Big Brother Xi’s vision is an Orwellian-style future
His ‘Second China Shock’ would ‘drive foreign’ firms ‘out of business,’ creating a new world order
Yan Yilong describes an Orwellian-style future in which China has vanquished its economic “enemy.” Sprinkling the cliched, the “East is rising and the West is declining,” he talks of a new world order and the end of “Pax Americana.”
In a sprawling 13,500-word essay, the relatively unknown deputy director of the Institute of State Governance at the prestigious Tsinghua University has put forward a thesis that will “deeply resonant” with official Chinese foreign policy.
“China and the United States is not merely a disagreement between two sovereign states, nor is it a dispute between the peoples of China and the United States,” he wrote as reported by the Sinification newsletter.
“Instead, it is a structural conflict between the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and American hegemony … Ultimately, it is through great struggle that we aim to break the old structure and lead a new international order,” he stressed in the translated commentary:
The world’s dependence on China far exceeds China’s dependence on other countries … most countries would not want to jeopardize their economic relations with China.
Key points:
- To do this, Beijing will need to fracture the United States’ alliance of major democracies, such as the European Union, Japan, India, and the United Kingdom.
- Coercive economic policies will be rolled out to try to shatter the foundations of the liberal world order.
- Tightening its already vice-like grip on global supply chains will make sure all roads eventually lead to Beijing.
Delve deeper: But this is only one scenario in the realpolitik “game of chicken.” There is another, mapped out by Aaron L Friedberg, a professor at Princeton University and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Between the lines: “The key to understanding [Chinese President Xi Jinping’s] economic policies is to recognize that they are principally about power, not prosperity,” he wrote in a commentary for Foreign Affairs.
By flooding global markets, China aims to drive competitors out of business
Aaron L Friedberg at the american enterprise institute
What that means: “[He] will almost certainly forge ahead toward concentrating the world’s industrial power within China, even at the risk of provoking a cataclysmic trade conflict,” Friedberg pointed out in Stopping the Next China Shock.
Big picture: The first ‘China Shock’ was the massive industrialization program in the 1980s and ’90s, triggering billions of dollars in foreign investment. As cheap exports flooded out of the country, millions of jobs disappeared in major democracies.
The bottom line: This time around, Comrade Xi aims to dominate advanced green manufacturing such as electric vehicles and clean energy alternatives. Robotics honed by Artificial Intelligence is another key area juiced up by colossal state subsidies.
Why it matters: “By flooding global markets, China aims to drive foreign competitors out of business. [It also plans] to leapfrog ahead of current generations of military and intelligence systems to surpass even the capabilities of the US,” Friedberg said.
Flashpoints: “Only by banding together in a trade defense coalition can countries [such as the US and its allies] with market-based economies protect themselves against China’s predatory practices,” he added.
China Factor comment: “This kind of coalition will be challenging to create but the alternative is worse,” Friedberg wrote. It would be a nightmare vision with one of the most authoritarian regimes in history as the sole global superpower.