From 'Japan Problem' to 'China Threat'?

Rising Powers in US Economic Discourse

Nicola Nymalm

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9783030449506
• eBook ISBN: 9783030449513
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book has four main objectives: to bring the thus far almost entirely neglected historical case of 'the rise of Japan' into the literature on power shifts in general and 'the rise of China' in particular; to propose a discourse-based conceptualization of identity for the study of economic policy that engages theoretical and methodological debates on how to overcome the dichotomy between 'ideational' (identity) and 'material' (economic) factors; to address the tendency to focus on the 'radical Other' in poststructuralist IR scholarship, by highlighting how heterogeneity disturbs exclusive and binary articulations of identity and difference; and to propose a method for putting political discourse theory (PDT) into practice in empirical research by drawing on rhetorical political analysis (RPA). US congressional debates on economic policy on Japan and China in 1985–2008 are analysed as examples of official US elite public discourse. The book shows that the 'new era' in US-Chinese relations that scholars and policymakers have been announcing since the beginning of the Trump presidencywas long in the making, as it rests on longstanding discourses on the USA's main economic competitor.

Part I

© The Author(s) 2020

N. NymalmFrom 'Japan Problem' to 'China Threat'?Global Political Sociologyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44951-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Nicola Nymalm¹

(1)

Swedish Defence University, Stockholm, Sweden

Nicola Nymalm

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

‘We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the US. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!’ Thus tweeted US President Donald J. Trump on 4 April 2018 (Trump 2018). In January that year, Trump had slapped 30 per cent tariffs on foreign imports of solar panels, of which China was the biggest source, in what is now considered the ‘first strike’ in a US-Chinese ‘trade war’ (Aleem 2018) that continued throughout 2019. Trump has claimed many times to be the first US president to stand up to ‘unfair’ trading practices by China, and for US workers who have been losing their jobs to ‘unfair’ competition (Cox 2019). Part of this can certainly be attributed to the hyperbole common to Trump’s characterizations of his achievements as president and more generally, but he and his administration are not the only ones to talk about a new phase in US-Chinese relations, and not only when it comes to trade and economic policies. Several comments and publications across the political divides have proclaimed not only a tougher approach but even the ‘end of engagement’ (The Economist 2018a; Campbell and Sullivan 2019) and a beginning of confrontation and conflict: ‘We’re at the end of one moment and the beginning of another’ (Moyer 2019, quoting Orville Schell). This ‘new moment’ has even been called a ‘New Cold War’ (e.g. Landler and Perlez 2018). What seems to be largely forgotten, however, is that while a growing consensus is visible in Washington that changing the economic approach to China in particular is overdue, accusations against the USA’s most important trading partner and economic competitor of forced technology transfers, unfair trading practices resulting in US job losses, limited access for foreign firms and regulatory favouritism for locals (cf. Zakaria 2019) are nothing new, but date back to before China began its economic ascent.

‘I believe that if trade is not fair for all, then trade is free in name only. I will not stand by and let American businesses fail, because of unfair trading practices abroad. I will not stand by and let American workers lose their jobs, because other nations do not play by the rules’ (Reagan 1985). This statement by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 was made at the height of a growing trade deficit and tensions over economic policy with Japan, which was the biggest economic competitor and deficit trading partner of the USA at the time. It is not only the allegations and widespread rhetoric that the main economic competitor is not playing fair and is responsible for US economic problems, or that this competitor is a rapidly growing East Asian economy that present parallels with the discourse on China today. Japan was also depicted as having the potential to replace the USA as new ‘No. 1’ (Vogel 1979), and as inaugurating a new type of mercantilist international order. In other words, this was the last time that there was a debate about a ‘rising power’ challenging the USA not only on its economic position, but as a global hegemon. Surprisingly, the Japan case seems to have been largely forgotten when it comes to ‘great power competition’ (cf. Nymalm 2019b), both in Washington and in academic circles (notable exceptions aside). Nonetheless, as a relatively recent example, ‘the rise of Japan’ as the main (East Asian) economic competitor of the USA is important for learning about both the relationship between ‘established’ and ‘rising’ powers and the political and academic discourse on the ‘rise’ itself.¹

This book examines the parallels in the US-Japanese and US-Chinese economic relationships by focusing on the role of identity in economic discourses. Identity has been largely neglected in research on US-Chinese economic relations. This also seems surprising, as an identity discourse—according to which China is expected to change and ‘converge’ (e.g. Moyer 2019, quoting Orville Schell and Jianying Zha) first economically and then politically, to become more like the USA—has been a widely debated constant of US economic policy that was also prominent in the case of Japan. The ‘disappointment’ about the outcome so far is now clearly demonstrated in the Trump administration’s openly more confrontational approach.

The 2017 US National Security Strategy (NSS), for example, labels China (along with Russia) a ‘revisionist power’ that wants ‘to shape a world antithetical to US values and interests’ (White House 2017, 25). It also takes stock of and signals a departure from previous US policies that ‘helped expand the liberal economic trading system to countries that did not share our values, in the hopes that these states would liberalize their economic and political practices and provide commensurate benefits to the United States’. Instead, the NSS continues, ‘these countries distorted and undermined key economic institutions without undertaking significant reform of their economies or politics’ (White House 2017, 17, emphasis added).

While China is not directly named in this latter context in the NSS, US Vice-President Mike Pence was more outspoken in his speech at the Hudson Institute in October 2018, which was quickly interpreted as reflecting the Trump administration’s ‘reset’ that merges ‘hawkishness, economic nationalism and values based advocacy […]’ (Rogin 2018) when it comes to its relations with China:

‘After the fall of the Soviet Union, we assumed that a free China was inevitable. Heady with optimism at the turn of the 21st Century, America agreed to give Beijing open access to our economy, and we brought China into the World Trade Organization. Previous administrations made this choice in the hope that freedom in China would expand in all of its forms — not just economically, but politically, with a newfound respect for classical liberal principles, private property, personal liberty, religious freedom — the entire family of human rights. But that hope has gone unfulfilled.’ (The White House 2018, emphasis added)

In April 2019 the acting US Defence Secretary, Patrick Shanahan, stated that China was an econom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Part I
• Part II
• Back Matter