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Rivalry Going Viral
Strategic Vision vol. 9, no. 46 (June, 2020)
China leverages COVID-19 to supplant US from position as hegemon
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Patrick Mendis & Dominique Reichenbach
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is utilizing the novel coronavirus outbreak as strategic leverage to vie for global leadership in the post-pandemic era. This is facilitated by a lack of visionary leadership from Washington, as the international reputation of the United States continues to falter, which could lead to a significant shift in the world order.
China’s sweeping geopolitical strategy provides opportunities from Europe to Africa, whereas the administration of US President Donald Trump is using Taiwan and Sri Lanka as pawns in its Indo-Pacific Strategy. With a lack of diplomatic acumen or vision on the part of the United States, Trump’s range of deflections, failures, and incompetence in the face of COVID-19 presents a victory by default for China. In a controversial move, which The Washington Post characterized as a “new form of retail politics,” the Treasury Department ordered that Trump’s name be printed in the memo line of stimulus checks being issued to the American people from taxpayer money. Trump had originally requested that he be allowed to formally sign the checks, presumably to remind Americans that he is a cheerleader for the United States, but this would have gone against standard practice by the Treasury Department to ensure that government disbursements remain nonpartisan.
This illustrates the way in which Trump—and indeed, most US politicians—are dealing with the pandemic as a political issue, exacerbated by the state of hyper-partisanship in America right now and the fact that this is an election year. As a result, Trump’s view of the pandemic is as a domestic problem, not an international one, and his administration is focusing on fighting the disease solely in America. This approach was exemplified by the decision to seal the US border to Europeans and attempts to secure exclusive American rights to a vaccine being developed in Germany. It has left other nations floundering for aid and cooperative partnerships and created a vacuum into which China is attempting to step.
Writing in Politico, Matthew Karnitschnig has suggested that the PRC is pursuing its geopolitical ambitions by conducting a “not-so-subtle PR campaign,” and is in fact “winning the coronavirus propaganda war,” earning praise for its humanitarian response from such high-level quarters as World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
According to Barron’s Magazine, China’s “donation diplomacy” had, by April 2020, led to the sale of nearly 4 billion masks overseas, as well as 16,000 ventilators, 38 million pieces of protective clothing, and 3 million testing kits, not to mention over US$2 billion in relief aid to various nations in Europe and Africa. While several countries, including the Netherlands, the Philippines, Croatia, Turkey, and Spain, have complained that the medical products provided by China have proved to be faulty or substandard, Barron’s reported, the media coverage has largely been in Beijing’s favor.
Humanitarian implications
This stands in stark contrast to the approach taken by the Trump administration, which initially invoked the 1950 Defense Production Act to halt export of 3M facemasks to Canada. Writing in The Guardian, Julian Borger predicted that this executive order would have “significant humanitarian implications for countries desperate for safety equipment.”
Chinese aid for COVID-19 arrives at Colonel Jesus Villamor Air Base in Pasay City in the Philippines.
photo: Toto Lozano
Indeed, Chinese aid to foreign countries comes after its initial COVID-19 cover-up that endangered the world. ABC News even suggested that China’s generous aid is an attempt to blur the memory of this fact. However, the aid represents a chance for China to bolster its global reputation, as well as a strategic opportunity for Beijing to transform its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) into a new “Health Silk Road,” a term coined by PRC General Secretary Xi Jinping himself.
Taiwan has gotten caught in the crosshairs of China’s attempts to enhance its standing via the BRI, and American attempts to counter it. Beijing and Washington spent weeks casting accusations at one another, referencing Taiwan and the WHO.
On one side, Trump has referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus,” “Wuhan virus,” and “Kung Flu,” as its provenance derives from the city of Wuhan, China, and because Beijing exacerbated the global death count by spending weeks attempting a coverup, rather than warning the international community. The New York Times has warned that this moniker could incite xenophobia. Trump also suspended US funding to the WHO, for reasons that included China’s undue influence over the operations of that world body.
President Trump placed travel restrictions on China on January 31 after Delta, United and other carriers had stopped flying there due to coronavirus.
photo: The White House
On the other, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhao Lijian, claimed that “No conclusion has been reached yet on the origin of the virus,” leading to the emergence of conspiracy theories in the PRC. One such theory, promoted by a Chinese diplomat, suggests that US soldiers engaged in spreading the epidemic around Wuhan while they competed in the Military World Games in Wuhan the previous year. Though unfounded, these conspiracy theories have not been removed by China’s normally efficient Internet censors, suggesting they may be beneficial to the Xi regime.
Sri Lanka’s current prime minister, and former president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, appears with PRC General Secretary Xi Jinping.
photo: Mahinda Rajapaksa
While the two dominant powers in the region continue to swipe at each other in the coronavirus propaganda war, to use Karnitschnig’s term, Taiwan has emerged from the pandemic with real gains in terms of international perception.
Due to their close proximity and strong trade and transport links, Taiwan is one of the most at-risk countries outside of China, according to an assessment by Johns Hopkins University. Despite this inherent vulnerability, Taiwan has fared better than almost any other nation, with just 447 confirmed cases and seven deaths at the time of writing. Under the leadership of Republic of China (ROC) President Tsai Ing-wen, the government accomplished this feat by moving quickly once signs of an infection in China became apparent. These measures included immediately shutting down travel to and from China, banning cruise ships from docking, issuing strict repercussions for breaching quarantine, and ramping up local production of face masks.
Moreover, Taiwan made these gains without instituting the kind of authoritarian measures employed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) just across the strait, such as welding shut the doors of patients’ homes to enforce quarantine. Indeed, even before the pandemic hit, Taiwan’s health system was one of the best in the world, with near-universal coverage, despite Taiwan long being excluded from the WHO at China’s behest.
Taiwan’s success
It was perhaps Taiwan’s well-reported success in dealing with COVID-19 that motivated both major powers to seek to share this spotlight. While Beijing sought to take credit for Taipei’s successes by claiming to represent the island’s people in the WHO, Trump inked the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act, or TAIPEI Act, designed to boost Washington’s ties with Taipei and encourage other nations to follow suit.
ROC Air Force pilots, seen here in the new Air Force jet trainer, train to defend Taiwan’s airspace from foreign incursions.
photo: ROC Presidential Office
China responded by calling the Act “evil” in its state-run mouthpiece, The People’s Daily, and saying it presented a “hegemonic threat.” Chinese leaders are upset that the Act all but recognizes Taiwan as independent and encourages other countries to establish relations with Taipei by promising to increase US “economic, security, and diplomatic engagement” with those that do so. It even threatens to punitively “alter” its engagements with nations that undermine Taiwan. The Act represents a threat to China’s desire for unification with Taiwan under the same “one country, two systems” framework implemented in Hong Kong, and is considered “sabotage” against China, according to The People’s Daily and the CCP.
Coupled with the election of President Tsai to a second term, the TAIPEI Act and the enhanced USTaiwan relations it represents have made trilateral Washington-Beijing-Taipei relations particularly icy. President Tsai has long been firm in her contention that the people of Taiwan have no interest in being ruled under China’s “one country, two systems” formula, and PRC leaders have made no secret of their disdain for her.
After Tsai’s second inauguration as president of the democratic country, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated her, stating “the United States has long considered Taiwan a force for good in the world and a reliable partner.” Predictably, this raised China’s hackles, and the PRC Ministry of Foreign
Affairs responded by saying that the congratulatory statement “seriously damaged the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait and China-US relations.” According to a CNBC translation of the ominous PRC statement, “China will take necessary countermeasures and the US will bear the consequences.”
Ultimately, the Trump administration hopes that the TAIPEI Act will promote democracy abroad and provide cover for other countries that desire to choose a partnership with the United States instead of with China. The Trump administration hopes that the economic and diplomatic benefits of this legislation—in addition to the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages visits between high-level officials of the United States and Taiwan—will serve as an attractive alternative for nations that fear the risk of the debt trap that analysts associate with China’s BRI scheme.
While the TAIPEI Act may enhance US-Taiwan relations, it is nothing more than a lame attempt to curb China’s growing influence. China’s BRI—estimated by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies to incorporate up to US$8 trillion in infrastructure development projects and connecting more than 100 countries—is far more attractive than the TAIPEI Act’s subtle threats and vague promises of either altered or enhanced US engagements depending on diplomatic ties to Taiwan. At this point, there is virtually no benefit for most countries to hitch their wagon to America’s star, as China is successfully “reshaping the global order,” as stated by Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi in Foreign Affairs Magazine.
China has the power of the purse, and many countries seem to be shifting their allegiances accordingly. Sri Lanka, for example, is a country that is becoming increasingly important to US and Chinese foreign policy aims. In a January 2020 special briefing in Washington after returning from Colombo, US Ambassador Alice Wells said Sri Lanka “occupies some very important real estate in the Indo-Pacific region” due to its strategic location in the Indian Ocean, and would be crucial to helping the United States sustain its maritime supremacy and contain Chinese expansion. The United States has a military base on nearby Diego Garcia, approximately 1,800 km southwest of Sri Lanka, but its lease from the British will expire in 2036. Sri Lanka is also on the planned Maritime Silk Road component of China’s BRI.
History of neglect
With a long history of neglecting Sri Lanka in its preference for India, the United States is losing its grip over the Colombo administration—a change made evident by the recent US failure to renew its Status of Forces Agreement, even after pledging US$480 million in development aid via the Millennium Challenge Compact.
A US Navy captain meets with the commander of Sri Lankan Navy Special Boat Squadron during exercise CARAT in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka in 2017.
photo: Amy Forsythe
Writing in The Diplomat, Ana Pararajasingham stated that Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena “has been forthright in ruling out the presence of any American troops or base on the island.”
Enter China. Just days after a request from Colombo, Beijing announced that it would extend a 10-year, US$500 million concessionary loan to help Sri Lanka manage the COVID-19 pandemic, it was reported in The Colombo Page. The US only provided Sri Lanka US$5.8 million to fight the pandemic, according to a fact sheet released by the US Embassy in Colombo—a tiny fraction of the Chinese offer. Clearly, the TAIPEI Act will be unlikely to sway Sri Lanka from a partnership with the Chinese. Similarly, Taiwan is losing its diplomatic allies to the much more spendthrift China, maintaining just fifteen at the time of writing.
Before the COVID-19 crisis, the United States was losing out to China on the 5G battlefield. By mid2019, even America’s closest intelligence-sharing allies, the members of the Five Eyes alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, had yet to definitely rule out a partnership agreement with China’s Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. in building the next-generation wireless network infrastructure, despite the severe security risk this poses to the integrity of these governments’ intelligence-gathering and military operations.
Faltering reputation
A cyber-warfare specialist works in the Hunter’s Den at Warfield Air National Guard Base, Middle River, Md., on December 2, 2017.
photo: J.M. Eddins Jr.
Now, however, China’s faltering international reputation—the result of increased public awareness of Beijing’s initial coronavirus cover-up, its Draconian measures to stem the spread of the virus, and the unreliability of data and information provided by the PRC government—has led to losses on the 5G battlefield. In May 2019, the US Department of Commerce announced export controls intended to limit Huawei’s access to chips, semiconductor designs, and other technologies. To comply with the new US regulations, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), halted all new orders from Huawei. TSMC’s decision could not have been made lightly, given that Huawei is their second-largest client after Apple Inc. The regulations were announced on the same day that TSMC revealed plans to construct a US$12 billion plant in the US state of Arizona—another announcement that caused consternation in Beijing.
As long as America is a house divided against itself, to borrow a phrase from Lincoln, China and others will leverage that disunity for global influence.
photo: Dean Karalekas
Following these US sanctions, the British National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) launched an emergency review of Huawei’s role in the UK, and London is now contemplating phasing out Huawei’s role in Britain’s 5G networks completely by 2023. Perhaps the tides of Five Eyes cooperation are turning in America’s favor.
The PRC has taken advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic to pursue economic partnerships, with Sri Lanka and other countries benefiting from the BRI, that advance its foreign policy goals. China’s new donation diplomacy tactics “offer a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence,” Xi promised in a 2017 speech at the 19th Congress of the CCP.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s shortsighted policies use Taiwan as a pawn and are leading the United States into a natural defeat in geopolitics. If President Trump continues to pursue his failed nativist policies, undermine US intelligence agencies, distrust European and Asian allies, and shirk global responsibilities, China will be well-poised to replace the United States as the global leader in a post-pandemic era.
To reassert its trademark strength in the post-World War II global order, the United States must refrain from threatening to decrease its engagements with nations who participate in BRI projects and instead offer competitive loans and development programs. Most importantly, though, US politicians on both sides of the aisle—Trump included—must immediately cease their relentless partisan enmity, which has caused great rifts along party lines and destroyed any semblance of domestic unity. Leaders must attempt to reconcile their internal political differences if America is to have any hope of effectively curbing China’s growing influence in the international community. In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided against itself, cannot stand.” These words are as true now as the day they were spoken.
Dr. Patrick Mendis, a former American diplomat and military professor, is a Taiwan Fellow of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a distinguished visiting professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
Dominique Reichenbach is a graduate of Arizona State University and an American David Boren scholar in Taiwan. She has served as a research intern and teaching assistant at National Chengchi University.
