Rich, autocratic China is too powerful an adversary for any democracy

Is the United States trying to obstruct China's rise or is it rising to China’s challenge to become the world’s top superpower? If somebody wants to replace you as No 1, it's only natural to fight back whichever way you can.

China has every right to feel its time has come to be top dog now that no other country except the US can rival it economically and militarily. That thinking, in fact, underpins President Xi Jinping’s vision for his country, giving birth to his so-called “Chinese dream”.

He fleshed out that vision with: the “Belt and Road Initiative”, designed for all roads to lead to China; “Made in China 2025”, which uses state subsidies for mainland companies to dominate global artificial intelligence; the “Greater Bay Area”, to knock Silicon Valley off its perch; and, militarised man-made islands in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims belongs to it.

But just because China feels it has acquired the right to use even tenacious means to snatch the superpower crown doesn’t mean the US must accede to China’s ambition. US President Donald Trump has shown he is more than willing to use equally tenacious means to defend his country’s long-held status as the dominant power.

He has unleashed a trade war, along with a pushback against the Belt and Road Initiative, efforts to discredit mainland telecom giant Huawei as a Beijing spy, a global campaign to prevent China from dictating 5G rules, and so-called freedom of navigation by US warplanes and warships in the South China Sea.

Whether you see this as the US trying to contain China or China confronting the US by hook or by crook to become top dog, this clash of the titans – which pitches Chinese autocracy against American democracy – will have far-reaching global consequences.

I have said before this is a new cold war. Others prefer less alarming language. Either way, if China triumphs, what will it be like living in a world with an authoritarian state as the dominant superpower? How will China react if the US successfully thwarts its ambition to lead the world?

This new rivalry between two 21st-century powers for global dominance is nothing like the cold war that pitched a wealthy and democratic US-led West against the communist Soviet Union, which had a crumbling economy before its demise. Even people within the Soviet bloc yearned for the freedom and prosperity of the West.

But today’s communist China is not only rapidly producing billionaires, its economy is forecast to overtake that of the US in coming years. Its people are proudly patriotic, can travel freely, are big spenders abroad, and there is little open support for Western-style democracy. Xi had actually suggested that developing countries yearning for prosperity should consider the Chinese model.

Democracy was the West’s best weapon during the cold war with the Soviet Union, uniting it against a common communist enemy. But the shared value of democracy is no longer enough to bind today’s West against an authoritarian but economically powerful China, which knows how to use its wealth and vast market to play Western nations against each other.

Even Trump has had limited success in forcing allies to boycott Huawei and the belt and road plan. Huawei, which is required by Chinese law to share information with the government, has lulled some US allies into believing it will never do that. It’s even legally challenging the Trump administration’s ban against its products. American democracy allows that.

China bans foreign companies from its network infrastructure, too, on security grounds but any US attempt to sue in a Chinese court would go nowhere. Huawei’s chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou used Canadian democracy to sue the government for wrongful arrest. The two Canadians China arrested aren’t even allowed lawyers.

Democracy allows China to open Confucius Institutes in US colleges to advance its agenda. No way would China allow US institutes in Chinese universities to promote democracy. Rather than democracy being a weapon in the new cold war, it is in many ways its own worst enemy.

Michael Chugani is a Hong Kong journalist and TV show host