The United States Is an Ideological Power, China Is Too
American and Chinese diplomats would be more successful if they acknowledge ideological competition as an inherent component of bilateral relations and then managed this tension – not resolve it.
Since the 1980s, I have been traveling to the People’s Republic of China, attending conferences, and in the summers of 2015 and 2019, living in residence at the Stanford Center at Peking University (It’s a cool building! Check it out!). I was in China to do research for my new book, Great Power Competition in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for Competing with China and Russia Today. Obviously, I am not an expert on China, just an avid learner. But I did spend the early part of my academic career writing about U.S.-Soviet competition during the Cold War. There are some lessons from that period that Chinese and American leaders should study. One is about the unavoidable, structural tension between powerful democracies and powerful autocracies.
Over these decades, I have been to countless conferences, workshops, meetings, and dinners where I heard my Chinese colleagues urge the United States to pursue a less ideological foreign policy and use more “pragmatism”. Many American analysts agreed. If we could all just be more like Henry Kissinger, so the argument went, U.S.-China relations would improve.
But ideology matters and it is not going away – not on the U.S. side, and not on the Chinese side. Hoping that the United States or the People’s Republic of China (PRC) could behave according to the tenets of realpolitik is an unrealistic and misguided approach to enhancing cooperation. Rather than pretending that ideological differences don’t or shouldn’t exist, American and Chinese diplomats would be more successful if they acknowledged ideological competition as an inherent component of bilateral relations and then sought to manage this tension, not resolve it.
Differences in political systems or competing ideologies do not always cause conflict. Last year, Mark Haas published an excellent book called Frenemies: When Ideological Enemies Ally. The United States maintains many friendly (in my opinion, too friendly!) relationships with autocracies, from Saudi Arabia to Vietnam. Likewise, the People’s Republic of China has nurtured close bilateral relations with democracies. But different regime types and ideologies almost always fuel conflict when mixed with power. The United States is not threatened ideologically by weak autocracies such as Tajikistan, Cuba, or Equatorial Guinea. The People’s Republic of China is not challenged by democratic Costa Rica, Ghana, or Portugal (although recently, seems to be very threatened by Lithuania!). But leaders and societies in the United States and China are both threatened by each other because of the cocktail of great power, opposing regime types and accompanying competing ideologies.
The United States is the most powerful country in the world. The United States is a democracy, albeit a flawed one. That combination, in and of itself, threatens autocracies all over the world. In addition, through a variety of instruments – economic aid, democratic assistance, government-funded media, alliances, and sometimes even military force – the United States unabashedly promotes liberal and democratic ideas around the world. This too threatens autocratic leaders, including even powerful ones like those in Beijing.
Chinese leaders have made it clear that it is not just American power but also American ideas that threaten them. An authoritative and leaked 2012 CCP document, the “Communiqué on the Current State of the Ideological Sphere” (Document No. 9), listed several ideological threats from the West, among which werethe promotion of constitutional democracy, universal values and civil society. The Communique explained: “Confronting the very real threat of Western anti-China forces and their attempt at carrying out Westernization, splitting, and “Color Revolutions,” and facing the severe challenge of today’s ideological sphere, all levels of Party and Government, especially key leaders, must pay close attention to their work in the ideological sphere (…)”. At the Communist Party of China centennial in 2021, Xi went from offense to defense: “[W]e will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.” A 2021 Chinese government White Paper on China’s alleged “Whole-Process People’s Democracy Under CPC Leadership” warned,
External interference and “democratic transformation” bring nothing but endless trouble. China never seeks to export the Chinese model of democracy, nor does it allow any external force to change the Chinese model under any circumstances. It firmly supports the independent choice by every country of its own path to democracy, and opposes any interference in others’ internal affairs on the pretext of “bringing democracy”.
As Peking University’s Wang Jisi explained,
In Chinese eyes, the most significant threat to China’s sovereignty and national security has long been U.S. interference in its internal affairs aimed at changing the country’s political system and undermining the CCP. Americans often fail to appreciate just how important this history is to their Chinese counterparts and just how much it informs Beijing’s views of Washington.
Americans are fooling themselves if they think the promotion of these ideas does not threaten Chinese Communist Party leaders.
China is the second most powerful country in the world. The People’s Republic of China is an autocracy. This combination, in and of itself, threatens democracies all around the world. In addition, through a variety of instruments similar to the American toolkit – party-to-party ties, support for civil society, universities, and local media, economic aid, global media, etc. – President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party also promote illiberal ideas around the world, albeit with much less vigor than U.S. democracy promotion, as well as deter criticism of China’s dictatorship. This too threatens democratic leaders, including powerful ones in Washington. Xi also celebrates “Chinese-style modernization” as a model for other countries to emulate. Chinese leaders are fooling themselves if they think the promotion of their ideas does not threaten Americans.
Just listen to them, Republicans and Democrats alike. Trump's National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien warned, “Let us be clear, the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist organization. The Party General Secretary Xi Jinping sees himself as Josef Stalin’s successor.” Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asserted, “China is working to take down freedom all across the world.” Strikingly, President Biden and his administration have tempered but not abandoned this ideological framing. Although invoking less Manichean imagery, President Biden and his administration have echoed the Trump team’s comments. Biden remarked, “[Xi is] deadly earnest about becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world. He and others – autocrats – think that democracy can’t compete in the 21st century with autocracies… We will meet the center challenge of the age by proving that democracy is durable and strong.” These American leaders are not only expressing fear about China’s power, but also the ideological content of the China threat.
Maybe this isn’t the way the world should be, but it is the way the world is. Realistic American or Chinese foreign policymakers must acknowledge these facts.
Like the Cold War, leaders and societies in both countries currently feel threatened by the other’s political system and ideology. But there are lessons from the Cold War on how to manage ideological competition. My upcoming book will discuss them all at length but let me highlight two here now.
American leaders should remember the disastrous consequences of exaggerating and misunderstanding the Soviet ideological threat. We don’t need to repeat the tragic era of McCarthyism or the unnecessary war in Vietnam. We also did not need to stop communism in Angola by arming so-called “freedom fighters” to win the Cold War. Moreover, the Chinese ideological threat today is not as intense and is not promoted as vigorously as the Soviet challenge during the Cold War. Xi is not (yet) Stalin. Xi is not seeking to foment revolution in the United States or other developed democracies. Beijing is not providing AK47s to communist revolutionaries in the developing world, not deploying intelligence officers to overthrow democratic governments, and not invading countries, at least not yet, to promote socialism or autocracy. Beijing’s enthusiasm for promoting socialism globally is much more muted than Soviet efforts. Even the promotion of autocracy is more about defense than offense.
Chinese leaders also should study the Cold War to learn the costs of overestimating the American ideological threat and the dangers of linkage. American leaders are not fomenting regime change in China today. American officials and civil society leaders will continue to criticize the deepening of autocratic rule in China, but doing so is different from promoting a democratic revolution there. Chinese overreacting to every U.S. statement in defense of democracy or human rights will impede cooperation on other issues of mutual interest. Instead of hoping the United States will change, Chinese leaders need to learn how to live with an ideological power, and then delink different foreign policy issues, as U.S. and Soviet leaders did in the later years of the Cold War. For instance, Chinese leaders need to get comfortable with competing in the ideological struggle while simultaneously cooperating on arms control and nuclear nonproliferation or fighting climate change and pandemics together with Washington.
In his first meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in 2021 in Alaska, Yang Jiechi, China’s most senior diplomat, said, "We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.” This is as foolish as Blinken saying that ‘U.S.-China relations would improve if China just stopped embracing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.’ (Thankfully, Blinken has not said that.) Leaders in Beijing and Washington need to recognize that ideological competition is a feature, not a bug, of great power competition today. As long as China remains autocratic and the United States remains democratic, no amount of Realpolitik talk, win-win dialogues, or diplomatic reassurances will ever eliminate this underlying tension completely. Acknowledging this fact, rather than ignoring it, is key to managing – maybe even compartmentalizing – the consequences of ideological competition in U.S.-China relations.
But maybe I’m wrong? I’m still learning about China. Eager to hear your reactions.
Agreed. I have a whole chapter on this topic in my next book. Once I have a draft, Ill send.
Agree. Stay tuned for more.