On China's Vision for the World

Spent the afternoon watching and thinking about this great panel on China's vision for a new world at Chatham House. I summarize and comment here my take aways from the conversation. One thing upfront: if the West wdn’t be so absorbed by Trump’s stupidity, it would realize that a much scarier loon agitates in Beijing. His luck, that only few people over here understand him.


1. the paranoid emperor

• continuous self-revolution: XJP picked up the knife of struggle, which his predecessors dropped
• world view shaped during his cultural revolution experience in rural poverty
• China under XJP defines its policy from a security perspective - much like Qin Shi Huang who was obsessed with security - even in after life.
• The mobilization of youth which reminds me strikingly of the red guards and Hitler Jugend is another element of this security priority which sadly extends fear, paranoia and hate into the hearts and minds of the next generations

2. Marxism with Chinese characteristics as religious ideology

• pronounced Marxism as label for state capitalism > 指鹿为马
• XJP believes that China’s system is different and superior to the West (material wealth, but spiritual poverty)
• is there really a systems rivalry? both systems are deeply capitalist, but the aggregates of extraction are greater under state capitalism than under corporate capitalism; in the end its not about systems rivalry, but power.
• China applies large scale primitive accumulation strategies to keep its system running. Industrial fishing is one striking example. Raw earth production another.

3. China’s role as global investor

• delivering infrastructure projects on time along the OBOR initiative
• Using UN as vehicle to provide aid and build trust
• Building additional institutions like the G-intitiatives
• China builds international shadow institutions China to undermine the existing framework. 
  

4. China as economic rival & Thucydides Trap:

• 1.2 Trillion USD trade surplus 2025
• Unemployment and far right on the rise in Europe as a consequence of direct competition
• China’s technological choke-holds on the West have increased tremendously leaving the West vulnerable
• Thucdides Trap as a recipe for war
• China’s trajectory is for obvious reasons (who would dare to offend China in public as new Nazi Germany?) never clearly compared to the rise of 3rd Reich Germany - despite much evidence - instead appeasement policies continue until its too late. I don’t feel great pointing out what I observe, because I am in love with so many aspects of China’s culture and have met so many decent people there - probably more than elsewhere. But the truth is, that any government abuses first its own people to later abuse the people of other governments.
  • Build up of China’s army including nuclear arsenal and 9 air craft carriers
  • mobilization of China’s massive fishing fleet (which is a core instrument in China’s state capitalist system) as a dual use technology
  • Ed Conway’s Material World explains Germany’s military and technology advancement before WWI and II and its resulting rivalry with GB and US - a blueprint for China’s rivalry with much of ROW, but in particular with US and EU now
  • Youth mobilization to safe guard the party, which I think is the most under-reported and overlooked theme, reminds strikingly of the Red Guards during Cultural Revolution and Hitler Jugend - a good leader does not instill fear and hate into the heart of the next generation.

5. China’s claims on building an ecological civilization:

• Manoj Kewalramani translates a recent China Daily article: "Compared with traditional industrial civilisation, it (ecological civilisation) represents a profound transformation of the logic and methods of human development. The contradictory and conflicting relationship between economic and social development and ecological environmental protection under the traditional modernisation model is thus transformed into a dialectical and unified relationship of mutual promotion. Building a global ecological civilisation provides a new modernisation choice for all countries in the world, especially the broad masses of developing countries eager to accelerate the realisation of modernisation, and represents the direction of the development of human civilisation.”
• with a 1.2 trillion trade surplus, we can not speak of an ecological civilization, but only of green imperialism. Still better than the fossil fuel imperialism Trump wants to rejuvenate, but what Damian Ma wrote already in 2013: “In line behind a billion people” has become a sad reality: whoever has lived in China knows that purchasing power there is manifold higher then elsewhere.
• green tech is not primarily applied to make this world a better and fairer place, but as choke-holds on the West - the frontiers of colonialism and imperialism, which Jason Hickel described in Less is More are being drawn anew.
• China’s sakoku approach reflects what Lin Yutang called family minded egoism (家/国家） - at one point XJP or his successors need to go beyond the in- and out-group-thinking that defines nationalism to truly and fairly govern the world - otherwise humanity will not progress. 
• China has a blueprint to build an ecological civilization, but its not neo-confucianism implemented by a paranoid emperor.

Below: a 2018 Economist magazine cover