Comparing Priorities, China and America
The recent Coronavirus outbreak that started in China and spread all around the world is breaking havoc with the globalized order of intense trade and travel. But even with this break in business-as-usual, it is still evident that in our current world order, America and China are the two top power contenders. America has been at the top of the world pyramid since WWII, while China started the post-WWII era in a struggle to emerge from the deep humiliation and disturbance caused by the European interventions in the 19th century and the invasion by Japan in the 20th century.
China has managed to deal with the pandemic crisis in an efficient fashion thanks to its well-structured health system and civil bureaucracy. The US and the West are having trouble being as efficient and their health and governmental entities are showing their inability to cope.
It is interesting to notice that the US and China have historical precedents with a cultural progression that is still present today, with the US as the inheritor of old Rome and China of old China. The most notable differences that concern us relate to their cultural priorities expressed in their budget allocation. These differences are evident now and are useful to understand our current state of world affairs and how each power responds to threats like the Coronavirus.
At the time of the Roman Empire, China had been unified under the Han dynasty. The two empires knew about each other, though mostly by hearsay. Rome knew China through luxury products like silk that were imported for the delight of the elites. The importance of silk was such that for the Romans, China was the country of silk. The Chinese knew about Rome from traveler’s reports and they imaged it as a mirror great empire in the West. Rome was the ruler of the Mediterranean with an empire that kept on expanding while the Chinese were hemmed in by the Tibetan Plateau, the Hindu Kusch, and the Gobi desert.
The Han dynasty was threatened repeatedly by the Xiongnu, the nomadic horse people of Central Asia. These same tribes also caused the gradual movement of people in Central Asia towards the West, a movement that ended up arriving at the Roman borders later and threatening the empire.
The way these two empires dealt with a similar threat shows the priorities of each empire. The Roman Empire became powerful thanks to its army and this army and military expense grew with the empire even as it stagnated in new conquests. In Roman culture, the military was the priority and the percentage of the budget allocated to it was quite high. Their civil servant allotment was surprisingly small for such a big empire. After the annexation of Egypt by Augustus, Rome made most of its money from tariffs imposed on imports from the East: India, Arabia and Africa. This intense trade was performed with a very small civil servant force, complemented by private entrepreneurs to fill the gaps.
China’s Han dynasty oppositely allocated its budget; the main allocation in the budget went to the immense civil servant bureaucracy that managed the empire. The emperor was at the top, but it was the civil servants, chosen from the bulk of the population after passing the required examinations, who did the managing. China had vibrant commerce with the empires to the west and its silk road was essential for this success.
The Xiongnu threatened the Han dynasty periodically but instead of fighting them in a costly eternal war, the Chinese found that bribing them with silk worked better than walls or war. This arrangement worked for much of the time and it allowed for the safe passage of the caravans on the Silk Road through the Hexi corridor, sandwiched between the Tibetan Plateau and the Hindu Kush.
This cultural choice meant that contrary to the Romans, the Chinese spent little of their budget on the military or an army. They had a small army and a system of army reserves, civilians that could be called in case of an emergency. Their army relied on a small number of career soldiers supplemented by civilians, while the Romans had a huge career army.
This difference in cultural priorities has been transplanted to the present with the US as the clear inheritor of old Rome. Following on its footsteps, the US allocates mind-boggling amounts of its budget for the Pentagon and the Military-Industrial Complex to the detriment of civilian expenditures. The US Establishment prefers an eternal war status quo that feeds the gargantuan appetite of a myriad of greedy defense contractors and the politicians who cater to them.
Though China has recently stepped up it’s military spending, it is still dwarfed by the military budget of the US; China still prioritizes civilian spending just like millenarian China did. China spends a high percentage of its budget in public infrastructure, economic stimulation to reduce poverty and the expansion of the One Belt One Road initiative, the 21st-century incarnation of the Silk Road.
Since the end of WWII, the Cold War and the War on Terror were used to boost defense spending. The US spends three times more in its military than China and if you count the percentage of military spending per GDP, the US outstrips China by far. The numbers tell one story, but another more complicated story is the prioritization of the military in the culture. This is evident by how readily does the US public accepts huge increases in the military budget without any questioning.
The military budget is expanded each time a president asks for it, and no matter how insane is the amount, politicians of both parties vote in favor, even if they openly dislike and distrust the president that has asked for it. The media shows its complicity with the Military Industrial Complex by barely reporting the passage of the bill, like it happened last December 2019 when it was increased to $738 Billion. This sum represents about half of all federal discretionary spending each year.
The US has an armed force of more than 2 million people, 11 aircraft carriers, a variety of warplanes and about 6185 nuclear warheads. China has 2 aircraft carriers and 290 nuclear warheads. The new military budget includes $1.87 billion for 98 F-35 aircraft. The F-35 program has been plagued with problems and delays and yet the Department of Defense continues giving contracts to its maker, Lockheed Martin.
The 2019 budget also an allocation of $40 million for an Air Force Space Command and continued expenditures for expanding the US nuclear warhead program. It is sobering to notice that from 1940 to 1996 the US spent about $5.5 trillion and nuclear weapons and related programs, in constant 1996 dollars. Since 1997 the nuclear budget kept on increasing with the most recent average being about $50 billion per year. It is unbelievable how politicians in DC repeatedly justify such increases for wars against poor countries that don’t even have one aircraft carrier.
The recent passage of the latest US military budget without much media fanfare implies that the culture accepts this as the given. While reporting little about the extravagant military expenditure, the same media insists that there is no money for an efficient and affordable health care system. This happens even as Covid19 has forced the US to declare a state of emergency and lock-down of cities and towns.
Even in this crisis, the media chooses not to notice how the excessive splurging on the military, not only at home but on US bases around the world, ends up shortchanging the spending on the health of its citizens. The US has 800 military bases in about 80 countries and this number reaches 1000 if you count the euphemistically called lily pads, which the military deems temporary, trying to cover the vast US presence in Africa. These lily pads were increased dramatically during Obama’s enlargement of Africom, and as a result, most countries in Africa had to accept a US base. Africom is supposed to have a humanitarian side to it, helping the image of America in Africa, but this claim ends up being a façade when you notice that Africom has 7 military employees for every civilian. The claim of needing soldiers to fight terrorism in Africa is made to obscure the fact that America’s interest in Africa is mostly related to competition for resources with China.
China’s civilian strategy is proving much more successful at winning hearts and minds around the world. China has but one army base overseas, in Djibouti Africa. China has also increased its presence in Africa, all of it civilian. A good example is the first electric train in Africa that links Djibouti with Addis Ababa, shortening the trip from 3 days to 11 hours. The Chinese gave the money for the railroad, will run it for 6 years and then it will revert to the two African countries. The Horn of Africa isn’t the only place getting China’s attention; China is building lots of infrastructures all over Africa, like a Special Economic Zone in Congo in which there is Chinese direct investment, not a loan or a gift. Many other projects have been financed by China’s Eximbank, whose loans are subsidized and have relatively low-interest rates.
China’s One Belt One Road Initiative, the modern Silk Road, is investing in civilian infrastructure all over the world, projecting a railroad from China to the UK, ports and energy infrastructure in several Asian and African countries. 138 countries including Russia, New Zealand, Italy, and Syria have joined the initiative promising support for the projects. This shows how China is still following its millenarian tradition of prioritizing civilian pursuits.
The wide difference between the priorities of the two world powers is quite evident in their responses to the arrival of Covid19. China, who has suffered the most until now, has mobilized the country’s resources to ensure the widespread testing and availability of masks, respirators, and aerators, effectively managing to stop its spread. In contrast, the US is currently mired in incompetence with a severe lack of tests, respirators, and masks.
As the virus spread around the world, Italy and Iran became hot spots for its spread and the reaction of the Western countries was appalling; The US intensified the sanctions against Iran by prohibiting the arrival of the much needed medical equipment to curb the virus. Nearby Iraq also has problems with the virus spread and instead of sending help, the US is bombing the country once more, as though it hadn’t been destroying it for decades.
Italy, as the first European country to have a crisis, asked the European Union for help, only to be rebuffed by the powerful countries in the EU. Germany prohibited the export of any health equipment ensuring that only Germans have access to it, while France refused to help Italy, alleging it was better to allocate the money for a continuation of NATO’s war in Syria.
China has come out as the provider of civilian aid by sending medical supplies and doctors to help Italy, Iran, and Iraq. Covid19 is our first world crisis and is giving us a test for how we deal with a crisis globally. The climate disaster we have created will continue to test us in more ways and much sooner than we think. The choice between military and civilian priorities will be crucial to the quality of life of the global population. The choice of continuing wars and military expenditures is a choice for destruction, wasted materials and lives at a time of crisis. Both military and civilian infrastructure pursuits continue to create greenhouse emissions that the global climate and civilian population can’t afford, but at least civilian pursuits have a constructive aim, while in war all is destructive and negative. As we pass from crisis to crisis our choice between destructive and constructive responses is going to matter more and more and hopefully solidarity will win.
