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Welcome to this presentation on Weaponizing Globalization.
My name is Francis Schortgen,
and I'm presently an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies,
as well as business at the University of Mount Union in Alliance,
Ohio in the United States.
In this session, I will aim to shed some light on how and why
Chinese high-tech has found itself squarely in the crosshairs of geopolitics.
I should also like to highlight that the remarks delivered here are based
on a chapter that I contributed to a forthcoming publication titled,
'Huawei Goes Global: Made in China for the World'.
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Any recent scholarly endeavor to clarify the nature, complexity,
and challenges of US-China relations would
seem an appropriate starting point for this discussion.
For our purposes, I have chosen to use Graham Allison's book Destined for War,
in which he talks about the possibility of a conflict between
the United States and China owing to a perceived Thucydides' Trap.
Even if conflict between the US and China may
appear rather more improbable than inevitable,
or at least we would like to hope so,
it is difficult not to perceive
the evolutionary dynamic of US-China relations in recent years,
as charting a seemingly inevitable course to a new Cold War.
Hardly what China's Xi Jinping had in mind when he first floated the idea of,
"New great power relationship".
Indeed, the most recent illustration of
this unfolding great power rivalry has been the Sino-American trade war.
Yet lying at the heart of Washington's concerns
about China's rising prominence is not so much
a persistent trade deficit as China's concerted efforts and
ambitions to claim the commanding heights of the industries of the future.
As such, the forces that are shaping
the evolving US-China relationship are indicative of a specific great power standoff,
namely, a nascent technology Cold War.
I will break down this presentation into four main parts.
First, I will offer
a very concise contextual backdrop for the discussion by briefly discussing
the geopolitical power shifts and
associated geostrategic concerns that feed into the perception of a nascent new Cold War.
I will then outline how the forces of globalization and
the dynamics of competition have begun to crystallize in an innovation,
vision, and strategy that lends additional and consequential
support to Xi Jinping's 21st century China dream.
Third, I will comment on
the geopolitical and geostrategic underpinnings of
the unfolding US-China technological rivalry and how
American efforts to arrest a relative decline in innovation capacity and
technological leadership have fed an accelerating Chinese techno-nationalism.
I will conclude by offering a few thoughts and
observations about how China's "New road to globalization",
to borrow a phrase from Princeton University historian Harold James,
"Need not usher in an era of destructive competition between
the established and rising power in
the 21st century international order in the emerging technologies realm".
Competition is an ineluctable reality of great power politics.
