This article by Chris Buckley and Steven Lee Myers is an excellent assessment of the mounting points of friction between the United States and Chinese governments–blame for the pandemic, trade, technology, espionage and China’s grab for the South China Sea. “The bitter recriminations have plunged relations between China and the United States to a nadir, with warnings in both countries that the bad blood threatens to draw them into a new kind of Cold War,” the authors write. Other threads of confrontation are China’s penetration of American universities and the clampdown on Hong Kong democracy advocates, particularly Martin Lee. Another point of tension that escapes mention in the article is the massive hacking of American computer networks.
What interests me the most is the use of the phrase “Cold War” and the argument that a cold war “threatens.” We are ALREADY in a new kind of struggle with President Xi Jinping’s government, one the likes of which the United States has never experienced before. The use of the term “Cold War” obviously harkens back to the confrontation with the Soviet Union. But China is a far more sophisticated and even more ambitious power than the Soviets ever were. Yes, I remember that they possessed a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons and extended their military presence far outside their own borders.
But the Chinese are playing a much more subtle game, which is why I called my book, “The New Art of War,” obviously a reference to Sun Tzu’s Art of War. The Chinese are masters of long-term conflict. At the same moment that we have effectively fused our two economies, Xi’s China is seeking to strip us of our technological lead and leapfrog us into new technologies and therefore new military capabilities. It has raced ahead of us on 5G wireless communications and may be doing the same in some aspects of Artificial Intelligence, particularly regarding its massive facial recognition efforts. The People’s Republic also has spent billions to create new levers of soft power projection and co-opted key American institutions such as Hollywood studios, which won’t make movies that Chinese censors don’t approve. China is also clearly trying to subvert the world order that the U.S. and its allies established after World War II. It’s Belt and Road Initiative extends around the world. It is bending U.N. organizations such as the World Health Organization to its wishes.
So this global confrontation between the United States and China is not “threatened.” It’s here. As a society and as a nation, we just have not recognized it yet. We’re at a terrible intellectual and policy loss at a moment when we are completely distracted by the Covid-19 pandemic and a pending U.S. presidential election. If anything, China appears to be pressing forward on several fronts even more aggressively at the moment. It’s time for us to start creating a coherent response.
