Carte Blanche: Is it Safe to Do Business With China?
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Thucydides’ Trap has been a very popularly discussed phenomenon since China’s meteoric rise in affluence and influence on the world stage. The phrase was coined by Graham Allison when he referenced the ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, and his analysis that Sparta’s fear of a more powerful Athens made war inevitable. The ensuing Peloponnesian War ravaged the Greek city-states in the war for hegemony.
The Thucydides’ Trap can be summed up into the idea that whenever an established power in the world order observes the increasing influence of a rival that might threaten its dominance, the dynamic almost always results in war. China has been a long perceived rival of the US because of its remarkable growth economically and politically, and it’s pretty clear that China fits the role of an ambitious Athens as the cautious US imitates Sparta.
U.S. and China relations have been dangerously escalating since President Trump decided to take a hard-line stance on China after his election. It would be a fair assertion to say that attacking China makes for easy polling points in the American political arena. Still, the trade war has, as all implementation of tariffs, mostly affected the consumers. However, how dedicated should we be to re-establishing free trade when the partner so blatantly abuses the openness of free trade.
Free and open trade is something world governments should aspire to for a more liberalized and democratic world; however, it would be foolishly naive to dive into free trade agreements despite a country’s tendency to ignore civil liberties and exercise authoritarian intervention. Oh wait, the entire world already did that when we let China join the World Trade Organization (W.T.O.).
It’s definitely unfair of me, or anyone for that matter, to completely dismiss the actions of a bipartisan Congress and a hopeful Bill Clinton as it also would be unfair since nobody really knew the extent that the Communist Party of China (C.C.P.) would wield total authority. Xi Jinping has consolidated all the major positions of power within China, and he is the most powerful leader in China since Mao.
In President Clinton’s speech dedicated to China’s acceptance into the W.T.O., he claimed that “membership in the W.T.O., of course, will not create a free society in China overnight or guarantee that China will play by global rules. But over time, I believe it will move China faster and further in the right direction, and certainly will do that more than rejection would”.
Clinton could not have possibly foreshadowed that a policy such as “Made in China 2025” be undertaken or the fact that the Chinese government has mandated that all private businesses must collaborate with the C.C.P. Sadly, the lines between trade and national security become completely blurred when we observe an authoritarian regime engage with liberal democracies. This escalation can be obviously felt today with the controversy over TikTok—the Chinese social media app that Trump has threatened to ban.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but it is painful how poorly this take has aged. Innovations in the fields of technology, specifically the internet and social media, has created an entirely new subset of variables that lawmakers and business owners must evaluate: on the one hand, appease the demands of the C.C.P. and access the largest market in the world, or on the other hand, do businesses and institutions defend classical liberal values and hold China accountable for her abuses.
While we all would hope that the latter would be true, money is the universal language, and it has greatly benefited those willing to look the other way. Observe the N.B.A.’s relationship with China: N.B.A. China, the branch in charge of Chinese ventures for the league, is worth roughly $4 billion. The N.B.A. is considered one of the most socially progressive leagues in the world, yet there was an intense backlash to Houston Rockets G.M., Daryl Morey, after his “Free Hong Kong” tweet.
The debacle following Morey’s tweet led to players being detained within China and a threat of ended business within China. Custom N.B.A. jerseys were reportedly barring customers from printing “Free Hong Kong,” despite the N.B.A.’s dedication to socially aware custom jerseys. Most recently, there were reports of serious abuses of young players in Chinese developmental leagues, and it is questionable whether or not the N.B.A. knew about them before the stories came to the surface.
If you were to combine this with the obvious censorship within big tech to appease C.C.P. standards and the suspicious behaviors of espionage by Chinese agents, we learn a very valuable lesson: the C.C.P. doesn’t follow any rules other than their own.
Therefore, we are witnessing an erosion of classical liberal values at the behest of the largest market on planet Earth. It is well known that the C.C.P. siphons information from Chinese companies, and there is little regard for intellectual property. It begs the question of how should the United States handle companies that bend the knee to C.C.P.’s demands all while information is being stolen from them for their own benefit? Is there really a problem in the first place, or is this fear-mongering for clicks?
Well, if anyone happened to watch the House Judiciary Committee hearing for tech C.E.O.s, then the claimed ignorance of three of the most powerful C.E.O.s on the planet not acknowledging China’s actions in intellectual property theft should be a little disconcerting. It makes it even worse when one C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, boldly proclaimed that China had been obviously stealing intellectual property and information.
Is Mark Zuckerberg simply more “woke” than Tim Cook (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Sundar Pichai (Google)? I think it would be more likely to say that the Great Firewall of China might be expanding its borders, and tech C.E.O.s are willingly selling their figurative plots of land to the C.C.P.’s estate.
We should avoid war at all costs, but appeasement and more free trade have proven to be too weak of a position when the C.C.P. is completely unrestrained compared to the governments of the democratic world order. While it is not our place to police every act of injustice in the world, the Uighurs are being sent to concentration camps, the South China Sea is contested –– and the Tech Iron Curtain is covering Hong Kong as we speak.
The ultimate goal should be a more free world and a more open economy, but we cannot be dismissive of the true threat that the C.C.P. poses to democratic institutions of the world.
