T

he Pacific is heating up. The rise of China rocks the balance of power making room for an emerging new order. In this month’s book bundle, we present eight books about the hottest topic of international affairs: the U.S.-China rivalry. What awaits the world as tensions rise? This selection approaches the topic from comprehensive and diverse angles ranging from international relations theory assumptions to the most outstanding topics of the U.S.-China rivalry such as economic leadership and information war.

The competition between the two great powers has overtaken the world agenda and is shaping foreign policy decisions globally. Therefore, this book bundle was compiled with special attention to the reactions of middle and smaller powers in the face of this competition, aiming to give the reader a broader perspective to interpret what awaits the world more holistically.

Will the shift in the balance of power between the U.S. and China lead to a war? International relations theory predicts that shifts between a hegemon and a rising power may trigger actions with such consequences. Steve Chan examines how many of these theories hold true in the case of U.S.-China relations with Taiwan remaining a flash point for a possible Sino-American conflict.

Rumbles of Thunder: Power Shifts and the Danger of Sino-American War further explores the risk-oriented popular narratives on the topic with sound and well-grounded judgement, considering whether several factors that can raise or lower international tension apply to the current situation. Chan criticizes overly mechanistic frameworks and shows that power shifts do not predetermine violent outcomes—and neither does their absence ensure peace. In fact, many factors like domestic politics, international political economy, and the choices of individual leaders come into play.

Rumbles of Thunder demonstrates that claims of a “rising China” catching up and overtaking the United States are alarmist, and Chan predicts that American structural advantages will endure for some time to come. Contrary to popular belief, Chan does not maintain that China acts like a revisionist power seeking to overturn the system or that the U.S. is defending the international order. Rumbles of Thunder brings a fresh analytical outlook to the table and challenges conventional wisdom on the likelihood of war between the United States and China.

Steve Chan, Rumbles of Thunder: Power Shifts and the Danger of Sino-American War (Columbia University Press, 2022) ISBN: 9780231208451, 336 pages

In Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives, Stephan Roach argues that the conflict between the U.S. and China wouldn’t have emerged were it not for a needless clash of false narratives, and that much of the rhetoric on both sides is dangerously misguided, amplified by information distortion, and should be seen more like a reflection of each nation’s fears and vulnerabilities than a credible assessment of the risks they face. The U.S. blames its trade and technology threats on China yet overlooks its shaky saving foundation. Meanwhile, China blames its growth challenges on the alleged U.S. containment of market-based socialism, ignoring its failed economic rebalancing.

Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives provides an analysis of both nations’ economies, politics, and policies, and offers a new road map for restoring a mutually advantageous relationship. The book will be available in paperback on June 6, 2023.

Stephan Roach, Accidental Conflict: America, China, and the Clash of False Narratives (Yale University Press, 2022) ISBN: 9780300259643, 448 pages

Kevin Rudd, a former Australian prime minister who spent more than forty years in China, puts the turbulent relationship between the U.S. and China under the spotlight with insightful analyses based on his firsthand understanding of the mindsets of the leadership whose judgment will determine whether the future course of events will escalate to a war.

Rudd provides context as to why the U.S.-China relationship rests on a seismic fault: cultural misunderstanding, historical grievance, and ideological incompatibility are all pivotal antecedents. The antagonism between the two superpowers is starkly visible, among others, in the field of military, intelligence, technology, and trade, while either country’s capacity to draw the last straw grows daily.

Against this gloomy backdrop, Rudd constructively argues that the relationship is not doomed to escalating tension and war. If both sides can sustain a “managed strategic competition” by coexisting without betraying their core interests, conflict could be avoided. However, the opposite could be catastrophic. The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China demystifies the actions of both sides, explaining and translating them for the benefit of the other.

Kevin Rudd, The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping’s China (PublicAffairs, 2022) ISBN-13 9781541701304, 432 pages

As the U.S. faces the first real challenge to its economic hegemony with the rise of China, The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic Leadership sees experienced policymaker, economist, and scholar C. Fred Bergsten analyze the two great powers’ competition from the scope of global economic leadership. Is economic conflict beyond the existing trade war inevitable between China and the U.S.? Will their clash produce a new economic leadership vacuum? What can the consequences of a world economy adopting Chinese characteristics be?

According to Bergsten a confrontation between the two would be calamitous. He further argues that it would be self-defeating for the U.S. to attempt to “decouple” from its rival. Bergsten advices the U.S. to pursue “conditional competitive cooperation” to lead, rather than destroy, the world economy instead of a policy of containment. As for China, he recommends exercising constructive global leadership.

Fred Bergsten, The United States vs. China: The Quest for Global Economic Leadership (Polity Press, 2022) ISBN-13 978-1509547357, 384 pages

Is China really a threat to the U.S. or just a threat to its unilateral superpower status? According to Paolo Urio, the U.S. has historically disguised the true nature of its relations with the nations that have stood in the way of its ambitions, often projecting fear of harm from other nations even as it was expanding its dominion over them. America and the China Threat: From the End of History to the End of Empire revisits and debunks the idea of the universality of U.S. values, and the perception of the imperial, dictatorial, and state capitalist character of today’s China. It provides a historical analysis of the divergent ideologies of the U.S. and China, and reveals the source of strain the U.S. faces in adapting to the changes occurring in the international system that has moved beyond its exceptionalism and uncontested leadership, now challenged by China.

Urio challenges the U.S. proclamation that it alone can assure stability and prosperity in the international system, while demonstrating that Chinese ideology has achieved greater flexibility by integrating values imported from the West and several Confucian values. Urio argues that China is better able to adapt its public policies to changes in the national and international environments. America and the China Threat: From the End of History to the End of Empire further addresses China’s significant military and economic advances and its new investments.

Paolo Urio, America and the China Threat: From the End of History to the End of Empire (Clarity Press, 2022) ISBN-10 1949762505, 476 pages

Information War: How Artificial Intelligence Is Driving U.S.-China Military Competition addresses a crucial variable shaping the intensifying confrontation between the U.S. and China: the struggle to control information. How will modern technology be wielded in a rising conflict between the two superpowers?

Technology and national security expert Tom Stefanick argues that the two contemporary superpowers will base their security competition primarily on the fight to dominate information and perception. How will the adversaries attack the other’s information architecture while protecting their own? Stefanick highlights that the way each country chooses to employ information countermeasures will determine the amount of friction and uncertainty in the conflict.

Stefanick draws attention to artificial intelligence, which will play an important role. Information War: How Artificial Intelligence Is Driving U.S.-China Military Competition reviews the recent Chinese research and trends in AI to determine how it will approach the conflict, and provides a sober view of how artificial intelligence will be weaponized in the new information war.

Tom Stefanick, Information War: How Artificial Intelligence Is Driving U.S.-China Military Competition (Brookings Institution Press, 2022) ISBN-13: 9780815738824, 280 pages

China expert Andrew Small offers an eclectic view of a rivalry ranging far beyond “great power” politics. He provides the inside story of a revolution in the China policy of countries from around the world. The Rupture: China and the Global Race for the Future explains a diverse range of topics such as how many of the Western politicians and business leaders closest to Beijing have now become its sharpest opponents, how the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically accelerated this trend, and why 5G represents the first test case as to whether China can win the race for the future.

As competition grows between systems, the Western model itself is transforming given that China’s rise changes both the balance of ideas and the balance of power. Small traces U.S. efforts to recast relations with old allies, examining Europe’s growing role in the technological and economic contest, and Beijing’s attempts to build a coalition of its own.

Andrew Small, The Rupture: China and the Global Race for the Future (Hurst Publishers, 2022) ISBN 9781787387782, 304 pages

What path does a middle power take when engrossed in the competition between great powers? Do they get caught up between the two or forge a path of their own? In the heating U.S.-China rivalry, what are the strategic responses of middle powers in the Asia-Pacific? The Strategic Options of Middle Powers in the Asia-Pacific examines these questions through the specific case studies of South Korea, Australia, Japan, India, Taiwan, and Vietnam from their local perspectives.

With each chapter, written by experts, the book provides comprehensive studies of the regional powers in the Asia-Pacific with an in-depth examination of the contemporary geopolitics of the region, including the impact of both the Trump and Biden administrations, Beijing’s “wolf warrior” diplomacy, cross-strait relations with Taiwan, and the influences of Japan, Vietnam, Australia, and South Korea. The Strategic Options of Middle Powers in the Asia-Pacific reveals that regional middle powers actually exert influence on the direction of regional cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, and develops theories of foreign policy analyses, forming a systematic framework through initiating crucial concepts, including reluctant hedging, economic statecraft, and strategic position-taking.

Chien-Wen Kou, Chiung-Chiu Huang, Brian Job, The Strategic Options of Middle Powers in the Asia-Pacific (Routledge, 2022) ISBN 9781003156314, 278 pages

How far-fetched is it to believe that global powers – with purpose, capacity, and reach, embark on regime change? In fact, it is not just probable, but likely. From Mossadegh in Iran, Rousseff in Brazil, Gaddafi in Libya, or several U.S. orchestrated regime change operations in Latin America, this is nothing out of the ordinary. It is a reality hiding in plain sight, openly attributed to the concept of American exceptionalism.

Therefore, outright dismissiveness of this possibility in Pakistan – with the illegal, unconstitutional removal of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, is not just disconcerting, but contrived. Loud, boisterous proclamations condemning the accusation of regime change seem so phony – especially coming from scholars of political science.

“I’m haunted every day…by the lies I told,” writes American author John Perkins in his New York Times best-seller Confessions of an Economic Hitman. “I’m haunted by the payoffs to the leaders of poor countries, the blackmail, and the threats that if they resisted, if they refused to accept loans that would enslave their countries in debt, the CIA’s jackals would overthrow or assassinate them.”

In compelling detail, Perkins describes the ways by which U.S. hegemony privileges an elite minority in countries of the Global South to convince them to mortgage their country’s wealth and policymaking. Whether it is by highly paid professionals that encourage the target country to accept loans in order for “corporatocracy” to flourish, or by local ‘kept rajas,’ who manipulate local policymaking in service of their foreign masters.

The consequences are simple: forfeiture of sovereignty. For those who resist, a well-orchestrated plan erupts to engineer regime change – through character assassination, bribery, parliamentary manipulation or, if necessary, murder.

Today, Perkin’s powerful, ominous words are hauntingly familiar as Pakistan – a nuclear nation of 220 million people, has been thrown into political disarray. Why? A vote of no confidence, allegedly orchestrated by the U.S., has removed the fiery, incorruptible Imran Khan. All this due to alleged U.S. unhappiness with Pakistan’s independent foreign policy, refusal to condemn Russia, allow drone strikes in Afghanistan, and an ‘iron-clad’ brotherhood with China.

As is customary according to diplomatic protocol, Pakistan officially lodged a strong protest and summoned the U.S. diplomat in Islamabad to condemn the meddling. If this is not an unequivocal instance of foreign interference in Pakistan’s internal politics, then what is?

Secondly, Khan’s government persuasively argues that it’s not just the evidentiary nature of the letter, but the context from which it emerges. The opposition focus, and the Supreme Court judgement, both remarkably avoid any mention of foreign interference, horse-trading, politicians on bail for corruption – even murder. Nor do they honestly acknowledge the National Security Committee, who agreed that there was a blatant interference.

What about the clandestine Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) dissident meetings with foreign diplomats? How about the recorded conversations with former National Security Advisor Moeed Yusuf with his American counterpart and instances of the clear hostile messages made to Pakistan’s outgoing Ambassador Asad Majid? All this has a direct bearing on the validity of vote of no confidence and Supreme Court decision.

After all, Khan’s government claims it has hard evidence of the horse-trading and bribery. If true, this is further evidence of an affront to the constitution and in clear violation of the rule of law. Is it not gross negligence, perhaps even treasonous, that neither the Supreme Court nor the opposition acknowledge this?

Third, in an unprecedented outpouring of grief, anger and determination, massive protests are occurring all over Pakistan. What is so inspiring is that these huge crowds were spontaneous. Millions of people across the country, in every major city, exploded in support of Imran Khan.

The powerful voices of hundreds of thousands of people were reverberating in the air with chants of ‘God is the Greatest.’ The chant means ‘there is nothing worthy of worship other than God’ and ‘the people will not accept an imported government’ – in clear reference to the new government being thrust on the people by foreign powers. Even Khan’s twitter account broke all records with over 160,000 people tuning in at the same time. It was nothing short of a spectacle.

This eruption of overwhelming popular mobilization screams to the world ‘we are not your slaves.’ It poses a direct, immediate threat to the teetering political order. And, this anger is not just directed at the opposition, but all those who facilitated this subjugation. Imagine the absurdity of asking someone to stand idly by as laws meant to protect society are being trampled by a privileged few. How could the judiciary allow murderers, traitors and convicted criminals abuse Pakistan’s parliamentary democratic structures in this way?

The Supreme Court’s bias is rightly being called out and their protestations seem so hollow and hypocritical. After all, the former head of Pakistan’s opposition, and newly minted Prime Minister, is himself on bail for corruption cases. It’s a strange, dystopic reality that has emerged.

Today, the overwhelming majority of Pakistan inwardly feel shame due the bizarre developments over the past few days. It’s not just that Imran Khan was removed from political office, but those who replaced him are the unethical, corrupt elite who do not represent the people. The new government is dominated by all those on corruption charges. In fact, 24 out of the 34 newly selected/imported cabinet are out on bail for various criminal offenses.

This is a horrible joke on the dignity of a nation. What makes this worse is that this imported government contains people who have previously viciously attacked state institutions, including the prestige of the army. As a result, demoralization, resentment, and anger is commonplace, which is feeding revolutionary fervor. This is a dangerous time for the people of Pakistan, and the powers that be must recognize this situation for what it is, and demand elections.

Since September 15, 2021 the global security agenda has been occupied with a security pact designed to pave the way for a technology transfer by the U.S. to Australia, replacing France as a supplier of nuclear-powered submarines. The argument goes that this strategic initiative is only the beginning of a much larger cooperation plan regarding the future of the Indo-Pacific security complex.

Global security analysts and scholars directly focused their attention on the Indo-Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea looking into possible implications. The pivotal argument is that world security is going to shift towards the East, and the U.S.-China competition will broaden itself into another dimension with this strategic step.

This claim holds certain validity as the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan and Syria should lead to the accumulation of a certain amount of tangible sources that will need another direction to flow into.

Thus, several scholars have been supporting the literature that hypothesizes a global U.S. channeling into the Indo-Pacific security complex. An alternative approach advocates that the U.S. is not entirely eager to interfere with China due to the potential implications of such a move, yet its partners are forcing a U.S. presence in the region.

This approach is an alternative that derives its legitimacy from the middle and great powers that cooperate with the U.S. – the superpower. This argument also has its merits as international relations are not solely the enforcement of the interests of a superpower but an interaction between the latter and its partnering countries.

The global understanding of such events represented in pacts such as the AUKUS Pact is vital. However, a regionalist approach is required to better present the impact on the regional and state-level dimensions. The French involvement in the pact is the part of AUKUS that is going to cause major implications for the MENA region.

Partnerships like AUKUS that will direct interstate partnerships and even enforce them to align. Recent military procurement deals such as the Turkish S-400 acquisition, the Pakistani JF-17 fighter aircraft production contract with China, Saudi-UAE procurements of F-35 aircraft, and THAAD air defense systems from the U.S. are recent comparable cases.

These procurements created different levels of leverage and tensions for the buyer countries as they were forced to choose a side. Despite the balancing literature and the conceptual history of the practice, it becomes more apparent that a bipolar system is very antagonistic in its buildup process.

Partnerships like AUKUS that will direct interstate partnerships and even enforce them to align.

Remembering the two world wars that created the Cold War structure, it is plausible that the “playmaker” states force certain great and middle powers with strategic geopolitical significance to align with them. In this sense, AUKUS might have created a rift between the U.S. and France (and the EU in a larger context, considering the UK also left the organization) that will have certain implications for the MENA region.

For the last 30 years, the U.S. was able to embark on its Middle Eastern policy vis-à-vis its European partners, but strategic gains that directly hinder EU profitability will cause certain fractions in this practice.

The most significant impact of AUKUS on the MENA security complex is expected to be observed in the Eastern Mediterranean. Since the EU has practically perceived the Turkish pivot for energy resources towards this area and North African interests in this area as threats, the U.S. has supported European interests in securing the energy routes and protecting the integrity of South European shores. However, a political dissemination process that was potentially started with AUKUS might divide this unification in foreign policy.

The Eastern Mediterranean is a quagmire of competing interests, and a transatlantic fracture will only escalate the situation.

The Eastern Mediterranean is a quagmire of competing interests, and a transatlantic fracture will only escalate the situation. This escalation might give middle powers like Turkey broader room for maneuver. If the U.S. stops supporting these interests in the region, the EU backlash and the hawkish French position will lose a certain share of their influence and capacity. A significant shift towards the Indo-Pacific Ocean might reduce the pressure on great and middle powers competing for interests.

An alternative power-centered approach might suggest that the void left by a U.S. strategic shift towards the East would trigger a great power to take responsibility and fill the vacuum. The current power balance propounds a Russian pivot towards the Eastern Mediterranean; however, Russia’s aircraft carriers are quite worn, and its only ship, Admiral Kuznetsov, is on the maintenance deck.

This does not mean Russia cannot control this area – it holds a submarine force of 58 known units which can only be challenged by the U.S. and maybe China in the next decade. Both scenarios imply that Turkey might have more room for maneuver with less focus and escalation from rival powers.

Meanwhile the possibility that France might become even more hawkish and hyper-emphasize its interests in the Eastern Mediterranean must not be excluded. Yet, this is less likely since if France and Germany plan to keep the union together, they have to align in foreign policy following Brexit. When push comes to shove, Germany will most likely balance the French hawkish reactionary stance towards these events and prioritize economic growth in the next decade.

When you’ve been punched in the face, it’s a good idea to gather your wits before returning to the fray. Still dazed from the Afghan war, the Biden team is already speeding toward even more dangerous confrontations in multiple directions—this time, with China in their sights instead of the older jihadist foes. American strategists are focusing on bigger targets across a wide arch of distant lands and waters—South and Central Asia, the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, and the western Pacific. As Washington struggles to regain its footing, we should try to point its leaders toward a better path—one leading to global development and cooperation instead of endless brinkmanship and more pointless wars. The name of that path is the New Silk Road.

The New Silk Road is an audacious vision that might have originated in the United States. Its spirit is American to the core: a transcontinental and transoceanic venture, marshalling the energies and resources of billions of people around the world in an astonishing effort to unite societies and markets in a single human community. Breathtaking. Foolhardy. Utopian. Exactly—that’s why it’s American to the core.

So, to our shell-shocked comrades in Washington: Pause a while, open your well-trained minds to a bit of brainstorming that can advance fundamental American dreams that, today, are universal yearnings and help turn them into concrete achievements. Join the New Silk Road, share in the credit of leading the greatest humanitarian enterprise of our time, and take your turn in steering it in the best possible direction.

Follow our European and Asian allies in making the New Silk Road a broader partnership that embraces international standards of human rights, environmental protection, and transparency. Present the developing countries of the global South with a stunning array of world-class technology and finance that transcends ideology and Great Power politics.

In other words, work to improve China’s Belt and Road Initiative instead of trying to subvert it, duplicate it or ignore it. The venture has gained too much momentum to be stopped and a competing effort won’t muster adequate resources, either economic or political. Forget about trying to mount a hostile takeover. Buy into an ongoing concern that has a promising future, but is still malleable enough to serve collective interests instead of the imperial ambitions of the Beijing bureaucrats who launched it.

Work to improve China’s Belt and Road Initiative instead of trying to subvert it.

The Chinese may have originated the project, but they don’t own it. In fact, the faster it spreads the more it defies their control and spawns demands for wider participation in decision-making—not just from other governments and international bankers, but from ordinary citizens and civil society groups around the world. Many of China’s showcase projects have been stymied or revamped in the face of well-organized protests from myriad local groups—tribes in Pakistan, fishermen in Indonesia, miners in Zambia, farmers in Myanmar, urban youth in Nigeria, shopkeepers in Iran, engineers in Mexico, and many others.

Since the project’s inception, Beijing has insisted that the New Silk Road is open to every country that wants to participate. The United States should hold China to that pledge and encourage America’s friends to do the same. This would be a welcome about-face from years of futile efforts by presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden to discourage European and Asian countries from partnering with the multinational banks and consortiums that have sprung up to support New Silk Road projects. Washington’s blocking tactics have failed; it’s time to follow in the path of the many allies who took their own counsel and left America on the sidelines.

If the United States wants to display a new willingness to collaborate with neighbors and adversaries alike, there is one enterprise with a potential impact—both symbolic and practical—that supersedes all others. Chinese engineers are drawing up plans for a high-speed rail corridor connecting the entire coastal rim of the north Pacific.

The proposed route starts in northeast China, passing along the shores of Siberia into Alaska and, then, down the west coast of Canada and the U.S. all the way to California. The most spectacular feature is a possible tunnel across the Bering Strait—a fifty-mile underwater link, nearly twice the length of the Channel Tunnel between England and France.

Many Siberia-Alaska ventures have been floated since the nineteenth century, usually dismissed as fantasies worthy of Jules Verne or Ferdinand de Lesseps. Today, however, there is greater interest than ever. Trans-Arctic shipping is gradually emerging as a realistic shortcut between Pacific and Atlantic ports. Air travel is falling in favor because of rising cost and alarm over pollution. High speed trains are commonplace and an inter-hemispheric railway is just one of several megaprojects competing for attention and financing on every continent.

Many nations have concrete reasons to be cautious in joining the New Silk Road—particularly concerns over debt service, human rights, labor practices, and the environment.  However, for the United States, the chief hang-up is psychological and ideological. How can Americans feel they are still number one in the world if they have to rub shoulders with so many other chefs in the same kitchen? Wouldn’t it be admitting defeat to sign up for an enterprise they didn’t start and can never dominate?

Self-doubt should not stand in the way. Americans know perfectly well how to use their power to advance the greater good. They’ve demonstrated that many times before and they are more than equal to the task of showing it again in even more convincing ways. By combining their talents with those of others, they can multiply that force and aim it at higher goals and more inspiring ideals.

Westerners who have lived in Pacific Asian countries and absorbed their daily rhythms feel the pervasive electricity in every nerve. The sense of optimism and confidence in the future is something they internalize and learn to take for granted—until they return to the United States and Europe where they’re quickly jolted by the seemingly unnatural rust, gloom, and obesity that creeped ahead in their absence.

For Americans, participating in the New Silk Road should not be seen as a defeat or loss of standing in the international order but rather as a chance to lead in bettering the world. The task of managing the New Silk Road should not be left to a single society. By encouraging partnerships instead of hierarchies, the developed and developing countries can share both benefits and burdens more equitably and, we hope, more peacefully.

The war drums are beating loud and hard in the Asia Pacific region. The rivalry between the U.S. and China has been escalating, and is more and more referred to as a new Cold War. Of course, the U.S. and its allies say they are “responding” to Chinese “aggression” to defend freedom and justice – a narrative that is amplified by a compliant media.

Just one manifestation of the new Cold War is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, often referred to as the Quad. Created in 2007, it is an ongoing informal dialogue between Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. From the outset, the Quad has been characterized by open hostility towards China and its increasing influence: that is obvious from the countries involved, their insistence on the hitherto nonexistent term “Indo-Pacific” to describe the region, and the fact that talks have been accompanied by joint military exercises on an unprecedented scale.

It is little wonder that China sees the purpose of the Quad as surrounding the country with hostile neighbors, which claim “defensive lines” practically at the Chinese shore. Essentially ignoring Chinese and other protests, provocative large-scale naval exercises continue. However, besides military and other co-operation, perhaps one of the main achievements of the Quad so far has been its success in reframing the terms of the discourse.

The 2021 statement of the leaders of the Quad trumpets their “shared vision” for an Indo-Pacific that is “free and open” and operates on a “rules-based order” – a language that has been repeated over and over by the international media, reinforcing the framing of the Quad as the purported defenders of freedom and justice. The Quad’s statement does not mention China, because it doesn’t have to – it is well understood by all what the unnamed “threats” to the above are. All of this serves to shroud the obvious intentions of the four countries (in particular the U.S. and Japan) to maintain their hegemony over the region.

To be clear, none of this is to defend the current Chinese system of governance, or the gross human rights violations perpetrated by the Chinese government. Nor is it to argue that there is no potential security threat posed by China. However, serious doubt should be cast on the narrative that the governments of the Quad are knights on white horses defending the free world from the yellow menace. For better or for worse, China is doing what any country does: demanding a global status it believes is commensurate with its might.

It may indeed be the case that, in the eyes of many in the world, the political system of Western liberal democracy is being challenged by the more authoritarian Chinese model. However, it is submitted that this is due less to Chinese successes and more to Western failings. The hypocrisy of the West in claiming that they defend democracy while they engage in military interventions throughout West Asia and Africa, slam their doors in the face of refugees, and provide the apartheid state of Israel with endless support, is plain for all to see.

While China has raised millions of its citizens out of poverty, Western economies remain geared towards exploiting the many for the greed of the few. And while respect for civil and political rights is certainly abominable in China, the perpetual “war on terror” has exposed the fragility of human rights in many countries in the West as well – not to mention the rise of near-overt fascism in the U.S. under Donald Trump. Facile concepts of “good guys versus bad guys” are not applied easily in the current Asia Pacific.

This has changed dramatically since the late 2000s, as Japan’s (and the United States’) relative power has declined. Japan’s speculation-fueled “bubble economy” burst in 1989, and since then, inept economic management, weak political leadership, and endemic corruption have meant that economic growth has been stagnant. Employment has become increasingly precarious for many, and real wages have been on a declining trend throughout what are now often referred to in Japan as the “lost thirty years.”

The overtaking of Japan by China in 2010 as the world’s second largest economy was a potent symbol to many Japanese of their country’s ongoing plummet, and of the end of the era where they dominated Asia economically. Though Japan remains the world’s third wealthiest country in terms of GDP, a shrinking population adds to a strong sense of continuous decline.

The Japanese right wing has been quick to exploit this social malaise, claiming (like in many other countries) that so-called traditional values is the answer – a return to an allegedly golden era when men were men and women knew their place. In particular, from nearly the get-go the pacifist postwar constitution has been the bête noir of the right, which has portrayed it as a national humiliation and the defanging of the Japanese military as a castration of the Japanese spirit.

Since the early 2000s, China has served as a convenient boogeyman, with the alleged “Chinese threat” being a constant feature of their campaigns. Though public support for pacifist policies generally remains strong, the right has been successful in shifting the discourse, ensuring a seemingly endless stream of references to this “threat” in political fora, the media, and popular publications.

Advances of the right under Shinzo Abe

In particular, the premiership of Shinzo Abe (who initiated the Quad in 2006) from 2012 was a watershed. A committed ideologue, Abe and his political allies have strong connections to shadowy right-wing organizations, many of which are committed to a return to the prewar order: worship of the emperor, militarism, and eradication of “Western values” and “individualistic” human rights.

True to form, Abe’s premiership was characterized by assaults on democratic institutions, the promotion of militarism, and the ramming through of oppressive legislation purportedly aimed at protecting national security (such as laws establishing vague crimes of conspiracy). Schoolchildren would be marked on the level of their patriotism, and Japan’s press freedom ranking plummeted from a high of 11 in 2010 to 72nd place in 2016 (61st place in 2021) as Abe set heavy penalties for both journalists and private citizens who publish leaked government information designated “secret.” Throughout this period, the “Chinese threat” served as an implicit (and, at times, explicit) justification for these measures.

Abe is no longer PM, but he remains an influential figure of the right, and, more importantly, the bullish nationalism he promoted seems here to stay. The anti-Chinese discourse has been amplified throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, with the right-wing press constantly referring to the “Wuhan virus” and parroting Donald Trump’s anti-Chinese fabrications.

In fact, the Japanese right is fundamentally contradictory. Domestically, they campaign against human rights and other “Western values” that were allegedly forced upon Japan after the war. However, in international relations, they are staunchly pro-American, and see Japan’s future as within the military alliance with the U.S. Hence the ease with which they make claims at the Quad and other international fora that Japan stands with its Western allies for human rights and democracy (as opposed to China of course).

This contradiction can be traced to the history of Japan’s modernization process (which has similarities with Turkey), and perhaps a postwar colonial mindset (idealizing the vanquisher). Whatever the psychology, it is clear that the right has been using China as a scapegoat to advance their repressive agenda.