By Todd Lassa

This is the Chinese Century. Or so admirers and detractors alike say about the biggest authoritarian communist country extant, which has managed to harness 1.4 billion people into a quasi-capitalist powerhouse that is the world’s second-biggest economy and catching us quickly. 

[The debt crisis at Evergrande, China’s second-largest property developer, seems to be affecting financial firms worldwide because it’s run like an American real estate development company.]

The People’s Republic of China is expanding its reach into third world countries the capitalist West let go fallow, with its Belt and Road initiative. The Belt and Road will run through Afghanistan, which means China is ready to take over there after the United States’ messy withdrawal from 20 years of war. 

It will have to forge a careful relationship with Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders, even as the Chinese government continues to suppress its own Uyghur Muslim population.

For years, China’s Navy has tested encroachment on Japan’s territory in the South China Sea. Beijing has more recently cracked down on Hong Kong, essentially tossing out an agreement China had with Great Britain to maintain a form of democracy there after Great Britain handed it to China in 1999. 

The Chinese government continues to claim Taiwan and Tibet are part of the PRC. 

And yet, China has had benefits for Western economies in the decades since President Nixon opened relations with its communist government. Western corporations, mostly from North America, Europe, Japan and South Korea must generally partner with a “local” government to do business there, but that hasn’t done much to dissuade these companies from risking their intellectual property by making and assembling everything from computer chips and electronic devices to battery packs and cars and trucks in those factories. The reason? The massive population, read: market.

The trade situation vis-à-vis China became a major campaign plank for Donald J. Trump and attracted the support of many American factory workers who lost their jobs, or feared losing their jobs, to cheap Chinese labor. When he became president, Trump waged a trade war against China, imposing tariffs that ultimately hurt the American consumer (the Trump argument was that tariffs were a “tax” on the Chinese companies when, if fact, importing American companies were willing to eat the tariffs in order to keep prices low).

So far, President Biden hasn’t backed off, much, from Trump’s attitude toward China, at least in the case of economic and trade issues. But now, with China continuing to cover up whatever it knew about early transmission of the coronavirus, with its reliance on coal as a power source [though it has just agreed to stop building new coal-fired projects for its Belt and Road], even as it arguably leads the world in electric vehicle development, and especially with its continued bellicosity toward Hong Kong, Taiwan and the South China Sea, the U.S. and NATO allies may be entering a new kind of Cold War, with the Chinese government. 

That Cold War came into world view earlier this month when Australia cancelled a diesel submarine contract with France (angering that country, as well) and joined the U.S. and the U.K. in a partnership to supply nuclear subs to its part of the world, which is obviously in the same general direction as China’s part of the world. 

The Hustings has asked two of our contributing pundits to consider whether we are entering a cold war with China. And whether we should be. Pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay’s commentary is on the left and contributing pundit Bryan Williams’ commentary is on the right.