“I think both
sides [China and the United States] should work hard to build a new kind of
relationship between big powers. The two sides should co-operate with each
other for a win-win result in order to benefit people from the two countries
and around the world”.
President Xi
Jingping
The view from on high
Leangkollen, Norway. 7 February. Is Europe
rising to the China challenge? No. Is the first truly global cold war underway?
Not quite yet. Is an era of cold, contested
globalisation underway? Most definitely.
The Leangkollen Conference is a gem of a
security conference. Sitting high above the Oslo Fjord the gathering is
perfectly placed to think big about big issues.
This year was no exception. My dear friend, Kate Hansen Bundt, and her
outstanding young team at the Norwegian Atlantic Committee (DNAK), once again
set the bar high for an as ever distinguished group to consider the challenge
of China’s burgeoning power. However, what I heard also concerned me. There
seemed to be a blind willingness on the part of some to not just accept the
fact of Chinese power, but also the nature of it. There was also a dangerous
equivalency expressed at times between the US and China in the mind of some of
those Europeans present. Whatever one might think of President Trump there is a
vast difference between the nature, the values, and above all the hope implicit
in American power compared with that of contemporary China.
What this dangerous slide towards
equivalency also shows is how far Europeans have moved away from the hard years
of strategic reality in which hard choices must be made and, at times, even
harder choices. Europeans must take sides in what will be the great strategic
contest of this age, and it is very clear which side Europeans must be on. Sadly, too many Europeans leaders and
commentators find it hard to accept that China’s rise is actually happening, the
scale of the challenge China poses for the liberal world order, or that Beijing
is anything but benign. Indeed, a
prevailing theme throughout the conference was that China’s power is
over-stated, and that China is, at best, a regional power with bits of global
outreach. This view strikes me as complacent in the extreme. The scale of China’s
global-reach ambitions are reflected in Beijing’s suggestion that it is a ‘near
Arctic’ power.
Furthermore, there are many power levers
in Beijing’s growing grand strategic tool-kit. Whilst much of the focus is on
China’s growing military might and reach, China’s use of debt and diplomatic
coercion is far more effective on a daily basis than any supposed military
threat. And, Beijing has already demonstrated
its willingness and ability to apply such coercion to force compliance and
acceptance of its increasingly assertive global foreign and security policy. Take
Djibouti. China secured a port with a loan to Djibouti it cannot possibly hope
to repay. How long before France and the
US who also have facilities therein are asked to leave? Norway has also
experience of such coercion. In December 2010, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo was
scheduled to receive the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in Oslo. Not only was
Xiaobo prevented from attending, Beijing put China-Norwegian relations into the
diplomatic deep freeze for six years thereafter.
Nudging China
The ‘West’ is transforming from regional
place into global idea and it is the idea of openness that China is contesting,
or rather exploiting because Beijing is perfectly willing to use the West’s
openness against it. At stake is the very
nature of globalisation and the kind of world that will emerge. If the West is
to successfully ‘nudge’ China towards a more open society and market, Europeans
will need to play their collective part.
Are they up to it? The goal of a
more open China would be a worthy one, for such a China would still be
immensely powerful and compete with the West, most notably the United States.
However, the dark side of China, and it can be very dark, epitomises also the
dark, cold side of globalisation implicit in much of China’s contemporary
challenge to the West.
If China succeeds in exploiting Europe’s
need for money to maintain an illusion of prosperity even as its
competitiveness declines dramatically, there is a very distinct danger that
Europe would in time become a ‘debt colony’ of Beijing and subject to its
bidding.
Make no mistake, Europe is on the
front-line of this struggle, with the growing debt dependency of Europeans
already distorting the cohesion of both the EU and NATO far more than a
capricious President Trump. Worse, it is not just Europe’s smaller and poorer
states that are vulnerable to the coercion implicit in China’s strategic
outreach and assertive statecraft.
Britain’s decision last week to permit Huawei to construct ‘non-core’ parts of its future 5G network is
both nonsensical and dangerous. Given the nature of 5G technology, and the
myriad ‘internet of things’ it will power, there is every danger that service
denial would cripple Britain’s critical infrastructure at a critical security
juncture, whatever ‘safeguards’ are built-in.
China is an authoritarian state driven by the need to control, and at
times coerce. Provide such a state with the means to exert control and it will,
and at a moment it deems most appropriate to meeting its strategic ends.
The essential point about power is that
unless infused with values it is inherently amoral. It is power. If ever this
China was to have a twenty-first century unipolar moment then rest assured
China’s statecraft would take on all the aspects of a Chinese state willing to
go to great lengths to force compliance.
Such coercion is already being applied across the civil-military
spectrum via debt, to espionage and the implied threat of the use of force. A
senior British official told me last week that China has more spies in the UK
than any other state.
Europe and China
For all the friction there is some hope
that China can be nudged towards the role of responsible global citizen. Unlike
the Cold War there is nothing irreconcilable about the US-Chinese
relationship. Deals can be done with
China, accommodations made. And, Europeans, together with the other democracies
that make up the Global West, can act as interested friends to both the
Americans and Chinese by helping to mitigate any drift towards
‘irreconcilability’ in the US-China relationship, not least by nudging both
back towards multilateralism and the trust it builds. For Europeans to play
such a role they will need to collectively convince Beijing that partnership
with China does not imply submission to it. For Americans to play their allotted
role will require that Washington re-learn the arts of complex coalition
leadership.
Is
Europe rising to the China challenge? Not yet, but collectively Europeans will
need to. Is the first truly global cold war underway? No, but cold, contested,
dark globalisation is a new form of a new ‘arms race’ in China’s quest for
global dominance. Like it or not, Europeans will need to take part in that
race, if for no other reason than it is China that is increasingly making the
rules, including the future shape of conflict.
‘Respect’
should be the mantra Europeans should adopt in dealing with China. Respect for
China, respect for its power and, of course, respect for its people and
potential. Equally, Europeans must also ‘respect’
the nature of the Chinese state, the dark sides of its growing influence and
power, and the threat it could pose, and develop the resilience needed to
resist Chinese coercion, both implied and actual, overt and covert.
Cold
globalisation and the bipolar US-China contest for global power is a fact. The outcome will decide not only the nature of
the twenty-first century, but which values and ideas will dominate. In that
sense there IS an ideological edge to the challenge China poses to the West,
even if it is nothing like the contest that suffused the Cold War. For Europeans,
the China challenge will also decide if they have the collective will and power
to be strategic partners and, at times, critical friends of China, or simply
yet more strategic prey.
In other words, no more China wishful thinking, Europe. Realism, respect and resiliency.
Julian Lindley-French
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