To understand China’s challenge to America and international order, look no further than the Borg collective of Star Trek.
“We are the Borg, lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.”
It might seem silly, but the Borg’s constructs are very similar to those of Xi Jinping’s China. Where the Borg demand surrender, Xi’s China demands fealty to its military power. Where the Borg usurp the “technological distinctiveness” of others, Xi’s China steals the technology of others. Where the Borg subjugate human freedom to a collective, China seeks to subjugate human freedom to its authoritarian center. Where the Borg portray resistance as a fallacy in terms, China presents resistance as a cause only of the delusional.
China will be, by far, the greatest U.S. foreign policy challenge in 2019. And the U.S. must challenge the challenger. While other foreign policy challenges will abound, no other actor matches China’s capacity to threaten U.S. interests, to degrade U.S. prosperity, and to vanquish U.S. values. But it’s not just about the capacity, it’s about the intent. Because led by Xi, China is a nation seeking a perceived destiny of international leadership. China doesn’t simply want to be the world’s pre-eminent superpower, it wants to remake global order in the 21st century. It wants an order in which access to the global economy requires the sacrifice of intellectual property to Beijing, acceptance of Beijing’s political diktats, and the purchase of Beijing’s products. In essence, President Xi wants to replace the current system of relative free trade and international arbitration with a feudal system over which he alone is master.
But while that system would ensure China’s enduring prosperity and power, it would be disastrous for the rest of the world. It would mean the perpetual transfer of wealth to China in return for whatever scraps Beijing was willing to offer in return. And it would establish a new political order in which one powerful nation tells many weaker nations what to do.
Yes, anti-Americans, supported by China in some cases, might say that this is exactly what the U.S. international order has brought. But they are wrong. America is not perfect, but our protection of free trade and democratic interests have led to unparalleled developments of human prosperity and freedom worldwide.
The world’s poorest have benefited by employment in developing export markets. And the world’s wealthy have benefited by accessing cheaper goods in a greater range of choices. All of us will benefit from the advent of new technologies, jobs, and opportunities made by a capitalist system that trusts in and rewards ingenuity. China recognizes as much. Its leaders understand that to fully detach the world from the American system of order, it must force that choice upon them. Otherwise, at the margin, political blocs like the European Union, or powerful developing nations such as Brazil and India, will choose America.
This is why China has set a course of urgent aggression. Xi’s legions engage in rampant intellectual property theft to steal the secrets they need to steal our better future. They use international trading rules to their own advantage, then systematically break them. They vacuum up information they hope to use to blackmail foreign officials. They threaten any and all who challenge their imperial island campaign (a campaign that would make proud the Axis powers of World War II). They harass their own and foreign citizens with impunity. They do all this because, like the Borg, they can. And because independent thinking is ultimately incompatible with Xi’s collective.
Yet the great ambition of China’s agenda is also its greatest weakness. Because with America offering an order built on mutual security and interest, and investment defined by fair, transparent rules of contract, the choice between the dragon and the eagle is not a complicated one. It is simply up to America to ensure that our choice is manifestly clear and that we will help protect those who choose it.
Still, the choice to lead shouldn’t be a complicated one. It’s either that, or surrender to Xi’s collective.
