2022: The year real drama begins

By Park Jung-won

Despite the diplomatic boycott of next month's Winter Olympics in Beijing, led by the United States under President Joe Biden's administration, China will continue to view its human rights issues as a domestic problem, and U.S.-China relations will not be completely derailed. These bilateral relations, which cannot be simply explained as game theory "power politics," are much more interdependent and complex than those between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.

It will not just be a reprise of the 45-year drama of the Cold War. For the U.S., a George Kennan-type of containment policy toward China may not be a plausible option. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union's economic and social ties with the U.S. were far less extensive than those it now has with China. Global environmental and health issues such as climate change and the pandemic have also made close linkages between the U.S. and China unavoidable.

Nevertheless, since China is not a power that is satisfied with the status quo, but rather a "revisionist-oriented" one, rivalry between the two countries is inevitable. This rivalry is likely to feature marathon-like competition that will impede any pursuit of creating a "win-win" relationship of mutual benefit to the two great powers. Consequently the stage is set for a new type of geopolitical drama.

The U.S.-led diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics may not be a fatal blow to China, but it will surely tarnish its image, by shining a light on claims that it is a country that trivializes respect for human rights under a "rules-based" international order.

In the era of President Xi Jinping, Chinese leaders have confidently argued that China's efficient state-controlled political system is far superior to the dysfunctional American form of government. They are fond of saying, "the East is rising and the West is declining," displaying a perceived superiority of the Chinese political system.

In 2022, this narrative will be pushed further. Next month's Winter Olympics and the 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress at the end of the year will be used as finely choreographed political events for glorifying the benefits of Xi's absolute power to the world. No domestic opposition to the current order under Xi's leadership will be tolerated. Most ordinary Chinese will feel a great sense of pride that they have become citizens of a united and rising global superpower.

Meanwhile, the U.S. will undoubtedly face a chaotic domestic political situation in 2022. Biden's Democratic Party is expected to struggle in the November elections, given that mid-term elections generally do not favor the president's ruling party. Even if the Democrats do better than expected, they have little chance of gaining a significant edge in Congress.

Fierce conflicts between conservatives and progressives over diverse social issues such as abortion rights, rising crime, racial inequality and illegal immigration, all amid the economic bane of increasing inequality combined with inflation, are likely to exacerbate the sharply polarized state of American democracy.

However, liberal democracy is the most complex political system that mankind has ever created. It presupposes the optimistic possibility that free-willed individuals acting as rational beings and actively participating in the political process can affect good governance through their collective choices.

The dry, top-down efficiency of the state-controlled Chinese system cannot be compared to the seemingly chaotic, dynamic American political system. China's ridiculing of the messiness of American society is not automatic proof of the superiority of the Chinese approach. The opposite is more likely in the long term.

In a democratic society, conservatives and liberals are naturally divided over a wide range of issues. Extreme elements of the far left and far right might occasionally seem to present a threat to the foundations of democracy, but the open nature of democracy also allows for heated debates that expose competing ideas through media reporting and other means of social communication.

The core strength of democracy lies in its power of managing consensus through a continual contest of ideas intended to promote a better society grounded in the rule of law and in civil liberties. However long it takes and difficult it may be, if the U.S. succeeds in dealing with its issues of domestic cohesion, it will likely be the eventual winner. If not, however, the future of the international order will be ever more uncertain and confused.

Aside from quantitative economic growth, China's economy is suffering from inherent problems due to its excessive state control. State-owned enterprises are a heavy burden on the overall economy, and Chinese banks have been plagued by bad loans. The real estate bubble could burst at any moment.

More seriously, while economic growth increases the demand for political liberalization, as it did in the case of South Korea's military dictatorship, the present one-party dictatorship in China stifles the growth of civil society, a precondition for democratization. China's true challenge will be whether the touted Chinese model of state capitalism can succeed without political liberalization.

The real battle between these two giants will therefore be over which country can be more persuasive at the domestic level and to the rest of the international community. Their troubles at home and their efforts in order to resolve them will spill over to the level of international relations, with normative repercussions in the "rules-based" international order. 2022 will be the year in which the two main characters of this lengthy drama will make their opening appearances.

Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE), is a professor of international law at Dankook University.