The Future Is Bleak If China Hardliners Get Their Way

There is no worse way to think about the U.S.-China relationship than as an “existential struggle.”

Blaise Malley reported on the first hearing of the new select committee on China earlier this week and found the usual hardliners pushing their agenda:

Much of the hearing, however, focused on fearmongering about the myriad threats that the Chinese government poses to the United States and the world. “We may call this a strategic competition, but it’s not a polite tennis match,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), the committee’s chairman, in his opening remarks. “This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century.”

There is no worse way to think about the U.S.-China relationship than as an “existential struggle.” That falsely implies that the survival of the U.S. is at stake, and it sets the goal of the “struggle” as the total defeat and elimination of the competitor. Short of regime collapse on one side, that is not going to happen. Hardliners exaggerate what is at stake to instill fear and to get people to stop thinking carefully about the costs of the policies they propose. They effectively put their thumbs on the scale from the start by overstating the other government’s capabilities and ambitions and then demanding that everyone take their distorted estimates as gospel. This inevitably produces poorly-conceived policies driven by unfounded fears and ideological fantasies, and the U.S. and the affected countries end up paying a steep price.