China’s Vision of the United States in 2012

China’s understanding of the U.S. in 2012 is not much different from other countries’ perception of it; that is to say, the U.S. is facing four major frustrating situations.

The first concerns the era of globalization. While the financial strength of the U.S. and the West has been restructuring the world manufacturing industry, it also has been gradually weakening the manufacturing sectors in the U.S. and other developed countries, resulting in tremendous and irreversible job losses in these countries. This has been accompanied by a more uneven distribution of wealth.

Second, people’s lifestyles and spending patterns in the U.S. have for a long time been overdrawing the country’s wealth and prosperity. Therefore, ordinary people and the states have become accustomed to seeing the budget deficit and growing national debt; and such a situation had already seriously affected the health of the U.S. economy and its political influence in the world.

Third, the U.S. has been unable to achieve consensus on balancing the budget because of internal political struggles. Facing the pressure of electoral politics, the two political parties in the U.S. not only find it difficult to come to agreement on increasing taxes and extracting resources in order to balance the budget, they also find it difficult to depart from their respective party platforms and to compromise on cutting spending for priority programs.

Fourth, even though the U.S.’ periodic foreign expansion has entered a new cycle of global contraction, the nation’s political genes and the demands of its interests make it impossible for the U.S. to accept the fact that its relative strength has declined. The U.S. is facing serious difficulties, but it is still seeking to lead the world, so it is inevitable that its intention and strength appear unequal. The internal and external conflicts caused by this situation will continue to wear down the U.S.’ national strength and thus accelerate changes in the international order.

Some of these four issues were dictated by time, some were uniquely American. The reorganization of the world manufacturing industry caused by globalization is not a uniquely American phenomenon; high unemployment rates and the exacerbation of uneven [wealth] distribution are common problems among Western industrialized nations. The Western welfare system is putting severe pressure [on countries] to balance budgets, and the U.S. is not the only one that has lost control of public spending. Electoral politics also make it difficult to achieve consensus on tax increases and spending cuts. What is unique to the U.S. is its super-high spending. There has been a high degree of over-spending in the U.S. for a long time, which deeply eroded the national body. And it is all because of the U.S.’ unique role as a world leader.

If we say that the U.S.’ success or failure was more closely associated with its allies’ interests during the Cold War when the world was divided into polar opposites, then many of the complicated situations that the U.S. faces today are natural consequences of its interaction with the world in the era of globalization.

With developing countries opening up their labor markets and China giving up its closed-door policy, Western capitalism, represented by the U.S., was unable to restrain its profit-driven impulses. At the same time, newly emerging markets had neither the intention nor the ability to learn from the “gunboat policy” used by the West to push for foreign capital inflow. Even if other countries’ currencies were deliberately undervalued, the U.S. government did not prohibit U.S. capital from flowing into other countries. Instead, it supported U.S. capital to gain profit in other countries and used other means to regulate its economic and trade relations with other countries.

It is reasonable to say that when weighing whether to support U.S. capital seeking profits overseas or protecting people’s job security inside the country, both parties in the U.S., overall, have inclined to the former. The most these two parties have done was to adopt some symbolic measures to console unemployed workers.

The U.S.’ only motivation is to make profits, which has made it huge short-term gains. As the world’s largest economy, so far it has not consumed the most energy resources in the world. But while it has obtained the greatest wealth, it has also left environmental burdens around the world that accompanied its economic development. Even though the U.S. initiated two wars in the past decade and its growth rate is down nearly 50 percent, the new percentage increase is still nearly equal to China’s total economic growth, even though the Chinese population is three times that of the U.S.

However, the U.S. cannot escape its economic short-sightedness; and it has cultivated its own competitor with the fastest speed. In the last ten years, calculating in U.S. dollar terms, the speed of China’s economic development was ten times that of America, and the size of China’s economy has increased from 10 to 40 percent of the U.S. economy. Official figures of China’s military spending, when compared to that of the U.S., have narrowed from 1/20 to 1/7. Even though China’s rapid rise was mainly the result of China’s opening and people’s hard work, it would not have happened without investments from the West, technology transfers and the opening of Western markets. Even now, the U.S. still possesses considerable advantages relative to China and other newly emerging markets, but they are at a level not comparable to the past. Therefore, worried about the trend in China — the issue of local extrusion, in particular — the United States is increasingly becoming anxious about the possibility of facing undue competition.

Even though China and other newly emerging market economies have entered the process of globalization and the world of “equal” competition — in an international system designed primarily by the West — only now have there been changes in the international balance of power. We say that the competition is “equal,” but in fact it is not really that fair. After all, political, economic and financial regulations in the world today were mostly created by the West based on its own interests, and latecomers could only accept them as they are. Not only that, but China has been forced to formalize its relationship with the U.S., even though the U.S. is still selling weapons to Taiwan. The U.S. has no reason not to accept China’s development under such circumstances. This is just a difficult situation in which the U.S. and China play games on their short-term and long-term interests.

We should see the relative weakening of the U.S.; but at the same time, we cannot neglect the strength of the U.S. There are at least four key aspects.