In 1996, Henry Rowen, a senior fellow at the Hoover institution and a former President of the RAND Corporation, predicted that in 20 years the People's Republic of China (PRC) would democratize. Rowen was not alone in making those predictions, after all the zeitgeist of the era was dominated by Francis Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’ thesis, which theorized that liberal democracy had triumphed over totalitarian ideologies, a culmination of the Hegelian dialectic.
Between 1996 and 2021, China has transformed itself, from being a woebegotten economic basket case, into the 2nd largest economy of the world, slated to overtake the US economy by 2028, ceteris paribus. The ramping of the financial might hasn’t been without geopolitical consequences. From the treacherous climes of the Himalayas to the high seas of South China, the dragon is breathing fire and asserting or rather announcing its ascendancy. While the aforementioned geographical features are the theatre of China’s forceful display to project power, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which covers over 70 countries, through strategic industrial and infrastructure development aims to establish China as a transcontinental power.
The Thucydides Trap
‘The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.’
-Thucydides, historian and Athenian general
Do historical patterns repeat? maybe or maybe not, but history does rhyme, so believed Mark Twain. Human beings are narrative seeking creatures and such efforts to fit patterns can culminate into self fulfilling expectations. The Thucydides Trap is one such pattern that has been a feature of western strategic thought. More recently, the rise of China and its subsequent bid to be more assertive in world affairs has raised hackles in the western world. It was believed that China’s admission into the global trade order would lead to economic growth, and subsequently the Chinese Communist Party would move towards embracing an enhanced practice of democracy and respect for human rights. A section of influential thinkers and politicians, who were optimistic that the arc of history would definitely bend towards liberalism, even in authoritarian China, have been disappointed that this has not been the case.
This isn’t the first time that a de facto superpower is getting fidgety about the ascendance of a power seeking upstart. More recently, it was Great Britain, in the 19th and first part of the 20th century, contending with a unified Germany first under Bismarck and then under Adolf Hitler, in both instances leading to global catastrophes. The patterns leading up to the two world wars had the same characteristics, with Germany gaining supremacy in some aspects (Germany became the largest manufacturer of steel leading up to world war 1) and catching up in some areas. The same factoids are thrown our way today when discussing China - that it has the largest steel production capacity in the world, and the second largest producer (India) is 1/10th the size of Chinese capacity. Suffice it to say that China is a formidable force in most relevant aspects be it manufacturing, defense, finance, or politics.
While the result of World War II was to crush Germany’s will and capacity to wage war, Great Britain also ceased to be a superpower. The transition of super power status from Britain to the US and the Soviet Union was peaceful, given the imperial and institutional exhaustion in post war Britain. From 1945 to 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated and the US became the only presiding super power, the transition was surprisingly peaceful, despite the cold war being marked by hot wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
So why couldn’t the transition from the US to China, as the pre-eminent super power, be orderly?
The Century of humiliation
In the Chinese nationalist psyche, the period from 1839 to 1940’s has been characterized as the time in which western powers and Japan inflicted defeat upon defeat on the Middle Kingdom - a term used by the Chinese to describe the salience of their civilization. With the establishment of PRC in 1949, thus began the project of national rejuvenation to reassert its centrality in matters of men and nations. Within years of its founding, the PRC was directly and indirectly embroiled in wars with the US in the Korean peninsula in 1950, with India in the Himalayas in 1962, supported the North Vietnamese forces against the US, and even fought a short border war with its former benefactor the USSR, in 1969. If involvement in turmoil outside its borders didn’t occupy the Communist party of China enough, Chairman Mao launched ‘The Great Leap Forward’, an economic and social program between 1958-62, which resulted in deaths of 10-40 million people. All this while countries like South Korea, Thailand, Singapore that had been ravaged by the second world war undertook export led industrialization. This would later be called the east asian miracle.
The reforms started under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970’s, who understood the fragilities of the communist system. Deng famously remarked that it doesn’t really matter that a cat is black or white if it catches mice, making his case for opening up the economy and loosening controls. However, his legacy remains tainted for the brutal crackdown on Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Despite western concerns and occasional lip service to human rights, China became the factory to the world. By deft management of its exchange rate, operating at scale and keeping labor costs low, Chinese factories, from electronics to apparels to chemicals, transformed the country from an economic backwater to a manufacturing behemoth.
While the west may have been delusional that trickle down economics would lead to trickle down of democracy and rights as well, the Chinese were adhering to their strategic doctrines of ‘hide your strength and bide your time’ and ‘hide a dagger, with a smile’. As the financial might and defensive muscle grew stronger, so went away the smile and out were the daggers.
Cold War 2.0
The election of Donald Trump in 2016 was a watershed moment in Sino-American relations. Trump followed up on his electoral rhetoric and slapped Chinese goods with tariffs, which was followed up by reciprocal action from China. While theft of American technology by Chinese companies happened under other Presidential administrations, under Trump stern action was taken. As an example Huawei was sanctioned from participating in building the 5G network in the US.
However, the straw that broke camel’s back was the outbreak of Coronavirus pandemic, with Wuhan, in China, being the epicenter of the virus. As the virus was breaking out, the Chinese government suppressed information about the nature of the disease. Further, the Chinese propaganda apparatus went out of its way to suggest that the virus originated from the US. The public opinion for China, which wasn’t favorable even before the coronavirus, has only further worsened, and this is now reflected in the official doctrine of the western bloc. Further, the disruptions caused by coronavirus made global corporations rethink their supply chains, and as a result they are actively looking for shifting or diversifying sourcing countries.
China’s treatment of its minorities was usually glossed over by the western bloc, but with changing geopolitical complexity, western governments are taking a more direct approach; the US senate passed a bill to ban imports from the Xinjiang region, which exports 85% of China’s textiles. PRC for its part has been supporting Taliban ever since the latter took over Afghanistan; it must be noted that Afghanistan sits on one of the largest unmined copper and lithium deposits.
So, the question that remains unanswered is whether the anxiety about China’s rise is justified or not? To answer that, anecdotal it may seem, let’s consider the case of Alexander Poskrebyshev who was Stalin’s personal bodyguard and private secretary. In the purges of late 1930’s carried out under the orders of Stalin, Poskrebyshev’s wife was shot in 1941 like other hapless and innocent millions. Despite the heart wrenching loss, Poskrebyshev’s loyalty toward Stalin didn’t waver, and he remained Stalin’s bodyguard till the time the latter was alive. The evidence that has now come to light after the soviet archives were opened, after the fall of USSR, suggest that ‘the revolution’ was of supreme importance and everything else was secondary to people like Poskrebyshev, and he wasn’t alone in such blind devotion for the revolution. The lure of utopia has wrought havoc on populations who were deluded into believing adherence to certain ideologies would lead to a most desirable end state. The people at the helm of Communist Party of China are no different, though it remains to be seen how far they will go to realize their version of utopia.
Much like the claims of inevitability of China prevailing in this contest, the worries of America’s demise as a global superpower remain unjustified.While America has its set of challenges- rising debt, soaring income inequality and worsening racial tensions, it would be premature to write the epitaph of American democracy. American armed forces still remain the most formidable fighting machine. The US dollar still remains the world’s reserve currency. And most importantly, as mentioned by an American commentator, that China has jobs but no Steve jobs; the US remains the center of cutting edge innovation. While China has been trying to replicate the success of silicon valley, the results haven’t been encouraging; the number of PHDs, patents, research papers published from China have all gone up over the years, but development of critical capacities in areas such as semiconductors hasn’t happened.
The coming years and decades would be frenetic from a geopolitical perspective, whether history of super power succession repeats, rhymes, or charts a new course remains to be seen.
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