Containment Can Work Against China

"The best check on autocratic aggression remains the strength and unity of the democracies. Knowing this, Mr. Xi longs to separate Washington from its friends. Any narrowly nationalistic American approach to competition will thus fail. The U.S. will need instead deeper cooperation with like-minded countries -- on trade, technological innovation and defense -- to build collective resilience against Chinese aggression and to generate the collective pressure that can throw Beijing on its heels for a change.

Indeed, containment reflects another fundamental truth of long-term rivalry: It is hard to win while remaining wholly on the defensive. The strategy is primarily defensive, and this contrast with the Beijing's more expansive aims is one of the reasons that so many countries accommodated Washington's power and resisted Beijing's. But containment bolstered a strong defense with a selective offense, meant to keep a dangerous adversary off-balance and under strain. To this end, U.S. information warfare highlights the crimes and failures of China's regime.

The U.S. never seriously should seek to overthrow the China’s regime. But Washington does need ways of taking the fight to an enemy that is certainly taking the fight to it.

The U.S. can work with allies to slow Chinese innovation through technological denial policies that limit its access to cutting-edge semiconductors, vast troves of American data and other crucial goods. It can complicate China's overseas expansion by highlighting the corruption, authoritarianism and local resentment that its Belt and Road Initiative often fosters in developing countries.

Not least, by quietly manipulating the technical vulnerabilities of China's Orwellian, AI-enabled domestic security systems, and by publicly sanctioning Communist Party officials engaged in heinous abuses, America can make repression pricier for Mr. Xi's government. If Beijing responds with self-defeating "wolf warrior" outbursts -- as it did in early 2021, reacting so furiously to multilateral sanctions imposed due to its persecution of the Uyghurs that it derailed an EU-China investment deal -- so much the better.

The most effective long-term strategies aren't simply passive: They bait an enemy into blunders and drive up the costs that it must pay to compete.

Only when containment is compared to other possibilities -- a replay of the appeasement that had preceded World War II, or a military showdown that would cause World War III -- do its merits become clear. Containment offers a way of navigating unacceptable extremes, showing that sharp but patient competition could allow the free world to avoid disastrous confrontations as well as disastrous defeats.

Containing Chinese influence implies a return, for the foreseeable future, to Cold War-style tensions and crises. It requires, once again, discarding the dream of "one world" -- a single, seamlessly integrated global order -- and accepting the grim realities of competition in a divided one.

Beijing is trying to become the globe's dominant power and usher in an autocratic century. If it succeeds, the world that America built will be consigned to history. Undertaking urgent, enduring effort to contain an advancing rival won't be easy, but it is the best way of averting a still darker future." [1]

1. REVIEW --- Containment Can Work Against China.

Brands, Hal.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 04 Dec 2021: C.1.