With US bipartisan "China Scare" reaching a crescendo, it is no surprise that the above 2020 Annual Report to Congress tries to back Beijing into a corner.
I use the word "Beijing" advisedly. The whole thrust of the Report seems directed at the Communist Party of China (CPC) - that Beijing harbors the ambition to displace the United States as the global leader; that it is trying to change the Western-led world order to suit its own rhetoric; that it has been doing this for years through advances in economic, military, trade, technology, academic exchanges and international organizations; and that its perceived transgressions in human rights, democracy, trade, investments, as well as its alleged machinations in the United Nations must be thwarted across the board with all the United States has at its disposal.
Without belittling a host of legitimate American concerns about China's Rise, and granted that China needs to do a lot better in many areas domestic and international, a reading of the Report's findings on China's rising economic, military and technological gravitas begs the following questions -
(a) whether as the world's second largest economy, China has the right to advance itself in all dimensions;
(b) whether China wants or is able to usurp the global leadership of the United States; America maintains military presence in 70 countries worldwide, its military expenditure exceeds the sum of the next 10 countries combined, its military technology and overall combat readiness remain unparalleled; even if China is likely to surpass the United States in aggregate GDP by 2035, its GDP per capita remains miles behind;
(c) whether the Communist Party has legitimacy if, according to July 2020 Report of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School, it has been earning extremely high level of people's support across many matrices;
(d) whether China needs to copy the Western model of capitalism: its own model has bee remarkably successful in lifting 800 million people out of poverty and growing China to what it is today in so short a time;
(e) whether some of China's assertiveness or authoritarianism is largely defensive e.g. against perceived foreign security threats (e.g.US military deployment in the first and second "island chains in the South China Sea), violent separatist movements in Xinjiang, and subversive separatism in Hong Kong;
(f) in cajoling China into mending some of its ways, whether in addition to a one-trick pony act - that of confrontation and containment, it may be more productive in working with China on defined areas of common interests e.g. Climate Change and North Korea, as well as on needed reform of multilateral institutions like the World Trade Organization, and the setting of international technological and other standards; and
(g) unlike the old Cold War, Beijing is not exporting Communism around the world while few countries want to or can copy its model. This begs the question whether the United States Can Negotiate With a China Driven More by Power Than Ideology , as Robert Manning of the Atlantic Council suggests in his article of 4 December, 2020 in Foreign Policy.
The following think-pieces may also offer some fresh perspectives -
The New China Scare - Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger
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