Yes—Jonathan Eyal
The very word “enemy” is now taboo; politicians today overwhelmingly deploy alternatives such as “risk,” “threat” or “competitor.” According to received wisdom, to identify China as an enemy is to reduce complex relations to binary choices and risk creating a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” with relations souring beyond repair.
But refusing to identify a country as an enemy does not mean that we won’t be facing one. In a world marked by the return of predatory powers, China is certain to be the apex predator. And refusing to acknowledge it as such may mean ending up on its menu.
True, China’s ability to transform, adapt and emulate over time has been remarkable. And it is obvious that, unlike the Soviet Union, China does not seek either global domination or the export of its political system. However, China not only sees our political system as fundamentally inimical to the survival of its communist regime, but is determined to make the world safe for autocracy. China is set on undermining the unity of the west—a bloc now palpably weakened by its defeat in Afghanistan—by dividing Europe from the US, and Europeans from each other. Nor is there much doubt that Beijing is aiming at technological domination.
We based our engagement with China on the hope of “change through trade.” That is happening, but in reverse: it is dependence on Chinese trade that is now eroding our political systems.
Chinese troops are not about to invade us. Yet China has embarked on both a conventional and nuclear arms race that will soon render it the most potent military force on the planet. The idea that China won’t transform its economic prowess into military power and won’t seek to widen its sphere of influence is a western myth that needs to be discarded.
Treating China as what it is—the only enemy able to overturn our way of life—does not spell inevitable war. But it may mean living in the “shadow of war,” as philosopher Raymond Aron put it, for decades to come.
“Dependence on Chinese trade is eroding our political systems”
No—Anatol Lieven
You have made a good case for why authoritarian China cannot be a partner of the democratic UK. But that does not make China our enemy.
You speak of China as an “apex predator.” In what sense? China’s illegal territorial ambitions are only in the Spratly Islands. In all the other (limited) disputes, the issue under international law is entirely open. In one of them (the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands), China’s claim was previously endorsed by the US. Elsewhere in the world, China has one small military installation (in Djibouti), while the US has hundreds. China has not demanded or proposed military bases in any other country.
China has certainly sought quite legitimately to extend its economic influence, and in some cases has driven a hard bargain. How precisely does that make them different from us? Are you suggesting western multinationals are charitable institutions whose sole agenda is democratic state-building in Africa and elsewhere?
The rest of your remarks are based on an open contradiction. You say rightly that “it is obvious that, unlike the Soviet Union, China does not seek either global domination or the export of its political system.” You then go on to argue the opposite, without producing any evidence for your accusations. In fact, it is just as you originally say. China has not sought to impose its own system by force or subversion anywhere in the world. It is the US that has done that, sometimes with British help.
China has created a model of authoritarian, state-led capitalism that has achieved great success and gained considerable international prestige. It is for us to show that western democratic systems can do better. That, however, is to be achieved with sober domestic reform, not hysterical Cold War paranoia.
Yes—We agree that China has never confronted the west with the multitude of threats the Soviet Union presented during the Cold War; we disagree on whether this observation is sufficient to rule out branding China an enemy. We don’t need to find perfect matches for old tropes. Nor do today’s enemies need to be threatening our very existence before they are classified as such.
You believe that China is not doing anything we didn’t do when we were in the ascendancy, and that it has a limited global military footprint. If only this were true. In fact, Beijing is touting the development of its military alliance with Russia as an explicit counterweight to US power, a move that—if successful—will profoundly impair the security of western nations. It is also planning to establish a network of bases around the world.
China has torn up—without even attempting to cloak its actions in any legal justification—an international treaty with the UK over the status of Hong Kong. It is behind a vast and global computer hacking effort designed not only for “traditional” spying purposes, but also for stealing western know-how, with a view to eroding our technological edge. And it is currently engaged in the most significant expansion of a nuclear arsenal since the US-Soviet arms race of the 1960s, not to mention the development of generations of other sophisticated weapons.
Identifying China as an enemy does not make war inevitable, nor is it an irreversible step. But it’s not semantics either, for it will allow us to be more precise in formulating our aims. Both individually and as part of alliances, we must work out how to contain the challenge China represents.
No—You have not replied to any of the specific facts that I presented on the limits of Chinese military, territorial and economic expansionism—evidently because you cannot.
To take your points in order: the careless use of the word “alliance” is common—and dangerous. There is no more an “alliance” between China and Russia than there is between the US and India. “Alliance” means that each country is bound to go to war for the other. China has not even recognised Russia’s annexation of Crimea. It certainly has no intention of fighting for Russia in Ukraine, any more than Russia will fight for China in the far east. You talk of Britain’s “alliances.” The only military alliance of which Britain is a member is Nato, which is legally committed to the defence of western and central Europe—not of US hegemony in the far east.
China has indeed torn up the Hong Kong treaty, and its behaviour there is illegitimate and wrong. It is, however, behaviour intended to shore up the Communist Party dictatorship within China—not to threaten the west.
Stealing know-how is traditional spying. And if Britain’s intelligence services are not trying to steal Chinese technology, then they damned well should be. As to your words about China’s nuclear build-up, this is grotesque hypocrisy. China has 350 nuclear warheads. The US has 3,800.
Your views reflect that of the US and UK establishment: that all countries should accept a global “rules-based order” in which America makes the rules and breaks them when it wishes. This in turn is based on the “unipolar moment” of the 1990s, when the US believed that it could dominate the world forever. But that was indeed only a moment, and it is now definitively over.
“China has 350 nuclear warheads. America has 3,800”
Yes—As I have argued throughout our exchange, a rival country can be regarded as an enemy even if its hostile ambitions are not universal, even if the threat it poses is not existential. The argument that China’s expansionist intentions are currently more limited than the Soviet Union’s is not decisive. The fact that the Chinese may merely be doing what western powers were previously guilty of is largely immaterial. And the question of parity between military arsenals is not that relevant either. China may have less than a tenth of the nuclear warheads the US possesses, but if these are aimed at the US and its European allies—as they are—that makes China an enemy. It would be a curious argument that only countries that reach parity in certain weapon systems can be treated as such.
I understand China’s quest for superpower status. I can also comprehend why the country’s dictators feel threatened by the western-led “rules-based order” of which you are so dismissive. But none of this gets around the basic reality that China is a threat.
The facts speak for themselves. China has already engaged in a naked land grab in the South China Sea. It is rapidly building up a whole array of weapons systems intended to deprive the US of its military superiority, including a new generation of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. It touts its political model as a valid alternative to that of the west.
And it is encouraging and sustaining Russia in doing the same. China’s strategic footprint is global, and unremittingly hostile not only to our aspirations, but to our very existence as democratic societies.
It is of course possible to argue that, at least for the moment, China’s behaviour largely affects faraway countries of which we know little. But we have made that mistake before.
No—You have not argued this “throughout our exchange.” You began with a colossally inflated picture of a universal Chinese threat, from which you have had to retreat in the face of the facts. You then try to sneak this apocalyptic menace back in at the very end with an obligatory hint at Nazi Germany—a propaganda cliché so exhaustively mined that it could have come from the pages of Pravda in the old days.
As to your new reference to nuclear weapons, the only conclusion to be drawn from it is that the US can have as many missiles as it likes and point them at China, and China should have no missiles at all. Is this a serious approach to the analysis of international affairs?
I do not deny that the return of China as a superpower is helping to end the brief era of unilateral American hegemony. But this ahistorical and megalomaniac project was bound to end sooner or later; and if it is sooner, this is as much because of America’s own failures (aided by Britain) in Iraq, Libya and, most obviously at present, Afghanistan.
While I have acknowledged that China does pose certain limited threats, all dangers are comparative, and must be met accordingly. Does China pose dangers remotely comparable to those of climate change? It is not China that is causing the heatwaves, fires and floods ravaging parts of Europe and North America; or that threatens to cause famines and state failures that would send hundreds of millions of migrants north, destabilising western liberal democracy. Every pound and dollar that you would spend on confronting China weakens the fight against this true enemy, which threatens to destroy us all.
