A new kind of cold war
How to manage the growing rivalry between America and a rising China
Fighting over trade is not the half of it. The United States and China are contesting every domain, from semiconductors to submarines and from blockbuster films to lunarexploration. The two superpowers used to seek a win-win world. Today winningseems to involve the other lot’s defeat—a collapse that permanentlysubordinates China to the American order; or a humbled America that retreatsfrom the western Pacific. It is a new kind of cold war that could leave nowinners at all.
As our special report in this week’s issue explains, superpower relations havesoured. America complains that China is cheating its way to the top by stealingtechnology, and that by muscling into the South China Sea and bullyingdemocracies like Canada and Sweden it is becoming a threat to global peace.China is caught between the dream of regaining its rightful place in Asia andthe fear that tired, jealous America will block its rise because it cannotaccept its own decline.
The potential for catastrophe looms. Under the Kaiser, Germanydragged the world into war; America and the Soviet Union flited with nuclearArmageddon. Even if China and America stop short of conflict, the world willbear the cost as growth slows and problems are left to fester for lack ofco-operation.
Both sides need to feel more secure, but also to learn to livetogether in a low-trust world. Nobody should think that achieving this will beeasy or quick.
The temptation is to shut China out, as America successfully shutout the Soviet Union—not just Huawei, which supplies 5g telecoms kit and wasthis week blocked by a pair of orders, but almost all Chinese technology. Yet,with China, that risks bringing about the very ruin policymakers are seeking toavoid. Global supply chains can be made to bypass China, but only at huge cost.In nominal terms Soviet-American trade in the late 1980s was $2bn a year; tradebetween America and China is now $2bn a day. In crucial technologies such aschipmaking and 5g, it is hard to say where commerce ends and national securitybegins. The economies of America’s allies in Asia and Europe depend on tradewith China. Only an unambiguous threat could persuade them to cut their linkswith it.
It would be just as unwise for America to sit back. No law ofphysics says that quantum computing, artificial intelligence and othertechnologies must be cracked by scientists who are free to vote. Even ifdictatorships tend to be more brittle than democracies, President Xi Jinpinghas reasserted party control and begun to project Chinese power around the world.Partly because of this, one of the very few beliefs which unite Republicans andDemocrats is that America must act against China. But how?
For a start America needs to stop undermining its own strengths andbuild on them instead. Given that migrants are vital to innovation, the Trumpadministration’s hurdles to legal immigration are self-defeating. So are itsfrequent denigration of any science that does not suit its agenda and itsattempts to cut science funding (reversed by Congress, fortunately).
Another of those strengths lies in America’s alliances and theinstitutions and norms it set up after the second world war. Team Trump has rubbishednorms instead of buttressing institutions and attacked the European Union andJapan over trade rather than working with them to press China to change.American hard power in Asia reassures its allies, but President Donald Trumptends to ignore how soft power cements alliances, too. Rather than cast doubton the rule of law at home and bargain over the extradition of a Huaweiexecutive from Canada, he should be pointing to the surveillance state Chinahas erected against the Uighur minority in the western province of Xinjiang.
As well as focusing on its strengths, America needs to shore up its defences. This involves hard power as China arms itself, including in novel domains such as space and cyberspace. But it also means striking a balance between protecting intellectual property and sustaining the flow of ideas, people, capital and goods. When universities and Silicon Valley geeks scoffat national-securityrestrictions they are being naive or disingenuous. But when defence hawksover-zealously call for shutting out Chinese nationals and investment theyforget that American innovation depends on a global network.
America and its allies have broad powers to assess who is buyingwhat. However, the West knows too little about Chinese investors and joint-venturepartners and their links to the state. Deeper thought about what industriescount as sensitive should suppress the impulse to ban everything.
Dealing with China also means finding ways to create trust. Actionsthat America intends as defensive may appear to Chinese eyes as aggression thatis designed to contain it. If China feels that it must fight back, a navalcollision in the South China Sea could escalate. Or war might follow aninvasion of Taiwan by an angry, hyper nationalist China.
A stronger defence thus needs an agenda that fosters the habit ofworking together, as America and the USSR talked about arms-reduction whilethreatening mutually assured destruction. China and America do not have toagree for them to conclude it is in their interest to live within norms. Thereis no shortage of projects to work on together, including North Korea, rulesfor space and cyberwar and, if Mr. Trump faced up to it, climate change.
Such an agenda demands statesmanship and vision. Just now these arein short supply. Mr. Trump sneers at the global good, and his base is tired ofAmerica acting as the world’s policeman. China, meanwhile, has a president whowants to harness the dream of national greatness as a way to justify theCommunist Party’s total control. He sits at the apex of a system that sawengagement by America’s former president, Barack Obama, as something toexploit. Future leaders may be more open to enlightened collaboration, butthere is no guarantee.
Three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union, the unipolarmoment is over. In China, America faces a vast rival that confidently aspiresto be number one. Business ties and profits, which used to cement therelationship, have become one more matter to fight over. China and Americadesperately need to create rules to help manage the rapidly evolving era ofsuperpower competition. Just now, both see rules as things to break.
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