By Alex Lo
People outside China often think everyone thinks the same way, at least publicly, as dictated by the Communist Party. That can’t be further from the truth. Intellectual dissent and critical debate are as lively as in any country with a substantial presence of university scholars and public intellectuals.
In the highly acrimonious information war over Ukraine, China has taken a controversial stance for neutrality. Against this official foreign policy, it’s interesting to consider the contrarian views of a university scholar and official with the Counsellors’ Office of the State Council.
A Chinese mind’s journey to the West
Hu Wei, who is vice-chairman of the Public Policy Research Centre under the Counsellors’ Office, has reached a conclusion almost exactly as what may be called “the Western consensus” on the war and predicted a grim future for China with few good options unless it tries to “liberalise” – Westernise? – its foreign policy. It’s worth considering his take at some length, which could well have been written by someone within the US foreign policy establishment in Washington. I don’t think he is right or even original at all, but it’s fascinating to me that someone in his position would take such a view.
Writing in the US-China Perception Monitor, Hu said: “The United States would regain leadership in the Western world, and the West would become more united … [T]he war would in fact bring France and Germany, both of which wanted to break away from the US, back into the Nato defence framework, destroying Europe’s dream to achieve independent diplomacy and self-defence. Germany would greatly increase its military budget; Switzerland, Sweden, and other countries would abandon their neutrality … The US and Europe would form a closer community of a shared future, and American leadership in the Western world will rebound.
“The unity of the Western world … will have a siphon effect on other countries: the US Indo-Pacific strategy will be consolidated, and other countries like Japan will stick even closer to the US, which will form an unprecedentedly broad democratic united front.
“The power of the West will grow significantly, Nato will continue to expand, and US influence in the non-Western world will increase. [T]he Russo-Ukrainian War … will greatly weaken the anti-Western forces in the world. [M]ore third world countries will embrace the West. The West will possess more ‘hegemony’ both in terms of military power and in terms of values and institutions, its hard power and soft power will reach new heights.”
This is Washington’s wet dream, and Beijing’s worst nightmare. The thought had occurred to me that it was all a satire from Hu. Alas, he continued: “China will become more isolated under the established framework. For the above reasons, if China does not take proactive measures to respond, it will encounter further containment from the US and the West.
“Once Putin falls, the US will no longer face two strategic competitors but only have to lock China in strategic containment. Europe will further cut itself off from China; Japan will become the anti-China vanguard; South Korea will further fall to the US; Taiwan will join the anti-China chorus, and the rest of the world will have to choose sides under herd mentality. China will not only be militarily encircled by the US, Nato, the Quad, and Aukus, but also be challenged by Western values and systems.”
What should China do? It should stop “playing both sides …, give up being neutral and choose the mainstream position in the world,” Hu argued. “Cutting off from [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and giving up neutrality will help build China’s international image and ease its relations with the US and the West.”
Washington seeks help from autocracies
Ironically, just as Hu advises Chinese rapprochement with Western democracies, Washington has been busy making nice with autocrats around the world – including those it has previously tried to subvert and those it has been friendly with – to isolate Russia economically. Even sympathetic observers must think this does not bode well for President Joe Biden’s idea of a league of democracies or his rallying of foreign governments by portraying the Russian invasion as a struggle between democracies and autocracies.
Given this fundamental contradiction at the heart of Biden’s foreign policy, it’s hard to see how it will successfully isolate China, as Hu and others in the West have claimed.
“For all freedom-loving nations, we must commit now to be in this fight for the long haul,” Biden said last month in Poland, adding the US and its allies must “maintain absolute unity – we must, among the world’s democracies”.
A week later, his top diplomat, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, flew to Israel for his summit with the foreign ministers of Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco. Hours after the meeting, he also called the Saudi foreign minister separately.
It has not been unacknowledged that all these Middle Eastern countries are either monarchical, autocratic, or have invaded, occupied and annexed their neighbours’ territories by force. So much for the league of democracies, and the mortal struggle between freedom and dictatorship.
The reason for Blinken’s Middle East visit was to convince his interlocutors to support Western sanctions against Russia – by pumping more oil into the world market and to distance themselves from Moscow.
But the most important sticking point, for the Middle Eastern countries, is the looming nuclear deal with Iran, which they all oppose. After spending years denouncing, isolating and sanctioning the country – and at one point even assassinating one of its top generals against all known international law and conventions, Washington suddenly thinks it needs Iran to pump more oil into the world market; likewise the government of Nicolas Maduro in oil-rich Venezuela, against which Washington has been trying to subvert, including recognising the opposition head as the only legitimate leader.
Interestingly, Caracas and Tehran, two long-time enemies of the US, have been much more receptive to Washington’s overtures than its traditional allies in the Middle East. As key members of so-called OPEC+ – which includes Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – have refused to pump more oil or to join efforts to isolate Moscow. Riyadh is considering accepting yuan instead of the greenback for oil sales to China. And India, Russia and Saudi Arabia – and also China – are arranging similar alternative payments for oil and other trades using each other’s currencies.
As in the past, Washington today is trying to make friends with both democracies and autocracies as is politically expedient, exactly like China. Rhetoric aside, it’s absurd and ignorant to assume that somehow democracies and autocracies will cleanly divide themselves into opposing blocs, rather than criss-crossing alliances and partnerships. In this struggle, it’s hard to see how Beijing will necessarily be isolated at all.
South China Morning Post
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