Many say global primacy the goal – but rumors of the West’s demise may be wildly premature
Many scratch their heads wondering what was China thinking in flying an easy-to-spot low-tech balloon over US nuclear installations. Did they want to get caught? Was one branch of a fragmented autocracy trying to embarrass the other? As Western leaders gather for the annual Munich Security Conference they should be asking a shorter question that may be harder to address: What is China thinking?
It is widely assumed that China seeks global primacy sometime soon, perhaps by the middle of the 21st century (by the Gregorian calendar, to be clear). What makes that interesting – what makes it less vulgar than just nations grasping for advantage – is the ideological clash. Ours is an era of growing competition between liberal democracy and authoritarianism (whether it pretends to be democratic, as Turkey and even Russia and Iran very feebly do, or not).
Liberal democracy went through a spasm of great arrogance after the West’s victory over the Soviet bloc. Three decades later it’s clear what we got wrong: it was a victory over communism (an economic system that is antithetical to human nature), but not over authoritarianism (a political system that, alas, is not).
Today liberal democracy is not only under renewed external attack but even attacking itself from within. In the US, the Trump Administration represented an assault on the system which by now appears to have infected the Republican Party base; in Europe, Poland and Hungary have installed authoritarian regimes democratically, each for its own sad reasons; Israel may follow in their footsteps at great peril to itself.
All over the world, the political divide has shifted from one based on socioeconomic class to one based on education – which correlates but is different. By attaching even somewhat to intelligence, the thing that humans see as rendering them unique among the creatures of the earth, it becomes radioactive. A pincer movement presents: many among the working class never really signed onto the finer points of liberal democracy, like minority rights; many so-called elites are concluding that democracy doesn’t work, because mobility is low and the less-educated have more kids.
With that as a background, smugness about democracy’s superiority is misplaced. It is best left to glad-handing politicians and other liars. The truth is that developing world is watching – I experienced this recently during years spent in Egypt – and many there see democracy as under evident dures
The fact that even some democratic countries are leaning toward elements of autocracy gives the Chinese Communist Party something of a leg to stand on when it argues that its system is better — that in some way, despite cruelty and despotism, it is not random but strangely and effectively meritocratic.
The proposition is that the party, at 96 million members accounting for a tenth of the adults, is big enough to represent the people. And that advancement through its ranks is not just a function of mindless servility (though this is certainly a factor) but also of genuine merit of a sort that will yield a competent ruling class.
Do Western democracies yield a competent ruling class? I’m not sure we can handle the truth on that one.
Do Western democracies produce a competent political class?
I have argued on these pages that there is nothing antithetical in Chinese culture to democracy – as evidenced in the robust version of it that thrives among the almost 25 million people of Taiwan. That said, though, there is no evidence that the CCP is about to fall anytime soon. They would have to upset the people more than they are doing at present for a revolution to succeed.
What has enabled the illiberal Chinese system to placate the people of mainland China has been the very strong economic growth it posted over the past four decades, a period during average annual growth approaching 10% were than triple the rates in the West. It’s the same thing that keeps its ambitions of global primary from being absurd: economic primacy, based on growth rates, seems potentially within reach.
How within reach?
Because of the low baseline, after the ordeal of Mao’s communism, phenomenal growth has only brought China to a level at which it accounts for the same proportion of the global economy as it does for the global population – just over a sixth.
The US, with a paltry 4% of the world population, accounts for twice as much of the global output as China does. Might it eventually be outstripped? That depends on whether China’s growth (which has slowed in recent years but remains far higher than the West’s) can continue.
And that brings us to Vladimir Putin. I credited him a few days ago with helping the world understand – through his epic mistake in invading Ukraine – that authoritarianism can lead to dangerous stupidity. That a major Putin gift to humanity – but he has also proven useful to those who want to arrest the rise of China.
Putin has inadvertently done this by exposing the downside of globalization in a way that everyone can understand.
China’s economic growth has been fueled by a number of factors, including vast infrastructure investment and urbanization projects. But the main driver was China’s status as the factory of choice for the West. One need not even turn to Alibaba – a huge proportion of whatever is available on Amazon is made in China. The EU’s trade with China approaches $1 trillion annually; the US imports about over a half trillion dollars’ worth – more than from any other country and fourfold the imports from any country outside of North America.
Putin’s war laid bare Europe’s energy dependence on Russia (whose natural gas accounted for 40% of Europe’s pre-war usage). This dependence exposed Europe to energy blackmail and weakened its position in trying to defend Ukraine. Russia was also able to cause food shortages and supply chain problems all over the world.
Thus do people conclude that instead of free trade bringing the world together and encouraging an exporting of the West’s political model (as the US and especially Germany had long assumed), we got dependence on bad-faith players which could either produce cheap goods (in some cases in sweatshops or through versions of slave labor) or just were lucky enough to ride a commodity boom.
The mood in the West is now one of suspicion toward globalization. The US, through the CHIPS act, is busily trying to achieve semiconductor independence. But that will take some time, and in the meantime the world will be very wary of China ac And that brings us to Vladimir Putin. I credited him a few days ago with helping the world understand – through his epic mistake in invading Ukraine – that authoritarianism can lead to dangerous stupidity. That a major Putin gift to humanity – but he has also proven useful to those who want to arrest the rise of China.
Putin has inadvertently done this by exposing the downside of globalization in a way that everyone can understand.
China’s economic growth has been fueled by a number of factors, including vast infrastructure investment and urbanization projects. But the main driver was China’s status as the factory of choice for the West. One need not even turn to Alibaba – a huge proportion of whatever is available on Amazon is made in China. The EU’s trade with China approaches $1 trillion annually; the US imports about over a half trillion dollars’ worth – more than from any other country and fourfold the imports from any country outside of North America.
Putin’s war laid bare Europe’s energy dependence on Russia (whose natural gas accounted for 40% of Europe’s pre-war usage). This dependence exposed Europe to energy blackmail and weakened its position in trying to defend Ukraine. Russia was also able to cause food shortages and supply chain problems all over the world.
Thus do people conclude that instead of free trade bringing the world together and encouraging an exporting of the West’s political model (as the US and especially Germany had long assumed), we got dependence on bad-faith players which could either produce cheap goods (in some cases in sweatshops or through versions of slave labor) or just were lucky enough to ride a commodity boom.
The mood in the West is now one of suspicion toward globalization. The US, through the CHIPS act, is busily trying to achieve semiconductor independence. But that will take some time, and in the meantime the world will be very wary of China achieving control of the world-beating microchip industry in Taiwan. This, more than fealty to the democracy on the archipelago, may be driving US policy there.
That policy essentially amounts to preserving the current limbo and no more. The US understands that no Beijing government can accept formal independence of Taiwan; its temporary loss to Japan in 1895 is a symbol of China’s „century of humiliation”.
In a debate on I24 News, David Goldman, deputy editor of the Asia Times, argued the US may not have the firepower needed to genuinely project power in the South China Sea — and thus is very much not yearning for a fight.
Bradley Bowman, Senior Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said some version of conflict is inevitable, and cautioned viewers (presumably in the West) that they do not want to live “in a world where China calls the shots.”
Of course, even if China’s growth somehow motors on, and its economy surpasses America’s or Europe’s, that alone will not mean it calls the shots.
A true global power, I replied, can boast consistent technological innovation – not just industry, espionage and replication. That, from China, is yet to be seen. And the ultimate mark of a superpower is soft power, which requires a cultural affinity that that has neither been China’s forte nor its evident desire.
That seemed to be the point of disagreement in the debate: does China want maximal economic advantage, or maximal geopolitical influence? Understanding which version of primacy China seeks may hold the key to global peace.
