“Let China sleep; When she wakes, she will shake the world.” -Napoleon, 1817
In Donald J. Trump’s January 20, 2017 inaugural address, often referred to as “the carnage speech” due to his characterization of the dismal state of the nation he was about to lead, the President hinted at a dramatically new approach he would bring to the U.S. foreign policy for the nation. “We assembled here today are issuing a new decree, he said, “to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital, and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First.”
While the President did not spell out just how this new approach to making America great again would be implemented in foreign policy, Trump left the unmistakable impression that there was a new sheriff in town, and he wouldn’t be following the old “politics-as-usual” script.
It wasn’t until December 18, 2017 that the President put some meat on the bones of his America First approach to foreign policy when he delivered a speech on national security strategy. Part attack on his predecessors and the establishment, part self-congratulatory Valentine to himself, the address and accompanying report contained a lot of hot rhetoric, but little that was truly innovative. We would have to let the President’s actions speak louder than his words.
From MAGA to America First
In order to “make America great again,” President Trump promised an “America First” policy. Putting America first meant pulling out of trade deals (e.g. TPP where China now has a dominant role), standing alone against the world on deregulation of environmental controls (e.g. pulling out of the Paris Climate agreement), threatening to pull out of multilateral nuclear arms reduction agreements (e.g. the Iran deal), and dramatically reducing the budget and role of the State department.
Putting America First means that our interests supersede the needs and interests of our allies. But the president can’t lead because he doesn’t play well with others ‒ even our allies (e.g. threatening to withdraw from trade deals with South Korea). The United States, under President Trump, is intentionally walking away from global leadership, leaving a vacuum that China is happy to fill.
Filling the Void
In early 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping, traveled to Davos, Switzerland to attend the annual conference of the world’s movers and shakers in government and business. It was where the elite meet and greet.
China’s president had more in mind than mere socializing and rubbing shoulders with the globe’s elite. He went to Davos to reassure the other elites not to worry. With a pending Trump presidency and the “America First” approach Trump was promoting, Xi wanted to comfort the globalists gathered at the posh ski resort, and reassure them not to worry, that everything would
be fine. If the U.S. was abandoning global leadership, China would graciously take their place: no worries!
Xi defended the global system ‒ the one that the United States had painstakingly constructed out of the ashes of WWII and the rising threat of Soviet Communism. It was that international order that for seven decades, helped prevent a major war between the superpowers, contributed to economic growth and international development (made a few big mistakes, no doubt), and developed a web of international institutions and a largely free trade ethos. Xi, offered China’s service in maintaining and leading “our” system.
President Trump all but declared war on that system; President Xi promised to be its saviour. Not only was China promising to be a good global citizen, it was offering to become the leader of all. As Harvard’s Graham Allison noted, “The bad guys were swapping places with the good.”1
At his Davos speech, Xi noted that “Some people blame economic globalization for the chaos in our world. We should not retreat into the harbour whenever we encounter a storm or we will never reach the other shore… no one will emerge as a winner from a trade war.” It was, as Allison said “. . . an Alice in Wonderland moment.” Yet, it also reflects the shifting of the tectonic plates of the international community, and reflects the decline (mostly self-selected) of the U.S., and the rise (mostly self-consciously) of China.
In a January 20, 2017 speech to Communist Party officials, Major General Jin Yinan of China’s National Defense University, bragged about China’s enhanced position due to Trump’s pullout from TPP: “We are quiet about it,” but insisted that Trump handed China a gift and that “As the U.S. retreats globally, China shows up.”2
The Rise of China
In roughly one generation, China went from a footnote in the international economy to one of the largest economies in the world. In 1980, the GDP of China was below $300 billion; by 2017, it was over $11 trillion. In less than thirty years, China’s GDP had become the second-largest on the globe. And in 1980 China’s foreign trade amounted to barely $40 billion; by 2017 it had increased to over $4 trillion. The 11/17/2017 cover of The Economist featured an American eagle with a Donald Trump coif with the lines: Endangered: America’s Future as a Global Power.
And it is not just in the economic realm that China is challenging U.S. leadership. China’s growing political influence can be seen in a number of areas, and was recently summed up in a cover story from The Economist, characterizing Xi Jingping as “The World’s most powerful man.”3
The U.S. and China seem headed in two different directions. While China focuses on industries of the future (eg. solar, AI, robotics, wind turbines), the U.S. is trying to revive industries of the past (coal).
In an October speech at the five-year party Congress, Xi more fully expressed his vision of a Chinese future. He said that China was moving “closer to center stage” as it pursued “great-power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics.” And the Xi mission is spreading throughout China. An October article in the top state-run news outlet Xinhua, an article entitled “Enlightened Chinese Democracy puts the West in the Shade”, argued that western democracy was dysfunctional, “doddering,” and confused. Ah, but the Chinese model “leads to social unity.”
This “China Model” is being presented as a viable alternative to the hyper-partisanship and dysfunction of the West. President Xi said that China was “blazing a new trail for other developing countries”. With liberal democracies on the defensive as they are challenged from within by right-wing populist disruptions, Chinese stability, economic growth, and centralized political authority are offered as the antidote to democratic distemper. And President Trump seems an all-too-willing accomplice with his “America First” agenda.
In most of the leading economic indicators, China is ahead, or soon will be ahead of the United States. It is already the world’s largest producer of cars, ships, steel, aluminum, cell phones, computers, and clothing.
Does China have a political mission to go along with its economic growth? If one could sum up China’s global mission in one short phrase it would be: “Make China Great Again!” As Xi said in 2012, “The greatest Chinese dream is the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. Rejuvenate from what? China is driven by a desire to reclaim its past greatness; a greatness to which it believes it is entitled. This involves surpassing and replacing the U.S. at the top of the mountain. It is ‒ they feel ‒ their entitlement and their destiny.
Translated into action, “Making China Great Again” seems to mean:
A. Returning China to leadership in Asia.
B. Commanding the respect of other great powers.
C. Replacing the U.S. as global leader of the international order.
D. Building their economy.
E. Building their military capacity and reach.
As Graham Allison has noted:
“At the core of these national goals is a civilizational creed that sees China as the center of the universe. In the Chinese language, the world for China, zhong guo, means ‘Middle Kingdom.’ ‘Middle’ refers not to the space between other, rival kingdoms, but to all that lies between heaven and earth. . . they ‘recall a world in which China was dominant and other states related to them as supplicants to a superior, as vassals came to Beijing bearing tribute.’ In this narrative, the rise of the West in recent centuries is a historical anomaly, reflecting China’s technological and military weakness when it faced dominant imperial powers.”4
Ironically, the U.S. and China along with Russia are singing the same tune: “Make America/China/Russia Great Again”! The U.S. is trying to do that with blue smoke and mirrors; China by investing in the industries of the future; Russia by trying to destabilize the Western Democracies. The axis of Testosterone they may be, but their paths are vastly different.
President Trump repeatedly has hesitated on the face of Chinese advances. Why? Perhaps because, as Trump told The New York Times, of his November 2017 trip to China, they “treated me better then anybody’s ever been treated in the history of China,” an answer reminiscent of his response to why he is so supportive of Vladimir Putin: “he says nice things about me.”5
China on the rise; the U.S. in retreat. The tectonic plates of international power are shifting, and not necessarily in a good way. Will these changes produce a safer, more democratic, more just world? Or will the U.S. retreat from leadership, to allow China to achieve its global leadership goal? As the U.S. pulls back, the West realizes that it can live without U.S. leadership, and China realizes that theirs is a clearer path to global leadership.
In order to avoid what Graham Allison and others refer to as “the Thucydides Trap” (rising powers and falling powers often engage in wars) both nations must seek to control confrontations and channel conflicts into regional or international organizations for dispute resolutions.
China’s hard power (economic and military) is rising; its soft power holds little sway, especially in the West; but its smart power and sharp power (phrase used by the National Endowment for Democracy denoting efforts by authoritarian regimes to coerce and manipulate authoritarian regimes to coerce and manipulate other countries) are accelerating.6 Can the U.S. keep up? Will it even try?
China has a long way to go if it hopes to truly replace the U.S. as global hegemon, and while it is clearly making inroads, a variety of factors will impede its rise in the short term. The rise of China is inevitable, but Chinese global leadership is not.
References:
[1] Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? , Houghton Mifflin Harcout; 2017
[2] Evan Osnos, “Making China Great Again,” The New Yorker, January 8, 2018, pp. 36-45.
[3] The Economist, October 14, 2017, see pg 11.
[4] Graham Allison, p. 209.
[5] Michael S. Schmidt and Michael D. Shear,” Trump Says Russian Inquiry Makes U.S. ‘Look Very Bad’”, The New York Times, December 28, 2017.
[6] See: The Economist, “At The Sharp End,” December 16, 2016, pp. 20-22