Debating with No.1 China hawk in Trump's new White House

The uninformed hubris of the soon-to-be Deputy National Security Advisor and the presumptive "top China expert"

Hi folks. Every week, you would expect to see me reviewing events of the last week(s) that I think carry a long-term impact on China. I try to stick to a weekly publishing schedule but there is no guarantee about it.

Occasionally, I also publish in-depth essays, some of which are connected with major themes listed in the Master Plan and Table of Core Contents.

And this is one of those weeks.

This is a free post and the comment section is free for all.

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This week, Mr. Alex Wong, a Chinese-American (?) who spent most of his career in the legal profession, was nominated by Donald Trump as the Deputy National Security Advisor.

During the 1st Trump Administration, Wong oversaw regional and security affairs for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State. Given that Mike Waltz, the new National Security Advisor Designate, has limited experience dealing with China, it’s reasonable to assume that Wong, born in 1980, would have a significant impact on Trump regarding future China policies in the next few years.

I found an article by Wong himself last October for Hudson Institute, titled Competition with China: Debating the Endgame.

The combo of hubris and ignorance shown in the article worries me, if it’s really the direction of future China policy under Trump 2.0 will look like.

In this post, I will offer a deep-dive analysis of both his thoughts and where he got (sometimes terribly) wrong.

Summary of Wong’s key points

Wong opened the article with an assessment that there is no consensus in DC for a clear strategic endgame when it comes to China. There are mainly two camps of thought here, one will stand for a regime change for China, and the other one is more realist and prudent.

However, Wong believed that there weren’t any meaningful differences between the two camps at all in terms of actual policy prescriptions. And here, through some sleight of hand, he made this major assertion about why this was the case. (emphasis my own throughout this article):

The muddled nature of this debate is not a reflection of the intellect or skill of the writers and policymakers. Instead, it may stem from a reality in which the endgame has already been predestined by the strategic choices of the CCP. It is a reality in which regardless of whether the United States pursues détente with China or democracy within it, the CCP will increasingly be presented with dilemmas for its legitimacy.

In short, the CCP needs to be responsible for the muddled nature of America’s foreign policy debate. This is certainly an absurd assertion, but let’s read on.

In the next paragraph, he laid out his key observation about China which his entire thesis rested upon. Let’s read it in its entirety and dissect it later:

This is because the CCP has based its domestic legitimacy—and its ultimate capacity to rule—on an aggressive international grand strategy. Now, it is axiomatic that there is never a clear delineation for any country of where its domestic policies and foreign policies begin and end. But for China, the linkage between the realization of its international vision and the perpetuation of its domestic rule is unusually deep, deliberate, and essential. To legitimate its rule, the CCP relies on unbalanced mercantilist trade, innovation fueled by foreign investment and technological know-how (either stolen or freely given), coerced international political acquiescence, domestic repression of “restive” minorities in violation of international conventions, actualization of territorial claims, and growing its regional military dominance. In other words, the CCP’s Leninist system is not just incompatible with the liberal order (although it very much is). It is instead, more threateningly, dependent on the abuse of the liberal order for continued survival.

For the rest of the article, Wong went on the explain that since China was this parasite taking advantage of the US, the natural course of action for the US is to “bracket and cut off these avenues for abuse, imbalance, and coercion”, and doing so “will inevitably have the effect of straining the CCP’s domestic rule—whether we aim to or not.”

But these questions and their answers point to the fact that the CCP’s parasitic abuse of both the liberal order and the U.S. economy has backed the United States into an endgame where—regardless of whether we seek to or not—our reasonable counters to Chinese strategy will create legitimacy dilemmas for the CCP.

In short, Wong is making the case that whatever the US will do, no matter whether the US wants it or not, China’s ruling party will be provoked anyway. But that’s precisely the aim here, because, again, as Wong believed: This is precisely because the CCP has chosen to predicate its legitimacy on the diminishment of U.S. interests. And so his policy recommendation is to exert maximum pressure on China from all angles, provoking China, eventually leading the CCP to lose its grip on power, just like how the USSR eventually dissolved.

A closer look

Let’s take a deep look at Wong’s central premise, which is that the CCP’s legitimacy to rule in China hinges on “abusing the liberal order”. In his words, again:

…the CCP has based its domestic legitimacy—and its ultimate capacity to rule—on an aggressive international grand strategy… for China, the linkage between the realization of its international vision and the perpetuation of its domestic rule is unusually deep, deliberate, and essential.

It is true that China was a shrewd free-rider of the post-Cold War and post-World War global order, seizing on the golden opportunity of globalization to achieve the most remarkable economic growth in history. It is also true that some aggressive posturing (e.g. wolf-warrior diplomacy) can score some credits at home. It is true that there are many, many things that China can improve on both in its domestic as well as international policies.

But to claim that using and abusing the world is the core source where the CCP’s legitimacy flows from is simply absurd. It’s as if a political party’s ultimate source of power in the 21st century is not about creating a better and more prosperous life for its people, but about pillaging the world.

Let’s take a closer look at the examples that Wong listed as measures the CCP uses to “legitimize its rule”:

To legitimate its rule, the CCP relies on unbalanced mercantilist trade

It is true that China has a very pro-production policy, as barely one generation ago we were more traumatized by the experience of scarcity but were not prepared to know that sometimes over-abundance can be harmful too.

But we are working on it. I have long made the observation that we are slowly trying to transition toward a stage where consumption and production are balanced (Week in Review #35). This is not just because the outside world asks us for it, but inherently what we would like to do because over-production is over-suppressing domestic profits and causing problems for employment, and will ultimately drag us into the dark pit of deflation.

So, NO, to legitimize its rule, the CCP will not rely on unbalanced trade practice, but will actually rely on a more balanced trade practice.

innovation fueled by foreign investment and technological know-how (either stolen or freely given)

This is again based on the idea that China can’t innovate, and without stealing and charity from others, China has no indigenous innovation.

This is very easy to refute. For instance, if China is unable to innovate, why would Europe contemplate demanding technology transfer from Chinese companies?

This kind of attitude shows a glaring lack of understanding of how innovation actually works.

I commented before that it is still hard for Chinese people to do “0-1” innovation, i.e. inventing something completely new (Can China catch up with the US in AI?). This is not because Chinese people are not smart, but just because our cultural and social setup makes it extremely difficult for mavericks to break things when there are no proven precedents. But when a new concept is proven when 0 has already become 1, when it’s been shown that a reusable rocket launcher works, when it’s been shown that a smartphone can actually have people buying it - Chinese people will have a unique capability to develop from 1 to 1000 by innovation on processes and techniques, which is still innovation none the less.

Creating something out of nothing is innovation (which is always the more exciting), but being able to produce a new thing at scale is also innovation (which is not as exciting but just as powerful).

As far as “CCP’s legitimacy” is concerned, our indigenous, scale-focused innovation is already quite sufficient to support that.

coerced international political acquiescence,

So, for instance, when the president of Indonesia, the world’s 4th largest country by population, came to China recently to jointly declare with China that “The two sides agreed that China and Indonesia are both major developing countries, emerging markets, and significant forces of the Global South. China and Indonesia are similar in the development phase, concept and path, as well as in cultural traditions,” does that come from “coerced international political acquiescence? Does China point a gun at his head to do this?

Picturing China’s international standing as mainly based on “coercion” is simply self-delusional.

actualization of territorial claims, and growing its regional military dominance.

Oh yes, China does have some remaining border disputes, despite the fact that it has settled the disputes with most of its neighbors. Recently, it has also been seeking less tension with neighbors such as India (Week in Review #32) and Vietnam (#15). The only one that still carries some major uncertainty right now is the Philippines, but it’s not impossible to settle disputes there either.

What would Alex Wong’s policy prescription actually lead to?

In Alex Wong’s eyes, unlike the responsible superpower that’s the US, China is this big bully, determined to do all the bad things to others so that its ruling class can keep itself in power.

This view refuses to consider the uncomfortable truth that China’s development story is, on balance, a force for good for the world. Of many things, this view fails to account for mounting evidence of ever deeper and closer ties between China and the Global South, where the great majority of the world’s souls actually reside. They are not coerced to trade or partner with China. In key regions like South East Asia, we are actually seeing an increasingly more favorable view of China in many ASEAN countries (#15)

If China really is a bad bully, certainly the right way to handle a bully is to try to contain this bully in every corner, or in Alex Wong’s words, “to insulate partners and itself from Chinese economic and political coercion.”

But what if the underlying assumption itself is completely wrong? What would this supposedly “anti-bully” tactic actually bring then?

First of all, instead of de-legitimizing the CCP, a containment strategy will actually help to legitimize it even more and will prove the CCP’s point to the Chinese people that China has to be more self-sufficient, despite the difficulties. And rest assured, any difficulty in life faced by the Chinese people, in the maximum pressure scenario, will be attributed to those bad Americans. Only a tiny, insignificant minority of the total population will blame the CCP in this case.

Moreover, we need to face the question of who exactly is insulating whom. If China is embracing, trading with, and working with the majority of the world, and the majority of the world is also willing to freely embrace, to trade with and to work with China, isn’t a containment strategy against China effectively a containment strategy around one’s self?

The real endgame of such a “self-containment” policy stance will not be the de-legitimization of the CCP, but it will certainly de-legitimize the US in front of the world, which will be quite depressing for the US.

Now, I think there is another, much better endgame for all of us to contemplate here. It may look like a futile, even naive call from me, but I will continue to do this while I am still alive:

Maybe it’s not China’s goal to dominate the world. Maybe China just wants to be a successful and prosperous power on its own.

Maybe the US does not have to experience a major decline in itself, only a relative decline, as more countries (not just China) demand a rightfully higher “stakeholding” of the world.

Maybe the right assumption is not to treat each new aspiring power as an enemy, but to collaborate with the newcomers to fight the real enemy: all the existential threats faced by humanity.

Maybe this is the only endgame that humanity actually needs.