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To understand the hard turn in the West against China, it’s essential to appreciate that there are quite different motivations for this turn in different political quarters. A thread. 1/8
To begin with, there are the long-time opponents: parts of the Right have always been suspicious of “Red” China; likewise, the military has never had much love to lose; nor obviously has the human rights community. 2/8
What’s shifted sharply has been the attitude among two groups who from the mid-1990s through the mid-teens were very bullish on China, namely (a) the business community, and (b) liberal internationalists. 3/8
The business people tended to be Republicans & the liberal int’lists tended to be Democrats; between them they created a “bipartisan” support for a pro-integrationist policy toward China, incorporating the Chinese into the WTO, the IMF, etc. “Neoliberal hegemony” if you will. 4/8
These folks were hardly as one in terms of their views of China: the business people looked at China and saw 🤑; the liberal internationaists tended to believe that the robustness of international institutions would enable the US to co-opt China’s own hegemonic ambitions. 5/8
But now, each of these groups has become disillusioned, albeitfor quite different reasons. On the one hand, the business people have lost faith as the market opportunities presented by China have not lived up to expectations & the downsides (IP theft, etc) have proven large. 6/8
On the other hand, the liberal internationalists lost their faith relatively suddenly, when they realized that the liberal institutions were not only not really succeeding in hemming in China, but were now about to be run by Trump. 7/8
Understanding this diversity of motives for anti-China positions in the West is crucial for understanding how that coalition might (or might not) hold together in the future. 8/8
