The book you need if you want to understand China right now

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The deterioration in relations between China and the US is a dangerous development. The friction does not just reflect the Communist Party regime’s opacity concerning the outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan. Nor is it the result of the Trump administration’s efforts to try to distract attention from its own failures in curbing the virus in the US.

Something much deeper and much worse is at stake: a potential clash between what two great powers perceive to be their vital interests.

Anyone wanting an articulate and honest version of China’s position – one that does not indulge in Sinophobic name-calling – should consult the work of Kishore Mahbubani. Written with his characteristic brutal clarity, Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy opens a big-picture window on the closing of the Pax Americana and the advent of a new world in which China’s rise will continue unabated.

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Attempts to deny China a sphere of influence will be strongly resented, says Kishore Mahbubani. David Rowe

Mahbubani, a distinguished Singaporean intellectual and former diplomat, says China is emerging from two centuries of weakness and humiliation. It is finally mastering Western technologies and is bound to be the world’s most powerful economy. As a result, many Chinese feel at long last they are in a position to command the respect and consideration they deserve.

From China’s perspective, the more powerful it becomes economically, the more likely it will grow its strategic reach in areas on which its future security and prosperity depends. That’s how rising great powers, including the US, think and behave. Which is why attempts to deny China a sphere of influence are likely to be strongly resented.

But everywhere China looks, Mahbubani notes, America gets in its face and seeks to block Beijing’s legitimate aspirations and interests. The US has enhanced strategic relations across the region. It rejects efforts by Huawei to join the 5G networks. It roars like a lion over human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang province but squeaks like a mouse about Saudi Arabia’s repressive regime. China has discovered ways to make industrial goods that are competitive with US products. What does Washington do but whine about the de-industrialisation of America’s midwest and launch a trade and technological war against China?

Still, China’s rise is likely to be peaceful, he says. When it was dominant for most of the 18 centuries before the industrial revolution, China (unlike the European powers) did not try to conquer the world. It follows that as China rises, it is important that the US and its allies try to work with Beijing rather than to provoke it.

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Singaporean academic and former diplomat Kishore Mahbubani argues for detente with Beijing. 

There is much to commend in Mahbubani’s book and it is true that we hear such arguments stated too rarely, especially in Washington and Canberra. He is surely right to highlight America’s many strategic mistakes of the post-Cold War era – from NATO expansion eastwards (which provoked Russia into defending its strategic orbit in Ukraine and the Baltics) to the Iraq invasion and other US misadventures in the Middle East (which cost America dearly in blood, treasure, prestige and influence).

Mahbubani is not anti-American, as some critics have claimed. He is married to an American, regularly visits the US and openly admires the American ethos of market capitalism and technological innovation, which he recognises has helped make the rest of the world more prosperous.

He wrote this book because he wants America and its allies, such as Australia, to better understand China. He seeks to temper the hunger for confrontation with Beijing, which has grown since the pandemic. If only Washington had a “comprehensive long-term strategy to deal with China.

But are things more complicated? Growing Chinese strength genuinely worries regional states, from Japan and South Korea to Vietnam and India. That anxiety and fear causes them to strengthen ties with America, which even under Donald Trump shows no signs of retreating from the region.

Mahbubani also appears to sugar-coat the Communist Party regime. While his book puts a cork on hyper-Chinese nationalism – those who support the democratisation of China should be careful what they wish for – does the author overlook the Chinese Communist Party’s evident flaws? In an otherwise positive review in The Sunday Times, leading British historian Max Hastings says Mahbubani “lets off Chinese authoritarianism, and its ruthless repression of human and civil rights, far too lightly”.

Post-Mao China represents a great success story – a tale of four decades of growth in the 5-12 per cent range that seems to defy the laws of economic gravity. But that was before COVID-19. (Mahbubani wrote his book just before the virus exploded.) Soon China will suffer its first real recession. It sits in an implacably tough region surrounded by more than a dozen neighbours, few of which are truly friendly towards Beijing. Nations dependent on China for supply chains will either diversify their export trade or diverge from the Chinese market. How will the likely economic dislocation affect China’s trajectory?

All this puts Australia in a bind. We want the best of both worlds: unrestrained trade with China under the US security umbrella. That mindset has served us well for a quarter of a century. However, it has meant we’ve been blinded by the fact that a broader, deeper confrontation is brewing.

Mahbubani says it will require restraint and diplomatic dexterity in Washington if China and America are to avoid becoming deadly rivals. But Beijing should also recognise its own flaws and limits to its power.