The Asian Dream: Part One
Investigating the geopolitical implications of the COVID-19 pandemic: fall of the old order.
The stench of meat and animal excretion had infiltrated his nostrils. He moved along the narrow aisles of butcher shops where all kinds of exotic meat were displayed. At one end lay baby crocodiles and snakes, and on the other end, one could see mutilated pangolins. There were also bloody porcupines on display. The market was wet and warm because of the congested area. He was here to buy some eggs and chicken. He approached his regular butcher, an old, bald man who had lived far too long. He bought what he wanted and went back home to his family. A week later, he was rushed to the hospital with a high fever and a lost sense of taste. His body was aching menacingly as if it would explode any minute. He had no way of knowing that in another week his family would be in the same hospital being treated with the same disease. In another couple of days, his whole neighbourhood would have experienced the fever and then the whole city. The country would come next as hospitals would start running out of beds. And then, at last, the world would be infected by this deadly virus which would come to be known as the coronavirus.
At the time of writing this article, over 1,600,000 people had been infected with the coronavirus (COVID-19) and the numbers are still piling. By the time you read the last word of this article, the numbers would have surged past 2 million or even hit 3 million. COVID-19 has taken the whole world by storm. It has become a major worldwide threat and has even been compared to the outbreak of influenza in 1957 by many scientists and doctors. Instead of a gradual increase in the cases, there seems to be an exponential shoot in the numbers as every day appears worse than the previous one.
The virus has hit the Western countries the most severely, even though it originated in a wet market in the centre of the Wuhan province of China. Bizarrely, as a matter of fact, the Asian countries seem to have handled this virus much more efficiently than the West even though Asia is home to the two most populated countries, one of them being China itself. This pandemic has played havoc in the USA, threatening its strong position in the global scenario and effectively putting it on a back foot.
Following the First World War, the United States was catapulted to the world scene and was for the first time recognized as a global superpower. During this unprecedented rise of USA, Asian countries tumbled and crumbled to the floor at breakneck speed. The once prosperous East was now dealing with a rotting economy and its two most influential countries found themselves buried deep in colonialism. As USA found itself on the upper rung of the global hierarchy, the Asian countries found themselves on one of the lowest. However, today peculiarly Asia has got a chance to climb up the power ladder and revive its medieval glory in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unlike any other pandemic that has hit the world, COVID-19 has threatened the very social order of humans, shown the potential to alter the global politics, and tilt the power dynamics towards Asia once and for all. This alteration will not be caused because COVID-19 has proven to be stronger than the rest, but simply because today global politics and power games have made us more vulnerable than what they would have a century ago. In this regard, USA is in more danger of losing its title of the most influential country today than it would have been fifty years ago.
Today, amidst the looming threat of COVID-19, the Asian powerhouses have the chance to take USA’s place in the world order. However, the rate at which China is losing the trust of other countries in the world, it is also possible that China might fall out of the race to be one of the most influential nations in the world. Another country might just become the driving force behind Asia’s rebirth.
The wet markets of China
The COVID-19 epidemic broke out in a wet market in the middle of the Wuhan province of China. This particular wet market was selling exotic meat which was presumably an illegal sale of wildlife goods. COVID-19 has not been the first virus to break out in a wet market of China. In 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) which nearly infected 8,000 people and killed 774 also broke out in a wet market in the Guangdong province, China. Wet markets have been known to be the most famous sources of infectious diseases. However, the Chinese government reasons that it is not possible to do away with the wet markets as they provide high economic growth and stability.
Wet markets are traditional markets of China. Even after the normalization of supermarkets across the country, the Chinese citizens still prefer to go to these wet markets and buy food. The demand for wet markets mainly rests in the freshness of the food which they are able to sell. Many scholars have suggested that the reason why wet markets are able to survive in competition against the standardised supermarket chains is the proximity to the consumers and the inherent cheap prices in which goods are dealt in.1 However, keeping all this in mind, wet markets seem to be dangerous as they have been marked as potential sources for new diseases and viruses. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was ascertained that “61% of all known human pathogens and 75% of all emerging diseases were zoonotic”, that is derived from animals, and which later can be transmitted to humans.2
This discussion about wet markets is important not only because it sheds light on the eating habits of the Chinese population, but also because wet markets serve as an essential accelerator to the Chinese economy. The chart given below represents the export quantity of meat in all the countries where there is a high concentration of wet markets. The amount of meat export which is carried out in these countries can be regarded as being in a direct relationship with the potency of the wet markets as most of the meat is closely affiliated with them.
It can be seen that the export of meat from China is higher than any other country. Indonesia follows closely behind. This signifies that wet markets are highly important economic institutions in China and Indonesia. Their contribution cannot be neglected or ignored.
In early April, China decided to reopen its wet markets despite the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. The next day many of the media houses flashed reports saying that this was a good decision undertaken by the Chinese government. According to one of The Washington Post articles, reopening wet markets is good because the Chinese citizens regard it as a more sustainable option than supermarkets.3 However, one needs to keep in mind that most of the diseases are zoonotic and wet markets serve as the perfect feeding ground for them. In this regard, wet markets are at a greater risk than supermarkets even if they are not indulging in any wildlife sale. It is especially harmful when there is already a threat which was introduced in a wet market in the first place. But reopening wet markets in China is a good move for the Chinese government because of a totally different reason. Reopening wet markets ensures that the economy at last gets breathing space and the meat export of China increases considerably for them to restart exercising their soft power and make the current geopolitical situation advantageous to them. It is a risk that the Chinese government is willing to take because after all they want to make a mark on the world and rise above the West.
Chinese soft power and the advantage of the COVID-19 crisis
People’s Republic of China is a Communist state with capitalist economic practices. However, this was not always the case. China reformed itself in 1979 and liberalized its economy to welcome global investment. The capitalist approach ensured an economic growth of 9% till 1990 and it rose to 10.4% in the next twenty years.4 Today, China boasts a share of roughly 19% in the world GDP based on the purchasing power parity (PPP) and it is second to none. USA and India follow with roughly 14% and 8% share respectively.5
China knew that it had a good chance to take control of the geopolitical situation of the world after its reform. It started exercising soft power that still continues till date. Since its reform in 1979, China has invested in many developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. In the year 2018, USA imported goods worth 18.4 billion dollars from China6 and this year the Chinese global provider of information and communications technology, Huawei went to UK to tender for the 5G contract. China has maximized its exports, not only of goods, but also services. They have started active cultural exchanges and have also globalized their educational institutions to accept foreign students and spread the Chinese culture as means to gain influence and make their global political position stronger. China has not only stretched its hand of soft power to USA, Europe and the emerging markets in Asia, but has also invested in down-trodden economies in Africa and Latin America. There are over twenty agricultural training centers run by the Chinese in Africa and in 2017 the Chinese minister of foreign affairs declared that China will “offer ten-thousand scholarships to African officials over the next decade.”7
In 2015 the Chinese government introduced their “Made in China 2025” initiative to maximize and upgrade their manufacturing strength in ten economic sectors. The manufacturing in these ten sectors would be supported by the government and would essentially aim to make China a global power.8 However, this initiative made China run into bigger problems. The Congressional Research Service report on China’s economy elucidates these problems:
In 2017, the Trump Administration launched a Section 301 investigation of China’s innovation and intellectual property policies deemed harmful to U.S. economic interests. It subsequently raised tariffs by 25% on $250 billion worth of imports from China, while China increased tariffs (ranging from 5% to 25%) on $110 billion worth of imports from the United States. Such measures have sharply decreased bilateral trade in 2019. On May 10, 2019, President Trump announced he was considering raising tariffs on nearly all remaining products from China. A protected and escalating trade conflict between the United States and China could have negative consequences for the Chinese economy.9
United States’ imposition of tariffs on China put the latter on the back foot. In this time of crisis, when the global economy is already in too deep, China seems to be scrambling to get on top of everyone else and redeem what it lost due to the trade war with USA.
Today, the Chinese government has tightened its reigns on its citizens by keeping them on a short leash and not letting them wander out. As a matter of fact, this is highly possible and quite effective as China is a dictatorship. By implementing a method of this kind, China has ensured that the epidemic does not spread at a rapid rate, at least within the country. China knows that if there is a time to rise above the West and make its mark on the world as the strongest power, then this is it.
Although the Chinese government has taken all possible measures to restrict the transmission of the virus within China, it has made the lives of the other countries harder. Before the pandemic flowed into Italy, it had donated personal protective equipment (PPE) to China, who at that time was in desperate need of the PPE. Later, when Italy became the worst infected by COVID-19, China declared that it would return the PPE that Italy had donated. However, at the last-minute, China backtracked and instead sold the same PPE back to Italy.10 What did China achieve by doing this? It simply supported its economy, however, to the detriment of another country’s economy; and on top of everything else, the world’s trust.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 cataclysm was in fact held onto by China for a long time. The government released the figures of the infections quite late. The WHO played along the “Chinese line” and did not play the “central role it should in the COVID-19 crisis.”11 WHO did not only begin playing to China’s tune, but it also ignored an email sent by the Taiwanese authorities on December 31, 2019, regarding an outbreak of “atypical pneumonia in Wuhan, China” which closely resembled the outbreak of SARS in 2003.12
This was a direly short-sighted and shoddy behaviour on the part of the WHO. It played on its personal bias of not recognising Taiwan as a sovereign state and jeopardised the lives of the larger population of the world. Even after releasing the figures of the COVID-19 confirmed cases in the country, China allegedly held back figures. In March of this year it was announced that over 21 million cell phone accounts and 840,000 landlines were cancelled in China.13 On December 1, 2019 the Chinese authorities had made it mandatory to sync bank accounts and the social security account with the cell phone.14 Therefore, if 21 million cell phone accounts and 840,000 landlines were cancelled, that means those many social security accounts were cancelled; and social security account is cancelled only when the holder of that particular account ceases to exist. Yes, many people might have changed their cell phone numbers and therefore, the previous cell phone number would have been cancelled. Yes, there would have most certainly been many natural deaths. But it still places the COVID-19 death count at a much higher number and consequently it can well be guessed that the COVID-19 count for confirmed cases would also be higher.
Many of the media reports also alleged that the Chinese government tried to influence the German government to praise China over how well it had handled the COVID-19 outbreak. The German foreign ministry resisted China’s demands. Needless to say, China denied the allegation of entreating praise in regard to its handling of COVID-19.1516
At this time in the story of this threatening pandemic, China- intentionally or unintentionally- turned COVID-19 into a competent biological weapon. China is trying to increase its economic strength by playing a “soft power” game in view to achieve global recognition and trump USA. However, there is a high chance that this plan will backfire; it will destroy China and mark it a villain in the eyes of the West. China will not only lose trust, but due to that it will also lose its economic prowess and its capacity to overcome its failures.
The American predicament
Since the First World War, the USA has always dominated the world stage. However, along with the presumed destruction of its own state, it is possible that China will drag down the mighty giant with it once the COVID-19 threat has ceased. Naturally, the extent of the USA’s destruction depends on how long this pandemic is there to last. The economy is already on its way into recession and the unemployment rate has been projected to be disastrous. It goes without saying that the USA is mainly losing its steam because of the exponential increase in its COVID-19 cases over the last few weeks. The numbers are growing by thousands every day and it will most probably take a while to stop.
USA is the single largest economy in the world with its GDP worth over 18 trillion dollars (as per 2015 figures from the World Bank).17 USA is the single largest export market for a lot of developing countries around the world, from Latin America to Southeast Asia.18 But all this is possible to change in the aftermath of the COVID-19 recrudescence.
When a recession engulfs a country, it is very common to see people out of jobs. USA has had a lot of problems with its economy, from the Great Depression in the early twentieth century to the financial crash last decade. The recession in the 1990s was not directly related to the United States, however, it did impact the economy at the time. The 2008 financial crash caused a great increase in unemployment. However, all these seem to be small obstacles when compared to the amount of damage COVID-19 has caused the American economy in only four weeks.
The chart above shows the scope and the unrealized capacity of the epidemic to cause overall harm to the USA. The heavy losses that it is going to have to deal with in the backwash of COVID-19 is going to majorly slow it down. USA is bound to come down a few notches in the global hierarchy. If the USA restarts its economy during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Imperial College London suggests, it will have to wield a cost of 2 million deaths of its citizens.19 In this respect, any course of action taken by USA is going to cause damage to itself. Restarting the economy is going to get people killed and staying put is going to destroy their jobs. Either way, it cannot escape a huge economic setback.
As it has been ascertained, China and the USA are most likely to destroy each other because they are more interdependent than what has been realised. In which case, the question remains:
If not China, then who?
© Anurag Inamdar, 2020
References
Zhong, S., Crang, M. & Zeng, G. Constructing freshness: the vitality of wet markets in urban China. Agric Hum Values 37, 175–185 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09987-2.
Wu, T., Perrings, C., Kinzig, A. et al. Economic growth, urbanization, globalization, and the risks of emerging infectious diseases in China: A review. Ambio 46, 18–29 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-016-0809-2.
China Is Reopening Its Wet Markets. That’s Good. Fickley, David. The Washington Post. April 6, 2020. Retrieved on April 17, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/china-is-reopening-its-wet-marketsthats-good/2020/04/03/6c12a474-7610-11ea-ad9b-254ec99993bc_story.htm.
Lin, Justin Yifu, China and the Global Economy. Luncheon Address. Retrieved from http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/Lin.pdf.
GDP based on PPP, share of world. International Monetary Fund (IMF). Retrieved from https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPSH@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WE OWORLD/USA.
The People’s Republic of China, Imports. Office of the United States Trade Representative (https://ustr.gov/). Retrieved on April 11, 2020.
Chinese Soft Power in Africa, Campbell, John. July 20, 2017. Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved from https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinese-soft-power-africa. Retrieved on April 12, 2020.
China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States. June 25, 2019. Congressional Research Service (CRS Report).
Ibid.
China forces Italy to buy same coronavirus supplies it had donated to Beijing a few weeks ago. Chakraborty, Barnini. April 9, 2020. Fox News. Retrieved on April 15, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-italy-coronavirus-supplies-buy-back.
Is COVID-19 a Geopolitical Game-Changer? Duclos, Michel. Institut Montaigne, March 24, 2020. Rerieved on April 18, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/blog/covid-19-geopolitical-game-changer.
The facts regarding Taiwan’s email to alert WHO to possible danger of COVID-19. Taiwan Centers for Disese Control. Retrieved on April 18, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/Detail/PAD-lbwDHeN_bLa-viBOuw?typeid=158.
Is China hiding COVID-19 death toll? 21 million cell phones disappeared, why? Majumder, Bhaswati Guha. International Business Times. March 29, 2020. Retrieved on April 18, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-hiding-covid-19-death-toll-21-million-cell-phones-disappeared-why-41580.
Ibid.
Beijing tried to make German officials praise China over coronavirus outbreak – report. AFP. Hong Kong Free Press (https://hongkongfp.com/). April 12, 2020. Retrieved on April 19, 2020. Retrieved from https://hongkongfp.com/2020/04/12/beijing-tried-to-make-german-officials-praise-china-over-coronavirus-outbreak-report/.
China denies seeking virus praise from Germany. AFP. France 24. April 13, 2020. Retrieved on April 19, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.france24.com/en/20200413- china-denies-seeking-virus-praise-from-germany.
The Global Role of the U.S. Economy: Linkages, Policies and Spillovers, Policy Research Working Paper 7962. February, 2017. Kose, M. Ayhan. Lakatos, Csilla. Ohnsorge, Franziska. Stocker, Marc. The World Bank Group. Retrieved on April 21, 2020.
Ibid.
The U.S. Economy Is Uniquely Vulnerable to the Coronavirus. March 30, 2020. Blyth, Mark. Foreign Affairs. Retrieved on April 21, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/americas/2020-03-30/us-economy-uniquely-vulnerable-coronavirus.