A DEADLY CONTRADICTION: THE ROOT OF THE US- CHINA CONFLICT
By John V. Walsh, Popular Resistance.
June 28, 2021 | EDUCATE!
Above photo: Middle class family in China. China Briefing.
The Chinese Dreamers Vs. The U.S. Hegemon.
Do China and the US have fundamental goals that constitute a contradiction,
that is, goals so profoundly at odds with one another that the goals cannot
coexist? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.
Such a contradiction means that one side must abandon its aims if a
disastrous conflict is not to ensue. Which country should step back? Is
there a moral, ethical or common-sense basis for making that call, a basis
on which humankind can readily agree?
What Are These Contradictory Goals?
China' overwhelming objective is clearly economic development, a policy to
which it has hewed closely and which it declares for its future. That is no
surprise; it is the dream of every developing nation. It is "The Chinese
Dream."
If such goals were no more than words on paper, there would be no problem.
But China is succeeding as is widely acknowledged now. Its economy
surpassed the U.S. in terms of GDP (PPP) in November of 2014 according to
the IMF and is growing faster. Over 700 million have been brought out of
poverty, with extreme poverty eliminated in 2020. The middle class now
comprises over 400 million people. The retail market is enormous and the
ecommerce market by far the world's largest. China is the world's largest
manufacturer and trader.
According to the World Bank, China is 7th from the top of the
Upper-middle-income group as of 2020 and poised to enter the ranks of the 59
countries in the High-income group. China has a set a new goal, a standard
of living enjoyed by the most prosperous countries in the West, to be
achieved by 2049 the centennial of the birth of the Peoples Republic of
China.
With this in mind let's turn to the American side of the equation. The
U.S. has a long history of expansion and imperialism with the inevitable
appeals to Exceptionalism and racism. However, the ambition of world
dominance, global hegemony, emerged consciously among the US foreign policy
elite in 1941 before entry into WWII as Stephen Wertheim documents in
Tomorrow the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy. Henry Luce
expressed the idea in his 1941 essay, "The American Century" in which he
enjoined the U.S. "to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as
the most powerful nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the
world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and
by such means as we see fit."
After World War II when the U.S. colossus looked down at the rest the world
prostate after the war, we heard a similar sentiment from George Kennan
considered as perhaps the principal architect of postwar U.S. foreign
policy:
"Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its
population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and
the peoples of Asia. . Our real task in the coming period is to . maintain
this position of disparity .. To do so, we will have to dispense with all
sentimentality. .. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today
the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction."
George F. Kennan
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Volume I, pp. 509-529
(This statement of Kennan's is discussed in detail here.)
More recently and equally starkly at the end of the Cold War, the Wolfowitz
Doctrine was enunciated by Paul Wolfowitz Under Secretary of Defense for
Public Policy.
It can be summed up in a single sentence:
"We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from
even aspiring to a larger regional or global role."
Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-1999 fiscal years, dated February 18,
1992, from the office of Paul Wolfowitz.
China fits the definition of a "potential competitor"; it not only "aspires"
to a larger regional role and global role but has already attained it! By
the Wolfowitz principle, China must not only be "contained" but returned to
a non-competitor status by whatever "mechanism" that the US can devise.
And so we come to the basic contradiction. The U.S. insists that it be the
world's greatest power, an unassailable hegemon. This means that it must be
the number one economic power since all power ultimately derives from
economic power.
Now assume that China's per capita GDP is equal to that of an advanced
Western country, the goal of China by 1949. Take the US as an example.
Since China's population is about four times that of the US, then it will
have a total national GDP four times that of the US! The US will then be
far from the dominant power; the Wolfowitz Doctrine will go up in smoke.
This does not mean that the U.S. will lapse into penury or even that its
living standard will be compromised. Indeed, there is no reason that the
U.S. cannot continue to be an increasingly prosperous country. In that
sense the contradiction between the US and China is not a conflict of
interests between the American people and Chinese people. But it is a
contradiction between the U.S. governing Elite and 1.4 billion Chinese
dreamers.
Even now with China on a par with the U.S. economically in GDP (PPP) terms
the U.S. cannot operate as a hegemon or as an unchallenged world power.
How can the U.S. maintain its ambition of hegemony? Simply put, China's
development must be halted or reversed. Thus, the drive for U.S.
superiority is a war on the aspirations of the vast Chinese population, not
simply a war on the Chinese state. Will China's people, nearly 20% of the
global population, passively accept this fate?
How then are we to look at the China-US contradiction in moral or ethical
terms? Given the U.S. goal of hegemony versus the Chinese dream of a
Western standard of living, which has the greater claim on the support of
decent humans everywhere? The 1.4 billion Chinese dreamers or a tiny U.S.
governing Elite?
John V. Walsh has written about issues of peace and health care for Asia
Times, EastBayTimes/Mercury News, Consortium News, CounterPunch, Antiwar.com
and others. He can be reached at John.Endwar@xxxxxxxxx