There is bipartisan agreement that China presents a significant, and growing, challenge to the world primacy of the United States. What exactly is the challenge, and how can it be addressed?
- IS IT IDEOLOGICAL? Not really; the Chinese believe in Chinese exceptionalism, and have no interest in imposing their system on others. They are most comfortable dealing with like-minded authoritarians, but they are perfectly willing to do business with genuinely democratic states. There is no danger that we will be forced to live on collective farms if we do battle with the Chinese and lose, which was not the case with the Soviet Union.
- IS IT A SOFT POWER BATTLE? The Chinese value soft power, and have invested considerable resources in it, but Chinese culture is relatively inaccessible to the rest of the world, largely because the language is so difficult. Running Tibet and Xinjiang as de facto prison camps doesn’t exactly make their system more attractive to outsiders. So, no.
- DOES IT HAVE A MILITARY ELEMENT? Yes, at least as to the South China Sea. Otherwise, not at present, but the Chinese military is becoming more professional, so the danger will undoubtedly increase over time.
- IS IT ECONOMIC? Obviously, yes. China has the ability to buy off many countries that it cannot otherwise persuade. The Chinese economy will be larger than ours in the foreseeable future. That, in and of itself, is not decisive; the Chinese economy, due to the size of the Chinese population, was larger than the British economy during the Opium War, and you know how that turned out. Nevertheless, size and resources definitely matter, and, barring a political catastrophe or a war of annihilation, a large Chinese economy is here to stay.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese system? That will be discussed in the next post in this series.