Has China Won?
by John Lawrence, October 16, 2020
Ian Bremmer wrote in Time magazine: "You might think 2020 had been a pretty good year for China, at least when compared with the West. Though COVID-19 began its global march there, China’s recovery has been remarkable. The government’s unprecedented capacity for surveillance, large-scale testing, contact tracing and quarantine helped contain the outbreak inside China within two months. That success allowed for the restart of supply chains and enabled a state investment-led rebound. China could be the world’s only large economy to grow this year. And as second waves of COVID-19 appear in Europe and the U.S., China hasn’t had any serious outbreaks over the past month. Life there is nearly back to normal."
The Chinese and the US economies were neck and neck prior to COVID. The fact that China has handled its response much better than has the US means that China will emerge as the world's largest economy by 2021. In his book, "Has China Won?", author Kishore Mahbubani sums up the strengths and weaknesses of both societies. He contends that the "Chinese Communist Party" is a misnomer. It should be called the Chinese Civilization Party as it owes more to China's 3000 year civilization than it does to communism. China values stability over chaos. It has pulled 800,000 Chinese citizens out of poverty in the last 40 years, largely because it has privatized large swaths of its society. Chinese citizens are well satisfied with their lot in life because among other things they have access to as wide a variety consumer goods as do the developed western societies.
So what has been the US response to China's rapid economic growth and expansion particularly with regard to its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which is building infrastructure all over the world with the intention of recreating the ancient Silk Road trade route? Obama initiated the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which would have been a trade alliance rivaling the BRI. Trump immediately withdrew from the TPP as well as withdrawing from other global initiatives and alliances under his America First go-it-alone philosophy with the result that even US allies are giving Xi Jinping and China more credibility than the US. Under the Trump administration the response to China's rise has been to try and put roadblocks in the way of Chinese corporations. They had Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Huawei, China's largest privately held company, arrested on December 1, 2018 in Canada under the pretext that Huawei had sold equipment to Iran violating US sanctions. Subsequently, she was extradited to the US. On February 13, 2020 Meng was personally indicted by the DOJ on charges of trade secrets theft which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years' imprisonment.
Similarly, the Trump administration sought to prohibit the popular Chinese app Tik Tok from being downloaded by American consumers. Tik Tok, however, received a reprieve in September 2020 from an American federal court when a judge put a temporary stop to the Trump administration's ban. The government had argued that Tik Tok may have a "back door" through which it could share American data with the Chinese government. A ban would “be no different from the government locking the doors to a public forum,” said John Hall, a lawyer for TikTok. “We’re pleased that the court agreed with our legal arguments and issued an injunction preventing the implementation of the TikTok app ban,” a spokesman for TikTok said after the judge’s decision.
The American response to the success of Chinese private corporations might have been to cheer the at least partial privatization of the Chinese economy, a laudable development in accordance with US free enterprise, capitalistic principles. Instead, the US under Trump has sought to hinder Chinese corporations every step of the way even when they have won competitions fair and square. It is what I would call the Tonya Harding response. In January 1994, skater Tonya Harding became embroiled in controversy when her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, orchestrated an attack on her fellow U.S. skating rival Nancy Kerrigan. Both women then competed in the February 1994 Winter Olympics, where Kerrigan won the silver medal and Harding finished eighth. Harding was later banned from the sport. The US response to China over China's pulling ahead of it is reminiscent of Tonya's response to Kerrigan. If you can't beat your opponent with your natural talent, try to injure them (in this case sanction or ban them) instead.
This leaves aside the legitimacy of the US use of sanctions to demand that another country (in this case China) must not do business with some other country if the US says it can't. A Biden administration would reenter the Iran nuclear agreement which reduced sanctions against Iran, and, supposedly, Meng would be released. Tik Tok also would be allowed to continue its ability to sell its app all over the world. The US should engage constructively and diplomatically with China to allay any fears about "back doors." Diplomatic treaties and agreements are the way to go, not retaliation over imagined and ill defined fears. It's important that the US and China cooperate especially when it comes to global warming. They are the 2 largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters, and their cooperation is necessary in working with the rest of the world (in particular India) in bringing GHG emissions to net zero in the shortest time. The destructive effects of global warming are manifesting themselves now all over the world in addition to the wildfires on the US west coast and hurricanes in the Gulf states.