On September 21st, 1949, revolutionary leader Mao Zedong proclaimed that “the Chinese people have stood up!” The declaration came following the Chinese “Century of Humiliation,” during which China suffered through European imperialism, a brutal occupation by the Japanese Empire, and over two decades of civil war between Nationalists and Communists. More than 70 years later, the West has begun to fear the potential implications of a new, united, and increasingly powerful China. Across the political spectrum represented in mainstream American politics, and amidst an increasingly divisive political climate, opposition to China seems near-entirely uncontested; both Republicans and Democrats have nothing but contempt for the rising power, and view China as a threat to US hegemony on the global stage.
But is American hegemony something we as Americans ought to maintain? In this article, I argue that China’s rise brings with it not only improved living conditions for Chinese citizens, but also a stabilizing force to geopolitics.
The Successes of Chinese Policy
On the most pressing contemporary issues, Chinese policy is leagues more progressive than the policy of the United States. One of the greatest issues facing the global community today is climate change, an area where China is making significant progress. In recent years, American policy on the issue has been lacking. From President Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017, to “progressive” President Joe Biden’s approving the Willow Project, a massive oil drilling operation in Alaska, in early 2023, it is clear that American leaders view the issue with little concern.
China, though, is making incredible progress in reducing their impact on global warming. Chinese President Xi Jinping has made vocal his commitment to attaining net-zero carbon emissions by 2060, an astounding goal for a nation home to nearly 20% of Earth’s population. In the short term, the country aims to achieve roughly one-third of its energy from renewable sources. These aren’t just empty promises. Last year China accounted for more than half of the world’s investment in green energy, investing $546 billion into solar, wind, and electric vehicle production.
China has rethought the automobile paradigm. One of the greatest contributors to global CO2 levels is road-faring vehicles, which account for roughly 16 percent of such emissions worldwide. About half of these emissions are produced by privately owned passenger vehicles, meaning transitioning away from car commutes is an imperative step in tackling global warming. In recent years, America has looked to renewable energy-fueled transit buses to help tackle record-high emissions, and today 60% of buses on American roads make use of green energy. China has likewise invested heavily into this sector, leading to 77% of Chinese buses being categorized as “new energy vehicles”–a statistic made all the more impressive when one considers the higher ridership and route coverage of Chinese bus transit.
The almost unanimously agreed upon alternative to car transit, though, is rail, which is not only much more environmentally friendly, but also more cost effective for consumers. In America, commuter rail transit is simply unfeasible over long distances, and while railways do cover vast interlocking parts of America, the US boasts not a single mile of the coveted high-speed rail developed nations from France to Japan are increasingly investing in.*
To illustrate the issue, let’s compare a rail commute between two major American and Chinese cities. If you wanted to catch a train from New York to Chicago, a distance of 712 miles, the journey would take an average of 23 hours. A similarly far journey in China, from Beijing to Shanghai (684 miles), would take an average of 5 hours–and cost one-third the price. And while American commuter rail infrastructure has changed little in the past decade, China’s rail coverage is expanding at an astonishing rate.
But the myriad benefits of Chinese influence are not limited to the country itself.
Chinese investment in the Third World worries many in the West. The phenomena of the “Chinese debt trap,” a supposed process by which China grants costly loans to developing states, imports experts, workers, and resources, and constructs infrastructure vital to the host nation’s development all as a means of bringing the debited county under Chinese soft power would undoubtedly be worrying. But while some analysts have made bold claims regarding the so-called “Chinese debt trap,” African governments, in fact, owe three times more debt to Western banks and asset managers than they do to China. Accordingly, China has been dubbed by some to be a “global leader of last resort,” providing over $240 billion in economic relief to countries suffering from–primarily Western–debt, a figure that has jumped 55% in the past 12 years.
Also relevant to Chinese foreign policy is the country’s preferred method of investment. The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is focused on building exactly what its name suggests: roads, railways, and other big public works and infrastructure projects that will continue to benefit host countries long after debt is repaid. Over 150 nations have already signed on, many of them in Africa. Kenya has benefited from a Chinese-led expansion of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), which connects the Kenyan capital Nairobi to port city and import hub Mombasa. While jointly funded by both the Kenyan and Chinese governments, Beijing agreed to foot 90% of the bill for the project. The SGR upgrade provided more than 30,000 jobs for Kenyans, and in its first year of operation transported 5.4 million passengers. All this has left Kenya–a heavy borrower from Beijing–with little risk of credit fault, especially when compared to its East African neighbors. On Africa’s other coast, China has played a leading role in Nigerian infrastructure projects, helping fund the Kaduna-Kano railway line ($1.7 billion), the Lagos-Kano line ($6.7 billion), and the Lagos-Ibadan line ($1.5 billion), in addition to numerous airports. It should perhaps come as no surprise then that so many African leaders espouse little but praise for the rising power.
Those critical of China’s role in the Third World scarcely extend the same animosity towards France, Britain, or America, all of which have had far bloodier, far more exploitative legacies in the global South.
But the Chinese government’s positive impact on the developing world is not limited to economic investment. Diplomatically, the rising power has worked to resolve regional conflicts, positioning itself as the neutral, “non-judgmental”, sensible, and law-abiding voice in the room of international relations. When war broke out in Ukraine in early 2022, many assumed China, a longtime Russian ally and trade partner, would publicly support Putin’s conquest. The Chinese government’s response, however, swung far more to the side of Kiev, with Beijing ending Russian weapons sales and in their official release called for a ceasefire, civilian aid, and respect for Ukrainian sovereignty, stating that “All countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are equal members of the international community.”
In April of 2023, China arranged talks between longtime regional and religious rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran in an attempt to bring security to the frequently-volatile Middle East. Perhaps surprisingly to some, the diplomatic discussions proved to be an outstanding success, normalizing Iran-Saudi relations, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi remarking that China hopes to “continue to support countries in the Middle East in exploring a development path that suits their own national conditions, strengthening communication and dialogue, adhering to unity and self-improvement, and realizing good-neighborliness and friendship.”
Any Chinese gains in the Middle East can almost always be attributed to the American government’s failure to uphold promises and maintain alliances; Saudi Arabia, for example, cited frustrations with the US’s unwillingness to aid in resolving security concerns during the Chinese-mediated talks.Furthermore, China’s stated position on the conflict in Palestine has been similarly encouraging, as the Chinese government has expressed strong support for full UN membership for the country. It is clear to see why the Chinese motto of “win-win” foreign policy is increasingly appealing to the long list of nations which have suffered at the hand of American intervention, both military and economic, in their recent history.
The Chinese Political System
But despite the overwhelming success of Chinese policy, many still remain unconvinced that the country’s rise spells good news for the international community. Critics point to China’s political system, which many see as authoritarian. Many have rightly raised concerns regarding Xi Jinping’s recent abolition of term limits for the position of president, and China is by any account a one party state (though the country does host eight other parties which together hold roughly ⅓ of the seats in the Chinese National Congress, more parties than America’s two, and on rare occasions in our history three or four, political parties with federal political representation). That being said, within the seemingly uniform Chinese Communist Party, a number of unofficial cliques have come to lobby for a variety of at-odds political ambitions. Most notable of these groups is the Shanghai clique, also known as the Shanghai gang or Jiang faction, named after former president and heir to Deng Xiaoping’s political legacy of economic privatization Jiang Zemin. In 2003 power was wrestled from the Shanghai clique by president Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor, who during his time in office sought to further develop China’s rural interior–a line of policy staunchly opposed by the Jiang clique, backed by the nation’s well-connected, coastal rich. When Xi Jinping rose to the position of president in 2013, among his first major actions in office was a crackdown on political corruption rampant in the Shanghai clique.
It is undeniable that China ascribes to a political system very different from what Americans are used to, but the idea that Chinese governance is ideologically uniform or absent of political debate is untrue; disagreements between CPC officials are no less pronounced than disagreements between American political parties. If China’s political system produces positive results for the country’s citizens, then perhaps it deserves less criticism than much of our media is so keen to make out.
Where China Stumbles
This is not to say that Chinese policy is a wholly positive force. The ongoing forced assimilation of Xinjiang has seen thousands imprisoned in harsh camps, in addition to the widespread suppression of Muslim religious practice. Human rights violations in said camps are frequently reported, though the Chinese government vehemently denies such allegations. Despite accusations of cultural genocide, the Uygur population has increased from 2.2 million to nearly 12 million in the past 60 years, and life expectancy for Uygurs has jumped from an average 30 to 75 years since the Chinese government regained control of the area in 1949. Still though, birth rates in Uyghur communities are decreasing at an alarming rate, even according to state-reported figures. The Chinese government claims that their actions in Xinjiang are a response to terrorist activity in the region (an argument Americans ought to be familiar with), however the very real impact the Chinese response has had on civilian life and cultural practice is worthy of much condemnation.
And despite the innumerable benefits of the Belt and Road Initiative, some of its projects have fallen victim to poor planning or less than desirable results. The previously mentioned expansion of the Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway received criticism from young Kenyans, who complained that SGR jobs offered were low-skill and underpaid. And while rail greatly benefits developed nations, its historic unprofitability in the developing world means the SGR has proven far less economically beneficial than initially anticipated. And any large-scale government investment coming out of notoriously corrupt governments like many in sub-Saharan Africa is worthy of speculation.
For an ostensibly Marxist-Leninist state, China has begun to pursue increasingly imperialist ambitions, especially in the South China Sea. As a nation surrounded by US-friendly states, the Chinese government has worked to ensure its naval security and shipping rights are safeguarded in preparation for potential sanctions. The result of this has been the artificial expansion of patches of land in the Pacific, claiming they are a part of Chinese territory, and extending exclusive Chinese shipping rights well beyond naturally occurring Chinese territory. In 2023, in an even greater departure from their supposedly Communist ideology, China offered the Philippines $14 million worth of arms and equipment to help combat the, somewhat ironically, Maoist revolutionaries especially active on Mindanao and in rural regions of Luzon. The deal is expected to be finalized later this year, and spells bad news for the Philippine Communist Party, a group working to improve the wellbeing of Filipinos.
Conclusion
To be sure, China is by no means a wholly ethical actor, but on key issues the country has proven itself capable of addressing the needs of the international community, from climate change to regional instability to economic development in the Third World. And despite the Chinese government stressing a desire to work with, not against, America, if the world does in fact need a global hegemon, I’d prefer it to be Beijing, not Washington. In the three decades following the illegal dissolution* of the Soviet Union, America has enjoyed power unparalleled by any other nation in all of human history. And in that same span of time, the country has directly killed more than 850,000 civilians in 18 wars, almost all of them unjust, with hundreds of thousands more dead at the hands of indirect American intervention. Perhaps what the US needs is a counterweight on the global scale, however inconvenient it may be to the interests of America’s leaders.
The unfortunate reality of geopolitics is that, almost always, no power is “in the right.” Competition between big players has defined the global order for centuries, and in bids to help facilitate their rise, nations often make an effort to present themselves as relatively moral. The American Empire has proven to be more ethical than the British, and it looks like China might continue the trend. The nation’s rise, then, should be viewed not as a threat to a global order supposedly built on democratic values, but as yet another link in the long and storied chain of imperial and neo-imperial projects, each more hospitable than the last.
*On March 17th, 1991, the USSR held a national referendum in order to put the issue of dissolution to popular vote. The Soviet people voted overwhelmingly against the prospect, with over 80% of Soviets (across the USSR, from Ukraine to Turkmenistan) supporting maintaining the then-present Communist government. In acting against a legally-binding referendum, Boris Yeltsin acted illegally. In 2009, Pew Research polling of former-Soviet states indicated that the public broadly maintained support for Communist government, preferring it to capitalist “democracy.”
