Has China won? The short answer is no, or not yet.
Earlier this month, I had the privilege of speaking in a book club on a similar topic arranged by the Punjab University Readers Society (PURS). The well-known book Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy influenced the title of the talk, written by Kishore Mahubani, a former President of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). When I finished delivering a definite review, the participant asked me: Is China an expansionist country? At that moment, I disseminated a concise answer. However, prolonged research is required to understand the philosophy of expansionism. Another voice echoed from the hall: Will China behave like the United States as a superpower?
The plot of the book is comparative. Mahubani analyzes American and Chinese societies simultaneously. Chapter One presents a detailed overview of the intention behind writing a book. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the considerable strategic mistakes made by the US and China in the past three or four decades. Chapter 4 highlights the philosophy of expansionism in both countries. The subsequent two chapters mark two questions: First, should China become democratic? Second, can the US make U-turns? At last, it ends with a paradoxical conclusion.
Napoleon famously said that China is a sleeping giant; when she awakens, she will shake the world. Mike Pompeo, a former US secretary of state, mentioned that the Chinese Communist Party will erode our freedom, but the CCP is very different from the USSR. They believe they have a better ideology and a society producing more fresh billionaires than the capitalist countries.
The center of power is shifting from Washington to Beijing. Significantly, since World War II, the West, particularly the US, has enjoyed greater hegemony, which is diminishing now. The primary parameter of victory in the current age is economic prosperity, in which China has had unprecedented success. According to C. Textor at Statista, the average annual per capita disposable income of households in China amounted to approximately 36,883 yuan. However, in the US, the average household income of the bottom fifty percent has stagnated in the past two or three decades.
Since the opium war of 1842, China has faced great humiliation. Afterward, it began to follow the Confucian philosophy that peace is better than war. China has not fired a single bullet on the out-of-border wars in the past forty years. Mahubani argues that, in the Cold War, American heavy defense expenditures proved prudent as they forced the Soviet Union, a country with a smaller economy, to match its military expenses. In the end, this helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union. China learned a lesson from the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is restraining its defense expenditures while focusing on economic development.
Henry Kissinger emphasized in his book On China that the Chinese game of wei qi () guides Chinese strategy rather than Western chess. In Western chess, the emphasis is on finding the fastest way to capture the king. In Wei Qi, the goal is to slowly and patiently build up assets to tip the game in its favor. The emphasis is on long-term strategy, not short-term gains. China is gradually and patiently amassing assets that are slowly changing the strategic landscape in its favor.
China has made several mistakes. First is the alienation of the American business community by favoring local enterprises. The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai issued a Business Report in 2018 that shows that survey takers believe Chinese government policies do bless local companies (54.5%); 60% reported that the regulatory environment lacks transparency, IPR protection, and enforcement (61.6%); obtaining required licenses (59.5%); and data security and protection of commercial secrets (52%) remain top security barriers.
The second mistake is that China did not open its market to foreign investors after joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. Mahubani notes that after twenty-three years of entering the WTO, China did not disclose its economic house to international competition. Consciously, it retains the joint venture, requirements, and ownership limits. It uses technical standards, subsidies, licensing procedures, and regulations as non-tariff barriers to trade and investment. Nearly 20 years after entering the World Trading Hub, this is simply unacceptable. It is why the Trump administration has argued that the WTO system needs to be modernized and changed.
Unlike the United States, China is not an expansionist country. There are two crucial reasons for this phenomenon. First is the Confucius philosophy, which urges China to remain calm within its territorial boundaries. China has not fired a single bullet out of its borders in the past forty years. Also, it did not indulge in disastrous wars like the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, and Vietnam in 1955, except for the late military tensions with the Republic of India.
The second is the behavior of the Chinese leadership, which has the motive of not teaching communist philosophy to the world like the USSR. Historically, the USSR promised the government of Mr. Bhutto economic prosperity initiatives if he accepted socialism as the mode of rule. Consequently, in 1973, the Pakistan Steel Mill (PSM) was established in Karachi with financial assistance from the Soviet Union.
Also, China is pursuing an expansionist strategy through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Peter Frankoian notes in his book, The Silk Road, that the Chinese government financed phase one of the construction of a deep-water port at Hambantota with a 15-year commercial loan from Exim Bank of China, which lent US$306.7 million (85% of the estimated total cost), while the Sri Lanka Ports Authority bore the rest. The loan carried a 6.3% interest rate and specified China Harbour Engineering Company, a state-owned enterprise, as the construction contractor. In 2016, it reported an operating profit of $1.81 million but was considered economically unviable. As debt repayment became difficult, the newly elected government gave the port to China on a 99-year lease in 2017.
In Pakistan, China has extended its imperialism. To date, Chinese contractors have supervised 95 percent of all the projects completed under CPEC. No local company was authorized to get a permit to work on them. Documents witness that the largest CPEC project, a 392-long M-5 motorway that connects Multan to Sukkur, was completed in 2020 with a cost of Rs. 200 billion by China State Engineering. According to Wikipedia, China financed 90% of the project’s cost through concessionary loans at a 1.6% interest rate, while the Pakistani government covered the remaining balance.
To conclude, China has done much better economically. It has raised the well-being of its citizens, which is the highest achievement in terms of prosperity. Historically, its expansionist behavior is not unique to the emerging power. All superpowers do the same. Unlike the US, it has abstained from direct interventions in the neighboring states. This century will see China as the empire enjoying the hegemony that the West, particularly the US, had in the past. Now, the reader can revisit the answer to the question, Has China Won? Yes, but it has to go too far to snatch the Medal of Superpower from the US.
