Are we stumbling into a new Cold War between the US and PRC?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

A lot of people worry about Russia, but it's clear that they are largely a threat to their proximate countries and little else. China, however, is another matter - they have actual real influence around the world, have provided an economic model for the authoritarians of the world and are providing a lot of capital for promised growth and the sort of prestige projects most developing nation leaders really want. Increasingly the US-China rivalry has shown up in the background of all sorts of political battles around the world, from obvious cases like the recent elections in Malaysia and the Maldives, to the internal politics of the Conservative Party of the UK.

It's pretty clear the US is also joining in. This includes under Obama, who attempted to economically isolate China with the TPP, but has doubled down under Trump. The strong tariffs on Chinese goods (presented under flimsy pretences of protecting American workers) are a clear indication that the interests that back Trump wish to sever economic ties with China, making conflict between the two nations less economically damaging.

The question is, do the citizens of China, the US and their respective allied states really want such a conflict?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The PRC is obviously more of a threat than Russia, but they prefer to mostly kick our butts economically. Sure they will increase their military some as well, but that would be used mostly in border clashes and South China sea claims and not areas that have been outside of China's historical influence.

[dead0man]

Citizens of states rarely want conflict, but we're almost always easily tricked into it.  Sometimes we see through the ruse and demand an end (the US in Vietnam), other times it's over before we find out (everybody in WWI).

If the bigger power doesn't want the conflict (cold or otherwise) there is a way out, but it's hard to get the country to go along with it (if you have to do that, future and past "bigger powers" won't necessarily care what their people think about it), it might not work, it might backfire, it might not be needed and it will certainly make our allies give us the stink eye.  That way is to attack, HARD, the first sign the lesser power hints at standing up to the big dog.  We've moved WAY past that point with the PRC.  We can still do it, and it might still work, but the negatives possibilities become more likely every passing month.



that said, there has to be SOME parity in a Cold War, right?  The PRC is not very close on that front.  Sure, everybody lied about the Soviets capabilities for most the real Cold War (it was convenient for everybody to lie to each other about it), but they were still closer to parity than the PRC is.

[Lord Halifax]

Increasingly the US-China rivalry has shown up in the background of all sorts of political battles around the world, from obvious cases like the recent elections in Malaysia and the Maldives, to the internal politics of the Conservative Party of the UK.

Tell us more.

[Cashew]

Give it 20 years, as tensions over the South China Sea trade routes and global warming mount.

(No credible US President can claim to aggressively address global warming without taking active measures against the Chinese, who are the world's greatest polluters. This is an under-discussed powderkeg.)

You forgot to mention they have a population four times larger than the United States.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

It's pretty clear China, not Russia, is the U.S.' biggest geopolitical foe in the long term. As much as I deplore everything Putin does, Xi's militarization of the South China Sea poses much more serious challenge.

[Zinneke]

I don't think the American people have the same appetite to take on China and the hardships that entails than they did against a Soviet state that was guilty of far more overt oppression in parts of the world and domestically. For all the talk about the million interned Uyghurs, the anti-trade rhetoric (that is actually justified, take note Democrats who still prostitute themselves to multilateralism), the terrible measures against individual liberties and groups...do Americans really care?

This has serious implications because I fear the Chinese elite are actually far more out of touch to even care about maintaining some basic standards at the international level, just so they can tow their "national sovereignty" vision at the same level. In many ways it will handicap the UN more than the USSR veto ever did, because the institutional make up of the UN will become PRC dominated. European politicians now are so down the social ladder compared to yesteryear and so lacking any vision for Europe beyond atharaxia, they accept CHinese investment for a free pass on parts of the world that are our responsibility if we want to stop the misery there that creates the refugee crisis, economic problems, etc.

Only a renewal of EU-US axis as equals would be worthwile. TTIP was a way to strengthen that but again it was hijacked by lobby groups who care about the bottom line rather than the real vision of it  : blocking China.

[Senator Incitatus]

Give it 20 years, as tensions over the South China Sea trade routes and global warming mount.

(No credible US President can claim to aggressively address global warming without taking active measures against the Chinese, who are the world's greatest polluters. This is an under-discussed powderkeg.)

You forgot to mention they have a population four times larger than the United States.

I forgot no such thing.

[Cashew]

Give it 20 years, as tensions over the South China Sea trade routes and global warming mount.

(No credible US President can claim to aggressively address global warming without taking active measures against the Chinese, who are the world's greatest polluters. This is an under-discussed powderkeg.)

You forgot to mention they have a population four times larger than the United States.

I forgot no such thing.

It's quite disingenuous to criticize the Chinese for that when the average American still has twice the carbon footprint.

[pikachu]

It's pretty clear the US is also joining in. This includes under Obama, who attempted to economically isolate China with the TPP, but has doubled down under Trump. The strong tariffs on Chinese goods (presented under flimsy pretences of protecting American workers) are a clear indication that the interests that back Trump wish to sever economic ties with China, making conflict between the two nations less economically damaging.

I don't really see this - a lot of Republican industry groups are against the trade war and I don't think this is something a more 'normal' Republican would've did. It's been clear that Trump hasn't been able to digress significantly from previous American foreign policy but considering there's a lot more presidential autonomy over trade than anything else, I think this is just Trump's weirdness as a president coming through. (If we want to go for something really antagonistic, it's notable that the plan to try banning Chinese foreign students from American universities under the pretense of stopping espionage was shot down.)

Besides that, I agree with coloniac that there isn't much desire for a full-scale Cold War among Americans nor do there seem to be many public figures who really care much about China as an issue. Outside of Trump (whose ire for China doesn't seem particularly exceptional compared to other countries) and Rubio, most politicians and people seem to care more about the 'sexier' issues of the Middle East and Russia. That Cold War bipartisan consensus that anticommunism should be the no. 1 foreign policy priority just isn't there imo.