Two days ago, former U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger, participating in a forum on global issues, warned that U.S.-China tensions could hold the world hostage and lead to an apocalyptic conflict between the two powers. He said that considering the strength of the two superpowers, such a risk is much greater than that of the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.
The Chinese media did not seem to be offended by such an alarmist “China threat theory,” but rather welcomed it. The Globe immediately republished a foreign media report with the headline “Flash! Kissinger warns: A clash between the two military giants could lead to apocalyptic evils”.
Kissinger is one of the “old friends of the Chinese people” who always feeds China’s big foreign propaganda as an American strategist. This is not the first time he has made the “China threat” argument. His China threat theory is different. Others have argued that China has profited from globalization and rapid development, but instead of becoming more democratic and free as expected, it has become more authoritarian and brutal, with nationalistic and militaristic tendencies that threaten human civilization. Kissinger’s China threat theory says that China has become so powerful that it can equal the United States, and that the United States should avoid provoking China and instead engage in sustained dialogue and seek cooperation.
In fact, such a China threat theory is not only welcome by the Chinese government, it is fundamentally the message it needs and is devoted to creating and spreading. The gist of it is, as the Globe headline emphasizes, that China is already a “military technology giant” on par with the United States. In the eyes of the Chinese government, the “new Cold War” is an affirmation of its strength. In March, the U.S. and China held their first high-level face-to-face talks in Alaska since the Biden administration took office, with Chinese officials performing aggressive war-wolf diplomacy that has the world worried about a “new Cold War. At the same time, China recruited key figures from the U.S. and Chinese political, business, academic and media sectors to hold the annual China High-Level Development Forum 2021 in Beijing to talk about U.S.-China relations in the “new Cold War era,” with Kissinger as its guest of honor.
At this Chinese-led conference, experts also compared today’s U.S.-China relations with the confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union back then. They argued that China today is more powerful than the Soviet Union back then. The Soviet Union and its allies, the Western countries, were not economically integrated, completely independent and divided from each other, and geopolitically, so their influence on global politics and economy was not as powerful as China today.
Making China more powerful?
It is natural that experts who take advantage of people’s weaknesses and shortcomings will not fail to talk about the “clash of civilizations”. I have repeatedly analyzed that one of the CCP’s propaganda tricks after the June 4 crackdown was to package the clash of systems as a clash of civilizations – the essence of the “Chinese Dream. Human rights, democracy and freedom are incompatible with autocracy, yet they are presented as incompatible with Chinese cultural traditions, as if there had never been imperial power and authoritarian politics in Western history. Xi Jinping has repeatedly called for respect for different civilizations, and in the context of Chinese Communist propaganda, for respect for its authoritarianism.
In an interview with Bloomberg last November, Kissinger said that the leaders of China and the United States should establish a better mechanism for dialogue and reach a consensus on “not resorting to military conflict. Otherwise, a collision between the two countries would lead to catastrophic consequences comparable to a world war. It seems he doesn’t think this “China threat theory” carries enough weight, so this time he emphasized that nuclear technology and artificial intelligence go hand in hand to multiply the threat of Armageddon – without forgetting to bring out the point that both China and the United States are leaders in this area. Kissinger said the Soviet Union had the military technology capability, but “not the ability to develop it like China. China is not only a military power, but also an economic power.
During the Cold War, Kissinger’s doctrine of balance of power argued that the United States should use diplomacy to build political alliances to counter pressure from the Soviet Union. It was this theory that led to the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and was also considered effective in containing the Soviet Union and ultimately leading to the U.S. victory. What is puzzling is that because of his strategy of parity, 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a more powerful opponent than the Soviet Union has emerged. Is this really a victory for the United States?
What is even more puzzling is that Kissinger seems to have no interest in building an international political alliance to deal with Chinese pressure. He is mindful of the need for the United States not to upset China, but to seek cooperation. In the end, it is all about making China stronger. Of course, China would welcome such a “new Cold War”.
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