Xi jinping

Much has been made of the return of great power competition. In truth, it never went away, although the great game was so one-sided for a time that almost everyone in the West tuned out, assuming the match was over in perpetuity. It was too boring to contemplate and so attention drifted to other concerns and second- and third-order problems. China’s attention did not deviate, and once again it is a great power. Like cholesterol, great powers can be good, in that they accept the present international order, or bad, in that they do not. China does not, and seeks to overturn the contemporary order the West created.  This is the source of what is already the great conflict of 21st century. China is not a status quo great power.

As President Trump settles in for a long trade war with China, he ignores a far more serious crisis in China relations. At stake is not just the size of a trade deficit, but the future of America’s position as a superpower. China has made clear its determination to lead the world in Artificial Intelligence by 2030 and to become the world’s sole AI superpower by 2050. To achieve these goals, China is aggressively investing tens of billions of dollars in future technology including robotics, surveillance, and data analysis. This state-controlled effort unites both the public and private sectors for a single purpose: world domination.

Alarmist news reports and panicky stock sell-offs. A threat to impose tariffs on US goods in retaliation for President Trump’s threatened levies. You’d think that Beijing had just ruthlessly shut down a major engine of American growth. But the truth is that tariff fear-mongering reveals the gulf between America’s financial markets and its real economy that provides everyday goods and services. The Chinese economy has grown spectacularly since Beijing turned away from Maoism in the 1980s. It’s true that major American industries from aircraft to agriculture have profited handsomely from supplying Chinese demand. The offshoring model supercharged by China’s admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2002 has been especially lucrative.

At the last minute the Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping vetoed the trade deal with the United States, after his representatives had negotiated and agreed to it. Xi claimed that he will take the responsibility for ‘all possible consequences.’ This left President Trump no choice but to impose higher tariffs on some Chinese imports. This battle over trade marks only the early rounds of the US struggle with China. China’s economic success was achieved in large measure by taking advantage of the working people of both China and the US. It was made possible because the US allowed it to enter the world’s free trade system. Because China entered the West’s economic ecosystem a generation ago, it has flourished.

Know this: It doesn’t matter what happens during what can only be described as ‘dinner diplomacy’ between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping at the G20 — good, bad or breakthrough. That’s because the course of US-China relations — a complex relationship that blends cooperation, competition and geopolitical slugfest — is set in stone. The reasons are obvious. From tensions all around China’s near seas, to the final status of Taiwan, to the flow of hundreds of billions of dollars in trade to an arms race in Asia that will soon feature sci-fi like hypersonic weapons the future is frighteningly clear.

What started out as one of those trade wars that Donald Trump believes are ‘easy to win’ has turned into a far broader confrontation between the US and China which is set to expand and deepen further. In his no-nonsense manner, the President has brought the era of ‘constructive engagement’ between the world’s two largest economies to a shuddering halt. Gone are the days when successive administrations thought economic growth would make the Chinese and their leaders ‘more like us’. Instead, the last major country ruled by a Communist Party is identified as a strategic competitor whose further economic political and military expansion has to be checked in America’s national interest.