Guanxi Master

An Omen of the Middle Kingdom’s Rise in Middle America

In the last few years, fishermen in the United States have started to notice that the old bluegill, sunfish, bass, and catfish of the Illinois, Mississippi and the Ohio rivers have been disappearing. In their place a new kind of fish is gobbling up resources, feeding on the other species, and reproducing at an astonishing rate. The problem has become so intense that officials are now afraid that the Great Lakes are doomed to fall in the onslaught. They call these ferocious invaders “Asian carp”. The Chinese call them “Li Yu” (鲤鱼), “Black” or “Silver” carp, and have cultivated these breeds for their amazing reproductive vitality and hardiness for thousands of years.

The Sign of the Times

In ancient China, there was a strong belief that animals were omens or heralds of the changing course of destiny. The “Spring and Autumn Annals” mentions extensively how people sighted rare and albino animals when the kingdom was ruled wisely and was at peace. Throughout the Chinese folk tradition, toads, snakes, wolves, foxes, bats, birds, and deer were thought to be harbingers of a higher spiritual order (explained later as “Principles of Qi”) that mandated the raise and fall of empire by the mandate of heaven. The Asian carp (ancestor of the goldfish) was an animal that had the traditional prestige of bringing messages of good luck, hence its domestication and status as a “blessed” animal among the Chinese. It is still remembered in this form during the colorful “Children’s Day” celebration in Japan, where carp banners represent a wish for blessing, strength, and vitality.

One of the greatest indicators of an omen in ancient literature was when an animal was out of place, like a mountain goat grazing in a rice paddy, a deer in the city, or a snake in a home. These were noteworthy and considered bearers of a message because they revealed an imbalance or change in the natural order. Confucius was called on by his local administration to interpret the meanings of such occurrences on more than one occasion.

Principles of Change

The Song Dynasty scholar Zhu Xi went to great pains to de-mystify the idea of omens in his systematic teachings about the Chinese tradition. He explained that these omens were often correct because they operated upon the same principles that caused a natural phenomenon to occur. The reason that a Mongolian eagle was seen killing a Chinese chicken was probably the same reason that the Mongolians invaded China’s Northern Territory; it was not because the eagle had any special spiritual significance, but simply because the drought that made the eagle hungry was also making the Mongolians desperate for plunder. In Zhu Xi’s logic, omens were not revelation of a spiritual message that could be divined for knowledge of the future, but were pieces of a puzzle that could be pieced together for a clearer picture of the world. In this respect, the Chinese idea of omens and harbingers was arguably scientific.

The Carp are Coming

In the United States, the reason for the proliferation of the Asian carp is clearly related to a desire for profit and a lack of management. American fish farms report that the Asian carp, while inferior in quality to local fish, grow so quickly and reproduce so prolifically that they can grow three crops of fish in the same time it takes to raise one of the local varieties. Because of the Chinese carp’s voracious appetite, these fish will eat almost any feed (unlike bass and bluegill, which are relatively picky), and this cuts costs as well. Thus, the American fish farmer can make three times the profit and feed his fish almost any kind of organic refuse that can be found.

Chinese fish farmers have often told me that they have to “thin” their fish crop by “eating thousands of little fish”. Because of the work ethic of the Chinese farmer, their desire to conserve every piece of usable food, and the practice of eating fish on the bone, they can effectively feed their families while still growing a crop of carp to sell. This practice of eating fish before they were large enough to reproduce has kept the carp population of China manageable for thousands of years. Not so in the US, however, where we throw little fish back, like to eat fish fillet, and sue if a bone slips through to “choke” us. Interested only in adult fish, many farmers found themselves overwhelmed by extra fish when they ordered Asian carp using the same cull ratios as for their native counterparts. What they did not realize is that the carp were much more tenacious than the native species, and wouldn’t die without a fight (I’ve personally seen Chinese carp survive for an hour out of water). The new fish grew so rapidly that the farmers could not keep their ponds clean and oxygenated, and so they dumped the content of some of their stock ponds to enable those left over to reach maturity. This is what the Agriculture Department thinks happened along the Illinois River, where the pandemic of unwanted fish began.

The Chinese Story

There is a famous Chinese legend about the “Leaping Carp” that are causing such headache in Middle America. This story comes from “The Xin Family’s Three Accompanying Stories” (辛氏三秦记) and states, “On the Yellow River, in Shanxi province, there are two cliffs that frame the river that the locals call ‘The Dragon Gate’. Here, if a carp leaps high enough, it will be magically transformed into a dragon.” This story is contracted in common speech into a four-character proverb, “鱼跃龙门” (yúyuèlóngmén), which means, “Those who try hard will be rewarded with unimaginable benefits, regardless of how humble their origins”.

Interpreting the Omen

For the many Chinese people that I talk to, the spread of Asian carp in the United States is a favorable omen for the raise of China’s power. Carp have been a symbol of Chinese industry for thousands of year, and they have been linked to “The Spirit of the Dragon”, China’s national spirit, through the legend of the Dragon Gate. Many would point to the victory of the carp over the local fish population as characteristic of Chinese aggressiveness, “go to”, and vitality in the face of opposition. A friend has a piece of modern Chinese calligraphy in his home that is a classic application of the analogy: “China is now in the age of the Leaping Carp; through effort we will become a Dragon.”

While these readings may reveal what the Chinese think about themselves, however, they do little to tell us what is going on in America. For this, we need to use Zhu Xi’s more scientific method for understanding the meaning of an omen.

American’s chose to start cultivating Asian carp over local breeds because of the economic benefits, in much the same way as we decided to continue trading with China after events in the late eighties and early nineties made it clear that there would be no consideration for human rights. The United States chose the hilarious policy of “containment through trade” simply because the promise of cheap was irresistible. Wal-Mart led the way as America went from “Made in the USA” to “Made in China”, and Americans failed to understand that things would grow much faster than we anticipated. Like the Illinois fish farmers, we were shocked to see how quickly things changed.

We also failed to see that “culling the small” was important to keep China manageable. This meant that we had to deal with the “bones”, all the prickly questions and situations of the nation’s inner structure that couldn’t be cut out and ignored like with other, more mature, trading nations… and interference was clearly not our style. Like those frustrated fish farmers, we thought we could get rid of the problem by dumping it into the “ups and downs” of the market (the natural food-chain). Little did we know that we had fed and raised a monster crop that could already sustain itself against the less aggressive native competitor.

Just like state governments, which saw fishing licenses as a source of revenue and would never consider freeing people to address the invasion by filling their own bellies, so we have lost our ability to compete with Chinese entrepreneurs through a burden of taxation that makes American small business impossible. Now we see that just like the tenacious Asian carp, once you let the Chinese system reach maturity, there are only two things it wants to do… consume and reproduce! Just ask a bass if his carp neighbors are good “partners in fair trade.”

Not only are we seeing the spread of China’s influence in the West, we are already seeing the spread of “Asian carp” in Africa and Australia. Soon the waterways will be clogged with this foreign species, the local species will be forced to the brink of extinction, and “through trying, the little carp will be a great dragon.”

The question is, who will be fishing?