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“With God’s assist, we are going to carry Shanghai up and up, ever up, till it is rather like Kansas Metropolis,” Kenneth Wherry, then the mayor of a small city in Nebraska, proudly proclaimed in 1940. It was a obvious show of race-driven paternalistic attitudes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nearing a century later, america’ China coverage has but to mature.
These days, the U.S. now not views China as a fledgling nation blossoming underneath its beneficiant tutelage; somewhat, China is seen as an ex-communicated protégé that has gone off the rails. Nowhere is that this extra obvious than on the street to the White Home. With the 2024 election on the horizon, presidential hopefuls, political pundits, late-night speak present personalities, 24-hours information networks, and an voters that’s extra polarized than ever are all gearing up for what’s being billed as one of many highest-stakes U.S. elections in current historical past. But, in an more and more divided political local weather, the necessity to “do one thing about China” appears to be the one and solely factor that Democrats and Republicans can agree upon.
President Joe Biden’s hardline method to China is effectively established. In Could 2021 – only some months into Biden’s time period – his Asia Czar, Kurt Campbell, made a profound declaration: the “interval that was broadly described as engagement” with China “has come to an finish.”
It’s no shock, then, that unfavorable views of China have permeated into public life in an eerie echo of the Fifties Crimson Scare. The American concern of China is so pervasive that it appears to have grown previous the purpose of rationality. Probably the most memorable shows of this occurred in January, when Singaporean TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew was incessantly grilled throughout a congressional listening to on his supposed ties to the Chinese language Communist Occasion, an absurd show of each McCarthyite paranoia and racist ignorance.
In March, TikTok was again within the highlight as the U.S. Home handed a invoice that would result in a nationwide ban of the app, with policymakers’ arguments boiling all the way down to: it’s harmful as a result of it’s from China. Such fear-mongering rhetoric will not be a response to any actual improvement in China’s conduct on the worldwide stage; somewhat, it’s a symptom of america’ identification disaster.
For the reason that starting of the Chilly Struggle, American identification has been characterised by an absolute perception in American exceptionalism. This ideology asserts that the U.S. sits on the apex of modernity and has a singular place in historical past because the bastion of freedom. However to be the defender of the free world, america should be defending the world from one thing. Throughout the Chilly Struggle, this enemy was communism. After the autumn of communism in Europe, the “Axis of Evil” shortly assumed its place throughout George W. Bush’s Struggle on Terror. Like how Batman wants a Joker, the uncomfortable conclusion is that American identification can not exist with out an enemy to outline itself in opposition to.
Because the world strikes on from america’ post-Chilly Struggle victory lap, American exceptionalism is extra fragile than ever. Guarantees to unfold democracy are belied by failed experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq and the next turmoil the U.S. left in its wake. Domestically, the International Monetary Disaster has shattered religion within the stability of the U.S. financial system. Donald Trump’s presidency (and the very actual risk of a second time period) has referred to as into query the legitimacy of america because the “chief of the free world.”
Moderately than leading to any productive reflection, the continuous erosion of the fundamental foundations of contemporary U.S. identification has solely redoubled america’ efforts to take care of its sense of exceptionalism, with a brand new enemy to reaffirm rising doubts over its legitimacy. And China is the right candidate.
China as soon as very neatly match into the thought of American exceptionalism. For the reason that 18th century, China has been portrayed as an uncivilized nation creating underneath U.S. steerage, a lot in order that the “lack of China” to communism in 1950 was seen by the American public as an unforgivable betrayal by the Chinese language. Within the Nineteen Seventies, renewed perception that China’s opening to the world would inevitably lead it to undertake a U.S.-style sociopolitical system was a key enabler of rapprochement in 1972 and continued to drive U.S. overseas coverage effectively into the twenty first century.
But, China didn’t grow to be extra like america. Quite the opposite, not solely has China defied expectations by doubling down on its rejection of Western fashions of governance, it has excelled in doing so, with its unprecedented financial development hailed as a miracle.
The “China Risk” narrative serves as a stopgap for america’ existential disaster. The narrative’s utility comes not from its objectivity, however as a substitute from a psychological need for safety – distracting the U.S. from the uneasy indisputable fact that the China of in the present day, a official contender to the U.S.-led world order, essentially challenges the doctrine of American exceptionalism. It’s the identical purpose why outrageously propagandistic headlines reminiscent of “These will be the world’s finest warships. And so they’re not American” barely elevate an eyebrow for many Western readers.
The USA (and, by extension, the West) should essentially change the way in which it thinks about China. China will not be, and by no means was, america’ to personal, form, outline, or direct. This outdated framework of pondering is rooted in American exceptionalism. What’s extra, the U.S. should let go of its post-Chilly Struggle triumphalism. The times of hegemony are over, the Finish of Historical past is a delusion, and now we have no selection however to co-exist. To meaningfully interact with China, america should reject the lie of American exceptionalism and evolve from cultural chauvinism to cultural humility.
It will certainly be an unimaginable tragedy to undo many years of globalization, improvement, and progress due to the delicate ego of a nation. Maybe it’s time for the U.S. to do some soul-searching.
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