Jakub Majmurek: Chatham home has late appeared analysiswhose author puts the thesis that independent of who wins the upcoming US elections, China is preparing to intensify its rivalry with the States. Do you agree with that diagnosis?
Bogdan Góralczyk: Yeah. Since Donald Trump's presidency, the United States has made a fundamental change in its approach to China. From engagement and cooperation in selected areas to strategical competition. Biden's administration made it worse. Not only has it never canceled the customs war with China, which Trump started in 2018, but it has late tightened it, imposing additional duties: 25% on steel, 50% on photovoltaics and semiconductors, 100% on Chinese electrical cars.
Two factors strengthened and accelerated competition on both sides. The first is pandemic. Thanks to it, the full planet understood that it is besides dependent on supply chains beginning in China – this besides applies to Poland, whose Prime Minister welcomed at the airport antonowa with Chinese masks. In response, Western states began to retreat their production from China, forcing governments in Beijing to undertake circumstantial answers. The second origin was Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. And as long as the war in Ukraine does not end with a peaceful solution, the West – including Poland – and China will be on 2 sides of the barricade.
So, yes, no substance who wins in the States, China's policy will be very similar. It is 1 of the fewer issues that connects the American political scene, even more polarized than Polish one.
Is there any difference in what means Democrats and Republicans will compete with China?
I think Donald Trump is serious in his unauthorized sounding announcements that in 48 hours he will lead to a peace agreement on Ukraine. His presidential candidate, J. D. Vance, even defined what this would be like: namely, neutralising Donbass and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. So it would truly be a Russian reception and a second Yalta over Ukrainian heads. This would besides have possibly immense consequences for Poland, due to the fact that Trump could, at the same time, take the east flank of NATO and go to the South China Sea, towards Taiwan.
Harris, on the another hand, would proceed Biden's administration policy and compete with China, would not undermine transatlantic relations. What Trump can do, who constantly attacks European NATO members, reminding them that they are not spending adequate resources to defend themselves.
The Chinese elite would alternatively compete with the states of Harris or Trump?
Chinese elites don't think in these categories. They don't defile who's better for them, they just build an army, a fleet, militarize their society. They think the fight's on. Listen. Common Chief of Chinese diplomacy Wang Yi at the last session of the UN General Assembly. He says directly: Taiwan is ours and must return to the homeland. China could not choose a wider forum to announce it to the world.
Do you think that in the word of office of the next U.S. president there could be a military clash over Taiwan?
I don't think this should be considered in the American time frame, I think, but in Chinese. Especially in the position of Xi Jinping's power. I hold firm thesis that the last, twentieth reunion of the Communist organization of China, at the end of 2022 gave Xi's lifelong power to complete the work of unification of Chinese lands, and he must do so by 2035 at the latest, if not 2027.
Why these dates?
In 2014, Xi formulated alleged 2 goals for the century. The first, at 01.07.2021 – the century KPC – assumed that by then China would be free of utmost poorness and build a "sociality of average prosperity". erstwhile this day came, speaking from the gate at Tiananmen Square, Xi announcedthat the goal has been achieved. The second is to be reached at the century of the People's Republic of China, or 2049. China is to become a "strong, democratic, harmonious, modern and civilized state" by then.
Xi, 1953, is improbable to live to 2049, and even if he did, he will not be an active politician. He so set 3 intermediate targets for 2035. Until then, China is expected to be an innovative society based on advanced technologies – present it is Xi's main horse. Secondly, they are to be a society not only moderate, but simply prosperity, equal to the standard of surviving of South Korea. The 3rd mark is simply a modern army. His planned accomplishment was accelerated for the year 2027, or for the century of the founding of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.
Therefore, in my view, Beijing will effort to someway resolve Taiwan between 2027 and 2035.
Could it be armed?
I belong to this number of external analysts who think it's a little likely scenario. The Chinese have this saying: the jaws of a weapon is simply a strategist defeat.
In my opinion, the direct hit on Taiwan, the script Putin utilized in Ukraine, is the last resort. China will apply any possible procedure to solve the substance differently: they will introduce the 5th column, effort to exhaust Taiwanese society, which is comparatively easy to accomplish due to the fact that Taiwan is an island without natural materials. However, a strength solution cannot be ruled out, and that would be a large calamity for the world. In times erstwhile I was an ambassador to Southeast Asia, I learned that where 2 elephants fight, grass will be trampled.
Would the Americans engage in specified a conflict?
As Poles, we know perfectly well the saying about “Dying for Gdansk”. However, the effort by China to take Taiwan will not only be about Taiwan, but about the function of the United States as a global leader. What they will do in the event of any military action by China against the island will be a litmus paper of the leadership will of the States. Which is why I think the Americans may not be limited to verbal declarations.
Do you see any differences between Harris and Trump?
Mostly that I do not imagine, however, that in relations with Beijing Democrats go to what Trump calls a "big deal". There was erstwhile a treaty with the Tordesillas, under which, at the threshold of the era of large geographical discoveries, the Spanish and Portuguese divided the full globe among themselves. The Chinese may effort to make a akin proposal to Trump. I don't know if she'll take it, but it's surely easier to imagine than a Democratic candidate.
However, while Taiwan is crucial from a Chinese perspective, it is not American. For the States, it is different: that China is simply a global challenge to them today, as never was the russian Union. Taiwan is part of this challenge, but not the most important, it is equally crucial to compete in advanced technology.
Biden's administration clearly tried to limit China's capabilities here.
Inflation simplification Act and Chips and discipline Act, Biden's key initiatives of administration, are isolationist actions to bring production out of China's high-tech area and relocate it back to the US.
China has tools to reduce the negative effects of akin actions? More recently, we have been reading about the increasing problems of the economy and the crisis of the growth model that drove it.
We in the West have a serious problem defining what is actually happening in China. present we are exposing China's interior tensions and structural problems, telling ourselves that they are about to collapse economically due to them.
There are quite a few tensions. Analyzing them, however, it is worth considering how China has changed under Xi Jinping. Before that, they were pragmatic, even calculating, meritocratic, sober, and reasonable. That's what their successes were based on. Since 2012, erstwhile Xi took over, they have become increasingly ideological, Marxist-Leninian.
In what way?
You must know Andrzej Walicki's book Marxism and Jump into the Kingdom of Freedom. Welsh defines Marxism very well there as an ideology based on absolute distrust of the marketplace and the private sector. And that was the direction of power in China after 2012. erstwhile again, the state has powerfully placed itself on the state sector. Xi besides reached out to lenism, or dictatorship of the proletariat, governments utilizing a police baton. Since 2012, the strategy has become increasingly authoritarian to not say – totalitarian. People in China are increasingly afraid to talk about certain things.
It's all about a policy against the pandemic. Shanghai was completely closed for 2.5 months, and at any point there were 70 percent larger Chinese cities in lockdowns. As a result, the economy slowed down, due to the fact that tiny and medium-sized enterprises, especially with abroad capital, left China, failing to withstand fresh political conditions and tough lockdowns.
At the same time Xi Jinping changed the improvement model. The Deng Xiaoping model was mainly based on exports. The Xi model was to be based on the interior market, with an export serving as a complement – as it usually looked in Chinese tradition. interior consumption, however, has slowed down, mainly for political reasons, due to the fact that the state sector has been unduly promoted.
The current stimulus package is the answer to these problems?
Yeah, I haven't seen anything like it in 40 years of Chinese reform. Further institutions, 1 by one, headed by the Central Bank, announce actions. On Thursday, October 10, the head of the Central Bank announced a stimulus package worth 500 billion yuan, or $70.6 billion. At the same time, which for me is very symbolic, the Chinese Ministry of Justice publishes the first in the past of the PRC the bill on the functioning of the public sector.
What could all this mean? The Chinese elites see how wobbly global markets are, that China is subject to an ever-increasing ostracism on them – not only from the US, but besides from the European Union increasingly – and all data indicate that China may not accomplish the planned growth of 5% of GDP this year. The question is whether this will undermine Xi Jinping's sole power or force him to decision distant from ideological politics, preferring the state sector.
You mentioned the European Union. Where is the Union in this American-Chinese competition? Because, on the 1 hand, the EU depends on the US as a supplier of European security, on the another hand, the European economy remains powerfully linked to China.
Europe's major problem in terms of this competition is that it is profoundly divided. There is no community, not to mention a common European identity. We specify ourselves and act not as Europeans, but as Poles, French, Lithuanians, Hungarians. And China, but besides Russia, will usage this by applying the rule of divide and rule. This was shown by the excellent discussion of customs duties on Chinese electrical cars. There was no consensus here, and the discussion of this solution revealed deep divisions within the Union. China immediately responded to the state which powerfully advocated the duties, France, imposing 100% duties on cognacs and brandy.
This is how China works. As a rule, they do not talk to multilateral actors, but to each state separately. France is being ‘punished’, but they are building close relations with Orbán, who now massively allows them into Hungary.
Since Trump, we have lived in a planet to which the rivalry of powers has returned, measured in terms of hard power. In the meantime, the European Union is simply a power in an economic, commercial and normative sense, but there is no hard power in a military or any another sense. It's gonna be a immense problem, especially if Trump comes back to the White House.
Because of his policy towards Ukraine?
Not only that. I fear that Trump's second word will consequence in transatlantic turbulence, even if the conflict in Ukraine ends peacefully. And going back to the Union: we will see how the fresh European Commission is now going to behave, which, after all, has yet to establish itself. Whether it will hold the duties voted on by Chinese electricians or prove consistent.
I have just finished writing a book trying to realize the phenomenon of Orbán, I have been in Hungary respective times over the last fewer months – and I have doubts about this consistency. Orbán is very open to the East, Hungary is out of all the standards in force in the European Union. Where is our European cohesion and unity?
Europe, with its dependence on China, has even space to carry out a akin review of economical relations with this country, as the Americans effort to do? Especially as crucial to the Union as the German economy?
I'd put it differently. Europe has lost 3 umbrellas recently. The first is the NATO safety umbrella. Trump will file it to us immediately, the Democrats will do it slowly, but under their regulation this process will besides take place.
The second is the energy umbrella that supplies natural materials from Russia. It inactive includes countries specified as Austria or Slovakia, but this process is irreversible. The 3rd umbrella gave us China. It was that, since the late 1990s, we have been able to decision production there and at the same time bring inexpensive goods. In time, it's not just crap. The pandemic showed it went besides far. That we can't bring 100 percent of the masks and medical equipment from China.
All Europe is profoundly dependent on China. It is not only Germany's problem, though the fact is that Germany has long sold more cars in China than in the remainder of the world. But today, Volkswagen is being pushed out of the Chinese marketplace due to the fact that it is losing to inexpensive Chinese electricians.
Where is Poland in this situation?
In trade relations with us, China has an advantage of 16–18 to 1. What are we exporting to China? Apples, chickens, milk powder, KGHM any copper. 5G, 6G, Huawei, TikToka. So we should truly seriously consider how to change relations and reduce trade and commodity dependence on Beijing. The Chinese have developed a strategy for both Poland and our full region. We have no strategy for China in our abroad policy. As with India, the global South, emerging markets.
Take Minister Sikorski's last exposé. There was Moscow, Kiev, Berlin and Washington. There was virtually no Beijing, fresh Delhi, Tehran, Riyadh. We live in a full fresh planet today. fresh force centers have emerged and they, along with the old ones, are in motion. The war in Ukraine has caused an unprecedented situation in this respect since the end of planet War II. And this is the time for creative thinking, not for the interior policy we are constantly observing in Poland.
You know, I teach students who were born in 2005–07. I must remind them of what was happening in Polish politics then, as Tusk fought the Kaczyński brothers. What is the mainstream of politics in Poland today? Tusk fights Jarosław Kaczyński and the ghost of Lech Kaczyński.
So what should Poland do to all these challenges?
First of all, to reconcile ourselves internally, to make simple consent on matters of state reason. That must be the starting point. Secondly, we request to start developing a strategy that fits the fresh realities. We have a large Institute of east Studies, an excellent investigation area. We should call a akin one, focused on Asia.
Polish elites must realise that the planet we have known since the collapse of the USSR, characterized by the dominance of the States, is ending. There is simply a new, at least bipolar – with 1 pole in Washington, D.C., the another in Beijing – or, more likely, multipolar. And Europe will surely not be its centre. The European Union has a population of 450 million. China and India number 1.4 billion each. It is these countries that are in the Renaissance phase today, where global dynamics is moving. In the decade preceding the pandemic, between 2009 and 2019, 80% of global GDP growth was generated by emerging markets.
China has created its own innovative ecosystem. They have an alternate Internet, an alternate GPS, they go like crazy into space, on uncommon soils, for minerals without which it is impossible to make technology. If the Taiwanese TSMC – the largest maker of the most advanced semiconductors – inactive peacefully take over, we have a completely fresh quality. The Americans know that, and they won't let that happen. It is about time that Polish politics began to announcement this reality and draw conclusions.
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Bogdan Góralczyk – Politologist, Sinologist and diplomat. prof. at the European University of Warsaw Centre. Author of many publications in the field of global relations, especially on Chinese topics. He served as Deputy Ambassador to Budapest and Ambassador to Thailand.
