The TikTok debacle shows the doomed approach the UK and US are taking with China

Shunning Chinese 'wolf warrior' diplomats and banning Chinese high tech companies won’t help the two Western countries win this new cold war, writes Ahmed Aboudouh

Donald Trump, left, and Xi Jinping have had a topsy-turvy relationship (AFP via Getty Images)

In an old Spanish film, a raging bull dominates a vast tent. The bull is mighty and wild and is smashing everything and everyone who dares to come close.

One of the actors came up with a strategy to dominate this angry beast. He said: “The only way to control it is to bring the canvas down on its head”, adding that “the tent’s poles should instantly be covered in red”.

Every time this brutal animal horns a pole, it was a step forward in what became a collective strategy by the actors to bring their seething and unruly colleague down.

The US is acting like this mad bull in its standoff with China. The actors decide they must bring the tent of world order down upon its head to gain control. China stands and watches as the US criticises and attacks its own allies, which serves to destroy the very multilateral world the US helped to create after the Second World War.

Standing amidst a ruined tent, China is then free to rebuild the rules of world order in its favour.

This is what could happen, and is already happening to a certain extent. In this new cold war, the West is doomed to be plagued by the death of multilateralism.

Collective diplomacy is (ironically enough) the crucial weapon for both China and the US. Whoever will wield multilateralism successfully and forcefully against the other will likely shape the post-coronavirus new world.

President Trump is caught in the trap of his administration’s disastrous handling of the pandemic crisis. His plummeting approval ratings against Vice President Joe Biden shaped his belief that the only exit strategy is to tie Biden to China and to pound them both. The days of “containment” of China are over, and now the US bipartisan political establishment believes direct confrontation with China is due. Hence the more aggressive stance Biden is taking against Beijing.

Confrontation, in fact, has become structurally embedded the two countries’ bilateral relations. For example, the Trump administration has repeatedly targeted the TikTok app amid concerns over the privacy and security of its American users. He has set TikTok a deadline of 15 September to find a US buyer, and this week he demanded to grant the US Treasury a “substantial amount of money” as a result of any potential deal.

The UK seems also stuck in an equally dangerous trap but with no exit in sight. Brexit, inevitably, has tied this country to the hip of the US.

Now the UK and the US are seeking to hold China accountable for its lack of transparency and misinformation over the coronavirus pandemic. They, rightly, want to pressure the Chinese communist party over the Muslim Uighurs in internment camps and the regime’s oppressive approach toward Hong Kong. And they see the Huawei 5G networks and TikTok dangerous for their national security.

But none of these shared objectives can be reached by the UK and the US alone. They might serve to up the ante and justify British or American unilateral actions that show their determinism, distracting the public away from their own disarray over dealing with the pandemic. Their collective actions might also place a burden on Chinese companies and taint its image on the world stage, but it won’t be enough to turn the tide on China’s rise as a superpower.

So far, China’s communist party has tied its political achievements domestically to its ability to conduct multilateral diplomacy abroad and create a situation that wouldn’t permit a single power, in particular the US to dictate international rules. Beijing’s view of the world, since the rise of President Xi Jinping, seems fixed on ending the US world hegemony following the end of the cold war.

During this era, several events have contributed to the strategically bad situation the US and the UK today find themselves in regarding their rapidly escalating confrontation with China. Allowing China to join the WTO without changing its rules was the first, followed by the US and UK’s occupation with wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the economic crisis of 2008, the rise of both Xi in Beijing and Trump in Washington, and the coronavirus pandemic.

As Biden’s campaign indicated, as president he would reenergise the US’s alliances all over the world. But it won’t be long before the new administration will discover the damage as to how costly it has become for the US to maintain and restore the world’s liberal order either in South East Asia, the Middle East or Africa.

In the meantime China has long had a plan. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, a unique business model and direct investments that, unlike the American style, comes with no political or economic conditionality, China is striving to close the power gap with the US in some crucial parts of the world.

In Africa, for example, the 2018 World Investment Report said China invested a total of $45.1bn in greenfield projects in 2016-2017, well above the $7.54bn spent by the US over the same period. This could be part of China’s debt-trap diplomacy, but many countries in the global south seem desperate for more Chinese investment and neither the US, the UK or the whole “west” are bothered to beat them.

As multilateralism appears to be an effective weapon for China, it could be the source of its weakness too. The multilateral world structure has been designed primarily by the US and its allies. It was embedded in their ideological and political systems for the past 70 years, and the UN organisations, where China has been unnoticeably projecting influence for the past two decades, reflect an image of the West.

Shunning Chinese “wolf warrior” diplomats and banning Chinese high tech companies won’t help the US and the UK win the new cold war. The US needs to put a lot of work into the diversification of supply chains, investing in collective efforts to develop 5G technology in America and Europe, and restoring the old alliances with Europe and South East Asia. They also need to stop China turning Hong Kong into a massive prison and make it very costly for China to wage war on Taiwan, or gain strategic leverage in the South China Sea

Being “tough” is not enough. And trying to fix 40 years of follies in dealing with China in just four months won’t win President Trump the election.

Multilateralism has worked well for China, and to stop the Communist Party in its tracks, the US and the UK have to adopt the very same strategy.