Why China is dangerous, and what to do about it
What does Xi’s China want? The answers are pretty clear.
First, to create the conditions for the ‘safe’ military subjugation of Taiwan.
Second, to coerce states in the Eastern Pacific and South and East China Seas spheres of Chinese influence to accept Beijing’s de facto control because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are control freaks, and its leadership fears any system – domestic or foreign – that might challenge its control.
Third, China wants to use the global geoeconomic system to fund its geopolitical ambitions by fair means and foul.
Fourth, to use Russia and Iran to fix US forces in theaters away from the Eastern Pacific and ensure the Americans cannot intervene with adequate resources.
Fifth, in the longer run Xi Jinping wants to curb US power in the Pacific to the point where the Americans are effectively excluded from the Pacific east of Pearl Harbor.
Dead historians tended to divide the history of the Roman Empire into three eras: the Republicanate, Principate and Dominate. The Republicanate (for Republican period, which I just invented) is seen by some as a glorious era during which Rome functioned like some latter day Western European democracy but in fact did not. This glorious era made all sorts of allusions to ancient Greece but was destroyed in the First Century BC by over-mighty citizens such as Sulla, Pompey and Caesar who seized power from the Senate and squabbled mightily amongst themselves but still ruled under the pretence that they were merely primus inter pares and were in fact defending the Republic. This was the Principate. Then there was the final phase of Rome’s glory which also marked its decline, division and eventual collapse – the Dominate. During the Dominate the emperors abandoned all and any attempt to pretend some residual constitutional propriety existed and ruled by naked military power.
The cause of the Dominate was Rome’s so-called Third Century Crisis. This was caused by the end of imperial expansion, the growing costs of maintaining imperial power across the known world, growing incursions into said Empire from emerging competitors, the breakdown of trade, inflation due to the printing of money by emperors with no understanding of economics, and the myriad political divisions that decline is father to and the growing influence of the military in politics.
How is the West complicit?
Take China today. For thirty years China has been content to get rich and powerful by helping Western leaders maintain the Potemkinesque façade of material prosperity. Under this arrangement, known by the rather misleading term globalisation when it was really Chinaisation, the West was made to feel materially comfortable in return for paying China to accelerate its own development and construct an enormous military machine.
As long as the West was content to consume huge amounts of Chinese goods and Western leaders were happy to turn a blind eye to Beijing’s coercion, spying, stealing and all-around collective bullying, China was happy to get richer and more powerful. Some states, such as the strategically illiterate British, even sold their industrial crown jewels and much else to China, such as British Steel, which should have been renamed Chinese Steel.
There was a problem. The Chinese Communist Party which controls China with an iron fist, particularly since it crushed (literally) a bunch of students in 1989 who had the temerity to challenge its absolute power, needed globalisation. This is because so-called post-Tiananmen deal between the CCP and the burgeoning Chinese middle class involved the latter never questioning the power of the former in return for making the latter ever more materially comfortable.
The Chinese Dominate
During this period of the Chinese Principate CCP leaders continued to pretend they were ‘of’ the people. Hua Goufeng, Jiang Xemin, Hu Jintao and others all claimed they were children of the proletariat. Then came Xi Jinping, China’s wannabe Caesar, who in 2018 became “President for Life”. Xi, a princeling of the Party, crossed the Chinese Rubicon in two ways. First, he replaced any legitimacy conferred on him by the ‘Party’ by establishing his power on the People’s Liberation Army and showering the armed forces with glittering new weapons. Second, he abandoned any pretence to be the Chinese heir of Karl Marx and replaced Communism with old-fashioned Han nationalism reinforced with a strong dose of Xenophobia.
The reasons for this became apparent during the COVID catastrophe. Xi realised that one day the West would wake up and finally understand that it had been feeding a dragon that could one day consume it. When that happened the West’s growing transfer of supply chains to China would stop. Starved of Western money China would face a problem transferring export generated income into domestic development unless Xi could find alternatives. The route Xi took was effectively to force smaller and poorer powers into China’s orbit through debt. The problem was that most of the West woke up too early (except the British whose leaders continue to try and sell themselves to China) and Russia, China’s useful idiot, screwed up with the second invasion of Ukraine.
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Now, China is faced with a situation not unlike Rome during the Third Century Crisis. It has built an enormous military which is very impressive, but which will soon decline because it will need to be constantly re-capitalised. However, unless the CCP can maintain at least 6% per annum growth the only way to do that would be to shift money away from social development. When that happens XI will face growing discontent in both the Party and the country and will doubtless seek to suppress dissent. He will also be tempted to embark on military adventurism to burnish his Han nationalist credentials, with Taiwan clearly in the crosshairs of Chinese gunsights, and maybe others.
Action This Day!
Based on this analysis, here is what needs to be done.
First, prevent China from creating the conditions for the ‘safe’ military subjugation of Taiwan by US allies helping to keep America strong where she needs to be strong. In Europe, that means European allies must deliver two thirds (67%) of NATO’s combined operational capacity for collective defence by 2035 at the very latest, as measured in rapidly usable forces, enablers, and other capabilities to execute advance plans across SACEUR’s Area of Responsibility. America’s European allies must also collectively provide at least 50% of all NATO Defense Planning Process (NDPP) designated capabilities by 2030.
Second, prevent China from coercing states in the Eastern Pacific and South and East China Seas spheres of Chinese influence to accept Beijing’s de facto control. This can only be achieved by a new concept of Global Democratic Alliance built around the US and with strong democratic allies in Europe and the Pacific.
Third, turn the global geoeconomic system back in the West’s favour and thus legitimate Western geopolitical ambitions by providing both carrots and sticks to China. The Trump administration is using tariffs and reshoring of industries as a blunt tool to create such a shift but as yet there is no apparent geopolitical end such policy aspires.
Fourth, we need to blunt the ability of Russia and Iran to fix US forces in theaters away from the Pacific. For example, the NATO European allies must aspire to the creation of an Allied Mobile Heavy Force by 2030 that could deter, defend and defeat the Russians irrespective of US force commitments.
Fifth, strengthen US power in the Pacific to the point where the ends, ways and means of Chinese policy and strategy are impossible to realise because the cost of doing so would threaten the hold of the CCP over the Chinese people.
NATO?
What would such a strategy mean for NATO? There are some 1.3 million personnel ‘under arms’ in Europe. That is more than enough Europeans in uniform, but they must be better equipped, better armed, better trained, and better supported. At the very least, the NATO Force Goals must be re-confirmed and reinforced. What NATO needs as a downpayment on the future transatlantic relationship is an Allied Mobile Heavy Force (AMHF) as living proof of more equitable transatlantic burden-sharing with its main purpose to act as a high-end, first responder force sufficiently robust and responsive, and held at a sufficient level of readiness, to meet all and any threats to the territory of the European theater.
A first step would be a strengthened NATO Force Model through which the enhanced NATO Response Force of some 40,000 troops is really transformed into a European Pillar Future Force of some 300,000 troops maintained at high alert, with 44,000 kept at high readiness. Whilst the new force would be held at 24 hours ‘Notice to Act’ the bulk of the NATO Force Structure would be held at 15 days ‘Notice to Move’. A force of that size and with the necessary level of fighting power would normally mean that with rotation there would always be a force of some 100,000 personnel kept at high readiness. A NATO standard brigade is normally between 3200 and 5500 strong. There are some 80 European army brigades most of which are neither warfighters nor mobile. Given that both air and naval forces will also need to be included a land force of, say, 200,000 would need at least 50 to 60 European rapid reaction warfighter brigades together with all their supporting enablers and elements. There are, at best, only 20 to 30 such brigades today.
The cost? A minimum of 3.5% GDP across the Alliance, which is exactly what Trump will demand at the NATO Summit in The Hague in June.
The curse of empires
China is not intrinsically bad. It is simply behaving like all ultra-nationalists behave when they have the power to impose their will on others. What is bad is the inability of democratic leaders to face uncomfortable truths. This is something I saw when I recently chaired a meeting last week at NATO HQ in Brussels. Ultimately, the Middle Kingdom sees itself as precisely that – the center of the world, an empire.
Empires are of course dangerous when they expand, but they are particularly dangerous when they begin to decline, and the settled order of power therein is challenged. That is exactly what happened in the Third Century to Rome and may well happen to China now as those in power seek to re-establish ‘order’. Therefore, we are just entering peak danger as far as China is concerned but with strength there is still a good chance Beijing can be persuaded that mutual coexistence is better than mutually assured destruction.
As Emperor Marcus Aurelius said: “Because other people are fools, must you be so too?”
Face it, leaders!
