The "Thucydides Trap" implies that rival powers can't resist destructive escalation against each other. But that's an awfully selective reading of history, isn't it?
Sure, Britain and the USA fought in the War of 1812. Yet they never fought a war again afterward, not even once, even as the USA got stronger and stronger.
Sure, the USSR and the USA made opposite sides in the Cold War, and even proclaimed their wish to exterminate each other's philosophy. Yet they worked so hard to limit actual military conflict that even *other* countries' international wars after 1945 were actually much rarer than before WW2!
Are China and the USA fated to suspect and be nervous of each other? Sure, I'll buy that. But "nervous" can go two ways: escalation, or negotiation.
Some pairs of countries settled their rivalries by nervous escalation to all-out war, like Germany and Austria versus Russia in World War I. But other rivalries got eased by nervous negotiation that limited conflict, like USSR and USA in the Cold War. Not all "trapped" powers end up annihilating each other.
So, what's the best recipe for priming US-China tensions to head for "nervous negotiation" instead of "nervous escalation"?
Whatever that recipe is, it might be worth the world to find it.
Dear Noah Smith, I think your book review bring about all the key points that needed to be considered to understand China US relationship and where it is going between the two countries. However, I may not agree that China is threatening democracies. Mostly China's role in other countries have been economic dominance and China's involvement in local culture has been minimum and that is one of the reasons that most of the Chinese projects under belt road initiatives in South Asia, Middle East or Africa have not seen much progress. Neither China is assisting partner countries in technology transfer. All the good things of Chinese cooperation wiz a wiz economic cooperation is only concentrated to East Asia and probably that is the reason China is not allowing Taiwan and Hong Kong to break away. Both Taiwan and Hong Kong are the golden goose for China.
Secondly you conclude your blog with excellent points that is that China is dominating the global manufacturing supply chain and all multinationals are very comfortable with working in main land China. Thus it seems that Chinese belligerent behavior that is mostly concentrated to Taiwan and Hong Kong is the main threat to Chinese economic progress itself. For example, multinationals work very comfortably in Africa in diamond trade or oil, and those African countries are suffering from institutional underdevelopment. Multinationals have rarely contributed to institutional aspects like political stability or rule of law in the countries they operate and have relationship with the countries that offer some benefit to international trade with natural resources despite any challenges to local development or class conflict. Thus it seems that multinationals would keep working with China and would not expect China to improve its records on human rights. The introspection has to be done by CDC and President Xi as to transform its economic gains with better domestic governance. It is that Hong Kong and Taiwan has actually contributed to Chinese economic prosperity in its historic context, whereby both the East Asian cities are the global business hub that has brought the global supply chains to main land China. It is unfortunate that China is showing belligerent behavior towards both Hong Kong and Taiwan that btw is rejected by the citizens of both mega cities. Regarding American superiority over China, I should mention that the modern world is synonymous to brand USA and the American dream any where you go into the world. Yes there is economic competition of China and the US but there is no competition of US with China in practice of liberal values, cultural aesthetics, freedom of speech because these values are the future of the world a decade after or a century after. This reality should be known to any country that opposes US value system. Remember US is the country of immigrants and every person in this world is represented in the US economy and its prosperity. No country in the world other than may be Britain can claim this. So China and its leadership should know that there is only one way to progress and that is better governance that can implement modern values into the laws that the Chinese people abide by. Economic dominance is a different story and if China rejects modern values and democratic governance, future multinationals might not find it a consumer heaven as Tesla EV found by relocating its Giga Factor there.
Wonderful summary of Chinese-US military-economic rivalry. How about attempting to further locate manufacturing in Mexico and other Latin American Countries. Close to home and helps develop our neighbors economies. No easy task but Mexico already is producing high value, complex goods.
Great thread. Using data sets to test historical theories that project the level of risk of a China/US military conflict cannot provide any measurable level of confidence in the results. That is because, as you clarify, the qualitative nature and mix of factors determining that level of risk differ from one historical context and time period to another. History is not chemistry. There is no periodic table to predict Xi’s behaviour, or whether a Republican Party committed to autocratic state capture will win the next US election and then politicise US security forces, with Trumpian appointments as they have the courts, or whether global CO2/GDP capita will decline fast enough to avert a climate catastrophe in the next 20 years and so on. Perhaps one other useful metric would be to compare the total level of support that both the ‘Allies’ (say to Saudi Arabia) and the Axis (say to Syria) have supplied globally for the last 20 years to autocracies (debt, grants, aid, military tech and training etc) and to democracies (say to India, South Africa and Brazil). That would give a better empirical basis for debates about whether ‘the Allies’ or ‘Axis’ export and support more autocracy or democracy, even if any such metrics are blunt instruments without specific contextual and qualitative nuance.
Great China stuff, Noah. Very important. If you're not already reading Elizabeth Economy's "The World According to China," do it! Very clear and comprehensive. And it's not selling anything. It's primarily reporting...and, of course, adding it up.
IRA, CHIPs etc are aimed at a renaissance in US industrial policy. Fine. What Pettis and Klein would say I think is that China's unwillingness to do anything to boost spending power of the mass population means Chinese goods surpluses have to keep flowing out to balance the capital account. On this account the US dollar would have to keep going up to offset the boost to US domestic production created by the IRA, so the US remains a massive importer from China. They have suggested the US should tax foreign purchases of T-bonds to break the cycle, which was been published on the Carnegie website. I would be interested in Noah's take.
I disagree with NS on this. Projections place the US population at 430 million people by the end of the century, assuming current immigration levels continue. Our population is still growing and our workforce will continue to grow as well. Immigration barring large policy changes (a safe assumption given the filibuster) should continue, because the average immigrant quadruples their annual income by moving here. Great Britain, France, Canada, and Germany also have high levels of immigration and thus stagnant or slow growing populations. It’s true that our Southeast Asian allies like South Korea and Japan face rapid demographic decline, but overall the allies face a far better demographic outlook and as a result growing relative economic, military, and political power vis a vis China.
The impression I got from reading Chinese media and observing their actions is that, the Chinese leadership sincerely believes they are on track to overtake the West. I, like most in the West, disagree with this assessment of course. But we should not just assume they share the same belief as ours.
Xi being a complete dictator and shutting down all meaningful policy discussions means the information he gets is likely of very poor quality. Think how Putin believed the Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as "liberators". We also amazed at the supreme stupidity of Russia but that's how dictatorship rolls.
If my assessment is right, the Chinese are in no hurry to wage war on the West. It too wants to wait for its power to climb. It too believes their chances would be better in 2035 than 2025. The whole thesis of the next 10 years being the Danger Zone would turn out to be wrong.
The US needs to reject the Xenophobes, racists and misogynists in our midst. We need to get back to welcoming the best and brightest from around the world. Making it easier for them to come for Education and stay to help build new technologies and industries. The liberalism of the 60's and 70's was a key draw for immigrants and we need to re-establish that core. That and have government "post-industrial policies" that accelerates the building of next generation automated, green, manufacturing and infrastructure.
We could be building near utopia instead of accelerating into dystopia...
Always come here wondering what new angle of "China bad!" you'll be serving up, and what mental gymnastics and logical origami you'll be performing. You never disappoint!
>Realizing that their country is fast approaching the peak of its might relative to its rivals, Xi Jinping & co. have an incentive to strike now — to take Taiwan and the South China Sea, to displace the U.S. from its position of global importance, and to establish regional and possibly global hegemony.
To play devil's advocate here, how do these moves actually address the longer-term weaknesses? Why would the advantage thus gained be sustainable?
One more thought before this post sinks below the waves.
After reading Jessica Chen Weiss' recent Foreign Affairs piece, The China Trap, and listening to her on the current Sinica podcast, she sounds to me like the Kissinger Isaac Stone Fish describes in his book America Second.
The problem with the Western thinking is that you always need an "enemy" for economic growth and Presidential election. Cold war in 60s, Japan in 80s and now China.
China is an economic competitor just like Germany, Japan, UK and many other foreign countries.
Interesting history fact: There were two countries bombed Taiwan in the past. Guess which countries? China is not one of them.
The "Thucydides Trap" implies that rival powers can't resist destructive escalation against each other. But that's an awfully selective reading of history, isn't it?
Sure, Britain and the USA fought in the War of 1812. Yet they never fought a war again afterward, not even once, even as the USA got stronger and stronger.
Sure, the USSR and the USA made opposite sides in the Cold War, and even proclaimed their wish to exterminate each other's philosophy. Yet they worked so hard to limit actual military conflict that even *other* countries' international wars after 1945 were actually much rarer than before WW2!
Are China and the USA fated to suspect and be nervous of each other? Sure, I'll buy that. But "nervous" can go two ways: escalation, or negotiation.
Some pairs of countries settled their rivalries by nervous escalation to all-out war, like Germany and Austria versus Russia in World War I. But other rivalries got eased by nervous negotiation that limited conflict, like USSR and USA in the Cold War. Not all "trapped" powers end up annihilating each other.
So, what's the best recipe for priming US-China tensions to head for "nervous negotiation" instead of "nervous escalation"?
Whatever that recipe is, it might be worth the world to find it.
Dear Noah Smith, I think your book review bring about all the key points that needed to be considered to understand China US relationship and where it is going between the two countries. However, I may not agree that China is threatening democracies. Mostly China's role in other countries have been economic dominance and China's involvement in local culture has been minimum and that is one of the reasons that most of the Chinese projects under belt road initiatives in South Asia, Middle East or Africa have not seen much progress. Neither China is assisting partner countries in technology transfer. All the good things of Chinese cooperation wiz a wiz economic cooperation is only concentrated to East Asia and probably that is the reason China is not allowing Taiwan and Hong Kong to break away. Both Taiwan and Hong Kong are the golden goose for China.
Secondly you conclude your blog with excellent points that is that China is dominating the global manufacturing supply chain and all multinationals are very comfortable with working in main land China. Thus it seems that Chinese belligerent behavior that is mostly concentrated to Taiwan and Hong Kong is the main threat to Chinese economic progress itself. For example, multinationals work very comfortably in Africa in diamond trade or oil, and those African countries are suffering from institutional underdevelopment. Multinationals have rarely contributed to institutional aspects like political stability or rule of law in the countries they operate and have relationship with the countries that offer some benefit to international trade with natural resources despite any challenges to local development or class conflict. Thus it seems that multinationals would keep working with China and would not expect China to improve its records on human rights. The introspection has to be done by CDC and President Xi as to transform its economic gains with better domestic governance. It is that Hong Kong and Taiwan has actually contributed to Chinese economic prosperity in its historic context, whereby both the East Asian cities are the global business hub that has brought the global supply chains to main land China. It is unfortunate that China is showing belligerent behavior towards both Hong Kong and Taiwan that btw is rejected by the citizens of both mega cities. Regarding American superiority over China, I should mention that the modern world is synonymous to brand USA and the American dream any where you go into the world. Yes there is economic competition of China and the US but there is no competition of US with China in practice of liberal values, cultural aesthetics, freedom of speech because these values are the future of the world a decade after or a century after. This reality should be known to any country that opposes US value system. Remember US is the country of immigrants and every person in this world is represented in the US economy and its prosperity. No country in the world other than may be Britain can claim this. So China and its leadership should know that there is only one way to progress and that is better governance that can implement modern values into the laws that the Chinese people abide by. Economic dominance is a different story and if China rejects modern values and democratic governance, future multinationals might not find it a consumer heaven as Tesla EV found by relocating its Giga Factor there.
Wonderful summary of Chinese-US military-economic rivalry. How about attempting to further locate manufacturing in Mexico and other Latin American Countries. Close to home and helps develop our neighbors economies. No easy task but Mexico already is producing high value, complex goods.
Great thread. Using data sets to test historical theories that project the level of risk of a China/US military conflict cannot provide any measurable level of confidence in the results. That is because, as you clarify, the qualitative nature and mix of factors determining that level of risk differ from one historical context and time period to another. History is not chemistry. There is no periodic table to predict Xi’s behaviour, or whether a Republican Party committed to autocratic state capture will win the next US election and then politicise US security forces, with Trumpian appointments as they have the courts, or whether global CO2/GDP capita will decline fast enough to avert a climate catastrophe in the next 20 years and so on. Perhaps one other useful metric would be to compare the total level of support that both the ‘Allies’ (say to Saudi Arabia) and the Axis (say to Syria) have supplied globally for the last 20 years to autocracies (debt, grants, aid, military tech and training etc) and to democracies (say to India, South Africa and Brazil). That would give a better empirical basis for debates about whether ‘the Allies’ or ‘Axis’ export and support more autocracy or democracy, even if any such metrics are blunt instruments without specific contextual and qualitative nuance.
Great China stuff, Noah. Very important. If you're not already reading Elizabeth Economy's "The World According to China," do it! Very clear and comprehensive. And it's not selling anything. It's primarily reporting...and, of course, adding it up.
Sounds about right, Noah.
IRA, CHIPs etc are aimed at a renaissance in US industrial policy. Fine. What Pettis and Klein would say I think is that China's unwillingness to do anything to boost spending power of the mass population means Chinese goods surpluses have to keep flowing out to balance the capital account. On this account the US dollar would have to keep going up to offset the boost to US domestic production created by the IRA, so the US remains a massive importer from China. They have suggested the US should tax foreign purchases of T-bonds to break the cycle, which was been published on the Carnegie website. I would be interested in Noah's take.
I disagree with NS on this. Projections place the US population at 430 million people by the end of the century, assuming current immigration levels continue. Our population is still growing and our workforce will continue to grow as well. Immigration barring large policy changes (a safe assumption given the filibuster) should continue, because the average immigrant quadruples their annual income by moving here. Great Britain, France, Canada, and Germany also have high levels of immigration and thus stagnant or slow growing populations. It’s true that our Southeast Asian allies like South Korea and Japan face rapid demographic decline, but overall the allies face a far better demographic outlook and as a result growing relative economic, military, and political power vis a vis China.
The impression I got from reading Chinese media and observing their actions is that, the Chinese leadership sincerely believes they are on track to overtake the West. I, like most in the West, disagree with this assessment of course. But we should not just assume they share the same belief as ours.
Xi being a complete dictator and shutting down all meaningful policy discussions means the information he gets is likely of very poor quality. Think how Putin believed the Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as "liberators". We also amazed at the supreme stupidity of Russia but that's how dictatorship rolls.
If my assessment is right, the Chinese are in no hurry to wage war on the West. It too wants to wait for its power to climb. It too believes their chances would be better in 2035 than 2025. The whole thesis of the next 10 years being the Danger Zone would turn out to be wrong.
The US needs to reject the Xenophobes, racists and misogynists in our midst. We need to get back to welcoming the best and brightest from around the world. Making it easier for them to come for Education and stay to help build new technologies and industries. The liberalism of the 60's and 70's was a key draw for immigrants and we need to re-establish that core. That and have government "post-industrial policies" that accelerates the building of next generation automated, green, manufacturing and infrastructure.
We could be building near utopia instead of accelerating into dystopia...
Remember “The Coming War with Japan”? I do.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_with_Japan
Danger Zone is a sure way to propulse us into a more dangerous world.
Always come here wondering what new angle of "China bad!" you'll be serving up, and what mental gymnastics and logical origami you'll be performing. You never disappoint!
>Realizing that their country is fast approaching the peak of its might relative to its rivals, Xi Jinping & co. have an incentive to strike now — to take Taiwan and the South China Sea, to displace the U.S. from its position of global importance, and to establish regional and possibly global hegemony.
To play devil's advocate here, how do these moves actually address the longer-term weaknesses? Why would the advantage thus gained be sustainable?
One more thought before this post sinks below the waves.
After reading Jessica Chen Weiss' recent Foreign Affairs piece, The China Trap, and listening to her on the current Sinica podcast, she sounds to me like the Kissinger Isaac Stone Fish describes in his book America Second.
In a weird confluence, Elizabeth Economy "jokes" off-handedly in a video that Mr. Xi wants to "make the world safe for autocracy" (14:33 here: https://youtu.be/POarSOmsceA?t=873) and Dr. Chen Weiss says in the Sinica podcast, without irony, that US policy should respect the CCP's desire to make the world safe for autocracy. (transcript here: https://thechinaproject.com/2022/09/01/an-affirmative-vision-for-u-s-china-relations/).
Reading Economy induces a sinking feeling in the chest about living in the world Xi envisions. Listening to Chen Weiss makes the head spin.
The problem with the Western thinking is that you always need an "enemy" for economic growth and Presidential election. Cold war in 60s, Japan in 80s and now China.
China is an economic competitor just like Germany, Japan, UK and many other foreign countries.
Interesting history fact: There were two countries bombed Taiwan in the past. Guess which countries? China is not one of them.