Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Screenshot
A RECENT ARTICLE by Adam Tooze in the Financial Times proves a notable example of Western narcissism. Namely, with much hand-wringing toward the apparent decline in American power to be a bulwark of the international order, Tooze frames China as the “last adult in the room” who should step up to ensure the international order.
To this extent, for Tooze, China provides the right conditions for maintaining economic prosperity. Tooze writes, “Under Communist party leadership, China is the last true bastion of technocratic ‘growthmanship’ in the world economy. Corporates who are willing to face the heat of Chinese competition love it.”
Tooze then goes on to outline steps that he believes China should take in order to shore up its global power. Most suggestions involve China negotiating an end to the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and creating multilateral institutions to propagate green power, with a “coalition of the willing.”
The article should, at a glance, show Tooze’s narrow political imagination. With the perceived crisis of American power, Tooze cannot imagine any other solution except another power stepping up in order to keep the wheels of capitalism turning. The world is for Tooze, in that sense, simply one dominated by great powers. There is no room for agency by other actors, and Tooze can hardly imagine any attempt by those small powers caught in the midst of great power rivalry to align with each other to find ways out of great power dominance.
Not only are Tooze’s solutions hilariously unworkable, but they also demonstrate profoundly little knowledge of China as it is today.
In what world is China the “last true bastion of technocratic ‘growthmanship’”? Growth has been slowing in China for years, as a result of which the country sees enormous labor discontent on a daily basis. The stark social pressures of contemporary China and the lack of economic opportunities have led many young people to leave, something that has been termed “run-ology.”
It is hardly as though China is some model of laissez-faire capitalism that corporations would find to be a playground that offers free and fair competition. The Chinese state acts to prop up national companies, so as to be competitive against Western ones, and is willing to retaliate against companies that cross its red lines–for example, drumming up nationalistic sentiment against Western tech companies when politically expedient, or threatening them with being shut out of the Chinese market. Indeed, neither does the experience of Chinese companies themselves attest to the existence of free and fair competition, as observed in the fall from grace of Jack Ma of Alibaba fame for daring to criticize the Chinese government on financial regulatory policy.
Likewise, Tooze does not seem to understand that it is unlikely that China has the international goodwill to be able to come to some grand bargain over everything from the Strait of Hormuz crisis to the Russia-Ukraine war. China has, of course, been one of Russia’s staunchest allies; it is hard to believe that Ukraine or, for that matter, parts of the world threatened by Russia would suddenly have faith in China to come to a grand deal that would satisfy all parties. For example, even if American power is in crisis, it is hard to imagine that the US itself–or, for that matter, its proxy state of Israel–would acquiesce to grand Chinese dealmaking in the Middle East, if only to defend its own interests there. Even if the sustained dominance of US power is increasingly questionable, it is hardly as though the US has evaporated from the Earth and already has zero role to play in the world–the British empire is an example of one that continued to exert a powerful influence on the world despite long decades of decline.
Indeed, Tooze’s argumentation is not only facile, but it goes to show the abstractions that Western opinion-makers operate under the delusions of when trying to understand geopolitics. In times of shifting global conditions, muddled thinking is likely to prevail from those whose understanding of non-Western contexts is limited to projection. The rest of us will suffer from it.