Victor Davis Hanson
Contrast the Russian Cold War with our current rivalry with a 1.4-billion-person China. Other than its size and strange combination of state-run/crony capitalism with Maoist totalitarianism, ostensibly, China should be no more difficult a rival than was the Soviet Union.
Like Russia, it was a one-time ally of the U.S. in World War II, and equally (and lethally under Mao Zedong) communist and totalitarian.
But here are the differences, and they are enormous, well apart from China’s population and its close proximity to our allies like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia.
First, China is far more adept at its propaganda. Unlike Stalinist Russia, which partnered with Hitler and came over to our side only when Hitler invaded Russia, China was a long and permanent enemy of our enemy, Japan. Unlike Russia, which was better armed than Germany, China was a political mess, relatively non-industrial, and completely out-armed and militarily outclassed by a brutal and often genocidal Japan. So, despite being our existential enemy during the Korean War (China killed more Americans than did the North Koreans), even today there lingers empathy for the brutalized Chinese of World War II, and the once special relationship between China and the U.S.
Second, there is almost no Russian diaspora today in the U.S.
Russians—mafiosos, thugs, assassins, drug kingpins, renegade Czarists— remain the caricatured evil-doers in Hollywood movies. Indeed, almost every action thriller with the usual evil white psychopaths showcases tattooed Russian thugs. Usually, these baddies appear with shaved or bald heads. They are lily white, huge, and have inked on their backs or chests some sort of Russian Orthodox three-barred cross and mystic runes.
Indeed, weak, anemic Putin’s Russia supplied our popular culture with caricatured enemies far more than did China, which poses a far greater threat in far more insidious ways.
In contrast, there are perhaps 3 million Chinese residents who are foreign-born from the mainland or Hong Kong. Some 300,000 Chinese students attend U.S. universities. Every year, a People’s Liberation Army “professor” is seemingly found on American campuses (Stanford in 2020–21 hired a PLA visiting professor).
Almost all Chinese students in the U.S. are interrogated on their return home. If only 1 percent were actively engaged in espionage, that would still mean 3,000 active agents are likely enrolled in or observant of sophisticated American research projects in the sciences and engineering.
Third, if during the Cold War, the CIA and FBI made sure that eventually Russian spy cells would be ferreted out, we have no such assurance with China. Instead, from biolabs in our small towns to owning farmland near military bases, China is far more adept and insidious in sifting through U.S. strategic planning and preparation, or indeed is preparing to harm the U.S. homeland in ways far beyond the ability of the Soviets.
It is no accident that almost every new Chinese tank, ship, or plane resembles an American archetype—and is produced in quantities six or seven times more numerous than our own.
Discussion (2)
Join the conversation. Logged in subscribers avoid the Captcha verification and get priority commenting approvals. No vulgarity, links, or code allowed.
Where are the 25-30,000.00 unaccompanied, military age, Chinese men who crossed the border during the Biden administration, and what are they doing?
It's probably worth noting the cultural difference between China and Russia as well, to compare the history of the two countries over 2 millennia. Russia was a backward and barbaric society, set on the edge of Europe and facing the harsh Eurasian interior. While the western regions were fertile, the eastern regions were not. While every part of Western Europe is no further than 500 miles from the sea, served by navigable rivers from its interior, Russia had a distinct disadvantage on this point. The Russians faced incursions up into the 18th century by aggressive, warlike people from the interior and from the Turks in their southwest. They lived under an authoritarian society, whether monarchy or Communist dictatorship. The one brief hope of joining their European neighbors in industrializing under the Tsars collapsed under the stress of the wars that the Tsars entered into. And though the Communists tried to make leaps, as Victor noted, they never could catch up. The Chinese, on the other hand, enjoyed a society that advanced and became more and more sophisticated for two thousand years. They were superior to their neighbors, and to societies overseas. They succumbed to the stagnation inherent to their worldview, that prohibited the kind of inquiry and advancement we have in the West. They lagged in technology and fell prey to the Western powers. But do not forget, they still remember they were the Middle Kingdom, whether empire of PRC. That is significant.