In this current historical moment, [the Chinese] official documents talk about this as a time that is marked by certain inevitable trends of history. These include globalization and economic integration, what they call multi-polarization where you move from a hegemon to multiple poles of power distributed in the global system, and the idea that using military power aggressively against other countries has very limited returns to the current order. As an example, they might think of something like Iraq. In this international environment, the way Xi Jinping talked about it, these are the ground rules.
The central idea is that they’re going to try to link their development as close as possible to the rest of the world so that the economic interest of the rest of the world and the economic interests of China are the same thing… They realize if there are actual conflicts of interests, they want to be in a position where the economic benefits of being on China’s side are so great that no other country would put other interests above it… You almost might say in the world that China wants to make, everybody is the NBA [National Basketball Association]. In this world, they don’t need to go into Africa, southeast Asia, and implant the Communist party of China.
Xi says in one of his very first speeches that the goal of the party is to create a socialism that is superior to capitalism, and then to gain the dominant position. They don’t intend to do this through military force immediately, thought they might over Taiwan. But they do think of their system and our system as something that cannot be reconciled. They hope for a day when things like universal human rights, freedom of association, independent judiciary, free internet, are relegated — not to the dustbins of history — but as parochial things that only people from small parts of Europe and the United States do. Not appropriate for the rest of the world. They’re trying to go about and build that future.
That was Tanner Greer on Venture Stories podcast “The Past, Present, and Future of the US-China Relationship.” There was a time when Westerns believed that economic integration with China would lead to it liberalize and eventually join the Western order. Greer argues that China knew exactly what US leaders were intending, and it started planning against that integration. By 2008 or so, it was obvious to people reading official Chinese documents that they resoundingly rejected the liberal order and embarked on a program to stop the economic and cultural integration with the West. It wasn’t until the last year or two that people in the West started catching on, and by then China built up a much stronger security posture.
I think Greer is a little too dovish on China’s military ambitions. Taiwan, disputes in the South China Sea, conflict with India, support to Iran — these things seem to be accelerating. But Greer does force me to reconsider what we’ve all considered: maybe China is playing a game of maneuver/intellectual warfare and the United States is stuck in 20th century concepts of military power. Perhaps the United States has many more years to get its industrial base in order before it will be needed for an armed conflict.
One potential problem is in the turnover in Chinese leadership. Greer argues that the old guard currently in power like Xi grew up in Maoist years and have strong ideological commitments. They are the ones who might be suspicious of the use of naked aggression to achieve policy goals when economic tools are in play. But the younger generation is not as committed to socialism and the ideals of their fathers. Here’s Greer:
Especially among younger people who grew up in the world of socialism with Chinese characteristics — the post-Deng era — a lot of them are very much in this startup mode. They believe the future is theirs and rush for it. I think the older people, including the leadership like Xi Jinping, are quite a bit more risk averse. A lot of what they do, like these human rights abuses, are actually symptoms of this great fear of chaos and anything destabilizing.
This poses a risk that the younger generation may look to traditional military power — especially if economic tools start to fade away. Economic and cultural subjugation of foreign nations is likely to encounter resistance and potentially Civil War. If that well runs dry, will China just recede back into its former place?
A professor of mine in Chinese history once said that Chinese dynasties always start with three good emperors, and then descend into mismanagement. Xi Jinping represents the 4th Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping. And in 2017 Xi made himself premier for life. Perhaps historians will look back and say that Xi represented the high-watermark and beginning of the downfall of China’s rise… but who knows.
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