16일차. Is time more on America’s or China’s side?

Culture | Braking China

Is time more on America’s or China’s side?

A new book offers practical advice about how America can win against China

World on the Brink. By Dmitri Alperovitch and Garrett Graff. PublicAffairs; 400 pages; $32.50 and £25

 

Though the wording may vary between “containing”, “deterring”, “decoupling” or “de-risking”, the Washington consensus is that China represents the pre-eminent threat to America. Changes of administration scarcely matter on this point. In 2019 Joe Biden slammed Donald Trump, then the president, for threatening to impose tariffs on Chinese imports, only to impose some stiffer ones himself in May. The China challenge has prompted a barrage of punditry; since March at least two books have been published whose titles declare a “new cold war” with China.

 

All the chatter makes the challenge of offering a unique and coherent take all the harder. But “World on the Brink” is a breezy and mercifully jargon-light book and an excellent source for the layman. Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a think-tank in Washington, and Garrett Graff, a journalist, neatly sketch the relevant history and current predicament, quote intelligently from a range of top “China hands” and suggest a number of prescriptions. Some of these are already happening, such as controlling the export of chip technology, diversifying and securing supply chains and funding research in artificial intelligence. Others are not.

 

Mr Alperovitch, who moved to America in his teens and remains a close observer of his birthplace, Russia, also draws lessons from the war in Ukraine. (He won kudos for correctly predicting Russia’s invasion in 2022 two months early.) One of these is that the perfect is the enemy of the good: America must urgently shift defence spending away from costly bespoke wonder-weapons (like f-35 fighter jets, which are estimated to cost $2trn over the programme’s lifetime to 2088) to cheaper, reliable mass-producible tools (like Javelin missiles at just $178,000 apiece).

 

However, this book’s biggest contribution is that it also proposes a single goal for American policy, which is deceptively simple: America should just play for time. More specifically, its objective should be to buy time for Taiwan to build up its defences and to systematically whittle away the West’s dependence on China.

 

To supply a singular goal may not sound groundbreaking. But considering that the rivalry between America and China is escalating, it is paramount that America retain clarity regarding its goals. Trying to hold on to the almost absolute global dominance that America has enjoyed since the end of the cold war in 1991 would be hugely expensive. However, too much accommodation also carries risks, as numerous Western countries that have seen industries gutted by Chinese competition are aware.

 

This does not mean dropping caution, or failing to maintain or even raise the American alliance’s capacity for military deterrence. But it does mean taking a clear-eyed view of China’s long-term disadvantages, such as a precipitously declining population, lack of natural allies, constraints of its political system and dependence on imported energy and food. As Mr Alperovitch says, taking the long view also means working to sustain America’s demographic, technological and geopolitical advantages by, for instance, encouraging talented people to immigrate and nurturing alliances.

 

But China’s ability to navigate big obstacles, such as air pollution or weak infrastructure, and its speed in overtaking others in building solar panels or electric vehicles, suggests that it is a mistake to assume it cannot catch up in making advanced semiconductors or in honing more effective international diplomacy.

 

China’s rulers could well look at America’s polarised politics and reach the same but opposite conclusion as Mr Alperovitch—namely that all they need to do is wait, since America might only grow weaker and more distracted. Xi Jinping, China’s president and a fan of the novelist Leo Tolstoy, is certainly familiar with the quote from “War and Peace” that is this book’s epigraph: “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” ■

 

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(2024-07-06) Is time more on America’s or China’s side？.docx

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