China is not the new America, and will never be

Derwin Pereira says the US is chaotic, fractious and ultimately self-correcting. That is its great strength and the reason it should not be written off as a fading power, despite Donald Trump’s best efforts to undermine US authority

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Published: 5:00am, 25 Aug 2018Updated: 8:12am, 25 Aug 2018

China is the new America, it appears, in a world turning upside down. Consider the most obvious of trends. The United States set up the liberal capitalist international order after the second world war to protect its interests and those of its allies from an expansionist Soviet Union and its socialist partners. The cold war was a contest between those contending visions of the global good.

Today, however, even as a new cold war erupts between America and China, the United States is abrogating its historical role. It is subverting the liberal international order by pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, withdrawing from the Paris accord on climate change, and now starting a punitive tariff war with not only China but also American allies and friends.

As if on cue, Beijing is stepping into Washington’s shoes. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative are the economic prongs of Chinese diplomacy. Its less benign prongs include the militarisation of the South China Sea and efforts to create naval access to countries in the Indo-Pacific region.

Chinese soft power is adding a third dimension to its economic and military rise. Hardly anyone still sees China as a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist power, repressive at home and dismissive of the status quo abroad (although these ills do remain in contemporary Chinese domestic and foreign policy).

Instead, today’s China has rebranded itself as a neo-Confucian entity in which rapid growth has enabled the state to re-inherit ancient traditions of obeisance to the government, its organs and its personnel. This magic formula of economic growth and authoritarian stability appeals to dozens of “China wannabes” abroad.

China is not the new America, and will never be

Derwin Pereira says the US is chaotic, fractious and ultimately self-correcting. That is its great strength and the reason it should not be written off as a fading power, despite Donald Trump’s best efforts to undermine US authority

Watch: A an aerial view of China’s militarisatiion of the South China Sea