Conversation with a friend: the decline of the West
A special edition to celebrate a special milestone.
Did you know that this is the 40th Sinobabble analytical newsletter? Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me so far! There are almost 200 of us talking about China and its interactions with the world, and our community is growing more and more each month!
I like my newsletter to be interactive, and I love it when you guys leave comments or write me emails about the topics we discuss here. This week I had a long conversation with a good friend (who is much smarter than me and way more tuned in to current affairs) about China, politics, and the world, and I wanted to share it here with you guys.
Please do leave comments, join in the conversation, and share this with your friends if you think it’s interesting! And special thanks to CQ for the fun conversation on a cold September morning.
The bigger picture
CQ: How has your view of the ‘Taiwan’ question evolved in light of Ukraine? [This is literally how our conversation started by the way. No hellos, no how are yous. We don’t do pleasantries.]
Xi must be in such internal conflict. On the one hand, a show of force against Taiwan would be catastrophic. But on the other, China is looking economically weak and Xi must feel like he needs to do something bold to justify a third term. For Putin, no matter how bad it gets in Ukraine, he can’t backpedal. There must be so many closet enemies waiting to behead him. This is what happens when you rule as a despot, no? No such thing as a friend. There must be people in China’s upper echelons thinking the same.
Edi: In general my opinion on the Taiwan crisis hasn't actually changed at all. If anything, I think the Ukraine war has increased or bolstered the Chinese position of a gradual reintegration with Taiwan. I’m sure you saw that the Chinese foreign ministry was like, "we want a ceasefire, we want you guys to come to a dialogue, we respect Ukraine sovereignty, blah blah blah". And at this meeting in Uzbekistan they were talking about challenging the West but also being peaceful and not really wanting to start WWIII, but instead trying to change the unipolarity of the globe without coming to blows. I think that in general Xi actually wants Putin to back off of Ukraine because it's getting a little bit embarrassing for Putin.
I also didn't think that Xi's position is as threatened as a lot of people think that it is. I have seen a lot of people talking about challenges to his third term as president, but the term limit only applies to the presidency, it doesn't actually apply to the chairmanship of the CCP which is what matters. Even if Xi was replaced as president it doesn't necessarily mean that he would be replaced as chairman, also I read that there are basically no contenders that are as good as Xi in terms of popularity, and another report that I read said his moves for party discipline have been really popular. I know the zero-covid stuff is unpopular, but I think those lockdown policies… the blame for them is eventually going to be pushed on to regional leaders. It's not going to come back on Xi, that’s literally the point of democratic centralism. Also I love that Putin is literally just killing off his enemies, like 12 Russian oligarchs have just been mysteriously killed or mysteriously died in very strange accidents over the past few months.
Stability in dictatorship
CQ: I just don't think that Putin has any call to play upon, I think he must be much more vulnerable than Xi in the sense that Putin is killing off everyone rich and powerful. Putin specifically has done nothing but create enemies. I think from the meeting China was also saying that we want this peaceful shift and whatnot, but we also condemn any Western countries getting involved in the foreign affairs of our country. They always come back to this kind of safeguard for themselves because they don't want anyone getting involved in the internal affairs or what they deem to be their internal problem of Taiwan.
I think it's probably exactly what you said that the West, particularly the US - Biden supporters and Trump supporters - want to make it look like Xi has been weakened, but I do think this must be the least comfortable period of his time in power. In Russia it seems like the populace is getting more vocal about their discontent which is kind of out of the ordinary for both countries.
If you take a step back and you look at the US and you think OK, the US is a global superpower, imposing its will on all parts of the world as a kind of stabilising democratic framework, but if the world is an imprint of the US then we are in a lot of trouble. If there exists this argument that the world should not be unipolar, I can accept this theoretically because if the US has showcased anything in recent times it's that the US should not be at the helm; and it's only at the helm by virtue of its economy; and its economy is probably the most damaging economy in the world. This push from China to have a varied viewpoint throughout the world, that’s half fair, but the two countries trying to push this ideology are two massive dictatorships that are doing everything that goes completely against what we view as the western way. I think we're doomed. The US is a melting pot of issues that are spilling out into the rest of the world and their allies in Europe are in just as precarious a situation. I mean Italy is about to vote in a very far right government, and Sweden have just had the far right elected into their government.
Edi: The internal affairs hypocrisy of China is really interesting to me. I love how China uses whataboutism, and I think what's really interesting about that is that the West is starting to do that as well, they are basically playing China's own game back at them more and more. I think whataboutism is actually really bad, pointless, and it doesn't solve any issues, but I just think that it's some sort of sign that China is having that effect on everyone else.
The thing is it's tumultuous for everyone and I think that's working to China's advantage because they can double down on the fact that authoritarianism creates stability whereas they can project this image of the US as floundering because it is: their democratic parties only argue with each other they don't solve any issues. So they can say “what we've got going on isn't great but look at the alternative, isn't it terrible?” I think the case of Russia is slightly different because Russia's economy is not and has not been growing, so Putin's position is way more precarious, and authoritarianism in Russia isn't working as well. I do agree that different camps are needed so you don't get this long arm colonialism that the US has been practising. But at the same time I feel that China kind of wants to be like the US, hence Belt and Road, which is a sign that they know soft power and economic power are more important or are vehicles to spread ideological power, just like Christianity or Islam in the past was a vehicle to spread political ideology. Economics is like the new way of doing that.
The UK definitely needs to start having its own ideological standpoint, because the fact that we can't choose between our economic interests in a growing Asia and sort of military and historical/ideological friendship with the US and the Global North is really standing in our way of developing and thriving. I think the UK could thrive. We don’t have to be completely neutral like Switzerland, but I do think there is the need to stop being so politically vehement about every single issue when we can't do anything about it because we don't have the military or political clout that we used to. I think the point that you made about Sweden is such a good point, because the reason that the far right party in Sweden has become the second largest is because Sweden's been resting on its laurels as a highly developed first world country. They've had problems with immigration and integration and they haven't been dealing with it and the Swedish people are not happy about it and so they're turning to parties that they feel can deal with it. That's the same thing that we had with Brexit: people are turning to parties or solutions that say that they are going to solve the problems that they care about. The UK should learn from Sweden on this point: we've got a fuel crisis, we have a food crisis, we have a child poverty crisis. If you look at China, it deals with its domestic issues first.
Decoupling the UK and US
CQ: I’m very disinvested in UK politics. Objectively it does very well, but at the same time it is the country that's completely beleaguered by political incompetence. As a society, we keep choosing politicians… actually that's not entirely fair because the last bunch of leaders that we have not been voted in by the public… but we find ourselves in the situation where we have clueless politicians that are actually just leaning heavily into this movement of culture wars crap. It’s not right to say Brexit was completely good or completely bad, I think the merits definitely exist on both sides. As to why it passed is a completely different discussion and passed on the extremely false and ‘ist’ kind of misconceptions - racist and anti-migrant - but I believe the UK could find a way to have its place in the world.
They’re definitely not neutral, they do things like completely ignore issues or espouse a position to an issue that they created in the first place, for example Hong Kong, and then just sit on the fence. It has this double effect of being ineffective and looking a bit stupid. At the same time we're just always in the pocket of the US from a social perspective, and in the pocket of China from an economic perspective because we have been inundated with foreign direct investment from them. The UK is completely lost with what to do economically, it's in a precarious situation because Liz Truss thinks that lowering taxes will not have any adverse impacts on inflation and thinks that lowering taxes for the wealthy is the way to grow the economy. It's just completely ludicrous, you have an economic and political fissure. Parties like UKIP get more popular and they're getting more popular everywhere - France, Italy, Sweden - because at the moment people are really focusing on the wrong things politically. I think too much emphasis is being put on how people feel, a movement of championing emotions, and at the same time actual very physical things are falling apart and nothing is being addressed. Europe is modelling itself on the US.
We need to rethink how we elect world leaders, what we value in leadership is a great challenge that we have as a species. Our tendency towards leaders is completely flawed. Looking at the US right now… it’s like getting your arm chopped off and you can't stop looking at the wound cause it's so gory and it's fascinating. It's a fantastic contemporary case study on how leaving things to fester and putting plasters over things is a recipe for absolute disaster. And you have president after president deepening wounds, and this is exactly what's happening everywhere. Governments working in their own political self-interest just doing things to stay in power, just doing things to appease, just to survive, and obviously now we're coming to a point where lots of nations are paying the price for it. And they’re all just bolstering China's long term argument that western democracy ideologies don't work, which is their favourite thing because they have empirical and anecdotal evidence to give to their population.
Edi: I think someone like Liz Truss is just a typical conservative - their message doesn't change because the party doesn't change. It feels that it doesn't need to change because it keeps getting voted into power. What we need is a change in democratic norms, a bottom-up sort of impetus to change what the leaders focus on in terms of issues.
What I will disagree on ever so slightly is the Hong Kong issue, because although technically the UK didn't do much and it really couldn't because it had handed over the political rights of Hong Kong to China, I know people who took advantage of the BNO visa to move to the UK and were able to get out of Hong Kong. And I think that not backing down when China was like “you better take that back” did actually take some balls. Also Rishi Sunak saying that he wanted to dismantle the Confucius institutes like… woah. Especially because most conservatives have deals and money tied up with China, so to say something like that knowing that China can retaliate in a very direct way, I thought that that was actually quite ballsy.
I think the culture wars are a sign of that decadence and decline that you see in late empire. It's that thing where all the fundamental problems have been solved, so people can just indulge in their emotions, like in Greece and ancient Rome. People put more effort into self-expression instead of solving issues around food and social issues. A rise in extremism follows, and then you get extremist leaders like Julius Caesar, so you fall into this pattern where leaders start electing themselves instead of being elected by the people. I think that's what you saw with Donald Trump, and I think also you can argue that's what you see with Biden. No one would argue that Joe Biden is a competent leader, but what he is is a symbol of a set of ideals upheld by a certain part of the population. He represents an idea that people have, as opposed to actually holding ideas himself or putting forward his own policies or having his own message. We're not electing leaders anymore, we're electing symbols.
I think the US is a perfect example of an empire in decline in real time. I'm so sorry to everyone who wanted it to be China, but it's actually going to be the US. The US is literally crumbling and as you say the wound is festering. It's probably going to cease existing in our lifetime, which is a shame because it was only around 300 years, but it's just going to become the United States of Amazon and that really is a shame actually.
CQ: OK I'm a bit harsh on the UK, and I think you're right they did stand their ground against the fire and fury comments from China. But I just feel like I'm still very attached to Hong Kong and I feel like enough wasn’t done to make China abide by the One country two systems rule. But the UK did oppose some of the 5G and other heavy Chinese investments that were being pushed for in the country. But my issue with Rishi Sunak is that his father-in-law is one of the richest men in India (#44 according to Forbes), and I just think that's such a cheap kind of self-interest to have. There's no shortage of tension between China and India, so I don't think that all comes from a place of national concern, I think that it probably comes from a place of backroom chatter.
It’s what you get when you allow unfettered capitalism and put money above all else. The US especially deserves its fate. A ‘democracy’ where politics is for financial gain, and this system is openly supported by those at the top. Good riddance.
I think the Ukraine War most closely resembles the Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40.
In the end, their heroism and determination kept the Finns free, but they lost some swampland on the border with the Soviet Union. And the understanding not to provoke the Russians.
Putin has not given himself a way out. China would prefer any decades or century of humiliation be enjoyed by Russia, not it. And has essentially told Putin this.
I personally think that if Putin is in charge, and he is in charge, he will use nuclear weapons. This is a simmering brinksmanship we have not seen since 1962.