From trade war to a clash of civilisations: how China and the West can avoid major confrontation
- Regina Ip says China is a civilisational power for whom democracy is no easy fit, making its rivalry with the West hard to resolve. Beijing must do better at presenting its point of view, while the West needs to understand China’s eventful history
As is well documented by scholars on Japan’s post-war economic miracle, Japan adopted a deliberate strategy of domestic market protection by erecting tariff and non-tariff barriers, grooming “national champions” in selected industries, targeting US rivals and making copycat production by reverse engineering.
In China’s case, size clearly matters. According to Professor Lawrence J. Lau, from 1978 to 2017, China’s share of world trade rose from 0.5 per cent to 10.2 per cent; while its share of the world’s GDP rose from 1.75 per cent to 15.2 per cent. As a continental economy with the world’s largest population, the unleashing of its teaming manpower and, more recently, brainpower, lifted the largest numbers of people out of poverty in human history.
The disputes, however, run deeper than trade imbalances and tech rivalry. Many in the West remain sceptical, if not downright critical, of China’s political system and practices. American scholars, journalists and sundry “China experts”, who study contemporary China, take a far more adversarial view than historians of China’s failure to launch political reform as part of its “reform and opening up”.
Distinguished Western academics argue that there is a correlation between the level of economic development and the expansion of freedom. They hypothesise that once a country has reached the “middle-income country threshold” of US$12,000 per capita, it would become increasingly free. China’s continued tight grip on its people’s rights and freedoms is lambasted as “a great leap backward”, while the expansion of Chinese influence in the West, allegedly in ways that are “covert, coercive or corrupting”, is viewed as a direct affront on the legitimacy of American democracy.
Better understanding of China’s checkered history would put contemporary Chinese trade practices and influence mechanisms in a broader perspective. Fact No 1 is that China, historically termed the “Middle Kingdom”, had preferred to be left alone. In 1757, Emperor Qianlong decreed that only the southern port of Guangzhou should be open for foreign trade. It did not open up its ports on its eastern seaboard until almost 100 years later, when an alliance of imperial invaders from the West forced open its gates.
Thirdly, because of its long history of periodic civil wars, disunion and frequent famines, China is obsessed with unity and unification, and prioritises keeping stomachs full and society in good order. It is also acutely aware of the variation in the “quality” of its multitudinous population, including many from the countryside who have yet to be gentrified. For centuries, Chinese governments have had to resort to control to maintain order and peace.
China has much to learn in dealing with and presenting itself to the West. Equally, the West should recognise that China is not an ordinary national state. It is a civilisational state. If Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations prognosis is anything to go by, Sinic civilisation is not one which lends itself easily to Western-style democratisation. It is equally if not even more important in the long run, to avoid a clash of civilisations between China and the West, in addition to avoiding a prolonged trade spat or tech ban which inhibits the free flow of ideas and, by extension, human progress.
Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee is a lawmaker and chairwoman of the New People’s Party