Book Review: Hidden Hand – Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World

right to remind people that:

·  China and the CCP are not one and the same

·  China has a party-state system of government that is authoritarian and not democratic

·  China does not have Western-style rule of law

·  it does not recognize universal human rights in the way we understand them.

What is missing is a balanced discussion of the central debate about the appropriate approach to be taken in the West’s relations with China.

As Peter Varghese, the former head of DFAT, recently put it, the choice for Australia is between trying to “contain” China or “engage and constrain”.

Containment, he argues, is gaining traction in the United States and among cheerleaders in Australia, but risks dismantling the global economic system and the supply chains that support it. For Australia, Varghese says, decoupling from our largest trading partner would be “sheer folly” irrespective of legitimate complaints about China’s behavior.

The “engage and constrain” approach he favors involves expanding areas of cooperation where mutual interests are served, while holding firm to our values and strengthening our capacity to resist Chinese coercion through increased investment in defense and diplomacy.

This would show Beijing that “leverage is a two-way street” and that, with others, we are willing to “push back” if China pursues its interests in ways that do not respect our sovereignty.

While increasing investment in defense may well be justified, boosting our spending in diplomacy is even more important.

In this light, viewing China as our “enemy” is counterproductive and ignores the mutual benefits and increased sharing of interests that have resulted from China’s opening up since 1978. (Hidden Hand does not repeat the explicit description of China as our enemy found in Hamilton’s earlier book, but it comes close, saying for the past 30 years China has viewed both sides of the Atlantic as its enemies).

Diplomacy may influence China’s perceptions of its national interests and, where significant differences remain, help to forge important alliances elsewhere.

Hamilton and Ohlberg seem to favor the “containment” strategy, warning on page 96 that “in fact, today it (the party-state) is more powerful than ever because of market forces” (emphasis in original).

Engagement Can Still Have a Positive Effect
The implication, presumably, is that we should no longer contribute to China’s economic growth. This dismisses the remarkable benefits involved in China’s growth, including not only massive reductions in poverty, but also, for most Chinese, freedoms that were unimaginable in the Mao Zedong era.