A Long Telegram for the 21'st Century

Jan 14, 2024

I’m posting a document that I wrote about the relationship of the West with China, back in May of 2018, which I called ‘A Long Telegram for the 21’st Century.’

The world looked a lot different then; It was about midway through the Trump Administration, before the sharp ramp-up in sanctions against China. It was before the emergence of COVID-19, and before the CCP made a series of deliberate decisions to keep international travel open while closing domestic travel–the most egregious and damaging example of biological warfare in modern times. Whether the virus was of natural origins or was the product of gain-of-function research remains an open question; the actions of the CCP in choosing to spread the virus overseas are not. It was before the CCP's lies about COVID caused millions of deaths around the world, and untold economic damage, and before the CCP began backing Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Having spent a considerable portion of my career interacting with the CCP's “national champion” companies, and seeing them systematically destroy the western telecommunications industry, I felt that I might have some unique insights to contribute to the discussion of US policy toward China. At the time that this document was written, I had responsibilities that required travel to China, which necessitated contributing these ideas anonymously; China's record with regard to international business people and dissidents suggested that I needed to take into account the possibility of reprisals.

I wrote the article below to articulate a clear idea of what a China policy for the next decades might look like. As the title suggests, it was meant to serve a similar purpose to Kennan's famous “Long Telegram” published on the eve of the Cold War. I then shared it with the editor of a major foreign policy publication, out of the think tank world, in August 2018; he expressed a strong intention to publish it promptly and anonymously. And there it sat; for most of a year it remained pending, as the leadership of his organization refused to allow it to be either published, reviewed, or rejected. In the end, I never received any formal comments or feedback. The editor who offered to publish it expressed sympathy and frustration, but there was nothing he could do.

Once it became clear to me that they would likely never publish the piece, I decided to take a different tack, and get it into the hands of members of the Trump administration. Around the end of October 2018, I wrote an accompanying speech that could be delivered by a sitting president or member of his cabinet.

In December 2018, I gave these documents to Professor Bob Destro, who shortly thereafter became the Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), and he was kind enough to circulate them to his colleagues in the administration.

I've made a few very minor edits and corrections since then, to improve readability and fix grammatical errors. The text is below. I believe that there are still some ideas here that deserve to be considered as part of the ongoing debate about US-China relations.

If I were to re-write it today, I'd probably add some words about the dangers of applying statist policies in the United States and allocation of capital by bureaucratic caveat; we will win this fight not by becoming more like our authoritarian adversaries, but by playing to our differentiated strengths. We need to be very thoughtful about application of industrial policy domestically; instead we must structure laws and policies to create broad incentives that allow the private sector to allocate the relevant resources. This is by far a superior approach.

I’ve included a letter from Prof. Destro, as well as the Long Telegram and the accompanying speech, below.

Best

Michael Hochberg

A Long Telegram for the 21st Century: