With the steep rise of China as a whole in recent decades it is very easy to see a world in which America is no longer that hegemonic superpower that it once was. However, America has always had it’s troubles keeping the position of “top dog” on the global hierarchy. Even if we look back to 1947 with the beginning of what we know as the cold war, we can see that America has been insecure for a while now, and I mean that in an economic, political, and psychological way in the sense that over time they began to realise that they might not be top of the food chain for much longer and they will do anything they can to maintain that position.
America has painted this picture of China that they are this foreign entity, this hivemind of, not individuals, but a collective of cogs all working efficiently and effectively to achieve economic domination over the global economy. A place similar to Orwell's depiction of his dystopian country Oceania. A place which is not the egalitarian utopia as it says it is, but an oppressive autocratic thraldom where you, and even your thoughts, are being watched at all times. While I do not agree with China’s mass surveillance, I do believe that it does a lot of things right in terms of wealth redistribution and genuinely working towards the betterment of all of society. Xi Jinping's reign over the last 40 years has seen radical transformative change to the structure of China both socially and economically.
I am going to go a little off topic but bare with me for a minute. This rapid growth has given birth to many mega-corporations which have dominated not only the Chinese market but the global one. However, the difference between the Chinese market and America’s is that all of these companies, regardless of the independence of them from their conception, are hyper-regulated by the government. This regulation allows the government to have full control of how the companies are run and who they are run by which, contrary to the American views on liberal free market capitalism, does not stunt or diminish the growth of these companies. We can see this fact very evidently in the rapid growth of the Chinese private sector in recent decades. Proof of this is an article published by China daily which says that the country's economy expanded at an average rate of 9.5 percent over the last 40 years, far beyond the world economy's 2.9 percent in the same period and more than tripling the American growth rate over the same period. This growth continues as China is projected to grow 5.1% in 2022, and while the US’s “purchasing parity power” is still more, if these trends continue China may be on course to passing its biggest global competitor .
In November 2020, famed Chinese business magnate and billionaire Jack Ma went missing for 3 months. This came after a series of outspoken comments by the CEO of the multi billion dollar company Alibaba. After the three months had passed Mr.Ma returned and was visibly more quiet, reserved and in support of Chinese government policies than he was prior to his disappearance. This is quite a common occurrence in China with relation to the elites in society who defy the collective goal of the government and therefore the people. Since 2003 (as of 2011, could not find any extra evidence), 72 billionaires have died of “natural circumstances” and 14 of those 72 were directly executed by the Chinese government. In an article by Forbes entitled “Friends don’t let friends become Chinese billionaires” they give the figure that a Chinese billionaire dies every 40 days. The average life expectancy of billionaires in China is 48. If these billionaires were not abducted or executed by the state they made “voluntary donations” of the sum of billions of dollars to social programs. This however is in stark contrast to Xi’s predecessors who were very lenient with elites. Xi’s crackdowns have come with a wave of nationalisation efforts made by the government in order to better distribute resources throughout the disadvantaged population or the “peasants” as they are referred to, known by Marx as “the proletariat”.
The reason I refer to all this is because the society which Xi is attempting to create is very reminiscent of Stalin’s vision for the USSR except practically adapted to the modern age. This type of "scary communism" is what is pushed in the US and western media in order to paint a negative picture of what China is while they themselves have similar if not worse domestic issues and have dominated the global hierarchy for, in America's case, over a century.
Globalisation has allowed China to modernise and move into progressive economics by expanding their interests outside of China into other parts of Asia, Africa and the most important being western countries such as America. The censorship of elites and outspoken public figures was also seen in Stalin’s Russia in order to control media and information.
The red scare was a period in American history which created a lot of fear of this type of autocratic socialism as a whole, and the remnants of that are still around to this very day. There were several campaigns put out by the US government in the media during the 50’s in order to scare monger the public into thinking that there were “reds under your beds”. This referred to Bolshevik sympathisers in America who were supposedly organising a communist or socialist revolution similar to the Russian revolution. This Mccarthyism has once again resurfaced due to fears of China posing an imminent threat to American sovereignty.
A relevant example of this is the Coronavirus. Asian hate crimes surged during the beginning of the pandemic, which sparked the “stop asian hate movement”. The attacks specifically targeted elderly asian people and many believe the route of the problem stemmed from Trump’s blatant racism, xenophobia and strawmanning when he refered to the global pandemic as the “Wuhan flu” and implied that it was in fact a biological weapon created by China and leaked on purpose to cause economic instability. As a result of this many of his supporters began to blame asian people as a whole for starting and spreading the virus. This was extremely damaging to the American-asian population as a whole and is comparable to the rise in Muslim hate crimes in a post 9/11 world, which to this day still exists.
This type of contempt towards China by western countries has created a neo-cold-war culture which poses an imminent threat to global security. These worries originally arose a couple of years back when there were threats by Trump to send nuclear strikes to North Korea in response to their recent technological advancements and vice versa. America in 2013, who technically is still at war with North Korea and their allies China as no peace agreement was reached in the 50's, said that North Korea posed an imminent threat to the national security of the US. This sparked a new wave of fear of communism and autocratic egalitarianism as a whole throughout the states and the west. This once again is comparable to red scare culture and all the controversy and propaganda which surrounds it.
China posed an economic threat to America for several decades now but it is only in recent years that they have caught up technologically to the US. In an article written by ex Australian PM Paul Keating, he spoke about the “China Threat” and what that actually is. One point he made is that when referring to the general attitude towards China in Australia specifically he said “the whispered word “communism” of old, is now being replaced with the word ''China”.'' I think that this is the case in most countries who fear the imminent Chinese expansion and growth, and fear what they will be capable of in 5,10 or 15 years from now. Will they do the same neo-colonialism which America does?
People hate what they fear and America is afraid of losing their global cultural, economic and military domination, which they have become so accustomed to, to a country with an opposing ideology. The thought of losing this hegemony scares the elites which, like the red scare, causes them to blame and slander the easy public enemy which is this faceless economic machine which they have created through media propaganda. As the saying goes, “better dead than red”.
16 December, 2021