Andrew Singer Talks About China and America
Vol. 3, Issue 20
World Order Gymnastics 2025
The world order as this second quarter of the twenty-first century begins is in stomach-churning flux. The dominant international trends since the end of World War II are, at a minimum, contorting and possibly collapsing. This reality is praised and damned depending on one’s global vantage point.
Photo by Myles Bloomfield, www.unsplash.com
“The problem of Chinese nationalism: Eurocentrism, US exceptionalism and de-colonization in the modern world-system.”1
The above article title caught my eye recently. Many labels. Human nature is to label. Yet to label is so often shorthand to frame and blame. In this instance, an ominous Cumulonimbus label cloud hovers over me -- Nationalism and Exceptionalism.Han-centric and Manifest Destiny; Isolationism and Globalism.Imperialism and De-colonization; Authoritarian and Democratic.Top-down and Bottom-up.
Detailed analyses and polemics fill countless volumes on all of the above, but at some fundamental level are they distinctions without a difference? Today, let’s look at what can be said to underpin each of these labels, separately and collectively:
The desire by a national group to establish, control, and maintain domestic (and corresponding internatonal) security and stability and primacy (three sides of the same coin) in the political, military, economic, and social spheres; and
The will to go to great lengths to succeed and dominate in these emotional and core quests.
These are the motivations that spur our governments. Everything else can be seen as characterization and method.
If global affairs continue along their current trajectory, the world in the second half of this century could well look back at the “historical aberration” that was the “Liberal International Order” from the end of WWII.
There is “…a leeriness about the U.S. and its global influence” around the world. Much of the American government is panicked. Much of the Chinese government is excited (even with the country’s economic headwinds). Both positions can blind in their influence on official and unofficial rhetoric, positioning, and action. Internal rifts complicate matters. Grudges linger. Resentments fester. Fears of Inadequacy are never far below the surface. America. China.
China stresses patriotic education for its children, while classical education is expanding in America. Florida is leading the charge in instructing children in “…liberal arts and western teachings on math, science, civics and classical texts.”
Propaganda is employed by all countries. In China, it is overtly directed by powerful government ministries. In America, it is mostly under the aegis of powerful business titans and media:
In China, and taking this as only one example from numerous areas of governance, “China’s ideology tsar last week asked the nation’s propaganda officials to…‘adhere to the correct orientation of public opinion, strengthen economic promotion and management of expectations, improve the ability to respond to public opinion, and create a united and progressive mainstream public opinion,….’”
In America, Aldous Huxley opined in 1958 that “Mass communication, in a word, is neither good nor bad; it is simply a force and, like any other force, it can be used either well or ill. Used in one way, the press, the radio, and the cinema are indispensable to the survival of democracy. Used in another way, they are among the most powerful weapons in the dictator’s armory.”
America demands to be the world’s top dog and is not willing to cede the perch anywhere.
China is determined to reclaim its place as top dog in Asia and will expand its influence wherever it will help to achieve this goal.
Security. Stability. Primacy. An evolving new world order, or one returning to its mean.
Andrew: You’ve distilled and presented the challenges we face as China displays its brand of leadership. The world is certainly competitive to the extreme, though there’s potential for collaboration if enough global environmental upheavals force cooperation (that is, if there emerges a serious interest in finding remedies). Given a precarious future, how the political divide evolves will be interesting, to say the least. . . . Hal