Author says China is playing the long game
(Editor’s note: This is the second part of Anne Bevilacqua’s review of “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.” The first part can be found at smokymountainnews.com.)
Until 2014, no U.S. adversary, including Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, had managed to achieve even 60% of American GDP. In that year, China became the first, and did so “quietly,” says Rush Doshi, political scientist and author of “The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.”
It is clear that Washington’s relationship to this emerging superpower is of criti-cal importance.
Does China have a grand strategy to equal or even replace the U.S. as world leader? Doshi argues yes, and his book offers an unprecedented amount of evidence from Chinese sources, many obtained with difficulty, especially after the increased restrictions applied under the leadership of current Chinese President Xi Jinping.
There is debate in Washington about China’s ambitions, between the “believers,” who believe with Doshi that China wants to be at least equal, if not dominant, and “skeptics,” who think that China has no such desires.
The stakes are critical, as “The Long Game” points out. Any kind of dominance by China, whether regional or global, would certainly be less liberal than dominance by a democracy. The word “liberal,” in this context, means adherence to the rule of law and to freedom of speech. In today’s China, government is the one-party rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), structured firmly under Leninist principles of maintaining power at the top. The Party dictates what the law is, and speech is tightly controlled. It is the antithesis of democracy, and a world order based on such principles would look different from the order that we now know. Criticism of China, today, is not criticism of the Chinese people.
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Doshi speculates about a world under CCP principles: “Chinese order would likely be more coercive than the present order, consensual in ways that primarily benefit connected elites even at the expense of voting publics, and considered legitimate mostly to those few who it directly rewards.” Surveillance and censorship techniques are already among China’s foremost technological advances. Outside of the workings of the government, “Party cells can be found in almost all institutions — as wide-ranging as law firms, private companies and non-profit organizations.” The Party can both direct and monitor, and it works to spread its principles and sell its surveillance innovations to other countries.
At the same time, it is sometimes hard for Westerners to take the Party seriously. Its structure seems old-fashioned and its pronouncements sound “wooden.” And yet, Doshi emphasizes, it is remarkably powerful and can act with remarkable efficiency.
Most rising powers do not have a grand strategy. “The Long Game” describes that term as a specific goal with strategy carefully planned to achieve that goal. The strategy consists of a coordination of economic, political, and military plans. That level of coordination is “rare.” Nazi Germany had a grand strategy and the U.S. had one during the Cold War, but most great powers do not have one. Doshi’s central point is that the CCP has one.
If the center of the CCP vision for the future is a “community of shared future for mankind,” a phrase used by “countless” officials, and based on a Leninist power structure, numerous China observers have concluded that 2049 is a target date. That year marks the 100-year anniversary of the founding of the Party. For those who believe that the CCP aims to equal or surpass the U.S. in global influence, there is debate over how to respond.
Some say accommodate China’s increasing power, and work for cooperation, but Doshi says there is no guarantee that the CCP would honor commitments, and plenty of recent history suggesting it would not. Some say try to change China towards a more freedom-supporting direction, through engagement or by supporting reformists. But since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Party has acted increasingly defensive. It has put in place a strong form of “patriotic education,” has become increasingly intolerant of dissent, and has increased censorship and surveillance. And, “it is highly unlikely reformers exist at the highest levels.”
Ignoring China would be foolish, if not impossible. It is a big country and “on track to surpass the United States in economic size.” If we retreated from the world stage, the CCP would gladly fill the void and push its repressive ways. Democracy is a threat to its position of power. The CCP would actively work to undermine democratic structures, including ours, and would continue to try to interfere with existing alliances.
Doshi argues persuasively that neither efforts to placate China nor efforts to change China would be successful, and concludes that “the most logical remaining alternative is a strategy of competition.” This should involve both a weakening of China’s attempts to achieve dominance and a renewed effort to build up the “foundation of U.S. order,” which in itself is based on democratic principles.
Intelligent competition, he says, would be what is called “asymmetric.” In other words, we can’t compete “dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.” China’s economic size precludes that. We must be strategic. “The United States has to be as good as or better than its opponent in the effectiveness with which resources are used,” said Andrew Marshall, State Department official, in 1973. That observation holds today and “The Long Game” gives many suggestions for action. Among them, careful planning, supporting local journalism around the world to help expose Chinese corruption, helping countries adopt regulations on Chinese investments and advertising, countering Chinese influence in the U.N., joining Chinese multi-country organizations, and increasing Chinese-language capability in our institutions.
Doshi does not believe that America is in decline. He describes several periods in our history when that was a popular opinion, and points out that we have “enviable advantages: a young population, financial dominance, abundant resources, peaceful borders, strong alliances and an innovative economy.” We worry about inequality and polarization, but he says that these issues are also global issues.
There is a wealth of common sense and patient explanation here, all built upon extensive scholar-ship and evidence, all offering an important understanding of our world today.
(Ann Bevilacqua is a book lover who lives in Haywood County. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)
