China and the West: The Munk Debates

by H.R. McMaster (Contributor), Michael Pillsbury, Kishore Mahbubani

Increasingly in the West, China is being characterized as a threat to the liberal international order, one that must be overcome through economic, political, technological, and even military means. For those who believe that the policies of the Chinese Communist Party pose a threat to free and open societies, the U.S. and like-minded nations must band together to preserve a rules-based international order. For others, this approach spells disaster; it ignores the history and dynamics propelling China’s rise to superpower status. Rather than threatening the post-war order, China is its best, and maybe only, guarantor in an era of declining U.S. leadership, increased regional instability, and slowing global growth.

The twenty-fourth semi-annual Munk Debate, held on May 9, 2019, pits former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs H. R. McMaster and director for Chinese strategy at the D.C.-based Hudson Institute think tank Michael Pillsbury against former President of the United Nations Security Council Kishore Mahbubani and president of one of China’s top independent think tanks, the Center for China Globalization, Huiyao Wang to debate the threat of China to the liberal international order.

Genres: China, Politics, International Relations, Nonfiction, History, Political Science

144 pages, Paperback

Published November 5, 2019

About the author

Herbert Raymond McMaster (born July 24, 1962) is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the 25th United States National Security Advisor from 2017 to 2018. He is also known for his roles in the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In February 2017, McMaster succeeded Michael Flynn as President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor. He remained on active duty as a lieutenant general while serving as National Security Advisor, and retired in May 2018. McMaster resigned as National Security Advisor on March 22, 2018, effective April 9,and accepted an academic appointment to Stanford University in 2018.

McMaster is the Fouad and Michelle Ajami Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a lecturer in management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Reviews

[Wendelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly recommend this short book as a synthesis of the problems, and possibilities, of the current CCP government's effect on the liberal order, both internationally and domestically in China

[Sem · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why do I continue to fall prey to the Munk debates? I've disliked every volume I've read or tried to read. They're repetitive - first, the debaters give a summary of their opinions in conversation with the moderator, then we hear the same arguments in the course of the debate, and in case we didn't catch them the first time or two most of them will be repeated. And then the debaters, or some of them, grovel a bit in a "what a wonderful debate I've learned so much" kind of way with a soupçon of 'Canada is fantastic' even though the reader has nodded off more than once, dreaming of the days when people knew how to debate or, for that matter, give a speech. The only thing that enlivened the discussion in this case was the mild hostility of the moderator towards the 'pro' side. In fact, the only way to account for the 'con' side having won was the moderator's bias. Otherwise I can't explain it. In spite of 83% of the audience having been open to changing their minds, only 2% did. I don't call that a win. I vow never to read another in this series. What an utter waste of an evening.

ETA: Also, given that the subject was the 'international' liberal order, it might have been better if one of the 'pro' side had been European.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a beautifully produced book containing the transcription of a 2019 debate on China and the West, but despite the elegance of the book and its format, I didn't find the debate itself particularly illuminating.

Given the proposition that was debated, ¨China is a threat to the liberal international order;¨ I can see why the opposition team (Wang and Mahbubani) won - because the pro-West team (McMaster and Pillsbury) seemed less smooth, more agitated, and less in control somehow. But no new ground was really broken, and no new ideas were exposed. There was no resolution or common ground found, or very little at best. The teams didn't budge or change, and so the debate had a static, repetitive air. You could practically predict what each side would say after a while - themes were repeated, they seemed to fall back upon the same ideas repeatedly.

Actually, the issue is that China was looked upon approvingly as the world´s factory as long as China didn't threaten the world´s geopolitical world order. The west can accept illiberal, authoritarian regimes as long as they are pro-West - and not even squawk about human rights, as long as the authoritarian leaders say nice things about us. Thus, the West didn't complain for decades about human rights in China when China was coming up - but trouble began once China began to assert itself internationally, and expand militarily by fortifying or creating militarized islands in the South China Sea (among other efforts). The ¨seven seas¨ are more or less regarded as the giant swimming pool of the West, especially the US, and so any power that tries to claim a portion of the seas as their own is going to face opposition. China also continues to intimidate Taiwan. But this has been an ongoing game for decades. The tipping point was reached when China began to pour money into development projects overseas - roping in scores of countries into its Belt and Road initiative, a gigantic infrastructure improvement project that will eventually make it easier to ship goods from China to markets in Europe, Asia, the Mid-East and Africa. The projects are being developed jointly, but inevitably each country that participates will incur debt, much of it payable to China, which is spending trillions of dollars to finance the sprawling project. Is the project a good thing or will it simply make the rest of the world even more dependent on Chinese manufactured goods, since they will then really be pouring in over high speed rail links, not just by container ship? Is China eventually going to turn into a global octopus - controlling the flow of manufactured goods, and attaining dominant market share such that industry in every other country withers and eventually vanishes?

McMaster and Pillsbury sounded shrill and almost ridiculous. If it weren't for China´s expansionist policies of the past few years, the West would have no reason to complain or fear China. Now China is trying to project its power world-wide - economically and militarily. It wants to be the new Number One, and the Number One power for the past 75 years or so does not want to give up its Number One position, naturally. This is the heart of the problem and the talk of human rights, democracy, China exporting authoritarianism worldwide etc., is just talk - the truth is if China had not embarked on the Belt and Road initiative, had not beefed up its navy or declared that the S. China Sea is its private swimming pool, we would have just continued to go along with things as they once were: China an integral part of the globalizing world, with US multi nationals booming in terms of profits, driven by the availability of an unlimited amount of cheap Chinese labor. It was a mutually advantageous arrangement and US government leadership never complained even as US industry was being inexorably hollowed out over the course of around four decades. Once China came up, it was supposed to provide a giant market for US goods, boosting employment in the US - but instead it´s the US that´s become the primary market for Chinese goods, as China dominates the market in sector after sector, given that no-one can compete with readily available, excellent, low-cost Chinese labor and the fact that China has mastered supply chain logistics etc. And yet US government figures of both parties accepted this situation for decades - throwing social programs at the US working class instead of fighting for US jobs. US political leadership figures in both parties didn't seem to care if the US de-industrialized because China was viewed as a reliable junior partner. If the US working class was suffering because their jobs had disappeared into China, then the displaced workers could switch to surviving in the gig economy, or take mostly low-paying service sector jobs, or subsist on social welfare programs. The grimness of this reality drove the fentanyl epidemic - a drug which was exported in massive amounts by Chinese ¨entrepreneurs¨ to the US, given that they are always on the lookout for new profit opportunities. This scenario - basically, the destruction of the US middle class - was OK with the globalists and pro-internationalist politicians because both US political parties are financed through massive campaign donations by the multi nationals. By the time the Senators and Congressmen paid attention to the fentanyl epidemic, it was too late. Thousands had already died. Lawmakers even stopped branding fentanyl users as addicts involved in the illegal usage of a narcotic drug. Instead the masses of fentanyl or other opioid addicts were re-conceived as patients, and their addicted condition now termed a medical catastrophe instead of a crime. Yet even they refused to discuss who had caused these ¨patients¨ -- the addicts -- to turn to drugs in the first place: Lawmakers themselves, facilitating the outflow of jobs to China, by signing trade agreements, and welcoming China into the WTO. China was welcomed into the family of capitalist nations, and US jobs were ushered out by US political leaders of both parties.

So, a small, yet infinitely influential, sliver of the population - the 1% and the political class - decided it was fine to de-industrialize the USA, because capitalism means constantly increasing profits, and that wasn't possible in the USA, or lesser profits would have been possible in the USA given that US workers must be paid more than their Chinese counterparts. The fate of American displaced workers was an afterthought - or perhaps the politicians actually believed in the lie that a rising Chinese middle class would inevitably boost jobs in the US, since the Chinese would then have money to spend on US goods. Lawmakers and ¨captains of industry¨ worked together to undermine and destroy the US middle class: They helped American multi nationals and many other businesses exploit the startling wage differential between US and Chinese workers: In the 1990s, a Chinese worker was paid on average 22 times less than an American worker. How could US companies not move to China with that kind of a wage differential? So the US government made it easy for the companies to move to China, even if it meant that millions of American jobs disappeared. So the companies flocked to China - around 70,000 so far. This is why McMaster and Pillsbury sounded so phony - because it was folks of their political class that for decades pushed de-industrialization onto the USA, didn't care about the fate of the working class or even the national security implications of de-industrializing the USA. When China was ¨merely¨ the world´s factory and didn't have any aspirations other than to focus on production, then China was great. Now that China wants to take its place in the world politically and militarily, the West complains, because political and military hegemony are the only thing the West has left given that they have surrendered industrial production to China, and once they lose that, they are really going to be marginalized and rendered irrelevant, as the world´s center of gravity inevitably centers on China. It´s all very ironic. The ¨smart¨ idea of having China be the world´s factory, has now backfired. All of a sudden, China is a bogey-man, although for decades we praised it as a fine example of a capitalist renaissance, despite it being ruled by a (nominally) communist party. I think the phoniness of the team arguing in favor of the resolution or debate proposition is why that team lost. Clearly, China´s record on human rights and democracy wasn't a problem for the West for decades, yet once it seemed to threaten Western world hegemony, suddenly China´s human rights violations and lack of democracy are critical. Suddenly the West is the great friend of the Uighurs and the Tibetans. Why wasn't human rights a problem 20 or 30 years ago - why did the West choose to overlook Chinese human rights violations when they eagerly located production to China? Wasn't it because they were willing to overlook human rights abuses as long as they could make record profits using cheap Chinese labor? The hypocrisy of the past 20 or 30 years translates now into phoniness on the debate stage.

The opposing side was a bit too facile - although perhaps more believable. There was plenty of nonsensical propaganda spewed by the Chinese gentleman, described by the moderator as ¨...one of China´s leading thinkers on globalization..." Barring an actual war scenario, China doesn't really have to worry about the future - it planned strategically, and the fruits of its hard-headed persistence and sacrifice will tumble into its hands, propelling the country to an even greater level of prosperity and power, no matter how much the West screams and blusters. It is too late to put the genie of Chinese enterprise and industriousness back into the oil lamp of communist economic failures and austerity. It would be ironic and hypocritical to try to stifle China´s progress now - because its expansion is viewed as an industrial, trade and national security threat - based on its human rights record, when its human rights record today is just as dismal as it was when no-one was complaining about it because China was the source of so much money for the 1% class, some of which trickled down to the political class in the form of campaign donations. The West needs to stop lying about the real reason it is trying to rein in China: It wants to retain its global hegemony, it doesn't want to relinquish it to China. That is the crux of the problem, but a problem the West can´t actually admit because if it did, it would have no ¨cover¨ or ¨justification¨ for possible future military action vs. China. China was the darling of the West as long as it didn't encroach on the West´s hegemony. Now that China is stretching out and trying to build its own global network of alliances, economic links, and also trying to stake out a claim on the S. China sea, the gloves are off; China is no longer a team player - and must be upbraided for its lack of democracy, and abuse of human rights, ¨sins¨ that weren't a problem before, when it was just as abusive of human rights and just as un-democratic. This is why the disjointed and repetitive arguments of the team defending the debate resolution fell flat - they cannot get around the hypocrisy of their position.

From pre-debate interviews:

(1) From H.R. McMaster in Conversation with Moderator Rudyard Griffiths

¨[McMaster:] ...the Cultural Revolution that Mao used to purge the party really destroyed the Chinese economy.¨

¨[McMaster:] ...that [Chinese] young generation is being brainwashed and brutally repressed by the state´s ... tight grip on the information that they have access to, ...also by the stifling of any kind of ideas or discussions involving concepts like rule of law. If you talk about rule of law and you´re a professor or a student, you get arrested. Many of these students were arrested and ... disappeared--until they reappeared later in confession videos. Books on rule of law are taken down from university bookshelves and destroyed.¨

¨[Griffiths:] A couple of other counter-arguments... the first is that some people will posit that the reason America is focusing on this trade issue now is that they realize that China is a technological and economic threat, and so in a sense the United States is trying to create a global alliance to push back against China--not to defend the liberal international order or universal values but to defend America´s narrow national interest.¨

¨[McMaster:] ...China was welcomed in 2001 into the World Trade Organization [WTO] and pledged to liberalize its economy, to stop state subsidies to state-owned enterprises, and to stop the forced transfer of intellectual property just for the privilege of doing business in their economy. They didn't make good on *any* of those promises."

(2) From Michael Pillsbury in Conversation with Rudyard Griffiths

¨[Griffiths:] Why do you think that this promise that we had all hoped for --that economic liberalization would lead to political liberalization--came to a crashing halt in the last ten years? Is it all about the specific leadership, or are there other dynamics in play in Chinese society that have allowed this to happen?¨

¨[Pillsbury:] The textbooks are very clear that deception only works if you´re trusted. Your target has got to believe you´re not a deceptive kind of person.¨

¨[Pillsbury:] I think ... Xi Jinping became the head of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012 and president of China in 2013... ... by making an appeal to the hawks. His platform contained the ... sentiment.... that we can´t stand for this, that we´ve got to come out more in the open, that China has to stand up; that we can´t have these Westerners imposing their values, which is rock ´n´roll--he characterizes Western values in a way you might find inaccurate.¨

(3) Kishore Mahbubani in Conversation with Rudyard Griffiths

¨[Mahbubani:] ...I think the fundamental problem in Western perceptions of China is that their minds have become trapped in an artificial time bubble of two hundred years of Western domination of world history, which is coming to an end, and therefore they are unable to enter into other thought bubbles that exist within very different worldviews.¨

¨[Mahbubani:] ...how is it that a country like the United States of America, which has a population of 300 million-plus--one-quarter of the Chinese population-- and a political history that is only one-tenth as long, how is it that this nouveau riche who just arrived on the political scene is saying, ¨I know what´s best for you, China. And even though you've had 2,000 years of history, you don´t know what´s good for yourselves?¨

(4) Huiyao Wang in Conversation with Rudyard Griffiths

¨[Wang:] Since 2001, China has joined the World Trade Organization, and its GDP has gone up almost ten times. It is probably going to be the largest economy in the world in ten to fifteen years´ time.¨

¨[Wang:] I think China ... pursued a different development model than the Western countries. ...there was some early expectation that China would converge with the Western model, but that obviously has not been the case.¨

¨[Wang:] ...China in the last four decades has been able to lift 800 million people out of poverty. China has contributed to the world and is now the second-largest donor to the United Nations.¨

¨[Griffiths:] I think this is why we haven't seen any major war in the last seven decades. Trade--goods movement, capital movement-- has supported this prosperous world.¨

¨[Wang:] General Motors and Ford sell more cars in China than in the United Sates. China is Apple´s second-largest market, and Walmart purchases 20 percent of goods from China to supply U.S. supermarkets.¨

From the debate: China and the West. Be it resolved: China is a threat to the liberal international order.

¨[McMaster:] The Chinese Communist Party is not only strengthening an internal system that stifles human freedom and extends it authoritarian control, but it is also exporting that model across the world and undermining the liberal international order.¨

¨[Wang:] ...since China opened up, it has been a great beneficiary of the liberal international order. the U.C. set up this wonderful liberal international order, including the United Nations, World Bank, IMF [International Monetary Fund], WTO, you name it. China embraced them all, so that in the last four decades China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty. Actually that accounts for more than 10 percent of the global population and also corresponds to 70 percent of the global poverty reduction.¨

¨[Wang:] China is the largest trading nation; over a hundred countries benefit from Chinese economic activity. China also contributes over 35 percent of the GDP of the world.¨

¨[Wang:] Since it has opened up, China has sent over six million students all over the world...¨

¨[Wang:] Since the [Belt and Road] initiative started, it has invested $44 billion U.S into the Belt and Road countries.¨

¨[Wang:] The U.S. has started up 68,000 companies in China. It is the largest market of the world now, with 400 million members of the middle class; in the next one hundred years there will be 800 million.¨

¨[Mahbubani:] It's important to realize that today we live in an era where we´ve seen far greater change in thirty years than we've seen in three hundred or even 3,000 years.¨

¨[Mahbubani:] ...from the year one to the year 1824 -- for the last 2,000 years -- the two largest economies in the world were always those of China and India. ... So, the past two hundred years of world history have been a major historical aberration.¨

¨[Mahbubani:] ... China is threatening the global balance of power.¨

¨[Mahbubani:] Of the world's population of 7.5 billion people, only 12 percent live in the West; 88 percent live outside the West.¨

¨[Wang:] China, after four decades of absorbing, learning, and benefiting from all the countries and multinational companies coming in, has developed.¨

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A toxic debate between two bureaucrats about which system should control your life "for your own good" of course.

[Felix Kwan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The hypocrisy and decline of America and the ascendancy of China…what’s not to like.

[Kaustubh Kirti · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is a balanced account of what the four of writers have as an idea. The book does not add much new content. However to read a more balanced viewpoint this book can be referred.

HR McMaster from his military experience keeps to the debt trap diplomacy of the Chinese, along with their idea of meddling of internal affairs of countries like Ecuador, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. His ideas were on philosophical level supported by Michael Pillsbury who said this was all but a plan. China was slowly testing the waters for global domination in this 100 years. Communist Party derived its ideas from the theologies of the warring states and how they patiently defeated their enemies. This was all those ideas in action.

Wang Huiyao was a mute witness. His contribution was probably just speaking good and niceties. The show stopper however was Kishore Mahbubani. He simply asked McMaster and Pillsbury - Where were you till now? China is coming of age as it was always used to except for the last 200 years. It is the west that has to understand and learn to live with the rise of this power. China is not doing anything different from the foreign policy perspective. It is expanding its circle of existence, vassals, reach.

The debate is interesting more an idea perspective. Some people were contesting status quo but as Kishore made it clear how did you define it anyway?

[Aminul Haque · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hugely interesting book - strong voices and opinions from both sides. It was more or less anticipated what McMaster and Pillsbury may say, them being two hawks in the Trump administration. That was even more so for Huiyao Wang, whose ability to continue an 'independent' think tank in today's China speaks volume. All three people treaded their party lines, however, stacking these views against each other in real time was illuminating. I find Mahbubani's accounts most fascinating. We would have expected a complex non-commitment from an ethnic Indian that represented Singapore in the world stage. Instead, he forcefully supported China's position to the extent that he was labeled as an apologist.

Which way to lean? West's liberal ideas are precious, noble and selectively applied. China is doing what is best for China. Does the rest of the world have to fall behind one side or the other? That depends how one defines the rest of the world. I guess at the end self-interest wins, which is at the most short-sighted.

[John B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great opportunity to be exposed to some very divergent views on the same topic. I felt that McMaster and Piilsbury, who were on the “yes” side of the question being debated (“is China a threat to the liberal international order”) were overly strident and rhetorical at times. The debt trap claims were probably a prime example. Even those inclined to agree with sentiment that China poses as a threat to the order may not be swayed by some of the reasons they cite for why that is the case. For example, there was much emphasis on the domestic repression of the Chinese state but no clear argument about why and how this would affect the international order. On the other hand, Wang Huiyao, the Chinese think tank head who argued against, seemed to talk about China in ways that probably had more to do with how he would like it to be (a reforming, UN and international order supporting state that just needs to learn a bit more and to work harder at implementing things like WTO reforms, but intends to follow the rules) than the direction in which Xi Jinping is taking it.

[Almodather Awad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really revealing and informing. The debaters give the reader a deeper understanding of the urgency of the China threat to the existing order of the world. While America may be prone to deviations like those shown by Trump, she has a system of checks and balances that fixes her mistakes. Meanwhile, China is a dictatorship like no other, with an egomaniac on top of its government. If any side should win a coming war, I think all the world would be better off with America winning that war.

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting introduction to the global perspective of whether or not China is a threat to multilateralism. Very easy to read and a manageable length, I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to have a new perspective on the United States' relationship with China.

[Martin Khamphoukeo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking were we are today the debate at this time was a signpost where we are headed. I enjoyed reading the debate. The issues that were presented are even more prominent today, and one will clearly see how this conversation has developed from time of the original debate to were we are now. Enjoy.