Chinese Open Work Chair

On China, Are America and Australia Two Allies Divided by a Common ...

Sam Roggeveen’s surprise at Nick Burns’ statement that there is a consensus in Washington that: (1) China is a potential threat; and (2) the United States must continue to engage China constructively is….well…surprising. Sam is only the most recent observer Down Under to express skepticism that the United States or our allies can walk and chew gum at the same time when dealing with Beijing. Hugh White probably sparked the whole debate with his prediction that Asia’s security and economic architectures will inevitably diverge, but he is clearly not alone there. It is as though our friends in the Australian strategic community are more bound by realist international relations theories than the we are in the States. If nothing else, it proves the need for a serious strategic dialogue between American and Australian policymakers and scholars. General Monash and Coral Sea aside, we still do not completely understand each other’s strategic outlooks.

Nick Burns’ observations in Sydney are basically on target. The range of views among American China hands has narrowed considerably this past year. There is still debate about the right mix of engagement and hedging, but much less about what is happening in Beijing. The shorthand version is as Nick described it : China’s emerging leadership is more nationalistic and less tolerant of domestic dissent at home or pretentious former tributary states abroad. The PLA serves under the direction of the Central Military Commission, but only the Chair and Vice Chair are civilian party leaders (currently Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping). Beyond that the PLA and the other security and intelligence services have fairly broad operational latitutude to safeguard China’s “interests,” which are increasingly defined in expansive terms with respect to “the Near Sea,” or what the rest of us consider the “Second Island Chain.”

While there is some hope that Xi Jinping will be more subtle on maritime issues because of his experience in Fujian Province, there is little expectation that current doctrine or practices will ease, or that the internal pressures to protect Chinese interests will abate. I heard an even more granular version of this thesis on a recent trip to Beijing, where long-time foreign residents described the domestic situation as the worst since Tienanmen. As one thirty year veteran of business and journalism in China put it to me, “the Deng era is ending and we don’t know what comes next, but this place is on the boil.

English furniture

Thirdly, that the straight leg pierced with open work is equally ... and the rocaille work or coquillage, which is employed to vary the Chinese chair, ...

The Encyclopedia Americana, a library of universal knowledge

The upholstered chair usually had straight legs and straight back; there was an open space ... Cane and open work appear in chairbacks, displacing leather, ...

Country life

The second is another chair in what Chippendale calls the Chinese taste. ... yet daring in design, having as its motif a;i open-work shell ornament, ...

House & garden

For the piazza there are Chinese mats made of grass, warranted rain and sun ... and even a Chinese Morris chair that looks like a very distant relative of ...

The Magazine of art

Occasionally the work has been executed in China, to order, on furniture sent out for the purpose and re-imported. A little later, chairs made of beech and ...