China: Threat Or Opportunity?
If great power contests are determined by domestic “spiritual vitality,”
China is winning.
BY*KISHORE MAHBUBANI
<https://www.noemamag.com/author/kishore-mahbubani-2/>*JUNE 15, 2020
https://www.noemamag.com/china-threat-or-opportunity/
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Kishore Mahbubani is a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research
Institute at the National University of Singapore. His most recent book,
“Has China Won?,” was published in March.
SINGAPORE — Is China a threat or an opportunity for America?
Is that a simple question? As a student of philosophy, I have learned
that behind a simple question can lurk many others that are more
complex. Here are a few for that particular question: Does China intend
to weaken or undermine America? Or is its rise driven by domestic
factors? Does China have a grand strategy? If so, what are its primary
goals? Is China’s rise a threat to American primacy or to the American
people? And, perhaps most controversially, should America give priority
to geopolitical primacy or to its citizens in taking on the challenge
from China?
Curiously, there has been little genuine debate on this complex
challenge in the U.S. Instead, there has been a dramatic convergence in
the opinions of many Americans, despite deep political polarization,
toward the view that China is a threat. Nine in 10 Americans believe
that, according to a recentPew poll
<https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/04/21/u-s-views-of-china-increasingly-negative-amid-coronavirus-outbreak/>.
The “deep state” has also turned against China. As Henry Paulsonput it
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/has-americas-china-backlash-gone-too-far-11566990232>last
year: “You have Homeland Security, the FBI, CIA, the Defense Department,
treating China as the enemy and members of Congress competing to see who
can be the most belligerent China hawk. No one is leaning against the
wind, providing balance.”
The goal of this essay is to provide some balance and objectivity.
Despite this extraordinary convergence of views, most thoughtful
Americans would agree that China has no plan to invade or occupy
America. It would be a mission impossible. Nor would China dream of
launching a nuclear attack. It has only about 290 nuclear weapons,
compared to America’s 6,000-plus. Nor does China have any desire to
close off sea lanes, like Germany tried to do in World War II. China
doesmore <https://chinapower.csis.org/trade-partner/>international trade
than America. Paradoxically, the U.S. Navy is keeping sea lanes open for
Chinese commerce.
Yet, it is also true that there has been a significant change of
military balance between China and America. In 1996, President Bill
Clintonsent
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/06/21/us-and-china-nearly-came-to-blows-in-96/926d105f-1fd8-404c-9995-90984f86a613/>two
aircraft carriers to patrol the ocean off the coast of China to dissuade
Beijing from being too aggressive toward Taiwan. Today, these two
aircraft carriers would be sitting ducks in the face of Chinese
hypersonic missiles. The military balance has shifted, creating
discomfort in Washington.
Even so, this isn’t where the primary challenge will arise from China.
In the era of nuclear weapons, superpower primacy is likely to be
determined in the economic sphere, not military sphere.
“In the era of nuclear weapons, superpower primacy is likely to be
determined in the economic sphere, not military sphere.”
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One of America’s wisest strategic thinkers was the diplomat George
Kennan, who lived from 1904 to 2005. When America embarked on its great
geopolitical contest against the Soviet Union, Kennan said the final
outcome would be determined by “the degree to which the United States
can create among the peoples of the world generally the impression of a
country which knows what it wants, which is coping successfully with the
problem of its internal life and with the responsibilities of a world
power, and which has a spiritual vitality capable of holding its own
among the major ideological currents of the time.”
Kennan added that with this “spiritual vitality,” America should
cultivate more “friends and allies.” He also counseled “humility” and
bravely said America should avoid “insulting” the Soviet Union, as
America would still have to deal with it.
Fortunately, Kennan’s strategic advice was largely heeded. America won
the geopolitical contest against the Soviet Union handsomely. Curiously,
even though China will be a far more formidable superpower rival, with
four times the population of America and a political resilience that is
at least 4,000 years old, America has not attempted to work out a
comprehensive long-term strategy to deal with it.
If Kennan is right and the contest will be determined by domestic
“spiritual vitality,” China is winning. America is the only major
developed society where the real wages for the bottom half of the
working population declined over a 30-year period. In turn, this has
generated a “sea of despair” among the white working classes, as
documented by Princeton economistsAnne Case and Angus Deaton
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-research-identifies-a-sea-of-despair-among-white-working-class-americans/2017/03/22/c777ab6e-0da6-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.html>.
By contrast, 1.4 billion Chinese people have experienced an
extraordinary improvement in living standards. The past 40 years have
been the best the Chinese have experienced in 4,000 years. As a result,
as the researcherJean Fan
<https://palladiummag.com/2019/10/11/the-american-dream-is-alive-in-china/>has
documented: “In contrast to America’s stagnation, China’s culture,
self-concept and morale are being transformed at a rapid pace — mostly
for the better.” China has spiritual vitality. America, not as much.
If Kennan were alive today, he would be deeply alarmed. He would
strongly argue against burning money in useless foreign interventions.
In fact, he was alive when the Iraq War began in 2003 — and he opposed
it. If America had heeded his advice and disbursed the roughly $5.4
trillion it spent on post-9/11 wars in the Middle East and Central Asia
on its own people instead, each member of the bottom 50% of the
population would have received a check for more than $33,000. This is
why Eisenhower wisely advised in 1953 that “every gun that is made,
every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold
and are not clothed.”
America is still a much richer country than China, with a per capita
income of around $63,000 compared to $9,700 for China. Its universities
and scientific expertise are clearly superior to China’s. Yet when
COVID-19 hit, China experienced0.33
<https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality>deaths per 100,000 people
(as of mid-May). The U.S. figure was 27. One figure cannot tell
everything. But it provides a clue that China has been investing in
strong domestic institutions, especially in public service, while
America has been neglecting them. President Ronald Reagan began this
slide when he declared: “Government is not the solution to our problem;
it is the problem.” China believes otherwise.
“Reagan began this slide when he declared: ‘Government is not the
solution to our problem; it is the problem.’ China believes otherwise.”
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All this brings up the key dilemma America faces in taking on the
strategic challenge from China: Should it focus on defending American
primacy or defending the wellbeing of its people? Most Americans assume
that America is rich and powerful enough to do both. Sadly, the data
argues otherwise. As the Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard
professor Linda Bilmes have said regarding the money spent on Iraq:
“[H]ad the taxpayer’s taxes been reduced commensurately, or if the money
had been spent on providing healthcare, it would have made a difference
to hard-pressed middle-class families.” With better healthcare, fewer
Americans would have died from COVID-19. The price for giving strategic
priority to American primacy has been paid by the American people.
Can America change direction and focus on domestic economic and social
development instead of wasteful external adventures? In theory, yes. In
practice, it will be difficult. America has had many brilliant defense
secretaries. None could reduce defense department expenses. Why not?
Defense spending results from a complex lobbying system rather than from
a comprehensive rational strategy.
Nevertheless, it remains true that there is a strong consensus within
the American body politic, especially among the American elite, that
America should remain number one. Americans feel an obligation to lead
the world. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright expressed this well in
1998: “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the
indispensable nation. We stand tall, and we see further than other
countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.”
Americans want America to be the “shining city on a hill,” inspiring the
rest of the world.
Indeed, the rest of the world would be happy to see a strong,
self-confident America inspiring us all. However, its “shine” comes from
its domestic record, not its military adventures. Clearly, the “sea of
despair” among the working classes, the rise of populism, the election
of Donald Trump and the recent incompetency around COVID-19 have dented
America’s standing in the world. Any empirical study would show that
while America’s geopolitical influence has been receding, China’s has
been gradually expanding.
“The price for giving strategic priority to American primacy has been
paid by the American people.”
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But even if China’s influence has grown, it has no desire to step into
America’s shoes and provide global leadership. China has only one key
strategic goal: to become strong enough to prevent another century of
humiliation, the period between 1842 and 1949 when Western forces
trampled on China with great abandon. China regained its strength by
plugging into the rules-based global order that America gifted to the
world in 1945.
China has no desire to overturn this order. It would be happy to
cooperate with America within it. In short, a prosperous China can live
together in peace with a prosperous America, as inconceivable as this
thought might seem in the toxic political environment in the U.S.
Hence, at the end of the day, all is not lost for America. It can
reverse its slide in geopolitical fortunes. However, to do so, it must
begin to heed the advice of its strategic thinkers, like Kennan. As
Kennan said, it should become humble and stop insulting adversaries. It
should cultivate friends and allies and focus on its domestic spiritual
vitality. Even to a lay observer, this is plain common sense. America
can still win — not by investing in military supremacy but in moral
supremacy. Until it does that, it is ceding the playing field to China.