Rubio brings China Realism to the State Department

Marco Rubio will be the next Secretary of State in the second Trump administration, according to media reports.

The senior senator from Florida presents as a vociferous China hawk, like the whole of his Republican party, but with a key distinction: In September, Rubio published a 60-page report, “The World China Made,” with a comprehensive and painstakingly researched analysis of China’s economic success.

Some commentators already speculate that the selection of a bona fide China hawk like Rubio might prepare a grand bargain with China, like Nixon’s 1972 China trip.

A credible anti-Communist like Nixon could make a deal with China without accusations of selling out, and Secretary of State Rubio could repeat the exercise, according to this line of thinking. Without second-guessing the incoming president’s negotiating strategy with China, Rubio’s published thoughts about China speak for themselves.

Full disclosure: the report cites Asia Times and this writer in particular, including our groundbreaking analysis of China’s export success in the Global South. By building factories in third countries, China circumvented the Trump and Biden tariffs by building supply chains for Vietnam, Mexico, India and other countries to export to the United States.

A bright line divides realists from Utopians among Washington’s China hawks. Neo-conservatives like Dan Blumenthal, popular publicists like Gordon Chang and Peter Zeihan, and true believers like former Secretary of State and CIA director Michael Pompeo believe that China is about to collapse and that the United States should hasten the fall by confronting China militarily and economically.

A senior official of the first Trump administration told this writer in 2018 that the then-president erred by striking a deal with China’s number two telecom equipment company, ZTE; if the US had shut it down, he averred, mobs of unemployed engineers would have marched on Beijing and overthrown Xi Jinping.

On the other side are realists who may detest China and accuse it of nefarious behavior but nonetheless recognize that China has made remarkable accomplishments in high-tech industry at home and in global trade. Rubio is the best-informed among the realists and he dismisses the Utopian vision in the conclusion of his report:

Commentary on China’s economy swings wildly between extremes. On the one hand, the Chinese economy is often portrayed as deeply troubled, perhaps even on the verge of collapse. Stories in this vein emphasize China’s very high debt burden, slowing growth, distressed real-estate sector, and aging population—all real problems. President Joe Biden repeated a version of this argument in an interview with Time magazine in June, where he stated that China’s economy is ‘on the brink.’…

It may be the case that China’s export- and manufacturing-oriented development model has been successful enough to propel China to the technology frontier in the short term, but not successful enough to help the country outrun its structural problems in the long term. This is certainly the narrative that many in Washington prefer, as it recalls our victory in the Cold War.

Then, an innovative, dynamic, and capitalist United States triumphed over an adversary with a gerontocratic and dysfunctional political class and a communist economic model incapable of managing the transition to the information age. It is tempting to believe that a similar triumph is now assured because our nation has been so successful in the past. We win, they lose. But an invincible belief in one’s own success is a recipe for complacency. And increasingly, this belief is at odds with the evidence in front of our faces.

If this report conveys any message, let it be that the United States cannot be complacent about Communist China. Think-tank scholars and economists may bank on China’s coming collapse. Beijing is taking the other side of that wager. It believes that manufacturing, exports, and ‘new quality productive forces’ are the keys to regime survival and indeed to the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” It believes that technology and production will enable it to preserve its communist system while becoming a rich country.

So far, it has succeeded in blazing this alternative development path. But suppose today is the high-water mark of China’s power. Even in such an optimistic scenario, the CCP will still present a real, existential threat to American industry and workers for years to come. And Communist China will still be a more formidable adversary than any the United States has faced in living memory. At this point, the burden of proof should be on the critics who insist the CCP’s project is doomed to fail.”

Some highlights from Rubio’s report include:

• China leads the world in installations of industrial robots and installed more robots in 2022 than the rest of the world did combined.
• China’s robot density surpassed the United States’ in 2021, a striking feat given the size of China’s manufacturing workforce and wage levels relative to our own.
• Chinese smart manufacturing is enabled by its vast 5G telecommunications network, composed of more than 3.5 million 5G base stations.
• Homegrown Chinese firms are helping China break its dependence on imported robots and machine tools. Despite record installations, China’s imports of industrial robots have declined the past two years. This is due to the steadily increasing business of Chinese firms, which had an estimated 35.5% domestic market. share in 2022, up from 17.5% a decade ago. China’s position in the highly fragmented machine-tool market is even stronger, with Chinese producers accounting for nearly a third of global production in 2022.
• Chinese companies are establishing global value chains, which include sophisticated factories that will allow them to enter foreign markets and tamp down criticism about export practices.

Rubio’s message is that the United States has to make extraordinary efforts to stay ahead of China and should not delude itself that a stroke of the pen can hold back this technological behemoth.

The foreign policy conclusions that suggest themselves on the strength of this analysis are not hard to deduce.

Follow David P Goldman on X at @davidpgoldman