US-China rivalry and the danger of using history to justify moral right

Both have been known to use history such as the Cold War and the Eight-Nation Alliance to bolster their positions and criticise the other side
The risk is that the US could end up feeding China’s narrative of Western imperialism, bolstering Communist Party legitimacy and narrowing the scope for de-escalation

Nicholas Ross SmithandTracey Fallon

Published: 3:30am, 2 Oct 2021

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Whether the increased efforts by the United States and its allies to contain the China threat in the Indo-Pacific region – most recently with the Aukus security alliance – makes strategic sense has been heavily debated.

However, an overlooked aspect of the growing US-China tension in the Indo-Pacific is how history is being used to justify and critique policies.

The US Defence Department’s 2019 Indo-Pacific Strategy Report describes China as a revisionist power that “seeks to reorder the region to its advantage by leveraging military modernisation, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce other nations”.

The report in part justifies US involvement in the Indo-Pacific through the selective use of history; placing America as the key actor in creating peace and stability in the region in the 20th century.

It identifies America as a Pacific nation and delineates its strong ties and contributions in diplomacy and trade, and how its expansion and involvement during the Cold War era enabled the region’s decades of peace and prosperity.

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China also uses history to critique US policies. For instance, on the day of the Aukus announcement, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian derided the military alliance as the product of an “outdated Cold War zero-sum mentality and narrow-minded geopolitical perception”.

The Cold War has become a popular historical analogy in China’s critiques. In stark contrast to the US narrative, China recalls the US and its Cold War allies as being fixated on containing Communism and pursuing international domination.

In invoking this analogy, Beijing is casting the US as seeking to maintain international dominance (by keeping China down) while China represents a country more interested in global cooperation and deepening trade relations.

Another historical analogy increasingly invoked is that of the Eight-Nation Alliance, which invaded Qing-era China in 1900 to quash the Boxer rebellion and led to the 1901 Boxer Protocol – an unequal treaty that granted foreign powers significant concessions in China that lasted until the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war.

A viral image, juxtaposing the Boxer Protocol talks with the US-China talks in Alaska. Photo: Social media

This analogy has yet to be officially referenced in response to Aukus (although it has appeared on Chinese-language social media), but has been used many times by Chinese officials this year.

For instance, in response to sanctions by the European Union and US criticism of the treatment of Uygurs in Xinjiang in March, China’s foreign ministry spokeswomen Hua Chunying said: “The United States and its allies of the Five Eyes have taken coordinated steps to gang up on China [ … ] The way they act reminds us of the Eight-Power Allied Forces.”

China’s use of history in this way has a twofold purpose. It presents the US (and its allies) as pathologically imperialist by highlighting the negative past, while also highlighting that China “is no longer what it was 120 years ago”.

In other words, the Communist Party has presided over the rise of China from a humiliated international afterthought into a superpower that can no longer be bullied.

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China’s use of such historically infused narratives is mostly for domestic purposes. With the Communist Party’s ideological, economic and political sources of legitimacy thinning, ramping up the “othering” of the US (and its allies) is a tried and tested way to generate legitimacy.

To this end, “vulgar” strategic announcements, such as with Aukus, play into China’s hands as they help to add fuel to its victim-playing. Although US-led initiatives – like Aukus – may be narrowly defined and defensive-oriented pacts, the optics can be easily skewed to validate China’s claims of representation of imperialism.

Furthermore, such a critique may find fertile ground in third-party countries, particularly those with experience of “Western” imperialism.

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Thus, beyond the real-world implications of the deterioration of the Sino-American relationship, the increased use of history by both sides to justify or critique policies represents a kind of ontological competition. Both sides are asserting their versions of the truth.

For the US, strategic partnerships with long-established allies bring peace and an “open” Indo-Pacific. For China, US actions have “seriously undermined regional peace and stability” damaging the trust necessary for cooperation through the creation of “exclusive clique[s]”.

China is positioning itself as the one to bring peace and stability: “Facts have proved that China is not only the main engine driving economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region, but also a staunch supporter of regional peace and stability,” said Zhao. “China’s development is a growing force for world peace and good news for regional prosperity and development.”

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Ultimately, it is clear that China’s rise and growing assertiveness in its regional backyard is causing significant fear (and perhaps, some paranoia) in many countries. Formulating long-term strategies to alleviate this is important.

But the problem with the efforts by the US and its allies so far is that not only might they not be strategically well thought-out, they could also add fuel to the fire of China’s grievance rhetoric, bolstering the Communist Party’s legitimacy and narrowing the potential for de-escalation before a new cold war firmly takes hold.

Nicholas Ross Smith is an adjunct fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Tracey Fallon is an assistant professor of China studies at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China