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| Chinese President Xi Jinping (Ju Peng/Associated Press via the Wall Street Journal) |
Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Analogies like this are trite, of course, but sometimes they're impossible to resist. While, on the whole, the world could certainly do with fewer Nineteen Eighty-Four comparisons, the United States' complicated and shifting relationship with China is a particularly striking example of life imitating art. It truly does look like we may be entering into some era of neo-Cold War with the People's Republic, potentially one with all the same subterfuge, sabotage and espionage we remember from our last one with the USSR—updated with all the latest technological innovations, of course. But where things get really interesting is when you look at the people leading us into this new morass.
Case in point: President Joe Biden. In his recent address before a joint session of Congress, he proclaimed that "[w]e’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st Century," and detailed how he had told Chinese president Xi Jinping that "we’ll maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific, just as we do with NATO in Europe" and "America will not back away from our commitments—our commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms and to our alliances." This strong stance was nothing new: in the final Democratic primary debate last year, Biden had compared China to Jack the Ripper, and his campaign released an ad accusing then-president Trump of "roll[ing] over for the Chinese" in its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But if China is some kind of global Jack the Ripper that must be opposed at every turn, Joe Biden has a great deal to answer for. At the turn of the century, as Senator from Delaware, he voted—along with a majority of Senators from both parties—to extend Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR, formerly known as Most Favored Nation status) to the People's Republic of China. Speaking before the Committee on Foreign Relations, Biden promised that "granting China permanent normal trade status would put our relationship on a more firm foundation and begin to build trust," and that "getting China into the World Trade Organization, a rules-based organization, will subject China to multilateral pressures on trade and, over time, enhance their respect for the rule of law[.]"
Nor was this an uncontroversial stance, even at the time. In the House of Representatives, PNTR with China was opposed by a majority of Democrats (and Vermont's independent Congressman, one Bernard Sanders—whom Biden's China-as-Jack-the-Ripper analogy would, ironically, be directed at some 20 years later). A report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute argued that
The potential benefits to the trade agreement are small—even by the supporters’ calculations—and largely benefit investors by providing them with wider choices of foreign investment opportunities. A more realistic analysis indicates that the net impact on U.S. employment and domestic business is likely to be negative rather than positive. Furthermore, the claimed geopolitical benefits of this trade agreement are less than credible. Given the United States’ recent experiences in Russia and Mexico, the assumption that the United States can identify the true Chinese “reformers,” that these leaders will ultimately prevail in the political arena, and that the acceptance of an ever-widening trade imbalance will turn China into a democratic, free-market economy cannot be taken seriously.
It concluded by noting the "costs and dangers of this proposal substantially outweigh any potential gains for the United States."
It is not hard to see who was vindicated by the course of events since China was granted PNTR in 2000. Matt Yglesias, formerly a defender of the notion that PNTR had relatively little impact on the American economy, wrote in 2016 that "making NTR status permanent led to a very rapidly [sic] displacement of American manufacturing work by Chinese imports in a way few PNTR proponents anticipated or have even acknowledged." When Biden, in his address before Congress last month, claimed that "[t]here is simply no reason why the blades for wind turbines can’t be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing," he overlooked (and perhaps intentionally obscured) the way in which the policy he supported led to exactly this sort of result.
On the "other side" of the aisle, of course, the situation is no less farcical. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wasted no time in urging the Biden administration to continue Trump's "tough approach" toward China, he too voted for PNTR back in 2000. Indeed, while the line that Biden is soft on—or even in league with—China is popular on the Right, Republicans in both houses of Congress overwhelmingly voted to give the PRC largely unfettered access to American markets.
So what explains this rather significant shift in politicians' attitudes toward the world's most populous country? This is, of course, a multifaceted question with no quick or easy answer. However, one common thread unites all the major possible factors: the interests of the American ruling class.
One piece of the puzzle may be President Xi Jinping's differences from his immediate predecessors. An article for the New Yorker notes that "[u]nder Xi, market reforms have stalled, and schools have replaced books by Western economists with tracts published by the Marxist Theory Research and Building Project." Furthermore,
Beijing has directed billions in subsidies and research funds to help Chinese companies surpass foreign competitors on such frontiers as electric vehicles and robotics. A Pentagon report commissioned under Obama warned that the U.S. was losing cutting-edge technology to China, not only through theft but also through Chinese involvement in joint ventures and tech startups.
Another major issue is intellectual property. In his argument for PNTR back in 2000, Biden claimed China would "agree to increased protection of our intellectual property laws," but the Biden administration's trade office now says China is still "fall[ing] short of the full range of fundamental changes needed to improve the IP landscape[.]" China's so-called "intellectual property theft" has reportedly cost American companies hundreds of billions of dollars per year—no doubt a source of some irritation. If PNTR failed to solve this "problem," it is no surprise that a new (and less friendly) approach is now desired.
There are other factors as well. For instance, China's loans to developing countries and international Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure project also threaten to pull other countries into its orbit in ways that challenge US hegemony. But more important, perhaps, than any transgression on China's part is the role that it can play as our nemesis. A second Cold War would, of course, be a boon for the much-discussed military-industrial complex, but that is far from the only purpose it would serve. At a time when economic and social inequality runs rampant in the United States and the cracks in the American body politic have grown more visible, a rivalry with another Great Power offers a welcome distraction. If anything can unite the American people once more, it is a new common enemy. China makes an especially convenient scapegoat given its above-discussed significance in the de-industrialization of the US. Why acknowledge the role American politicians played in letting jobs get shipped overseas when they can simply blame the country where the jobs have been moved to?
Senator Chris Coons came close to admitting this calculus when he spoke at an April 22 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies:
Let me close by being optimistic about our ability to invest in innovation, science, and competitiveness here in the United States. If we look back at what happened when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, it was a moment that was a genuine wake-up call for the American people. And as a result, Congress and the administration invested in STEM education, invested in research, and in fundamental and applied science, and the benefits of that lasted for two generations.
January 6 was a moment that was challenging, divisive, difficult for all of us here in Congress, and it was a wake-up call that our country is badly divided. And the ways in which China has become a peer competitor in investing in R&D, in the number of patents issued, the number of research papers published, and the ways in which they are now trying to take the lead in standard essential—standard-setting bodies—that recent campaign to put a Chinese national at the head of the WIPO, where the PTO director, Andrei Iancu, was—did yeoman’s work to make sure that someone committed to a strong intellectual property system globally instead became the head of the WIPO—all of this is a wake-up call for us that we need to have another Sputnik-like moment of reinvestment in American innovation and competitiveness.
"[T]he implication[,]" Luke Savage correctly notes in an article for Jacobin, is "that America can and should try to rectify its internal cultural divisions by rallying the nation against global competitors[.]"
Acknowledging the cynical motivations behind the push for a new Cold War does not, of course, require that one pretend China’s government has done nothing wrong. From its treatment of the country’s Uighur minority to its clampdown on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, there is a great deal that merits (and has received) strong criticism. But, while these serious offenses may be invoked as justification for a new Cold War, it’s difficult to take this pretext very seriously when the US continues to ally with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and numerous other countries whose governments are also guilty of major crimes.
The proper stance on the new China-US conflict, in my view, is not support for either side, nor even simple neutrality. Rather, we should recognize the ways in which the governments of both countries betray the citizens they are supposed to be serving, and that it is in the interest of the Chinese and American people to live peacefully and to cooperate—not to compete. As we face global crises like climate change and growing inequality, the last thing we need is another interstate contest.
