What if China Succeeds? |
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I recently participated in a daylong conference focused on the question “If China succeeds, what are the implications for our security, prosperity, and freedom?” My colleagues attempted to devise win-win scenarios in which China’s rise could be consistent with the continued flourishing of the United States and its allies.
I took a more direct approach. I started instead by asking how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself defines success. Contrary to my colleagues’ rosier assessments, that exercise reveals that the CCP’s success would likely result in a more dangerous, impoverished, and tyrannical world for everyone else.
I recently participated in a daylong conference focused on the question “If China succeeds, what are the implications for our security, prosperity, and freedom?” My colleagues attempted to devise win-win scenarios in which China’s rise could be consistent with the continued flourishing of the United States and its allies.
I took a more direct approach. I started instead by asking how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) itself defines success. Contrary to my colleagues’ rosier assessments, that exercise reveals that the CCP’s success would likely result in a more dangerous, impoverished, and tyrannical world for everyone else.
Let’s begin by examining U.S. success over the past 80 years. After World War II, the United States and its allies constructed a so-called liberal international order. The system was based on strong U.S/ military alliances in Europe and Asia, the expansion of free market economic systems at home and abroad, and the (sometimes inconsistent) promotion of democracy and human rights. The system was imperfect to be sure, but it still resulted in one of the most remarkable transformations of the human condition in world history. Since 1945, there have been 80 years of great-power peace, standards of living globally have increased fivefold, and the number of democratic countries has multiplied by nearly eight times. That is quite a record.
But a successful CCP would structure the world differently.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has railed against U.S. alliances in Asia as relics of the Cold War that should be replaced by an “Asia for Asians” approach to regional security. China’s success in that........