As a democracy, we tend to know a lot about our problems and weaknesses than a dictatorship. So when we compare ourselves to China it is easy to overestimate China and underestimate the U.S.
I often wonder what that comparison looks like from the perspective of China’s leader, Xi Jinping. China has a lot of problems and challenges. For one thing, a lot of his economy depends on selling products to the U.S. Typically, you don’t go to war on one of your biggest customers. That is very bad for business.
So if Xi Jinping this weekend decided that now might be a good time to invade Taiwan, he would have to consider whether Taiwan was worth massive unemployment in China. An invasion of Taiwan would get a response from the U.S. Despite his best efforts, Xi cannot be sure exactly what that response would be. Would the U.S. engage militarily to try to defend Taiwan? Would that then lead to a full-scale war in the Western Pacific? Maybe that wouldn’t happen, but the U.S. and several of its allies might block container ships from crossing the Pacific from China to U.S. ports. If that happened, many Chinese factories would shut down as inventory piled up. Maybe the U.S. would prevent oil shipments from reaching China, similarly shutting down parts of the Chinese economy.
This would be a big problem for Xi. The reason that 1.6 billion Chinese have gone along with Communist Party rule is that the Chinese made a deal with the government. We will give you a monopoly on power in return for a growing economy, for a rising standard of living. If there is widespread unemployment in China, suddenly, all bets are off. What is the benefit of letting the Party run everything if the Party cannot deliver prosperity?
And that leads to another problem. China’s military’s effectiveness depends on being able to face outward. If Xi needs a lot of military force to quell unrest, then he doesn’t have enough troops to fight the U.S. But that could be a real prospect, that he would have to devote a lot of manpower to locking down the country. He doesn’t have enough troops to lock down 1.6 billion people.
His other problem is food. Everything has to go right in China to feed 1.6 billion people. There are a lot of problems that can occur during wartime that can affect his agricultural sector. Maybe China can’t get enough oil and petroleum products to keep farm machinery running. Maybe China can’t get spare parts. Shortages of food can cause a lot of unrest in China.
All these things won’t be short-term problems. Right now, a lot of companies are looking at their supply chains in China and thinking seriously about moving them to places like India, Vietnam or Mexico. For decades, China has been a source of cheap labor. But it doesn’t do any good to have cheap labor if you can’t get your product on container ships bound for the U.S. If we are in a shooting war with China, trans-Pacific trade could be sharply reduced. And after the conflict, companies would be hesitant to resume operating in China. It will be a pain to set up new supply chains, but at least companies will have some assurance that they can get product.
There has been a school of thought that Xi’s aggressive posture vs. Taiwan has just been a performance to built nationalistic fervor and support for the Communist Party. Much as Republicans in the 1950s talked about “unleashing” the Nationalists on Taiwan to reclaim the mainland. That was good stuff for the right-wing base in the 1950s, but most of the country never had an appetite for a war with what was then called Red China. MacArthur was all in favor of it, but he didn’t get the 1952 Republican nomination, Eisenhower did.
The problem with Xi’s sabre-rattling is in the West. We can’t tell what is performative stuff for domestic consumption, and what is real. So we have to take him at his word, that at the core of China’s strategy is an eventual invasion of Taiwan, because Taiwan, to the Chinese Communist Party, is part of China. And if it won’t come back voluntarily, China will take it. In other words, China views Taiwan’s independence in 1949 like Lincoln and the North viewed the Confederate secession in 1861. A major difference, of course, is that Lincoln went right to war to end the rebellion and reclaim the South. Mao and successive Chinese leaders didn’t, in part because of the U.S. military presence in the region. And for more than 70 years, the U.S. has provided Taiwan with armaments, and a quasi-guarantee of security. Not an absolute guarantee, but enough of one to give China pause.
One thing Xi has done is he has galvanized the U.S. military. It is focused like a laser right now on the Western Pacific. That probably wasn’t a brilliant move on Xi’s part, because the U.S. has traditionally not been a fast mover when foreign aggressors have started to pop up. But for the last 10 years, Xi has been rattling that saber, and that has given us time to prepare, if he is really serious.