U.S. Versus China: A New Era of Great Power Competition, but Without Boundaries

It is amazing that it took until Trump became President for the experts to decide that the conflict with China will be a long one. I am sure glad that low cost production and jobs went to China rather than to Central America decades ago. Otherwise, those governments and economies would be prosperous and there wouldn’t be any immigration problem because few people would leave their jobs to work on the side in the US.

I for one, would be very happy to see a decoupling of the Chinese economy from the US. Hopefully, in 5 years time, China can be wholly self reliant without needing to rely on American technologies and software. Follow that up with internationalisation of the RMB, an increase in the number of nuclear weapons, the building of enough long range hypersonic missiles that can hit the entire continental United States, and finally, the Monroe Doctrine-ing of the US out of the Western Pacific once and for all. Let there be more than one sphere in this world. The US can stick to North America. China should work together with all of Asia, and even Europe to decrease their exposure to American warmongering, American double-crossing and American military, financial, economic and political terrorism. And China will have many supporters worldwide on her side!

Everyone in the Trump administration lies, and the biggest liar among them is Pornpeo. The Chinese have their own philosophies and ideology as well as value system, but they don't sell them like the west. And they never claim them as universal, like the Americans think about their values. That's why we have been fighting new foreign wars every decade, but they have been working one their industrialization and trade. Like it or not, the Chinese don't push their system on anybody.

Let me start with a little story. In 1962 there was a little conflict in the Himalayas between India and China. I was afraid if this continued, government I was working for might fall, and I will loose my job. I had to go to my ancestral village for a religious ceremony there I ran into one of my cousins whose family had never left the village. I told my cousin about the war with china and told him what a catastrophe it will be, if the Chinese took over. He looked straight at me and said. Amrit, my great, great grandfather farmed this land when Maharaja Gulabsingh ruled this land. More Maharajas came , India came , my family still tills same land. If the Chinese came I will still till the same land. He looked straight into my eyes, you are afraid you will loose your job, aren't you Amrit? So as a Canadian now, We were ruled by the British we loved them we fought for them, we died for them, they promised to protect us from you the Americans. They left and we loved you we fought for you we died for you and you promised to protect us. We had a little hard time last year, you called us weak and dishonest but eh, we are cousins. It has always been America first open or hidden.So how will it be different for us, when it will be China first? Let me be my old cousin for a minute and paraphrase him. You are afraid, you are going to loose your world dominance, aren't you. Amrit

"...China is an authoritarian nation that most likely seeks to displace American military dominance of the western Pacific." No, China is run by a dictator whose criminal empire plans to take over major portions of the world and exploit the rest. China confines people (Falun Gong followers, Uighurs, political prisoners, former Party rivals, etc.) in camps where they wait until a foreigner needs an organ transplant. China then selects an unwilling donor, kills him/her with an injection, and immediately harvests the person's organs for transplant. That is how little China cares about individuals. That is the best view of a future world dominated by China.

China, at this point in its development, has the capability to continue advancing its power and wealth regardless of what the US wants. What’s important for the US is that it teams up with its allies to move all security related supply chains out of China and Chinese control. Security related supply chains include those that supply our military and vital infrastructure. This way, if China wants to throw its weight around while continuing its repressive authoritarianism, then at least the security of the US and its allies will not be at China’s mercy.

China is not spreading authoritarianism around the world. Actually, US foreign policy is much more authoritarian than China’s—we tell Europeans what countries and companies they can do business with, China does not. The only evidence cited in this article of China spreading authoritarianism is that it sold surveillance equipment to Ecuador. Leaving aside our arms sales to far worse regimes like Saudi Arabia, the fact that China is willing to allow its companies to do business with everyone is a sign that it is *not* authoritarian and, unlike the US, does not economically coerce other countries to accept its values. The real authoritarians in this conflict are people like Pompeo who want the US government to dictate who all companies, both American and European, do business with. If China creates an alternative global infrastructure that allow companies to do business without coming into the jurisdiction of the US government, it would be the biggest win for global freedom since 1989. And the real reason for this conflict is what Trump’s own official has said—China is a “great power competitor that is not Caucasian.”

Excellent article!

The complexity of China's relationship with the world and the United States is just one more example of why Trump is unfit for office; his used car salesman's method of alternating bullying with flattery is the only tune he knows, and it's utterly ineffective in this and many other settings. If he isn't removed without further delay, coming generations will pay not only with a crippled economy but with their lives in needless, intractable conflicts across the globe.

The mathematical growth machine of China is unstoppable simply because they have distributed themselves into both tiny and gigantic societies and nations using consumerism and trade collaboratively. Extreme examples are evident in tiny societies wherein every roadside multi-product-shop are owned by (fully integrated) Chinese citizenry that dates back thirty years. These tiny shops have (by extension) buying and pricing reach unmatched by the original locals. The shop owners are good citizens and are entrenched, and enjoy full citizenship rights of the adopted Nation. In the Caribbean (and many other emerging Nations), indigenous shop ownership disappeared entirely as no one can match Chinese logistics and organizations, economic reach and (unlimited, indominable sweat equity). Moreover, in mainland China, STEM training is surpassing everyone in numbers or in mathematical proportions unmatched and in a society that is moving in a unified direction. China discovered the (currency printing press) and understands education, infrastructure, globalization and double digit growth as the elixir of modern times. Mr. Trump and his tariff war will simply be a blip on the radar of long term China (China thinking and policy). The Western ideologies are moving to xenophobia, isolationism and paranoid policy making. Chinese Nationals are everywhere living alongside, underfoot and among everybody else gleefully and peacefully. A special understanding of things called globalization.

“Most economists estimate China will overtake the United States as the largest economy in 10 to 15 years.” What kind of nonsense is that? It’s essentially already true. The US and China need to learn to live together. The main problem in trade relations today is not that the issues are insurmountable. It’s that the Trump people have combined resolvable fairness issues (market openness, intellectual property) with a desire to maintain US dominance. We would certainly never accept these measures applied to us. The result is a ridiculous mess that hurts primarily us. We’re going to get less market access, slower world economic growth, and a punishing new arms race. None of it necessary. All wars generate chest-beating propaganda. That doesn’t it any better.

Just think, who has the capacity to take on China other than Trump in America? Nobody else would dare to do what Trump is doing regarding China. It was high time somebody challenged China to stop its unfair trade practices and its attempt to dominate its neighbors.

Why this current power struggle with China is different rests on the likelihood that China will ultimately prevail on many fronts. As the author points out, the Chinese are now a generation, or so, from achieving global economic leadership. The current Huawei phone controversy, really a battle to preserve Apple’s competitive advantage, exemplifies that changing influence. Then too, China’s capacity to field a prodigious fighting force projecting well beyond it’s borders is another. Factoring in Trump’s cozy obsession over totalitarian regimes round the globe further diminishes ideological differences that once set us apart. Historically dominant American exceptionalism is on the verge of being swept into the dustbin alongside the vast British empire upon which the sun once never set.

China has basically hacked almost all defence companies in US for stealing technology. Hope NYTimes will bring clarity on the scale and scope of these attempts through an investigation.

There are two big insights of this article. First we can see China as an adversary like either post WWII Japan or Hitler's Germany, business competitor or existential threat to Western progress. The second is that China has developed for about as long as Western Civilization and has a different cultural outlook., Plato, Aristotle, Christ, vs Confucius? Up until 2017 we had been navigating that gap without a war footing since Nixon, who was prescient about the importance of China. We cannot hold China back anymore than we can prevent damage from Hurricanes. There may be two elements of our culture which are at play here, one is our aggressiveness, in which we in our infancy took land from Spain, England/Canada and Mexico. The other is our very successful balance of egalitarianism with capitalist greed, which at some level has lead to a content population of happy consumers with a sense of right and wrong.

It was the US that couldn't stand the prospect that China - thanks to its large population and its fast growing economy - seemed destined to take over some day as the world's richest and most powerful doctrine. That led to the "Pivot to Asia" and the adoption of a military doctrine in which China is the most likely adversary. It has always been China's frustration to be locked in. To its North, West and South are mainly mountains, deserts and the Siberian wasteland. And to the East its access to the ocean is blocked by a long range of Islands - from the Philippines to Sachalin. The American military buildup in the region alarmed China and pushed it to improve its connections with the rest of the world: the Belt and Road Initiative. That is road and rail lines towards Europe and the Middle East. It is also military bases on the sea route towards the Middle East and Asia. The Buildup may also have contributed to the rise of a nationalist like Xi. Despite all the American claims to the contrary China is quite a normal country. Japan and Korea followed a similar path of industrialization (and received the same accusations of unfair trade practices). And neither Korea nor Taiwan became democratic until it was much wealthier than China now is in terms of income pro capita. Trump is now driving Obama's China-fobia to its extreme. The sanctions against China look more and more like a goal for themselves - not to push China to adopt certain policies but just to harm China.

This article promotes confrontation instead of cooperation between US and China. It used words such as contentious, threat, competition, decoupling, dominance, and antithetical to stir animosity and distrust. What good does it do? Even if we can handle China at this time, what will happen that India is rising to be the next Japan or China? Do we want to fight this perpetual war with all these rising powers ? Why can't we think a more positive way to make a better world for the common goods such as climate change, deadly diseases, and religious extremists? Just open our mind a bit, there are plenty of rooms for everyone.

At a minimum, the Trump anaysis is overdrawn and self-defeating On a human level, the comments by Ms. Skinner are incorrect and racist. Japan was certainly a big power compeititor against whom we fought the largest war in American history, It is now one of our closest allies. A large number of Americans are of German heritage, but that country was overtaken by a murderous regime which became one of the most defiled criminals in world history. For more than 60 years, Grmany has also been one of our clsoest allies. Russia was not a member of the Western family, was motivated by an autoritiarian philosophy and was determined to bury the West. But more important is the fact that American interests should not be defined by the genetic heritage of either the partner nor the opponent. To put a country such as China in a different, more threatening category, because the majority of its inhabitants are not caucasian is both disgusting and self-defeating. .

“China is an authoritarian nation that most likely seeks to displace American military dominance of the western Pacific” Funny. The authoritarian nation is not the one that has attacked and invaded countries around the world like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Vietnam. And it seems to me that China is located in the western Pacific, not the US.

The best way to counter China is to strengthen America with a robust education system, good universal healthcare, a growing middle class, modern infrastructure that allows business to thrive, a fair taxation system that puts ample funds into the federal treasury, stronger government funding of scientific research, development of new technologies and the resulting domestic industries, an honest government where legislators get things done, and on and on. Instead of things like these, which would represent a vision of America’s future, the country is now rotting to its core, thanks to the likes of Trump, McConnell and their followers. China is successful not only because of its inherent strengths, but because of America’s rapid decline. We’re frittering away all of the physical and moral attributes that made us a great nation internally and a force in the world. When the history of this century is written, it will be as much a story of how America finally gave up by giving in to all of its worst elements. To quote Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

In addition to spreading tools of authoritarianism globally and establishing military footholds across oceans and mountains, China seeks to purchase property in the United States. That the Chinese are purchasing homes and businesses adjacent to areas of national security significance (communications hubs, military bases, electrical grids) is no accident. The United States needs to pass laws restricting hostile powers from making such acquisitions.