China labelled ‘evil empire’ as ‘new Cold War’ gets into top gear

Former US Vice President Mike Pence has drawn his foreign policy battle lines in his bid for the 2024 US presidency by reportedly labelling China an “evil empire”. Such tagging by the foremost figures of the political Right in the US of those powers seen as the country’s arch rivals, by drawing on theological imagery, has a familiar ring. Former Republican President Ronald Reagan, for one, was most adept at it.

In his efforts to damn the USSR during his presidency in the eighties Reagan often labelled it an “evil empire” and referred to the principal alliance headed by it as an “axis of evil”. In later decades, conservative opinion in the US fixed the tag “Satan” on Iraqi insurgents and on others seen as terrorists.

For the political Right in the US such labelling makes considerable sense. One of the Right’s support bases being Christian fundamentalist opinion in the US, the Right achieves a substantial measure of propaganda mileage through the use of theological imagery in its election rhetoric in particular. However, now that China has eclipsed Russia as the chief contender of the US in the latter’s efforts to remain the world’s foremost political, economic and military power, referring to China as an “evil empire” is politically expedient from the viewpoint of US conservative opinion. Moreover, the US Right is likely to factor in support that would be forthcoming for the US from Christian fundamentalist opinion the world over through such labelling strategies.

However, as pointed out by some commentators, divisive rhetoric carrying strong religious overtones of the above kind puts the world political order at the risk of getting back, as perhaps never before, to a bygone “discourse”, wherein the world was characterized as consisting of the “forces of civilization”, that is the West, and “barbarians”, meaning the rest of the world; more specifically the South. In other words, the chances of Western colonialism in its crudest forms strengthening itself in the Western consciousness are great. That is, Western racism could enjoy a new lease of life and prove a dangerously divisive force in international politics.

It is not the case that these tendencies in international politics were not present to a lesser or greater degree throughout modern world political history. They certainly were, but given the current global power distribution these trends could only serve to intensify big power rivalries and tensions in the days ahead and render the world a quite uncomfortable place to live in. This would be particularly true when the political Right occupies the US presidency.

Considering China’s present strengths, she is unlikely to prove a tame recipient of Western hostility on the ideological and other planes. The Chinese political leadership, in fact, is not mincing its words on how it would deal with Western military threats and power projections. For example, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in the course of his address to the nation recently on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party: “….We will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

Needless to say, China is the power to watch. As it persists with its “Belt and Road” mega project, for instance, its economic power is bound to grow overwhelmingly. While it is yet to be seen whether all the countries and regions that come under the project would eventually be in a position to fend for themselves on a self-sustaining basis, what could be considered a certainty is that quite a few of these countries would be indebted to China. And being indebted is as good as being held in subjection.

While the US Right may stand to gain on the domestic front by pandering to local religious and ethnic prejudices, the bald fact is that China is now its foremost challenger on a number of planes and that it would need to deal with the greatest tact and foresightedness with China. It could no longer be considered barbaric, as in colonial times. In fact, even a Democratic administration in the US would need to be guided by these considerations.

The data on the economic front alone testify to the need for flexible and pragmatically-oriented US-China ties. For example, as the World Bank recently stated, global growth is expected to increase to 5.6 per cent this year and it is mainly China and the US that would be the drivers of this growth. The economic vibrancy of both countries is such that each would contribute a quarter of global growth in 2021. US growth is expected to reach 6.8 per cent this year, its fastest growth rate since 1984, while the World Bank expects China’s growth to hit 8.5 per cent.

Thus, the US would increasingly find that China is no “push-over” in economic matters and that a degree of peaceful co-existence would be badly needed between the countries if they are to gain mutually in their bilateral economic relations as well as in their efforts to interact on the economic plane with the rest of the world without getting in the way of each other. Whether Right or centrist, US administrations are bound to find out that China is just too big to handle roughly and dismissively. Diplomacy would prove crucial.

Accordingly, the West in general and the US in particular would need to divest themselves of divisive and unproductive mindsets, such as the notion that they alone represent the forces of civilization and that the rest of the world is barbaric, if they are to enjoy a degree of material self-sufficiency and be free of external military threats. The same goes for China, since her economic interactions with the world would be greatly hampered if she is to court strained relations with the rest of the international community.

However, the world expects much from its foremost powers. In terms of international peace and harmony, hardly anything has been achieved since the ending of World War Two. The big powers while working out ways of co-existing peacefully, need to also think in terms taking the world increasingly in the direction of a substantial measure of international peace and harmony. They need to think seriously on ways of decreasing their power rivalries which do not benefit the rest of the world in any way.