Re: [GELORA45] Why the Trump Administration Has Helped China

['B.H. Jo' b...@yahoo.com [GELORA45]]

 Artikel ttg geopolitik/ekonomi yg menarik/bagus utk di-simak.
Salam, BH Jo
    On Friday, June 12, 2020, 11:32:54 PM PDT, ChanCT sa...@netvigator.com 
[GELORA45] <gelora45@yahoogroups.com> wrote:  
 
     
 Strange as it may sound, China will miss the Trump administration, if, and 
when, it goes.  
 
   
 
 57,774     
Undoubtedly, the Trump administration has been the most aggravating 
administration that China has had to deal with since the normalization process 
that Henry Kissinger began in 1971. It has launched a trade war that has 
damaged the Chinese economy a little. Restrictions have been placed on 
technology exports to China. A massive effort has been undertaken to cripple 
Huawei. Yet, the most galling move has been the effort to extradite Meng 
Wanzhou. Applying Western laws to Chinese citizens reminds the Chinese people 
vividly of the Century of Humiliation when Western laws were applied on Chinese 
soil.  
 
Yet, if the Chinese leaders think long-term and strategically, as they are wont 
to do, they could also calculate that the Trump administration may have helped 
China. Clearly, the Trump administration has no thoughtful, comprehensive and 
long-term strategy to manage an ever-rising China. Nor has it heeded the wise 
advice of key strategic thinkers, like Kissinger or George Kennan. Kennan, for 
example, advised that the long-term outcome of the contest with the then Soviet 
Union would depend on “the degree to which the United States can create among 
the peoples of the world” the impression of a country “which is coping with the 
problem of its internal life” and “which has a spiritual vitality.” No such 
impression has been created by the Trump administration. Post-coronavirus and 
post-George Floyd, America is delivering the opposite impression. In relative 
terms, the Trump administration has raised the stature of China, which is now 
perceived as the more competent country in the world.  
 
To be fair, America’s internal problems have preceded President Donald Trump. 
It is the only major developed country where the income of the bottom fifty 
percent has gone down for a thirty-year period leading to the creation of a 
“sea of despair” among the white working classes. John Rawls would have been 
appalled to see this. Indeed, as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times says, 
America has become a plutocracy. By contrast, China has created a meritocratic 
governing system. A meritocracy could well out-perform a plutocracy.  
 
Equally importantly, Kennan emphasized that America had to assiduously 
cultivate friends and allies. The Trump administration has seriously damaged 
relationships with friends and allies. In private, the Europeans are appalled.. 
Walking away from the World Health Organization (WHO) when the world never 
needed the WHO more, especially to help poor African countries, was massively 
irresponsible. Not one American ally followed the United States out of WHO. The 
Trump administration has also threatened tariffs on allies like Canada and 
Mexico, Germany and France. All this does not mean that the rest of the world 
will rush to embrace China. Indeed, the Europeans have developed new 
reservations about working closely with China. Yet, there is no doubt that 
diminishing global respect for the United States opens more geopolitical space 
for China. Madeleine Albright once said “We are the indispensable nation. We 
stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future.” The Trump 
administration may succeed in making America a dispensable nation, presenting 
another geopolitical gift to China.  
     
The Trump administration has also ignored another wise piece of advice of 
George Kennan: to not insult one’s adversaries. No other Administration has 
insulted China as much as the Trump administration. Trump has said “China’s 
pattern of misconduct is well known. For decades, they have ripped off the 
United States like no one has ever done before.”  
 
In theory, such insults could have damaged the standing of the Chinese 
government in the eyes of its own people. The effect has been the opposite. 
According to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer, the country where the people 
have the highest trust in their government is China. It is 90 percent. This is 
not surprising. For the vast majority of Chinese people, the past forty years 
of social and economic development have been the best in four thousand years. 
Kennan spoke of domestic “spiritual vitality.” China enjoys it today. A 
Stanford University psychologist, Jean Fan, has observed that “in contrast to 
America’s stagnation, China’s culture, self-concept, and morale are being 
transformed at a rapid pace—mostly for the better.” The Chinese people are also 
acutely aware that China has handled the coronavirus crisis better than 
America. If America had the same rate of fatalities as China, then it would 
have had one thousand deaths instead of one-hundred thousand. Against this 
backdrop, the constant insults hurled at China have only provoked a strong 
nationalistic response, boosting the standing of the Chinese government. One 
small but critical point needs to be added here: no other government in the 
world hurls insults at China. America stands alone in this dimension, ignoring 
once again Kennan’s valuable advice: “And if there were any qualities that lie 
within our ability to cultivate that might set us off from the rest of the 
world, these would be the virtues of modesty and humility.”   
 
 
 
If he were alive today, then Kennan would first advise his fellow Americans to 
step back and thoughtfully work out a comprehensive long-term strategy before 
plunging into a major geopolitical contest against China. Any such strategy, 
heeding the advice of thinkers like Sun Tzu, would first require a 
comprehensive evaluation of the relative strengths and weaknesses of both 
parties. 
 
There is no doubt that America retains many magnificent strengths. It remains 
the most successful society humanity has created since human history began. No 
other society has sent a man to the moon. No other society has produced a 
Google and Facebook, Apple and Amazon, in short order. Even more remarkably, 
two of its biggest corporations, Google and Microsoft, are run by foreign-born 
citizens. No major Chinese corporation is run by a non-Chinese. China can tap 
the talents of 1.4 billion people; America can tap the talent of 7.8 billion, 
including talented Chinese. It would be a huge mistake for any Chinese leader 
to underestimate America. Fortunately, or unfortunately, that is not likely to 
happen. 
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By contrast, in evaluating China’s relative strengths and weaknesses, the Trump 
administration is making the mistake of underestimating China. Here the supreme 
ideological conviction that democracies will always triumph against a communist 
party system creates a particular ideological blindness in America. In reality, 
functionally, the CCP does not stand for the Chinese Communist Party. It stands 
for the Chinese Civilization Party. The key goal of the CCP is not to revive 
communism globally. It is to revive the world’s oldest civilization and make it 
again one of the world’s most respected civilizations. This is the goal that 
energizes the Chinese people and explains the unusual vibrancy and vitality of 
Chinese society. Equally importantly, the Chinese civilization has historically 
been the most resilient civilization. As Professor Wang Gungwu says, it is the 
only civilization to have been knocked four times over four thousand years. 
Each time it stood up again. There is no doubt that Chinese civilization is now 
a great renaissance. 
 
It is therefore unwise for any American strategic thinker to assume that 
Americans cannot lose. It’s true that America hasn’t lost a major contest in 
over a hundred years but it has never had to deal with a competitor as 
formidable as China. Equally importantly, if the primary goal of the CCP is to 
improve the well-being of its people (and thereby revive Chinese civilization), 
there need not be a fundamental contradiction with the primary goal of any new 
American administration: to once again improve the well-being of the American 
people. Hence, when the Trump administration goes and America tries again to 
work out a more thoughtful long-term strategy towards China, it should consider 
a now unthinkable option: a strong Chinese civilization and a strong America 
can live together in peace in the twenty-first century. The world will be 
relieved and even cheer this outcome. And the American people will be better 
off. 
 
   
 
 57,775     
Kishore Mahbubani is a professor in the practice of public policy at the 
National University of Singapore and the author of Has China Won?
 
Image: Reuters
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