Chinese Won’t Eat That

 

“The East rising while the West is declining.” PRC President Xi Jinping 

Playing foreign policy for the domestic stage has long been considered a fundamental, though occasionally illogical, axiom of politics. What’s happening overseas often seems sufficiently distant and unverifiable to ordinary citizens that it provides irresistible fodder for politicians seeking deflection from their own shortcomings and targets to blame for internal failures. It also engenders the same bragging power inherent in competitive sports. “We’re number one! We’re number one!”

Blaming China was a magnificent strategic decision by Donald Trump, both because there was more than a modicum of truth in China’s newfound militancy – from its militarization of a manmade island in the South China Sea to its brutal repression in Hong Kong and among its Uyghur citizens – its Internet hacking and disinformation efforts against democratic societies (particularly the United States), its blatant and continuing efforts to steal and coopt foreign patents and its proclivity to mask and deny its own obvious internal failures. 

But China’s achievements are equally staggering. They spend ten times as much on infrastructure as does the United States. Their autocratic, centrally directed economy lifted over one billion people from poverty into a middle class in under half a century. Their pre-pandemic expenditures on education absorbed 4.04% of their GDP, compared to the US’ 2.6% of GDP. While China’s expenditure for their military is rising fast, it pales by comparison to US spends as the above chart from the Peter G Peterson Foundation illustrates (published on July 9th). And yet, the United States has not won a major military campaign since WWII. While we deploy major forces all around the world, China has maximized it military might by focusing its military on Asia, where it dominates. China’s economic growth easily outpaces that of the United States.

Clearly the Trump-initiated trade sanctions against China, and China’s reaction to them, have hurt both economies. The lack of computer chips, based primarily on China’s primacy in that manufacturing sector, has slowed Western automotive manufacturing (particularly in the United States) to a crawl. Car prices, for new and used vehicles, have skyrocketed as a result. Soybean farmers across the United States, just one example, have probably permanently lost the massive PRC market as China has declared the United States to be an unreliable supplier of agricultural products, shifting its buying power to alternative producers. Like Brazil’s Mata Grosso region.

But even as Donald Trump is out of office, Joe Biden has yet to reverse those trade restrictions. As we castigate China’s blatant human rights violations, the PRC jeeringly refers to our immigration policies (particularly at our southern border), mistreatment of Native Americans and the growing BLM resentment over blue-on-black killings, general ethnic/racial intolerence and the rise of white supremacist policies like anti-“cancel culture” and “critical race theory” movements. They deride democracy as a political system, noting how an entire major US political party still does not support that Joe Biden was duly elected as President. They carry images from the January 6th insurrection as clear evidence of how the United States is unraveling.

PRC media slogans, even coffee mugs and tee-shirt, declare how the United States is the greatest threat, the most prominent adversary, to China and the Chinese people. Anti-American sentiment plays exceptionally well all over the PRC, pretty much mirroring the same level of negativity displayed inside the United States against China. That suggests that a détente to the current tensions between the nations – generally recognized as the worst since the Korean War seventy years ago – has little or no popular support within each country’s ordinary citizenry. 

Here’s how China views the current animus between nations (from the July 26th CNN.com): “The breakdown in US-China relations is due to some people in the United States treating China as an ‘imaginary enemy,’ Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng was quoted as saying during a meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Monday [7/26], according to a statement provided by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“Sherman arrived in the northern city of Tianjin Sunday for meetings with Xie and State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, as part of what her office described as ongoing US efforts to hold candid exchanges with Chinese officials to ‘advance US interests and values and to responsibly manage the relationship.’

“The Chinese ministry statement, which came ahead of Sherman's meeting with Wang, accused the US of wanting to reignite a ‘sense of national purpose’ by orchestrating a ‘whole-of-government and whole-of-society’ campaign to demonize and suppress China… Xie was also quoted as saying the US was in ‘no position to lecture China on democracy and human rights,’ pointing to the US' historic treatment of Native Americans, and US military action…

“The talks come more than three months after the countries' confrontational Alaska meeting in March, during which top diplomats from both sides publicly exchanged barbs… In the months since Alaska, the two countries have continued to clash across a range of fronts, with the US government being highly critical of China's policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. On Friday [7/30], China announced new sanctions against seven US officials — including former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — and entities in response to US sanctions against several Hong Kong government officials, according to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

While the United States and China still maintain an open dialog on climate change issues, given the strong emotions among the citizens of each country against the other, politicians from each nation are likely to continue to fan the fans of blame and mistrust of the other for the foreseeable future. Reversing this negativity does not work well for any political leader in either country. Don’t expect any major changes in diplomatic or economic relations between the United States and China anytime soon.

I’m Peter Dekom, and notwithstanding the obvious benefits of normalizing relations between the US and the PRC, the intensity of local sentiments suggests that cannot happen without some major and unlikely near-term local attitudinal changes.