How Biden and Xi will shape world opinion

President-Elect Joe Biden in Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. [Reuters]

As the year of Covid-19, 2020, comes to an end, serious geopolitical realignment is taking place at regional and global levels. It gave countries hard times and exposed their inability to deal with forces beyond themselves. As each struggles to protect perceived interests, inadequate response capabilities partly relate to incompetence.

The centre for global realignment is China which has, somehow, convinced the rest of the world to pay attention. It has done that at the expense of the United States which used to behave as if Washington was the centre of the universe.

Several factors explain why China grew as the centre of geopolitical realignment. It has the largest population which translates to a large market for anything. It is the third largest in terms of territory after Russia and Canada. It holds the record for historical longevity as an entity. It was a top maritime power in the 14th and 15th Century before it became complacent and inward looking in its mistaken belief that it did not need, or could not learn, anything from the ‘barbarians’.

Becoming a forbidden country as symbolised by the Forbidden City imagery in Beijing, China suffered because white ‘barbarians’ came through the sea, partitioned its coastal, and subjected the Chinese to a Century of Humiliation.

Few countries can beat China in exploiting the past to advance current policy. In that context, it likes reminding Third World countries that it too was subjected to European imperialism. The Century of Humiliation that started with the British manufactured Opium War in the 1840s and ended in October 1949 with Mao’s proclamation of the People’s Republic of China at Tiananmen Squire is constant in China’s global narrative.

Within that narrative are all the bad things that Western powers and Japan did to China which was then liberated by the Communist Party of China. Identifying with the plight of Third World countries gives China leverage. It was the ‘African brothers and sisters’, Mao reportedly said, that put China at the United Nations and that meant closeness of the global oppressed.

Besides identifying with Third World countries, China beats the Conceptual West in other manifestations of power. In contrast to the arrogance, racism, and disregard for global commons that characterises the Conceptual West, especially the United States of Donald Trump, China projects itself as concerned with such common challenges as climate change.

In this image projection, President Xi Jinping is the direct opposite of Trump’s global trampling. Inadvertently, Trump’s United States promoted China’s interests by behaving terribly at home and abroad. As the US kept losing through the Trump callous imagery, therefore, Xi looked reasonable even as he pushed for acceptance of Chinese global influence. While Washington trumpeted its arrogance and racism in the world stage, Trump calling Africa toilet, Beijing worked to seem considerate of the interests of other countries. China is efficient, not as costly, and it delivers.

China’s ability to realign the world to its liking is not accidental; it is carefully calculated to take advantage of the blunders by other powers. This started with Mao launching the New China as a global political reality in 1949, made a few mistakes like trying to export revolutions, and then changed to reach out to others. After Mao, Deng Xiaoping pressed for economic reforms, adopting capitalism and calling it ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’, but remaining communistic in politics. Xi aims at doing unto the West what the West did unto China in the Century of Humiliation. The whole thrust of the Belt and Road Initiative, BRI, therefore, is to bring Europe into the Chinese orbit in a two pronged approach. A high speed land railway links Xi’an in China to Rotterdam in the Netherlands and Duisburg in Germany.

A sea route starting at Fuzhou in China connects to Western Europe through Kenya and the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean Sea. China’s success makes the EU wonder how to link up with the incoming Biden administration to counter China’s influence.

In the geopolitical realignment taking place, Xi is a grand strategist, Trump was not, and the question is whether Biden can match Xi. Biden would have to reverse the Trump damage to the US, among them being arrogance and racism. Failure to do that would mean letting Xi run geopolitical rings around Biden and continue to realign the world, with the US watching helplessly.

- Prof Munene teaches history and International Relations at USIU