China is yin, America is yang, and they need each other more than Trump knows
- China and the US can avoid a clash of civilisations if they can grasp the idea that they need to restrain, support and balance each other. Without the support and restraining influence of either country, the global order cannot last
In his classic The United States and China, John Fairbank gave us a glimpse of the immensely complex love-hate relationship between the two countries, one that defies simple summary: it is neither a Huntingtonian clash of civilisations nor just another case of great power rivalry.
Sustained conflict with the aim of destroying one’s rival can only lead to mutual decline. To borrow an analogy from naturalistic Chinese medicine, it is unhealthy when either yin or yang is weak, and the other becomes dominant.
Looking at the world through the lens of yin and yang, it is not hard to see America, like much of the West, is yang in nature. It is steeped in the culture of wide personal freedom and transparent governance, and it is impatient for quick solutions to problems.
Betting against China is a fool’s errand
Evidently, the East and the West have different values, as well as political and social ideologies. Yet, there is no necessity, neither is it desirable, for either yin or yang to dominate or prevail. Without the support and restraining influence of either force, a system will eventually falter, as America might have begun to in the last two decades.
This is the core aspect of a yin-yang balance. It is the reason China has repeatedly declared that it has no wish to export its system of governance, and that it will not tolerate any preaching of the virtues of liberal democracy that have no roots in China, and likely never will.
Moreover, the technological leadership of the US – great internet companies like Amazon and Apple, and aerospace giants like Boeing and Lockheed – is being challenged by China. Alibaba and Huawei are among a fast-growing list of Chinese companies offering advanced technologies from high-speed transit to artificial intelligence.
The US mistakes China’s communist ways for Chinese civilisation
As a result, American paranoia about the “yellow peril” has reared its head again; amid fears that Chinese are somehow robbing Americans of decent livings, Americans from opposite ends of the political spectrum are closing ranks against China. Recently, Texas senator Ted Cruz was close to hysteria about this imagined threat to Western civilisation.
Over the long term, this new cold war will destroy economic value and cripple the very liberal world order the US had played a major role in creating, an order that has supported unparalleled advances in global prosperity in the last seven decades.
The sensible solution is for China and the US to coexist, compete fairly with each other, and to cooperate when it benefits both sides and the rest of the world. When yin and yang are in balance, China and the US would be able to play their parts constructively.
The perils of Chinese ambiguity
The principle of yin and yang is not that far from the concept of checks and balances in governance. Healthy contention between yin and yang is also consistent with the belief in the virtue of business competition.
For China and the US to ignore this wisdom is to imperil the world, and to jeopardise the liberal order that past world leaders painstakingly built for mankind.
Hong Hai, a former dean of the business school at Nanyang Technological University and a past member of the Singapore Parliament, is author of the forthcoming The Rule of Culture: Corporate and State Governance in China and East Asia