Air Force One is on its way home after the President’s state visit to China. Donald Trump’s account of the meeting is that it went well. But Xi Jinping said a disturbing thing during his speech—he raised the specter of the Thucydides Trap. The Thucydides Trap, a concept popularized by Harvard professor Graham Allison, describes the structural tension that occurs when a rising power (in this case, China) threatens to displace an established ruling power (the US). The reference suggests the US is afraid of China. It warns of war. Xi is subtly threatening America.
I agree with Jack Posobiec, a former intelligence officer who appeared on yesterday’s morning edition of the War Room. Observing the moment, Posobiec said that Trump should get on Air Force One and return home. He also suggested that the White House cancel the visas of Chinese students and send them back to China. I also agree with the War Room’s host, Steve Bannon, that the US Navy should send a carrier battle group to the South China Sea. On second thought, Bannon may have been the one who suggested canceling visas. At any rate, the sentiment was that America Xi should not speak to us in that tone. I agree. The Chinese are keen on saving face. Trump should have made them lose face. But Trump is polite, so he let it go. I hope at least he filed away the reference.
Among the other objectionable things Xi said to the President’s face was his claim that the US is only 250 years old (a dig at our anniversary), while China is thousands of years old. However, the Chinese Communist Party has been in power for less than a century, roughly the same timespan as the Soviet Union. The CCP is no more the legitimate government of China than the Islamic Republic is the legitimate government of Persia. The CCP was a Leninist creation. And Xi is a Stalinist. Chinese communism (With Islam in tow) has replaced Soviet communism in the East-West divide, replacing an old existential threat with a new one. On comparative terms, the new threat is worse. The CCP cuts the organs out of living bodies and sells them on the international market. It has forced millions of women to abort their babies. It runs concentration camps. And it is integrating with the transnational corporate order. Evil is striving to become planetary.
If China is a rising power, it is only because the Democrats and transnationalism have built China into a superpower. Richard Nixon’s disruption of the Sino-Soviet alliance in the 1970s opened a path to globalization that Democrats walked the US through. The Democratic Party is the party of globalization. Globalization has undermined the fortunes of American labor and, if allowed to succeed, will end its freedom, as well. This is not inevitable. China’s economy is in decline. They lack a consumer class with purchasing power to buy the cheap commodities they produce. They depend on the US market to move product. Cut them off. Isolate them. The question today is whether Trump will do what must be done.
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan pursued a strategy of increasing economic and military pressure on the Soviet Union through geopolitical competition, higher US defense spending, and technology restrictions, believing the Soviet system was economically weaker than it appeared. The CIA concluded California’s economy was larger than the Soviet economy. The agency assessed that the Soviet economy was stagnating, inefficient, and burdened by military costs. The Soviet Union had become far less productive and innovative than the United States and increasingly unable to compete with Western technological and consumer prosperity. Reagan used that knowledge to shape the collapse of a totalitarian system.
Will Trump do the same? Technology issues were discussed at the summit, especially around artificial intelligence, export controls, semiconductors, and supply chains. Reporting indicates that China pushed for easing US restrictions on advanced semiconductors and chip-making technology. For its part, the United States focused on AI safety discussions, strategic guardrails, and export controls tied to national security. US officials are downplaying China’s emphasis on chip export controls. It is unclear whether Washington agreed to significant technology concessions. Trump is a polite man when dealing with authoritarians, so we await our debriefing, hoping the assessment will be forthcoming and transparent.
In the final analysis, the West must dump the CCP in the history’s toilet, just as Reagan did with the Soviet Union, and flush it to the sewer. The United States should center its strategy regarding the rise of communist China on supporting the liberation of the lǎo bǎi xìng—the ordinary Chinese people—from totalitarian rule, enabling that ancient civilization to build a future worthy of its cultural heritage and free the world from the pressures of authoritarian state capitalism. It will then be a worthy partner in world affairs. The Chinese people are decent and kind. Integration with the world capitalist economy will not change the character of the current regime. Communism is incorrigible. Integration will only embolden the CCP. Worse, it will expose the rest of the world to the logic of authoritarian state capitalism and everything that entails—concentration camps, total surveillance, and the final negation of species-being.
freedom and reason 