Summary
The concern of the West about China’s approach to dominating the world needs to have insightful analysis regarding Beijing’s strategy, confronted with the challenges it must face. Therefore, experiences during the first Cold War may prove revealing regarding big power’s politics to form alliances based on economic, ideological, and military convergence of interests and question Beijing’s capability to pursue a comparable result in a much more complex reality.
End of August 2023. Johannesburg. Six more members joined the so-called brics-Club. Worldwide, commentators are focusing on the sole winner: China, for having formed a club to counterbalance a G 7 dominated by the “West”.
The discourse gains momentum, also because for some time, a general assumption has prevailed, which holds that China is focusing on world domination to replace the old hegemon, the usa. Evidence for such an assumption seems too obvious: None other than China’s President Xi Jinping emphasized at every occasion a “shared fate of human community”, that shall no longer be led by the West. Chinese state ideologists like the philosopher, Professor Zhao Tingyang, promoted for more than three years his thesis of “Chinese Universalism” – all under heaven – as a much better theoretical ground to put the world of the 21st century on than any Western systems such as the one of Emanuel Kant. A plain language takes shape in real confrontations in Southeast Asia, South Asia, Northeast Asia, and increasingly in Africa and Latin America, which sees two “combatants” pitted against one another: China and the USA.
Yet, upon closer inspection, reasonable doubt emerges: Just because the brics Club, visibly driven by China as well as by Russia, is set to be enlarged and appears as “another club” besides the G7, is that already a declaration of China to challenge the West, let alone successfully? What is the relationship between the founding members (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are they led by China? Not to mention the six new members with conflicts like those that oppose Saudi Arabia and Iran. Is it to be expected that China mediates a religiously rooted conflict with a history of centuries? The reality is much more complex than what seems apparent, also than what the Chinese leadership under Xi Jinping might desire.
Three of five initial members of the brics: Brazil, South Africa, and India, none of them is truly interested in China’s initiative to drive the process known as de-dollarization. India still feels sufficiently tied to Russia as a traditional ally in geopolitics. By comparison, China has begun to weaken Moscow’s influence in Central Asia. For instance, three months prior to the summit in Johannesburg, President Xi Jinping chaired a summit with five states of Central Asia. Russia, which views Central Asia as its backyard, was not present. As revenge, in July, Moscow invited Viet Nam, the Philippines, and India, all three rivals to China, to a “symposium” on the disputes in the South China Sea that China declared as its “core interest zone,” that it denies anyone else to claim. This time, it was Beijing that was not invited.
One may understand China’s efforts in Johannesburg to be nothing more than joining “networks” beyond the West, as a “disobedience” of sorts and not as a realistic move to establish a China-centered “Anti-Club.” Well known as such was another international organization, the so-called “Shanghai Cooperation Organization” (sco), that was also newly enlarged by a new member Iran, with a perspective to include Belarus somewhere in the future.
Again, many Western media read this, too, as a sign of the efforts of Russia and China to counter the overwhelming influence of Western organizations, such as nato and a series of new alliances still in the making, such as aukus (usa, Britain, and Australia) and the quad (usa, Japan, Australia, and India). Yet again, nobody could reliably identify China as a “leader” or at least as a “moderator.” Rather, the opposite: Central Asian countries are trying to neutralize Russia’s grasp. Pakistan is trying to get away from China’s economic and military-technological control.
If neither Russia nor China could preserve control over countries in their orbit, if Russia and China alike appear to wrestle with what they once could count on, how can we be sure of their increasing momentum to match the global challenges they believe in being confronted with, when Russia is caught in the quagmire of the war in Ukraine as it is, for instance?
More impressive than joining multiple “clubs” like sco or brics is the fact that, until now, China has shown no signs of forming an alliance of its own on a geo-economic, geopolitical, and geo-military basis. Such foundations have been needed until now by any big power that aims to dominate vast regions, let alone the world. Washington formed nato at the beginning of the 1950s and it remains, even under an utterly unpredictable President as Donald Trump was, loyal to this alliance.
Until the former Soviet Union in 1991 was dismantled, it remained loyal to the Warsaw Pact at all three levels: economic (Comecom), political (Comintern), and military (Warsaw Pact). None of the major disputes with the other side was taken and performed without involving nato: during the Cuban Missile Crisis’’ (1963), in the “Six-Day War” (1967), in the Middle East and into the Gulf War 1991 and the war in Kosovo (1999). On the side of the former Soviet Union, we count the invasion of Czechoslovakia (1967) and the war in Afghanistan (1979). The importance deriving from this practice of block building, also in the economic sense, has been global throughout the entire Cold War.
The experience of the Cold War might prove to be enlightening. Many are already talking about a Cold War 2.0, with China as the main adversary to the West. If so, the logic would read as follows: Mighty were the former Soviet Union and the usa for over four decades. Each of them was and is able to ruin our world many times over by the power alone of their nuclear arsenals. However, even the two could not dominate the world without a firm and reliable alliance in none of the three senses: ideologically, economically and militarily. What makes us believe that this seemingly “iron rule” of building and promoting a long-lasting and reliable alliance would not apply to newcomer China? Would China not need a geo-economic sphere of influence, at least, to converge the basic interests of many countries, making them dependent on Beijing like those in Eastern Europe once depended on Moscow?
One may notice that forming a common political basis for an alliance would not be easy because, for Beijing, neither the Communist ideology nor a world religion like Islam is readily available for allies to join. Militarily during the Cold War, the former Soviet Union indeed many times outclassed their adversary. the usa, in terms of high-tech. Until now, even severely concerned American strategists contend that in some areas, China “might be getting dangerously close to the high-tech level of the usa.” A substantial “overtake” has barely been confirmed. Wouldn’t this make a military alliance more paramount for Beijing today than it was for Moscow during the Cold War? Are we not already witnessing the first steps from China to cautiously approach Vladimir Putin?
The most compelling distinction between the confrontation between the us and the former Soviet Union during Cold War 1.0 and the upcoming conflict between the West and China is the fact that both camps were separated as systems in all three dimensions. Thanks to its “Opening-Up politics” for three decades, China has been interwoven into the world economy. As for factual dependencies that emerged between Western industrialized states and China, in some areas, economists are seeing Chinese domination related to rare earth as a resource, quantum-physics as a high-tech, and car-making industry as a question of market volume.
However, of all three, none possess the potential to reliably indicate a predestination for future development. As for natural resources, the competition is raging in Africa, Central Asia, and Latin America. There, China is a remarkable player but by no means an unchallengeable hegemon. Besides the usual suspects, the usa, the eu, Brazil, and India, and to some degree, Russia all are also chasing resources in Africa. African countries, countries in Central Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere stand to benefit from this. They are trying to balance between different competitors much like Brazil is trying to balance out China’s desire for Australia’s ores or Kenya trying to neutralize China’s industrial investment into its railway system. Nowhere could China claim a lasting economic sphere of influence like in the Cold War, as the usa once viewed Latin America, and the former Soviet Union, the entire Eastern Europe.
As was the case during the Cold War, now the monetary momentum ceases to play the only decisive role. Geopolitical tension worldwide contributes its share to impact, if not to determine the competition. Thus China’s mercantilist politics, like the “One Belt One Road” strategy, are fading. 17 plus 1 Cooperation with Eastern Europe has shrunk to 14 plus 1, with Italy on the verge of quitting China’s offer. Due to geopolitical tension, Pakistan, known as “a friend for all weathers,” is drifting away from China’s investments that aim to “buy” the geopolitical fidelity of Islamabad. Pakistan again approaches the us and favors the F16 to upgrade its air force rather than the Xiaolong 100, a co-production and a strategic project with far-reaching consequences that has been run by China for more than two decades. Not to mention the newly reached “Camp David Agreement” between the us, South Korea, and Japan not merely to strengthen their alliance, but also to declare their commitment to contain China’s effort in the South China Sea, where countries like Vietnam and the Philippines are anyway trying to gain more economic independence from China.
Not even Africa remains loyal to China as the major donator. In May 2020, the first year of the covid-19 pandemic, 23 African ambassadors jointly protested in Beijing against “racist discrimination of Africans by Chinese in China,” a troubling phenomenon that had lasted for three decades without any of these ambassadors ever voicing their disapproval. But in 2020, their protest note was copied and submitted to the United Nations in New York and the African Union. Finally, the protest was soon backed by all 34 African countries. Considering that almost the entire continent was longing for Chinese aid in money and vaccines, within weeks, numerous African countries demanded a debt cut of epic proportions from Beijing. It worked.
Beijing reluctantly accepted the painful sacrifice, beginning with a debt cut for Kongo, a country rich in rare earth, which is essential for China’s semiconductor industry. However, regarding specifically the semiconductor technology, China was facing the pressure coming from the West, led by the usa, South Korea, and Japan, countries that, again due to geopolitical tensions, are now trying to cut off China from their supply chain, knowing Beijing is missing its own “economic orbit” that could serve Chinese interests well. This is generally true elsewhere, but particularly in Africa.
Finally, the discussion about “decoupling,” driven by the usa under Donald Trump and subsequently adapted into a Western strategy called “de-risking,” means that large economies should diversify their industrial production of all critical goods by shifting away from China.
China comes under unprecedented pressure: Its established industrial scale for producing steel, cement, glass, and primary industry machine lathes, even cars, vanished because key players from the usa, Japan, South Korea, Britain, France, and Germany switched their focus away from China towards other countries like Indonesia, Viet Nam, and India. Also, the market volume that kept attracting Western investment into China withered. Now, mass unemployment and the dropping purchasing power of the middle class, coupled with disastrous pandemic-control politics from 2020 until the beginning of 2023, persuade more money to leave China, rendering Beijing’s sharpest weapon obsolete to fight Western dominance. A reliable economic sphere centered around China would very much help to neutralize the pressure. However, none with any significant weight is in sight.
Surrounding China’s neighborhood, three real or possible free trade zones of global clout are to be considered: The rcep includes China but is well-balanced between many other players like Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. The cpttp, led by Japan and joined by European powers like Great Britain, kept China excluded. Moreover, the apec is still wrestling with a free trade option whatsoever. Meanwhile, other essential players are speeding up efforts to build alternatives like the fta of the eu with Japan, South Korea, and with essential member states of asean, Vietnam, and Singapore. The eu has begun negotiations about an fta with India, yet not with China. The principally reached cai, a comprehensive agreement regarding service, investments, and trade, was frozen in 2022 by the eu due to political disputes such as human rights violations in Xinjiang. A resumption is not to be expected.
Remarkably, the failure of China to build up an economic sphere of influence, for instance, in Southeast Asia, is partially due to the Communist Party itself. Under Xi Jinping, the ruling party of China abandoned its doctrine to base its power legitimacy upon economic growth. A premise that let China unbothered by its convergence with the Western-style economy for three decades. From his inauguration at the end of 2012 onward, Xi declared that it was no longer his major development goal that China should top the world’s economies, measured by China’s gdp, by 2049.
Instead, fighting dangers to China from the outside, especially from the West, became the utmost priority. Consequently, seeking economic progress alongside the West ceased to be a proper path, despite the best insight into how badly the Chinese economy needed every cooperation with the West or any other influential partner – such as with brics or member states of sco. Interest conflicts with everyone else, also those in both “clubs” “beyond the Western grasp,” are being increasingly seen as threats to be coped with at any cost and based on China’s economic momentum as a whole.
In the style of Donald Trump’s “America First,” China under Xi Jinping is pursuing a policy that could be titled “China only.” Until now, unlike the eu, China has not pursued a negotiation about an fta with Latin America as a region. It prefers to overpower each of the smaller and weaker countries by negotiating with each one of them separately to coerce Chinese interests at any cost.
Without having shaped any geopolitical and geo-military alliance that even remotely compares to those of the Cold War Superpowers, and with no chance to substantially converge its economic interests with partners in the world, the only remaining tool to assert China’s desire to dominate the world is a military-technological option: Arms race, coupled with the convergence of civilian production with a military capability (double use), accelerates, and in a few areas of high tech such as hypersonic missiles, a closing in on the superpower usa is a worrying reality for the West which is launching an ever more tightening boycott in all the high-tech areas, beginning with the Five-Alliance in terms of chips, consisting of the usa, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the Netherlands
To reiterate the open question: Compared with the former Soviet Union that many times topped the us high-tech in real and military-industrial capability during the Cold War, compared with Moscow’s firm alliance in the shape of the Warsaw Pact, China could, as it seems, only count on itself. Would this be enough for Beijing to turn upside down, or even challenge, the existing power structure today, let alone in tomorrow’s world?
Many factors that determine China’s future course remain uncertain. Only one thing is clear: the determination of the ccp leadership to fulfill what is known as the “China Dream” to top everyone else in the world. One may reasonably doubt China’s real chances to do so. Yet, the world must remember: Mao Zedong in the 1960s dreamed consistently of a world revolution not only to wipe out world imperialism but also to overwhelm the traitorous “Socialist camp” dominated by Moscow, meaning Mao’s China challenged both superpowers simultaneously.
With an unprecedented crisis breaking out within China and an increasing isolation from the outside world, does Xi Jinping need the dream of world dominance for the same reasons? Or could his empire, without such a vision, collapse like a house of cards as Mao’s did?
