting
upon the brain, caused all his intelligence and talent to attain its maximum,
and thereby conquer his adversary. That’s what a cook may do. This would
be a far better and happier world were there more really good cooks on land
and sea. And when all cooks are Blots or Soyers, then will we have a
society to be proud of.
 CHAPTER VII.

SIGHTS WHILE COOKING.

St. Bartholomew or Turtle Bay is a small, almost circular, sheet of

water and surrounded by some of the dreariest territory in the world. The
mountains which stand about it seem the cooled and hardened deposit of a
volcano. Vegetation there is none, save cactus and other spined, horned, and
stinging growths. Of fresh water, whether in springs, rivulets, or brooks,
there is none. Close by our boat-landing was the grave of a mother and
child, landed a few years previous from a wreck, who had perished of thirst.
Coyotes, hares, and birds must have relieved thirst somewhere, possibly
from the dews, which are very copious. Our decks and rigging in the
morning looked as though soaked by a heavy shower. Regularly at night the
coyotes came down and howled over that lone grave, and the bass to their
fiend-like yelping were furnished by the boom of the Pacific surges on the
reef outside. To these gloomy sounds in the night stillness and blackness,
there used for a time to be added the incessant groaning of a wretched
Sandwich Islander, who, dying of consumption, would drag himself at night
on deck to avoid disturbing the sleep of the crowded forecastle. Small hope
for help is there for any thus afflicted on a whaler. There is no physician but
the Captain, and his practice dares not go much beyond a dose of salts or
castor-oil. The poor fellow was at last found dead, early one evening, in his
bunk, while his countrymen were singing, talking, laughing, and smoking
about him. It was a relief to all, for his case was hopeless, and such misery,
so impossible to relieve, is terrible to witness on a mere fishing-schooner so
crowded as ours. The dead man was buried at sea without any service,
much to the disgust of one of our coopers, who, although not a “professor,”
believed that such affairs should be conducted in an orthodox, ship-shape
fashion. Some one, after the corpse had slid overboard, remarked, “Well,
he’s dead and buried,” whereat the cooper muttered, “He’s dead, but he
ain’t what I call buried.” I don’t think the Captain omitted the burial service
through any indifference, but rather from a sensitiveness to officiate in any
such semi-clerical fashion.
 Some rocks not far from our anchorage were seen covered at early dawn
every morning with thousands of large black sea-birds. They were thickly
crowded together and all silent and immovable, until apparently they had
finished some Quaker form of morning devotion, when they commenced
flying off, not all at once, but in series of long straggling flocks. In similar
silence and order they would return at night from some far-off locality.
Never during all the months of our stay did we hear a sound from them.
Morning after morning with the earliest light this raven-colored host were
ever on their chosen rocks, brooding as it were ere their flight over some
solemnity peculiar to their existence.
The silent birds gone, there came regularly before sunrise a wonderful
mirage. Far away and low down in the distant seaward horizon there
seemed vaguely shadowed forth long lines one above and behind the other
of towers, walls, battlements, spires and the irregular outline of some weird
ancient city. These shapes, seemingly motionless, in reality changed from
minute to minute, yet the movement was not perceptible. Now it was a long
level wall with an occasional watch-tower. Then the walls grew higher and
higher, and there towered a lofty, round, cone-shaped structure, with a
suggestion of a flight of circular steps on the outside, as in the old-
fashioned Sunday-school books was seen pictured the tower of Babel. It
would reveal itself in varying degrees of distinctness. But when the eye,
attracted by some other feature of the spectacle, turned again in its direction
it was gone. A haze of purple covered as with a gauzy veil these beautiful
morning panoramas. Gazed at steadily it seemed as a dream realized in
one’s waking moments. It was sometimes for me a sight fraught with
dangerous fascination, and often as I looked upon it, forgetting all else for
the moment, have I been recalled disagreeably to my mundane sphere of
slops, soot, smoke and dish-rags, as I heard the ominous sizzle and splutter
of the coffee boiling over, or scented on the morning air that peculiar odor,
full of alarm to the culinary soul, the odor of burning bread in the oven. ’Tis
ever thus that the fondest illusions of life are rudely broken in upon by the
vulgar necessities and accidents of earthly existence.
There were ten Sandwich Islanders in the forecastle of the Henry, one
big Jamaica negro, who acted as a sort of leader for them, and no white
men. These Kanakas were docile, well-behaved, could read in their own
language, had in their possession many books printed in their own tongue,
and all seemed to invest their spare cash in clothes. They liked fish, very
slightly salted, which they would eat without further cooking, plenty of
bread, and, above all things, molasses. Molasses would tempt any of these
Islanders from the path of rectitude. When not at work they were either
talking or singing. Singly or in groups of two or three they would sit about
the deck at night performing a monotonous chant of a few notes. This they
would keep up for hours. That chant got into my head thirty-three years ago
and it has never got out since. Change of scene, of life, of association,
increase of weight, more morality, more regular habits, marriage, all have
made no difference. That Kanaka chant, so many thousand times heard on
the Southern Californian coast, will sometimes strike up of its own accord,
until it tires me out with its imagined ceaseless repetition. It’s there, a
permanent fixture. Recollection will wake it up.
So unceasing was the gabble of these Kanakas that one day I asked Jake,
the negro boat-steerer, who understood their language, what they found to
talk so much about. “Oh, dey talk about anyting,” said he; “dey talk a whole
day ’bout a pin.” Whereat I retired to my maritime scrubbery and kitchen
and varied my usual occupation midst my pots, pans, and undeveloped
plum duffs with wondering if the simpler, or, as we term them, the inferior
races of men are not more inclined to express their thoughts audibly than
the superior. I do not think an idea could present itself to a Kanaka without
his talking it out to somebody.
But some of these simple children of the Pacific isles used to pilfer hot
biscuits from my galley when I was absent. In vain I set hot stove covers in
front of the door for them to step on and burn their bare feet. I burned
myself on the iron I had prepared for my recently civilized, if not converted,
heathen brother. Both the superior and inferior races often went barefooted
on the Henry while in the lower latitudes.
At times, leaving a portion of the crew at the St. Bartholomew’s bay
station to collect and cure abalone, the schooner cruised about the coast for
sea-elephant. Not far from the bay are the islands of Cedros (or Cedars),
Natividad and some others. The first we saw of Cedros was her tree-
covered mountain-tops floating, as it were, in the air above us on a sea of
fog. This lifting, we were boarded by a boat containing two men. They
proved to be two Robinson Crusoes, by name Miller and Whitney, who had
been alone on the island nearly six months. They, with others, had fitted out
in San Francisco a joint-stock vessel and were left with a supply of
provisions on Cedros to seal. Their vessel was long overdue, their
provisions down to the last pound of biscuits, and they were living largely
on fish and venison, for though Cedros is many miles from the main land,
deer have got there somehow, as well as rattlesnakes. Their vessel never did
return, for their Captain ran away with her and sold her in some South
American port. Miller and Whitney joined our crew and made the
remainder of the voyage with us. They brought on board all their worldly
goods in two small trunks; also, a kettleful of boiled venison, a treat which
they were very glad to exchange for some long-coveted salt pork. They
reported that a “stinker” was lying among the rocks ashore. A “stinker” in
whaleman’s parlance is a dead whale. In giving things names a whaleman is
largely influenced by their most prominent traits or qualities, and the
odorous activity of a dead whale can be felt for miles. They told us, also,
that they had nineteen barrels of seal oil stored on the island of Natividad.
Natividad is but a bleached-topped, guano-covered rock. We sailed thither
but found no oil. The Captain who had stolen their vessel also included the
oil. Miller and Whitney proved very useful men. Whitney was a powerful
talker. Miller never spoke unless under compulsion. Whether in their six
months of Cedros isolation such a pair had been well mated is a matter on
which there may be variance of opinion. Perhaps from a colloquial
standpoint some if not many long-married men can best tell. Miller was a
Vermonter, and had spent seventeen years of his life roaming about among
seldom-visited South Sea islands. Could his tongue have been permanently
loosened and his brain stimulated to conversational activity, his might have
been a most interesting story. Once in a great while there came from him a
slight shower of sentences and facts which fell gratefully on our parched
ears, but as a rule the verbal drought was chronic. He had an irritating
fashion also of intonating the first portions of his sentences in an audible
key and then dying away almost to a whisper. This, when the tale was
interesting, proved maddening to his hearers. He spoke once of living on an
island whose natives were almost white, and the women well formed and
finer looking than any of the Polynesian race he had ever seen. Polygamy
was not practised; they were devoted to one wife; and their life, cleanliness
and manners, as he described them, made, with the addition of a little of
one’s own imagination, a pleasing picture. Miller’s greatest use to mankind
lay in his hands, in which all his brainpower concentrated instead of his
tongue. From splicing a cable to skinning a seal, he was an ultra proficient.
Others might tell how and tell well, but Miller did it. Talking seemed to
fatigue him. Every sentence ere completed fell in a sort of a swoon.
In St. Bartholomew’s, alias Turtle, Bay, we lay four months, taking
abalones. All hands were called every morning at four o’clock. Breakfast
was quickly dispatched, their noon lunch prepared, and everybody save
myself was away from the vessel by five. That was the last I saw of them
until sunset, and I was very glad to be rid of the whole gang and be left
alone with my own thoughts, pots, pans, and kettles. The abalone clings to
the surf-washed rocks by suction. It has but one outer shell. San Francisco
is very familiar with their prismatic hues inside, and the same outside when
ground and polished. Heaps of those shells, three feet in height and
bleached to a dead white by the sun, lay on the beaches about us. Of
unbleached and lively-hued shells we took on board several tons. They
were sent to Europe, and there used for inlaid work. The live abalone must
be pried off the rock with stout iron chisels or wedges. It was rough work
collecting them from the rocky ledges in a heavy surf. Carried to the curing
depot on shore, the entrails were cut away and the round, solid chunk of
meat left was first boiled and then dried in the sun. An inferior pearl is often
found within the body of the abalone. Our one Chinaman, Ah Sam, was
chef of the abalone-curing kitchen on shore. He was shipped for that
purpose. One live abalone will cling to the back of another too tightly to be
pulled off easily by hand, and you may in this way pile them on top of one
another, and thus erect a column of abalone as many feet in height as you
choose to build. These fish were intended for the Chinese market, and the
projectors of the voyage expected to get forty cents per pound for them in
San Francisco. When some forty tons had been cured we heard from a
passing steamer that the English had instituted another of their Christian
wars with China, for which reason abalones in San Francisco brought only
ten cents per pound. Then we stopped cooking abalones, hauled up our
anchor and hunted the sea-lion and the whale.
But while in St. Bartholomew’s Bay I was left alone on the vessel all day
with no companions save the gulls in the air and the sharks in the water.
Both were plentiful. The gulls made themselves especially sociable. They
would come boldly on board and feast on the quarters of turtle-meat hung
up in the rigging. Once I found one in the cabin pecking away at the crumbs
on the table. His gullible mind got into a terrible state on seeing me. I
whacked him to my heart’s content with the table-cloth. He experienced
great trouble in flying up the cabin stairway. In fact, he couldn’t steer
himself straight up stairs. His aim on starting himself was correct enough,
like that of many a young man or woman in commencing life; but instead of
going the straight and narrow path up the companionway he would bring up
against a deck beam. There is no limit to the feeding capacity of those
Pacific-coast gulls. The wonder is where it all goes to. I have
experimentally cut up and thrown in small pieces to a gull as much fat pork
as would make a meal for two men, and the gull has promptly swallowed it
all, waited for more, and visibly got no bigger. They never get fat.
Sometimes I tied two bits of meat to either end of a long string and flung it
overboard. Barely had it touched the water when the meat at either end was
swallowed by two of these bottomless scavengers, and they would fly away,
each pulling hard at the latest received contents of the other’s stomach. The
picture reminded me of some married lives. They pulled together, but they
didn’t pull the right way.
At low tide the shore would be lined with these birds vainly trying to fill
themselves with shellfish and such carrion as the waters had left. It couldn’t
be called feeding; a Pacific-coast gull does not feed, it seeks simply to fill
up the vast, unfathomable space within. Eternity is, of course, without end,
but the nearest approach to eternity must be the inside of a gull; I would say
stomach, but a stomach implies metes and bounds, and there is no proof that
there are any metes and bounds inside of a gull. It was good entertainment
to see the coyotes come down and manœuvre to catch the gulls. There was a
plain hard beach, perhaps a quarter of a mile wide, between coyote and gull.
Of course coyote couldn’t walk across this and eat gull up. So he went to
work to create an impression in gull’s mind that he was thereon other
business, and was quite indifferent, if not oblivious, to all gulls. He would
commence making long straight laps of half a mile on the beach. At the end
of each lap he would turn and run back a few feet nearer gull; back another
lap, another turn, and so on. But he wasn’t looking for a gull. He didn’t
know there was a gull in the world. He had some business straight ahead of
him which banished all the gulls in the world from his mind. He kept
forgetting something and had to run back for it. And the gull on the water’s
edge, trying to fill its void where men imagined a stomach to be, had no
fears of that coyote. It realized the momentous and all-absorbing character
of coyote’s business. There was no danger. So coyote, getting a little nearer
and a little nearer at each turn, suddenly shot out of his lap at a tangent, and
another gull was forever relieved of the impossible task of trying to fill
itself.
 CHAPTER VIII.

WHALING IN MARGUERITA BAY.

Marguerita Bay lies on the Mexican coast about 200 miles north of
Cape St. Lucas. On arriving the schooner was “kedged” up the lagoons
running parallel with the coast fully one hundred miles. This took two
weeks. We passed, as it were, through a succession of mill-ponds, filled
with low, green islands, whose dense shubbery extended to the water’s
edge. The trunks of a small umbrella-shaped tree were washed by the tides
to the height of several feet, and thickly incrusted with small oysters. When
we wanted oysters we went on shore and chopped down a boatload of trees.
Is it necessary to remark that the trees did not grow the oysters. The oysters
grew on the trees, and they were as palatable as so many copper cents,
whose taste they resembled. When cooked, the coppery taste departed. The
channel through these lagoons was very crooked. It was necessary to stake
out a portion at low water, when it ran a mere creek through an expanse of
hard sand, sometimes a mile from either shore. At high water all this would
be covered to a depth of six or seven feet. The Henry grounded at each ebb,
and often keeled over at an angle of forty-five. From our bulwarks it was
often possible to jump on dry ground. This keeling-over process, twice
repeated every twenty-four hours, was particularly hard on the cook, for the
inconvenience resulting from such a forty-five-degree angle of inclination
extended to all things within his province. My stove worked badly at the
angle of forty-five. The kettle could be but half-filled, and only boiled
where the water was shallowest inside. The cabin table could only be set at
an angle of forty-five. So that while the guests on the upper side had great
difficulty in preventing themselves from slipping off their seats on and over
that table, those on the lower side had equal difficulty in keeping
themselves up to a convenient feeding distance. Captain Reynolds, at the
head of the board, had a hard lot in the endeavor to maintain his dignity and
sitting perpendicularly at the same time on the then permanent and not
popular angle of forty-five. But I, steward, butler, cook, and cabin boy, bore
the hardest tribulation of all in carrying my dishes across the deck, down
the cabin stairs, and arranging them on a table at an angle of forty-five. Of
course, at this time the rack used in rough weather to prevent plates and
platters from slipping off was brought into permanent use. Transit from
galley to cabin was accomplished by crawling on two legs and one arm,
thus making of myself a peripatetic human triangle, while the unoccupied
hand with difficulty bore aloft the soup-tureen. It was then I appreciated the
great advantages afforded in certain circumstances by the prehensile caudal
termination of our possible remote ancestors. With such a properly
equipped appendage, the steward might have taken a close hitch round an
eyebolt, and let all the rest of himself and his dishes safely down into the
little cabin. It is questionable whether man’s condition has been physically
improved by the process of evolution. He may have lost more than he has
gained. A monkey can well afford to scorn the relatively clumsy evolutions
of the most skilful human brother acrobat.
Marguerita Bay was the nursery of the female whales, or in whaler’s
parlance, “cows.” The long, quiet lagoons, fringed with green, their waters
warmed by the sun to a most agreeable temperature, were the resort during
the spring months of the mother whales to bring forth and nurse their
young. The bulls generally remained outside. The cows were killed with
tolerable ease in the shoal waters of the bay. Outside they have, on being
struck, the reputation of running out all the line a boat can spare and then
demanding more. Grant could never have fought it out on one line with a
“California Gray.” In the lagoons, so long as the calf was uninjured, the
mother would slow her own pace, so as to remain by her young. Thus she
became an easy sacrifice. If the calf was wounded, woe to the boat’s crew.
The cow seemed to smell the blood the moment it was drawn from its
offspring. The first time this happened—the boat-steerer accidentally
slipping his lance into the calf—the cow turned and chased the boat ashore.
The tables were turned. The miserable pigmies, who dared strike
Leviathan’s child, were saved because their boat could float where Mrs.
Whale couldn’t. She drew at least seven feet of water. A whale is one of the
few things read of that is bigger than it looks. The pigmies hauled the boat
upon the beach, while the whale for full half an hour swam to and fro where
her soundings were safe, and embargoed them. It was, with her, “Come off
if you dare.” But they didn’t care to dare, and finally she went away
unkilled. She managed, at the start to give the boat one crack, enough to fill
it with water. But whaleboats are made to be broken. A few hours’ work
and the insertion of a few bits of wood in the light clinker-built sides will
restore a whaleboat which, to an inexperienced eye, looks fit only for
kindling-wood. A whale is much more of an animal than people generally
imagine. There’s a great deal of affection somewhere in that big carcass. I
have seen them close aboard from the schooner’s deck play with their
young and roll and thrash about in mammoth gambols. They knew the
doors to these lagoons leading out into the ocean as well as men know the
doors to their houses. When struck, though miles distant, they made straight
for that door, and if not killed before reaching it they escaped, for no boat,
when fast, could be towed through the huge Pacific breakers. Pigmy man in
such case sullenly cut his line and sulkily rowed back to his crowded little
schooner to growl at the cook.
We filled up in six weeks. Our luck was the envy of the eleven other
vessels in Marguerita Bay. This luck was mainly due to “Black Jake,” a
huge Jamaica negro, with the face of a Caliban, the arm of a Hercules and a
stomach greater than an ostrich’s for rum. When we left San Francisco he
had a tier of twenty-five bottles, full, stored under his bunk, and not a soul
was ever the wiser for it until all were emptied. He kept his own head level,
his own counsel, and lying in his berth in the early evening hours of his
watch below, would roll over, turn his back to the noisy, chattering Kanaka
audience of the forecastle, and put the bottle, but not to his neighbors’ lips.
He was king of the forecastle, king of the Kanaka crew, and king of the
whaleboat when after a “muscle-digger.” He could throw a harpoon twice
as far as an ordinary man, and it was to this force of muscle, added to a
certain knack of his own in working up to the “grayback,” before striking,
and managing the boat after, that we owed our successful voyage. Great
was his fame as a whale-killer in Marguerita Bay. Many were the offers
made by masters of other vessels to bribe him from us. He remained true to
us. Hard were the knocks the cows gave their boats and sometimes their
crews. One well-appointed schooner lying near us had her boats stove
twenty-six times during our stay. Twelve men out of the fleet were more or
less injured. “Dese yere whale,” Jake would remark to his audiences in the
night yarns when one or two other boats’ crews from other vessels came on
board, “dey aint’ like oder whales. Dar ways are ’culiar, and ye got to mind
sharp how ye get onto ’em.” But nobody ever solved Jake’s “ ’culiar way o’
getting onto ’em.”
 A harpoon was not a toasting-fork to throw in the days when men
oftener threw the iron by muscle instead of powder. It is a shod, with a
heavy wooden pole five or six feet in length fastened into the socket of the
iron barb. This, with the line attached, makes a weight requiring for the cast
the use of both arms, and strong arms at that. A man would not care to carry
a harpoon more than a mile in a hot day. Its own weight, as much as the
impelling force, is depended on to bury itself in the floating mound of
seemingly polished India-rubber which constitutes a whale above water.
And when it first buries itself, there is for a few seconds some vicious
splashing and ugly flirting of fluke or fin. A whale’s tail is an instrument of
offence of about one hundred horse power, and well adapted to cutting
through a boat as a table knife goes through an egg shell. The two fins
suggest members between paddles and rudimentary arms. It is also a
member very capable of striking out from the right or left shoulder, and
striking very hard. When a half-dozen men are within six feet of these
weapons, controlled by an enormous black sunken mass, eighty or one
hundred feet long, they are apt to look a trifle wild and their eyes have a
tendency to bulge. There are stories among whalemen of boat-steerers who
have had all the grit permanently taken out of them by the perils and
catastrophes of that moment. A New Londoner once had the cap swept from
his head by the sweep of the whale’s tail over it, and he was too nervous for
boat service ever afterward. It is no skulking fight, like shooting lions and
tigers from the shelter of trees or rocks. It’s a fair standup combat between
half a dozen men in an egg-shell of a boat on the open sea, and sometimes
on heavy ocean billows, and 500 tons of flesh, bone, and muscles, which, if
only animated by a few more grains of sense, could ram the whaleship
herself as effectually as an ironclad. As a murderous spectacle the capture
and killing of a whale, as seen even by a sea-cook from the galley window,
is something ultra-exciting. It makes one’s hair stand upon both ends.
There is the whaleboat, the men sitting motionless in their seats, the long
oars apeak, shooting through the water, towed by the whale unseen
underneath the surface. Sometimes two or three boats hitch on, for the more
the whale has to drag the sooner he becomes exhausted. Now they haul in
on him and carefully coil the wet line in the tubs. Closer and closer they
near him, the passage of the great mass under water being marked by swirls
and eddies on the surface. Our herculean king, “Black Jake,” is at the bow,
the round, razor-edged, long-handled lance lying by him, his back to the
crew, his eye on the eddies, his great bare black arms, now the right, now
the left—moving first in one direction, then another, as thus he signals to
the steersman the direction in which to keep the boat’s head; for although
we are being towed as a tug would tow a skiff, we must be kept as near as
possible in a line with the submerged motive power, and then, with a swash
and snort, out of the water six feet ahead comes twenty, may be forty feet of
that great black mass! It is astonishing how much there is of him. And he is
down and under, with his great gulp of air, in less time than it takes to write
or even speak these last twenty words, but not before the lance is out of
Jake’s hands, driven three feet into his side, and hauled aboard again by the
light, strong line attached. Suddenly the whale line slacks. The boat ceases
its rush through the water. The eddy and swirl ahead cease. Now look out
for squalls. This is one of Mrs. Grayback’s peculiar tricks. She is ambushed
somewhere below. She designs coming up under the boat’s bottom, and
constituting herself into a submarine island of flesh, bobbing up like a
released cork. She is resolving herself into a submarine earthquake, and
proposes to send that boat and crew ten feet into the air, or capsizing them
off her India-rubber back. One hundred or five hundred tons of wicked
intelligence is thus groping about in the unseen depths for the purpose of
attaining the proper position, and, as it were, exploding herself like an
animated torpedo. Every seat in the boat is an anxious seat. There is no
talking, but a great deal of unpleasant anticipation. Those who have seen
the thing done before, await in dread suspense the shock and upset. It’s very
much like being over a powder-magazine about to explode. To keep up the
interest let us leave his particular boat and situation in statu quo. Your
imagination may complete the catastrophe or not, as you choose. Final
consummations are not desirable in a thrilling tale, and this tale is meant to
be thrilling. Therefore, if you’ve got a thrill in you, please thrill.
From the schooner’s deck, a mile and a half away, Captain, cook, and
cooper—the head, tail, and midriff of the ship’s company—we perceive that
the white puff of spray from the whale’s blowholes has changed to a darker
color. “Spouting blood,” we remark. The boat is lying quite near by. At
intervals of a few minutes a circular streak of white water is seen breaking
the smooth surface of the lagoon. He’s in his “flurry.” He is dying. It is a
mighty death, a wonderful escape of vitality and power, affection, and
intelligence, too, and all from the mere pin’s prick of an implement in the
hands of yon meddlesome, cruel, audacious, greedy, unfeeling pigmies.
Spouting blood, bleeding its huge life away, shivering in great convulsions,
means only for us forty barrels more of grease, and a couple of hundred
pounds of bone to manufacture death-dealing, rib-compressing, liver-
squeezing corsets from. And all the while the calf lingers by the dying
mother’s side, wondering what it is all about. Dead and with laborious
stroke towed to the vessel, the calf swims in its wake. Made fast alongside,
its beautifully symmetrical bulk tapering from head to tail in lines which
man copies in the mould of his finest yachts, the body remains all night, and
in the still hours of the “anchor watch” we can hear the feeble “blow” of the
poor calf, as it swims to and fro.
In the morning the mass which last night was but a couple of feet out of
water, has swollen and risen almost to the level of the low bulwark’s top,
while the gas generated by the decomposition within escapes from each
lance puncture with a faint sizzle. With the earliest light the crew are at
work. Skin and fat are torn off in great strips and hoisted on board. Round
and round the carcass is slowly turned, with each turn another coil of
blubber is unwound and cut off. The sharks are busy, too. Monsters (I use
the term “monsters” merely for the sake of euphony, not liking to repeat the
word “shark” so often) fifteen and eighteen feet long rush up to the carcass,
tear off great pieces of the beefy-looking flesh and then quarrel with each
other for its possession, flirting the water with nose and fin, and getting
occasionally a gash from a sharp whale-spade which would take a man’s
head off. Amid all this, men shouting, swearing, singing, the windlass
clanking, fires under the try-pots blazing, black smoke whirling off in
clouds, sharks grabbing and fighting and being fought, the motherless calf
still swims about the mutilated carcass, and when cast adrift, a whity-
yellowish mass of carrion, swept hither and thither by wind and tide, it still
keeps it company until dead of starvation or mercifully devoured by the
“monsters.” Madame, every bone in your corset groans with the guilt of this
double murder.
After a whale had been “cut in,” or stripped of his blubber, an operation
somewhat resembling the unwinding of a lot of tape from a long bobbin, the
whale answering for the bobbin as he is turned round and round in the
water, and the blubber for the tape as it is windlassed off, the whity-
yellowish, skin-stripped carcass was then cast adrift, and it floated and
swelled and smelled. Day after day it swelled bigger and smelled bigger. It
rose out of the water like an enormous bladder. It would pass us in the
morning with the ebb tide and come back with the flood. A coal-oil refinery
was a cologne factory compared to it. Sometimes two or three of these
gigantic masses would be floating to and fro about us at once. Sometimes
one would be carried against our bows and lodge there, the rotten mass
lying high out of the water, oozing and pressing over our low bulwarks on
deck. We had a fight with one of these carcasses for half an afternoon trying
to pry it off with poles, oars, and handspikes. It was an unfavorable mass to
pry against. Of course it smelt. For a dead mass it was extremely lively in
this respect. There are no words in which to describe a powerful smell so
closely as to bring it to the appreciation of the senses. It is fortunate there
are none, for some talented idiot to make his work smell and sell would be
certain to use them. The gulls used to navigate these carcasses on their
regular trips up and down the lagoons. They served these birds as a sort of
edible ferry-boat. You might see forty or fifty feeding and sailing on a
single carcass. But they seemed downcast—the dead whale was too much
for them. Not that they ever got full of the carrion, but they exhausted
themselves in the effort. The supply was unlimited; ditto the void within the
gull, but there were limits to his strength.