My Take | America’s 1980s Japanese lesson for today’s China
- Wiser heads in Washington would not want the Chinese communist state to collapse and cause chaos across Asia and the world economy. The best outcome for them would be a Japanese-style, decades-long stasis, which would put a stop to China’s rise
One of the few advantages of ageing is that what younger people think is new is actually just repeated.
China’s techno-nationalism is nothing new, though some pundits pretend that it is. Before the Chinese, Japan had its own version. And the response from the United States was the same: outright hostility. It’s well worth remembering that particularly recent history to appreciate what is happening today.
Much has been said about how the Chinese Communist Party had learned from the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russian communism to survive and prosper. In recent years, though, many within the party are likely to have been studying the rise of Japan in the 1980s and Washington’s successful response to nip it in the bud.
American leaders like to portray their growing rivalry with China as one of ideologies – democracy vs authoritarianism. That was how US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it out to be in his preface to the contentious first meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, between the Chinese and the new American leadership under Joe Biden. It irked foreign policy chief Yang Jiechi so much he went into a 17-minute rebuttal.
At bottom, he suggests, ideology and values are just a fig leaf to conceal the US drive to maintain its global dominance, in trade, technology and geopolitics.
If we recall how the US treated Japan, a close ally, there is much to be said about Yang’s criticism of the US. Granted, the American response to China has been much more militaristic and therefore far more dangerous. However, we should not underestimate the underlying economic competition.