Why the U.S.Should Abandon Hostility Toward China

By James Peck

Americas greatest existential threat today is not China； it is making China into Americas existential threat. The war of words launched by the U.S. over the coronavirus is a sad commentary on the lack of necessary cooperation， not to mention a lack of compassion initially for the severity of the epidemic in China in the early months. The escalating hostility toward China now so evident in Washington will all but ensure a competitive rather than any collaborative search for vital solutions. The result will be wasted resources， duplicative research， insufficient financing， and the undermining of international dissemination of advanced green technologies. And this is only to note the consequences for coping with just one of humanitys looming crises.

Yet amid all this， Washington has been gearing up for a full society mobilization against China—the “looming new superpower” that threatens America. In U.S. national security discussions today， as well as in congressional and media debates， the depiction of China as a frightening new superpower is in reality a reflection of what has so often happened in the past—a projection onto China of the dark underside of what American globalism has long been about. In the current fear-provoking projection， China would， like the U.S.， be everywhere and into everything. Its economic might will lead to a domineering Chinese-centric world order； its military might extend worldwide； its drones would be everywhere； its ethos would threaten alternatives of all sorts all over the globe.

But this is a fantasy， however useful for those lining up in Washington today for greater defense spending and those urging escalating military maneuvers against China. China， unlike the U.S.， will not have 800 overseas military bases， be invading and overthrowing numerous governments， or committing regime change actions throughout a large part of the planet as the U.S. has done for decades. Why？ Because China is not the U.S.—and the world is not what it was when U.S. power sought to fashion an American-centric world after 1945. The world today is a very different place.

End of U.S. centrality

The world China entered as it embarked on its great reforms since the late 1970s coincided with a fundamental restructuring of the capitalist world as the U.S. sought to reconstitute and transform the operations of its global centrality after the Viet Nam War. The U.S. was at home in a bipolar world； its global preeminence was augmented and ideologically sustained by it. Chinas rise is a“rise” in a multipolar world， a very different world from the one in which the U.S. envisioned a worldwide American-centric ordering of global capitalism amid a “bipolar” struggle in the immediate post World War II decades.