On Making Sense of China-U.S. Relations: A Conversation with Brian Wong
Photo of Brian Wong. Image provided by Brian Wong.
Brian Y. S. Wong is a Rhodes Scholar (2020) & Kwok Scholar (2015) from Hong Kong SAR, pursuing a DPhil in Politics at Balliol College, University of Oxford. They hold a MPhil with Distinction in Politics, and a BA with First Class Honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford. They founded the Oxford Political Review, a publication that aspires to bridge the theory and practice gap, and serve as Head of Asia for Polemix, a communications technology start-up, and Founding Fellow to Governance Partners Yangon, a Myanmar-based development NGO. They write regularly for a wide range of publications, including Nikkei, The Diplomat, and TIME.
The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
The Chinese leadership’s principal objective is frequently interpreted by Western media as a desire for worldwide dominance. Along with China’s rapid economic growth, the country’s expansion of global influence would secure future development stability and provide it more control over possible competitors. One point of tension between the U.S. and China, as well as a trigger for the trade war between the two nations, is China’s supposed aim to overtake the U.S. as the world’s number one power. You have stated that you don’t believe China has the capacity or the will to do so, and that China’s leaders are primarily concerned with empowering the country’s burgeoning middle class as independent economic agents and enhancing its domestic performance legitimacy. Could you explain why you believe that China has no intention of supplanting the U.S. to become the world’s number one power?
I think this is a wonderful question and what I’ll say here is [that] the reality is a bit more nuanced [than] what’s suggested by both existing discourses and perhaps the framing that’s adopted by this question. I don’t necessarily believe that the Western media frequently misinterpret the report[s] about… what they take to be open scrutiny that the Chinese leaders or the Chinese government submissions, at least not in the sense that non-Western media are to be construed as being necessarily fairer and more balanced. I don’t want to play into the ruse that all Western media are ostensibly biased—this is a disclaimer.
More substantively, I will divide my answer into two components. The first is what we call the “structural” and the second is the “incidental.”
On the first, I do think there are structural commonalities that have historically undergirded China’s understanding of statecraft and imagination or constraining of its objectives since the establishment of the modern People’s Republic of China. Now, to be clear, unlike many others and politicians or political scientists, I do not enjoy—and I, in fact, don’t think we should necessarily—[going] all the way back in time… throughout the five thousand years of Chinese history “上下五千年” to understand how Chinese statecraft works. In my methodology, I tend to focus on the Chinese Communist Party (henceforth, CCP) and its grip over power, specifically in modern China. And I would make the argument that [during] all periods of contemporary Chinese leadership—not just President Xi but also Hu, Jiang, Deng, Mao—China has focused on domestic consolidation of power and entrenchment of party authority, via delivering upon material goods in accordance with a wide range of so-called performance indicators, centered around what some of its leaders term “以人民为中心” (which denotes a people-centric mode of governance).
The Communist Party of China attempts to establish internal and inward facing… legitimacy without paying much heed to the notion of external legitimacy. That’s a default argument that leads me in some of my earlier and previous writings to argue that China has no interest in seeking global domination because doing so is too costly, too detrimental, and fundamentally incompatible with its mode of governance. That’s the structural argument that I have frequently made, and I still maintain it to a certain degree.
But then there’s also the “incidental” side: we need to understand contemporary China’s history and politics, not just through the broad strokes of the regime’s logic or the undergirding rationale, as aforementioned; but also, [we must] look at its behaviors, antics, rhetoric and the ideology of leaders, of factions, of parliamentarians, bureaucrats, and administrators jostling for power. A very interesting report from Dr. Yu Jie at Chatham House points out that China, in calibrating its climate change policy and also international MMC policy in terms of multilateral organizations, often takes into consideration more than just what Zhongnanhai “中南海,” the central government proverbially, thinks, but also what [the] federal level and municipal governments believed to be… the best option for them on a tactical and personal level. All of this is to say that we have got on one hand the variable of the leaders’ ideology, on the other hand interest groups that [are] fragmented and distributed throughout China, and thirdly,… the emerging… middle-class consciousness and civil society in China. All such variables collectively come together to steer foreign policy. What is the upshot of this? The upshot of this is that when you have a largely and vastly disillusioned civil society that increasingly are antagonistic towards the West, and a leader whose projected and espoused ideology extends beyond the scope of just China alone but also encompasses the rest of the world, then inevitably, we may have good grounds to think that China cannot be reduced to purely the structuralist explanation outlined above. And that’s right.
So I don’t deny the fact that China now may be different from what the structural forces determine it to be. But here is a cautionary note. It is different in the sense that the Chinese Government does now have an incentive to increase its economic, political, and ideological influence across the world, and it is worth bearing that shift in incentives in mind. But does this therefore result in A: its leaders’ ostensible search for global domination… B: an abrupt upending of American hegemony, [and] C: the vast range of deleterious consequences of people attributed to China[’s] expansion? I am not so sure about B and C, at the very least. I think China definitely wants more global influence, and maybe in some areas, this would translate to regional hegemony in spheres beyond just Asia. But this should not be equated with, or construed as, equivalent to a China that seeks global hegemony, or, indeed, the displacement of America by becoming the number one, or at least joint number ones, in the world.
Photo of the country flag of the People's Republic of China. Image courtesy of Tomas Roggero.
Some Western academics say that one way to deter China from acting in ways that “transgress” international norms and limits is to make its behavior “sequential and costly.” However, because of China’s strong internal nationalism, the country as a whole is unconcerned with the overseas criticism. What are your thoughts on the West’s critical and punitive policies, as well as their effectiveness?
This is a great question and I want to lay out a theoretical framework here.
Consider Country A, or any other actor A, who is seeking to influence the decisions to be made by Country B. There are three possible decisions: X1, X2, and X3. At least, these are the three likeliest options I subjectively and intersubjectively believed as the most likely options. And each of these options, obviously to Country B in the question, has its costs and benefits. So say we are analyzing the appeal of X1 to Country B, then the net utility function is essentially the benefit of X1 minus cost of X1. You can denote this as: U(X1) = B(X1) - C(X1), from the point of view of B.
Assuming that B operates with some degree of minimal rationality, which I actually think is perfectly compatible with the judgment that there exists high levels of jingoistic nationalism or emotivism within the public of said country, or, indeed, amongst the party cadres of said country’s ruling party, then what A needs to do in order to nudge B to do X1, is to employ a combination of sticks and carrots, penalties and benefits/positive incentives, to push B towards the particular option A wants B to undertake. Say it’s X1 that A wants B to engage in.
Logically, A needs to make X1’s net utility the relative largest as compared with X2’s and X3’s, or all the other options under consideration. But you can’t just stop there at the level of what A takes to be the net utilities at play here, because it is not about the objective net utility, or what A takes to be the utilities; it’s instead about the perceived utility in the eyes of B, who’s the actor in question. So, what you really need to do is to introduce a layer of modification, some sort of benign, distortionary filter that carries forth that transfiguration of net utilities into what the perceived utilities [are] in the eyes of B.
All of this is just to pave the way for the following. Case scenario one: very harsh sanctions are attached to B’s engaging in X2 and X3. The rationale is as follows—Country A thinks that by sanctioning Country B when it does X2 and X3, this could cause it to push itself… towards option X1. The trouble with this view, however, is that it fundamentally neglects how new costs would arise in the eyes of B in relation to carrying out X1. There is a huge cost attached to B’s doing X1 in the aftermath of such sanctions, because to be seen to be responding to such sanctions and negative incentives is akin to admitting defeat and capitulating, which in turn would, in B’s eyes, encourage further repercussions and delegitimation down the road. It’s an absolutely no-go for any strong-man leader, especially one that places a high, ultra-high premium on looking strong in appearance. This is why Russia was unfazed by the sanctions imposed upon them in the aftermath of the Crimean annexation—just look at what it’s doing now in relation to Ukraine. This was also why Iran and North Korea can’t possibly be considered successful targets or case studies of sanctions. On the other hand, where the government places a lower premium on national solidarity saving face and also some degree… catering to domestic nationalist sentiments, then, perhaps, sanctions would work in those cases, because the relative benefits of undertaking that option X1 are far larger than the benefits of keeping to X2 or X3.
In the case of China, I do not think absolutist, totalistic, structuralist, or sanction attached critiques of the state will convince its rulers that whatever the West wants it to do, it should thereby do. Indeed, it is counterproductive, because the optical cost of “capitulating” to the “foreign enemy,” so to speak, would outweigh the benefits.
But does that therefore mean that there is no way and no means whatsoever for the West to engage critically and to constructively recommend prescriptions for China, and indeed, most other countries? I remain somewhat sanguine that this need not be the case. In fact, I am quite optimistic that if the West were able to couch their criticism in a way that fulfillment and compliance with such critique does not lead to this huge cost to the party’s credibility, and huge cost on [the] front of policy confidence, or massive whiplash in terms of nationalistic sentiments that would allegedly precipitate domestic political instability in China, then there could always be some wiggle room that’s healthy and conducive. Now, I’m not here posing any and all forms of criticism, and I certainly don’t want to slip into the trap of apologeticism on behalf of particular parties. But if we want to be fair and pragmatic, you have got to look at what the Chinese state is. Fundamentally, I think CCP is an incredibly rationalistic and successfully, ruthlessly pragmatic party at that. So, I genuinely think criticism is one thing—and could work—but sanctions against China just won’t work, especially not towards an economy as dynamic and as substantial as the country. It’s a no to sanctions from me.
In your article, Three Fundamental Misconceptions about China, you argue that American politicians citing viewpoints held by Western audiences will not persuade Chinese policy makers and key players. This is also related to the legitimacy of the moralizing assaults on China that we discussed previously. These discourses also often characterize the Chinese people as helplessly victimized by an authoritarian state. Who is the intended audience of such discourses? Are they merely an indication of Western instability and U.S. imperialism, as stated by experienced Chinese policymakers? Or is its target audience the U.S. people, to contrast with the U.S.’s favorable aspects?
In answering this question, I think we need to break down the subsets of folks into three different categories and different demographic groups. On the first, I’m still convinced that, as of today... many Americans or many members of Western countries are acting out of good faith when it comes to China. I refuse to subscribe to the radical nationalist Chinese argument that all Westerners are allegedly racists and white supremacists. I don’t find that plausible, as someone who’s spent years in the West cutting my teeth academically. These are not the people who are racists and want Chinese people to suffer.
And then there’s the second group, individuals who subscribe to monolithic narratives about China, propagate such narratives, and also respond to such narratives out of motivations and interests within social justice discourse. Such speech-acts… affirm and, through doing so, play into the confirmation biases they have about China. To condemn China becomes a past-time, one that enables individuals to gel and mash with both the existing impressions they harbor towards the Chinese public and state, but also others who share their views. Within this camp I also classify politicians who I take to be fundamentally well-meaning, who simply have very strong ideological and normative disagreements with the way things are run in China right now—and you know what? I think such disagreements are understandable, and rooted in sound argumentation and logic.
These folks would criticize the regime because they think the regime is normatively genuinely evil. Their target audience is not just their own voters, but also what they take to be folks who reside under China who are receptive towards the discourse. They want to express some degree of moral solidarity and approval towards those whom they take to be oppressed and victims of the Chinese state.
The question for these folks from me is what do they reckon they can achieve through the open calls and outrage-infused criticisms of the Chinese state. It’s all very cynical and practically ends-driven from me, but I want to know, where’s the pathway for action and progressive reform? Now, if all they want is decoupling and limiting the Western engagement in contact with China, that I can definitely understand. And decoupling is, in many ways, a logical implication of, albeit not the best upshot to be drawn from, the view that the West must guard its institutions and values from potential undermining or corruption by excessive entanglement with foreign powers. But if the aim is to change the lives of people in China for the better, the moralizing discourses just won’t work, and won’t cut it in affecting actual policy, or real-life, changes.
I want to end my answer by turning to a final, third category of folks, which differs from both groups above. Now, these folks are the ones who claim that they care about eliminating the party, because they allegedly care for the Chinese people, but in practice, I suspect these folks don’t really care for either the party, or the 1.4 billion people of China. They hate China and the Chinese people, but to them, China is a great tool and a great base for stoking fears; for stoking animosity towards the Other, to rally their own base in the run up to elections over national leadership, or, indeed, the midterms. And the discourses they emanate in turn are fused with what could be very dangerous and problematic essentialist tropes about the Chinese… claims like “the Chinese are more open to manipulation by their government,” or, “the Chinese are dangerous people coming to steal our jobs.”
There are well-meaning critics of both the Chinese people and the Chinese regime. But there are also deeply problematic and selfish individuals that nefariously seek to manipulate Western attitudes and sentiments into endorsing and backing a new Cold War against the Chinese people. I think China should do more to welcome, not aggressively attack, constructive criticisms. I also think we need to call a spade a spade—let’s not justify politically motivated criticisms of foreign regimes, as ostensibly pro-human rights activism. It’s not.
Lochlan Liyuan Zhang is a Staff Writer for CPR and a first-year student in the Dual BA Program between Columbia University and Trinity College, Dublin. He is passionate about law, history, and geopolitics. He is an avid fan of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oscar Wilde, and Jackson Wang.