It seems we are all grappling to understand the emergence of a new world order where interactions between democracy, capitalism, technology & social media are generating an emotional fog — driven in part by fear and deception.
At the end of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, a rare lucidity emerged concerning the rules underpinning international trade, human rights and socio-political engagement. Since then we have encountered an increasingly confused set of conditions in which human affairs are being played out, accompanied by an ecological breakdown we are denying.
Perceived through the lens of the pervasive Western episteme — with its obsession on growth and ascribing value to measurable ideals — these conditions conflate and distort the economic and political might of China. Recent waves of right-wing populism now encircling the globe, along with the massive ecological breakdown we are still trying to avoid, have provoked ideological confusion and distorted the geo-strategic context still further. So what are we really dealing with in the current trade spat and tacit hostility between China and the US? Will it lead to war?
Since 1945 the role of global dominion assumed by the US, bolstered by the imposition of neoliberal values and practices through trade or warfare, has been a charade. We were all taken in. Including the US itself. Yet successive administrations never quite succeeded in camouflaging the act of global “leadership” as one of pure neocolonial self-interest based on economic and resource imperatives. Chairman Deng Xiaoping was possibly the first to see through the pretence and to begin openly contesting such a conceit. Naturally, that did little to win him friends in Washington.
The rise of China has caused concern in the West for some years now. But this is largely because of fundamental misinterpretations regarding Chinese aspirations and intentions. By implementing the Singapore governance archetype (focusing on material wellbeing rather than individual freedoms) while adhering to its core socialist values, China has been able to catch (and possibly overtake) the West by remaining true to its cultural past and future vision. This has to be acknowledged as an unprecedented achievement.
What irritated those in the West far more, however, were breaches of human rights. And because the West holds human rights to be a universally binding concept, we expressed outrage. Naturally we had to turn a blind eye to our own flaws in that regard. But that was easily done. As a consequence, China became a strategic challenge to be overcome and most probably humiliated by applying the same bully-boy tactics imposed by the US in other foreign lands.
Of course it’s not possible to understand the Sinic mind through an Occidental lens — the optics are just too fuzzy. But the reverse also holds true.
China quietly observed Western-style democracies failing to live up to their own rhetoric, failing to achieve their own aims and standards, failing to engage with their own citizens, failing to control their domestic agendas, and succumbing to various forms of graft and corruption. More obviously, the recent growth of Western tribalism, heightened by technology-shrewd activists spreading biased information, weakened public trust in the most venerable of Western institutions, including any deeper sense of unity — or what we might call moral law. To the Chinese, moral law is almost sacred. It signifies the higher purpose which unifies the nation.
It is no surprise then that China interprets all of this as a sign of moral decadence and a weakening of the West’s core societal values. If the West is in decline to such an extent that it loses its own sense of identity and purpose, the Chinese surmised, it has already forfeited the right to preach or to act on behalf of other nations. For the US to profess that it’s guiding the world towards freedom and prosperity, or to criticise China for its record on human rights, is duplicity of the first order.
Of course not everything is fine and dandy in China. A raft of legacy issues, including air pollution and ecological degradation, could derail the Chinese juggernaut. Second- and third-order change, innovation, and the role creative destruction can play in disrupting the status quo are still not fully appreciated in China. Whereas Western economies can usually recover quickly from unforeseen crises, China’s policy mistakes can rankle for years. This is why precision and consistency are so vital for Chinese interests.
The China-US trade feud is still in full swing and seems to be escalating with Trump’s tariffs. Pointing to this economic sparring as proof that military conflict between the two is inevitable, however, is dubious at best. The current shows of strength between Presidents Trump and Xi are little more than belligerent chest thumping. Inevitably it will cause damage, perversely to manufacturing and agriculture in the US, but also to investors who are in the wrong markets at the wrong time.
Technology is the sweet spot. And 5G, along with disruptive tools such as robotics, quantum computing and machine intelligence, looks to me to be the key to that treasure trove. While we live in an era of uncertainty, abide separation, and comply with the rules of an extractionist paradigm, there will be winners and losers. In that context we can only be sure of one thing. While technological breakthroughs will continue to stream out of Western laboratories and universities, China will deploy those breakthroughs faster and more effectively at scale as soon as it can get its hands on them. That is how they will win.