Sinea deterrendae sunt – China must be deterred. That is the maxim of World on the Brink: How America can beat China in the race for the Twenty-First Century by Dmitri Alperovitch (and Garrett M. Graff). The title is self-revelatory, because the book is mainly about China, the United States and Taiwan.
Unfortunately, the book begins with an illustration of what a Chinese attack on said island-nation could look like, and several times before I’ve complained about the future as an example. It gets tiresome presenting the near future for an audience, however feasible and smart it may be.
Taiwan
The authors delve into the shifting antagonistic and fascinating periods of relations between the US and China, how entwined their histories have been for approximately 300 years. One center is the island of Taiwan, earlier called Formosa after the Portuguese word beautiful, home of the semiconductor giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), producer of Apple’s and nVIDIA’s chips.
A blow to TSMC would, and I concur amateur as I am, most likely cause the global economy to collapse. TSMC, alongside the Dutch company Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography (ASLM), are considered (perhaps) the two most important companies in the world. The authors draw on Chris Miller’s fantastic book Chip War, and it truly is very hard not to acknowledge Alperovitch and Graff’s perception of these two companies as the pinnacle of modern human civilization. Without them no cars, phones, computers, satellites, HIMARs, airplanes etc.
The Chinese Communist Party (the CCP) considers the island a province of China, a natural part of the mainland, so to speak. Little did I know the former Chinese empire did have a presence on the island, but never acknowledged it dominated and subjugated the island. Only after the Kuomintang fled the mainland and the Communist party conquered it, did the CCP turn its eyes on Taiwan (still named Formosa for many).
Opening China
Zhou Enlai, the eminent premier under (the crazy idiot) Mao Zedong uttered words about Taiwan, that sums it all up, to Henry Kissinger: “That place is no great use to you, but a great wound to us.” Richard Nixon, another paranoid leader, wrote some very insightful words about China though: “There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in isolation.” Thus ensued the pivot under Nixon and Jimmy Carter, when China earned the status of Most Favoured Nation, and could rely on a steady growth related to trade with the US.
It’s funny how things work out in reality: Pax Americana, with its financial and economic system, benefited China perhaps more than any other nation, and hopes were that China would become democratic. It was seen as unavoidable (the Olympic Games in 2008 contradict this, but the economic perspective and thirst prevailed).
Anyone studying China knows that the importance of “The Century of Humiliation forms the spine of the People Republic’s founding mythology, where the party emerged as China’s rightful rules by avenging it’s indignities and restoring it’s honor”, as put by the reporter Chun Han Wong (cited by Alperovitch and Graff). Following Mao, Deng Xiaoping, in turn, spread the famous motto of “hide your strength, bide your time” (or “hide our capabilities, bide our time” as it truly was?). Roughly ten years ago a new leader emerged, who initiated the wolf warrior diplomacy and the current motto of “show your strength, waste no time.”
Cold War Two
Taiwan is Berlin during the 1950- and 60’s, and the US must “protect and preserve it as a bastion of Western alliance and avoid provoking a devastating global conflagration until an era of stability can take hold.” They agree with Theodore Roosevelt on “speak softly but carry a big stick.” Too late did the US understand that the so called cold war had begun decades earlier. Soviet spies and propaganda had been working against the US and only in the 1950’s did the Americans comprehend the scope of hostility and actions from the USSR. The Chinese hostile relation towards the US was proven, Alperovitch muses, in 2009 while Chinese hackers penetrated Google and a host of other American companies. Thus, a cold war is a concept, which relies on the defender to comprehend hostile actions. History shows this conception, perception, can take decades to comprehend.
Next comes American arrogance. Americans have been prone to ignore threats and hostile actions at first, and later, they’ve had an inconsistent threat perception. Alperovitch and Graff argue that the American policy nowadays in shortsighted and incoherent in comparison to the anti-Soviet policy’s focus on the defeat of the Soviet Union. A real policy is based on the defeat of the Chinese communist party, requiring diplomatic, economic and military deterrent, a readiness to act at all times.
Respectful and supportive treatment of friends will convince Europe China is a real threat. This the Biden administration has done, in my regard. Biden has let allies and his secretaries into the spotlight, given them room and spotlight. Biden has understood how allies appreciate information-sharing, carrots, not sticks, and support, although the US needs to step up more and needs to let countries know the US is on their side, be they the Phillipines or Sweden, according to Alperovitch and Graff.
Population collapse
I once wrote a very small examination on China and the gendercide/infanticide of girls and female foetuses. In China (and India) tens of millions of girls have been killed and female foetuses been aborted without medical reasons, resulting in a warped gender balance, with far more men than women. Ever since I have thought much about population collapse.
As a parent (or would-be parent), China is one of the most expensive countries to live in. Funnily, China in this regard is very liberal, turning most costs on the parents, not society. Therefore, the average population estimate is that China has about 700 million inhabitants the year 2100. For Russia, the average estimate is 67 million inhabitants. Both countries are facing a population collapse, which might not have a precedent in countries without natural disasters and war.
An issue I miss in the book is environmental collapse. A very large proportion of the Chinese population live in densely populated areas, with water scarcity an issue. They do tocuh on air pollution and water scarcity. During the presidency of Hu Jintao many thousand of protests on environmental issues occurred in China annually, now a past phenomena. The environmental issues haven’t decreased during Xi Jinping, but exacerbated. Environmental and population collapse are intertwined and pose a very real threat to the Chinese communist party, and I wish the authors had written about this.
Semiconductors (and environmental concerns)
On writing about the importance of semiconductors, they actually do write about environmental issues. This is when the really interesting part begins. They write about the importance of foundational chips, how the US should outmanoeuvre China here, and thus, leading us up to the extremely important critical minerals and rare earth elements (abbreviated REE, also called rare earths).
Accessing these minerals is challenging, and doing it in an environmentally friendly way is even more so.
It gladdens me to read how they propose the US should “develop new mining and refining capacity that meets higher labor and environmental standards”, and one way of competing could be to have taxes (in concert with allies and encouraging African and South American countries to follow suit) on “Chinese-processed minerals and the products that contain them”, and ban imported products “from a country that have comparable levels of effectiveness on labor and environment compared to laws in the United States.” Worker safety and sustainable mining are called for, all laudable efforts if realized. I wonder though, if American laws are enough?
War with the West?
Misconception and miscomprehension of the enemy is not solely an American problem. Russia has completely miscalculated Ukraine, the US and the EU. The takeover of Ukraine turned into a full-frontal war which has cost about 200.000 dead Russians and they still don’t dominate the four Ukrainian provinces Putin/Russia has annexed. As Alperovitch and Graff puts it:
The leaders of nations are historically terrible at understand their adversaries’ thinking, in part because leaders – convinced of their own peaceful intentions but wary of the nefariousness of others – tend to underestimate how their own actions will be viewed by others while overestimating the aggression of foreign adversaries.
Diplomatic relations are a necessity to avoid military confrontation, which can happen very easily. China and the US are more hostile today than in many years, and without diplomatic channels between their respective leadership can lead to complete disaster for everyone on Earth. Recalling nuclear confrontational approaches in the “early” days (from a Western perspective) of the Cold War, it took time to establish “rules” and procedures for avoiding total war between superpowers. The authors urge for diplomatic relations amid deterrence.
An minor detail: Regarding “normal” cyberespionage, like the (Russian) SolarWinds attacks, this belongs to similar acts the US commits too: “Shame on us for letting it happen, rather than shame on them for trying.” The authors join Shapiro in this regard.
Conclusion
“We have to marshal all our resources” to deter China diplomatically, economically and militarily. That’s the simple conclusion of this book, simply because a war between the US and China would be extremely costly in human lives and to the world economy. It would be untenable and cause extreme damage to all of us. The US must therefore focus much of its attention on China, with a clear and outspoken strategy to deter China from ever claiming Taiwan or waging war on the US, without loosing Ukraine.