Chinese Peril

China has a plan to rule the world
By David Ignatius

The Chinese dictator and the American moron.

The friendly words exchanged between Trump and Xi Jinping this month softened the edge of a Chinese economic and military buildup that a recent study commissioned by the Pentagon described as “perhaps the most ambitious grand strategy undertaken by a single nation-state in modern times.”
At the Beijing summit on Nov. 9, Xi repeated his usual congenial injunction for “win-win cooperation,” and Trump responded in kind, calling Xi “a very special man.”

Trump also complained about the Chinese trade surplus, but the visit was mostly a serenade to Sino-American cooperation.
What caught my ear was Xi’s hint of China’s big ambitions in his toast that night. 

He quoted a Chinese proverb that “no distance, not even remote mountains and vast oceans, can ever prevent people with perseverance from reaching their destination.” 

Xi then cited an adage from Benjamin Franklin: “He who can have patience, can have what he will.” 

That’s an apt summary of China’s quiet but relentless pursuit of becoming a global superpower.
China’s rise has been so rapid that it’s easy to miss how fast Beijing has expanded its ability to project power. 

The mesmerizing go-slow style of the pre-Xi years, summarized in the Chinese slogan “hide and bide,” has been replaced by what U.S. analysts now see as an open power play.
Trump’s “America first” strategy has facilitated China’s buildup, unintentionally. 

The administration’s rhetoric on fair trade has been strong, but the actual gains have been modest. Meanwhile, Trump has shredded the Trans-Pacific Partnership and stepped back from other U.S.-led alliances — opening the way for China’s new network of global institutions, including the “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) plan for Eurasian trade and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to finance Chinese-led projects.
The scope of China’s challenge to the American-led order is described in two unpublished and unclassified studies commissioned by the Air Force.
One study argues that China’s Eurasian reach is beyond that of the 1947 Marshall Plan, which cemented American power in postwar Europe. 

The report estimates that the OBOR framework would provide up to $1 trillion in Chinese support for more than 64 countries, while the Marshall Plan provided about $150 billion in current dollars, mostly to six countries. 

The report describes OBOR as “a program of unprecedented size and scope with the strategic intent of constructing a Chinese-led regional order in Eurasia.”
China is building the infrastructure of power. 

The study describes, for example, how Beijing is financing a string of ports in the Indian Ocean region, including in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Pakistan, Burma, Djibouti, Kenya and the United Arab Emirates. 

The proposed investment is nearly $250 billion.
China has also invested $13.6 billion in Greece, buying control of the port of Piraeus and big shares of Greek utilities and fiber-optics companies. 

“Greece serves as a strategic beachhead for China into Europe,” notes the report.
The Asian infrastructure bank, meanwhile, has approved $16 billion in projects in 10 countries, including long-standing U.S. allies such as Egypt, India and Oman. 

And the Chinese are building rail lines to Europe and every part of Asia, allowing them to bypass U.S.-controlled sea lanes. 

China already has 40 rail routes to nine European countries.
American dominance has been built partly on the primacy of our scientific and technological laboratories, which have drawn the best and brightest from around the world. 

But the Chinese are challenging here, too. 

China is building at least 50 joint-venture science and technology labs with OBOR countries and plans over the next five years to train up to 5,000 foreign scientists, engineers and managers, the study notes.
As foreign scientists pull back from some U.S. labs because of visa and government-grant worries, the Chinese are doubling down. 

According to the second Air Force study, China surpasses the United States in annual patent applications, is now No. 2 in peer-reviewed research articles and in 2014 awarded more than twice as many degrees in science, technology, engineering and math.
China is mobilizing its best tech talent for this global empire. 

China Telecom plans to lay a 150,000-kilometer fiber-optic network covering 48 African nations. IZP, a big-data company, plans to expand soon to 120 countries. 

BeiDou, a government agency, is building a GPS-like satellite navigation system for all Eurasia.
There’s an eerie sense in today’s world that China is racing to capture the commanding heights of technology and trade. 

Meanwhile, under the banner of “America first,” the Trump administration is protecting coal-mining jobs and questioning climate science.
Sorry, friends, but this is how empires rise and fall.

President Trump's Art of the Deal

For China, a Painful Rethink on Donald Trump
By ANDREW BROWNE

A man at a bar in Beijing takes a photo of the inauguration of Donald Trump. Whether banning refugees or going ahead with a wall along the Mexican border, President Trump has made clear in his first days as president that he actually means what he says to his popular base.

SHANGHAI—The officials who look after China’s relations with the world respect—even admire—a tough negotiator. 

That’s how they first thought about the challenge of Donald Trump.
Even when he rattled the foundations of U.S.-China relations by taking a call from the Taiwan president after his election, their calm response reflected hopes that he was bluffing. 

Indeed, President Trump encouraged the idea by suggesting that trade concessions from Beijing might make his threats to abandon America’s longstanding “One China” policy go away.
By now, it is dawning on Chinese policy makers how badly they may have misread him. 

Whether banning refugees or going ahead with a wall along the Mexican border, President Trump has made clear in his first days as president that he actually means what he says to his popular base.
The course appears set for confrontation between the two nuclear-armed giants over issues that have been stewing for years: China’s mercantilist trade practices, its cybertheft, military buildup and ambitions to dominate its neighborhood. 

Chinese leaders must decide how—or whether—to deal with a U.S. president who has proven unrestrained by diplomatic protocol than they could have imagined, and just as prone to sound off about U.S. allies as adversaries.
Can China do business with this White House?
The Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, asked himself the same question after increasingly hostile exchanges with President Trump over whether Mexico would pay for the proposed wall—and canceled his visit to Washington. 

The two leaders later spoke by phone.
The episode stands as a warning about how quickly U.S. ties could unravel with China, a far more important relationship.

Jorge Guajardo, a former Mexican ambassador to Beijing, says the Chinese dictators may conclude that attempting to make nice with President Trump is a waste of time. 

Mr. Peña Nieto had “bent over backwards” to accommodate President Trump, he says, welcoming him to Mexico in August with all the courtesies of a state visit.
“I didn’t think he would be so callous and cruel immediately,” said Mr. Guajardo.
Then there are the tweets. 

Chinese diplomacy is fastidious. 

Official exchanges are minutely scripted. 

Chinese public opinion, conditioned by a sense of national victimhood, is acutely sensitive to foreign slights. 

Imagine, then, the anxiety of Beijing’s leaders knowing that Mr. Trump could blow up a high-level meeting by embarrassing them with a 140-character blast.
That’s the point, of course. 

President Trump employs impulsiveness as a negotiating tactic—the “Art of the Deal.” 

He believes—with some justification—that Chinese negotiators have outsmarted their predictable U.S. interlocutors at every turn. 

Lopsided trade flows illustrate the point. 

U.S. technology markets are open, China’s are closing. 

Where’s the reciprocity? 

“They’re killing us,” President Trump complains.
Mr. Peña Nieto can’t afford a complete rupture; he’s torn between national pride and fear that President Trump will withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement and badly damage Mexico’s trade-dependent economy.
China’s trade surplus with the U.S. dwarfs that of Mexico. 

But Beijing has more cards to play. 

If Mr. Trump raises trade tariffs, it can retaliate against U.S. multinationals such as Boeing or Apple that are reliant on the Chinese market.
China has missiles and cyberwarfare capabilities. 

Ultimately, the U.S. would prevail in a military contest over Taiwan or the South China Sea, but at some cost.
Beijing would greatly prefer tough negotiations over a standoff, or worse. 

Xi Jinping needs internal stability as he prepares to consolidate power at a key Communist Party congress late this year. 

Any mishandling of the U.S. relationship could expose Xi to criticism. 

Meanwhile, the economy is stumbling; as capital flees the country, export revenues from the U.S., China’s largest market, are more important than ever.
High-level communication between Beijing and Washington is vital to prevent disagreements spiraling into crises. 

Risk-averse Chinese leaders may try to wait out President Trump, hoping he softens, or his presidency implodes.
If they take the plunge and engage, his unpredictable negotiating style will be a wild card.

Trying to use Taiwan as a bargaining chip will play as disastrously with China as the wall does with Mexico. 

In that sense, President Trump’s ugly spat with the Mexican president is ominous.
Says Mr. Guajardo, the former ambassador: “He doesn’t even allow you to get to the table.”