Under Trump, US narrative of the China threat is simply false
- China’s pattern of behaviour and priorities have been largely consistent since 1978, even if the pace of its opening up is not to the West’s liking
- While Beijing has become more assertive internationally, the true system-breaker has been Washington, with its trampling on the rules of the global order it helped write
There are perverse forces at work in Washington at present, with the deafening consensus that China is an existential threat to the world. Talk is of the sudden emergence in China of “a pattern of behaviour” that is undermining world order as we know it.
According to this narrative, something bad but fundamental happened around 2015, as Xi Jinping began to consolidate his power. And the United States, as leader of the free world, is duty-bound to do something about it.
As the Financial Times’ James Kynge noted more than a week ago, “it can seem as if China is picking fights with almost everyone”. The narrative depicts a newly assertive China flexing its expansionist muscles in all directions: lashing out in the South China Sea, against Taiwan, against Hong Kong democracy advocates, and against Uygurs; using the Belt and Road Initiative as a weapon of economic expansion; and manipulating subsidies and state-owned enterprises to subvert private-sector enterprises worldwide. It has Huawei being used as a weapon to win global technology hegemony. And of course the Covid-19 virus must have been deliberately unleashed on an innocent and unsuspecting world to hobble the market-driven economies of the West.
For people like myself who have been trying over the last four decades to track and understand the re-engagement of China with the global economy that was shaped and driven by Deng Xiaoping from 1978, such a narrative is preposterous. But that does not lessen the pervasiveness of the “Washington consensus” on China.
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Washington’s hardened position on Beijing’s claims in South China Sea heightens US-China tensions
It is not untrue that China is being more assertive internationally, nor that China’s rapid rise has created challenges for many economies worldwide. It’s just that the narrative is all back to front. Cause and effect have been all muddled up. And getting to the heart of who did what when, and who the true system breaker is, presents a massive challenge.