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It's often said
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there's only two kinds of people in the world,
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those whose data has been hacked by China
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and those who don't know
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that their data hasn't hacked by China.
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That statement is actually more true than you might think.
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[upbeat music]
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Hi, I'm Michael Beckley.
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I'm an associate Professor of political science
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at Tufts University.
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And I'm the author of Unrivaled.
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Why America Will Remain The World's Sole Superpower.
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Today I'll be debunking myths
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about the future of international relations
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between the United States and China.
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[upbeat music]
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United States and China are destined for war.
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I think that's not true, but it's not totally false either.
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What I would say
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is that the United States and China
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are destined for rivalry.
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They are the two most powerful countries in the world
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and have very different visions
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about how the world should work.
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So the United States is a democracy.
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China is an autocracy
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and certainly wants to promote that vision of governance.
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The United States treats Taiwan
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as an independent entity in everything but name.
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China considers it a renegade province.
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The United States wants one open global internet
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and China wants every country to be able to
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censor the internet as it sees fit.
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Wired's February issue features excerpts from the book 2034
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which imagines an all out war
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between the United States and China
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that starts in the South China Sea.
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The South China Sea is an area of dispute
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because that's one of the world's
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major international waterways.
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Is this the most likely scenario for US China war?
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I think it's possible.
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I don't think it's the most likely scenario.
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China could very well beat the United States in a war.
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And I think that's especially likely
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if the war happens over Taiwan.
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Taiwan is only 100 miles from the Chinese mainland.
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So China could throw its entire military at the conflict.
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The Chinese military could hit targets on Taiwan
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without ever having to leave the Chinese mainland
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in the first place.
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The US military of course
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is coming from thousands of miles away.
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It would have to operate
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mainly from two bases that are on Okinawa, Japan.
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Those are the only two American military bases
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within 500 miles of Taiwan.
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And China actually now has missiles
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that could wipe those bases out
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in a sort of Pearl Harbor style surprise attack.
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The United States would then have to fight from Guam
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which is 1800 miles away from Taiwan.
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And that's a huge problem
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'cause American fighter aircraft
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run out of gas after 500 miles.
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These are the kind of nightmare scenarios
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that keep American defense planners up at night
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and frankly, for good reasons
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[upbeat music]
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China is surveilling US data.
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That's definitely true.
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Every country spies on every other country
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but what distinguishes China's espionage and surveillance
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it's just the sheer scale.
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So if you just look at 2014 alone
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it was revealed that China had hacked
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into the office of personnel management.
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They took the data, the deepest darkest secrets
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from American government workers,
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including CIA operatives.
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During that same year, they hacked into Marriott
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and stole the passport data and credit card information.
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They also hacked into Anthem
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and took 78 million people's healthcare information.
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So China has a long history
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of trying to gather up data on American citizens.
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So it's no surprise that now there is this worry
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that at once you allow
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an app like Tik Tok onto someone's phone
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it's only one update away from becoming spyware essentially.
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So for all these reasons, there's a great worry.
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And I think a great reason to worry.
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[upbeat music]
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The CIA is fueling anti-Chinese groups.
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The CIA has done this in the past.
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So during the cold war, China was conquering Tibet.
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And at the time the CIA
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actually funded Tibetan gorillas,
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they of course lost their battle.
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Since then, we just don't know what the CIA has been up to.
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But the fact that
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the United States also backs the government on Taiwan
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is further an example that Chinese use
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to say look, the United States is clearly meddling
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in our internal affairs.
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I think that's certainly true.
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It just may not be through
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some of the groups that people have surmised.
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Some people think the CIA is funding the Falun Gong
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which is this religious sect within China.
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There's no hard evidence that that actually went through.
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If the CIA is in fact funding, the Falun Gong
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they're running some serious interference
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because members of the Falun Gong
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have gone on to found the Epic Times
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which now is spreading disinformation
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and conspiracy theories within the United States
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that are basically causing Americans to turn on each other.
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I don't know where to go with that
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but [laughs] it doesn't make any sense.
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[upbeat music]
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The United States is the biggest threat to world peace.
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I think that's true
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but I also think the United States has the most potential
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to be the biggest contributor to peace.
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So just as the most powerful country in history
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when the United States puts its weight behind something
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the world gets remade, whether for better or for worse.
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The United States has just in the last couple of decades,
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toppled a number of regimes.
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It of course has military bases
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on pretty much every continent.
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It's the only country that can fight major wars
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far beyond its borders.
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And the catastrophes are obvious.
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You look at Iraq, Vietnam, the list goes on.
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I think some of the successes though are less obvious
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and one that I would highlight is this system
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of US alliances that got extended after world war II.
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So the United States has offered security guarantees
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to dozens of nations
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and that has helped create zones of peace around the world.
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Countries that have an alliance with the United States
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have pretty much never been invaded
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or had to fight major wars.
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So what these security guarantees have done
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is essentially allowed countries
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to not have to build big militaries,
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to defend their own borders
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to not have to fight for resources or market access
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which was the norm for millennia prior to 1945.
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So while I think it's certainly true
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that the United States has the power to wreck the world
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and wreck the world it has in various ways.
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It also has the capability to really
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make the world much more peaceful and prosperous.
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[upbeat music]
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The Chinese government is about to collapse.
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I think that's very unlikely.
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China has arguably the world's strongest
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internal security force.
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So take the American law enforcement system
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now add on top of that 3 million additional security guards
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2 million internet sensors, 600 million surveillance cameras
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and something that China calls the People's Armed Police
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which is actually essentially an army of 1.2 million troops
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that is directed inward at China's own people.
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So the bottom line is the Chinese Communist Party
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is not gonna go down without a fight
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and it can fight like hell.
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Now, the only way you would actually
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get a collapse of the Chinese Communist Party
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is if there is a split at the elite level,
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that's what happened prior to the Tiananmen Square Massacre,
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where you had hardliners versus reformists
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and the party almost collapsed.
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But I think that China's leaders essentially
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learn the lessons of Tiananmen.
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They realized that they either stick together
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or they're gonna hang separately
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and no one has taken this lesson
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further to heart than Xi Jinping
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who has purged thousands of his political rivals.
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He's stacked the highest decks of the Chinese government
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with people loyal to him.
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He's even written himself into the Chinese constitution.
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So while Xi Jinping certainly has created many enemies
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by crushing a lot of powerful Chinese families.
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He has cult a personality and his iron grip on power
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will make him extremely hard to dislodge anytime
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in the foreseeable future
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[upbeat music]
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US-China relations have worsened
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under the Trump administration.
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I think that's basically true.
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Donald Trump is the first US president
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to really wage full spectrum competition with China.
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He presided over a huge boost in US military power
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directed into East Asia.
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He made the most aggressive use of tariffs
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against China that we've seen
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since really the World War II.
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It's a very aggressive upfront policy.
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At the same time though
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I don't think Trump himself was the sole architect
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of this shift in US-China relations.
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I think part of it was actually reaction
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to China's own rise in international aggression.
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China's just become a much more active,
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muscular and authoritarian country over the last decade.
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So I actually think US-China relations
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are gonna continue on the same trend
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during the Biden administration.
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The one thing that Democrats and Republicans
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seem to be able to agree on
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is that the United States needs to get tough with China.
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The one major difference
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is that Biden is all about multi-lateralism.
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He's all about allies.
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And so he's trying to build an Alliance of democracies.
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So it's more of a difference of tactics
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but the overarching strategy
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of what the United States is doing with China
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is largely gonna remain the same.
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[upbeat music]
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China is a superpower.
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Not yet.
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When analysts look at what makes countries powerful
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and what has really driven the rise and fall of great powers
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over the centuries.
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It's a few basic components.
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One of course is wealth.
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You need just lots of money to buy various forms
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of influence and invest in technological innovation.
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You also need a big powerful military
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in case things get tough
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and you need to rectify the situation through force.
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And you also need some kind of global narrative.
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You need some kind of story to tell
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or some kind of ideology that can help them win over allies
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and partners to your cause.
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So all these reasons China's an extremely important country
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but it still lags pretty far behind the United States
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which has three to four times China's wealth,
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five to 10 times its military power projection capability
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and nearly 70 allies
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whereas China's only ally is North Korea.
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The US dollar is the world's reserve currency.
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It's used in 90% of international financial transactions.
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China's currency is only used in about 2%.
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And of course America's soft power,
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its global appeal has taken a pretty big beating
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over the last few years, but it still ranks above China.
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So with gaps, this big in money and muscle
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and allies and partners
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you can't really consider China a superpower
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in the same league as the United States.
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At least not yet.
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[upbeat music]
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China's the world is the largest economy.
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That's actually true.
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China's rise has actually been quite steady over the years.
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It's gone from a nation
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that was mostly dominated by peasant farmers
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to one where there is a burgeoning middle class today.
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If you adjust for the fact that things like food and clothes
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and haircuts are cheaper in China than in the United States
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then China does in fact have the largest
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gross domestic product or GDP.
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Having a big GDP is not the same thing
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as being really wealthy or having a strong economy.
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GDP just measures spending. And it would be sort of like
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measuring the wealth of a family
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if you just looked at their credit card statement.
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Obviously just because you spend a lot of money
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it doesn't mean that you're necessarily rich.
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China does have a lot of mouths to feed, 1.4 billion people
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and no country has run up as much debt as China
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over the past decade.
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So while China certainly does have the largest economy
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that's not the wealthiest country in the world.
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The world is divided between two large economic blocks.
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The US and Chinese economies are intertwined
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in so many different ways.
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The big debate is over whether these two countries
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are starting to diverge,
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whether there's this new cold war between the two countries
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where each country will develop its own technology
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and those technologies won't be compatible.
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I actually think there is gonna be a fair amount
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of what is called decoupling between the two economies.
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It's gonna take decades most likely,
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but I think there's been so much bad blood
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stored up by the recent trade conflicts
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that both countries now are looking for ways
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to if not entirely disentangled at least try to walk back
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some of their economic entanglements.
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[upbeat music]
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Will China become a superpower?
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It's certainly possible,
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but China will have to overcome two main hurdles.
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The first is that its economic engine
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is starting to slow down.
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So China's economic growth rates have dropped by 50%
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over the last decade.
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And I think even worse productivity has declined by 10%.
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So China's having to spend more and more
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to produce less and less.
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At the same time China's debt has ballooned eight fold
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just over the last decade.
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No country has racked up this much debt
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this fast in peacetime.
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The second obstacle is a geopolitical backlash.
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So according to China's own government sources
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anti-China sentiment around the globe
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hasn't been this high
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since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
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Some of this is COVID,
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but frankly, a lot of it is a response
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to China's aggressive so-called Wolf Warrior diplomacy.
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The fear for China
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is that it may be confronting a tightening geopolitical news
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at the same time that its economy is slowing.
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And if both of those trends continue
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China's super power ambitions could be crushed.
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[bright music]
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The bottom line is that for the next decade at least
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US-China competition is going to likely continue
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across the full spectrum of areas of world politics.
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The good news is that these two countries
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do need each other at the end of the day,
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they need each other
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to solve big transnational problems like climate change
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to regulate the global economy.
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So with the hope is that cooler heads will prevail
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and the two countries will in fact cooperate,
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but it's certainly not guaranteed.
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[bright music]