America Isn't So Tough on China
How are you going to declare war on a country you're in bed with?
TikTok is now banned in the US. And I’m sure the subject of last week’s article is popping the champagne as we speak. Mark Zuckerberg lobbied hard behind the scenes to turn the government against TikTok, and he finally got what he wanted. It’s also worth noting that he — being the CEO of TikTok’s biggest competitor — stands to profit the most from such an arrangement. Of course, he left that part unspoken.
Instead, what he presents to the public (and regulators) is a case of “national security”. That America is in a geopolitical race against China, and the only way to defeat them and to protect ourselves is to have our government focus on prioritizing the interests of American businesses. Which once again, is something he would stand to profit from.
Addressing The TikTok Ban
TikTok has long been on the radar of China hawks for one reason: it’s a subsidiary of ByteDance, a Chinese company1. ByteDance, being located in Beijing, is subject to Chinese laws governing the use of its data2. This is why in discussions surrounding the subject, you’ll often hear talks of how TikTok is harvesting your data, how it promotes censorship, and how it’s pushing foreign propaganda onto our youth — all charges commonly leveled against the Chinese government as a whole.
And apparently, the argument gained enough steam to the point that the Supreme Court was willing to uphold the ban, ruling that national security takes precedence over other issues. Banning an entire social media platform out of fear of what kinds of media Americans will be consuming is both unprecedented and raises serious concerns surrounding the First Amendment.
But what’s really telling is how even considering the “national security” interest, none of the issues cited are unique to the Chinese companies. The court cites Chinese data harvesting as the #1 factor in their decision, but American companies (such as Facebook) have long been notorious for doing the exact same thing. Even more of a kicker is that Facebook has been known to share said user data with Chinese firms. The hawks argue TikTok spreads foreign propaganda, but foreign actors have had just as easy of a time manipulating American platforms. And while a big deal is made over Chinese companies being required to hand over data to law enforcement, the American government is also known to do the exact same thing.
An even bigger irony is that TikTok is not fully banned in America: the government deems the platform useful enough to carve out an exception for its own purposes and messaging.
What we’re left with is a status quo that doesn’t seem to actually protect us against authoritarianism or foreign adversaries — but only serves to enrich the companies and politicians that capitalize on it. Reading this, you might get the impression that Americans are willing to talk the talk when it comes to China, but not walk the walk.
And you’d be right.
A Quick History Lesson
It might seem crazy now, but it wasn’t that long ago that these two countries were on good terms. Even beyond the era where we bonded over our shared hatred of the Soviets, American statesmen were beginning to feel optimistic about what the future held for China.
With the death of communist dictator Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping succeeded him and began to push the country in a more capitalist direction. This happened in the 1980s, around the same time that the Cold War was starting to come to a close. With the seeming victory of liberal democracies all across the globe, Western thinkers began to settled on a theory to explain what they were seeing. This theory — neoliberalism — held to a principle of “the freer the markets, the freer the people”.
As a result, neoliberals developed this dogma (which persisted up until the 2000s) of believing any country which moved towards capitalism would also naturally begin to move towards democracy.
Looking back, it’s quite impressive to see the extent to which this optimism carried. The Tianamen Square massacre of 1989 left America appalled, but it only took two years before the Bush administration lifted pretty much all sanctions and trade relations went back to normal. This pattern continued through the 90s, with the next two presidents working to fully integrate them into the world economy. Even through the Obama administration, there seemed to be a willful blindness, with his Secretary of State going as far as to name Japan — not China — as the biggest threat in Asia.
If there was still any lingering hope that the allure of free trade would turn China into a liberal democracy, even that would soon be dashed. Warning signs that the country might be backsliding into authoritarianism were becoming impossible to ignore by the time Xi Jinping took over in 2012. One of the biggest legacies of his tenure has been to reform the CCP to streamline and consolidate power under himself. Accompanying this, the CCP has made a cultural push to sell the values of authoritarianism both domestically and abroad.
But, by this point, the realization was coming way too late. After decades of free trade, the American and Chinese economies had become inseparably linked. In 2016, the Obama administration attempted to “pivot to the Asia question” and settled on the Trans-Pacific Partnership as their answer. Based on the advice of top economists, the agreement was designed to curb Chinese economic power by developing a multinational trade network that deliberately excluded it. Problem was, the TPP ran into significant opposition — from both the political left and right. Labor unions saw the deal as a way to offshore American jobs, and among politicians there was a bipartisan skepticism surrounding its secrecy and corporate influence.
Trump famously ran on opposing the deal and immediately took to shredding it as soon as he won. And while many China hawks bemoan Trump and protectionists for sinking what they thought was a surefire win, it’s incredibly telling how nobody was willing to die on a hill for it. Hillary Clinton famously flip-flopped on the issue when it came time to campaign, and so did previously pro-trade Republicans following Trump’s win.
The immediate political collapse in support for the TPP at the first signs of political pushback should call into question whether or not its benefits were overstated. Which, for the GDP argument3, was absolutely the case — these were all countries that were already trading with each other in a status quo that involved both America and China. So, to sell the deal, they worked closely with business representatives to remove “non-tariff barriers” through measures such as expanding drug patents and and standardizing corporate litigation.
But this points to a larger pattern in how we wage “economic war” on China. It seems to always involve corporate handouts. Always the carrot, never the stick. Even Trump, for all his talk of bringing jobs back, didn’t seem to deviate from this pattern. He signed $10 billion to chip manufacturers such as Foxconn, in the hopes it would bring jobs back to America. Foxconn was happy to pocket the money, even as they kept their factories in China. The Wisconsin plant promised never materialized.
And even now, it still continues. In 2020, Biden made a big show on the debate stage of calling Xi Jinping a thug, but as soon as he won his administration stressed “friendly rivalry” in their stance towards China, and pleaded with the country to establish guardrails to avoid escalation in the conflict. Beijing, on the other hand, ignored this and kept doing their own thing. It’s been over 30 years since the Cold War has ended, and not a single president has shown any meaningful action to back up their words.
And while we can sit here and continue to pick apart the failures of individual politicians, it really does seem to be a larger problem with the country as a whole. Companies will proudly brand their products as “Made in U.S.A” for the free PR, even as they’re often, in reality, produced offshore. Having your cake and eating it too seems to be the consistent theme.
What’s Really Going On
If you actually look at the goals the CCP outlines for the country, one of the most consistent top priorities is economic development. The very same deals that have benefitted multinational firms has also contributed to the country’s record-breaking economic growth. Hawks love to run with the narrative that China is a communist power bent on world domination, but it’s actual aims are a lot more mundane.
At present, China’s primary focus rests on the development of its economy, inspiring the confidence of the Chinese people, and maintaining social stability at home. On the international front, a key objective for China is the reunification of Taiwan as a strategic platform for global expansion. In contrast, the United States prioritizes mobilizing its national resources to address China’s comprehensive challenges, maintain its influence in the Asia-Pacific region, and ensure its global dominance.
These are primarily domestic and regional concerns, rooted in the CCP’s long-standing conception of “sovereignty”. This ideology provides a framework where the ruling class of the country don’t necessarily see conflict with the West as inevitable nor their relations zero-sum. It’s a mercenary attitude, but not one that seeks limitless expansion.
And while you can’t always take public statements at their word, it seems to correspond with the actions of everyone involved. The hesitation on part of China hawks to take action can be in part explained by the uncomfortable truth that cutting off the country comes with tradeoffs. That it might raise prices, hurt profits, and hurt growth: it’s easier for politicians to instead posture and bet on strategies that won’t rock the boat. Moments like these highlight that the state and market aren’t necessarily at odds — governments judge their success on metrics (jobs, growth, prices) that often overlap with that of the market.
Looking at things from a market perspective, the more consumers and suppliers you have access to, the more activity you can stimulate in the global economy. But economists still prefer to take the economies of each country in isolation. There’s a reason why a lot of things are still Made in China. Chinese manufacturing, despite recent hurdles, is still a highly relevant force in the world, even moreso in prior decades.
And that’s why you can’t just take countries in isolation, especially when you’re talking about economies. This is where I do think it helps to take a “world-systems” perspective: countries have to be considered within the context of the role they play within the larger global economy. Some countries have higher labor pools, some countries are bigger consumer hubs, some countries have resource capital whereas other countries rely on human capital. The horrid Chinese labor conditions that appall us in the West also allow for razor-thin profit margins, which in turn lowers costs on exports. This is a very attractive deal for multinational companies, who can produce goods in low-cost developing countries and sell them to wealthier, developed countries.
But just like how the Victorian sweatshops of 200 years ago laid the foundation for modern Western affluence, so China’s growth is propelling many of its members into the middle class. Some analysts take this as a sign that we’re entering a new era of U.S.-China relations, but even this dynamic opens a new can of worms. China’s massive pool of workers is turning into a massive pool of consumers. These people who have newly come into wealth spend similarly to their Western counterparts, and are just as attractive for Western companies to do business with.
And it’s very telling when you look at the hoops through which companies are willing to jump for this market. Hollywood has been notorious for censoring their movies to appeal to Chinese sensibilities, why? Because the Chinese market for film is too large to ignore. Video game company Blizzard famously suspended one of its top e-sports players over support for the 2019 Hong Kong protests. These are the same kinds of companies whose oligarchs are forming the new president’s inner circle, having to balance paying lip service to his China-hawkery while protecting their conflicting interests.
If there is one thing that could set the stage for global competition, it’ll likely be the fact that this newfound Chinese wealth has been built off of the backs of third-world countries. Programs such as the Belt and Road Initiative have been frequently been used as a wedge for Chinese firms to establish a foothold and exploit newly-developing resource markets. Yet, despite how blatantly predatory these loans are, many nations still choose them over competing Western offerings. Why? Because loans by the World Bank also come with strings attached, often times ones that are much harder to swallow.
Whether it’s because leadership still delusionally clings to failed neoliberal prescriptions or because they measure success in terms of what most benefits global capital4, the conditions institutions like the World Bank and the IMF attach to loans have often left these countries in ruins. Regardless of intentions, the only ones who seem better off by the end tend to be the corporations who take the opportunity to set up shop.
What this has meant for people can be seen by looking at Ghana, an IMF ‘success story,’ from the viewpoint of the extensiveness of the trade liberalization allowed and the present growth rate. Since 1983, when Ghana decided to comply with the IMF, the national currency, the cedi, has collapsed nearly 100 percent in value. As a result, the banknotes that people are paid with are worthless, which means that the majority of Ghanaians have been demonetized. Unions, however, have been suf ficiently intimidated (thanks also to Jerry Rawlings’s past reputation as ‘man of the people’) as to subscribe to the plan and keep workers from striking. Thus, international capital’s initiative has forced Ghanaians to leap beyond the money relation. Today the monthly salary of midlevel civil servants hardly pays for one-third of their families’ monthly food bill.5
And if this is the stage whereby the West competes with China, the struggle begins to looks less like a great “clash of values” and more like two economic behemoths fighting for their slice of the global pie.
(Even then, it’s seriously questionable whether China even has the juice to overtake America at the core of the world’s economy, as the biggest hurdles it faces are intrinsic to its economic model.)
When the hawks decry TikTok data harvesting, their outrage comes from their belief that the data is exclusively theirs to harvest. For all the scaremongering about Chinese surveillance and “social credit scores”, the actual sophistication of the infrastructure with which the CCP can even (despite how much it would want to) monitor its own citizens is laughably poor. Ironically, it’s actually the United States (and the accompanying Five Eyes) which has seemed to master the art of surveillance6.
Ultimately, states are economic rent-seekers. They tolerate commerce insofar as they can look to profit off of it for themselves. When our new president talks about taking the fight to China with tariffs, he’s also at the same time publicly enamored with the revenue he’d imagine it would raise. It’s not at all unlike how individual capitalists (such as Zuckerberg) are constantly looking for an opportunity to use the situation to get a leg-up while also still being able to cut deals with the Chinese in the background. Nobody actually wants to slay the golden goose, they just want to run off with the golden eggs. And as long as this “friendly competition” continues to keep spitting out money, everyone involved is perfectly fine to keep playing along. Meanwhile the American people are lectured on their “patriotic duty” to sit back and allow American companies to make as much money as they desire.
The reason why everyone is so unserious is because the framing of “America vs. China” was never an accurate one in the first place. Corporations in both countries have found common ground in profiting off of workers and consumers, both American and Chinese. To the third-world countries caught in the crossfire, they don’t see an ideological standoff, but two faces of foreign investment. It seems like the capitalists of all nations have enough sense to see where their common interest lies, so that only leaves one question — will workers around the world be able to notice the common war waged on them?
American politicians also commonly allege that the Chinese government directly owns or has a stake in the company itself, but whether or not this is actually true seems to be unclear.
One example of this is the requirement for companies to turn over relative data to the government when deemed necessary.
The most commonly publicized argument for the TPP (just like prior free-trade deals) was that it would help boost economic growth and increase the GDP of all countries involved.
Federici, Silvia. Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. Kairos. Oakland: PM Press, 2019, p. 20.
Federici, Silvia. Re-Enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons. Kairos. Oakland: PM Press, 2019, p. 44.
Chuang. Social Contagion: And Other Material on Microbiological Class War in China. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2021, p. 146.