Knowing and understanding the point of view of the People’s Republic of China in its own terms does not mean endorsing, condoning or justifying that point of view. I do not advocate China’s authoritarian technocracy as a substitute for representative democracy. I also do not defend representative liberal democracy as the definitive model when this term “liberal” defends the interests of a miniscule minority at the expense of an immense majority. I think both models are in crisis. What is happening in Hong Kong today could be a major symptom of the difficulty of merging the two models.
Changing paradigms in the world order
The “reform and opening up” policy Deng Xiaoping inaugurated in 1978 led to the extraordinary rise of China as a geoeconomic superpower. Geoeconomic power tends to become geopolitical power. “The West” characterises China as an “emerging” economy. In historical terms China is re-emerging. It is returning to the pre-eminent position it held in the world economy before being subjected to Western imperial aggression in the nineteenth century. A major priority of the “China Dream” proposed by Xi Jinping is to “take centre stage” in world affairs. Taking centre stage involves the “China Model” of economic development and the modernisation and the strengthening of Chinese military power.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The USSR disappeared two years later. Francis Fukuyama (in)famously celebrated the close of an ideology-driven bipolar world order — the inevitable and conclusive Hegelian victory of liberal democracy and free market economics over autocracies and planned economies in a world organised by Westphalian nation-states [1]1 — Fukuyama, F. (1989), “The End of History?”, The National Interest, 16: p. 3-18. . History soon returned, and Fukuyama recanted — he now warns of the fragility of liberal democracy. China was still a slowly awakening giant, stunned by its own events of 1989. Joseph Stiglitz has warned that the simultaneous waning of confidence in neoliberalism and in democracy is no coincidence because the triumphant neoliberalist policies that claimed the fall of the Wall as a victory have been undermining democracy for 40 years. They have spawned populist and neo-nationalist movements that react against the damage caused by unfettered global markets which concentrate wealth in the hands of the few at the cost of the many [2]2 — Stiglitz, J. (2011), “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%”, Vanity Fair; Stiglitz, J. (2019), “The End of Neoliberalism and the Rebirth of History”, The World’s Opinion Page. .
A geoeconomic power shift has occurred and a concomitant geopolitical power shift is occurring, but the paradigms that dominate Euroamerican political theory have not shifted. “The West” runs the risk of falling prey to a Maginot Line Syndrome, preparing obsolete defences of political systems and paradigms based on Westphalian nation-states for a supranational post-Bretton Woods world order that has moved “the Rest” into uncharted territory. The G7 has ceded relevance to the G20. The dynamic economic growth of the BRICS and MINT countries and Africa’s new rising centrality are supplanting the economic hegemony of the former metropoles. South-South cooperation offsets asymmetrical North- South relations. Five hundred years of “Western” dominance is ending. The largest part of the world’s population and trade are now centred in Asia.
Any analysis of the emerging shift in geopolitical power that corresponds to the shift of geoeconomic and demographic power would call for adequate paradigms, but these new paradigms are still emerging [3]3 — Golden, S. (2018), “New paradigms for the new silk road”, in: Mendes, C. (ed.), China’s New Silk Road: An Emerging World Order, Londres: Routledge, p. 7-20. . They must compete with established theoretical models developed by and for “the West”. Paradigms can generate path dependent models, and if the paradigm employed is flawed, a strategy based on that paradigm will be flawed as well. A paradigm that defines another country as a rival will model zero-sum competition and prepare a strategy for confrontation and conflict — and perhaps provoke it. A paradigm that defines another country as a partner will model win-win cooperation and prepare a strategy for harmonious relations — and perhaps ensure them.
A geoeconomic power shift has occurred and a concomitant geopolitical power shift is occurring, but the paradigms that dominate Euroamerican political theory have not shifted
The latest Global Trends Report of the US National Intelligence Council describes the shifting nature of the world order as an ever-widening range of states, organizations, and empowered individuals that will shape geopolitics. It concludes that the emerging global landscape represents the end of an era dominated by the US, and that any US attempt to impose order would fail. The report acknowledges the obsolescence of Cold War and Westphalian paradigms and tries to imagine new models for a changing world order [4]4 — National Intelligence Council (2017): Global Trends: Paradox of Progress. Available online. .
Geopolitical challenges facing China
Internationally, there are a number of factors that could destabilize the Party-State: on the economic front, barriers to regionalisation, shortage of resources (raw materials, energy, transport), access to markets (protectionism, transport, piracy), financial crises (e.g., 1997, 2008, SARS, Covid-19), global capitalist market turbulences, trade wars, sanctions, barriers to the Belt and Road Initiative, disruption to supply chains and distribution chains, uncertainty in international finance. Cross-border environmental degradation and worldwide climate change are leading to natural disasters and pandemics. There are security threats (Taiwan, anti-missile defence shields, US Asia- Pacific military presence, consolidation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the South China Sea, conflicts in the Middle East), as well as cross-border ethnic conflicts, international terrorism, international organised crime, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, destabilising external interference, taking on geopolitical responsibility commensurate with its geoeconomic power, promoting world governance.
The regionalisation of East Asia and Southeast Asia is a self-defence strategy of great interest to China in a global economy. Any obstacle to regionalisation, such as the reluctance of Japan or US interference, could threaten this process. Donald Trump sabotaged US influence over an Asia-Pacific regionalisation process that excluded China by withdrawing the US. Now a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has emerged that excludes the US. Its own scarcity of natural resources essential for industrialisation forces China to compete for them on an increasingly more expensive international market. Any hindrance to China’s access to raw materials or energy sources would lead to risk. The same goes for restricted access to markets as a result of protectionist policies or interference with transport (for this reason China is actively involved in the control of piracy and preoccupied by the presence of the US Seventh Fleet in the waters that Chinese cargo ships must navigate). Environmental degradation crosses borders, as do the effects of climate change, natural disasters and pandemics.
In the security field, China feels an urgent need to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The “unequal treaties” of the imperialist era, which in China is called the “century of humiliation”, imposed extraterritoriality and stripped sovereignty from the Chinese empire. The nation-states that justified their incursions into China on the basis of their own sovereignty did not recognize China’s sovereignty. To deal with these former aggressors on an equal footing, China must demonstrate its ability to consolidate and defend its own territorial integrity, which implies the recovery of land expropriated by imperialism (Taiwan) and the repression of separatist movements (Tibet, Xinjiang).
China sees another threat in the United States’ military presence in the Asia-Pacific region (the Seventh Fleet, the missile shield that excludes China, covert support to Taiwan, bases in Japan and South Korea, joint military exercises), or in Central Asia, which could also interfere with China’s commercial trade or the transportation of raw materials and energy sources or the Belt and Road Initiative. For this reason, China promotes the consolidation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a counterweight to US strategies and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and as a factor promoting geopolitical multipolarity.
The regionalisation of East Asia and Southeast Asia is a self-defence strategy of great interest to China in a global economy. Any obstacle to regionalisation, such as the reluctance of Japan or US interference, could threaten this process
China shares borders and ethnic groups with several countries where transnational trends carry the risk of separatist movements across national borders, a phenomenon parallel to the dangers of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons and weapons of mass destruction, and international organized crime. In various fields, Chinese advisers perceive the possibility of destabilizing interference promoted by foreign powers, while fearing that demands from the UN, the US or the EU that China assume a responsibility in international politics proportional to its global economic weight, could force China to give its approval to interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states. If China accepted the possibility of such interference, it could itself become subject to interference in the case of a possible intervention in Taiwan or Hong Kong. In addition, if China participates in international intervention policies, it could be exposed to military losses and terrorist reprisals.
The failure of conventional frameworks
Failed attempts to deal with non-state terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa based on conventional security-based foreign policy are further symptoms of the obsolescence of conventional paradigms. So too are the tendencies towards economic regionalisation and political regionalism that emerge as a response to the inability of the individual nation-state to control the dynamics of a supranational market economy, even though the Covid-19 pandemic has resuscitated nationalist approaches to an international problem. The proliferation of Bretton Woods-style international organisations that legislate on a supranational basis is one more symptom of the obsolescence of the Westphalian world order. Strategy based on nostalgia for Cold War strategies that favoured “the West” tends to define China as the inevitable rival in an inevitable conflict. This could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So too could a post-Cold War pragmatism that sees China as a partner in a new world order inclusive of “the Rest”. The same is true for Chinese strategists as they plot their course through a globalised capitalist market economy in which “the Rest” have begun an accumulation of capital at the cost of — or thanks to — the decline of “the West”.
Donald Trump’s erratic “America First” policy and neo-isolationism diluted the moral authority of the US in world affairs. His courtship of autocratic rulers subverted traditional liberal democratic allies. His trade wars reversed the trend toward a world-wide free market. His boycott of any attempt to deal with the climate crisis put the US at odds with the rest of the world in combatting the greatest existential threat the world order now faces. US obsession with the Middle East facilitated China’s rise as a regional power in Asia and as a major source of investment and foreign aid to Africa and Latin America, displacing the US and the EU. It remains to be seen whether and to what extent the foreign policy of the Joseph Biden administration will reverse the Trumpist policies and recover “lost” ground or break new ground. It also remains to be seen whether and to what extent Trumpism may make a comeback. More in tune with the wider world, Xi Jinping is now the strongest defender of free trade on a global scale and of action to combat climate change.
Challenging liberal democracy
Xi Jinping proposes a “China Model” that would return China to the pre-eminent position it held in the world before succumbing to Western aggression in the nineteenth century. Xi is confident that China could become the “alternative” to the Western neoliberal model in the emerging world order that China will lead in the 21st century, a Pax Sinica. It also offers a political alternative to the liberal democratic order of “the West”. China’s successful development model resists the neoliberal Washington Consensus, and both the success and the resistance lend China soft power in the eyes of “the Rest”. For the time being, China advocates a diverse and multipolar world as an alternative to US/NATO hegemony — a balance of power among large regional blocks that would prevent any single one of them from dominating the emerging world order.
China has its own set of paradigms that might impede a more accurate assessment of the changing world order. Ironically, chief among these is a belief in the primacy of Leninist revolutionary political control of a post-revolutionary period of governance. Wang Shaoguang argues that the “China model” offers four advantages over liberal democracy’s “veto players” — political parties, lobbies, interest groups — in promoting social equity: a stable political centre, a problem-solving mentality, diversity in terms of policy implementation, and responsiveness to popular needs [5]5 — Wang, S. (2012): “Traditional Moral Politics and Contemporary Concepts of Governance”, Reading the Chinese Dream. Available online. . In an emerging world order with a polarised liberal democracy in crisis due to its failure to guarantee equality, China’s technocratic efficiency in promoting social equity, as well as China’s defence of multipolarity, may gain ground as competitive alternative paradigms — seriously challenging the premise that liberal representative democracy is necessarily the final step in the evolution of the governance of complex societies on a global scale.
The “China Dream” promotes the “rejuvenation” of China. In traditional Chinese terms, this means the consolidation of wealth and military power. The first priority is to consolidate and maintain the CPC’s control of the political system. The second is to improve the people’s standard of living. The third is to “take centre stage” in world affairs. Taking centre stage involves the “China Model” of economic development and the modernisation and the strengthening of Chinese military power. The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has been a rallying cry since the mid-19th century, when the superior economic and military might of the western imperialist nations inflicted successive defeats and the consequent loss of sovereignty on the Chinese empire. The defeat of China at the hands of societies that had defined modernity as the accumulation of wealth and power subverted the traditional Chinese worldview of moral and cultural superiority as the basis of power, causing a crisis of introspection and theorizing that continues to the present day.
In 1820 China represented more than 30% of world GDP, while Western Europe and the United States combined did not reach 25%. In 1949 China had fallen to less than 5%, while the US and Western Europe had doubled to more than 50%. Today China represents 16% of world GDP, while the European Union and the US still share about 40% of world GDP. The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation that Xi calls for is a strongly nationalistic push for sustained economic growth and consolidation of geopolitical power to restore China to its former preeminent place in the world order.
The fact that China and the China Model could become the alternative for the new era is a symptom of the obsolescence of the existing model — the post-World War II model based on Bretton Woods-type supranational institutions dominated by America and Europe
The fact that China and the China Model could become the alternative for the new era is a symptom of the obsolescence of the existing model — the post-World War II model based on Bretton Woods-type supranational institutions dominated by America and Europe. The Western neoliberal model was defined by the “Washington Consensus”. What Xi calls the China Model has been referred to as the “Beijing Consensus”. China’s emergence as an economic superpower has coincided with the rapidly accelerating decline of two of the imperial powers that dominated world affairs since the eighteenth century. The pro-Brexit vote in the UK reflected a deep-rooted, outdated and futile nostalgia for the lost British Empire and the Pax Britannica. Trump’s call to “Make America Great Again” was at the same time an admission that the US was no longer great. The election of Trump reflected a deep-rooted, outdated and futile nostalgia for the lost American Empire and the Pax Americana. Both cases represent a 180º turn in geopolitical strategy, away from free trade and international cooperation toward protectionism and isolationism.
Donald Trump’s “America First” policy diluted the moral authority of the US in world affairs. He provoked Angela Merkel into warning EU leaders that they can no longer rely on the US. The rejection of free trade and the rejection of any attempt to combat climate change isolated the US in the new world order, as has Brexit in the case of the UK. America’s obsession with controlling the Middle East made the US abandon other regions of the world. This facilitated China’s rise as a regional power in Asia.
Chinese investments overseas have allowed China to become a major source of foreign aid to Africa and Latin America, displacing the US and the EU. The US attempt to stop its NATO allies from joining the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that was promoted by China was a dismal failure. The AIIB has become an alternative to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and has thereby diluted the control that Europe and the US can exercise over developing nations. China promotes South-South cooperation in international organisations, at the expense of North-South asymmetrical relations. China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” to build transport infrastructures across the Eurasian continent and the Indian Ocean will transform the economies of the participating countries, especially in Central Asia, despite facing regional problems and US opposition. It will also shift the balance of power on the Afro-Eurasian landmass, displacing the role of the Seventh Fleet of the US Navy as the arbiter of hard sea power in the region.
Today, as in the past, China has opted for trade and commerce as the means to maintain a peaceful and stable world order, rather than expansionism and military dominance. China offers a win-win situation in the new era that Xi has proclaimed. It offers the creation of an economic interdependence based on equality, mutual respect and mutual profit. China wins in this situation, but so do its partners. The US intelligence community has recognised the decline of America’s ability to impose its will on the world or to maintain its dominance over both the Eastern and the Western hemisphere and is calling for new strategies to protect US interests in a world no longer dominated by the US. NATO leaders may not be listening. They are worried about short-term electoral results, a problem that does not impede Xi Jinping’s leadership of China’s long march to centre stage.
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References
1 —Fukuyama, F. (1989), “The End of History?”, The National Interest, 16: p. 3-18.
2 —Stiglitz, J. (2011), “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%”, Vanity Fair; Stiglitz, J. (2019), “The End of Neoliberalism and the Rebirth of History”, The World’s Opinion Page.
3 —Golden, S. (2018), “New paradigms for the new silk road”, in: Mendes, C. (ed.), China’s New Silk Road: An Emerging World Order, Londres: Routledge, p. 7-20.
4 —National Intelligence Council (2017): Global Trends: Paradox of Progress. Available online.
5 —Wang, S. (2012): “Traditional Moral Politics and Contemporary Concepts of Governance”, Reading the Chinese Dream. Available online.
Seán Golden
Seán Golden is Full Professor of East Asian Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). He is Senior Associate Researcher of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) and Associate Professor at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). He holds a PhD in Literature from the University of Connecticut (USA). He has taught at universities in the USA and China, and has been visiting professor in Hong Kong, China and Venice. His research work involves comparative cultural studies, the construction of political discourse in China and the development of a Chinese school of international relations theory. He is former Director of the East Asia Studies & Research Centre of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), member of the Advisory Board of the ASEF Higher Education Programme (ASEF) & member of the Executive Board of EastAsiaNet (European Research School Network for Contemporary East Asian Studies). He is also member of the UAB InterAsia Research Group. He has edited, co-edited and translated numerous translations of Chinese poetry, classical and contemporary, as well as publications in Chinese Studies. He authored the book China en perspectiva: análisis e interpretaciones (2012).
