Xi's China has made 3 foreign policy mistakes: Bilahari Kausikan

https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/Interview/Xi-s-China-has-made-3-foreign-policy-mistakes-Bilahari-Kausikan

 SINGAPORE -- At the Chinese Communist Party's national congress set to kick off on Oct. 16, President Xi Jinping will try to extend his tenure as the country's top leader.

China's foreign policy has changed significantly under his decade in power, shifting to a more confident and assertive stance than his predecessors.

Nikkei Asia spoke with retired Singapore Ambassador Bilahari Kausikan, former permanent secretary of the city-state's foreign service, to reflect on the Chinese leader's style and how U.S.-China tensions may play out in the years ahead.

Veteran diplomat Kausikan served as his country's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York and ambassador to Russia. He is currently chairman of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore.

Edited excerpts of the interview follow.

Q: How would you rate Xi's foreign policy?

A: China has made three very fundamental mistakes. The first big mistake was prematurely abandoning Deng Xiaoping's approach of 'hiding your capabilities and biding your time.' The trigger point there was the 2008 global financial crisis.

It led to far too much boasting. This is an irreversible mistake because once you boast, even if you shut up, people are not going to forget what you said.

The second connected mistake is again around 2008. [China's leaders] actually began to believe their propaganda. America, in particular, and the West in general are in absolute decline and cannot recover, they thought. America may be in relative decline and it's got a lot of problems, that is true. But the decline is relative, not absolute.

About a month or so ago, Peking University Professor Wang Jisi gave an interview in which he makes a very important point. He says do not believe the U.S. is in absolute decline; the U.S. is only in relative decline vis-a-vis China because we are growing. The U.S. is still absolutely dominant over every other major country, Wang said.

This is a very brave thing for him to say because it is a direct contradiction to what his boss is saying -- that the East is rising.

And the third thing is this 'no limits' partnership with Russia. Russia will be a permanent liability to China. Russia can only get more and more dependent on China. China may get some cheap energy but as we can see, China is more worried about getting entangled at a time when there are so many domestic economic problems and growth is slowing.

These are big macro mistakes.

Q: As a career diplomat, how do you see Beijing's wolf-warrior diplomacy?

A: Diplomats should be able to be very tough if necessary in order to achieve their goals. It is not all about being nice and polite. This is what I used to tell my younger diplomats. Your job is to advance Singapore's national interests. Preferably by being nice and polite but if required, by using whatever means necessary, even if it means being nasty. But the point is to advance your goals.

Now this wolf-warrior diplomacy, I don't see how China's interests are being advanced. In fact, I think they are damaged. But these wolf warriors are really talking to the people in Beijing and not necessarily the people outside.

Q: When U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, the hawkish line presented by wolf-warrior diplomats led many Chinese citizens to expect some kind of action against Pelosi's plane, which was dangerous. How did feel about this?

A: Whether Pelosi should have visited Taiwan is another matter. The trip achieved nothing except to create a lot of excitement. But you're right because this is where conflict by accidents can happen. You excite your people so much and at some point you may find yourself trapped by your own propaganda. If you don't meet your people's expectations, you will look weak.

Q: Will U.S.-China tensions dominate the news cycle for the next 10 years?

A: You say 10 years. I think it will be for much longer than that. It will be the new structural feature around which international relations revolve. As an example, international relations revolved around U.S.-Soviet relations for over 40 years in the Cold War. But I think that U.S.-China relations are more complicated than U.S.-Soviet relations.

I don't like this term 'new Cold War.' It misrepresents the nature of the relationship. The U.S. and the Soviet Union each led separate systems and it was a competition between systems. Essentially it was a binary competition, either A or B. The two systems were connected only at the margins.

In the U.S.-China relationship, [both countries] are vital parts of a single system. They are connected to each other; and to Japan, to Singapore, to Europe [and] to everybody via a new phenomenon -- that of supply chains of a complexity and scope that I don't think we have seen in history before.

I find it very difficult to believe that this web can separate into two separate systems. There will be partial separation. It has already occurred in the area of technology, the internet, but I don't think it is a complete separation. It's too costly.

I can give you one example. We all know semiconductors are a great vulnerability for China. And I think the Chinese are going to find it very very difficult to be able to catch up. In fact, I would say it is almost impossible to catch up with the high end because the frontier is moving. What is the high end today is not the high end next year.

But the fundamental reason why they are going to find it very hard to catch up and take a long time [to do so] is that all or the most vital parts of the supply chain are controlled by the U.S., its friends or its allies. Certain kinds of materials, certain kinds of chemicals, by Japan. Other kinds of machine tools to make the design, by the Dutch. Other kinds of other machine tools, by [other] Europeans. Big fabricators, by Taiwan, South Korea and the U.S. And there are so many small parts, and the most vital ones are controlled by the U.S.

On the other hand, China is 40% of the semiconductor market. So how do you cut off 40% of your company without damaging it terribly? Competition within a system is much more difficult than competition between systems. [You can] just drop off the Soviet Union from everything. [But] you can't really do that to China. You have to be more differentiated.

Secondly, I don't think this competition is likely to end in any clear-cut way. Why? Because the Chinese may want to dominate this single system and the U.S. wants to preserve its domination. But neither one of them wants to destroy the other because to destroy the other means to destroy the whole system and that's too costly.

So it will go on for much longer than the Cold War, that's the bottom line. We'll have to learn to live with it.

Q: The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden is preparing to use export controls and investment screening so that China does not catch up and overtake the U.S. in key technologies. What is your take on this?

A: You have to be very careful now to see what kind of semiconductors you are selling China. You are only selling China semiconductors that could only be used in washing machines. Fine, why not? But don't sell them things that can be used in precision-guided missiles. It becomes very, very complicated. Very, very technical. Each case has to be studied.

What I have been hearing from industries -- including Japanese industries and German industries -- is that while they will work in the China market they are not going to be naive. It's not possible to say, 'All Japanese companies [return] to Japan, come to Singapore, come to Vietnam.' It's just not possible. Even if you want to do it will take years and years and years. It's not something that can be done quickly.