Niall Ferguson: Are the US and China Truly ‘Polar Opposites’? - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
Niall Ferguson: Are the US and China Truly ‘Polar Opposites’?
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Niall Ferguson is one of the Western world’s most prolific historians, and his recent opinion piece in Bloomberg marries history with current geopolitical insight. He describes the recent meeting in California between Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping as a “cold war summit” reminiscent of the 1973’s Nixon–Brezhnev meeting, except that time was on the side of the United States in Cold War I (though not everyone appreciated this at the time) while now, in Cold War II, time may be on the side of China. Ferguson’s reading of the tea leaves from the Biden–Xi mini-summit is that the United States under Biden is looking more and more like “late Soviet America.” 

Ferguson’s tea leaves include America’s ever-growing debt, with the government “issuing $776 billion in marketable debt per quarter to fund a deficit running at around 7% of GDP”; “annualized interest payments on the federal debt [that] exceeded $1 trillion at the end of last month”; and interest payments that are greater than defense spending in the last quarter. Biden’s approval rating among voters is rapidly declining, with young voters (under age 30) moving toward former President Donald Trump while Black voters support Trump in unprecedented numbers. 

China, Ferguson continues, while not without its own problems, has become the “workshop of the world” and the “arsenal of autocracy.” He notes that China can supply enough solar panels and automobiles for the entire world. It produces most of the world’s electric car batteries, “46% of the world’s ships,” and soon “42% of the less-advanced semiconductors for modern appliances.”  

Ferguson notes that it was Trump who “shift[ed] US policy toward China from accommodation to confrontation,” while Biden at the recent summit used the language of détente. And the Biden–Xi summit occurred at a time when China has increased pressure on Taiwan in anticipation of the upcoming presidential election, pitting a pro-independence incumbent vice president against two opposition parties that are “more conciliatory” toward China.

Meanwhile, Ferguson notes, Xi has removed from power a former foreign minister and ambassador to the U.S., in addition to a former defense minister who may have opposed the saber-rattling against Taiwan. And this is all happening at a time when the United States is distracted in Ukraine and the Middle East. (RELATED: Qin Gang’s Erasure Is Just the Beginning)

Ferguson suggests that China wants not to invade Taiwan but instead to blockade the island. The People’s Liberation Army forces, he writes, regularly train and rehearse for such a blockade. And he reminds us that if there is a repeat of the Cuban Missile Crisis over Taiwan, China, not the U.S., will impose the blockade, and we would be in the Soviet’s position of deciding whether to risk war by running it.

What was especially telling about the Biden-Xi summit to Ferguson was the respective “read-outs” by Chinese and U.S. spokespersons:

In the Chinese read-out, unlike the American version, Xi called on the US to show “in concrete actions” that it does not support Taiwan’s independence, to cease sending arms to Taiwan, and to accept Taiwan’s “peaceful reunification” with China as “inevitable.” The US side offered no comment. The Chinese statement also condemned the US for using export controls, investment reviews and unilateral sanctions against China. Again, no comment.

Ferguson calls this approach “détente lite.” 

The Soviet Union lost Cold War I as a result of internal collapse (with a significant push from the Reagan administration). Another way to lose a cold war, Ferguson writes, is “convergence.” Ferguson worries, quoting N.S. Lyons, that the United States and China may be converging toward a “system of totalizing techno-administrative governance.” In other words, we may be witnessing the emergence in the United States and much of the world of what James Burnham predicted in The Managerial Revolution — a sociopolitical transformation where capitalism and communism converge into an administrative managerial state ruled by a coalition of political, financial, scientific, technological, and cultural elites. Perhaps, Ferguson writes, the most “sinister” aspect of the Biden–Xi summit is “this uncanny sense that the two superpowers are not quite the polar opposites they purport to be.” Perhaps that explains the standing ovation Xi received from America’s business leaders. Perhaps it also explains the Biden administration’s deténtist approach to China’s aggressive behavior.

Perhaps the free citizens of Taiwan should get used to living like their cousins in Hong Kong.

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