Biden’s new Chinese doctrine. Economist Report
All the details (and problems) of Joe Biden's plan to contain China, according to The Economist weekly
Optimists have long hoped that welcoming China into the global economy would make it a "responsible stakeholder" and lead to political reform. As president, Donald Trump blasted all of this as weakness. Now Joe Biden is converting the Trump bombing into a doctrine that pits America against China, a struggle between rival political systems that, he says, can only have one winner. Between them, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden have engineered the most dramatic break in American foreign policy in the five decades since Richard Nixon went to China.
Biden and his team base their doctrine on the belief that China is "less interested in coexistence and more interested in domination." The task of American politics is to blunt Chinese ambitions. America will work with China in areas of common concern, such as climate change, but will counter its ambitions elsewhere. This means building the force at home and working abroad with allies who can integrate its economic, technological, diplomatic, military and moral weight – writes The Economist .
Much of Mr. Biden's new doctrine makes sense. The optimistic case for engagement has collapsed under the reality of Chinese power. Led by President Xi Jinping, China has garrisoned the South China Sea, imposed party rule in Hong Kong, threatened Taiwan, skirmished with India, and sought to subvert Western values in international bodies. Many countries are alarmed by Chinese "wolf warrior" diplomacy.
But the details of Biden's doctrine contain a lot to worry about – not least that it's unlikely to work. One problem is how Mr. Biden defines the threat. As politics in Washington is broken, he seems to feel he needs the spirit of Pearl Harbor to help rekindle a sense of national purpose. This is a miscalculation.
It is true that Republicans jump on anything they can portray as soft about China (although every time they say the presidential election was stolen, they do the job of Chinese propagandists). However, Republicans are unlikely to start supporting Mr. Biden's internal agenda just because it has the word "China" printed on the cover.
Worse, the more Biden uses jarring rhetoric to galvanize Americans, the harder his job becomes to galvanize allies and emerging great powers like India and Indonesia. By framing the relationship as a zero-sum race, he is presenting them with a Manichean struggle between democracy and autocracy, rather than the pursuit of coexistence. Alas, in this he is overestimating America's influence and underestimating how much potential allies have to lose by turning their backs on China.
For many economic measures, China will become a dominant force no matter what America does. It will have the largest economy in the world and is already the largest trading partner of nearly twice as many countries in America. Germany, the European export powerhouse, aims to sustain trade ties with China even as political ties weaken. In Southeast Asia, many countries look to America for their security and China for their prosperity. If forced to choose between superpowers, some may choose China.
Rather than imposing a decision on other countries today, Mr. Biden needs to conquer them. And its best chance is for America to prove that it can thrive at home and that it is the leader of an open and successful world economy.
Again, the details of Mr. Biden's plan are troubling. Rather than building on America's strengths as a champion of global rules, the administration is using China's threat to further its internal agenda. Its doctrine is full of industrial policy, government intervention, planning and controls. It is uncomfortably similar to the decoupling pursued by China itself.
For a taste of what this could entail, look at the administration's report on four crucial supply chains – for semiconductors, batteries, rare earths and vital pharmaceutical ingredients – released last month. The report doesn't just make the national security case for government intervention in these industries. It also embraces trade union representation, social justice and pretty much everything in between. More such reports will come later. If that's any guide, Mr. Biden will propose using subsidies and regulation to ensure jobs and manufacturing stay within America's borders.
Inevitably, Mr. Biden's plans have trade-offs. Central to his attack on China is his abuse of human rights, especially of Uighurs, who are subject to internment and forced labor in Xinjiang. Central to its climate change policy is the shift to renewable energy. Yet the two are intertwined, at least in the short term, because Xinjiang is the origin of 45% of the silicon used to generate solar energy.
A more fundamental problem is the soft protectionism of Chinese doctrine. This favors incumbents over competitors and risks burdening the economy rather than supercharging it. The country's new lunar program is mostly popular as a way to show America has an edge over China. Yet it's vibrant just to the extent that it allows for the kind of competition in which private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin can shine.
A third problem is that Mr. Biden's doctrine will make America's allies even more suspicious. If the purpose of cutting ties with China is to create good union jobs in America, the allies will be wondering what is there for them.
Mr. Biden's plan is a missed opportunity. If America is to prevent China from rebuilding the global order in its image, it should defend the kind of globalization that has always served it well. At the heart of such an approach would be trade and the multilateral system, embodying the belief that openness and the free flow of ideas will create an advantage in innovation.
If America really wanted to counter China in Asia, it would join the pan-Asian trade deal it departed from in 2016. This is highly unlikely now, but it could seek new environmental and digital trade deals. It should also put money and influence behind new ideas that strengthen the Western order, such as a vaccine program for future pandemics, digital payment systems, cybersecurity and an infrastructure scheme to compete with China's Belt and Road Initiative. Rather than copy Chinese techno-nationalism, a more confident America should claim what made the West strong.
(Extract from the Epr press review)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/biden-cina-strategia/ on Sun, 18 Jul 2021 06:00:23 +0000.