China ShouldNot Provoke the United States
America is a much richer country than China,with a more motivated ethos, comparatively well-functioning institutions, andthe advantages of a free society, an enterprise economy, and serious allies.
In the immense and multifaceted controversy over thecoronavirus pandemic, and in the midst of tumultuous pre-electoral events inthe United States, the role of the Chinese government in inflicting thiseconomic and public health disaster on the world has been the subject ofcomparative restraint.
Were it not for these other preoccupations inthis American election year, and expert research confirmed official Chinesecomplicity, by negligence or malice, in the generation of the pandemic, with thecomplicity of the World Health Organization, there would be some danger of anintemperate response.
I have no standing to make scientificjudgments but my canvass of those more knowledgeable on the subject indicatesthat it is extremely unlikely that this was a naturally occurring virus; itseems to have emerged, presumably accidentally, from the viral research centrein Wuhan.
It is difficult to put an acceptable face onthe conduct of the Chinese government in recognizing the gravity of the problemby isolating Wuhan within China while not curtailing extensive direct aircontact between Wuhan and many foreign countries, or even disclosing candidlyand promptly the gravity of the problems that occurred. Published Chinesefigures about the pandemic in China are obviously fictitious.
Being as positive as reasonably possible, itseems that the Chinese were experimenting with a range of dangerous viruses,and that this one escaped unintentionally, and the highest levels of theChinese government determined to deny what was happening, thereby assuring theinfection of much of the world. If this was deliberate Chinese governmentpolicy from the start, it was an act of war; though it could not be respondedto with outright hostilities.
China’s Fatal Overconfidence
It seems a reasonable surmise that theChinese had succumbed to the frequent habit of those with aggressive ambitionsof believing what they wished to believe. Moreover, they appear to have assumedthe United States and the West generally would continue to tolerate immensetrade deficits, the endless theft of intellectual property, systematic Chineseviolations of international law in international waters, the creeping takeoverof underdeveloped countries through a corrupt program of loans, and generallythe “Belt and Road” program of expanding Chinese hegemony throughout East andSouth Asia and Africa.
The traditional Chinese posture, even in theperiods of Chinese decline and exploitation by foreign powers, wasdisparagement of foreigners and a comprehensive lack of interest in them,serene national self-confidence, and the Chinese leadership seems to haveassumed that the West would not respond effectively to any provocation.
There has never in the history of thenation-state been anything like the almost simultaneous bifurcation inradically different directions of two leading world powers about 40 years ago.As the Soviet Union relaxed its dictatorship while maintaining its collectivisteconomy, China maintained its totalitarian dictatorship but transformed itseconomy to one of state capitalism, albeit with considerable retention of acommand economy. In these last 40 years, all the world has seen the SovietUnion quickly disintegrate and the international Communism that had threatenedthe West in the Cold War die with it, as China has risen to be the mostformidable economic rival the United States has had since before World War I.The leaders of China are over-confident.
Whether the coronavirus pandemic waspremeditated or of accidental origin but magnified by malice and negligence, itwas a very serious strategic error by China. While there has been considerableDemocratic congressional support for President Trump’s policy of identifyingthe Chinese threat—as well as requiring the end of practically unlimited tradedeficits, theft of industrial and technological intelligence, misuse of theextensive Chinese presence in American universities, bribing and bullying ofAmerican industries with threats of ending access to the Chinese market, and asteadily more assertive foreign policy in the Far East and Africa—beforecoronavirus there was still a broad consensus including almost all of theDemocratic Party that the best policy toward China was President Obama’sappeasement of Beijing. This was based on the assumption that China eventuallywould succumb to the temptations of consumerist democracy and grow into a stateof rules-based coexistence with the West. Lately, even Joe Biden, who openedhis campaign with bland assurances that China was no danger to the UnitedStates, seems (with the help of the polls) to be outgrowing that delusion.
China shows no signs whatever of seeking vastmilitary conquest as Nazi Germany did, nor of using an ideological basis forattempting to undermine the West in the world and build an alliance onostensibly Marxist principles as the Soviet Union did. China’s advance istraditional Han Chinese nationalism enabled and lubricated by what leaders inBeijing imagine to be an original method of using state capitalism to subornand dominate resource-rich underdeveloped countries and, by focus anddiscipline, to out-distance and overawe what they have effortlessly convincedthemselves is a flabby and irresolute West led by an erratic and hedonisticAmerica. But underestimating America’s determination to maintain its positionwould be a grave mistake (as Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union learnedto their regret).
America Has Many Strong Cards toPlay
In cooperation with all of the otheraggrieved countries (approximately 120 have demanded to know how the pandemicbegan), the United States must seek and reach a consensus on the level ofChina’s duplicity in propagating this pandemic. Then it must lead the insertionof a military presence in the international waters around China to ensure thatChinese sovereignty is not imposed upon the freedom of the seas in the FarEast.
If the existing tariff replacement agreementis ratified and observed by China, the United States must still rigorouslyenforce the end of the systematic Chinese technological theft. The UnitedStates must end Chinese espionage and propagandistic activities around Americanuniversities and encourage its allies to do the same and, if appropriate, rollback the number of student visas issued to the Chinese. It must strictlyenforce the policy that already officially exists against the acquisition ofAmerican commercial interests that could be harmful to the U.S. nationalinterest and must repatriate the manufacture of everything that is strategiceither by its essential nature or because of the extent of its commercialsignificance.
China must be deterred from abusing theinternational organizations that it has been allowed to join but whose rules ithas not observed, and China’s neighbours which resent the People’s Republic’soverbearing influence must be leagued together in defensive arrangements toresist commercial and political aggression. The example of Myanmar (Burma), isindicative of China’s propensity to overplay its hand: the Chinese soover-asserted themselves that the country dispensed with the military regimethat had indulged Beijing and effectively threw the Chinese out, bag andbaggage.
There is no shortage of Americans, especiallyin Hollywood and the American media, who are eager to salute China as asuper-state exposing the corruption and venality of Trumpian America and urgingwhat amounts to a policy of submission to Chinese leadership. Fortunately, theoverwhelming majority of Americans, given a clear policy choice, will rejectany such cowardly and shameful course.
The United States is a much richer countrythan China, with a more motivated ethos, comparatively well-functioninginstitutions, and the advantages of a free society, an enterprise economy, andserious allies.
The president is right to try to preserve theexisting trade arrangements and build on them, and he is right to be thoroughin determining how this pandemic was unleashed. He is right to make it clearthat Chinese conduct is unacceptable and that America and its allies have theability to discourage and punish it.
As soon as the political fireworks end andthe U.S. president for the next four years is identified, a national andinternational consensus should be built quickly behind all of these objectives.Everyone accepts that China is a great nation and a great development story,but the West and the United States, in particular, should be submissive to noone.
