The new Cold War?

The new cold war? (This is China series, Episode 74)

张维为《这就是中国》第74期：中美新冷战？

On September 20^th 2020, in the 74th episode of Dragon TV’s “This Is China”, Professor Zhang Weiwei, Dean of China Research Institute of Fudan University, and Professor Yongpeng Fan, Vice Dean of China Research Institute of Fudan University, analyzed the US extreme right advocating the new Cold War. 

Zhang Weiwei:

I remember that we made a special program “China winning the heart ” here. Through the international comparison of this war epidemic, the Chinese people greatly enhanced their self-confidence and enhanced the socialist system’s “winning the heart” over the capitalist system. If we are “heart-winning” in China, then the United States is now “heart-breaking”. The collapse of the American war against the epidemic, the outbreak of ethnic conflicts and the severe economic recession have caused a kind of anxiety. The far-right forces in the United States have been blowing a new cold war recently. I think such anxiety manifestation, which is very similar to going to the clinic when being overwhelmed by the rapid rise of China. However, they must have prescribed the wrong prescription and will surely end in failure.

American anxiety is reflected in a series of recent somewhat irrational speeches by American politicians. Since June, senior Trump administration officials  such as national security adviser Robert O ‘Brien, FBI Director Christopher Babers and Secretary of State Pompeo, have delivered anti-China and anti-communist speeches one after another. On June 24th, O ‘Brien said in his speech: One of the fundamental mistakes that the United States misjudged China is that it failed to pay attention to the ideology of the Communist Party of China, ignoring that the Communist Party of China has always been a Marxist and Leninist in nature.

Frankly speaking, senior officials at this level in the United States only recently learned that the Communist Party of China is a Marxist-Leninist party, which is really ironic. It seems that this lawyer-born official is a bit ignorant. Of course, he should not only understand that the Communist Party of China is a Marxist-Leninist political party, but also understand that the Communist Party of China is a political party that has sinicized Marxism, which is the essence of China’s successful experience.

On July 7th, Christopher Babers said that China’s goal is to replace the United States as the world hegemon, and no country has ever posed such a wide and comprehensive threat to American innovation, economic security and democratic thought. He even said: every 10 hours, the FBI will start investigating a case related to China’s infiltration that threatens the national security of the United States.

On July 23rd, Secretary of State Pompeo made an anti-China and anti-communist speech at Nixon Library. He believes that the US policy of engagement with China since President Nixon has been aimed at changing China, but as a result, China has not been changed, but China began to infiltrate the United States on a large scale. This can also be understood as: the attempt of the United States to peacefully change China has failed in his view, so the United States can no longer continue the old mode of blind interaction with China. Then he began to abuse the Chinese Communist Party for interfering in the internal affairs of the United States and attempting to change the United States. The absurdity of logic and the exaggeration of language is just incredible.

Ideological paranoia

These ideological paranoia in the United States are very similar to McCarthyists in the 1950s, but the United States will eventually pay a heavy price for this new McCarthyist movement. As we all know, McCarthyism in the 1950s not only caused thousands of American citizens to be persecuted, but also plunged the United States into an extremist way of thinking, which led to the stupid Vietnam War.

What is surprising this time is that a group of western mainstream scholars who often criticize Trump also began to clamor for the “new cold war”, which is the sorrow of western academic circles. Of course, these scholars have always been quite ideological, but now they are more extreme.

I want to mention two people here. One is Niall Ferguson, a senior researcher at Hoover Institution. In 2007, he put forward a new concept of Sino-US economic symbiotic relationship, called Chimerica, but now he thinks that the New Cold War has begun, and China is a greater challenge to the United States than the Soviet Union. He said that this new cold war with China may be colder and last longer.

The other is Fukuyama, the initiator of the “The end of history”, who recently published a long article in American Interests, entitled “China Challenge: What kind of regime is China?。 Different from his past articles, this article is full of cold war language. He said that the western democratic countries should first realize that China is very similar to the Soviet Union in the mid-20th century. He believes that China is no longer a country similar to the “authoritarian capitalism” regime in East Asia, but a country aiming at establishing a “totalitarian system”. He agrees with President Trump’s sanctions against Huawei. Although it was a rather clumsy attempt, the intention was “basically correct” as any free and democratic country that allows Huawei to build its own information infrastructure must be crazy because it may be controlled by the Chinese government.

Fukuyama accused China of expanding its military power to break through the first island chain, and criticized “the belt and road initiative” as China’s attempt to shift the world economic center from the US-led trans-Pacific system to the China-led Eurasian system. He suggested that western countries should gradually decouple from China economically. This epidemic has shown that western countries have become over-reliant on a manufacturing industry that is hostile to western countries. China’s attempt to control society in an all-round way has transcended China’s national boundaries and is affecting the academic freedom of western countries. He hoped that China would eventually undergo a democratic transformation like the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and abolish the “Four Basic Principles” in the Chinese Constitution.

Obviously, he continued to criticize Trump severely for the poor performance in his opinion. Of course, I think Fukuyama will continue to be disappointed, because the end of the final conclusion of history is an irresistible historical tide.

At the same time, many experts and scholars in the United States believe that it is unwise to use the new cold war to deal with China. For example, Richard Haas, chairman of the American Foreign Relations Committee, recently published a document in the Washington Post, criticizing Pompeo’s speech strongly. He believed that Pompeo knew nothing about China, Nixon and American foreign policy. He said that the problem is not only that the country’s chief diplomat has no diplomatic skills, but even worse, he has distorted history, and at the same time, he has no ability to propose a practical road for future Sino-US relations.

According to Pompeo, Nixon’s interaction with China is to change China. Haas wrote: In fact, the policy formulated by Nixon and Kissinger aims to use China to balance the Soviet Union and influence China’s foreign policy, not its internal nature. In response to Pompeo’s portrayal of China as militarily aggressive, he said, “It is true that China has shown its muscles in the South China Sea, but Pompeo did not mention the fact in his speech that China has not waged any war since its counterattack against Vietnam in 1979.”. Haas believes that Pompeo is trying to put the United States on a doomed road. “We have no ability to decide China’s future, let alone change it.”

On July 29th, Dan Coates, former US National Intelligence Director, also wrote in the Washington Post that “there is no Cold War between China and the United States, and even if there is, we will not win”. He bluntly said that if the United States now uses the same method as the Soviet Union to deal with China, it has been very difficult to work, let alone succeed. He put forward his own set of so-called methods to contain China, which should be “ganged up” internationally and fight against China together with American allies.

In fact, Coates’ view is also the view of many senior Democrats, who also want to contain China, but think that they should not offend their allies at the same time as Trump, but unite their allies, especially those in Europe. No matter whether it is the New Cold War or attempt to contain China, it is an unjust cause that have few supports.

With the rise of China, the world pattern has changed. Let’s take Europe as an example. Europe publicly criticized the United States for engaging in the Cold War. On June 12th, the German newspaper published an article entitled “Break with China? Our real dependence on China is so great, how can we do this? “. The article quoted the president of the Federation of German Industries as saying, “China may be a competitor and an institutional rival, but it is always an important partner for Europe and Germany. It is unthinkable to be forced to completely decouple from China. This will definitely bring huge losses to the national economy. “

Borrell, a senior diplomat of the European Union, also wrote that “the world order led by the United States has ended and the Asian century has arrived ahead of schedule. Europe is facing increasing pressure to choose between China and the United States. The EU should avoid falling into Trump’s  New cold war.

From the perspective of the Chinese people, no matter how much energy the people who advocate this New Cold War in the United States have, no matter who comes to power after the US election,  it is doomed to fail.

There are three main reasons why it is doomed to fail

The first is to “move against the historical trend”. An important experience of China’s successful development is that it must accurately grasp the tide of the times and take advantage of the trend. When doing things, Chinese people pay attention to the relationship between “Dao” (the way) and “Shu” (method, skill), and pay attention to “it is not enough to seek a domain without seeking the overall situation”. We always make clear the tide of the times first, and promote “Shu” on the basis of grasping this “Dao”.

Today’s tide of the times is that the people want peace, development, unity and anti-epidemic measures, leading to the community of shared human destiny, but the United States believes in Cold War, being conceited, and adopting win-lose mentality. Taking the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 as an example, it is actually a common disaster faced by humankind, which require the international community to unite. The United States refused international cooperation, and as a result turned itself into the epicenter of the world epidemic. Many Americans lamented that the United States had become an outcast of the international community in the fight against the epidemic.

Looking back, even if the United States can partially accept the concept of “community of shared human destiny”, its epidemic prevention and control situation should be much better than it is now. If it chooses not to blame China, but to seek China’s help, not to quit the World Health Organization (WHO), but to follow the WHO’s prevention and control recommendations, then the epidemic prevention and control in the United States will be much better.

Pompeo himself admitted that the United States faced many difficulties against China’s “new cold war”. He called for a “democratic alliance” with “like-minded” countries in the United States against China. But not long ago, when attending the hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Senate, he was asked: The United States has joined forces with more than 20 western countries to raise the issue of Hong Kong’s national security legislation at the UN Human Rights Council, but 53 countries have also made joint speeches at the Human Rights Council, welcoming China’s adoption of Hong Kong’s national security law, and they reiterated that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is an inalienable part of China. What do you think of 53 countries supporting Hong Kong’s national security law? Pompeo admitted that he was “surprised and disappointed”. Undoubtedly, this kind of surprise and disappointment reflects the above-mentioned “unjust and helpless”, and this situation will only increase with the foolishness and hegemony of American right-wing forces.

The second reason is that they mistakenly regarded China as another Soviet Union. The Soviet Union exported ideology and Soviet model to the outside world, and China advocated a community of shared human destiny, neither importing foreign models nor exporting Chinese models; The Soviet Union engaged in military alliance system and expansionism, while China advocated non-alignment, built equal and mutually beneficial partnerships and opposed expansionism. The Soviet Union established its own economic mutual aid system and did not participate in economic globalization. China was integrated into the world economic system, and implemented the “embedded cooperation and win-win” model, which formed a big pattern of mutual benefit integration with major economies in the world, which made it difficult for the “new cold war” to succeed in the economic field. The speed of foreign investors entering China is still accelerating, and the New Cold War policy of the United States, which is disordered in time and space, is bound to pay an increasingly heavy price.

On July 31st, when the BBC interviewed me, and was asked what I thought of Secretary of State Pompeo’s speech on China. I said that Pompeo’s is very ideological  and he is a cold war warrior. His concept is outdated, arrogant and ignorant, and we don’t care much about this person. China is not the Soviet Union as China is the world’s largest trading country and the largest trading partner of 130 countries. In terms of purchasing power parity, China is the largest economy in the world with the largest population of middle class in the world. How can you contain such a country? If the United States wants to do this, you will find that China is not isolated, but the United States itself becomes isolated instead.

The third reason is that today it is just not strong enough. At the time, George Kennan, the Cold War designer desired to contain the Soviet Union, and repeatedly stressed that whether the long-term competition between the United States and the Soviet Union could be won depended on “whether the United States can give the people of the world such an impression”, where the United States “has the ability to handle its own internal problems” and “has great spiritual power”.

Today, the COVID-19 epidemic brought the United States back to its original form. China now has the most developed information means in the world, where with a mobile phone in hand, one can get all kinds of information at any time. Ordinary people, overseas students, overseas Chinese, and even foreigners all compare the anti-epidemic handling between China and the United States in the form of video and WeChat. People were shocked and this greatly enhances the institutional confidence of Chinese people. It can be said that in the hearts of most Chinese people, especially the vast majority of Chinese young people, the illusion of the United States has ended, and the internal governance and institutional arrangements in the United States are more the subjects for analyses rather than model to learn from. Frankly speaking, this is China “winning the heart” where an advanced political system wins over a backward political system.

Kishore Mahbubani, a senior Singaporean scholar and my good friend, also said that in the face of the COVID-19 epidemic crisis and the tragic deaths, the poor performance of the Trump administration shows that China has become the most capable country in the world today.

On August 20th, Trump’s rival Biden gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention, saying that the United States is facing “four historic crises”: virus crisis, economic crisis, ethnic conflict crisis and climate change crisis. By far, the United States is the country with the worst anti-epidemic performance in the world, with the highest number of infections and deaths in the world. This year, more than 50 million people applied for unemployment, and nearly one sixth of small businesses closed down. Biden said that the United States under Trump was shrouded in darkness for too long, and Trump failed to protect the United States, which is unforgivable.

But Trump is not idle either. He said at the campaign rally on August 18 that if the sleepy Biden was elected, “China will own everyone here, will own this building, and will own the United States.” He also said that Biden would give everything to China. For Chinese people, Trump’s remarks are simply outrageous. China doesn’t want to own any country, but the United States wants to own China, but it just can’t do it.

However, the four crises Biden saw, namely, virus crisis, economic crisis, ethnic conflict crisis and climate change crisis, should be true, but he could not come up with any solutions, but only called for “American unity”. To deal with these crises, it is not enough to rely solely on “American unity”, but also needs “international unity”, especially China’s help. I think this is where China’s confidence and determination in handling Sino-US relations arise today. However, for various reasons, the United States may not realize this for a while, but as it keeps hitting the wall, I think the United States will realize this eventually, and then the opportunity to substantially improve Sino-US relations will really come, so we can continue to maintain strategic patience and strategic determination. In a word, a “heart-winning” China can calmly deal with a “heart-breaking” America. Let’s talk about this today, thank you!

Fan Yongpeng:

After World War II, in 1946, the United States and its leading NATO group fought with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact for half a century in military, economic and cultural struggle. But because there is no direct war between the two nuclear powers, it is called the Cold War. The concept of the Cold War has been unfamiliar to Chinese people for a long time. In fact, this half-century competition is, to a great extent, a struggle between two systems, two ideologies and two development paths.

Moderator: The keywords you just mentioned can make everyone quickly grasp the Cold War. Back to today’s “new cold war” topic, the United States wants to launch a “new cold war”, but China has made it clear that it will not accept the move, so I would also like to listen to the analysis of the two people. What is the thinking logic behind this insistence of the United States? Will launching the “New Cold War” definitely benefit it?

Zhang Weiwei: The United States is “confused” and seems disorganized. If you really want to fight the “New Cold War”, how do you play it? Moreover, the Cold War has several conditions, one is a strong alliance system, the other is a high degree of ideological confrontation, and every aspect must contain each other. The United States itself does not have the ability to organize alliances now. Ideologically, we don’t export the Chinese model and we advocate a community of shared human destiny. China doesn’t want to engage in ideological confrontation. In the past, in the Soviet Union, you fought the Cold War and I fought with you, but in China, we don’t. We continue to follow our own path, while you pursue close-door policy, and we continued to open up. Therefore, this style of play has never been seen by the United States.

Fan Yongpeng: Speaking of thinking logic, I have a perspective, that is, why the United States has such a “new cold war” thinking, which has a very deep historical root from the perspective of civilization evolution. To put it simply, such a way of thinking will come into being only when the national construction or national construction of the United States has not been completed. Any civilization needs a shell, people have skin, and the earth has an atmosphere. Why? Only when we can control the exchange of material, energy and energy can we produce life.

Then the United States is too special. First, it occupies huge land and resources, so he has no competition for such resources; Second, the unique security environment of the United States is also very rare in human history, which leads to the fact that the United States does not have a particularly strong impulse or need to build such a shell. Therefore, when the United States was on the rise, we saw that this open-minded attitude of Americans was determined by his various conditions.

Today, we talk about the great influence of the Cold War on American nation-building, but it has a negative impact. Why? China has a long history and is a natural fusion of national cultures. The formation of national culture in European history depends on two points: first, forced assimilation and violence, and second, expulsion, which excludes various heterogeneous factors such as Jews and Gypsies.

The United States is an immigrant society, so it will not reject it. The United States adopts naturalization and forced assimilation. For example, forced language assimilation, until the 1970s, the United States still adopted forced sterilization for some ethnic minorities and forced assimilation education for children, which was a means for the United States to build a nation. The Cold War led to the transformation of the United States in the direction of “progress”. Before the national construction was completed, it suddenly turned into a period of “progressivism”, which followed the Soviet Union to engage in universal suffrage, ethnic equality and gender equality, resulting in cultural pluralism. This cultural pluralism has formed a vicious circle with the electoral system and representative system that I just mentioned. As a result, the United States has a mentality of taking differences as beauty and taking pride in a few.

The rise of the United States as a world power also blocked the process of national construction. For example, just like a country boy, when he reigns over the world overnight, he will encounter a problem. Your personal basic personality has not yet been formed, and you will have to build an imperial personality. Once the throne is crumbling, your mentality will collapse to the unfinished basic personality, which is the giant baby mentality we are talking about today.

Today’s America is a typical state of empire when the national construction is not completed, and then once the empire is crumbling, the United States feels cold without skin, so it is especially necessary to control the exchange of energy, material and resources inside and outside the body, and it wants to find enemies. The so-called “new cold war” it engages in is the response of this mentality.

Zhang Weiwei: I quite agree with Teacher Fan. Generally speaking, when you deal with the United States, you will feel that this country is immature. The United States needs China’s help most now, and its infrastructure construction is too backward. Our sanctioned enterprises are all first-class infrastructure enterprises, and so is Huawei. From the Chinese perspective, you have made a mistake of time and space disorder, so you must keep in touch with the most advanced productive forces and learn to master the most advanced productive forces. Therefore, I often say that the United States has no strategic mind in doing so.

Fan Yongpeng: Indeed, the first problem facing the United States to launch the “New Cold War” is that it is not monolithic internally.

We should make a distinction from two angles. First, we should distinguish the capitalist ruling group in the United States as a whole, and at the same time, we should distinguish this relationship between it and specific industries and enterprises. Today’s civil strife, political conflicts and polarization of political parties in the United States are behind many differences among different capital groups. Second, we have to distinguish between a country, a civilization and its specific groups and specific people’s interests.

During the Anglo-American War in 1812, on the one hand, the United States fought against Britain, on the other hand, local businessmen in New York and Massachusetts also cooperated with Britain, and finally in order to do business, they even declared independent. For capitalists, their mouths are full of doctrine, their stomachs are full of business, as their businesses are the most important things. Therefore, if you look at the latest data, under the current New Cold War atmosphere, US trade and investment in China are still growing.

Moderator: We have noticed that in recent years, the United States has been withdrawing from WHO in various international organizations. At the height of the COVID-19 epidemic, it has recently withdrawn from WADA, the World Anti-Doping Organization. WADA’s response this time is that it is ok to quit, but next time I ask to come in, I disagree. This is also a very interesting reaction.

Zhang Weiwei: Now it seems that people’s IQ and knowledge are better than those of American leaders, whether it is a developing country in the third world or other western countries. It seems that no adult is making political decisions there, which is an important stage in the decline of American soft power.

Fan Yongpeng: Today, the United States began to retreat from the group and began to decouple, which shows that his self-confidence is gone. Thinking that freedom is a threat, it wanted to give up freedom. Therefore, it is actually a cycle from earlier closing, then opening, and then closing today. From this point of view, it is not surprising that there are all kinds of chaos in the United States, including the future development prospects. We often talk about the post-World War II international order. This international order may really be short-lived, because its builder, the United States, no longer wants it.

Moderator: Chinese people have always said that they should learn from history, and they also want to hear what we can learn from the history of the Cold War when we discuss the concept that the United States insists on launching the “new cold war”.

Zhang Weiwei: It’s an interesting phenomenon. When I met Russians in the Cold War, I always asked, Why did you fall into an arms race with the United States? The United States said that I could produce atomic bombs that destroyed the world 100 times, while the Soviet Union said that I would also produce atomic bombs that destroyed the world 101 times. Why bother? I think this was a serious mistake of the Soviet Union at that time. After all, China is a great civilization. It has continuity. When its strength is strong, it knows how to exercise restraint when its strength is weak. Therefore, it is more methodical and holistic in dealing with problems.

Fan Yongpeng: Why did the Soviet Union fall into the Cold War? There are many opinions that the Soviet Union lacks security, but it is actually a state of distrust. In addition to the mentality, I think the Soviet Union has many lessons worth summarizing. The first one is the bureaucratization and privilege of the Soviet Union’s political class. In the end, the common people have no sense of identity with you. This is a great lesson.

The second is the abnormal development of technology and industry. The Soviet Union’s high-end science and technology, military science and technology are very powerful, but civilian science and technology are not. To what extent? When the United States imposed an embargo on the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the Soviet Union could not even manufacture its own industrial equipment, and even the oil drilling platform would stop production. One source of great confidence in China today is that our technology and industry have formed the most complete industrial chain, which is a great source of confidence.

Third, after the 1980s, a large number of intellectuals and politicians in the Soviet Union gave up their positions and struggles ideologically, which ended up being fooled and lame. Let the Soviet people accumulate wealth for decades and lose all their power, which is a more vigilant lesson for China.

Fourth, the Soviet Union engaged in world expansion, hegemonism and arms race. However, we must absorb the lessons of the Soviet Union and not dance in the footsteps of the United States. We must make up for our shortcomings and build our own military so that our national defense forces can fight, dare to fight and win.

Zhang Weiwei: In fact, the United States and the Soviet Union fought for hegemony. From the mid-1980s, the Soviet economy had a big problem, which led to more and more troubles. Therefore, our proposition is economic globalization, and we should take part in it. Of course, in opening up, we emphasize choice, seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages.

Source: https://www.guancha.cn/ZhangWeiWei/2020_10_11_567704_1.shtml