Washington’s True Fear of China: An Obstacle to American Hegemony 華盛頓對中國的真正恐懼：美國霸權的障礙

https://journal-neo.su/2024/02/28/washingtons-true-fear-of-china-an-obstacle-to-american-hegemony/

China’s rise across the region is not marked by invasions and networks of military bases, but by high-speed rail lines, ports, power plants, factories, and roadways. Its influence around the globe is not maintained by aircraft carrier strike groups engaged in modern gunboat diplomacy, but by fleets of container ships engaged in international trade.

Whereas Washington maintains global preeminence by bombing, China challenges it through building.

For example, in Southeast Asia where China’s high-speed rail network extends beyond its own borders, Chinese engineers literally had to disarm unexploded US ordnance dropped on Laos during the Vietnam War, before laying tracks finally connecting the impoverished land-locked country to the rest of the region.

Quite clearly, China’s approach is not similar to that of the US, but fundamentally better – so much so that the US is wholly incapable of competing against it.

Toward that end, op-eds like those found in Foreign Affairs, reflecting sentiments widely held across Washington, London, and Brussels, strain to make a case for why the world should continue under a US-led international order built on conquest and coercion, instead of an alternative international order favored by China built on cooperation and mutual benefit. Because it is an irrational argument to make, the use of fear is central in making Washington’s case.

The irony is, in order to create sufficient fear of what China may do in the future, the authors must tap into what the US has already done – or in other words – they must accuse China of becoming in fiction, what the US has already become in reality.