After twenty years of believing in Chinese liberalisation, or at least giving it the benefit of the doubt, the US left has realised that much of it was bull. Via the FT:
- The Alaska summit was acrimonious.
- The US attacked China for violating the rules-based order in HK, Xinjiang Taiwan and Australia.
- China attacked the US for weak human rights at home and abroad.
There are various commentaries on all sorts of angles but none of it really matters much. What does is that this is the official end of the doctrine of “China’s peaceful rise”. The thirty-year propaganda coup that China planned to integrate with the global liberal order. That order is and always was the American liberal empire.
It has been clear for ten years that China had no intention of doing so. Since the rise of Xi Jinping it was also clear that the CCP intended, rather, to occupy the order and turn it illiberal for its own purposes. To create, as it were, the Chinese illiberal empire. But the ‘Obama left’ in America was a bit slow on the uptake.
That miscalculation was mercilessly exploited by Donald Trump, and so, Joe Biden is now salting the earth around it.
The question now arises: where to from here? To my mind, we are still entering the period of Sino-American Cold War rather than an open great power conflict. In time we will see:
- A war over Taiwan. Though I do not see it coming in the next decade, the timeline has been accelerated by the occupation of HK which ended any hope of peaceful reunification.
- That war will probably be lost by liberalism. Strategically, it’s simply too hard to win. Unless the US was to nuclear bomb China, which risks catastrophe everywhere so is extremely unlikely unless a loon is in control. In truth, I don’t see the US even fighting the war directly. America has always maintained maximum strategic flexibility with regard to Taiwan. It will offer moral and strategic support but let Taiwan fight its own battle.
- The key to that battle is not whether it is won or lost. It is how it will impact the greater war between the American liberal empire and the Chinese illiberal version. In short, will Chinese aggression in Taiwan rally the world to CCP containment or capitulation to it?
- The answer is likely to be mixed. Japan, India, Korea and The Philippines will be traumatised by a Taiwanese invasion and will militarise against China with the help of the US and mushrooming Quad alliance. SE Asia will be alarmed but seek strategic balance. The Pacific will be a theatre of contest but largely American dominated. The Anglosphere will be all the way with the USA. The middle east will disintegrate into sectarian proxy wars.
- The key to whether or not CCP containment can ultimately work is probably Europe. If it joins the democratic war on CCP illiberalism then China will decline economically more swiftly as it is starved of capital. Europe may be forced to join the Anglosphere by the Sino-Russian relationship but the Germans are pretty greedy and weak-kneed about China. If Europe is bought by the CCP, as it currently is, then the Chinese illiberal empire can sustain access to capital and the choice for everybody else becomes more complicated. Though it is still likely that, eventually, China declines economically as it ages and runs short of growth options. The CCP is then forced into economically debilitating border and proxy wars to keep its restive peoples busy, which slowly sap its strength as it enters the middle-income trap.
Either way, the die is cast for Australia. We are an American protectorate. Currently, we enjoy being so. But it can always be enforced if we stray too far from the core interests of the liberal US empire. Once the contest of empires is truly joined in the Taiwanese war, Australia is far too valuable to be allowed to drift into the Chinese sphere of influence. Our iron ore and coking coal power Chinese industry. We sit at the jumping-off point for critical Chinese commodity supply routes. Our rare earth metals will, in the future, power the US military. Our satellite integration with PacCom is invaluable.
In short, the Taiwanese war will mark the end of Australia’s steel and energy trades with China. Right alongside the closure and/or harassment of all kinds of strategically vital commodity trades through SE Asia to China.
That may sound terrible and it will hurt. But, realistically, the steel trade is largely doomed anyway as the Chinese economy swings away from urbanisation and heavy industry in the years ahead. Other American protectorates will fill some of the hole left by blocked Chinese exports. Our energy exports are so badly structured that they cost us money, at least on the east coast.
This touches on what may well develop into Australia’s greatest internal challenge during and after the Taiwanese war: how to keep WA as an intact state of Australia. Without being specific about it, contingency plans should be drawn up.
The second and related challenge will, I’m sorry to say, be what to do about the ethnic Chinese diaspora which Bejing is determined to keep loyal to its illberal empire whatever the cost. Unquestioning multiculturalism is already giving way to a less forgiving kind of Australian nationalism. That will get worse.
It’s not much fun to witness the collapse of one’s hopeful fantasies of a collective human future culminating on the rainbow bridge of the exploratory space vessel USS Enterprise. But the truth is, the world is always shit so don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
It is no small thing to have your choice of nightmares.
