Neither a New Cold War nor a New Peloponnesian War: The Emerging Cyber-narrative Competition at the Heart of Sino-American Relations

There is much pessimism as to the current state of Sino-American relations, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020. Such pessimism has led to some scholars and commentators asserting that the Sino-American relationship is on the cusp of either a new Cold War or, even more alarmingly, something akin to the Peloponnesian War (via a Thucydides Trap) whereby the United States might take pre-emptive measures against China. This article rejects such analogizing and argues that, due to important technological advancements found at the intersection of the digital and fourth industrial revolutions, most of the real competition in the relationship is now occurring in cyberspace, especially with regards to the aim of asserting narratives of truth. Two key narrative battlegrounds that have raged since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic are examined: where was the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic? and who has had the most successful response to the COVID-19 pandemic?. This article shows that Sino-American competition in cyberspace over asserting their narratives of truth (related to the COVID-19 pandemic) is fierce and unhinged. Part of what is driving this competition is the challenging domestic settings politicians and officials find themselves in both China and the United States, thus, the competing narratives being asserted by both sides are predominately for domestic audiences. However, given that cyberspace connects states with foreign publics more intimately, the international aspect of this competition is also important and could result in further damage to the already fragile Sino-American relationship. Yet, whether this competition will bleed into the real world is far from certain and, because of this, doomsaying via historical analogies should be avoided.

Why Thucydides’ Trap Misinforms Sino-American Relations

Thucydides Trap has become a familiar term in scholarly and even popular discourse on Sino-American relations. It points to the ancient rivalry between Athens and Sparta as an analogy for contemporary relations between China and the United States. This analogy warns about the increased danger of war when a rising power catches up to an established power. This essay raises concerns about (mis)application of historical analogy, selection bias, measurement problems, underspecified causal mechanisms, and so on that undermine the validity of the diagnosis and prognosis inspired by this analogy and other similar works. My objection to this genre of scholarship does not exclude the possibility that China and the U.S. can have a serious conflict. I only argue that this conflict can stem from sources other than any power shift between them or in addition to such a shift. By overlooking other plausible factors that can contribute to war occurrence, a monocausal explanation such as Thucydides Trap obscures rather than clarifies this phenomenon. Because it lends itself to a sensationalist, even alarmist, characterization of a rising China and a declining U.S. (when the latter in fact continues to enjoy important enduring advantages over the former), this perspective can abet views and feelings that engender self-fulfilling prophecy. Finally, as with other structural theories of interstate relations, Thucydides Trap and other similar formulations like power-transition theory tend to give short shrift to human agency, including peoples ability to learn from the past and therefore to escape from the mistakes of their predecessors.

Thucydides Trap, Global Value Chain, and Future of China

Chapter 10 analyzes the issue of whether China would fall into the Thucydides trap, which is defined here as a situation where the US causes China to stop expanding as an economic power. Before the Trump administration, China was navigating steadily to grow beyond the middle-income trap (MIT), building its China-led global value chain (GVC) and localizing formerly imported goods into domestic production. However, it suddenly faced another trap, of Thucydides, because of the US measures for containing the further rise of China as a superpower. China will not collapse unless the US dares to wage an all-out war by taking drastic measures across various fronts of confrontation. The sudden emergence of this new trap disrupted the China-led GVC formed around Asia, which still relies on the West for key high-technology goods. Such disruption would have further repercussions on the prospect of China’s growth beyond the MIT because China must now reallocate resources away from economic competitiveness and “Made in China 2025” to socio-economic stabilization and job creation. China remains a developmental state. Its Asian neighbors have gone through their path of political democratization, but China now faces the challenge of crossing this unknown territory. This situation may be a more challenging trap compared with the MIT and the Thucydides trap. Thus, China now faces triple traps.

Introducing Schumpeter to China

Economic catch-up is defined in the literature as the narrowing of a latecomer firm’s or country’s gap vis-à-vis a leading country or firm. However, latecomers do not simply follow the advanced countries’ path of technological development; rather, they sometimes do something new, skip certain stages, or create a new path that is different from those of the forerunners. Although the path-following strategy based on the initial factor–cost advantages helps in the gradual catch-up of late entrants’ market shares, a sharp increase in the latecomers’ market shares is likely to occur when a shift in technologies or demand conditions occurs. Such a shift is utilized by the path creation or stage skipping of latecomers, both of which can be considered a case of leapfrogging. That is, leapfrogging is a latecomer doing something differently from forerunners, often ahead of them. Technological leapfrogging is a precondition for success in technological catch-up or in closing the gap with incumbents in terms of technological capabilities. Then, such technological catch-up in several sectors may lead to economic catch-up in terms of the growth of per capita GDP or economic power. This eventual linkage from technological leapfrogging to economic catch-up via technological catch-up is what we mean by the title of this book. We focus on this main hypothesis with the Chinese experience in this book. One conclusion from this book is that China’s successful rise as a global industrial power has been due to its strategy of technological leapfrogging, which has enabled it to move beyond the middle-income trap and possibly the Thucydides trap, although at a slower speed.

China's Technological Leapfrogging and Economic Catch-up

After a miraculous economic growth, spurred by the Beijing Consensus, China is now facing a slowdown. This book deals with the interesting issue of the middle-income trap—the phenomenon of the rapidly growing economy of a country stagnating at the middle-income level—in the context of China. It also discusses China’s limitations and future prospects, especially after the onset of a new “cold war” between China and the US, and in particular whether it would fall into the “Thucydides trap,” the conflict between a rising power and the existing hegemon. This book plays around three key terms, the Beijing Consensus, the middle-income trap, and the Thucydides trap, and applies a Schumpeterian approach to these concepts. It also conducts a comparative analysis examining China from an “economic catch-up” perspective. Economic catch-up starts with learning from and imitating a forerunner, but a successful catch-up requires leapfrogging, which implies a latecomer doing something different from, and often ahead of, a forerunner. Technological leapfrogging may lead to technological catch-up, which means reducing the technological gap, and then to economic catch-up in living standards and economic size. This linkage between technological and economic catch-up corresponds exactly with a similar linkage between the Beijing Consensus and escaping (or not) the middle-income and Thucydides traps. The book concludes that China’s successful rise as a global industrial power has been due to its strategy of technological leapfrogging, which has enabled it to move beyond the middle-income trap and possibly the Thucydides trap, although at a slower speed.

American-Chinese Confrontation from the Perspective of Thucydides Trap

War is an inevitable companion of human history. Therefore, from a scientific point of view, as well as from a practical and applied point of view, the identification of the fundamental causes that give rise to this phenomenon continues to be an urgent problem. It was made an attempt to explain a new research method along with class and geopolitical approach assigning reasons of great military conflicts. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the method called the Thucydides trap. The object of the study is the deterrence strategies used by the main actors of world politics. The subject of the study is the modification of the Thucydides trap in relation to the US-China confrontation.

SINO – US Relations: A Case of Hybrid War

US National Security Strategy, 2017, mentioned China as a revisionist state, an economic competitor and a challenger. US NSC China declared to compete with China under the guided principles of realism. US actions and strategies make an interesting argument to validate that USA has fallen in the Thucydides Trap, not because China has pushed the US, but because fear has engulfed her and has adopted an appropriate form of war. This article explores the approaches adopted by USA in her Hybrid War against China. It discusses the surge in attacks on China political Center of Gravity. It analyses the created chaos in Hongkong and the engineered clash of Muslim and Chinese civilisations. It observes how Corona Pandemic has been used to malign China and uncovers that US allies have been buoyed up to contain China. Before rendering conclusions, the article examines how the friends of china are being targeted.