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We’re Already in the New Cold War

July 30, 2021 , ,

Whether we like it or not, Beijing has global aspirations.

by Zaid Jalani for Inquire

As Americans, we’re citizens of a superpower. Although we don’t get everything we want — witness the U.S. military departing an Afghanistan that will likely end up no more stable than we began our adventure there — we have the privileged position of being able to influence events all over the globe. There’s a reason countries line up to hire lobbyists to influence the administration. Everyone wants Washington’s favor.

But D.C. isn’t the only game in town in a multi-polar world. For most of the 20th century, observers expected Russia to be the other pole. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought with it a decline in Russia’s military and diplomatic prowess; although the country’s 2016 election shenanigans briefly elevated Russian leader Vladmir Putin to supervillain status, it was a short-lived moment. Today, Americans overwhelmingly see China, not Russia, as the biggest threat to our country.

They’re right. China is now our biggest rival. And whether we’re ready to admit it or not, we’re already living in a new Cold War.

Americans aren’t used getting humiliated on the world stage (okay, maybe one country gets away with it occasionally). But weaker countries are humiliated all the time, as they have to cater to the whims of more powerful states in order to pursue their interests.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has been on quite the humiliation tour this year. Maybe you saw the interview he conducted with Axios where he was quick to criticize abuses against Muslims worldwide but clammed up when asked about China’s mass imprisonment and abuse of its Uyghur Muslim minority:




The British-educated Khan has a reputation as a relatively progressive Pakistani politician and few analysts think that he sincerely finds China’s treatment of the Uighurs acceptable. But Khan is not speaking as an individual — he’s speaking as the head of a state that is financially dependent on China (China is also a long-time rival of Pakistan’s chief rival, India).

That’s why Khan doubled down a month later, when he addressed the Chinese Communist Party during its centenary event. “Because of our extreme proximity and relationship with China, we actually accept the Chinese version,” of the Uyghur narrative, he told Chinese journalists (who, of course, are in no position to push back on that narrative).

He went even further at the event, praising the Chinese political system and contrasting it with democracy:

"Until now, we had been told that the best way for societies to improve was through Western democracy. "The CPC has introduced an alternative model and they have beaten all Western democracies in the way they have highlighted merit in society," he said.

He said that a society only succeeds when it has systems in place for holding the ruling elite accountable and ensuring meritocracy. "Until now, the feeling was that electoral democracy is the best way to bring leaders on merit and hold them accountable.

"But the CPC has achieved much better [outcomes] without democracy. Their system for sifting through talent and bringing it up is better than the democratic system," he said.

Addressing a foreign government and describing their political system as superior to your own is a level of pandering that is shocking. It would be bizarre to watch President Biden appear in Riyadh or Moscow and tell the rulers their that their systems of government are preferable to ours. But those are the sort of contortions that China’s government has started to extract from the world.

For most of its history, China was basically an isolationist country. China observers I talk to, who’ve had conversations in and around China, always tell me that the country basically doesn’t have a foreign policy. But what you have to remember is that China was a weak state until recently. It didn’t have the capacity to project very much power in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Things are different now.

Many analysts didn’t see China rising so quickly. One of those analysts was President Biden. Here’s Biden speaking in 2000 about normalizing trade in China, which he was in favor of:

I do not anticipate a dramatic explosion in American jobs, suddenly created to fuel a flood of exports to China. Nor do I see the collapse of the American manufacturing economy, as China, a nation with the impact on the world economy about the size of the Netherlands’, suddenly becomes our major economic competitor.   

(To be fair to Biden, he’s evolved with the facts. There are signs he takes China more seriously now he acknowledges that they are our “most serious competitor.”)

Trade is now China’s greatest asset, and much of the planet is dependent on the country for basic goods. It’s the world’s “second-biggest exporter of parts,” something that became glaringly obvious after the pandemic was in full swing and China’s shutdowns induced delays in production across industries.

Although trade has been an economic boon to China, the ruling party also views its economic power as diplomatic power. When China wants something from a weaker country, like Pakistan, it is able to use its economic power as leverage.

Ethan Knecht offers a few recent examples from Latin America. Although their vaccines are inferior to the West’s, China beat the United States and European Union to the punch when it came to exporting them to the developing world. But those vaccines come with strings attached.

Paraguay is the only country in South America and one of only fifteen countries globally that formally recognizes Taiwan. Because of China’s “one-China policy,” Beijing basically forces countries to recognize one or the other. In March, it was reported that China had informed Paraguay that it would have to flip its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in order to purchase vaccines.

In the face of this diplomatic bullying, other democratic states stepped in. Taiwan worked with India to help secure vaccines for Paraguay; the State Department also quickly reached out to the country to offer support.

Knecht notes that China appeared to be more successful elsewhere in the region. Earlier this year, Guyana expanded its relations with Taiwan by coming to an agreement to establish a Taiwan Office in the country to expand trade relations.

China’s Foreign Ministry wasn’t pleased, and told Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party that ‘any attempt to seek foreign forces to engage in secessionist activities around the world will never succeed.”

A few weeks later, Guyana received 20,000 vaccine doses from China. If Taiwan was hoping that the trade office was a step towards richer ties and even diplomatic recognition, those hopes can be considered dashed for the time being.

Elsewhere in South America, China has been equally successful in maintaining support for its agenda. As the plight of the Uyghurs and the suppression of Hong Kong have become a global cause, China has been able to prevent much of the developing world from protesting its policies. Colombia’s Ambassador to the United Nations applauded China’s human rights record, which is among the world’s worst, in remarks given in March. This came one week after China delivered half a million vaccines to the South American country.

In 2019, Western countries at the U.N. Human Rights Council raised Uyghur issue; they were able to get 22 countries to sign onto a letter protesting Beijing’s policies. 50 countries stood on the other side. Some observers noted with irony that “23-Islamic majority states backed the PRC [People’s Republic of China], thereby supporting Chinese actions that oppress their Muslim brethren.” In explaining this support, they noted that “many of the 50 states are also now reliant on the PRC for investment and other development projects. The fact that the PRC has been able to organize and leverage this latter group illustrates the growing economic and diplomatic influence now wielded by Beijing around the globe.”

They described the Uyghur issue as defining the contours of China’s strategy:

The PRC’s growing influence over developing states may affect what the world will look like in the next few decades. Chinese economic growth has allowed it to establish itself as a leading diplomatic player alongside the United States—and as such, it increasingly sets the rules of the game in the international arena. Many countries from all over the world are in the process of redefining their international relationships and alliances. The fact that China has won the support of 50 countries for its Xinjiang policies, as opposed to 22 who voiced opposition, is a telling example of Beijing’s growing clout in the international arena.

More recently, RFERL uncovered how Ukraine first signed onto and then removed its name from a statement about the Uyghurs after China threatened to limit trade and access to vaccines.

In the face of this expanding Chinese global influence, some have argued that we should do everything we can to avoid a new Cold War. Memories of campaigns of subterfuge, nuclear arms races, and outright hot conflict in places like Vietnam and Afghanistan have understandably made many Americans wary of a similar rivalry with China.

But that suggests that we’re not already in such a situation. While China does not pack the military prowess of the Soviet Union of old, it’s increasingly clear that it has expansive global aspirations that include using its economic power — including the life-or-death leverage of vaccine distribution — to secure its interests. When the United States isn’t heavily engaged, we get situations like that of Pakistan, Guyana, or Colombia. When we do get involved, we can keep countries like Paraguay within the democratic sphere of influence instead.

We should resist the naivete that proposes a sort of American exceptionalism of the left. Unlike the American exceptionalism of the right, which suggests that America is exceptionally just and noble, the American exceptionalism of the left proposes that our country is exceptionally wicked and selfish — and that the world is better off with other powers in charge. Some writers, like hawk-turned-dove Peter Beinart, are in danger of swinging from one extreme to the other. In 2018, Beinart suggested that the United States shouldn’t really oppose China annexing Taiwan — the worst that could happen is that it ends up like Hong Kong:

If China renounces the use of force, the United States should support its reunification with Taiwan along the principle of “one country, two systems.” The U.S. should ask China to commit publicly not to station troops or Communist Party officials in Taiwan, and to let Taiwan manage its domestic political affairs. Would Beijing adhere to such an agreement once unification occurred? The best precedent is Hong Kong. Two decades after reunification, it remains substantially freer than the rest of China. (Freedom House rates countries on a scale of one to seven, with one being freest and seven being least free. In 2018, Hong Kong received a 3.5 and China got a 6.5.) But Hong Kong would almost certainly be freer were it not under Beijing’s control.

It’s likely that under reunification people in Taiwan would lose some of their freedom as well. But, even if Taiwan sunk to Hong Kong’s level, it would remain far freer than Vietnam, a country some Washington hawks are clamoring to ally with in order to contain China.

In the three years since, even Hong Kong is no longer Hong Kong. A year after the enactment of the National Security Law, Human Rights Watch warns that the increasing Communist Party encroachment on Hong Kong means that “basic civil and political rights long protected in Hong Kong—including freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly—are being erased.” China’s long promise that it was “one country two systems” has essentially been broken. We should hardly believe any Chinese government promises about respecting the rights of the Taiwanese or anyone else.

For all of its flaws — and there are many — America is governed under a democratic system. The beauty of a democratic system is that it’s capable of adjusting itself when it faces public pressure. Yes, the United States was often on the wrong side of human rights disputes, particularly during the Cold War. But because we’re a liberal democracy, we had the capacity to fix our errors.

As one example, the U.S. spent many years supporting the Apartheid government in South Africa as a bulwark against the Communist bloc. Eventually, we came to realize that our values were more important than the realpolitik arrangement that was undermining them. Congress voted for sanctions on South Africa, overriding the veto offered by President Reagan. Not long afterwards, Apartheid fell.

There is no comparable democratic process in China for addressing what’s happening to the Uyghurs. Far from exporting our system to China, the West’s expansive and growing trade seems to be exporting Chinese norms to America by influencing our business elite (just ask Kodak).

But if we realize that we are already living in a new Cold War, there is an opportunity for us to use economic and diplomatic levers to pull the world out of China’s sphere of influence. The administration has been a bit late to the game, but it has started to seriously compete with China with vaccine strategy. Rush Noshi, Biden’s director of China at the National Security Council, understands that China’s goals are now global and present a direct challenge to the U.S. Most of the world prefers the U.S., not China, as the global leader.

We’re starting to pull our heads out of the sand. The only question is whether we do it quickly enough to prevent a century where the global order is run by Beijing, which is unlikely to be favorable to people who hold liberal values.


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