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CHAPTER 1
Afraid of China? Maybe You Should Be
"China was globalization's tipping point, beyond which there is only further integration or war."
— Tom Barnett, author of Great Powers and The Pentagon's New Map
In late June of 2016, Donald Trump's campaign saw fit to hold its first major economic and trade speech in front of a pile of garbage. What flowed from the candidate's mouth would have been, twenty years ago, widely derided by people on both sides of the aisle. Now, it seems strangely relevant, a realization that should worry everyone. President Donald Trump represents the line of thinking that has always been ascendant when past eras of globalization came to an end: that free trade in some way disadvantages businesses and workers in developed markets, and as such, barriers must be constructed.
Over the last several years I have wondered what our world would look like if China were not a part of it. Not from the perspective of a consumer; rather, what would our world look like if China had not opened after Nixon's historic trip? Would China have become a dysfunctional cousin to the Soviet Union? Would it be a much bigger version of North Korea, except with a billion hungry mouths to feed rather than Pyongyang's millions? Would China be using its nuclear arsenal in ways even more destabilizing to the world than North Korea does? What would the globalized world, which many of us take for granted, look like without China?
Given how Republican president Donald Trump has spoken about China, it would seem Americans wish China had stayed poor, isolated, and powerless. For elites in Washington DC on both sides of the aisle up until the 2016 election, this was all noise, but to politically disenfranchised and economically dislocated middle-class Americans, blaming China for our economic problems had been embraced as truth. As is almost always the case, the people were ahead of the politicians. Trump channeled these anxieties perfectly toward China, saying in the heat of the 2015 presidential primary, "When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let's say, China in a trade deal? They kill us." As the American economy has struggled to create wins for more than those who are already wealthy, politicians have become increasingly willing to point toward China as the party to blame for the pervasive insecurities that have come to define too much of American political life.
Not too long ago, these would have been ridiculous thoughts to hear from American politicians, but no longer. Largely absent from America's discussion in popular culture about trade with China today is the idea that both win by trading with one another. Now trade is perceived to be a zero-sum game, where China's win is America's loss. This leads to an important question: is America's frustration with China nothing more than a distraction from profound insecurities the United States has about its economy, global status, and domestic politics? If so, then is it possible America will decide to act on this blame game toward China rather than wrestling with problems wholly our making?
During trips to Washington DC to attend various congressional hearings and participate in think tank discussions on China, I have heard many angry comments about China, specifically how its economic gain has been at the cost of American jobs. Always in the background were fears about whether China could really be trusted; after all, they are still a "Communist" country. We have witnessed a variety of public intellectuals put out new books that have challenged long-held ideas about why an open and engaged China was ultimately good for the United States. Such thought leaders as James Mann in his book The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Oppression went back and questioned the most basic assumptions about whether China would develop into something similar to a Western democracy or become a more wealthy authoritarian government hostile to American values and potentially competing with our military for supremacy.
Today, the United States and China are moving toward a fundamental repositioning of their relations, a repositioning as significant as when Nixon went to China. When Donald Trump called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) a "rape of our country," he channeled the raw feelings of many blue-collar American workers who felt the elites have marginalized the needs of the working man over those of business and the 1 percent. Trump is not alone. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders echoed similar criticisms when asked about his own thoughts on globalization: "Let's be clear: one of the major reasons that the middle class in America is disappearing, poverty is increasing and the gap between the rich and everyone else is growing wider and wider is due to our disastrous unfettered free-trade policy." And what of the 2016 Democratic nominee for president and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton? Her own position on trade, and on the TPP specifically, was convoluted and, at the twilight of her ill-fated campaign, hostile. Her tortured attempts to walk back her prior advocacy for TPP reflected not only her own lack of conviction and attempts at political expediency, they also spoke to how far right the Democratic Party had moved on trade, largely the result of policies Clinton's husband had successfully advocated for in the nineties.
Beyond the venom of the 2016 presidential campaign, in private, congressmen who should know better refer to China as "Reds" or "Communists" with too much venom to be a simple slip of the tongue. In public, others such as Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher from California are all too eager to feed the flames. Showing real insight into how many Americans already viewed China, in 2012 Rohrabacher opposed foreign aid to China on the congressional floor with an impassioned plea to remind his colleagues that "43 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed money and Communist China is the single largest foreign holder of U.S. debt." What Rohrabacher lacks in subtlety he makes up for in understanding how to connect with the voters in his district and others spread across America. Ideas about China's ultimate liberalization, the good it has done for everyone by serving as the world's factory, or its needs as a still-developing economy are no longer the predominant and accepted perspectives on the country. Now a much simpler and more dangerous line of thinking has evolved: China's gains are America's losses, and these gains must be stopped. Stopped to protect the American middle class. Stopped to ensure America's global military hegemony. Stopped to reinforce the belief that only America's political system is the standard against which every country should model itself.
The United States needs a reminder on why China matters while we all reflect on the reality that the American political establishment squandered the opportunity to help the average American as the twin pressures of globalization and automation began to mount. Without this reminder, America could upset much that has proven capable and trustworthy in stabilizing the world over the past several decades. The easy avenue for American policy is to blame China for problems of our own making, but doing so would distract Americans from the substantial changes we need to make at home, changes that have nothing to do with our relationship toward China. The more fixated we become on China as the source of our problems, the more likely a future politician even more manipulative than Donald Trump will distract us by blaming China, with the real potential of global conflict in the balance. Blaming China is not only shortsighted; it will do nothing to remedy America's economic problems. In fact, blaming China for our own mistakes could sow the seeds for an unnecessary trade war and military conflict.
Groups of Democratic politicians see China as a threat to one of their most traditional constituencies: labor unions who fear even more job losses from Chinese competition. Parts of the Republican Party share similar grievances. In addition, large segments of Republicans distrust China's leaders and hold misgivings based on the country's Communist past. Consequently, members of Congress are particularly uncomfortable with China's military buildup and its regional aspirations in relation to Taiwan and the South China Sea. Steve Bannon, the Trump administration's former chief strategist, stated this bluntly in 2016: "We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years. ... There's no doubt about that. They're taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face — and you understand how important face is — and say it's an ancient territorial sea." Any number of Republicans like Bannon and his ilk have a serious hangover from the Cold War and appear too comfortable with finally having another competitor to drop into the preordained spot the Soviet Union had formerly occupied. Both Democrats and Republicans harbor concerns about China's human rights record and the various market access issues that have begun to sour the business community's ideas about China as a potential market. The storm clouds are gathering for anyone with the humility to really listen to the many anxieties of the American public that President Trump has tapped into, insecurities that pulse and inflame with every layoff, political failure, and terrorist attack. The message is simple: these things have happened because America is weak, and only belligerent strength will make America great again.
Attitudes toward China are also influenced by 9/11. The shapeless and largely stateless nature of terrorism makes it the sort of threat governments are ill equipped to deal with. While militant Islam remains a competitive political ideology and worldview in some of the same ways as Soviet- and Chinese-style Communism was, militant Islam remains an asymmetric threat that leaves America's political and military institutions without responses that satisfy the American electorate. As the West's frustration over how to deal with the ambiguous nature of terrorism grows, so too does the possibility that we will look for a conventional state against which to project our fears and frustrations in a misplaced attempt to make ourselves feel safe. Where global jihad is amorphous, China is a nation-state with an actual government, opposing ideology, and growing power against which America can define itself.
The last Bush administration intentionally tapped into a similar vein and produced one of the original arguments that led us into Iraq. In the months following 9/11, a tenuous relationship between state-sponsored terrorism and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was enough to get Americans to support an invasion of Iraq. The insecurities and desire to do something led us to misperceive that country as a threat. Similar anxieties could also lead us to the same type of miscalculations regarding China but with even more disastrous possibilities. As a consequence of China's Communist past and socialist present, the country presents Washington with a state-on-state ideological counterpoint and potential (if yet imaginary) threat. China can be understood through many of the conventional Cold War prisms our leaders are most comfortable using to set national policy. It would be a mistake to underestimate the potential for conflict between the United States and China, if for no other reason than the ease with which China can be slipped into the uninspired thinking of a political class in Washington possessed of its own insecurities: governing citizens who find themselves in a particularly sour mood.
Regardless of the other ideological incompatibilities between the two parties in Washington, large segments from both sides agree that China's economic policies are problems for American business. Both want more aggressive trade remedies. This might not seem like a big adjustment, but it is. When past tensions around free trade accords flared up, China could count on a strong business community broadly supported by both Democrats and Republicans to push back against dissenting voices, as happened during the negotiation to grant China most favored nation status or to allow China's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
But Trump's election has sent two messages to America's politicians. First, ramping up rhetoric about China pays dividends. Second, rhetoric against China is not going to be enough. The time for action against China is coming. China has watched the 2016 election with equal parts concern and bemusement: concern over the possibility that its largest trading partner is clearly moving toward a more hostile view of China, bemusement over the vessel the American people have entrusted to remedy America's perceived issues with China, someone particularly susceptible to a type of flattery that China's more sophisticated leaders easily recognize. America now finds itself negotiating with China from a position of perceived weakness, which the Chinese are acutely aware of. Trump channeled this insecurity in his June 2016 trade policy speech when he asserted, "China respects strength and by letting them take advantage of us economically, which they are doing like never before, we have lost all of their respect."
The world may wait this all out, trusting that America's political and economic institutions will again find their footing and that China will develop a clearer understanding of what its trade partners expect in terms of economic openness and the need for further political liberalization. But the world is atomizing along long-dormant lines of nationalism, tribalism, economics, and governing philosophies. Those who believe in globalization and that staying connected to China is therefore good and necessary are now challenged to go back and convince others, to cover ground that many older China hands in particular feel is old and well worn. On the off chance that this moment in time is different because of America's insecurities, it must again be proven, using the most current facts, why blaming China is a dead end. In addition, a clear and compelling vision of a future in which China and the United States can compete but peacefully coexist is sorely needed.
Americans are victors of the Cold War, advocates and enablers of globalization, and progenitors of the Internet revolution. Yet we are unsure how to greet today's new economic realities or what policies best advance our own economic priorities. Over the last thirty years, major shifts in the global economy have largely been to our advantage. On the rare occasion when a recession buffeted America's shores, concerns over jobs shipped overseas or a struggling manufacturing sector would present themselves, but these concerns would dissipate once the economy regained its footing. Since 9/11 Americans have been disquieted on multiple fronts: the 9/11 attacks themselves, the 2008 great financial crisis, the multiple domestic political crises with no resolutions. They have all taken their toll on the American psyche. Everyone hopes the 2016 president election will have been the moment when our collective fever breaks, but it may well point to a fundamentally broken political system that no longer has the flexibility or stamina to wrestle with issues of any complexity. If that is the case, then America likely stands at the forefront of a new chapter in its history, one marked by a profound sense of loss and misplaced anger.
To say that Americans are feeling insecure at this moment would be an understatement. We bring this to bear in our view of every domestic or international issue, and our relationship with China is no different. This charged environment has been challenged by multiple story lines over the last several years that have only escalated tensions between the United States and China: China's massive cyber-spying programs, its enormous share of American treasuries, multiple American companies' announcements that China had infiltrated their corporate networks, China's handling of dissenting political voices, and China's military buildup. The accumulation of all of this has bent Americans toward a more hostile view of what it means to call China a partner. A 2014 poll by the Chicago Council on Foreign Affairs illustrated this point. They found that "only 33 percent of Americans encourage developing stronger ties with China."
We have taken for granted that everyone understands and agrees why China matters to the United States. Does this country, once deemed so critical to our foreign policy, once a counterweight to the Soviet Union, no longer matter? Can China no longer be viewed as someone we could work with in pursuit of common goals? Can China accumulate power without America losing it? And perhaps most important, if we can no longer view China in a constructive light, where does that leave us: are we enemies? If so, can anyone envision a future with an economic equivalent to the Cold War? Is globalization rejected in such a world? And if globalization is destroyed, what does our world look like? Even worse, are we beginning to view China as America's existential threat, a country that embodies a threat to core parts of how we understand the American experience, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War, when China does little more than reflect the inadequacies of our own political economy?
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Blaming China"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Benjamin Shobert.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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