Sarwar A. Kashmeri

CHINA’S GRAND STRATEGY by Sarwar A. Kashmeri is a relatively short book that can help both professionals and the general population understand the new world order that is being formed by changes by China in Asia and Africa and the role that the US has played in its world relations. It is well-written and researched and easy for a layman to comprehend.
There are major differences between the ways the US and China interact with the rest of the world. At the present time China’s method is more successful. In the 21st century, Asia will be the fastest growing region in the world. Because of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) China will become the richest and most commercially influential country in the world.
Complicating this impending global political transition from a Western dominated world to an Asian dominated world is the fact that the US, still the Western leader, is bereft of its own grand strategy. Voicing the US position, The George W. Bush administration said, “Grand strategy is a concept for academics. It has no place in the real world.” For a long time, the US has had a single-minded focus on infrastructure: military building. Donald Trump is in the midst of a trade war with China. “America First” is his motto and he is willing to alter our relationships with other countries if it furthers his vision.
China, on the other hand, is traveling in the opposite direction. It uses the same philosophy it utilized more than a thousand years ago when the Silk Road tied it to its neighboring counties, making itself wealthy in the process. Xi Ping, China’s president, has proven that “countries with differences in race, belief and cultural background can absolutely share peace and development as long as they persist in unity and mutual trust, equality and mutual benefit, mutual tolerance and learning from each other, as well as cooperation and win-win outcomes.”
China’s Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward program in the 1980s wrecked its economy. It had 1/5 of the world’s population but produced only 3% of global manufacturing output. Today China accounts for over 1/4 of the world’s manufacturing output; its gross domestic product is has grown nearly 10% a year for three decades, lifting some 750 million Chinese people out of poverty.
Within the next decade China is expected to overtake the United States as the largest economy in the world. It will continue to be militarily dominant in Asia, which means will continue to have the ability of destroying any US-led military forces that comes close to China. It will continue to be a nuclear power with warheads and missiles that can destroy the US.
The BRI provides money and personnel to help other countries, primarily in Asia and Africa, build high speed rail, roads, bridges, ports, dams, tunnels, and fiber-optic internet connectivity. The countries improve their economies and China becomes first in line to gain access to their raw materials. For example, landlocked Ethiopia needed access to import and export 90% of its products. It used to take three days to get to the closest deep-sea port in Djibouti, 466 miles away. With the help of China, it now can use a new electrified railway, the first of its kind in Africa, which has shortened the time to less than 12 hours..
China also finds new markets for its own exports and has become the center of Africa’s transformation. There are already more than 10,000 Chinese firms in Africa. While the contractors are Chinese, more than 95% of the workers are Africans. In Nigeria alone, whose population will be greater than that of the US by 2050, Chinese companies produce products for American labels such as Kohls, Levis and Reebok, which are then shipped to the US. Egypt is now home to over 1500 Chinese companies that have made about $610 million in investment, excluding the Suez Canal zone, and have created more than 27,500 jobs.

China is the top trading partner with twice as many countries as the US. By 2016 China had doubled its foreign direct investment projects in Africa outweighing US investments by a factor of 10. China-Africa trade increased by 16.8% in the first quarter of 2017. Its infrastructure projects generated earnings of around US $50 billion a year, creating numerous jobs for Chinese citizens as well as for people in the developing nations. On the other hand, most US alliances are military troops stationed in foreign countries. The EU is the richest group of countries in the world but US still foots the bill to defend them.
Even if a country cannot pay its debt to China, the country still benefits. For example, Sri Lanka had to default and so China was given a 99-year lease on its port. But Sri Lanka got an economic zone and industrial park and the Chinese pay an annual fee, a win-win situation.
After World War II, Japan’s living standard rose dramatically. As it expanded its production capabilities, the cost forced Japanese firms to relocate to Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. This in turn triggered a new wave of economic transformation, converting these four rickety economies into rich industrialized countries.
These changes have not been reflected in international monetary organizations. After World War II, the Allied countries, especially the US, worked hard to rebuild Europe. The Marshall Plan gave reconstruction money to Europeans in the form of a credit (which had to be spent in the US). As a legacy, it was determined that an American should be the head of the World Bank and a European head of the International Monetary Fund. That set up is still being observed though it is no longer appropriate since Asia has become home to strong economies and governments. In fact, China and Japan are the second and third largest economies in the world.
China’s entry into so many countries in Africa and Asia can prove detrimental to US interests. For example, by controlling a port, which it financed and helped build, China can not only block the transport of supplies, both military and commercial, it can interfere with US missions abroad. Most African countries do not want a US military base located within its borders. This may interfere with US antiterrorism and intelligence operations and leaves China as the only superpower in that strategic part of the world.
By 2020 China expects to have created more than 13 million jobs in the renewable energy sector.
There are areas in which China’s economic rise is vulnerable. There is a huge difference between the wealth of the 1% households which hold 1/3 of the country’s wealth, primarily in the coastal regions, and the rest of the population, mostly in the Western provinces. China’s debt is rising very quickly. The billions of dollars of BRI investment must be maintained as its economy expands.
Among the ways that the US might devise a strategy for the changing situation, Kashmeri reminds is that the US is still the country with the widest and deepest financial markets in the world, and the US dollar continues to be the world’s premier trading in reserve currency. It also has the power to influence other countries with nonmilitary means, which still outweighs China’s soft power.

Interesting side notes:

Like President Kennedy’s speech about going to the Moon, it was a vision statement, meant to inspire. Not a blueprint with detailed construction plans.
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