Last week’s issue of The Economist went to great lengths to argue that international trade is not a zero-sum game. True, but trade intersects with geopolitics, which is. A more powerful China inevitably means trouble for the United States.
From a geopolitical standpoint, is China rising or falling? It depends on whether one focuses on hard or soft power, as follows:
- China’s hard power has never been greater, and it is increasing. China has the financial wherewithal to buy off many Third World countries and to influence the decision-making process of important American allies. In addition, China’s military is becoming more stronger, more professional, and more dangerous.
- As to soft power, China’s complex language has always been a serious handicap, and an official ideology that effectively sets China well above all other countries has little to offer the rest of the world. The government has made things worse with its clumsy and opaque response to the virus and with its obnoxious “wolf warrior” diplomacy. As a result, China’s only reliable ally at this point is Russia, which is nothing to crow about.
Frankly, Xi is looking more like Kaiser Wilhelm II every day. The German Empire threw its unqualified support to a decaying fellow empire (Austria-Hungary) that looks a bit like today’s version of Russia. As with the Triple Entente, the bonds tying America to its allies in Europe and Asia, as well as unaligned countries with a concurrent interest in limiting China’s territorial claims (e.g., India) are getting stronger with time, thus threatening China with encirclement. Xi could stop this unfavorable trend by playing a bit less to his domestic nationalist gallery and returning to the more pacific tone of his predecessors. Whether he will or not remains to be seen.