After a very hot war broke out in Ukraine when Russia invaded what had once been one of its “Soviets”, all eyes have been turned towards China to see whether their “economic competition” will morph into a new Cold War. The old Cold War, between 1945 and 1989, turned out to be very traumatic for what was then called the “Third World” – the First and Second Worlds being the West and the USSR-Eastern Europe. We were the grass that got trampled when the two elephants fought for political, ideological, and strategic dominance.
China’s economic challenge was recognised for decades now after they inexorably moved up the economic food chain to their present position of number two and their eclipse of the US only a matter of time. Ironically, it was the US, under the leadership of President Nixon who brought China out of the cold in 1972 and made them their tacit ally in that Cold War by facilitating the latter’s industrial base to become “America’s factory”. When the USSR fissioned in 1989, there was talk of an “End of History” in the sense that America’s ideology of Liberalism had seemingly conquered all, especially when new Russian President Boris Yeltsin adopted its premises liberally.
But China turned out not to be a one-trick pony and began using the economic clout garnered through over US$3 trillion foreign reserves accumulated by running export surpluses with primarily the US and the EU. Under their new model of capitalism of an economy run by a very disciplined Communist Party with most of its financing and manufacturing funnelled by the state, China became a juggernaut. In the meantime, after Mao’s China had refused to play a junior role to the USSR during the days of “world communism”, they became the de-facto numero uno after the USSR crumbled ignominiously. The competition with the US was foreshadowed since its new mode of “directed capitalism” could prove to be an ideological model for the Third World – now euphemistically called the “developing world”.
China had joined the nuclear club very early on and soon began to beef up its military capabilities, including a navy through which it could project its power. Its People Liberation Army is the largest standing army in the world, far exceeding its next two challengers India and the USA. It is also very technologically proficient and manufactures its own missiles and aircraft. After it clashed with its erstwhile Asian rival India at their borders high in the Himalayas, it demonstrated that it is not afraid to be aggressive.
Outside its borders, it has moved aggressively in the economic arena to not only “win friends and influence countries” with its trillion-dollar “Belt and Road Initiative” (B&RI) spanning Asia, Europe, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean. All these countries are now being influenced by China since they received extraordinarily large loans for infrastructural projects and some being unable to service the loans become amenable to Chinese pressure. Finally, it has declared Taiwan to be under its sovereignty and has challenged the US in the South China Seas, which it declares to be its area of influence, à la the US’s 1823 “Monroe Doctrine” and its “backyard”.
In 2019, preeminent foreign policy expert and architect of the US rapprochement with China, Henry Kissinger warned that the United States and China were in “the foothills of a Cold War”. Dr Kissinger’s warning cannot be taken lightly because China is no USSR that was economically hollow, bereft of the strategic wherewithal to put its money where its mouth was. We should note China’s implicit support of Russia in its Ukraine War. While it cannot be gainsaid that China has a tremendous amount of intricate relations with the US because of the history of its economic miracle, the dynamics of power have a logic of its own when China is challenging the US’s hegemony as the sole superpower left standing after the first Cold War.
As a minnow, Guyana has to take cognisance of the larger picture within which it must situate its foreign policy.
