CHINAwatch

New Concert of Powers: How to Prevent Catastrophe and Promote Stability in a Multipolar World

My PowerPoint presentation via Zoom on 22 September, 2021 at the 8th Annual Conference on Eurasian Politics and Society (IEPAS) 2021, Lisbon, Portugal 

Download New Concert of Powers for a more stable World Order Revised 2 September 2021 

Download IEPAS2021-Final Conference Programme 

Would a US-led Carbon Tax, instead of partnership, spur China's progress under the Paris Agreement?

A think-piece by Andrew S. Erickson and Gabriel Collins in Foreign Affairs of May/June 2021 argues that only pressure, not partnership, will spur China's progress on Climate Change.

The argument is that despite advances in renewable energy capacity, China's coal reliance in recent years has markedly increased, due to concerns with energy security, local vested interests, employment imperatives, and projects along the Belt and Road. The authors suggest that only coercion by way of a US-led carbon tax, along with Western allies, would do the trick, on grounds that China has under-performed with its Paris Agreement targets and is unlikely to be able to fulfill more promises. 

Not unexpected is the now-fashionable China bashing and demonization. What seems lacking is appreciation that as "factory to the world", China's economy is fundamentally different from that of the United States. It is much more dependent on energy input, of which coal is likely to remain a comparatively large contributor, due to insufficient endowment of more readily available natural gas.

Also lacking is appreciation that China has already become the world's leading country in electricity production from renewable energy sources, with over double the generation of the second-ranking country, the United States. By the end of 2019, China had a total capacity of 790GW of renewable power, mainly from hydroelectric, solar and wind power.

Furthermore, the authors seem to doubt China's genuine desire for renewable energies. Apart from pollution and quality of life considerations, renewables will lessen China's exposure to choke points like the US-controlled Malacca Strait and the Strait of Hormuz near Iran subject to uncertain geopolitical risks. 

Melanie Hart, Luke Bassett, and Blaine Johnson's earlier analysis of 15 May, 2017 for the Center on American Progress puts things in more balanced, quantitative perspectives. Entitled Everything You Think You Know About Coal in China Is Wrong, it highlights the following considerations -

"China’s Paris commitment includes a promise to install 800 gigawatts to 1,000 gigawatts of new renewable capacity by 2030, an amount equivalent to the capacity of the entire U.S. electricity system. While China and the United States have roughly the same land mass, however, China has 1.3 billion people to the United States’ 325 million. It needs an electricity system that is much larger, so adding the renewable equivalent of one entire U.S. electricity system is not enough to replace coal in the near to medium term."

" three things American observers need to understand about coal in China:

1. China’s new coal-fired power plants are cleaner than anything operating in the United States.
2. China’s emissions standards for conventional air pollutants from coal-fired power plants are stricter than the comparable U.S. standards.
3. Demand for coal-fired power is falling so quickly in China that the nation cannot support its existing fleet. Many of the coal-fired power plants that skeptics point to as evidence against a Chinese energy transformation are actually white elephants that Chinese leaders are already targeting in a wave of forced plant closures."

"The U.S. coal fleet is much older than China’s: The average age of operating U.S. coal plants is 39 years, with 88 percent built between 1950 and 1990.  Among the top 100 most efficient plants in the United States, the initial operating years range from 1967 to 2012. In China, the oldest plant on the top 100 list was commissioned in 2006, and the youngest was commissioned in 2015."

"The United States only has one ultra-supercritical power plant. Everything else is subcritical or, at best, supercritical. In contrast, China is retiring its older plants and replacing them with ultra-supercritical facilities that produce more energy with less coal and generate less emissions as well. Out of China’s top 100 units, 90 are ultra-supercritical plants". 

"In the United States, the total nameplate capacity of our top 100 most efficient coal-fired power units is 80.1 gigawatts, and their cumulative annual carbon emissions amount to 361,924,475 metric tons. Meanwhile, the total nameplate capacity of China’s top 100 units is 82.6 gigawatts, and their cumulative annual carbon emissions are an estimated 342,586,908 metric tons."

"Since China’s fleet uses more advanced technology, it also consumes less coal: an average of 286.42 grams of coal equivalent, or gce, consumed per kilowatt-hour of power produced in China versus 374.96 gce consumed per kilowatt-hour produced at lower heating value in the United States."

What is more, it is doubtful if a US-led carbon tax would be a silver bullet. If anything, it could massively backfire. First, considering most of the world's consumer products are now made in China, such a tax, like US trade sanctions, is likely to hurt consumers worldwide, not least in the United States.

Second, the developing world is unlikely to be supportive. To survive, the poor are heavily dependent on whatever energy sources are available to them locally. Such a tax is likely to be viewed as a ruse of the world's richer to tax the less fortunate. 

A better outlook would be for the United States to coordinate with China their respective national policies, targets, and actions under the Paris Agreement. They could do well to cooperate on joint efforts to accelerate attainments of Climate Change targets across the globe.

For a start, they could showcase each other's best technologies and practices to their own peoples. This would vastly enhance their mutual understanding and learning of each other's capacities and progress. What is more, as the world's great powers and largest polluters, they could set a dynamic example for the rest of the world to reach for the stars under the Paris Agreement. 

Separately, this would have the added, yet powerful, benefit of building mutual trust and understanding between the two great powers, now locking horns for mortal combat that is bound to engulf the whole world. 

The New Concert of Powers: How to Prevent Catastrophe and Promote Stability in a Multipolar World

With the waning if not passing of Pax Americana, the world is increasingly torn between fears and denialism in trying to avoid the unavoidable. A more powerful, assertive and self-confident China sees its time has come to return to the future where a large part of the world had been dominated by China and India, the two oldest Eastern civilizations, for millennia before the 17th century.

Amidst a transitional era of uncertainty, Richard N. Haass and Charles A. Kupchan's ground-breaking insight for a "New Concert of Powers" in their 23 March 2021 think-piece in Foreign Policy has much to commend itself. Haass is President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Both are éminences grises in global affairs and international relations. 

The concept borrows from the Concert of Europe, a loose consensus among the Great Powers of 19th Century Europe to maintain balance of powers through a mutual commitment to upholding the territorial settlement at the 1815 Congress of Vienna. The consensus allowed for cooperation, disputes, as well as  jockeying for position and influence. After the Napoleonic Wars, the Concert managed to sustain relative peace and stability in Europe for a hundred years until the 1914 First World War.  

Far from ivory tower theorizing, there are many practical considerations in the Foreign Affairs thick-piece:

"A global concert would have six members: China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, and the United States." 

"A global concert would be a consultative, not a decision-making, body. It would address emerging crises yet ensure that urgent issues would not crowd out important ones, and it would deliberate on reforms to existing norms and institutions. This steering group would help fashion new rules of the road and build support for collective initiatives but leave operational matters, such as deploying peacekeeping missions, delivering pandemic relief, and concluding new climate deals, to the UN and other existing bodies."

"Members would send permanent representatives of the highest diplomatic rank to the global concert’s standing headquarters. Although they would not be formal members of the concert, four regional organizations—the African Union, Arab League, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Organization of American States (OAS)—would maintain permanent delegations at the concert’s headquarters."

"A global concert would shun codified rules, instead relying on dialogue to build consensus. Like the Concert of Europe, it would privilege the territorial status quo and a view of sovereignty that precludes, except in the case of international consensus, using military force or other coercive tools to alter existing borders or topple regimes."

"At the same time, the concert would provide an ideal venue for discussing globalization’s impact on sovereignty and the potential need to deny sovereign immunity to nations that engage in certain egregious activities. Those activities might include committing genocide, harboring or sponsoring terrorists, or severely exacerbating climate change by destroying rainforests."  (Japan's recent plan to dump radioactive water in the ocean may fit this category.) 

"Members would reserve the right to take unilateral action, alone or through coalitions, when they deem their vital interests to be at stake. Direct strategic dialogue would, though, make surprise moves less common and, ideally, unilateral action less frequent."

"Although members would, in principle, endorse a norm-governed international order, they would also embrace realistic expectations about the limits of cooperation and compartmentalize their differences. "

"A global concert would give its members wide leeway when it comes to domestic governance. They would effectively agree to disagree on questions of democracy and political rights, ensuring that such differences do not hinder international cooperation..... But the concert would also work toward a shared understanding of what constitutes unacceptable interference in other countries’ domestic affairs and, as a result, are to be avoided."

"The international system, for one, will exhibit characteristics of both bipolarity and multipolarity. There will be two peer competitors—the United States and China. Unlike during the Cold War, however, ideological and geopolitical competition between them will not encompass the world. On the contrary, the EU, Russia, and India, as well as other large states such as Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey, and South Africa, will likely play the two superpowers off each other and seek to preserve a significant measure of autonomy."

".... the twenty-first century will be politically and ideologically diverse. Depending on the trajectory of the populist revolts afflicting the West, liberal democracies may well be able to hold their own. But so too will illiberal regimes. Moscow and Beijing are tightening their grip at home, not opening up. Stable democracy is hard to find in the Middle East and Africa. Indeed, democracy is receding, not advancing, worldwide—a trend that could well continue. The international order that comes next must make room for ideological diversity."

"Pax Americana is now running on fumes. ..The absence of U.S. leadership during the COVID-19 crisis was striking; each country was on its own. President Biden is guiding the United States back to being a team player, but the nation’s pressing domestic priorities and the onset of multipolarity will deny Washington the outsize influence it once enjoyed."

"Allowing the world to slide toward regional blocs or a two-bloc structure similar to that of the Cold War is a nonstarter. The United States, China, and the rest of the globe cannot fully uncouple when national economies, financial markets, and supply chains are irreversibly tethered together. A great-power steering group is the best option for managing an integrated world no longer overseen by a hegemon. A global concert fits the bill."

Terry Su, president of a Hong Kong-based online publishing house and geopolitics think tank, opined in the South China Morning Post in support of the Concert idea, provided that Japan and India are removed from the suggested list of Members. I tend to agree.

After all, the idea is a proposed mechanism for Great Powers, defined in terms of substantial global, rather than regional, gravitas, and not in terms of size of economy (otherwise Russia would hardly qualify). But more importantly, India and Japan are seen by China and Russia as US "allies", whose formal inclusion may upset the intended balance. In any case, depending on issues, they will often have to be involved as important Members of the United Nations and other international organizations and platforms including the G7 or G20. 

Having said all this, the world is still in transition. Everything remains in a flux. The Concert idea may need time to incubate and nurture, even absent a torrent of destabilizing undercurrents amidst an intensifying Great Power rivalry. 

US-China Relations - The Avoidable War: The Decade of Living Dangerously

An insightful analysis dated February, 2021 by well-seasoned and well-respected China hand, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, ex-Prime Minister of Australia, President and CEO, Asia Society, and President, Asia Society Policy Institute, makes a convincing case for trust-building “managed strategic competition". 

Download Asia Policy Institute US-China Relations The Decade of Living Dangerously 

U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REVIEW COMMISSION 2020 Annual Report to Congress

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

With Biden, China gets four years to remake itself as a likeable, trusted power. It must seize the moment  

The New China Scare - Why America Shouldn’t Panic About Its Latest Challenger

At a time of paranoiac anti-China confrontations, it is instructive to re-visit Fareed Zakaria's insightful analysis in Foreign Affairs dated January/February, 2020. In sum, we need to ask whether China is really such an existential threat to the United States and the global liberal order. 

First, is China trying to take over the world as portrayed by Michael Pillsbury's The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (New York, 2015)? 

Yes, China has become the world's second largest economy and is growing to become first within a decade or so. But regardless of anxieties about relative decline, the United States remains dominant in many matrices of world power, including global military presence, leadership in cutting-edge science and technology, alliance systems with leading advanced countries, and the mighty dollar.

While China may be able to challenge some of these matrices, at least regionally, there is no indication that China will be able to take over the world anytime soon.

Moreover, according to the latest survey of 6 October, 2020 of Washington D.C.-based PEW Research Center, Unfavorable Views of China Reach Historic Highs in Many Countries. At the end of the day, few countries want to embrace China's political system. Nor does China want to rival American's military presence in more than 70 countries around the world.

Second, consider China's perceived assertiveness in the South China Sea.

As these waters are vital sea lanes of communication for China's economic and strategic lifeblood (energy and trade), is it surprising that a growing China will want to guard against encirclement by US military assets in the so-called First and Second Island Chains and the Malacca choke point ? 

As China's economy remains heavily dependent on these waters, of necessity they will remain free and open for international shipping. In any case, China is unlikely to be able to impose a "Monroe Doctrine" on the United States as a long-established Pacific Power, unlike the relative power position of the United States in 1823 vis-a-vis its European rivals, both geographically and militarily. This reality seems unlikely to change substantially in the foreseeable future. At least, geography is immutable. 

Third, since accession to the World Trade Organization, China has been the biggest beneficiary of the liberal world order founded by the United States. Despite perceived malpractices, China remains a staunch supporter of free trade and a multilateral system underpinned by global institutions including the United Nations.

Instead of pushing for needed reforms of the existing liberal order, should the United States throw the baby out with the bathwater? Would unilateralism and rule of the jungle serve America's best interests when the whole world's supply and value chains are intricately intertwined, and power becomes more diffused? Even America's allies don't really want to be forced to choose sides sacrificing their own key economic interests. 

Fourth, regarding human rights and democracy, despite perceived transgressions, there is little evidence that the vast majority of the peoples in Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, let alone the rest of China, are demanding regime change.

As regards ethnic cultural heritage, it is instructive that the PRC has taken care, right from the start, to show the native languages of its four largest minority ethnic groups - Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian and Zhuang - on all of China's banknotes - the Renminbi.  

Not forgetting that the United States has its fair share of human rights infringements (systemic racism, and extrajudicial detention camp at Guantanamo Bay come to mind), compared to the West, the Chinese Communist Party has been enjoying increasing support by the people, according to a July 2020 Harvard Kenney School Ash Center survey Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time. All seem to support the nation's trajectory towards the China Dream of historic renaissance as a Great Power, bringing better and more dignified lives for its people.

Fifth, with 56 different ethnic groups, and great divergence of development between provinces, Western democratic models based on multi-party adversarial electoral systems can only lead to fragmentation, if not disintegration. Unlike former Communists, China is not imposing its ideology on other countries, or gunning for regime change.

Sixth, as for alleged belligerence, since the end of World War II, the United States has waged wars 57 times in 75 years. By comparison, China has waged few wars to speak of in recent decades, always pleading for peaceful coexistence, despite differences. 

Last but certainly not least, the world is big enough for diversity of political models, including China's and those of Arabic kingdoms. While substantial corrections are in order and differences or conflicts with Western political values remain, there is no reason to cancel cooperation or partnership in defined areas, such as regional peace, denuclearization, anti-terrorism, and Climate Change.

Indeed, measured cooperation will at least serve to calm down nerves, build trust for negotiations, and avoid a self-fulfilling security dilemma spawning unintended consequences that may spiral out of control.   

To put US-China power competition in a structural context, John Mearsheimer's webinar on 15 October 2020 with the University of Chicago - The Clash of Great Powers: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Primacy is opportune. The above run-down may help to answer, some, of not all, of the vital issues he raised. 

Click here for an alternative view in Foreign Affairs (November/December, 2020) on how the United States should respond to China's perception of America's "hastening decline". And here to listen to an American YouTuber living in China why an American patriot can love both America and China. 

China’s Response to Climate Change: A Study in Contrasts and a Policy at a Crossroads

An Asia Society Policy Institute Issue Paper of July 2020 by David Sandalow, Inaugural Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, surveys China's remarkable achievements and contradictions on Climate Change in its run-up to its 14 Five Year Plan (2021-2025) (expected to be launched in October this year).

The following excerpts are instructive - 

• China leads the world in deployment of renewable power, with almost three times as much capacity as any other nation. In 2019, 36 percent of the renewable power capacity added globally was in China (down from 42 percent in 2018 and the lowest this figure has been in several years).
• The Chinese government has adopted some of the world’s most ambitious energy efficiency and forest conservation policies, but is financing a significant expansion of coal-fired power plant capacity at home and abroad. China’s leaders are strongly committed to the Paris Agreement, but appear to attach less priority to climate change than in years past.
• The Chinese government has announced four principal climate change goals:
  I. to achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030, making best efforts to peak early;
  II. to lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60 percent–65 percent from the 2005 level by 2030;
  III. to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy to around 20 percent by 2030; and
  IV. to increase the forest stock volume by around 4.5 billion cubic meters from 2005 levels by 2030.
• China is on track to meet all these goals. In fact, many analysts project that China is likely to achieve the first goal—to peak CO2 emissions—well before 2030. The second and third goals both appear to be achievable based on current trends. And the fourth goal was met in 2019—11 years ahead of schedule.
• Policies that promote solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power as alternatives to coal reduce both local air pollutants and heat-trapping gases. So do policies that promote energy efficiency. Policies that promote natural gas as an alternative to coal help reduce local air pollution by 90 percent or more and CO2 emissions by roughly 50 percent, provided the natural gas does not leak. Policies to promote electric vehicles provide significant local air pollution benefits and are essential to long-term decarbonization of the transport sector. 
• China has 48 nuclear power plants—the third-largest fleet in the world, behind only the United States and France. Of the 13 nuclear power plants in the world opened in 2018 and 2019, 9 were in China. In 2019, nuclear power provided roughly 4.6 percent of China’s electricity, up from 4.0 percent in 2018 and 3.8 percent in 2017. The Chinese government has ambitious plans to expand China’s nuclear-generating capacity. However, construction has not kept pace with the goals in the 13th Five Year Plan (2016–2020), which calls for 58 GW of installed nuclear power capacity and an additional 30 GW under construction by 2020. As of June 2020, China had 48 GW of installed nuclear power capacity and roughly 12 GW under construction.
• In the first half of 2020, the central government and many provinces adopted policies to promote EVs, including extended purchase subsidies and additional license plate quotas. In his May 2020 speech to the National People’s Congress, Premier Li Keqiang identified investment in EV charging infrastructure and promoting greater use of new energy vehicles as economic stimulus priorities of the Chinese government.
• Implementation of China’s national CO2 emissions trading program has proceeded slowly. Delays have been due to data availability challenges, government reorganization, the inherent complexity of emissions trading programs and—most recently—COVID-19.
• China’s green finance policies promote investment in a wide range of assets, including renewable energy projects, water treatment plants, recycling facilities, and mass transit. In 2019, China’s green finance policies helped mobilize in the range of RMB 240 billion to RMB 280 billion ($34 billion to $40 billion) of green bonds for qualifying projects.
• During the next 18 months, the Chinese government will spend heavily on economic stimulus measures, release its 14th Five-Year Plan (for 2021–2025), and develop short- and long-term climate action plans (known as its “updated nationally-determined contributions” and “mid-century strategy” in the terminology of the global U.N. climate process).
• In the United States (where a Biden administration would dramatically change the federal government’s climate change policies), in Europe (where climate issues have especially high profile), in many poor developing counties (where vulnerability to climate change is most acute), and everywhere policymakers focus on climate change, Chinese policies will receive significant attention.
• Today, China’s climate policies are a study in contrasts—promoting low-carbon development and high-carbon infrastructure at the same time. The next 18 months are a critical time in Chinese climate change policy. Decisions by China’s leaders will have significant impacts on the global climate for years to come.  

China is a vast and ecologically-challenged country. With 20% of the world's population, it is endowed with only 7% of the world's freshwater. Moreover, the distribution of its water resources is extremely uneven: over 80% are situated south of the Yangtze River. A vast proportion of China's polluted lakes and rivers remain sub-standard in water quality. While impressive advances have been made in renewables, this has been offset by "curtailment" due to insufficient "smart-grids" to capture and redistribute wasted power in off-peak hours. Moreover, much of China's energy needs have to be met by coal. Air quality in cities have registered improvements but much is left to be desired. 

Suffice it to say that an ecologically "beautiful China" remains a key tenet of the China Dream, hopefully to be realized by 2049, the centenary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. The vision is no longer a mirage but getting there is a long and winding road. 

China Is Done Biding Its Time? But what is America's end-game?

The End of Beijing’s Foreign Policy Restraint? poses the above question in Foreign Policy on 15 July, 2020. The piece is penned by Kurt Campbell, Chair and CEO of The Asia Group and former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, with Mira Rapp-Hooper, Senior Fellow for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The tour d'horizon summarizes a dramatic about-face of China's foreign policy, in rhetoric and action, from Deng Xiaoping's earlier "hide-and-bide" admonition. China's assertiveness on all fronts is thought to be exploiting the Trump Administration's AWOL on global leadership. The worldwide chaos resulting from the Coronavirus pandemic has created opportunities for a much more powerful China to overreach, thinking that its time has come as a Great Power. 

The authors conclude with the following observation: 

"Fortunately for the next U.S. president, the contours of a better American approach to China have been evident for some time. The United States must reject the punitive unilateralism that has become the norm in recent years and that has produced no trade or national security gains whatsoever. It must rejigger its relationship with allies in Europe and Asia, who provide its only remaining chance at balancing China in the decades ahead. It must reinvest in international institutions, such as the UN, the G-7, and the WHO, which are indispensable for crisis management and which China is all too happy to lead in the United States’ absence. And it must restore its own domestic health and prosperity to remain a viable competitor on the global stage."

Aside from the chances of a second-term Trump presidency, there is a robust bipartisan consensus in the United States that China has become an existential threat (or an "evil empire") with a totally different ideology. This is perceived to be eroding the America-led liberal global order, including American interests in trade, technology, the South China Sea, and ideology. There is widespread support for a robust all-of-government push-back on all fronts, with unilateral sanctions and decoupling where necessary, to exert maximum pressure in the hope of behavioral, if not regime change. It's no wonder that amid the Coronavirus outbreak, American negative views of China have jumped significantly, according to an April 21st PEW survey. 

As for traditional US allies, while wanting to resist China's assertiveness, neither Europe nor Asia wishes to be forced to take sides. This also applies to the rest of the world, with a few exceptions. This is because China has become the largest trading partner of 124 countries, compared to US's 76. China is deeply imbedded in the global complex supply-and-value chains, strategic decoupling notwithstanding. The seven-year period needed for the UK to decouple from Huawei is a case in point. So is the fact that some 90% of India's pharmaceutical industry depends on inputs of China's ingredients.

Another example showing how integrated China remains is the proposed launch in a year or so of the world's largest trading bloc, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), where China, as the world's second largest economy, is set to be a leading partner. This encompasses all ASEAN countries and each member's regional trading partners. With India, it would account for 50% of the world's population and 40% of world GDP. Without India, which has recently withdrawn from engagement, the percentages would be 30% in both cases. 

As for global institutions, the Trump administration has been flouting the UN, lording it over the G-7, and dishing the WHO. It would take time and concrete examples to rebuild America's leadership. 

At the end of the day, there is a growing risk of misreading China's real intentions. China would be foolish to displace the United States as global leader as it remains unable and unwilling to shoulder the responsibilities. Nor would the world be prepared to accept this in view of China's ideology.

However, the Chinese Communist Party has been enjoying increasing support by the people across the board, according to a July 2020 Harvard Kenney School Ash Center survey Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time. It's only rightful for China to realize its China Dream of historic renaissance as a Great Power, bringing better and more dignified lives for its people, provided its trajectory is not seen to be at other countries' expense.

What is more, absent a pragmatic and constructive end-game, a plethora of paranoiac, no-holds-barred, get-tough actions on China could well end up with the very opposite of what these maximum-pressure tactics are meant to achieve, warns Jude Blanchette, Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., in his July 17 commentary The United States Has Gotten Tough on China. When Will It Get Strategic? 

A World Politics Review of May 2020, US-China Rivalry in the Trump Era offers a panoply of analyses of multiple responses to the perceived China challenge. As one of the Review's leading authors Howard French wily observes, "Nonetheless, beyond vague calls for the U.S. to get its own house in order and reinvigorate its partnerships, which few sensible people can argue with, it is far from obvious what else Americans should do about the across-the-board challenge that China presents." The absence of a clear-eyed endgame is conspicuous. 

A Rand Corporation 2020 study China’s Grand Strategy: Trends, Trajectories and Long-Term Competition examines how successful China would be in realizing its China Dream of becoming a fully-developed nation by 2049. It outlines four scenarios: "triumphant", "ascendant", "stagnant" and "imploding", concluding that the middle scenarios are much more likely.

While generally balanced, the study quotes statistics no later than 2015. It somewhat under-estimates China's explosive consumption growth (38.8% of GDP in 2019, contributing 60% to economic growth), overplaying the importance of exports (only 17.4% of GDP (5% for net-exports) in 2019). It doesn't seem to do justice to China's rapid advances in e-commerce, 5G, big data, quantum computing, internet-of-things (IoT), its recently-completed global BaiDou Navigation Satellite System, and Tianwen-1, China's first Mars Probe Mission. It also seems oblivious to the above-mentioned Harvard Kennedy School's study on CCP resilience. In any case, its overarching response is America's military.

A Brookings Institution April 2020 study Preparing the United States for the Superpower Marathon with China underscores the imperative of geo-economic competition, defined by 21st century game-changing technologies like 5G and quantum computing. Apparently borrowing the competitive terminology from Michael Pillsbury's much-admired 2016 tome The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower , it argues that " If we are to prevail, we must  compete rather than contain China." It concludes that "The outcome of this geo-economic competition is by no means certain. .... If the U.S. fails to prepare for this superpower marathon, we will resign ourselves to becoming a second-rate power while the world looks up to a new global leader with strikingly different values and views." This gives some credence to the possibility of the China "triumphant" scenario in the above-mentioned Rand Corporation study.

With American hawks in the ascendant, a new US-China Cold War seems inevitable. Nevertheless, de-risking  it would be in everyone's interests. What is more, President Trump will never win his New Cold War with China , according to columnist Robin Wright of The New Yorker on 29 July, 2020, suggesting that principled engagement on areas of concern coupled with partnership on global issues like Climate Change is likely to be more productive.

New Cold War: De-risking US-China conflict

A June 2020 Hinrich Foundation report authored by research fellow Dr. Alan Dupont offers seven insightful recommendations (Chapter 4):

(1) Protect democratic values and interests;
(2) Maintain a military edge;
(3) Manage decoupling to minimize disruptions; 
(4) Reform the WTO; 
(5) Strengthen international cooperation, middle-power diplomacy and "back channels"
(6) Develop new cyber and tech rules, protocols and agreements 
(7) Integrate economic and security policy.

These recommendations have a great deal to commend themselves. They may, however, benefit from the following additional perspectives -

(a) Does China really want to dominate the world, with all the obligations, costs and pushback implied? Would achievement of its China Dream be better realized by upholding multilateralism and a global "community of common destiny"? If so, instead of baiting an awoken lion by stroking fears of a global "China Scare", would there be room to encourage greater mutual understanding and learning between the West and China as regards governance and norms, without necessarily negating one or the other? 

(b) As for decoupling, it's true that the idea has gained much further traction thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic. So essentials like certain medical supplies and equipment plus products and components directly affecting national security are likely to see changes in their supply and value chains. But totally "cutting the Gordian knot" seems impossible, as Dr. Dupont quotes from John Lee of the Lowry Institute (page 28). This will become even more apparent with the coming Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), the world's largest trading bloc, of which China will be a key Member. China has also indicated it may well join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Click here At many more countries already have China as the largest trading partner by far, the vast majority of nations do not want to be forced to choose between the United States and China. 

(c) As the world's Superpower, the United States already possesses overarching global military dominance on multiple fronts. It has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carrier battle groups compared with China's nascent and miniscule version. It has some 800 military bases in 70 countries and territories, compared with China's only spot in Djibouti. It's nuclear stockpile is some tenfold over China's. Would stroking fears about US global military edge risk a "security spiral" with China and Russia, feeding into the American "military-industrial-complex" vested interests at the expense of much-needed improvements of homeland infrastructure, healthcare and education? 

(d) A looming new Cold War with the United States and the global  Coronavirus backlash have taught China a huge lesson. Its coming Five Year Plan (2021-2025) is likely to focus on improving its own people's livelihood and environment. Click here  Would cooperation with China on global issues of common interests such as Climate Change, denuclearization, anti-terrorism, water scarcity, poverty relief, UN Sustainable Development Goals, and reform of China's Belt and Road Initiative, be more productive in de-risking US-China conflict?         

Worsening Australia-China relations and what to do about it

As highlighted in this live TV interview on 9 June, China has warned citizens not to travel to Australia due to increasing hostility towards its nationals.

As Australia-China relations are plummeting, Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister (1988-96), and currently with the Australian National University, offers a nuanced yet realist view of how to engage with a perceived "increasingly-assertive" China to achieve a truly win-win relationship.

Read his article How Not to Respond to China dated18 June, 2020 on an online platform of the Asia Global Institute, a University of Hong Kong think-tank.