China Doesn’t Want Deals, It Wants Domination…

Originally published by AND Magazine

The winner of next week’s U.S. presidential election will find himself in an epochal fight with the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Epochal?

Akin to the Mongols swarming into Eastern Europe in the 13^th century? Or the Ottomans moving on Vienna three (and four) centuries later?

Maybe so.

This is not skirmishing in the borderlands or proxy wars of the Cold War era.  Nor is it jockeying for cell phone market share.  Instead, it’s an all-out struggle that will have a clear winner and a clear loser.

The PRC seeks domination.  It will be regional at first by pushing the U.S. out of Asia – and then on to global domination. Old-school occupation of territory isn’t usually required.   Instead, technology, economic coercion, a military that operates globally, long-range missiles (and being willing to use those weapons), and controlling the high ground of outer space, is all that’s needed.   Psychological domination will do just fine.

And America could lose.  That’s a concept few Americans alive are familiar with.

If the U.S. loses, every other free nation on earth has bleak prospects.

Let’s take an odds-maker’s view:

PRC’s advantages…

China has “heft.”  It’s a big country with 1.4 billion people.   And that heft manifests itself in economic clout – both outwards and inwards.   Outwards, for example, China can produce all the steel the world needs (if it feels like it) and many other products. And unlike the former Soviet Union, the PRC makes things people want to buy. The Chinese can also innovate – contrary to popular belief.

Inwards, the huge Chinese market seduces foreigners who supply raw materials and commodities – or think they will sell one of something to everyone in China.  This weakens their will to resist and encourages accommodation.

Economic clout is also political and military clout.

The PRC has pulled off the biggest, fastest military expansion since World War Two – if not in history.  The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a match for U.S. forces in certain areas and surpasses in others. One recalls U.S. commanders snickering about the PLA thirty years ago.

The Chinese Communist Party’s ultimate objective is a Chinese version of today’s U.S. military, and operating worldwide.  This is not unthinkable.

Geography is an advantage for the PRC, but not as usually considered. How’s that? The PRC controls the headwaters of the Mekong, Brahmaputra, and other rivers that flow southwards through the Indian sub-continent and Southeast Asia.  The “extortion opportunities” are excellent.   Humans must have water.

But perhaps the PRC’s main strength is the industriousness of the Chinese themselves.  China’s progress over the last 30 years only required the CCP to relax the boot on its citizens’ necks a little.  Not exactly rocket science.

But it’s an industriousness unrestrained by law – and often borders on rapaciousness both domestically and overseas.

Formidable but not omnipotent

China is formidable, but also has serious weaknesses.

First, its currency is not freely convertible.  So if China wants something from overseas it needs to pay in U.S. dollars or another convertible currency. Try funding the Belt and Road with the Chinese Yuan. Choke off the flow of dollars and the PRC has problems.

Next, CCP rule is based on coercion, not consent.  It will not share power.  This seems an advantage to some Westerners who should know better.  But it creates a brittleness in the system.

And don’t forget that China lacks a proper legal system and secure property rights.  This results in a lack of confidence in the “system” – and breeds a sort of tribalism at the family or individual level. 

Exhibit #1 on this score: rampant capital flight and everyone who can – including top CCP leaders – spiriting their money overseas where it’s safe.  Foreign real estate and green cards are time-honored insurance policies for Chinese elites.

One can’t think of a similar case of a powerful, aggressive nation’s most successful people putting their wealth (and relatives) into the countries they consider their main adversaries – and whose governing systems they profess to despise.

As for the People’s Liberation Army, it is powerful and getting stronger.  But for now, it can’t project power far from its borders.  But wait for two or three decades.  Lack of combat experience?  That’s more a soothing excuse for the people who squandered the U.S.’s military advantage.

And finally, the PRC has no real allies or at least ones that it hasn’t paid for.  And it has bad relations with most of its neighbors.  If Beijing gets into trouble, nobody is coming to its aid.

And on the other side 

The United States is resisting Chinese domination – fronting for other “free nations” (and even some less free ones).

America’s biggest advantage is that it seeks to dominate nobody, and is defending an idea – i.e. human freedom.  And it is also defending a global order where countries have equal rights and don’t take territory that belongs to others or to everyone.  However imperfect in practice, that’s an attractive proposition for many countries.

The Americans have partners and allies.   And it is all voluntary.

And for all the foreign elite complaining about the United States, nobody is ending their alliances with the USA or telling the Americans to go home.  If anything the complaints are that Americans aren’t keen enough to die on their behalf.

Defense-wise, for all its problems and two decades of strategic floundering in the Middle East and Afghanistan, the U.S. military is still immensely powerful and is finally focusing on the Chinese threat.

And the U.S. has a geographical advantage. The PLA may have de facto control of the South China Sea, but it still has to break the First Island Chain to access the Pacific.  So-called A2AD applies both ways, and the U.S. and partners operating from the First Island Chain can hem in the PLA.  And there’s a Second Island Chain beyond the first one. _{(Note: A2AD is a reference to China’s anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) technology which is “a series of interrelated missile, sensor, guidance, and other technologies designed to deny freedom of movement to keep any potential adversaries, including the United States, from intervening in a conflict off of China’s coast or from attacking the Chinese mainland.”)}

This is an American advantage for now – if it can keep its allies, especially Taiwan and the Philippines.

The American economy is still the world’s strongest. The result of free markets, a real legal system and enforceable contracts, and a stable enough political system (for now).  As a result, the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency.  That is worth any number of aircraft carriers.

America’s Weaknesses

The big one:  America’s business and financial classes are falling over themselves to get into China – with other peoples’ money.

U.S. financiers and businessmen are funding to the tune of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars annually, the country that seeks to subjugate Americans.  This is insane, if not traitorous.

And when facing an epochal adversary, some national unity is helpful. But these days you’d think half of America wishes the other half would disappear.

One of these halves claims the U.S. was flawed at its founding, is no better than the Chinese communist system, and not worth defending.

Ask somebody in Hong Kong or Xinjiang what the alternative is like.

America’s alliances are also in need of work.  But Mr. Trump was mostly right on this score.  The U.S. can’t handle things by itself.  It needs allies that can fight.  Unfortunately, most of them got accustomed to American backstopping. Asking them to do more creates resentment or even a sense of defeatism.

However, if Washington holds firm, demands capability improvements and not money, and demonstrates its long-term commitment, more countries may be willing to stick their necks out.  The Quad – shows what is achievable. _{(Note: The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD, also known as the Quad) is an informal strategic forum between the United States, Japan, Australia and India.)}

As big a weakness as any, U.S. finances are a mess.  It has too much debt (and is taking on more) and needs to get its economic house in order.  There is nothing guaranteed about the U.S. economy and the U.S. dollar is on top.

Sometimes a country needs to focus on the more serious external threat over domestic social issues.  The U.S. got a taste of this with President Obama.  He was more interested in a national dental plan than defending the United States’ partners in Southeast Asia or China building islands in the South China Sea.  

And the final weakness is the American tendency to think there is a always a deal to be cut, even with the worst people.

The U.S. tried for the last four decades with the PRC.  How did it do? Look at the military balance and listen to PRC officials threatening the United States.  Or even better, spend a couple of nights in Youngstown, Ohio, or Erie, PA.  The U.S. handed over a good chunk of its blue-collar citizens’ livelihoods to “improve Chinese behavior” – leaving their countrymen with the choice of Wal-Mart jobs or opioids.

There is no deal to be cut with the PRC, if there ever was.

Hopefully, our next President understands that what’s going on with the PRC is epochal.

Mr. Trump seems to have figured it out.

Mr. Biden?  One hopes…

However, one imagines there was a fellow in Krakow in 1241 who declared when Subutai’s Mongol cavalry was three days away:  “(The Mongols) are going to eat our lunch? Come on, man”….“I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what? They’re not competition for us.”

If so, that was an epic mistake.