Flashing red: Reactions to the rise of China
By Richard Cullen |
China Watch |
Updated: 2018-03-12 16:13
In the 19th century, the United Kingdom was the dominant world "superpower". In less than 100 years, by around 1910, it was supplanted by the steady rise of US power, in the process marking an extraordinary peaceful transition of world supremacy.
During World War II, US military might played a pivotal role in the defeat of the Nazis and the Japanese. After the war, the US was viewed by most emerging nations as a benign hegemon that provided a certain degree of political stability for them to grow economically. But not all of them were to develop politically in the manner Washington would have wished for, American exceptionalism notwithstanding.
How, though, has the US treated China, especially since the "open door" policy began in 1978?
For about three decades after reform and opening-up, the US generally welcomed the rise of China. Immense business opportunities were recognized and trade boomed. The expectation was that a modernizing China would follow a path, over time, of economic and political convergence, presumably toward a version of the US model of liberal democratic individualism wedded to capitalism as practiced in the West.
But China has not adhered to this Washington-dictated macro political-economic script. Today we find that the US mood has gone, over the last 100 years, from pitying China, to assisting China (to do business) to being increasingly bewildered by and in recent years, hostile to China. Before we consider the consequences of this growing animosity, it is apropos to study what within the US worldview may have animated this comparatively sharp change of outlook.
There is a clear framework within which the US perceives Chinese threats to its self-asserted (and largely effective) global hegemony during the 20th century. Defeated serious competitors (Japan and Germany) are now firm allies. Japan and South Korea remain quasi-tributary states harboring substantial US military outposts. The USSR is no more. The rest of the leading economies in the world (outside of China and Russia, but including India) are allies or at least broad, doctrinal associates. The remaining nations around the world present no significant challenge to US global supremacy in view of their comparatively small size, terrible poverty or habitual local conflict – often combined.
China, meanwhile, has managed to rebuild itself relying fundamentally on its most abundant resource — its people. It has made itself the "factory of the world" and traded so well that it has become the second-biggest economy in the world in barely three decades. At the same time, in its crowning achievement, it lifted at least 700 million people out of abject poverty. In the process, it has exploited the existing dominant Western economic and financial system to its best advantage. But every other large impoverished nation has had the same opportunities (in a number of cases blessed with natural resources China can only dream of). Also, China now has a leadership team that combines a messianic sense of China's resurgence to world pre-eminence with an uncompromising determination to stamp its mark on the world stage relative to its wealth and clout. Its current trajectory follows a well-worn path of many emerging powers throughout history. In short, China has arrived, again.
As immense as China's current difficulties are, they look less intractable than those profound challenges now facing a range of advanced liberal democracies, especially the US. Increased societal polarization is a main feature of the current political landscape. So how is China viewed in this mix?
Above all, there is an increasing spate of official, academic and media questioning. Some of this rush to re-examine is often shaped more by emotion than reason. At the other extreme, rather hostile, wild-eyed speculation can be found. The "beware of China" narrative emerging from the US has since permeated through much of Western society, reaching as far as Australia, where one academic has recently published an alarming book arguing that Australia is already on the way to becoming a puppet state of China.
In 2012, as the London Olympics progressed, Ross Clark wrote an article in The Spectator UK weekly entitled: "Sinophobia, the last acceptable racism". The success of Chinese swimmers, in particular, was annoying to their Western rivals, he noted, and the unfounded, Western critical responses reflected an irrational suspicion of China.
Implicit in the grand narrative of the European Enlightenment, shaped as it was by transforming Christianity, was the conviction that (Caucasian-crafted) rationally-based, liberal principles offer a foundational best option for the exercise and control of political power. It follows from this worldview that these principles have universal application. This perspective still shapes how the West – and especially the US – disapprovingly views China's refusal to conform to this narrative.
Liberal elites in the US are, in fact, currently feeling two levels of primary anxiety: externally there is the rise of China; internally, disrupter Trump is in the White House. Many are troubled by China's insistence that it tread its own path. This is despite China's enviable accomplishments over the last 40 years to overcome so many monumental challenges. They simply find it hard to admit to themselves that: "Something must be right with China!" In the US, meanwhile, amplified polarization means that collective morale, across the broad population, is increasingly concerning.
We can expect the new "beware of China" narrative to continue. But let us leave open the possibility that the peaceful transition of the "leading influencer" ("hegemon" has a malevolent ring to it!) role from UK to US over a century ago could be repeated, whether with a different actor on the receiving end or at least with a firm agreement to share the power to influence. Historically, change is the only constant; how we manage that will tax our collective wisdom.
Richard Cullen is a visiting professor in the Faculty of Law at Hong Kong University and an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Australia. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.
All rights reserved. Copying or sharing of any content for other than personal use is prohibited without prior written permission.
In the 19th century, the United Kingdom was the dominant world "superpower". In less than 100 years, by around 1910, it was supplanted by the steady rise of US power, in the process marking an extraordinary peaceful transition of world supremacy.
During World War II, US military might played a pivotal role in the defeat of the Nazis and the Japanese. After the war, the US was viewed by most emerging nations as a benign hegemon that provided a certain degree of political stability for them to grow economically. But not all of them were to develop politically in the manner Washington would have wished for, American exceptionalism notwithstanding.
How, though, has the US treated China, especially since the "open door" policy began in 1978?
For about three decades after reform and opening-up, the US generally welcomed the rise of China. Immense business opportunities were recognized and trade boomed. The expectation was that a modernizing China would follow a path, over time, of economic and political convergence, presumably toward a version of the US model of liberal democratic individualism wedded to capitalism as practiced in the West.
But China has not adhered to this Washington-dictated macro political-economic script. Today we find that the US mood has gone, over the last 100 years, from pitying China, to assisting China (to do business) to being increasingly bewildered by and in recent years, hostile to China. Before we consider the consequences of this growing animosity, it is apropos to study what within the US worldview may have animated this comparatively sharp change of outlook.
There is a clear framework within which the US perceives Chinese threats to its self-asserted (and largely effective) global hegemony during the 20th century. Defeated serious competitors (Japan and Germany) are now firm allies. Japan and South Korea remain quasi-tributary states harboring substantial US military outposts. The USSR is no more. The rest of the leading economies in the world (outside of China and Russia, but including India) are allies or at least broad, doctrinal associates. The remaining nations around the world present no significant challenge to US global supremacy in view of their comparatively small size, terrible poverty or habitual local conflict – often combined.
China, meanwhile, has managed to rebuild itself relying fundamentally on its most abundant resource — its people. It has made itself the "factory of the world" and traded so well that it has become the second-biggest economy in the world in barely three decades. At the same time, in its crowning achievement, it lifted at least 700 million people out of abject poverty. In the process, it has exploited the existing dominant Western economic and financial system to its best advantage. But every other large impoverished nation has had the same opportunities (in a number of cases blessed with natural resources China can only dream of). Also, China now has a leadership team that combines a messianic sense of China's resurgence to world pre-eminence with an uncompromising determination to stamp its mark on the world stage relative to its wealth and clout. Its current trajectory follows a well-worn path of many emerging powers throughout history. In short, China has arrived, again.
As immense as China's current difficulties are, they look less intractable than those profound challenges now facing a range of advanced liberal democracies, especially the US. Increased societal polarization is a main feature of the current political landscape. So how is China viewed in this mix?
Above all, there is an increasing spate of official, academic and media questioning. Some of this rush to re-examine is often shaped more by emotion than reason. At the other extreme, rather hostile, wild-eyed speculation can be found. The "beware of China" narrative emerging from the US has since permeated through much of Western society, reaching as far as Australia, where one academic has recently published an alarming book arguing that Australia is already on the way to becoming a puppet state of China.
In 2012, as the London Olympics progressed, Ross Clark wrote an article in The Spectator UK weekly entitled: "Sinophobia, the last acceptable racism". The success of Chinese swimmers, in particular, was annoying to their Western rivals, he noted, and the unfounded, Western critical responses reflected an irrational suspicion of China.
Implicit in the grand narrative of the European Enlightenment, shaped as it was by transforming Christianity, was the conviction that (Caucasian-crafted) rationally-based, liberal principles offer a foundational best option for the exercise and control of political power. It follows from this worldview that these principles have universal application. This perspective still shapes how the West – and especially the US – disapprovingly views China's refusal to conform to this narrative.
Liberal elites in the US are, in fact, currently feeling two levels of primary anxiety: externally there is the rise of China; internally, disrupter Trump is in the White House. Many are troubled by China's insistence that it tread its own path. This is despite China's enviable accomplishments over the last 40 years to overcome so many monumental challenges. They simply find it hard to admit to themselves that: "Something must be right with China!" In the US, meanwhile, amplified polarization means that collective morale, across the broad population, is increasingly concerning.
We can expect the new "beware of China" narrative to continue. But let us leave open the possibility that the peaceful transition of the "leading influencer" ("hegemon" has a malevolent ring to it!) role from UK to US over a century ago could be repeated, whether with a different actor on the receiving end or at least with a firm agreement to share the power to influence. Historically, change is the only constant; how we manage that will tax our collective wisdom.
Richard Cullen is a visiting professor in the Faculty of Law at Hong Kong University and an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Australia. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.
All rights reserved. Copying or sharing of any content for other than personal use is prohibited without prior written permission.
