Abstract
The year 2019 saw the curtain rise on a US–China bipolar rivalry quite different from the Cold War US–Soviet bipolarity. The fundamental difference between the current bipolar rivalry and that during the Cold War is that ideology is no longer the main engine driving international competition, but rather the new digital dimension of strategic competition that is emerging between the United States and China. Technological advancement over the past 15 years has led world history’s entry into the early digital age. The development of digital technology has created new ways of protecting national security, of accumulating national wealth, and of obtaining international support. Cybersecurity is becoming the core of national security and the share of digital economy in major powers’ gross domestic product dramatically increases. For the leading powers, strategic competition in cyberspace in this early digital age outstrips to a crucial extent that within physical geographic boundaries. This article observes that Cold War mentality and digital mentality will have mixed impact on foreign policy-making in the digital age, and that interactions between the nations whose foreign policy is simultaneously influenced by both mentalities will shape the emerging international order into one of uneasy peace, where there is no direct war and few proxy wars. It will rather be a scenario reflecting the dark side of globalization and downside of global governance, evident in the violation of agreements, double dealing, cyber-attacks, and technology decoupling between states. Although further digital advancement will indeed change international politics in ever more aspects, US–China bipolar configuration will nevertheless remain in place for at least for two decades, or perhaps longer.
Introduction
On 24 September, 2019, in his annual report ahead of the opening of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly’s 74th General Debate, Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his fear of, ‘the possibility of a great fracture: the world splitting in two, with the two largest economies on earth creating two separate and competing worlds, each with their own dominant currency, trade and financial rules, their own Internet and artificial intelligence capacities, and their own zero sum geopolitical and military strategies’.1 As incumbent UN Secretary-General, his speech testifies to the popular perception that a bipolar world dominated by strategic competition between the United States and China is emerging. US–China competition, however, will shape a different bipolar international order from that of the Cold War as they will compete for digital superiority rather than ideological expansion. This article elucidates the characteristics of the new bipolar order by analyzing the differences between them and those of the Cold War.
A New Cold War or Not
Predictions of a new Cold War between China and the United States have been around for years. In an article published on 21 February, 2014 in the FT magazine titled, ‘US vs. China: Is This the New Cold War?’, Financial Times reporter Geoff Dyer said in his observation that the Pentagon’s concept of AirSea Battle is ‘primarily about China’, that ‘[T]he few indications that have been made public suggest an approach that, if pushed too far, could be a manifesto for a new cold war.’2 A year later, Da Wei, the then director of the American Studies Centre at China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, the largest Chinese governmental research agency of its kind, said, ‘The possibility is increasing for China–US relations to deteriorate to a new Cold War. The new cold war refers to political and strategic hostility with the existence of economic and social relations.’3 In fact, more and more Chinese scholars have been predicting the competitiveness of China–US relations towards a new Cold War since the Obama administration’s adoption of the ‘Pivot to Asia’ strategy in 2010.4
Since the Trump administration’s release of its first National Security Strategy (NSS) in 2017, growing numbers of people have come to believe that a Cold War between China and the United States is inevitable. This official document defines China as United States’ major challenger, and cites the geopolitical rivalry between the major powers, rather than terrorism, as the main strategic issue.5 Belief in the coming of a new Cold War was strengthened by US Vice President Mike Pence’s speech at the Hudson Institute in October 2018.6 He accused Beijing of breaking international norms and acting against American interests, enumerating a long list of reproaches against China—from territorial disputes in the South China Sea to alleged Chinese meddling in US elections. The tone was overtly hostile and reminiscent of how United States used to speak of the Soviet Union. ‘This is the Trump administration’s “evil empire” speech’, China watcher Bonnie Glaser said. ‘This looks to me like deliberate confrontation’, she added.7
Pence’s speech was so blunt that many people interpreted it as a harbinger of a new Cold War between China and the United States. Explaining why a new Cold War is unavoidable, American foreign policy experts Charles Edel and Hal Brands said, ‘As tensions between Beijing and Washington harden, there is a growing fear that China and the United States are entering a new cold war—another multi-decade struggle to shape the international system.’8 After the US government expressed its support for Hong Kong protesters, former American Ambassador to Beijing Max Baucus said in September 2019, ‘I think we’re in a kind of cold war that is more insidious than the last cold war … The last cold war was easy, with MAD—mutually assured destruction—that brought transparency. This is much more difficult, much more pervasive.’9
Differing from the above views, there are some people, including myself, mainly academics, that disagree with the idea of an imminent new Cold War. Academics mainly stress the differences between China and the Soviet Union, even though both countries were under communist rule. Soon after publication of the NSS in 2017, I wrote an article arguing that ‘[W]hile America’s new policy towards China will inevitably have a strong impact on international politics, it does not necessarily mean a coming cold war. There are three fundamental differences between the Sino–US competition today and the US-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War.’10 Odd Arne Westad, a professor at Yale University and author of The Cold War: A World History, raised a similar argument, saying, ‘It is these differences, the contrast between the sources of Soviet conduct then and the sources of Chinese conduct now, that stands to save the world from another Cold War.’11 Gregory Mitrovich, a research scholar at Columbia University and author of Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956, asserted, ‘We are not in the midst of a global Cold War with China, nor do we face crises similar to Berlin or Cuba that risked escalating to World War III.’12
Public opinion in 2018 was highly receptive to the idea of a coming new Cold War, but it seemed in late 2019 to be heading toward a diametrical shift. Although the US–China trade war that started in March 2018 escalated to technology decoupling and financial conflicts in 2019, it did not culminate in an international ideological confrontation between China and the United States. This would imply that secular interests, rather than ideology, define the two countries’ strategic relations. Prognostications over more than 5 years of a new Cold War notwithstanding, it has nevertheless not happened. And despite the growing belief that an emerging bipolar world does not necessarily mean a Cold War, there are few discussions about what the characteristics of the new international order might be, or why. The following sections attempt to draw a general picture of the new order and provide a causal explanation for it.
Methods of Analyzing Digital Impact
Methodologically, we have to control for the same strategic factors observable in both the Cold War period and the present time, so as to avoid attributing major differences between the two periods to shared factors. Figuring out shared strategic factors helps us to understand the similar impact they exerted on international politics during the two periods. The similarities between them could mislead people into believing that a new Cold War is imminent.
Bipolar configuration, nuclear weapons, and ideological confrontation between communism and capitalism were the three major strategic factors that shaped the characteristics of the Cold War period. The bipolarity between the United States and the Soviet Union drove them to compete for global dominance and to compel other states to be their allies. Nuclear weaponry mutually deterred nuclear states from initiating direct war on each other, but left room for fighting proxy wars. Ideological confrontation made political parties of different ideologies regard one another as evil forces that they were bound to destroy as the Letzter Zweck.
Today, US–China bipolarity has replaced that between the United States and the Soviet Union. Furthermore, owing to nuclear proliferation, more countries now possess these ultimate weapons. The ideological difference between China and United Sates is similar to that between the Soviet Union and the United States. Therefore, the Cold War mentality shaped by these three factors will have similar impact on foreign policy making in both historical periods. The existence of the three factors explains the similarities between the Cold War period and the present day, but it is irrelevant to the differences between the two periods.
In order to understand the differences between nations’ behavior now and during the Cold War, we must examine the new strategic factors that were absent during the Cold War period. There could be many, but the two most important ones are internal ideological conflicts in Western countries and the rapid development of digital technology. Therefore, this article will examine how domestic ideological conflicts have reduced ideological impact on foreign policy-making, and how digital technology advancement has engendered the digital mentality that influences foreign policy making in the digital age.
Based on the above observations, this article proposes three hypotheses: (i) when ideologies or political systems are widely viewed as irrelevant to economic growth, as well as to national security, policy-makers will be less concerned about ideology in their policy-making; (ii) when digital technology advancement based on the Internet renders the digital economy and cybersecurity the most important aspects of national wealth and security, technological superiority, mainly digital superiority, becomes the core of strategic competition between the two superpowers in a bipolar configuration; (iii) as long as people of the Cold War generation hold national power, Cold War mentality and digital mentality will have mixed impact on foreign policy-making in the digital age. Interactions between nations whose foreign policy is simultaneously influenced by the two mentalities will shape the emerging international order, which I name an ‘uneasy peace’13 (See Figure 1).
Factors Influencing Policy Making and Shaping an Order of Uneasy Peace.
In today’s digital age, decision-making is influenced by both Cold War mentality and digital mentality. Cold War mentality rests on ideological biases and beliefs, while digital mentality rests on belief in the power of science and technology, especially digital capability. Digital mentality refers to the way of perceiving and responding to international strategic issues from the perspective of cybersecurity and digital economy. It believes that, in the digital age, cyberspace is strategically more important to national survival than is the geophysical world—land, ocean, and air—and that digital superiority leads to global domination based on a nation’s advanced digital economy and cybersecurity.
Because digital capability can vary dramatically in different countries, so, too, does the influence of digital mentality on each one. As regards the degree of digitalization, states can be divided into highly digitalized and under-connected states. Different degrees of digital capabilities, therefore, will lead to different policies in each country. However, this article aims to figure out the characteristics of the emerging international order; thus, it will examine the common characteristics of policy-making in the present day, and the differences between them and those during the Cold War.
Although this article treats digital technology advancement as a crucial factor shaping the characteristics of the emerging bipolar world, it assumes that technological progress can change the content and form of international politics, but not its essence. Competition for power is integral to international politics. For instance, both US–China competition over 5G standard of mobile communications and US–Soviet competition for ideological influence are driven by the motivation to achieve international dominance.
Based on the above assumptions and hypotheses, the next section of the article will expound upon the impact of bipolarity, nuclear arms, and ideological conflicts; and the ensuing section will discuss digital technology advancement. According to the description in these two sections, this article will examine the foreign strategies that major powers, namely China and the United States, have adopted because it is their strategies that exert the strongest impact on most countries in the world. Based on the understanding of major powers’ policy-making in the digital age, this article will draw a general picture of the emerging international order by describing its characteristics. Finally, the conclusion will present—rather than a summary of the preceding sections—a forecast of the digital world in which we will all live.
The Impact of Bipolarity, Nuclear Arms, and Ideological Conflicts
Since Cold War mentality is closely related to the three factors of bipolarity, nuclear arms, and ideological conflicts, this section examines their present status and impact. Although, as during the Cold War period, they still influence policy-making, it is to differing extents, especially the ideological factor. In comparison with the influence of the three factors during the Cold War, the nuclear arms have expanded due to nuclear proliferation, the influence of bipolarity is around the same, but the effect of ideological conflicts has dramatically diminished. Ideologically driven foreign policy, therefore, has become either anachronistic or ineffective.
First, the year 2019 marked the start of a new bipolarity between China and the United States. All international configurations are shaped according to the power structure between major states and the strategic relations between them. The current power structure shows that the United States and China are the world’s two most powerful states. In 2019, the United States spent over $700 billion and China spent $170 billion on their military. The third largest military budget—India’s, meanwhile, was $60.9 billion,14 less than one-tenth that of the United States and one-third that of China. The same year, the US and China’s nominal gross domestic product (GDP) exceeded $21 trillion and $14 trillion, respectively, while that of the third largest economy—Japan’s, was only $5.2 trillion,15 less than a quarter of America’s and slightly more than one-third of China’s. As regards diplomatic power, the United States and China rank as top two in terms of formal diplomatic relations and embassy personnel posted in foreign countries.16
As to strategic relations, almost all countries face the pressure of taking sides with either the United States or China. Many national leaders are cognizant of this situation. In May 2019, when expressing his wariness at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that small countries like Singapore do not want to be forced to choose between China and the United States.17 In August of the same year, French President Emmanuel Macron said in his address to the Ambassadors’ conference, ‘[T]he world will be centred around two main focal points: the United States and China. And we will have to choose between the two powers.’18 He also said, ‘[We] should prompt us to examine our own strategy, because the two nations that now hold the real cards in this affair are the Americans and the Chinese. We then have a choice to make with respect to this major change, this major upheaval: do we decide to become junior allies of one party or the other, or a bit of one and a bit of the other, or do we decide to be part of the game and exert our influence?’19
Second, nuclear proliferation further reduced the danger of direct wars between nuclear states. Since the end of World War II, nuclear weapons have prevented direct wars among all nuclear states. India and Pakistan possessed nuclear arms in the early 1990s, since which time their military conflicts have never escalated to full-scale war. The latest case in point is that of heightened tension between the United States and North Korea in 2017, which showed that the possession even of primitive nuclear weapons can prevent war between nuclear states.
Following North Korea’s test-firing on 5 April, 2017 of a medium-range ballistic missile, President Donald Trump said that the United States was prepared to act alone in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear threat.20 On 9 April, US Navy announced that it was sending a navy strike group to the Korean peninsula headed by the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier.21 On 18 April, it turned out that the Carl Vinson and its escorts were in the Indian Ocean, 3500 miles from North Korea.22 On 28 April, Trump stated, ‘There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea.’23 After the crisis eased, North Korea conducted its last nuclear test on 3 September, 2017, stating that it was of a thermonuclear weapon (hydrogen bomb).24 Since then, the United States has never threatened to launch a military attack against North Korea. In June 2018, President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held the first-ever summit between the two countries where they signed a joint statement on security guarantees for North Korea, on a new peaceful relationship, and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.25
Third, ideological impact on international affairs is far weaker now than during the Cold War. No ideology is as popular today as the liberalism promoted by the United States and the communism advanced by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Liberalism became the dominant global ideology after the Cold War, but its influence has dramatically declined since the surge of populism in Europe and of anti-establishmentism in the United States in 2016. The two hallmark events of this trend are Brexit and Trump’s victory in the presidential elections. Ideological conflicts have prevailed in many Western countries in the wake of these two events.26 Since 2016, right-wing and nationalist parties have gained a considerable number of seats in the European Parliament, to the extent of becoming the majority in the parliaments of Italy, France, Poland, and Hungary. Domestic ideological conflicts in Western countries have weakened their liberal-oriented foreign policy, thus dramatically reducing the global influence of liberalism.
China’s rise has transformed a unipolar world dominated by the United States into a bipolar one led by the United States and China. But China has not promoted an ideology as influential as the Soviet Union’s during the Cold War. China’s achievements over the last four decades are based on the pragmatic doctrine represented by Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Cat Theory’, namely, ‘[N]o matter it is a black or white cat, it is a good cat as long as it catches mice’.27 This doctrine enables the Chinese government to adjust its policies according to changes in needs rather than any ideological principle. The very nature of pragmatism prevents it from becoming a global political ideology. Since December 2017, the Chinese government has reiterated that it has no intention to export its political system to other countries.28
Although the Chinese government iterates the importance of ideology in domestic governance, it cautiously avoids international ideological disputes. For instance, since Vice President Mike Pence delivered his new Cold War speech directed against China in 2018, the heads of the US Congress, the State Department, and the Pentagon have all advocated an ideological confrontation with China in the international arena.29 Faced with America’s deliberate provocations, the Chinese government coolly responded with a solely rhetoric protest. The Chinese government fully understands that China’s model is too specialized to be popular in the world at large. Thus, it has not promoted its political model around the world in the way the Soviet Union did. ‘Some are talking about China in the same expansionist terms as the late USSR—these assessments are wrong’,30 Amitai Etzioni, a professor at George Washington University, said, ‘China shared this expansionist ideology but abandoned it decades ago. It has not invaded nor occupied any nation and although it prides itself on having developed its own kind of regime (authoritarian capitalism, my words)—it has shown few signs that it seeks to impose this kind of regime on other nations, let alone the world.’31
Ideology can no longer serve as a political base for strategic cooperation as it did during the Cold War. People familiar with the Cold War may think that the decline of the ideological role in international relations is just a natural adjustment by virtue of liberalism, and that it will revive in tandem with the intensification of US–China strategic rivalry. It would be difficult for this vision to become reality. First, China’s intention of avoiding ideological confrontation prevents the world’s being divided according to ideology. Second, the ‘America first’ doctrine prevents the United States from consolidating its relations with Western countries. This doctrine is based on the ideology of anti-establishmentism, which comprises protectionism, isolationism, and extreme nationalism.32 This doctrine has naturally caused America’s allies to suspect the US strategic reliability.33 The absence of a shared ideology and growing strategic suspicion between the United States and its allies prevents the kind of global ideological confrontation between two political camps that we were familiar with during the Cold War.
Political determinism, moreover, is losing its charm. Although liberalism and Marxism disagree with each other in many aspects, they nevertheless argue that it is the political system that determines social and economic achievements. During the Cold War, the Western and the Eastern governments identified themselves according to ideologies mainly because they believed that ideology-based political systems determined the fate of their countries. The Western countries’ victory in the Cold War, however, strengthened faith in the Western political system. Since the 2008 financial crisis, political determinism has failed to explain the international redistribution of power, and has been challenged by the fact that, despite utterly different political systems, both the United States and China have dramatically enlarged their strength gap with other major powers. For instance, Japan has sustained its ranking as the world’s third largest economy since 2010. Yet, America’s GDP increased from 2.64-fold that of Japan in 2008 to 4.1-fold in 2019, while China’s GDP grew from 63.7% to 2.7-fold that of Japan in the same period.34
The Impact of Digital Technology Advancement
Although digital technology dates back to the 1960s, its social impact began with the advancement of the Internet in the 1990s. Over the last 15 years, digital technology advancement has become crucial to international politics, as the digital economy has grown faster than any other sector of the economy, and cybersecurity has become the core national security issue. Future advances in digital technology will boost the influence of digital mentality on foreign policy-making in the emerging bipolar world.
(1) Based on the Internet, digital technology has created new approaches to accumulating wealth, and rapidly increased the digital economy’s share in major powers’ economies. Digital technology has turned data into economic resources with characteristics quite different from those of natural resources. Data constitute a kind of resource whereby the greater their consumption, the greater their overall increase, whereas the opposite is true of natural resources. The approach of the digital economy is to turn data into wealth, mainly relying on innovated digital technology to create and capture the value of data.35 Data value creation comprises data collection, data processing, and data analysis, while data value capturing comprises data monetization and consumption of products and services. Figure 2 illustrates the wealth creation process of the digital economy.
Wealth Creation Process of the Digital Economy.
The digital economy is becoming the main engine of the global economy, and especially of the US and China’s growth. According to research by Huawei and Oxford Economics, over the 15 years since 2001, the global digital economy grew 2.5 times faster than global GDP, reaching about $11.5 trillion in 2016, double that of 2001 and accounting for 15.5% of global GDP in that year.36 This research predicts that, by 2025, the digital economy will account for 24.3% of global GDP.37 The United States and China now have the world’s largest digital economies. According to a Japan Research Institute report, the digital economy accounted for 58.2% of United States’ GDP in 2016,38 and by 2018, the digital economy had accounted for 34.8% of China’s GDP.39 According to a UN Conference on Trade and Development report, the United States and China lead many areas of digital technological development wherein other countries trail far behind. The two countries account for 75% of all patents related to blockchain technologies, 50% of global spending on the Internet of things, 75% of the cloud computing market, and 90% of the market capitalization value of the world’s 70 largest digital platforms which include 68% from the United States and 22% from China.40
The advanced digital economy of the United States and China will widen further their economic gap with other countries. In 2018, United States’ GDP was $20 544 billion and China’s was $13 608 billion, accounting for 23.9% and 15.8%, respectively, of the world $85 910 billion GDP.41 The United States and China now account for about 40% of world GDP, a share that their fast growing digital economy will rapidly expand in the coming decade. From 1998 to 2017, the average annual growth rate of the real value of the digital economy was 9.9%, while the overall growth rate of the US economy was 2.3%.42 Recently, China’s digital economy grew even faster than that of the United States. By mid-2019, the world’s top-10 largest Internet companies were either American or Chinese: Alphabet Inc., Amazon, Tencent Holdings, Facebook, Alibaba, Netflix, Priceline, Baidu, Salesforce.com, and JD.com.43 All of them operate largely outside each other’s markets. The two digital economic superpowers will hence monopolize the world economy just as Boeing and Airbus do the large commercial aircraft market. This trend will exacerbate the international polarization between them and other countries.
As Internet-based digital technology innovation promotes vigorous development of the digital economy, the role of natural resources in international politics will wane. As highly digitalized countries can easily trade newly innovated digital products and services for natural resources, these countries will no longer need to compete to control them. As a result, countries relying on natural resource exports, such as Russia and Middle-Eastern states, will have less leverage in their relations with highly digitalized countries, especially the United States and China. The withdrawal of American troops from Syria in 2019 was just the beginning of a full American withdrawal from the Middle East.44 To win its digital competition against China, the United States will conserve the resources earmarked for controlling the Middle East and devote them to advancing its technological innovation capability.
(2) Digital technology based on the Internet renders cybersecurity the top national security issue for every country. Internet, like water and electricity, has become a basic necessity of modern life, and national survival is embedded in cybersecurity. Cybersecurity comprises cyber-attack, cyber intelligence, and cyber defence, which have now become daily procedures. Cyber-attacks occur not only between governments but also between governments and nongovernmental organization-backed hacking groups.45 Therefore, cyber defence has become a staple daily task of governments and civil institutions. Most digital technologies have ‘dual-use’ risks, namely, commercial technology that may be used for military purposes. The expansion of dual-use digital technology is accelerating, especially in emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and robotics, where the range of potential applications is not yet fully understood.46 The expansion of digital technology and the risk-averse nature of policy-making in the national security domain will inevitably increase the export controls of technologically advanced countries as a part of the technology decoupling policy.
Concerns about cybersecurity will drive the United States and China to lessen Internet and digital technology interdependence because Internet interdependence makes both sides vulnerable to the other’s strategic maneuvering. They will also go to great lengths to prevent other countries from gaining access to their high tech, and reduce digital dependence on other countries. For instance, the Chinese government warned, ‘Heavy dependence on imported core technology is like building our own house on the top of others’ walls: no matter how big and how nice it looks, it cannot survive a storm.’47 China will complete implementation of its BeiDou Navigation Satellite System in 2020, so freeing itself from reliance on America’s Global Positioning System (GPS).48 It is also trying to establish another root server system, which may divide the global Internet into two independent systems.49 The focus of US–China digital competition is on 5G technology because it is the new engine of the digital world. Currently, there are two main 5G technological achievements, represented by enhanced machine-type communication and narrowband Internet of Things.50 The former is led by American telecommunication equipment giant company Qualcomm, and the latter led by Huawei. Overall, China is ahead of the United States in this respect.51
Cybersecurity also provides grounds for justifying the idea of treating economic development as a national security issue. In 2014, the Chinese government adopted a comprehensive security strategy of treating economic security as the basis of national security.52 US NSS of 2017 stated that ‘economic security is national security’. In remarks made at the launch of the NSS, President Trump said, that ‘economic vitality, growth, and prosperity at home [are] absolutely necessary for American power and influence abroad.’53 The logic of economic security thus extends the scope of legitimate government intervention in foreign economic relations in the name of safeguarding national security. Most major powers will hence follow the United States and China in treating economic interest as a security issue.
Further development of the digital economy and cybersecurity will shape a digital mentality that influences the foreign policy-making of most countries, not just the United States and China. Digital technology advances that the United States and China have made will inevitably spread throughout the world, and few countries can avoid the digital competition between the two. Meanwhile, people’s online life increasingly becames more important, at least the same, important than that offline. Since the invention of the smartphone, both young and middle-aged people have been spending more and more time online.54 Online activities have increased people’s dependence on the Internet to an extent where they cannot function normally without the Internet or WiFi. Heavy reliance on the Internet compels worry about national cybersecurity on the part of every country’s decision makers. The development of Internet and other digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and blockchain, have transformed ways of connection between states, ways of wealth accumulation, and ways of warfare. Since digital technology and Internet will inevitably increase their impact on every country’s national security and development, digital mentality will become popular in policy-making. On the one hand, digital technology is viewed as a magic power; on the other hand, it is perceived as a monster too strong to be controlled. Figure 3 illustrates the digital mentality shaping mechanism.
Mechanism of Shaping Digital Mentality.
Digital mentality is a broader concept than cyber mentality, because it stresses not only the influence of technology advancement on cyber sovereignty and cybersecurity, but also the importance of digital superiority in general. Cyber mentality refers to thoughts about the application of Internet technologies that are mainly manifested as cybersecurity concerns. Digital mentality is mainly represented by concerns about both cybersecurity and digital economy, which includes all digital technologies, including Internet technology. That is to say, cyber mentality is a part of digital mentality.
Digital mentality and Cold War mentality may have political differences in many aspects, but the core difference is that digital mentality regards technological superiority, not ideological superiority, as the determining factor. Cold War mentality is just the opposite. Digital mentality drives decision-makers’ concern about competing states’ digital technological expansion as they fear the relative digital superiority of others, while Cold War mentality makes them worry about competitors’ ideological expansion as they fear the evil of others’ different ideologies. Policy-makers with a Cold War mentality are always proud of their ideology, while policy-makers with a digital mentality always feel that their digital capability is not strong enough.
Policy-making in the Early Digital Age
Cold War mentality emphasizes the importance of ideological threats and geopolitical control. It consequently urges decision-makers to identify enemies according to ideological conflicts and adopt geostrategies to contain enemies. Different from Cold War mentality, digital mentality encourages policy-makers to identify enemies according to where cyber-attacks and cyber intelligence come from, and to strive to gain digital dominance. Geopolitical thinking was introduced by Halford John Mackinder before World War I, when there was no large-scale aircraft technology, let alone Internet or other digital technology. In the digital age, the digital economy and cybersecurity replace natural resources and strategic locations as core national strategic interests. Geostrategy is based on a 2D vision, and digital mentality rests on a 4D scan. In a world dominated by the digital duopoly between the United States and China, Cold War mentality and digital mentality will influence the foreign policy of these two countries and also that of most countries of the world.
(1) As the strongest superpower, the United States will adopt a selective decoupling strategy to maintain its dominance in the coming digital bipolar age, rather than a comprehensive containment strategy as it did during the Cold War. America’s victory in the Cold War has rendered the Cold War mentality bipartisan thinking in the United States. It will, therefore, inevitably affect the Trump administration and even beyond. Economic sanctions, including decoupling policies, will be the main approach in dealing with ideologically different countries, including China and Russia, and will partially apply to those Western countries with serious economic conflicts with the United States, such as certain European Union (EU) members. Nevertheless, economic sanctions and decoupling policies will be selective rather than comprehensive; therefore, they are different from the Cold War containment strategy in two respects. First, ideological confrontation will not be the core. Second, the United States will not completely cutoff relations with its main rival—China, and maintain independence in insensitive fields.
Digital mentality will drive the focus of America’s decoupling strategy toward containing China’s technology development, specifically digital technology. This strategy aims to slow China’s technological progress, rather than destroy China, and keep a technological gap large enough for the United States to maintain its global dominance. In order to retain its technological edge over China, the United States will decouple China from selected, but not all technology sectors. The technology decoupling policy was implemented in December 2018 when the United States requested that the Canadian government should arrest Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese tech giant Huawei.55 In May 2019, the White House formally banned American firms from using telecoms equipment made by Huawei based on its alleged, ‘risk to national security’.56 The United States, however, has constrained the decoupling policy from applying to all technologies. For instance, on his many visits to US allies, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to convince them to ban only Huawei 5G equipment, but not other Chinese technologies.57
As ideology is no longer the major concern in policy-making, the United States prefers a unilateral strategy to a multilateral one. Most people in Western countries perceive China as a state-led capitalist country rather than a communist state. They do not feel the same ideological threat emanating from China as that from the Soviet Union. Melvyn Leffler, a historian specializing in the Cold War, says, ‘Beijing today may disparage Western democracy and tout socialism with Chinese characteristics, but all the world can see that it has embraced a capitalist mentality and a nationalist ethos. The Chinese are not championing of equality and justice, as the Soviets pretended to be, and they have little ability to exploit the discontent in neighbouring nations.’58 Therefore, it is impossible for the United States to form an international camp to contain China. A typical case is that of Pompeo’s failure to lobby America’s allies to block Huawei’s 5G for ideological reasons, as few responded positively to him.59 Those that did restrict Huawei’s 5G equipment—Japan, Canada, Australia, and Finland—did so due to concerns about technological competition or domestic politics, rather than because of ideological issues.
(2) As a junior superpower relative to the United States, China will adopt a selective resistant strategy rather than the full-scale confrontation strategy that the Soviet Union adopted during the Cold War. Cold War mentality has less impact on China’s foreign policy than on the United States, because China has drawn lessons from the Soviet Union’s defeat. This, however, does not mean that China is immune to the Cold War mentality. Chinese policy-makers are always alert to regime security and, in recent years, have frequently stressed the importance of ‘adhering to the view of the general situation from the aspect of consolidating the party’s ruling position’.60 Regarding ideological issues such as Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, and Taiwan which directly relate to the legitimacy of the Party’s rule, China must retaliate rhetorically against the United States, but not on ideological issues that are of no relevance to the country. Meanwhile, China will adhere to the nonalignment principle, so avoiding the danger of being drawn into war. China has not been involved in any war since 1980 or in any military clashes since 1989. China would not risk a war even to reunify Taiwan, let alone for any other issue.
Digital mentality has much stronger impact on China’s policy-making than on the United States’, mainly due to concerns about regime security. In 2016, China apprehensively stated, ‘The core technology of Internet is our crucial “lifeline” and our biggest latent danger is when it depends on others …… We must grasp the initiative of our Internet development to ensure cybersecurity and national security. Meanwhile we have to make breakthroughs in core and key technologies, striving to achieve “corner overtaking” in some fields and aspects.’61 In order to reduce the technological gap with the United States, China made technological R&D the core of its national strategy. Based on digital mentality, the Chinese government organized the Conference on Constructing a Digital China in 2018 on pacing up its digital development. At the conference, the Chinese government said, ‘accelerating the construction of a digital China is to adapt to the new historical direction of China’s development’.62 According to a report by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the Patent Cooperation Treaty filed 253 000 patent applications in 2018, of which 53 345 came from China-based applicants, second only to the United States, with 56 142 Patent Cooperation Treaty applications.63 In July 2019, China launched a new science and technology policy to ensure its technology sector advances faster than the United States’.64
As regards foreign policy, digital mentality drives China to develop more technological, especially digital, cooperation with other foreign countries. In April 2018, the Chinese government issued the policy on constructing the digital Silk Road with a view to developing more digital projects with other countries.65 From the economic angle, China will inevitably compete with the United States for global markets in digital products and services. China has excluded American Internet companies from its market for years. As to security, China will offer cybersecurity technology to those who cannot afford US technology due to either price or political considerations. China will, moreover, constrain its military expansion to avoid posing a security threat to America’s allies, especially technologically advanced countries. This policy aims to ensure that US allies, such as Germany, France, the UK, Israel, and South Korea, continue their technological cooperation with China. It seems to be an effective policy. For instance, the UK, the United States’ most loyal ally, still considers Huawei equipment as a necessary means in ensuring that 5G mobile networks are affordable, despite the campaign that the United States mounted on the basis of Chinese technology posing a security risk.66
(3) Faced with the digital bipolarity between the United States and China, most countries will adopt hedging strategies between the two countries that are guided by specific issues, instead of siding with one of them according to strategic relations. The hedging strategy differs from the neutrality or nonalignment strategy. A neutrality or nonalignment strategy means not taking sides between the two competing superpowers, while the hedging strategy refers to concurrently taking sides with both parties on different issues; for example, siding with China on economic issues and the United States on security issues. Hedging strategy is also the result of the interwoven influence of Cold War mentality and digital mentality. Cold War mentality drives most countries to take sides between China and the United States, while digital mentality encourages them to take sides according to pragmatic interests rather than to ideological doctrines. As the pragmatic interests of each country vary greatly, so do their hedging strategies.
With regard to economic issues, most countries side with China in opposing the United States’ protectionism and unilateralism. The most crucial economic dispute between major Western powers emerged over the global trade principle in 2017, shortly after Trump entered the Oval Office. Trump’s administration advocates protectionism blanketed with the term ‘fair-trade’, while European states and Japan adhere to the principle of free trade.67 As to the US–China trade war since 2018, most Western countries have ostensibly taken a neutral stance while privately encouraging China to take a tough stance due to worries that United States’ trade negotiations might get tougher generally if China were to yield.68 As to the redistribution of international financial power, China has also gained more support than the United States. In 2015, the UK took the lead in joining the China-led Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) without consulting the United States.69 Despite America’s anger at this move by the UK, most Western countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Australia, and Canada, followed suit and joined the AIIB later on.70 Japan is the only major developed country that sided with the United States on this issue. The United States labeled China a ‘currency manipulator’ in 2019, but had no supporters.71
On security issues, in general, more countries support the United States than China, but their support for the United States is nevertheless diminishing, and that for China is growing. The United States has many military allies and China has none, which is the main reason why more countries support the United States than China on international security issues. America’s confrontation with China in the South China Sea gained the support not only of related Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries but also of Japan and the UK. Nevertheless, there is a new trend, whereby the United States is less popular than it used to be as regards international security issues. According to a Pew survey, a median of 45% across the surveyed nations sees the United States as a major threat, up from 25% in 2013 to 38% in 2017.72 This survey also reveals that 39% of respondents across 38 countries consider the United States as a major threat to their countries.73 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s European members are drifting away from the United States as Washington presses them to increase their military expenditure.74 In November 2019, French President Macron expressed doubt about US-led NATO’s security maxim, saying, ‘What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.’75 Even more countries share China’s stance rather than America’s on certain international issues, such as the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
Regarding ideology, more countries have political systems similar to America’s than of China’s, but ever fewer countries care about either ideological similarity or diversity when choosing sides between the United States and China. As liberalism is losing its influence to populism in European countries and to anti-establishmentism in the United States, Western ideologies are becoming divided both domestically and internationally.76 There is no consensus among Western countries on major global issues, such as globalization, global governance, free trade, multilateral diplomacy, humanitarian intervention, or refugee protection. In 2019, Macron said, ‘The United States is in the Western camp, but it is not promoting the same brand of humanism. It is not as sensitised to climate issues, to equality, to social equilibrium as we are. It puts freedom ahead of everything else. This is a strong characteristic of American civilisation and explains our differences, even as we remain strong allies.’77 Although the declaration of the 45th G7 Summit briefly touched on the large-scale protests in Hong Kong and Moscow in 2019, most Western countries kept quiet on these two events for the sake of deeper economic engagement with China or to avoid unnecessary offence to Russia. For instance, neither the Japanese nor the South Korean government mentioned the protests.
An International Order of Uneasy Peace
The emerging bipolar world order will be shaped by interactions between major powers’ foreign policy that is made under the combined influence of Cold War mentality and digital mentality. This order can be studied from two aspects—state and characteristic. Its state will be reflected in a durable asymmetrical bipolarity and uneasy peace; its characteristics will be reflected in new international identities, re-prevalent sovereignty norms, and retrogression from multilateralism to unilateralism.
(1) The emerging asymmetric bipolarity will be durable and create a duopolistic digital world. Intensified US–China strategic competition tends to be protracted, and will probably carry on for at least two decades. Nuclear weapons will prevent the United States and China from destroying each other through direct war; digital advantages will ensure that their strength grows faster than that of other major powers; and domestic political divisions will be too weak to tear them up internally as was the case for the Soviet Union in 1991. Thus, it would be wrong to expect the emerging international bipolarity to be only a short-term configuration.
It will be very difficult for China to change the asymmetric bipolar configuration in two decades. The ultra-leftist media policy caused the coronavirus in Wuhan to spiral out of control in December 2019. This implies that ultra-leftism will impede the growth of China’s national strength in the coming years.78 China’s GDP growth has been slower each year since 2012.79 China’s current GDP is about two-thirds that of the United States, which means that China will not substantially reduce its gap with the United States should it be unable to achieve an annual average economic growth rate of two and half times larger than America's. The United States maintains a rate >2.5%, which it has over the last seven decades.
Due to its zero-sum nature, US–China competition will shape a duopolistic digital world with two centers. Although the EU issued the strategy in early 2020 of A Europe Fit for the Digital Age aimed at improving its digital competition capability, the EU’s decentralizing trend undermines the possibility of European countries’ creation of a cross-border European telecommunications company modeled after Airbus.80 Countries worrying about cyber threats from the United States or China will, respectively, purchase digital products and services from one of the two digital superpowers. For instance, Vietnam has displayed a disinclination to use Huawei 5G equipment and has played it safe by using Qualcomm 5G chip sets .81 Russia and Iran dare not purchase American equipment. Most countries will possibly consider using both Chinese and American digital systems according to different usages. The UK has set up a model for others on this issue by allowing Huawei to build part of the British 5G network.82
(2) The emerging international order will be one of uneasy peace, with no direct war and few proxy wars, but with rife with cyber-attacks between major powers. In the emerging bipolar world, the United States will be unwilling to assume the responsibility of global leadership like it did during the post-Cold War period when it enjoyed unipolar dominance. Trump has said, ‘The United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world’, arguing that the role of world police does not merit the cost.83 The States will dramatically reduce its military presence in the Middle East and focus on preventing China from becoming a leader in cyberspace and digital technology. Meanwhile, as a junior superpower, China is not capable of assuming global leadership. Even in the digital realm, China cannot comprehensively surpass the United States in the next two decades, so will not be able to establish global rules governing digital activities. Neither the G2 nor Chimerica idea suits the reality of US–China strategic competition. These two giants will provide neither unilateral nor joint global leadership for the emerging digital world.
In the absence of global leadership, existing international norms cannot be effectively enforced, and new norms cannot be set up; therefore, cyber violence will be rampant. Cyber-attack or sabotage will be the alternative forms of military attack, and will happen every day. Conducted online with no mass casualties, cyber warfare is far less of a worry to ordinary people than is traditional warfare. Therefore, political ethical constraints on cyber war will be far weaker than those on war. Frequent occurrences of cyber warfare will, moreover, inevitably accelerate digital technology innovation.
It is challenging to apply the concept of ‘balance of power’ to an explanation of the changes in international relations in the digital age. The different digital progresses of the United States and China will inevitably bring about changes in the balance of power between the two countries, but these changes will not cause a traditional war between them. Therefore, all major powers, including the United States and China, do not think it necessary for world peace to maintain the balance of power between the two superpowers. In addition, even if cyber warfare does happen every day, it does not cause direct casualties; therefore, major powers have no interest in reaching any substantial agreement on arms control like those witnessed in the history of the Cold War and early post-Cold War period. For instance, the United States suggested trilateral negotiations on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia and China after withdrawing from that treaty in 2019. However, neither China nor Russia responded positively.84
(3) New international identities will emerge in the digital age, along with the depoliticization of ‘the West’. After the Cold War, the term ‘the East’ disappeared from international relations discourse, and a similar fate likely awaits ‘the West’ in the coming years. Although it may still be applicable to cultural issues, increasing conflicts between Western countries will render the term ineffective in international politics. The 56th Munich Security Conference (MSC) of 2020 was themed ‘Westlessness’, reflecting the loss of a common Western identity. At the closing session, MSC Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger said, ‘[I]f we [Europe and the US] don’t listen to each other, we would have problems.’85 Germany has closer relations with Russia even than with the United States. A Pew survey in 2019 shows that Germans want more cooperation with Russia (66%) than with the United States (50%).86 Besides the increasing conflicts among Western countries, the growing ideological irrelevance of digital capability also make the concept of ‘the West’ obsolete in the digital age. For instance, China, Germany, South Korea, and Singapore have different political systems, but all are identified as highly digitalized states. Their international status is judged more according to their digital capability than to their political systems.
With the weakening of a geopolitical mentality, ‘the South’ and ‘the North’ will also be used far less in analyzing international relations. Brazil has renounced its status as a developing country, rendering the BRICS no longer an institution of South countries.87 Singapore has been ranked as a developed country for years, thus making ASEAN no longer a South–South cooperation body.88 Since China became the second largest economy in 2010, industrialized countries, especially the United States, have insisted that China should not be treated as a developing country.89 As an advanced digital country, China may indeed lose the identity of ‘developing country’ in the coming decade. If so, then many international relations will no longer be termed ‘South–South’ or ‘North–South’.
In the emerging digital world, new identities will emerge along with the changes in different domains. In the economic realm, ‘the developed’ and ‘the developing’ may be replaced, respectively, by ‘the highly digitalized’ and ‘the under-connected’. These two terms appear in a report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development.90 In the political domain, ‘the West’ is likely to be replaced by ‘the democracy’, and other countries may be categorized as ‘flawed democracy’, ‘hybrid regime’, or ‘authoritarian regime’ according to the democratic falsehood of their election system.91 As regards comprehensive strength, the countries that may be categorized as superpowers would include the United States and China; those deemed major powers would include Germany, France, the UK, Japan, and India; and middle and small states would include all other countries. To some degree, this category is like the three worlds categorization during the 1960–1980s.
(4) Cyber sovereignty norms may be established through two or three independent digital systems. Many countries, China and Russia in particular, regard information flow on the Internet as a cyber threat to their regime security, so are promoting the concept of ‘state sovereignty in cyberspace’.92 Although the competing countries headed by the United States oppose the idea of cyber sovereignty at the moment, they are also extremely anxious about cyber-attacks and cyber espionage.93 Trump has claimed to protect America’s national sovereignty on several occasions, including at the UN general assembly.94 Pompeo even argued, ‘The truth is that only nations able to protect their data will be sovereign.’95 India, Japan, and European states are now considering ways of governing data flows effectively, such as by designing limits on free data flows.96 Along with the increasing scale and frequency of cyber warfare, digital mentality will become highly influential in the coming decade. A strong digital mentality will drive major powers to agree on a set of cyber norms based on the notion of cyber sovereignty that governs cyber activities.
The concept of digital sovereignty emerged with the concept of cyber sovereignty. Europe currently lags behind the United States and China in digital technology. Faced with the American technology companies dominating their market and vacuuming up their personal data, Europeans from Berlin, Brussels, and Paris are crying out for ‘digital sovereignty’.97 Since the digital economy accounts for a growing share of its GDP, in 2019, France imposed a 3% levy on the digital revenue of Internet companies such as Facebook and Google.98 Some countries are targeting multinational digital companies, mostly American companies that evade local taxes. For instance, the Israeli government has initiated draft legislation on introducing a digital services tax modeled on the French policy.99 Digital sovereignty mainly concerns economic interests, but it is also a strong fortress of cyber sovereignty that relates mainly related to security interests. As progressively more countries become digitalized, the notion of digital sovereignty and cyber sovereignty will become attractive to the majority of UN members.
Cybersecurity threat and digital competition could dismantle the global Internet and create at least two, or maybe three, independent cyber systems. Out of strategic security concerns, China's BeiDou System, which the Chinese military has adopted will inevitably compete with US GPS in the civilian market.100 Some Chinese economists predict that America’s strategy of decoupling China will split global industrial chains and result in two competing markets.101 Since it launched its first satellite in 2005, the EU has made huge investments in Galileo, Europe’s Global Navigation Satellite System, which progressed more slowly than China’s BeiDou system.102 Some European states are considering building a cyber system adaptable to both Huawei 5G and American technology, taking into consideration America’s threat to stop intelligence cooperation with them due to their acceptance of Huawei 5G technology. Japan and South Korea already have their own independent cell phone networks with which foreign phones are incompatible. In December 2019, Russia successfully tested a country-wide alternative to the global Internet.103 Russia will not be the only state setting out to establish an isolated national Internet. China, Iran, and North Korea, faced with cyber threats from United States, have, to different degrees, already disconnected their Internet from the global one.
(5) Retrogression from multilateralism to unilateralism represents the trend of the emerging normative order that is rife with mutual suspicions and violations of international agreements. The unilateralism that the United States adopts exacerbates all major powers’ suspicions with regard to America’s arbitrary sanctions. Moreover, its unilateralism will inevitably become an example for many countries to follow in the belief that they will benefit from copying America.104 The prevalence of unilateralism will inevitably lead to more breaches of international commitments. Ironically, the Philippines, following America’s unilateralism, initially terminated the Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States in January 2020, so abandoning its military alliance with the United States.105 Owing to its nonalignment principle, many countries also regard China as an unreliable power. In January 2020, a Pew survey polled nearly 37 000 people across 33 countries, among which 64% said they had ‘no confidence’ in Trump and 43% checked the ‘no confidence’ box for the Chinese leader.106
Global governance will ebb, and technology protectionism will become normalized. Intensified digital competition among major powers will increase their fears about the vulnerability of global industrial chain interdependence. They will consequently prefer to shorten their international industrial chains, or even establish national industrial chains. The Trump administration regards globalization as harmful to the United States, while China’s support for globalization is limited to the economic sector. The strategic competition between them will prevent either leadership from establishing a multilateral regime that governs digital or cyber cooperation. Global governance will sag further due to more sanctions, restrictions, and decoupling between states. As technological innovation advantage is the core of national strength, major powers will prevent others from learning their own advanced technology. The United States has taken the lead in restricting academic exchanges with China.107 In order to protect their cybersecurity and digital economic interests, highly digitalized states will restrict technological exchanges with foreign countries either in person or through the Internet.
Conclusion
In the coming two decades, Cold War mentality and digital mentality will jointly influence foreign policy-making in most countries. Given that major powers will be ruled by people of the 1950s or 1960s, in addition to the bipolar configuration of the next two decades, Cold War mentality will drive these decision-makers to follow the principle of unilateralism. However, digital mentality will prevent policy-makers from copying Cold War strategies, and encourage them to adopt a strategy in favor of improving the digital economy and cybersecurity. The focus of US–China rivalry will be on establishing an international order that is in favor of their particular interests, mainly Internet dominance and digital superiority, rather than on annihilating each other. Therefore, they will instrumentally use their different ideologies to achieve material interests, rather than truly promote their own ideologies to the world. Furthermore, it is impossible for the United States and China to provide a unilateral or a joint global leadership, thus, the emerging international order will be more chaotic than that in the post-Cold War period, but less violent than that during the Cold War.
The US–China bipolar rivalry over digital superiority that started in 2019 will aggravate social polarization at the international level, further accelerating the shift of the world center to East Asia in the next two decades. It is possible for China, Japan, and South Korea to become more digitalized than most EU members in two decades. By 2040, East Asia is likely to have more smart cities than Europe. Along with that, the United States and China will widen their digital gap with the rest of the word, and the sum of their GDP and military expenditure will, respectively, account for more than half of that of the entire world in the next decade. The consolidation of the US–China bipolar configuration means the marginalization of most countries, and polarization between the highly digitalized and under-connected countries.
In replacing geopolitical mentality, digital mentality will become the most influential strategic thinking in major powers. Ideological and geopolitical foreign policies will fail to achieve their goals. Ideological and geopolitical identities, such as ‘the West’, ‘the East’, ‘the South’, and ‘the North’ will vanish, while digital and cyber identities, such as ‘digitalized’ and ‘under-connected’, will become popular. Most countries will adopt hedging strategies between the United States and China in the emerging duopolistic rivalry style of Boeing versus Airbus. ‘Selective’ will become the common characteristic of foreign strategies, such as decoupling, hedging, engaging, and partnering strategies.
The history of international relations is making a U-turn toward an uneasy peace characterized by the dark side of globalization and downside of global governance. Globalization will be mainly represented by its dark side, such as pandemics, cyber-attacks, Internet segmentation, digital taxes, economic sanctions, violations of international norms and commitments, and so on. Countries will value strategic credibility less and less as double dealing and defaults become the normal foreign conduct of most countries. Moreover, the concepts of cyber sovereignty and digital sovereignty will encourage countries to reduce their interdependence with other countries, shorten the industrial chain, and circumvent global governance. Because mutual suspicion between major powers will become prevalent, it will be difficult to reach multilateral agreements. To manage conflicts between them, major powers, especially the United States and China, will mainly rely on bilateral diplomacy rather than multilateral approaches.
Digital mentality is a brand new and evolving concept whose content and influence mechanism have not yet been fully comprehended. In any event, what is quite certain is that digital mentality will have an increasing impact on foreign policy-making and international relations. Future advancement of technology will boost such impact. Thus, this concept deserves further observation and research.
Footnotes
‘In “World of Disquiet”, UN Must Deliver for the People, Guterres Tells General Assembly’, 24 September, 2019, https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/09/1047172.
Geoff Dyer, ‘US v China: Is This the New Cold War?’, Financial Times, 20 February, 2014, https://www.douban.com/group/topic/49391156/.
Li Jingrui and Xiao Hong, ‘Da wei: zhongmei huo huaxiang “xin lengzhan” xu jianli changqi wending kuangjia’ (‘Da Wei: China and the US May Slip to “A New Cold War” and Need to Establish a Long Term Framework of Stability’), 6 June, 2015, http://world.people.com.cn/n/2015/0606/c1002-27113810.html.
Zhao Minghao, ‘Is a New Cold War Inevitable? Chinese Perspective on US-China Strategic Competition’, Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2019), pp. 373–4.
‘A New National Security Strategy for a New Era’, The White House, 18 December, 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/new-national-security-strategy-new-era/.
Alex Ward, ‘Pence Says US “Will not Back Down” from China’s Aggression in Fiery Speech’, 4 October, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/10/4/17936514/pence-china-speech-text-hudson.
Ibid.
Charles Edel and Hal Brands, ‘The Real Origins of the US-China Cold War’, Foreign Policy, 2 June, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/06/02/the-real-origins-of-the-u-s-china-cold-war-big-think-communism/.
Finbarr Bermingham and Wendy Wu, ‘China and US in New “Cold War” that is “More Difficult” than Soviet-era, Says Former US Ambassador to China’, South China Morning Post, 21 September, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3029735/china-and-us-new-cold-war-more-difficult-soviet-era-says.
Yan Xuetong, ‘Trump Can’t Start a Cold War with China, Even If He Wants to’, The Washington Post, 7 February, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/02/06/china-trump/.
Odd Arne Westad, ‘The Sources of Chinese Conduct: Are Washington and Beijing Fighting a New Cold War?’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 98, No. 5 (2019), p. 87.
Gregory Mitrovich, ‘A New Cold War? Not Quite: The U.S. Shouldn’t Worry about a Cold War with China—Yet’, The Washington Post, 21 March, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/03/21/new-cold-war-not-quite/.
Yan Xuetong, ‘The Age of Uneasy Peace’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 98, No. 1 (2019), pp. 40–6.
‘The World’s Biggest Defence Budgets in 2019’, 13 June, 2019, https://www.army-technology.com/features/biggest-military-budgets-world/.
‘Projected GDP Ranking (2019–2024)’, Statistics Times, 13 November, 2019, http://statisticstimes.com/economy/projected-world-gdp-ranking.php.
‘Zhongguo zhuwai shilingguan zongshu chao Meiguo cheng quanqiu diyi, geng shuang: bushi weile yu shui jiaoliang, he shui panbi’ (‘The Number of Chinese Embassies and Consulates Surpasses America’s as No. 1 in the World, Geng Shuang: Not to Compete with Others’), 8 January, 2020, https://world.huanqiu.com/article/3wXBGaQfaWk.
Chen Weihua, ‘US Should Stop Forcing Nations to Take Sides’, China Daily Global, 25 June, 2019, http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201906/25/WS5d117315a3103dbf14329fe4.html.
Emmanuel Macron, ‘Ambassadors’ Conference-Speech by M. Emmanuel Macron, President of the Republic’, 27 August, 2019, https://lv.ambafrance.org/Ambassadors-conference-Speech-by-M-Emmanuel-Macron-President-of-the-Republic.
Ibid.
‘Trump Ready to “Solve” North Korea Problem without China’, 3 April, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39475178.
‘North Korea Missiles: US Warships Deployed to Korean Peninsula’, 9 April, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39542990.
Christopher P. Cavas, ‘Nothing to See Here: US Carrier Still Thousands of Miles from Korea’, Defense News, 17 April, 2017, https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2017/04/17/nothing-to-see-here-us-carrier-still-thousands-of-miles-from-korea/.
‘Trump Fears “Major, Major Conflict” with North Korea’, 28 April, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39741671.
Ted Kemp, ‘North Korea Hydrogen Bomb: Read the Full Announcement from Pyongyang’, 3 September, 2017, https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/03/north-korea-hydrogen-bomb-read-the-full-announcement-from-pyongyang.html.
‘Joint Statement of President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea at the Singapore Summit’, The White House, 12 June, 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/joint-statement-president-donald-j-trump-united-states-america-chairman-kim-jong-un-democratic-peoples-republic-korea-singapore-summit/.
Florence Schulz, ‘How Strong Is Right-Wing Populism after the European Elections?’, Euractive, 4 June, 2019, https://www.euractiv.com/section/eu-elections-2019/news/how-strong-is-right-wing-populism-after-the-european-elections/.
Fan Di, ‘Reflecting on Deng Xiaoping’s “Cat Theory” of Economic Reform’, The Epoch Times, 18 October, 2016, https://www.theepochtimes.com/reflecting-on-deng-xiaopings-cat-theory-of-economic-reform_2173740.html.
‘President Xi Says China Will Not Export Its Political System’, 1 December, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-parties/president-xi-says-china-will-not-export-its-political-system-idUSKBN1DV4UM.
Walter Russell Mead, ‘Mike Pence Announces Cold War II’, Wall Street Journal, 8 October, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-pence-announces-cold-war-ii-1539039480.
Amitai Etzioni, ‘China is Not the Soviet Union’, The National Interest, 13 August, 2018, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-not-soviet-union-28642.
Ibid.
Lily Rothman, ‘The Long History behind Donald Trump's “America First” Foreign Policy’, Time, 28 March, 2016, https://time.com/4273812/america-first-donald-trump-history/.
Max Boot, ‘Why Would Any Ally Trust the United States Ever Again?’, The Washington Post, 6 September, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/why-would-any-ally-trust-the-united-states-ever-again/2018/09/05/8c8e093e-b125-11e8-aed9-001309990 777_story.html.
‘2008 nian shijie geguo zuixin GDP paiming’ (‘Global GDP Ranking in 2008’), 14 November, 2019, https://wenku.baidu.com/view/0fa6b157bb0d4a7302768e9951e79b89680268bb.html; ‘2019 nian quanqiu GDP paiming’ (Global GDP Ranking in 2019), 7 March, 2019, https://wenku.baidu.com/view/ebeca1a2b80d6c85ec3a87c24028915f814d84c0.html.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Digital Economic Report 2019: Value Creation and Capture Implications for Developing Countries (Geneva: United Nations, 2019), p. xvii.
Huawei and Oxford Economics, Digital Spillover--Measuring the True Impact of the Digital Economy (Oxford: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., 2017), p. 8, https://www.huawei.com/minisite/gci/en/digital-spillover/files/gci_digital_spillover.pdf.
Ibid., p. 6.
Yuji Miura, ‘China’s Digital Economy—Assessing Its Scale, Development Stage, Competitiveness, and Risk Factors’, Pacific Business and Industry, Vol. 18, No. 70 (2018), p. 7.
Liu Yuying, ‘2018 nian zhongguo shuzi jingji guimo dadao 31.3 wanyi yuan’ (China’s Digital Economy Reached RMB 31.3 Trillion’), 19 April, 2019, http://www.ce.cn/cysc/tech/gd2012/201904/18/t20190418_31890416.shtml.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Digital Economic Report 2019: Value Creation and Capture Implications for Developing Countries (Geneva: United Nations, 2019), p. 2.
World Bank, ‘World Development Indicators Database’, 23 December, 2019, https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/GDP.pdf.
The US Bureau of Economic Analysis, ‘Measuring the Digital Economy: An Update Incorporating Data from the 2018 Comprehensive Update of the Industry Economic Accounts’, April 2019, https://www.bea.gov/system/files/2019-04/digital-economy-report-update-april-2019_1.pdf.
Andrew Bloomenthal, ‘World's Top 10 Internet Companies’, Investopedia, 25 June, 2019, https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/030415/worlds-top-10-Internet-companies.asp.
John Hannah, ‘US Deterrence in the Middle East is Collapsing’, Financial Times, 30 October, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/30/u-s-deterrence-in-the-middle-east-is-collapsing-syria-iran-saudi-arabia-trump/.
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