The rapid rise of China in recent decades has increasingly drawn attention to its similarities with the rise of the Soviet Union. Many believe that the hegemony of the United States has been squandered and that China is looking to replace the United States as the world’s undisputed superpower. Such a future would undoubtedly lead to conflict, either cold or hot, and will significantly impact the relationship between the United States and Europe, as China is looking to further its economic inroads into Europe, gaining admiration from illiberal democracies such as Poland and Hungary along the way. However, before assuming that such a future is a foregone conclusion, we must evaluate the intentions of China and the current relationship between the U.S. and its European allies.
The threat of the Soviet Union from the perspective of the United States came in the form of its governing ideology, communism. The belief that communism was the antithesis of free-market capitalism and democratic freedoms led the U.S. to believe that the rise of communism elsewhere in the world would lead to the demise of democracy, capitalism, and freedom throughout the world, and possibly within its own borders. In order to preserve the economic system in which the US is on top, the United States went far and wide to combat the ideology of communism in areas as far as Vietnam. Although the Soviet Union has collapsed, China has continued the legacy of communism, perhaps in name only. What we see in China today is a technocratic authoritarian state that has been able to rise the ranks of capitalism at the expense of freedom and democracy. China seems to have avoided modernization theory, with the middle class increasingly growing in wealth and population, yet failing to clamor for greater rights as Western scholars believe naturally should occur. This has worried the United States as China has proven that democracy and human rights are not necessary to keep a nation of over one billion citizens prosperous and supportive. I would argue that the threat of China is not immediately similar to that of the Soviet Union, as the Soviet Union made clear attempts to support states that had communist revolutions and communist governments. China on the other hand has helped states regardless of governance structure but has rather created debt traps for smaller nations to help upkeep their economic progress and entrench itself within the international economic system so deeply that any economic punishments for human rights violations or issues of international law would hurt everyone in the world and not only themselves. This has made China a prime example for illiberal democracies around the world, just as the Soviet Union had been during the Cold War, although China’s intent may not be to spread such a governance system knowingly. Today we see states like Poland and Hungary questioning why they should be held to democratic values by the EU if their people are happy with authoritarian strongmen. The example of China may topple Democracy by providing the example of an illiberal capitalist state by which elites and oligarchies could control populations by bribing them with economic gains. Thus, I believe that this may very well resemble the issues of the Cold War.
In terms of the relationship between the United States and Europe, I believe that the rise of China will make the relationship between them even stronger. The European Union has held strong as a beacon of democracy since its inception. Europe was marred by constant violence and war prior to the EU and the rise of democracy on the continent. Germany, France, and the UK have all become increasingly skeptical of Chinese investment, eyeing acquisitions of significant European tech companies, such as KUKA robotics, as national security issues. Although states such as Poland and Hungary have looked toward China and become illiberal democracies, the EU has held firm that they will not allow such a shift away from democracy to occur through their COVID relief bills which mandated that countries will receive benefits only if they uphold the values of democracy. Although this ran into legal trouble, the EU has made it clear that it plans on defending the concept of Democracy, which will only better its relationship with the United States as the Biden administration continues to use a potential cold war with China as a uniting factor for the political divide in America. Similarly, Biden may use the potential for a cold war with China as a uniting factor with the EU on a variety of issues, such as climate change, in order to repair the damage that the Trump administration caused between the two.
Overall I believe that the United States and Europe will continue to deepen their relationship with each other as they combat China in the next iteration of cold war.
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