“China Threat” is a political slogan coined by hawkish anti-China “expert” or “strategist” and widely quoted by politicians to build a halo over their head beaming patriotism. This patriotism is not based on the fact that the politicians have served in the military, sacrificed for the country or wounded in a war. Many who shouted “China Threat”, like Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State or Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban immigrant, who simply saw Donald Trump’s victory of presidential bid in 2016 was due largely to Trump’s strong messages on anti-China and blaming China for U.S. domestic and international problems. Unfortunately, this has become a trend in the U.S. Presidential election, diverting voters attention on domestic problems away from searching for solutions and shifting to blaming foreign countries. Rubio, as a young politician and a Cuban immigrant and a local politician in Florida, he knows so well that China is no more “communist” (China reforms rigorously from orthodox Communism) than Cuba, no more socialist (China embraces more capitalism) than Cuba and thus no more a threat than Cuba to the U.S. Rubio and the like with a big ego and presidential ambition who never traveled to China and had little real foreign affairs experience other than hosting political dissenters’ testimonies at the Senate hearing, really don’t know what China Threat really is. As a political analyst traveled many times to China, I will devote this column to explain what real “China Threat” is to general Americans and in particular to politicians like Rubio (Republican), Pompeo (Republican) and Ocasio-Cortez (Young Democrat, 30), all future Presidential Candidates in the brewing.
 
This column will not discuss the schemed “national threat” which to a large extent is created by the self claimed national security experts. They hypothesize a “nation threat” (for example, Russia/Soviet Union, Japan, EU or China) under three axes, ideology, military and economy, then devise corresponding counter measures, rarely related to how average citizens feel about 'national threat'. In reality, ideological threat is never a real national threat, since if the majority of people in a nation accept an ideology, it is hardly a threat to the U.S. other than to some politicians. Military threat is a self inflicted mutual threat since military spending (especially for expansionist) is an expensive and non-productive investment, rarely bringing a positive return but a crippling economy. So rationally, nations would not initiate military threat to each other and none would escalate unless being obviously threatened first. The economic threat, however, may seem to be real simply because the Earth has limited resources and all people/nations desire to live better lives which means that every nation will  consume more resources with time unless humans invent their way out of scarce resources. Therefore, the economic threat is really just a competition for resources (and innovation for conserving resources) to support a better life. A competition is not a threat when it is resolved by a fair trade and competitive effort against each other. Just like participating in an Olympic game, a fair competition is not a threat; win or loss, you can try again, generation after generation.
 
So what is the real “China Threat” then? The fair answer is that China presents an economic competition to the U.S. China does not pose any ideological threat to the U.S. and her democracy. If anything the threat is the other way around that the U.S. is insisting on an ideological war, exporting the U.S. brand of democracy, which is persisting even long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. History clearly showed us, any country that is left alone with no ideological confrontation fared rather well economically. It is peace that is needed in a fair economic competition. For country like the U.S., blessed with rich resources, there is less need for her to worry about fair economic competition since no other nation is richer than her or can pose an ideological or military war against the U.S. Other nations would be busy enough to struggle and compete economically with the ever developing world. So the best interpretation of so called ‘China Threat’ is economic competition, which may be perceived as a threat only when one gives up competition and resort in rhetoric. We may give a few examples to illustrate this point.
 
China has become a nation of world manufacturing. She plans her economy methodically to first build her basic economic needs in terms of living; that is supplying enough food, clothing and shelter to her vast population. Then she strengthens her national infrastructure to sustain her economic development. Through her economic scale, she manages to make household products efficiently with low cost. Thus through hard work and ever expanding export, she became the main supplier of most household products to the world. Many nations depend on Chinese goods, especially the U.S. who chooses to move away from those low-profit mass production industries and moving into high profit and quick return hi-tech and financial industries. Is China a threat to the U.S.? Yes, if China were wiped out of the Earth. But who would want to wipe China out of the Earth? The “China Threat” sayers. Obviously, that kind of ‘China threat’ holds no logic. Trade had become freer since the colonial days were over, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has done a reasonable job for maintaining a free trade system that supported decades of supplying inexpensive goods to advanced and rich countries such as the U.S. and Western Europe and lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. If China made the most significant contribution to world trade and lifted half of her population above poverty, I would not call that “China Threat”. I would rather think, whoever wants to wipe China out of the world is creating a threat to the world!
 
 
 
 

 
Abstract

There are many views on US-China relations, changing with time for sure. This article is presenting a view on the relationship from multiple angles from US-China direct confrontations to tissues related to third party or geographic regions in the world, such as EU, M.E., Russia, Africa, South America (and US neighbors), FVEY (Australia), South China Sea and Taiwan, and – how the world sees the US-China relation.
 
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(5) Africa’s View of the U.S. - China Relation
China as a developing nation making rapid progress is somewhat sympathetic to African nations in their economic development. The colonial masters made very little investment during their occupation of Africa. The West developed nations including Japan from Asia held a profit-first attitude in their loans and investment; they treated Africa just as a consumer market. Whereas China was willing to wait for her investment returns in longer terms, such as developing farm-land or transportation infrastructure, patiently waiting for progress of development to occur and more flexible bartering deals to happen. This gave China many more friends in the UN. The U.S. has obviously felt it in the UN.
 
(6) South America and U.S. Close Neighbors
The U.S. long held the Monroe doctrine as her backbone of foreign policy regarding South America, Mexico and Canada. The U.S. is both protective and dominant. Even though China’s interest is merely in trade of goods and raw materials for her industrial needs, the U.S. considers China’s entry in S. America as a threat to her leadership, in fact, more likely viewed as challenging her ‘governance attitude’ regarding those regions. The USMCA regional trade agreement specifically requires Mexico and Canada to source supplies from member countries rather than from China. Again, such protectionism makes the U.S. appear hypocritical when she demands other countries to open up and exercise free trade. Canada's arresting of the Huawei CFO bowing to the U.S. request of extradition on an Iran sanction violation has generated lots of international bad press for Canada and the U.S.
 
(7) Australia and The Five Eye Alliance
The five eye alliance, U.S., U.K. Canada, New Zealand and Australia (FVEY), is an intelligence alliance, but it gets involved in the U.S. trade war and technology sanctions concerning telecommunication products and services from China. Under the U.S. pressure, FVEY made a concerted effort to sanction Huawei, a Chinese telecommunication corporation. Their trade relations with China, except New Zealand which took a conciliatory position with China, are now on the rock. China took a firm stand and singled out Australia to severe their trade ties. China is the number one trading partner of Australia which exports her 39.4% goods and 17.6% services to China. Combined with COVID-19’s impact, Australia’s economy is badly hurt and may never return to previous level in the future. FVEY has been regarded as a high-profile discriminating organization. The world is hardly receptive to its behavior; and they see that the U.S. is leading the pack.
 
(8) South China Sea and Indo-Pacific Strategy
The U.S. launched the Pivot to Asia strategy to strengthen her containment of China and instigated the Philippines to challenge China on her sovereignty of some islands in the South China Sea (SCS) in an international arbitration court. China denies such court’s jurisdiction over sovereignty matter and its ruling. This episode prompted China to increase her naval presence in SCS and her successful island fortification program, building ports and airfields on land refills on a few strategic islands. The U.S. has sent her carriers and naval vessels claiming freedom of navigation in SCS as well as attempting to extend the containment plot to Indian Ocean by recruiting India and Australia to join her Indo-Pacific alliances. India although has taken part in the Indo-Pacific navy exercises but showing no intention to be an ally member. Many of the ASEAN countries simply expressed their displeasure being pressured by the U.S. to take side on this U.S.-China confrontation. Here is a Monroe doctrine case in SCS for China, why is the U.S. thinking differently from a Monroe case in South America?
 
(9) Taiwan as a part of China
The U.S. and China established their diplomatic tie on the basis that the U.S. recognizes the People’s Republic of China as the only legitimate China and Taiwan is a part of the only China, expecting a peacefully reunification someday. The U.S. maintained an informal tie with Taiwan and exploited this two-China situation as a pressure point to hurt China, even selling offensive weapons to Taiwan. China has kept her promise patiently waiting for a peaceful reunification, but the island has drifted away from Mainland China since the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan promoted independence for the island. The mainland Chinese now view the U.S. as the culprit for such shift under the disguise of democracy with a real purpose of preventing their reunification. The island Chinese has developed a serious split with different ideas of reunification and independence, albeit most people recognized that the future would not be in their hands. The island citizens may be uneasy with the Chinese Communist Party but they also know that they cannot rely on the help from the U.S. Taiwan’s independence movement would be similar to California or Texas independence movement, never acceptable to the rest of the nation. Trump made use of the Taiwan issue to antagonize China with no obvious gain. Biden Administration may change their Taiwan policy after they handled the COVID-19 situation, but they do need to stand in someone else shoes to think about the US-China issues for a change.
 
The U.S. has many think tanks on foreign policies. They tend to reinforce each other’s view all based on American perspective. On US-China issues, we need to take a third party or a world perception to gain understanding. Why can we apply Monroe doctrine to S. America and China cannot apply Monroe doctrine in SCS? Why do we demand others to open trade and yet we restrict trades to others? Why do we need to form allies as if war is imminent? Why did we fail in Africa with prejudice as we preach diversity at home? The author hopes that this article will stimulate some honest discussions and arrive at some sensible conclusions!


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          US-China relations command attention today despite of hundreds of books and thousands of essays have already been written on the subject. Dr. Wordman alone under his real name has published six books and is ready to release his seventh one, entitled ‘Calculated Rivalry between the U.S. and China’, in a month or so. Readers may ask why is there a need to write about the title article in this column? The answer is that for every honest and factual article about China and/or US-China issue, there are tens or hundreds of papers spreading half-truth, biased opinions and fancy assertions without evidence by people who never lived or visited both nations with any significant length of time. In today’s media, quantity overwhelms quality, thus leading the subject matter into a confused state. Not necessarily everyone believes the false and somewhat corrupted mass media but people are confused and unable to articulate a correct and meaningful description of the US-China relations issue. In this article, the author hopes to make one more honest attempt to characterize the US-China relations from the perspective of the world at large from several angles or viewpoints. These views are discussed under nine separate categories.
 
          (1) Obvious Direct Confrontations between the U.S. and China
Many political analysts would like to discuss US-China issue in terms of confrontations. We can summarize the direct confrontational issues under five categories: trade, sovereignty, human rights, military and ideology. The author places ideology at last simply to underscore the fact that China and the U.S. have transformed so much over past 100 years. China has long abandoned Stalin style communism and adopted socialism with endorsement of limited capitalism. On the other hand, the U.S. has expanded her capitalism along with her modified democracy to include more minority groups, blacks, women, immigrants and non-property holders with due incorporation of socialism. Human Rights and Military are really non-issue if not provoked with rhetoric. The efforts China is making to lift her citizens from poverty and terrorists threat have made the world including many Muslim/Islam nations recognizing China’s positive achievements. Any real military threat, say attack each other, has to be mutual and provoked by an aggressive party. As a superpower, the US is now perceived by the world including US allies as the provocative aggressive party. It is the US that has raised military tension in many parts of the world, for instance in South China Sea (SCS). There is really no sovereignty issue between the U.S. and China except when the U.S. chose to stick her nose into China’s sovereignty issue, such as Taiwan, Diaoyu Islands in ECS and SCS islands. The real direct confrontation is in the trade, a common problem between any two trading partners. As two largest economies in the world, the two countries having significant mutual dependence must understand that free trade means voluntary transaction, surplus or deficit, either one is nothing more than a domestic issue of managing resources and productivity. There is only one solution that is to constantly optimize one’s goods and services to reach and maintain a trade balance if possible in general, the tariff war initiated by Trump has not been viewed positively by the world.
 
          (2) EU’s perspective on US-China Relations
Collectively, EU is the 3rd or 4th largest economy. Since the end of Cold War, EU perceives a different world stage where Russia has become less a security threat to EU nations and more an energy supplier to her needs. As a large economy, EU has trade issues with the U.S. and China, hence obviously EU desires to exercise independent diplomacy and trade negotiations with China rather than unconditionally accepting the demands from the U.S. on any of their bilateral trades or the EU-China trade. It is understandable that EU wishes to have a direct trade negotiation with China rather than being handcuffed by the U.S. through NATO forcing political and national security considerations onto EU-China trade negotiations. The 2020 year-end Investment agreement signed between EU and China is a clear manifestation of the above logic for the U.S.
 
          (3) Even M.E. Has a Significant Influence on US-China Relations
The confrontation between Israel and the Arab world has been a millennium long issue. It is understandable for the U.S. to have a strong bias in supporting Israel. Trump’s one diplomatic achievement of making Israel and UAE establishing diplomatic relations is commendable. China is free to choose her own diplomatic strategy to maintain good relations with all states in the M.E. This is trade-driven perhaps, but it is also a rational consideration for the sake of her significant Muslim population in Qinghai and Xinjiang. There is a historical Muslim-Chinese relation over a millennium as well though it is different from the Christian-Islam history. Both the U.S. and China must respect each other’s foreign policies in the M.E. where some may be in agreement and some not. The world certainly sees that.
 
          (4) Russia as an archenemy of the U.S.
Whether or not the U.S. should continue to hold the anti-communism flag against Russia, the leader of the communist Soviet Union, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union is a debatable foreign policy issue. Russia’s change is not as predictable as China’s based on history. On the other hand, China has experienced a stressful relationship with Russia from dependency to cautiously disengaging, to joining the West sanction against Russia to a recent cordial trading relationship; the recent Sino-Russia relationship has grown to be more friendly as China has risen more with her rapid economic development. Since Cold War ended, the U.S. still maintained an anti-Russia foreign policy mainly because Russia has maintained a mighty military force. The U.S. led the world with an imperial approach settling issues with war and regime change using the UN only as a tool to justify a military action if needed. During the Trump Administration, the U.S. elevated China to an enemy level openly as well as pushed Russia and China closer although they have not yet signed an ally agreement. The world including U.S. allies such as Japan and S. Korea does not see that as a good thing and wonders why the U.S. is pushing it? (To be continued)
 
Ifay Chang. Ph.D., Inventor, Author, TV Game Show Host and Columnist (www.us-chinaforum.org) as well as serving as Trustee, Somers Central School District.