What kind of power does China want?

(Editor’s note: This is the first section of a two-part review. See next week’s SMN for the second part.)

Does China seek to replace the United States in its position as global leader? This is the question that political scientist Rush Doshi answers in “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order” (Oxford University Press, 2021, 339 pp). 

I heard Doshi give an interview recently, and was impressed with his calm, friendly demeanor and with the depth of his knowledge. I assume he is a hard worker. He has collected what his colleagues call an unprecedented array of Chinese language sources and written a book that is informative and interesting. He makes a convincing case that, yes, China wants to replace U.S. world order with its own authoritarian model. Then he lays out practical strategies for maintaining the current liberal one.

Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that by China, political scholars mean the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and not the Chinese people. In fact, that is precisely the point. The CCP is a Leninist institution, founded and run on principles set down by Vladimir Lenin, who maintained that a group of proficient revolutionaries can reshape history if they can keep the power to themselves.  Copied from the Soviet Union’s example, the one-party political system of the CCP is capable of “ruthless amorality.” “Its priority is centralization of power,” Doshi says. Its justification is efficiency. As one of China’s leaders said in the 1980s, “The Soviets can do something after just one Politburo meeting. Can the Americans do that?” Checks and balances? No. The moderating force of public opinion? No.

China and the U.S. were at one time “quasi-allies.” In the 1980s, both were concerned about a powerful Soviet Union and co-operated in monitoring Soviet missile testing. The Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989, in which the Chinese government killed demonstrators, changed the relationship immediately. Nothing in China’s recent history has had such a consequential effect. Its leaders were convinced that the U.S. wanted to overthrow the CCP, and began, quietly, to interfere with American influence in Asia. They strengthened their military defenses and began to join regional organizations for the first time, stalling Western attempts to build order based on democratic principles.

In 2007, the global financial crisis emboldened China, who saw it as a sign of weakness in the West. Now, in addition to interference, the Party began to work on building influence regionally and once again increased military spending, especially to broaden its naval reach. It began to form, for the first time, its own regional institutions, especially economically based groups. “The Community of Common Destiny” was a phrase used often in speeches given in Asian countries by Chinese officials. The regional infrastructure investment project, Belt and Road Initiative, was begun at this time.

It did all this work as quietly as possible, and most Americans involved with foreign policy were “skeptics,” as Doshi calls them, doubting that the CCP had global ambitions. Doshi gives robust evidence from documents at the time, including sources not examined previously, such as memoirs written by key Chinese officials, to support his argument.

The 2016 Brexit vote by the U.K. to leave the European Union, and the U.S. election of Donald Trump as president, signaled chaos in the West to observers in China. They saw these events as another opportunity for global advancement. The theme of opportunity was emphasized repeatedly in papers and speeches by officials at all levels of the CCP at this time. It was a time of “profound changes in the international balance of forces,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said.

In 2020, China sent to Australia a list of 14 demands. Among the 14, China insisted that Australia ease its foreign investment screening, stop condemning foreign human rights situations, stop saying that China instigated cyber attacks, and “constrain the independent actions of its think tanks, media and local officials that China found distasteful,” as Doshi summarizes. If Australia did not follow these demands, China promised to punish Australia economically.

Taken as a whole, these 14 demands give a picture of what China desires as the way the world should work. This is the world order it would prefer. China sees this way as efficient. The economically stronger country decides. The economically weaker countries fall in line. Otherwise, thinks China, chaos and decadence are inevitable. It is certainly true that democratic ideas threaten the hold of the CCP.

The demands made to Australia, says Doshi, are but one example of the ways China has increased the intensity of its actions since 2016. It has also reneged on its agreements for Hong Kong autonomy, opened concentration camps, killed Indian soldiers in a border dispute and kidnapped a Swedish citizen in Thailand.

Although it can be fairly said that the U.S. is hypocritical, that it falls short of its ideals, others point out that at least Americans have a right to criticize and have political parties to choose from. China has neither. The U.S. attracts criticism “precisely because it holds itself to a higher standard,” says South African journalist Dele Olojode. “No one holds China to that kind of standard.”

Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister, makes a pertinent comment about this book. “The Long Game’ brings what’s been largely missing from debate in US-China relations: historically informed insight into the nature of China’s Leninist system and strategy.”

According to Doshi, “many Americans take features of the international system as granted rather than as products of American power.” The assumption that the rule of law is the healthiest basis for government is partly the product of U.S. willingness to defend that assumption. Respect for borders and for international shipping rules, to give two other examples of such features, are partly products of U.S. willingness to defend these assumptions, “even if Washington’s own adherence to or defense of these norms is imperfect.”

Part ll of this review will look at speculation about what a world based on Leninist principles would look like, and what steps the U.S. could take to ensure the predominance of liberal, as opposed to authoritarian, principles.

(Anne Bevilacqua is a book lover who lives in Haywood County. abev1@yahoo.com.)