Edward Ludwick defined Great Power Autism as the “lack of situational awareness of the world around them (in large countries) natural in small countries of equal advancement.” This condition seems to have not only taken a firmer hold in both China and the U.S. since the Trump administration, but has infected middle powers like Canada and Australia as well.
Counterproductively, China has placed demands on counterparts such as Canada, Australia, and the U.S. as a quid-pro-quo for a return to normal track bilateral relations. Even the existential crisis of climate change cooperation has not been seen as important enough to compartmentalise the problems in between the U.S. and China with State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressing that “The U.S. side wants the climate change cooperation to be an “oasis” of China-U.S. relations. However, if the oasis is all surrounded by deserts, then sooner or later, the “oasis” will be desertified. China-U.S. cooperation on climate change cannot be divorced from the overall situation of China-U.S. relations. The United States should work with China to meet each other halfway and take positive actions to bring China-U.S. relations back on track.”
For China, they are wary of the appearance of bowing to U.S. pressure while at the same time watching carefully if the Biden administration will abide by its own commitments to climate change. Sensing opportunity, Beijing may be positioning itself as the global champion of climate change action.
In Western countries, rather than nuanced discussions about China’s grand strategy and long-term ambitions as articled by scholars such as Rush Doshi in his meticulously researched The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order or Tsinghua University’s Yan Xuetong in his opinion piece In the new era of diplomacy, how does China make its own voice?, public debate concerning China has become characterized by hyperbole, misinformation, and the obfuscation of fact and fiction when it comes to the challenges associated with China’s re-emergence as a powerful state on the global state.
For many, they view China’s current trajectory as challenging to post WW-2 order. Conversely, China views the current international order to be one that was constructed without the input of China. The consequence is most advanced post-industrial states and many emerging countries have come to a standstill in bilateral relations with China. The path towards co-existence with China has veered towards parallel existence, a condition in which China and the West bifurcate their political, technological, educational, and socio-economic existence into parallel trajectories with limited and selective interaction.
The widening gap understandable. As Peking University’s Professor Wang Jisi wrote in Foreign Affairs in his July 2021 essay The Plot against China?: How Beijing Sees the New Washington Consensus, many in China feel that the Chinese political system established by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been under constant direct and indirect attack by the U.S. throughout its existence. For many in China, the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong, growing ambiguity about Taiwan and the one China Policy are attacks against China’s domestic order, an order in which the CCP is the sole political entity responsible for China’s development.
Similarly, many Western countries feel that China has not lived up to its international commitments. For them, China has veered towards hard authoritarianism that infringes upon human rights, eschews rule-of-law, and supports an unfair commercial environment prejudicing foreign firms.
They view Beijing’s behaviour ranging from economic coercion to re-education camps for the Uighur minority, to the reneging of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration related to Hong Kong to assertive behaviour in the East China Sea (ECS) and South China Sea (SCS) as revisionist and out of line with the post-WW 2 rules-based order that benefited the world and China in particular.
The situation is no better when comparing cross-national views on China. The Hankook Research and the Korean newsmagazine SisaIN, China has surpassed Japan as the most disliked country in South Korea. PEW’s June 2021 Global Images Survey found that “unfavorable views of China also hover near historic highs in most of the 17 advanced economies surveyed.” Both surveys echo findings in the ISEAS’ Survey of Southeast Asia that find China ranks low in terms of trustworthiness in Southeast Asia.
Mirroring Western views of China, recent polling suggest Chinese citizens are equally disenchanted with the West, especially with the U.S.
Superficially, these unfavorability ratings would suggest that bilateral relations with China are highly problematic in multiple areas. A more granular look at bilateral relations with China, however, suggest that the relationship with China is complicated, but one that brings economic benefit and prosperity to its participants, including China.
In the case of Canada-China relations, trade flows have continued to increase throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and since the arrest of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. The March 31, 2021, survey by Statistics Canada demonstrated that stocks of major crops such as lentils, oats, peas, soybeans, barley, wheat and canola were down compared to the previous year. This decrease was primarily driven by China demand.
When compared to the previous year, trade from January to December 2020 rose from $23.3 billion to $25.2 billion, an 8.12 per cent increase, according to the University of Alberta’s Canada-China Trade: 2020 Year in Review. Chinese trade was up from July to August 2021 in terms of both imports (+25.6 per cent) and exports (+33.1%).
Canadian trade with China not only increased in the agricultural sector; indeed, bilateral trade in non-agglomerated iron ore, canola seed, swine and canola oil has also increased in volume and value. Australia, Japan, and South Korea have similar trade dynamics with China despite record low unfavorability ratings amongst their respective publics.
What explains the gap in public perceptions related to China and the tangible benefits that advanced liberal democracies and neighbours of China discussed above have with China?
Certainly, bilateral relations with China have numerous serious problems that should be of a concern for liberal democratic societies. Nonetheless, the threat of China replacing the U.S. on the global stage are both unrealistic and a poor misreading of China’s domestic agenda, internal contradictions, and its broader appeal in international society.
The same could be said about how the Chinese perceive the U.S. and the West. The paranoia concerning national cohesion and counterrevolution Chinese leaders have held since the founding of the PRC as Sulmaan Wasif Khan writes in Haunted by Chaos: China’s Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping has led China to see interactions and problems with the West and the U.S. through the lens of conspiracy and containment.
This tendency has become even more problematic as Xi Jinping has built a cult of personality with sycophantic advisors dramatically reducing the opportunity to hear sober, self-reflective assessments of China’s own role in in worsening relations.
Political leaders in many countries are failing to engage their public with nuanced discussions as to what kind challenge China presents to their countries, societies, and the rules-based order. The same is true in China. From Canada to Australia, Japan to the U.S., all want constructive, mutually beneficial relations with China, regardless of regime type.
In the context of Canada, the “Blame China” game intensified with the politically motivated arrest of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in December 2018. It further spiralled in a negative direction as selected Canadian products were subject to increased scrutiny and or boycotts to pressure the Canadian government to find a political solution to the arrest of the Huawei executive Ms Meng Wanzhou.
Notwithstanding the egregious nature of the hostage diplomacy and economic coercion against selected sectors of the economy, the debate concerning China in Canada devolved into that resembling the former U.S. administration’s which focused on China’s predatorial inclinations and hegemonic ambitions.
At the extreme end of the China debate continuum were arguments made by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who attempted to distinguish between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese people. With nearly a 100 million members of the CCP and a population that has comparatively high levels of satisfaction with their central government, the CCP’s governance as seen from the average China citizen is one that has consistently transformed the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Chinese for the better during the first period of reform and opening.
This confidence in the CCP to protect the health and welfare of its citizens was enhanced greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic as the CCP’s leadership led to a quick containment of the virus, relatively few deaths, and a quick reopening of the economy compared to Western countries, especially the U.S.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who argue that China’s assertive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific and efforts to weaken the post-WW 2 international order are not a threat to the current rules-based order and that China has, is and forever will be preoccupied with domestic challenges.
Unlike Western countries, it is more difficult to gauge the continuum of views in authoritarian China. However, cracks do emerge when prominent intellectuals and former officials release essays obliquely or directly criticizing the CCP and direction of China under Xi Jinping as we saw in the February 2020 essay by former Tsinghua University Professor Xu Zhangrun.
Professor Xu’s concerns about Xi Jinping’s China are echoed by former CCP Party School Professor, and now exile Cai Xai who described the increasingly totalitarian aspect of China under Xi in her essay China-US relations in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party: An insider’s perspective.
It is imperative to avoid further deterioration based on mutual securitization. It accelerates the path towards parallel existences and makes dialogue and cooperation on global problems from today’s pandemic to climate change more difficult to tackle.
A reset or new beginning in relations between China and Western countries will only gather momentum when political leaders in Western countries and China build more literacy about one another such that knowledge, networks, and dialogue are the instrument by which bilateral relations are negotiated instead of populism or paranoia and mutual suspicion. This will require better situational awareness of how China and Western countries view each other’s policies and positions towards each other.
Dr. Stephen Nagy is a senior associate professor at the International Christian University in Tokyo, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI) and a visiting fellow with the Japan Institute for International Affairs (JIIA). He is currently the director of policy studies for the Yokosuka Council of Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS) and a governor for the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Japan (CCCJ). He was a distinguished fellow with the Asia Pacific Foundation from 2017-2020.