China’s strategic ambitions, the United States exposes Achilles’ heel

Despite repeated failures, Americans believe that those who are familiar with their way of life and their capitalism will definitely want more and forever. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before all other societies, civilizations, and cultures give up their societies, civilizations, and cultures and clamor for everything in the United States, including American-style capitalism, democracy, and culture. Samuel Huntington asserted in his 1996 book, Clash of civilizations, Modernization is different from Westernization, or for that matter Americanization. Many other cultures may prefer to modernize rather than Westernize themselves. Obviously, neither Washington DC nor New York had read his book.

About a year ago, you did write on these pages (bit.ly/3BX8Fd0) that the best guarantee for China’s success is Beijing. Similarly, it can be said that the greatest threat to the status of the US superpower is the US elite and its interests. Nothing can illustrate this point better than Wall Street. American non-financial companies are not far behind. There are many unforgettable lines in an article published by the Hoover Institution (hvr.co/3A5M7q0) to coincide with the Centennial Celebration of the Communist Party of China. One of them is that China must deceive the West by hiding its long-term strategic goals and pretending to be weak and harmless in order to take advantage of Western markets, technology, capital, and talent, while waiting for opportunities to attack. Come back and win the final war. This is an ancient strategy used many times by successive Chinese kings and emperors. China seems to think the time has come. It has behaved like it since 2008, and for this, it must thank Wall Street. It is still China’s trump card. Generally speaking, American companies don’t seem to understand (or may not care).

Therefore, although China seems to know something about the United States in terms of geopolitics, it also started another part of its game plan. That is to move towards common prosperity. In other words, the growth of the economic pie is now complete. Redistributing the cake is Beijing’s new policy goal.

At the same time, the cultural relics of capitalism will also be eliminated. As long as China believes that the economic benefits outweigh the costs, China will tolerate the obvious manifestations of American culture. Since American capitalists and policymakers have neither demonstrated the will nor appetite to reform capitalism, China has correctly concluded that it must act before it is too late. Therefore, it has recently restricted games and entertainment programs.

On Sunday, friends nearby said that China restricts teenagers’ playing games to less than three hours a week. They feel that children in other places will move around like zombies as adults, because screen time has caused a lot of damage to their brains, and Chinese children will grow up to become healthy and intellectually active adults. Regardless of whether there are natural parental exaggerations here, Beijing’s recent decree on the provision of private tutoring as a non-profit activity and restrictions on games have resonated in India and may even be welcomed. The fact that they are considered the correct course of action allows us to confirm that, given the long rope, capitalists are seen as preparing to hang society in the first place. In the context of India, readers should remember an article on Indian packaged food labeling that I wrote in this space two weeks ago (bit.ly/391dfdF).

We can regard the pursuit of common prosperity and the elimination of the ugly elements of capitalism as the third way. The country took the communist line and failed. Countries have embarked on the path of capitalism and are now busy destructing themselves and indulging in free currency. But there is a third route. Use capitalism to create prosperity, and then turn to socialism to share the spoils. Therefore, China is a great experiment, the results of which can show the way to other parts of the world (or not).

So, is the timing right? China thinks so, but there are reasons to doubt it. There is a backlog of debt. China cannot completely avoid the temptation of debt to economic growth after 2005. Growth is needed to pay off debts. Of course, China can formally default on debt repayment, but we don’t know what impact this will have on household finances, even if resistance is eliminated or suppressed. Second, will its war on cultural degradation deprive Chinese entrepreneurs of their creativity and imagination? Third, considering these two risks faced by the strategy China is pursuing, can China find the answer to growth by turning the South China Sea into its own sea? Forcibly reintegrating Taiwan and the mainland, and expanding the “Belt and Road”?

Considering the castration of the American will, interesting times are coming, but they will also be disturbing times.

V. Anantha Nageswaran is a member of the Prime Minister’s Council of Economic Advisors. The above is the author’s personal opinion.