China wants to use the COVID-19 pandemic to consolidate more global power as U.S. leadership balks
Neither countries’ response has been great, but strength comes in outdoing your competitor. So which major power will gain the upper hand?
An eerie absence of American global leadership during the coronavirus pandemic is leaving U.S. allies bewildered as China tries to intensify its competition for power with the States.
“There is not only no global leadership, there is no national and no federal leadership in the United States,” said Ricardo Hausmann, director of the Growth Lab at Harvard’s Center for International Development.
How did this competition heat up amid the pandemic?
The answer begins with a brief explanation of what catapulted China into becoming the second most powerful country in the world — and where U.S. leadership has slipped.
China’s rise to superpower status
Before 1978, China was deeply impoverished, sustained primarily by a failing agrarian-based economy under Chairman Mao Zedong’s leadership. State ownership of all enterprises stifled foreign investment into the country and prohibited entrepreneurs from creating businesses.
But after Mao’s death in 1978, China’s new leader, Deng Xiaoping, began a series of market-based economic reforms that lifted many protectionist policies and regulations, decentralizing the economy and enabling newly-formed private sectors to flourish.
Now, more than 40 years later, China boasts not only the world’s second-largest economy, but also the fastest-growing trillion dollar economy when measured by total gross domestic product (G.D.P.), dwarfing Japan’s third-place status by nearly $10 trillion. China experienced unprecedented nonstop economic growth almost every year since Deng’s ascension to power — and the trend continued relentlessly after he retired in 1992.
China’s ability to convert its economy from ashes to a well-oiled machine has allowed it to improve its technological, military and world prestige to the point where the U.S. now deems China (along with Russia) as the biggest threat to American values and global leadership, according to the most recent U.S. doctrine on the matter.
America’s new National Security Strategy
The executive branch of government periodically issues a National Security Strategy (N.S.S.) to Congress, highlighting how the president’s administration plans to deal with what it believes to be the most important national security concerns. The most recent N.S.S., issued by President Donald Trump in December 2017, starts with his words that the world is “lifted by America’s renewal and the reemergence of American leadership.”
It promises to promote and advance America and its allies’ safety and influence around the world, with the primary objective being that the U.S. will “respond” to the growing political, economic and military competitions it faces around the world, requiring a rewrite of old policies. It also targets two primary competitors.
“China and Russia challenge American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity,” it reads. “They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.”
Read the full N.S.S. here.
Lack of U.S. leadership
That said, a closer look at Trump’s actions the last few years show a betrayal of these claims to re-strengthen global influence and alliances. He withdrew U.S. support from the Paris climate agreement and the Iran nuclear deal, called N.A.T.O. and other alliance structures “obsolete,” provoked a trade war with China, slashed funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (which assists millions of stateless Palestinians) and assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani without notifying America’s closest allies.
But perhaps the worst betrayal of Trump’s promise is his domestic and international handling of the coronavirus.
It started with the elimination of the National Security Council’s pandemic unit in 2018. And during the current crisis, he has mischaracterized basic information about the outbreak to the public, incited protests against safety measures advised by scientific experts in some states, waited too long to roll out working test kits from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, clashed with governors over what to do and who has the authority to do it, promoted using the drug hydroxychloroquine without any evidence of its efficacy and even publicly pondered the injection of disinfectants into COVID-19 patients.
Trump has floated unfounded suggestions that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab, branded COVID-19 as the “Chinese” or “Wuhan” virus to stoke xenophobic sentiments, suspended immigration temporarily and cut off all funding to the World Health Organization pending “further review” of its handling of the outbreak.
As the W.H.O.’s primary benefactor, that’s $400 million a year withheld amid the most deadly pandemic in a century.
Trump said this was because the organization failed to respond to the virus’ penetration in China early enough. Meanwhile, China pledged an additional $30 million to the W.H.O.
This is one example of how the current COVID-19 scenario presents a near-perfect opportunity for China to fine tune its “soft power” capabilities — the use of institutional skills, organizational effectiveness, communication, investment and international aid to gain favor and influence other countries to do what it wants without coercion or direct force. In doing so, China will have a unique chance to try to shape world opinion in its favor and consolidate more power from the U.S. while American leadership has its head in the sand.
Here’s how.
Beijing’s strategy
China wants to become a superpower in smart manufacturing, digitalization, cyber and other emerging technologies by 2025. Dubbed the “Made in China 2025” strategy, one of its main objectives is to buy up struggling Western firms, which will be made easier by the financial uncertainty caused by COVID-19.
Last year, Chinese entities invested close to $13 billion in E.U. countries; in 2018, they poured more than $25 billion into the U.S. The majority of these transactions were mergers or acquisitions, with far fewer instances of money being pumped into forming new companies.
The U.S. and some E.U. countries have slowly realized the national security implications of these investments and acted accordingly. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (C.F.I.U.S.) reviews certain foreign investment takeovers, while Germany and the U.K. recently adopted similar measures to stop any potential solicitation of sensitive national security information.
Beijing’s investments extend to areas of higher education as well. A report issued by the Mercator Institute for China Studies shows that Chinese companies participate in huge amounts of research and development on sensitive topics in partnership with some of the world’s most prestigious universities.
Perhaps the most high-profile case came to light when Harvard University’s Chemistry Department Chairman and nanotechnology pioneer Charles Lieber was arrested for lying to the Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health about receiving millions of dollars in funding from a Chinese organization called Thousand Talents Plan in January. The federal complaint lodged in Massachusetts shows that Wuhan University of Technology — in conjunction with the Thousand Talents program — gave Lieber more than $1.5 million to set up a research lab in China, as well as a $50,000 monthly salary and $150,000 for annual living expenses between 2012 and 2017.
China’s information warfare vs. Western skepticism
Beijing has subtler ways of prodding for Western vulnerabilities as well; one of these techniques relies heavily on deploying information subterfuge across the internet. Sources that can be traced back to China are executing well-coordinated disinformation campaigns throughout the world, intending to promote false claims and sow both doubt and anger among Americans.
An extension of these goals for China is to control global perception about its handling of the virus as much as possible: It has accelerated its ad spending on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to shape popular opinion.
Since the end of 2018, China bought more than 200 political ads on Facebook; a third of them have been purchased within the past two and a half months. China’s political ads on Facebook so far have amassed 109 million views in the past 14 months; about 45 million occurred since February 15. These disinformation efforts far outnumber the 40 million impressions made by Russia’s Internet Research Agency found to have intended to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
These efforts have not gone unnoticed to the U.S. and its allies. Last Friday, N.A.T.O. Secretary General Jans Stoltenberg reprimanded China for its attempts to spread disinformation that could make the COVID-19 crisis deteriorate even more. French President Emmanuel Macron and European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell have also chastised China’s manipulation.
All the while, health officials in Wuhan added an additional 1,300 coronavirus-related deaths retroactively on April 16, citing earlier lapses in their ability to count deaths accurately. This is not uncommon for a health crisis of this magnitude, but it came one day after U.S. leaders called out China for its overall limited disclosure.
Chinese Foreign Minister Spokesman Zhao Lijian responded to the Trump Administration’s comments by saying there has never been a coronavirus cover-up in China — that the government “does not allow cover-ups.” Lijian previously asserted an unfounded claim that the U.S. Army brought the coronavirus to Wuhan.
Skepticism within China
As international leaders question China’s reporting, so do some of its citizens. Many in China are worried their government simply decided to stop reporting most cases so that President Xi Jinping can boost his image abroad and maintain the narrative that his country has defeated the virus.
Feelings of apprehension manifested into a border riot between residents of eastern Hubei province and northern Jiangxi province on March 27 after Chinese authorities lifted travel restrictions for all non-Wuhan city residents of Hubei. When Hubei residents tried to cross the Jiujiang Yangzi River Bridge into Jiangxi, police on the other side blocked their passage. Clashes emerged between citizens and citizens, citizens and police and even police and police on both sides.
China’s recent admission that it did not publish figures for asymptomatic cases of coronavirus until April 1 further adds to the skepticism surrounding Beijing’s transparency. A publication affiliated with the Communist Party’s official People’s Daily newspaper quoted a senior doctor from Wuhan who claimed there could be as many as 10,000 to 20,000 asymptomatic cases there. That was before the report was quickly deleted online.
Underlying all of the paranoia and fear is the possibility that inaccurate sensitive medical information combined with relaxed social distancing measures could conjure a second wave of infections worse than the first one, which would diminish much of the progress China made to combat the virus. Eyes from across the world will be fixed firmly on China to see if a second wave hits harder than the first — and if Beijing’s government allows other international bodies a more clear-eyed view than it did the first time.
No clear winner in sight
The U.S. and China might be the two most powerful countries on the planet, but one would be hard-pressed to make the case that either Washington or Beijing have shown and maintained exemplary leadership during the coronavirus crisis. China failed the world initially by hiding the true extent of the virus’ outbreak and America failed with its erratic responses on the world stage.
What differentiates the two failures is that America has more to lose while China has more to gain. And although many world leaders may not rush to adhere to Beijing’s preferred style of global leadership, China will consider it a victory if it can use the current pandemic to exasperate doubts that countries already have about the U.S.’ ability to lead.
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