Does China Want to Rule the World?

Guiding us through the rocky shoals of the current debate about China’s intentions is one David Goldman, he of the Asia Times.

As best I can discern, Goldman counts as one of the precious few China watchers who speaks sanely, rationally and sensibly about the Middle Kingdom. For that he has been widely excoriated, especially from his fellow conservatives. As it happens, Goldman is a conservative Republican, one who supported Donald Trump.

The question under debate in his recent essay on Chinese intentions is: Does China seek to become a hegemon, to exercise hegemonic power and influence throughout the world?

In other words, does China seek world domination? Does it seek to export its current economic and political systems to the world entire?

At the least, these are important questions? And you know that current thinking tells us that China is an imperialist predator, an evil empire seeking world dominance. You also know that China is doing so because it hates liberty and wants to supplant democracies around the world. 

Now, the occasion for Goldman’s analysis was provided by a Chinese professor, by name of Wen Yang. His thoughts should be understood as being an official proposal, subject to debate, but not public policy.

Professor Wen argued against nations that have imperial ambitions. He believes that when nations decide to expand into empires they risk dislocation. They have so much trouble keeping obstreperous provinces in check that they exhaust themselves. One might reply that the first Qin emperor, in the third century B. C. did create something like a hegemonic state by conquering competing nations. To the Chinese mind this most likely entails uniting China, not annexing other nations with other cultures.

According to Wen, China has never really been a hegemon. It has never entertained such ambitions. 

China’s decisive advantage, Professor Wen Yang of Fudan University wrote in a recent essay for The Observer (guancha.cn), is its lack of ambition for global hegemony. The Observer website often acts as a sounding board for the State Council.

The Soviet Union fell, Wen argued, precisely because it attempted to become a hegemon, a concept that Professor Wen finds alien to Chinese civilization.

“Even though the history of modern international relations has emphatically pointed to the undefeated record of ‘the Anglo-Saxon countries,’ the real reason for this is not to be found in the boast of liberal theory that liberal democracy and the free market must prevail,” he wrote. “

“The real reason for the failure of the Russian-Soviet empire is certainly not to be found in errors of Marxist theory and the socialist system. It should be regarded as the inevitable result of the misguided goal of pursuing hegemony.” 

Of course, when China was fully Marxist during the Mao era, it did not pursue hegemony. And yet, it did produce an appalling record of poverty and starvation. 

Besides, China recovered from Maoism by introducing free market reforms in 1978. Led by Deng Xiaoping, post-Maoist China was not hegemonic, but it was capitalistic.

But, the question remains, does China want to dominate the world? Or, in different terms, does China seek victory in the current chapter in the ongoing clash of civilizations. American analysts fear China and fear especially its hegemonic intentions:

This, of course, is the diametric opposite of the usual American view of Chinese intentions. American analysts take for granted China’s intention of “displacing the United States as the world’s leading state,” as National Security Council official Rush Doshi argued in his 2021 book The Long Game. 

“Beijing would project leadership over global governance and international institutions, advance autocratic norms at the expense of liberal ones, and split American alliances in Europe and Asia,” he wrote.

Americans think that China aspires to world hegemony, while Professor Wen contends that the aspiration to hegemony as such is the fatal flaw of empires past and present. Americans will dismiss Wen’s analysis as Chinese dissembling, but they would be mistaken to do so.

But, Goldman notes, most American analysts will not take Wen’s disclaimers seriously. They will see it as dissembling, designed to make the West complacent. That is, more complacent than it current is.

Wen argued that China has never really been a hegemon:

China never has been a hegemonic power in the past, certainly not in the sense of the British Empire or Soviet Communism. Nor does it intend to become such a power in the future. 

Wen added that the West would do better not to seek world hegemony for liberal democracy and that China should not seek world hegemony for communism:

[Wen] concluded: “World hegemony exercised in the name of liberalism must be opposed by the people of the world, and world hegemony exercised in the name of communism also must be opposed by the people of the world.”

An interesting point, to say the least. Interesting because serious Western thinkers, led by one Francis Fukuyama have been seeking world hegemony for liberal democracy. For Hegelian idealists like Fukuyama the victory of liberal democracy is inevitable. The World Spirit will make it happen, like it or not.

In its historical past, China never built an empire outside of its own borders:

Historic China accumulated vast wealth through the exports of silk, tea, porcelain and other goods, but it never built an imperial economy like Athens, Rome or Britain. Agriculture was centered on the extended family farm rather than slave-based latifundia.

Unlike Rome, which constructed roads to speed its armies from Mesopotamia to Britain, China built walls to keep invaders out. The Qin dynasty which gave China its name, consolidated power through infrastructure, including the Dujiangyan on the Min River that turned the Sichuan plain into China’s breadbasket.

Better yet, China was not in the past set on world conquest. Apparently, it did not have an appetite for worldwide plunder:

Unlike Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, Englishmen and Americans, the Chinese never sent their armies or large numbers of colonists around the world.

When I wrote of “China’s plan to Sino-form the world” in my 2020 book, I referred to the export of China’s digital infrastructure to the Global South, in the ultimate exercise of soft power.

Today’s competition between China and the West involves technology, not military conquest. Goldman is not alone in holding this view. Other serious thinkers are looking at China’s technological prowess with alarm:

Its 5G broadband, fast trains, e-commerce, e-finance, telemedicine and other Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies well may transform backward economies into little Chinas, starting in Southeast Asia.

China surely aspires to return to first position in world manufacturing technology, which it held from the beginning of recorded history until the 18th century, and it will try to extend its influence and power by dominating the new technologies enabled by fast broadband. 

Massive investment in flood control, river transport and irrigation created China, and the export of Chinese infrastructure well may hard-wire a great deal of the world into China’s economy.

As for the burgeoning Chinese military, Goldman asks this:

If China has no hegemonic ambitions, Western analysts ask, why has it built a navy worthy of a hegemon? With 355 ocean-going vessels, the Peoples Liberation Army Navy has more ships than the US – although much lower tonnage.

A November 2021 Pentagon report warned: “As of 2020, the PLAN is largely composed of modern multi-role platforms featuring advanced anti-ship, anti-air and anti-submarine weapons and sensors … This modernization aligns with the PRC’s growing emphasis on the maritime domain and increasing demands for the PLAN to operate at greater distances from China.”

He suggests that the military buildup is defensive in nature. Whereas America has hundreds of military bases around the world, China has only one. Hmmm:

At this writing, China has only one overseas military base, on the Horn of Africa at Djibouti, built for anti-piracy operations. The US has 750 bases. There have been unconfirmed reports of Chinese attempts to build military facilities in the UAE and Equatorial Guinea, but they do not add up to a campaign for global military supremacy.

When it comes to competing economically and technologically, China is currently leading the world in producing scientists and engineers. We, of course, are hellbent on producing social justice warriors:

Today, China graduates 1.2 million scientists and engineers a year, according to the National Science Foundation, roughly double the combined total of the United States, Germany, Japan, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan.

The quality of Chinese universities, moreover, has risen to international standards during the past 10 years. China now surpasses or is poised to surpass the United States in several realms of technology that bear on military power, including Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing, according to a Harvard University study directed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Professor Graham Allison.

They wrote: “China has become a serious competitor in the foundational technologies of the 21st century: artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, quantum information science (QIS), semiconductors, biotechnology and green energy. In some races, it has already become No 1. In others, on current trajectories, it will overtake the US within the next decade.” 

Perhaps we are trying to make China into an enemy because we want to stop it from gaining technological mastery. We are doing everything in our power to damage Chinese industry, to hobble Chinese companies and to discredit China in world markets.

Does this show how righteous we are or does this show that we cannot compete economically or technologically?