Reactions to the recent onslaught of cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) have ranged from panic to dismissal. While panic is never useful in foreign policy, there is reason for concern.
After all, China produced 30 million cars in 2023 and the European Union (EU) is essentially watching as their auto markets become flooded with cheap Chinese cars. While America’s markets have been protected by Trump-era tariffs on Chinese-produced EVs, the threat of their market penetration is still present.
But reactions should be neither panic nor denial. Instead, they should be realistic. Long mocked as the place where cheap plastic toys come from, China is simply no longer making garbage and should be taken seriously.
While their models may not be entirely up to the standards of some Western companies, they are generally speaking solid cars which happen to be incredibly cheap (due in large part to China’s non-existent labor protections and low pay; Beijing has China’s highest hourly minimum wage, at $3.70 per hour).
America’s protectionism is, for now, doing its job and keeping our market free of Chinese EVs. With a low-paid but high-producing adult labor force twice the size of the entire American population, the tariff is akin to putting a band-aid on a flood. This is accentuated by the EU essentially surrendering to the Chinese auto market.
The fact that we have reached this precipice is only because, for decades, the crafters of America’s foreign policy operated along severely misguided lines of thought. Two in particular have led us to this point.
The first was that, with exposure to democracies, China would itself democratize (this line of thought was extended to Russia in the 1990s as well). This idea was essentially taken as gospel for decades by the American foreign policy establishment.
One individual, who worked at high levels in both the Reagan and H W Bush administrations, wrote in 1999 that China was no longer a totalitarian state and that democratization was inevitable. Not only was China a totalitarian dictatorship in 1999 but it has arguably become even more so since.
The second line of thought was that, post-Cold War, America would be capable of keeping up a unipolar world ad infinitum.
Much hay was made over our military’s supposed ability to fight two major wars at once, and the notion that we had reached the end of history – that liberal democracy was the final stop and would ultimately not be surpassed or seriously challenged for supremacy – informed 30 years of democracy promotion and military overextension.
This is not to say that all American policymakers have thought along these lines. Upon his opening to China, Richard Nixon had no thought in his mind about turning China into a democracy. Their internal politics were their business, and it would not have behooved America to attempt to change their communist tune.
China, then the most populous nation in the world, was in Nixon’s view inevitably going to rise; why not use this growing giant as a weight against the Soviets? He likewise was relatively uninterested in perpetuating the bipolar world, which he thought too unwieldy, and was much less interested in creating a unipolar one.
Instead, Nixon envisioned a multipolar world with power centers in America, the Soviet Union, China, Western Europe and Japan. This came out of a recognition of the bipolar world having put the entire planet on edge for decades.
And while Nixon could not have known exactly what a unipolar world would bring, we do: it has required 30 years of perpetual war to maintain and even that effort is increasingly resembling an attempt at grasping sand in one’s hand.
Nixon, with Henry Kissinger, mostly made foreign policy separate from the traditional establishment, which Nixon did not trust. And indeed, after they left office, the traditional ideas returned.
But had America stuck with the notion that multipolarity was safer, we would likely not be shocked today to see the flood of Chinese electric cars, nor would we be surprised at China remaining a totalitarian dictatorship.
Instead, by sticking to the notion that a unipolar world is ideal but expecting a bipolar world, all of the establishment’s efforts have been centered on Europe, as in their worldview America’s enemy when the world was bipolar, Russia, must be stopped in whatever it attempts.
But this focus on Russia has come at the cost of not focusing on the actual rising polarity, China, which has an economy ten times bigger than Russia’s.
Some in Washington DC may argue that they are doing both, but the recent aid package proves this to be false: nearly two-thirds of the “national security package” focuses on Ukraine while only a paltry 8% goes toward the “Indo-Pacific region.”
None of this is to say that the United States should actively seek a multipolar world. Indeed, such a goal would be incredibly ostentatious, requiring world-building in places we have no business doing so.
As former Trump administration official Elbridge Colby has discussed, the world is not multipolar at the moment, given the fact that America and China run far ahead of any other countries militarily or economically.
But the world is fundamentally changing and many of the current solutions proposed to stop China’s rise simply are inefficient for long-term planning.
Former president Donald Trump’s proposed 100% tariff on every imported Chinese car will certainly keep them out of the US, but they will not solve the broader issues brought to the fore by China’s rise.
To do that, we must first confront it. If we take China seriously and show we are willing to actively compete and defend our national interests, we could stave off war and manage the transition to a true bipolar world (America and China) or a multipolar world (should other states or state groupings join the party).
But if we are not going to show that we will compete, or if we do not address the reality of China’s rise as-is, the shock over China’s EV revolution will not be the last the Chinese inflict on Americans.
Anthony Constantini is a Contributing Fellow at Defense Priorities.
Yes, China has become more “totalitarian” since 1999. The hope then was that once China joined the WTO, it would “play by the rules” and be encouraged to reform its domestic political structures. This did not happen and the arrival of Xi Jinping as “emperor” for life, along with dramatically heightened surveillance of Chinese society are distinctive markers of where this country has been headed.
Xi’s “New quality productive forces” are the best pair of hands to fondle Amelika’s. 😀
Not only was China a totalitarian dictatorship in 1999 but it has arguably become even more so since.
the above statement are a beacon to this author Cabbage writing, Almost the whole of Asean tourists flock to China and be amazed with the Chinese modernity and advancement, the Author himself is partly as a journalist is responsible for the dismissing China advancement with a “its became more authoritarian the even”