The solution is right here in a recent Foreign Affairs article.
Author Wang Jisi, a professor at the Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Peking University, says that “America and China Are Not Yet in a Cold War; But They Must Not Wind Up in Something Even Worse” (November 23, 2023).
Professor Jisi says:
● It’s up to China and the United States “whether to engage in a cold war; their perceptions and assumptions will, in turn, shape the reality of the relationship. Handled properly, the relationship might foster global stability. Handled poorly, it might plunge the world into something much worse than the Cold War.”
Why didn’t anybody realize this before? What happens between China and the United States is indeed up to them, up to their assumptions and reality-shaping. Yes.
Can we have a show of hands, please? How many are in favor of the global stability? Okay. Now, how many are in favor of the plunging of the world into “something much worse than the Cold War”? What about turning the earth into a smoking, black, lifeless cinder? Any takers for that option?
The vast majority prefer global stability. But it is not up to the United States and China alone to secure global stability. It is also up to all the other countries of the world, plus Taiwan. (For the sake of world peace, I do not want to state my own opinion as to whether Taiwan is a country or just a big town.)
China must do its part by stating its demands clearly and accepting everybody’s meek submission in a prompt and orderly fashion.
And all the other countries of the world and Taiwan must do their part by making sure that they understand all the things that China wants them to give China or give up and by making sure to obey China in these matters just as quickly and comprehensively as possible.
Things that you or your country must give up may include your land, probably just slices of land on the border of your country that China wants; but, possibly, your entire country. (Check with China to be sure.) The things may include ability to express independent thoughts in speech or writing. They may include your culture if, for example, you happen to belong to an ethnocultural group residing in or near China that has a culture that China would like you to relinquish. They may include privacy and security. If China tries to sell you things that have the capability of spying on you, be sure to buy those things; and if China wants to infect your computer with spyware or viruses, be sure to download the spyware or viruses.
It can be hard to keep track of all the things that China wants from you. But if you petition the Chinese government for more information, it will probably let you know if you’ve left anything out. Moreover, both iOS and Android have tracking apps that you can use.
● Professor Jisi says: “China does not seek to export its version of Marxism in the way that the Soviet Union did.” China has its own way of exporting its version of Marxism. The West misses the significance of the fact “that the CCP now rarely extols Leninism separately and more commonly refers to its leading ideology as Marxism. Thus, although the U.S.-Chinese competition involves rival models, it is not the kind of global ideological contest that Washington and Moscow fought.”
Got it. Own way of exporting. Marxism, not Leninism. We have nothing to lose but our chains. And these factors “make the current situation less dire than the Cold War.”
Less dire? Great! What a relief. But—
● “Other differences, however, push in the opposite direction.” Oh no! See, after the Cuban missile crisis, “Washington and Moscow maintained mechanisms for preventing crises and managing them if they did occur. The contemporary U.S.-Chinese relationship lacks such coordination.”
Are we doomed then? Because of the lack of coordination? No, because—
● Biden and Xi have met in San Francisco! Yaaaay!
This, says Professor Jisi, “has rekindled hopes that the two countries will find a stable trajectory and avoid a catastrophic conflict. Both leaders have declared many times that they do not seek a new cold war. The key will be for their governments to better understand how the U.S.–Chinese competition differs from that historical precedent [i.e., the U.S.–Soviet competition, which has disappeared now except for that thing in Ukraine]: acknowledging the similarities, embracing the differences that make things less dangerous today than during the Cold War, and working to minimize the effect of the differences that could make it even more dangerous.”
Got it. Similarities. Differences. Good things. Bad things. Maximize the good things and minimize the bad things! Do both! What I love about this article is that it’s so clarifying!
● To achieve our best future, we must remember our past. We must remember the prequel, Cold War I. “The United States and the Soviet Union actively divided the world into two parts. Moscow referred to them as ‘the socialist camp’ and the ‘imperialist/capitalist camp,’ whereas Washington spoke of ‘the communist world’ and ‘the free world.’ ”
Aw geez. Why are we always labeling things? That’s 112% of the problem right there.
● The U.S. and the Soviet Union only rarely exchanged culture. It was always a special event, a ballet thing or whatever. In contrast, the U.S. and China are exchanging culture all the time, and there’s probably some of that culture in the forced-labor product that Amazon just mailed to you (my example).
“On the one hand, Chinese and American individuals and groups who have benefited from interdependence deplore the corrosion of bilateral ties and call for stability.”
Stability! Two thumbs up!
“On the other hand, those with political weight who have gained little from U.S.-Chinese cooperation see national security as a reason to prevent deepening ties.”
Grrr. Boo. Pullers of political weight always like to cause trouble. They can’t leave well enough alone and just let the cultural interdependence and deeper ties occur.
Some of the weight-pullers have even arranged to shutter some of the benevolent stability-fostering Chinese centers of cultural exchange and propaganda, the Confucius Institutes, that the Chinese Communist Party had bestowed on U.S. campuses. Others—and I hate to say it, but it’s true—have even acted to arrest Chinese thugs running “police stations” in the United States whose only benevolent cultural purpose was to facilitate the harassment of critics of the Chinese regime and and facilitate the harassment and kidnapping of Chinese nationals who had escaped China. It’s sort of maybe a little scary kind of culture, sure, but it’s their culture, China’s culture, so can we just give it a hug and leave it at that? Otherwise, we’ll never get the stability.
● Professor Jisi would like us to know that “U.S.-Chinese strategic competition is multilayered…. It is not simply an interstate affair…. If geopolitical and national security concerns override economic considerations and nationalist populism swells in both China and the United States, conciliatory voices are likely to be drowned out.”
Hmm. I don’t think we want concerns about national security or the forces of nationalist populism to drown out conciliatory voices, as can sometimes happen in life. The author deserves a lot of credit for this insight. By the way, one good thing about this Foreign Affairs article is that it just speeds right along. For example, it doesn’t get bogged down in a lot of details on exactly what the conciliatory voices in the U.S. at risk of being drowned out by any resurging concern about national security or resurging nationalist populism would be conciliating. Well, let’s move on.
● Professor Jisi recommends five things that we can do right now to “stabilize the relationship and avoid catastrophe”!
1) The American and Chinese economies “must remain intensively intertwined.” No more hazardous decoupling from genocide and forced labor, invasion of other countries, etc.
2) “Beijing and Washington should defuse tensions over Taiwan.” China, for its part, “remains committed to peaceful unification.” (Wonderful how well the author understands China.) Now all the United States and Taiwan have to do is commit to peaceful unification too; i.e., “do everything they can to encourage that commitment and not persuade China that it must employ nonpeaceful means.” In brief, as soon as Taiwan surrenders, everything will be fine. Why is it that China understands this sort of thing so well and everybody else just hasn’t been getting it until this Foreign Affairs article came along?
3) Set up that hotline, Xi and Biden! And do something to cope with the risks of artificial intelligence.
4) China and the United States should work together more closely to improve the health and well-being of their respective citizenries. For example, China should help Biden cure cancer.
5) China and the United States should also work together to fix the climate.
Well, I guess that’s it. Problem solved; world saved. I was worried that more than five steps would be required, but fortunately it’s just five.
P.S. I just wanted to mention that Wang Jisi is not only a professor at Peking University. From 2001 to 2009, he directed the Institute of International Strategic Studies of the Central Party School of the Communist Party. From 2008 to 2016, he was on the foreign policy advisory committee of China’s Foreign Ministry. This experience, inexplicably omitted from the bioline that Foreign Affairs provides at the end of Jisi’s article, may help explain why his ruminations have such a ring of authority.
