The US has failed to understand China

Andrew Sheng is a former central banker and financial regulator, currently distinguished fellow at the Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong.

China is such a giant player in the global economy that understanding how the US-China contest of the century for international primacy will evolve has become crucial.

Some Westerners, especially those in the United States, feel so threatened that they have resorted to protectionism, with global fragmentation and perhaps even preparations for a third world war already in the cards. Kishore Mahbubani’s book Has China Won? highlighted deep misunderstandings and structural tensions between China and the US.

In February, the US and Israel attacked Iran. The Trump administration got bogged down in a war of attrition, drawing comparisons to conflicts with countries such as Vietnam.

However powerful the US may be, it appears to be taking on four fronts at the same time: China, adversaries in the Middle East, Russia and its own fiscal dilemma of fighting for hegemony using borrowed money. Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf argues that “on the eve of its 250th birthday, America and the world order it created are in crisis”.

At the heart of America’s quandaries in dealing with China is the country’s tragically shallow understanding of China’s complexity and its civilisational mindset honed from millennia of dealing with severe crises, within and externally. China has one of the oldest surviving bureaucracies in the world, one that it would be too simplistic to classify as Stalinist, Leninist or inflexible centralised decision-making.

From my experience of working with Chinese agencies, I know that they can achieve things at a speed and scale not easily conceivable for Western public services. However, some of the institutional reforms that Western bureaucracies have achieved, such as a centralised pension system, face delays in China due to the division of power between the central and local governments and fiscal traditions that hamper execution.