Opinion | The obsession with China's decline
By Tom Fowdy
A rare objectively written article in the Japan Times, titled: "America's 'new' China narrative: A wounded dragon" describes how the mainstream media have, in light of recent economic difficulties, seized upon a narrative of dismissing China's rise and instead emphasizing what they perceive as "China's decline." According to this line of commentary, which is repeated from the Washington Post to the Wall Street Journal, amongst others, China's economic rise is now "over", citing the country's domestic debt, high youth unemployment, geopolitical tensions and of course an aging population which they argue will usher in a shrinking workforce over time.
The author, James K. Galbraith, however, goes to disagree. His conclusion is that these things have all been predicted before, and that "So, what is the new narrative really about? It is not so much about China as it is about the West. It is about our lead in technologies, our free-market system and our ability to wield power and to keep all challengers at bay. It is about reinforcing what Westerners like to believe: the inevitable triumph of capitalism and democracy. Above all, it is about our American leaders winning out against "bad folks" who may do "bad things." It's a narrative that's made-to-measure for the 2024 election campaign."
The reason why the discourse of China's decline has become so eagerly anticipated is because the shift in the geopolitical environment towards US-China competition has made an acceptance of China's rise, once deemed an opportunity and an inevitability, into something unacceptable which must be stopped at all costs, with politicians and commentators having juxtaposed it into a zero-sum "threat" to US world dominance and the prevalence of western liberal-democracy at large. The infusion of this political agenda has made it nearly impossible to report on China in good faith or to admit anything good about the country or its development, with all who do so being framed with suspicion.
Of course, as the article notes, obsession over China's decline is not new, or at least for that matter, the Communist Party. After all, who was it who authored a book all the way back in 2001 called "The Coming Collapse of China"? The book has become an object of ridicule for those who support China because it represents a caricature of the absurdity that Beijing will soon inevitably fail. Of course, it is an unassailable truth that nothing lasts forever, I mean one day in billions of years to come there will be no Earth. However, the insistence that the Communist Party must "politically fail" in the near future is ideological. It is born out of the hubris stemming from America's victory in the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, which assumes that the collapse and failure of Communism as a political and economic system is an inevitability.
This thesis, known as "The End of History" was expounded upon by Francis Fukuyama, who argued (as now proven wrong completely) that liberal democracy was the final and destined form of human evolution and government, and that great power competition and "regressive" states would be a thing of the past. Part of this logic is partially derived from Christianity, which also holds the religion's universal victory, and thus the return of Christ's kingdom, to be an absolute certainty, therefore all "not of god" (or the truthful ideology in other words) must fail.
It was because of this that the US so aptly believed that even if China was not going to "decline" economically, its transformation into a US-style country was underway through the process of free market capitalism and "reform and opening up." This was what made four decades of open engagement such a politically acceptable premise, and why in turn China's rise was embraced. However, once it became clear that this ideological "transformation" was not taking place, the US's stance turned towards confrontation and hostility, now believing that Beijing's "absorption" into American hegemony was not an inevitability, but in fact a threat to it.
Therefore, the onus of political discourse transformed from treating China's rise as a given, towards actively denying and attempting to suppress it, and henceforth now framing everything China does as a failure as a means of psychological warfare. This is why the media discourse, starting from the point around 2019, has become militantly negative and the conclusion that you must draw from every setback or challenge China faces is that Xi Jinping's regime is facing failure in some way, therefore of course, you shouldn't invest or engage with China anymore. Thus, just one patch of sluggish growth is doomed as the complete, absolute and almost certain "end" of China's rise. And what if it isn't? Well, the cycle just starts again with the next challenge or setback the country faces, because these rules don't apply to the US itself.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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