Not just ‘containment’: America’s real goal may be to undermine China’s Communist Party
David Zweig questions the wisdom of China’s flashy arrival on the global stage, as it seems to have invited a counter-attack from the US that is looking increasingly like an effort to not just limit China’s growth, but also undercut the party’s legitimacy
In the run-up to the anniversary of China’s reform and opening up this December, commentators have been assessing the country’s foreign policy over these past 40 years, including the Chinese leadership’s decision, circa 2009, to gradually replace Deng Xiaoping’s strategy of “lying low” until China was fully prepared to challenge the US.
Let me elaborate. While China is the trading partner of the world, it remains highly vulnerable to outside pressure. China exports to the US about three times as much as it imports from the US, complicating retaliation by China in a head-on confrontation. China remains deeply dependent on importing American and European technology.
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China’s research capabilities have progressed rapidly. The citations of Chinese academic papers and patents have grown exponentially, as has investment in research and development and the production of biotech products and supercomputers.
But every Western paean to China’s scientific ascendancy lists a bevy of problems, particularly a research culture where personal ties still strongly influence the allocation of research grants, where plagiarism remains too common, and where the very best talent still prefers to remain full-time in the West. Amazing progress? Yes. But the dominance of the state bureaucracy in science says that 40 years of reform may still not be enough.
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It rejects China’s duty-free “most favoured nation” trade status, something granted in the 1990s. It threatens decades of scientific collaboration. And according to Reuters, the US military was considering sending an aircraft carrier group through the Taiwan Strait for the first time since 2007, but reconsidered doing so as it could have significantly escalated bilateral tensions and risked a military confrontation.
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Trump and his team smell blood on the trade and investment front as well. Cutting off access to US technology limits China’s hi-tech development. Tariffs versus China’s export-dependent economy hurt all Chinese, letting “rollback” threaten Communist Party legitimacy.
Should Beijing believe that the Trump administration’s real goal, as in Iran and Venezuela, is not just containment but is regime change, we are in for a protracted fight, as China would be loath to make any concessions, which would only trigger further demands from a US administration set on seeing the Communist Party go away.
David Zweig is director of the Centre on China’s Transnational Relations at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and recently co-edited the book, US-China Energy Triangles: Resource Diplomacy under Hegemony