The China Challenge, Democracy, And U.S. Grand Strategy
policy briefThe China challenge, democracy, andU.S. grand strategyTarun ChhabraAmid the rapid growth of China’s international power and influence, the United States will haveto make defense of democracy and liberal values a centerpiece of its grand strategy.EXECUTIVE SUMMARYand liberal values to the forefront of U.S. grandstrategy. U.S. and allied leaders of open societiesshould embrace the China challenge, seizing anopportunity to restore faith in democratic capitalismthrough political realignments and mobilizationfor renewal, including major new investmentsin infrastructure, research and development,education, development assistance, intelligence,alliances, and defense.The rise of China and the persistence of deep,internal challenges across open societies havecreated tremendous headwinds for democracy andliberal values globally, threatening U.S. alliances,liberal economic order, and even the political identityof the United States and its democratic partnersand allies. Beijing’s “flexible” authoritarianismabroad, digital tools of surveillance and control,unique brand of authoritarian capitalism, and“weaponization” of interdependence may infact render China a more formidable threat todemocracy and liberal values than the SovietUnion was during the Cold War. China’s growth anddetermined illiberalism mean that open societiesaround the world must prepare for the current era ofdemocratic stagnation to continue, or even worsen.Against this backdrop, the United States and itsallies must first come to grips with the gravity ofthe China challenge and then advance democracyINTRODUCTIONAs the United States and its allies enter an eraof renewed geopolitical competition with a rising,authoritarian China, democracy and liberal valuesmust advance to the forefront of U.S. grand strategy.National security is ultimately the defense ofpolitical identity and core values from externalthreats.1
DEMOCRACY & DISORDERTHE CHINA CHALLENGE, DEMOCRACY, AND U.S. GRAND STRATEGYNational Security Council Directive 68 (NSC-68) of1950 thus defined the foremost and “fundamentalpurpose of the United States” not as territorialor economic security, but instead as “assur[ing]the integrity and vitality of our free society, whichis founded upon the dignity and worth of theindividual.”1 The Kennedy administration definedthe United States’ national purpose similarly.2 Anda quarter-century later, the Reagan administrationstipulated that the overriding purpose of U.S.national security policy was to “preserve thepolitical identity, framework and institutions of theUnited States as embodied in the Declaration ofIndependence and the Constitution.”3 The UnitedStates was to fulfill this purpose by defending andpromoting democracy.To some degree, U.S. grand strategy reflected theseambivalences for more than two decades after theCold War ended. The Clinton administration pushed“democratic enlargement”9 through the expansionof NATO, but on China, despite criticizing hispredecessor for appeasing the “butchers of Beijing”after the Tiananmen Square massacre, PresidentClinton elected to delink trade from human rightsconcerns.10 While the Clinton administration soughtto advance a “democratic security community” anddeter the re-establishment of peer competitors,11the deepening of global economic integration wasparamount. The George W. Bush administrationchampioned its “freedom agenda”12 but arguablytreated democracy promotion as indirect means ofachieving its more immediate objective of counteringterrorism. And the Obama administration—skeptical of Bush’s freedom agenda, wary of U.S.overstretch, and burned by the Arab Spring—shiedfrom a democracy agenda, even as it suggestedcooperation among democracies was necessary fora stable global order.13 President Trump, of course,has turned ambivalence into hostility, embracingautocrats and antagonizing democratic allies.14For much of the Cold War, of course, theseaspirations were belied by U.S. interference indemocratic elections, efforts at regime changeagainst democratically elected leaders, andtolerance of rights-abusing, authoritarian regimes.U.S. grand strategy in practice subordinated thepromotion and defense of democracy and liberalvalues to “short-term” concerns about Sovietinfluence. This began to shift only with the riseof a congressional human rights caucus and thesigning of the Helsinki Accords in 1975. In 1982,Reagan’s Westminster speech committed theUnited States to “foster[ing] the infrastructure ofdemocracy,”4 leading to the establishment of theNational Endowment for Democracy and alliedorganizations, and critical support for democracy inSouth Korea and the Philippines.5To be sure, successive U.S. administrationsengaged in significant internal debate about theproper role of democracy and liberal values inU.S. grand strategy. But the terms of this debatemust shift profoundly. Moscow’s authoritarianresurgence; autocratic turns in Turkey, Hungary,and the Philippines; and illiberal consolidationin Saudi Arabia and Egypt are all worrying trendsin their own right, but now must be assessedin the sweep of deeper strategic trends. In thecoming years, the rise of an authoritarian China, inconjunction with deep internal challenges acrossthe democratic world, mean that a return to postCold War ambivalences—or Cold War ones, for thatmatter—is no longer viable. Democracy and liberalvalues face tremendous headwinds abroad and athome, threatening U.S. alliances, liberal economicorder, and even the political identity of the UnitedStates and its democratic partners and allies.When the Cold War ended, however, even ardentanti-communists argued that “the function of theUnited States is not to spread democracy aroundthe world.”6 It was time to be “a normal countryin a normal time.”7 For others, the “third wave”8of democratic development suggested democracywas on such a tear that the United States didn’tneed to do much anyway.2
DEMOCRACY & DISORDERTHE CHINA CHALLENGE, DEMOCRACY, AND U.S. GRAND STRATEGYTo regain its footing, the United States must first cometo grips with the gravity of the threat to democracyand liberal values posed by a rising China, and thenmove democracy and liberal values to the center ofU.S. grand strategy. Second, mass digital surveillance may enablethe Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to realizepreviously unattainable totalitarian visions,and to export such capabilities not only tolike-minded autocrats, but also to vulnerabledemocracies.A MORE FORMIDABLE CHALLENGE Third, China’s authoritarian capitalism ismore dynamic and sustainable than Sovietstyle economic policy.The idea that the United States and China are hurtlingtoward a new Cold War has become a shibboleth forthose who believe that U.S. policy toward China hasbecome too confrontational. Cold War analogies, sothe argument goes, are dangerous and risk becomingself-fulfilling prophecies. Fourth, China is poised to weaponizeinterdependence at the expense of liberalvalues, particularly at a moment when opensocieties are deeply divided and vulnerableto political interference and capture.The implicit assumptions are that China poses alesser overall threat to the United States than theformer Soviet Union did, and that ideology is not, andneed not be, prominent in U.S.-China competition.In combination, these trends pose significantthreats to the political integrity of long-standing andemerging U.S. allies and partners across Eurasia.And Sino-Russian alignment, which U.S. intelligencerecently assessed as “stronger than at any pointsince the mid-1950s,”20 will compound the growingchallenge to a foundational assumption of U.S.foreign policy since World War II: that a hostilepower, or hostile entente, exercising primacy overEurasia would pose unacceptable risks to theUnited States’ political identity, prosperity, andterritorial security.These assumptions merit scrutiny.While the Soviet Union posed a greater military threatto the United States and its allies than China doestoday, and the risks of nuclear war were greater,the equation could soon change. 15 Chinese forcesare moving closer to parity with U.S. forces in keycontingency scenarios, such as a conflict over Taiwanor in the South China Sea,16 and the risks of U.S.-Chinanuclear escalation are increasing.17 The questionabout China’s long-term strategy is whether it seeksto, and could, replace the United States as the globalhegemon;18 that Beijing is seeking to build a Chinesesphere of influence in East Asia is already clear.19Supple authoritarianism meets democraticvulnerabilityToday, some argue, the CCP’s authoritarianismis categorically more benign than its Sovietpredecessor because it lacks the messianismand totalizing quality that characterized the mostambitious periods of Soviet foreign policy.21Less appreciated is that China’s challenge todemocracy and liberal values may be more formidablethan the Soviet challenge during the Cold War. U.S.planners must prepare for this scenario in light of thefollowing:The central assumption of this critique may befaulty. A flexibility and opportunism that, at least fornow, do not demand strict fealty to CCP doctrine—but instead model, co-opt, and capture—may, overtime, more effectively undermine the integrity ofdemocratic states than heavy-handed, backlashinducing coercion. First, China’s supple authoritarianism abroadmay be less demanding and more flexible thanSoviet communism, precisely at a momentwhen open societies are more vulnerable thanthey have been for decades.3
DEMOCRACY & DISORDERTHE CHINA CHALLENGE, DEMOCRACY, AND U.S. GRAND STRATEGYIt remains an open question whether Beijing will beable to muster restraint as its power waxes.22 Butas Hal Brands has argued, China already seeks asphere of influence in the Asia-Pacific region in orderto “decrease the danger of ‘ideological contagion’from neighboring democracies, to prevent thoseneighbors from ‘providing aid and comfort’ to antiregime forces within China, and to reduce thechances that regional states will participate incampaigns to punish Beijing for repressing its ownpopulation.”23 And beyond Asia, Beijing knows the“’costs of suppression’ at home will be lower in aworld in which more leaders are authoritarians,”and that “fellow authoritarians will not underminetheir regimes or diminish their international prestigeas democracies often do.”24Trumpism has shown, for instance, that JeaneKirkpatrick was wrong about Americans’ ideologicalrepugnance toward authoritarian attitudes. Inher well-known article, “Dictatorships and DoubleStandards,” Kirkpatrick argued that socialismand communism were “highly congenial to manyAmericans at the symbolic level” because, amongother reasons, “it is modern and not traditional[and] Marxist revolutionaries speak the languageof a hopeful future while traditional autocratsspeak the language of an unattractive past.”28On the other hand, she argued, we respond toauthoritarian figures by becoming “as censoriousas Cotton Mather confronting sin in New England”because “the notion that public affairs shouldbe ordered on the basis of kinship, friendship,and other personal relations rather than on thebasis of objective ‘rational’ standards violates ourconception of justice and efficiency”; a “preferencefor stability rather than change is disturbingto Americans whose whole national experiencerests on the principles of change, growth, andprogress”; and the “extremes of wealth and povertycharacteristic of traditional societies also offendus.”29 But today, across Europe and the UnitedStates, principles of justice and efficiency aretargeted as “rigged”; nostalgia trumps aspirationfor change, growth, and progress; and economicinequality rivals that of the Gilded Age.30 The qualityof democracy in the United States has diminishedsignificantly over the past decade, and particularlyunder the administration of President Trump; in theannual Freedom House assessment of democracyglobally, the United States ranks behind 51 of 86“free” countries.31So long as states follow these rules, Beijing is notdemanding adherence to “Xi Jinping thought” orHan cultural hegemony. This flexibility eventuallymay yield to more aggressive ideological demands,but it has thus far enabled Beijing to gain a footholdfor political interference in targeted states’ domesticeconomies and politics.25 It has even dulled vigilancein democratic societies. It is hard to imagine, forexample, Soviet political interference moving sofar and so quickly as the CCP’s recent politicalinterference in Australia26—precisely because ofthe general perception that China’s ideologicalambition abroad is far more benign. What hasbecome increasingly clear, however, is that, Beijing’sintensifying repression at home will require moreand more affirmative efforts to silence and otherwisedisarm critics abroad. As the CCP has engaged in ashocking campaign to erase the religious and ethnicidentity of Xinjiang’s Uighur Muslims—interning up to1 million, while seeking to control even more throughinvasive physical and digital surveillance—it shouldbe no surprise that Beijing has intensified effortsto undermine the global human rights regime thatcould help hold it accountable.27China’s growth and determined illiberalism meanthat open societies around the world must preparefor the current era of democratic stagnation tocontinue, or even worsen. The geopolitical recordsuggests that the global balance of regime typeshas long reflected the global balance of power.Following the end of World War I, the number ofdemocracies in the world doubled, but as the UnitedStates retreated and fascism was ascendant,The flipside of the CCP’s adroit authoritarianoffensive is that the democratic world seems morevulnerable than it has been for decades.4
DEMOCRACY & DISORDERTHE CHINA CHALLENGE, DEMOCRACY, AND U.S. GRAND STRATEGYdemocracies from Europe to Japan to SouthAmerica fell.32 All 20th century ideologies, arguesthe historian Mark Mazower, proclaimed “their ownutopia as an End to History—whether in the formof universal communism, global democracy, orThousand Year Reich.”33 But all ultimately ride andfall atop geopolitical waves.34In market democracies, these technologicaladvances, coupled with de minimis governmentregulation, have generated what HarvardBusiness School Professor Shoshana Zuboff calls“surveillance capitalism.”38 This has generated“unprecedented asymmetries of knowledge andpower” between technology companies and theircitizen users, empowering these companies toengage in unprecedented behavior modification“at scale” and to reap tremendous profit andconcentrated, private power.39As Robert Kagan argues, “liberal democracies havenot been common in history. If they are not contraryto human nature, they are also not favored by it.Liberal democracy has survived and flourished inour time” because leading powers have “overcomethe natural obstacles to its success.”35 As China’srelative power increases, U.S. and allied plannersshould prepare for a global environment thatgrows increasingly hostile to democracy and liberalvalues.The CCP has facilitated the rise of its own indigenoussurveillance capitalism by fostering the growth ofindigenous technology giants such as Alibaba,Baidu, and Tencent (which combined have 500900 million active monthly users in their respectivesectors),40 while going much further by affirmingthe state’s unqualified access to these companies’insights and data.41 The CCP’s ability—prohibitedin most liberal democracies—to pool this data withubiquitous state-administered surveillance is likelyto generate extraordinary predictive behavioralinsights. We should expect unprecedented effortsat behavioral modification to follow.42 The objectiveis nothing short of “the automation of societythrough tuning, herding, and conditioning.”43The CCP’s experiment in social control fueled byartificial intelligence and big data will likely outstripMao’s wildest dreams.Digital authoritarianismTechnology is accelerating this trend.In 2005, political scientists George Downs andBruce Bueno de Mesquita argued that authoritarianregimes were undergoing extensive economic growthwithout any corresponding political liberalization, inlarge part because they were “getting better andbetter at avoiding the political fallout of economicgrowth—so good, in fact, that such growth tendsto increase rather than decrease their chances ofsurvival.”36 Exploiting technological advancementsto consolidate, if not perfect, this trend, China hasnot only restricted access to what political scientistscall “coordination goods” that could fuel opposition,such as a free internet and unrestricted academicinquiry, but is also marshaling advances in machinelearning, artificial intelligence, and data sciencethat will enable social control and manipulation atscale. When authoritarians learn to fully harnessthis technology, paths toward liberalization maybe choked off for good. Distinctions between“revolutionary” and “traditional” autocracies37—tothe degree they were ever meaningful—may blurinto oblivion.This fundamental challenge to liberal valueswill not be easily contained. Authoritarians andwavering democrats around the world want whatChina is offering.44 Already by 2005, upholdingfreedom of the press and civil liberties reducedthe chances that an autocratic government willsurvive for another year by between 15 and 20percent—a sobering figure that explains the waveof suppression that has washed over illiberalregimes since.45 China’s “great firewall” approachto the internet has been replicated in Vietnam andThailand, and Chinese experts are reported to haveprovided support to government censors in Sri Lankaand supplied surveillance or censorship equipment5
DEMOCRACY & DISORDERTHE CHINA CHALLENGE, DEMOCRACY, AND U.S. GRAND STRATEGYto Ethiopia, Iran, Malaysia, Russia, Venezuela,Zambia, and Zimbabwe.46 Freedom House’s annual“Freedom on the Net” study found that Chineseenterprises were “combining advances in artificialintelligence and facial recognition to create systemscapable of identifying threats to ‘public order’” inalmost 20 countries.47China has achieved its economic dynamismthrough what political scientist Yuen Yuen Ang calls“directed improvisation,” an “adaptive, bottom-upsearch within the state for localized solutions,”involving a “paradoxical mixture of top-downdirection and bottom-up improvisation.”55 Thisapproach has not only generated growth in China’smanufacturing and infrastructure sectors, but alsoput it on a path toward the commanding heightsof technology leadership in artificial intelligenceand biotechnology. According to some reports,China has established nearly 800 “guiding”funds worth between 500 billion and 1 trillion,with a significant portion dedicated to advancedtechnologies and industries highlighted in theCCP’s “Made in China 2025” plan.56 These fundshave made major investments in machine learning,robotics, and green energy.It may be beside the point that China’s exportor support of autocracy abroad is somehow“defensive” or “self-serving rather than drivenby an ideological commitment to creating rsmust worry less about the CCP’s intent than thecumulative impact of its modeling and export ofmass surveillance. These technologies and theirapplications may require time to mature,49 but forpolicy planners, the trajectory and risks should beclear. The CCP’s experimentation in Xinjiang withinvasive digital surveillance and control offers ahaunting window into China’s digital authoritarianfuture.50Abroad, China’s 1 trillion Belt and Road Initiativemay fall short of Beijing’s economic and strategicambitions and, particularly amidst the U.S.China trade war, is facing domestic challenges.57Nevertheless, the initiative is likely to continueexpanding China’s market for goods and services,as well as its political and economic influence acrossEurasia, Africa, and the Pacific. This influence maybecome increasingly exclusive over time. W
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