At its annual and the ,
Beijing presented all sorts of lofty concepts aimed at propelling China’s faltering
economy to new heights. However, in doing so, President
Xi Jinping and consorts will find a foreign barrier in their path. For a long time, the West gave
China every opportunity to advance economically and politically. America and Europe assumed that Chinese citizens would naturally demand and gain more freedom once their prosperity and contacts with the West increased. The expectation was that, by being incorporated into the liberal world order, China would also be infected with the
Democratic “virus.” This seemed to be the case initially, but from the time Xi succeeded Hu Jintao, Beijing has tightened the reins. Tentative democratic experiments disappeared, and the Chinese Communist Party centralized power. In Peter E. Harrell in Foreign Affairs “China’s economic transformation was making Beijing more, not less, authoritarian.” It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg story, of course, but the U.S. started taking a tougher line against China, particularly from Obama’s second term onwards, by gradually deploying economic weapons more often. For example, Obama over intellectual property theft, and under Trump, America went significantly further by starting a . Biden subsequently continued Trump’s line against China; some were made here and there, but , Biden went even further than Trump. Rather than a decoupling strategy, the U.S. has opted for a three-pronged de-risking approach: increased investment in strategic importance at home, intensified controls on exports of services and goods that could make China (and other) opponents stronger against America and stricter screening of foreign investors. Also, the U.S. is no longer beating around the bush in terms of its objectives vis-à-vis China. , “They want to become and overtake the
United States as the dominant country globally. And we don’t want that to happen. We don’t want to live in a world where the Chinese are the dominant country.” America will never say to China, “Go ahead, come sit next to us on the throne and we will accept each other’s differences and make the best of it.” Conversely, China will — even if it says it doesn’t — strive to ultimately knock America off its throne if it sees the opportunity. The past offers little reassurance. Harvard professor Graham Allison how often emerging and incumbent powers went to war with each other over the past five centuries. In 12 of the 16 cases studied by Allison in which a newcomer challenged the old guard, the parties clashed. Political scientist Michael Beckley that the more than two dozen rivalries between great powers over the last two centuries ended only because one of the two could no longer continue the fight or because the two united against a common enemy. at Rand reached similar conclusions: Since 1816, there have been 27 instances of rivalry between two great powers, of which 19 ended in war. In other cases, the two found each other in their fight against another or the battle turned into the Cold War. So, the historical data offer little hope that Beijing and
Washington will put aside their disagreements. What they consider their vital interests clash too much and too hard and are firmly entrenched in their respective political systems, geographical positions and historical experiences. Although tensions have eased somewhat, the differences of opinion seem too vast to reach a lasting détente: Not just America but many other countries have become more suspicious of China. For example, the
European Union and its member states have become significantly more stringent in approving Chinese investments, and Western companies are becoming more cautious about production in, and dependence on, China. The world is, and will be, less of an immense economic playground for China. We see this, for example, in China’s collapsed foreign direct investment, which is now at . In all likelihood, China will increasingly struggle to boost its economy through additional exports and may struggle with technological development, as Western countries and companies are less inclined to cooperate in this area. However, the issue is not as clear-cut as it may seem: China will not have it any easier in a world where mistrust and hostility towards Beijing have increased greatly. However, this should not be exaggerated because, in many respects, China has a very strong position in relation to the rest of the world that won’t change from one day to the next.