Sino-American home truths
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Two news items from Beijing, seemingly unrelated: a Chinese space probe has landed on the far side of the Moon, and President Xi Jinping has warned that China will not tolerate Taiwan’s independence and will use “all necessary force”. A scientific achievement that catapults the Chinese ahead of their American and Russian rivals contrasts with a threat to subject “our Taiwanese compatriots” to a Hong Kong-style “one country, two systems” arrangement, regardless of democratic niceties.
In the West, we mostly see China as a mostly benign power: a source of cheap goods, investment and tourism. In technology, Chinese companies are rapidly overtaking the Western competition, despite suspicions that Huawei, for example, is working hand in glove with the Beijing government to extend the reach of its global surveillance and intelligence network.
Donald Trump is an exception to this generally positive view of China: he has unleashed a trade war that is hitting both sides where it hurts. But protectionism does nothing to inhibit Beijing’s state aid for capital-intensive strategic industries, such as semi-conductors, which is creating Chinese near-monopolies by driving out competition. In any potential change conflict between China and the United States, the latter’s lack of such capacities could be decisive.
In academic circles, there has been much discussion of the “Thucydides trap”, applied to the Sino-American relationship. According to the Ancient Greek historian, a rising power and an established one are destined to fight for supremacy: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”
Could a combination of economic and intellectual rivalry, symbolised by a new space race, and the struggle for global hegemony, symbolised by a regional dispute over Taiwan, trigger a catastrophic conflict between the two greatest powers on earth?
It should not be forgotten that Washington is bound by treaty to defend Taiwan against invasion from mainland China. Hence President Xi knew exactly what he was doing and whom he was targeting when he issued his warning this week: “We believe that peaceful unification is in our best interest. But we cannot make the promise that we will give up force, but we reserve the right to all necessary options. That targets external forces and a handful of separatists and their activities, and not our Taiwanese compatriots.”
Back in 1996, the Chinese and the Americans came close to war over Taiwan. President Bill Clinton responded to a series of provocative missile tests staged by Beijing in the Taiwan Straits. He dispatched two carrier task forces to the region in the largest display of US naval force since the Vietnam War. One of the aircraft carriers, the USS Nimitz, sailed through the Straits with her escorts to demonstrate that the American military guarantee rendered Taiwan invulnerable to Chinese intimidation. It was a lesson that China has never forgotten.
Today, more than two decades later, the balance of power has shifted in favour of the Chinese. Not only have they undertaken a huge programme of naval construction, including several aircraft carriers of their own, but they have developed a whole ring of air and missile bases around the South China Sea, making any attempt by the US Navy to approach the Taiwan Straits extremely perilous.
Two weeks ago, the deputy head of the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences, Rear Admiral Lou Yuan, warned that China’s new anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles are capable of destroying US super-carriers, each of which has a complement of some 5,000 service men and women. Admiral Yuan boasted that China could easily sink two such warships, with the loss of 10,000 men. “What the United States fears most is taking casualties,” he told a summit on December 20, adding: “We’ll see how frightened America is.”
Unfortunately, this threat is credible. Chinese technology, including military technologies, has overtaken American efforts to protect naval and other assets. For this and other reasons, President Trump is struggling to respond to the sabre-rattling of his Chinese counterparts. His trade war may help his own electoral prospects in the American rust belt, but the next war won’t be about steel. It will be about quantum computers and other futuristic technologies.
The West still has one great advantage over China and any other strategic rival: our capacity for innovation. We need to harness this unique creative power in ways that will deter the aggressive ambitions of Xi and his Communist Party henchmen. Whoever takes over at the Pentagon after the resignation of General Mattis should be a Defense Secretary who is able and willing to think outside the box. Otherwise, America risks fighting the last war instead of preventing the next one.
