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Two pieces in this morning's @monkeycage blog refute State Dept Policy Planning director's remarks. wapo.st/2GWbhNl @Steven_m_ward notes that calling China the first non-'Caucasian' competitor is wrong & dangerous. Elevating race helped fuel Japan's aggression in WWII 1/
But Skinner's remarks went beyond race, describing a new 'clash of civilizations' and calling China an ideological rival. My take on why that's wrong, in three ways: washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/… 2/
1) China has no coherent, universal ideology. Many China scholars call the Chinese Communist Party 'ideologically bankrupt' 3/
2) Exporting technology is not exporting ideology. Cameras can substitute for brute-force methods of surveillance, as in Ecuador, which installed a Chinese surveillance system. But its political effects are still being disentangled. 4/
3) Cold War containment policy was premised on the Soviet Union being 'impervious' to influence. China has not been impervious to influence, as @AmberWichowsky and I find in @RIPEJournal tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…, for example 5/
When critics say that engagement with China has failed, it’s unclear what alternative (“counterfactual”) policy they had in mind. China's failure to democratize or continue to liberalize economically doesn't recognize all the changes that engagement has brought. 6/
So does the U.S. face a hardened, ideological adversary in Beijing? The reality is China has been shaped by engagement with the outside world and has no coherent ideology with international appeal. 7/
As U.S. policy planners fashion a new strategy for dealing with China, understanding the differences between today’s China and the former Soviet Union will be critical to their success. /fin
