Reactions to the recent onslaught of cheap Chinese electric vehicles ( EVs ) have ranged from , panic , to , dismissal. While anxiety is not important in foreign plan, there is reason for concern.
After all, China , produced , 30 million cars in 2023 and the European Union ( EU) is essentially , watching , as their auto markets become flooded with cheap Chinese cars. Although tariffs on Chinese-produced Batteries from the Trump era have protected American areas, the risk of their market penetration is also present.
However, reactions should n’t be one of panic or denial. Otherwise, they should be reasonable. China is no longer making wastes and should be taken seriously because it is the place where low plastic toys come from much mocked as the place where it is made.
While their models does not be , entirely , up to the standards of some Western companies, they are generally speaking good cars which happen to be incredibly affordable ( due in large part to China’s no- observable work protections and small pay, Beijing has China ‘s , highest , daily minimum wage, at$ 3.70 per hour ).
America’s corporatism is, for now, doing its work and keeping our business free of Taiwanese Vehicles. With a lower- paid but higher- producing grownup labor force , twice , the size of the whole American population, the tariff is equivalent to putting a band- aid on a flood. This is made even more acute by the EU’s largely surrender to the Chinese auto industry.
The fact that we have reached this cliff is just that, for years, the crafters of America’s foreign scheme operated along greatly mistaken lines of thought. We are at this point in particular thanks to two things.
The first was that, with exposure to democracies, China would itself democratize ( this line of thought was extended to Russia in the 1990s as well ). This notion was essentially accepted as gospel by the American establishment’s foreign policy base for decades.
One individual, who worked at high levels in both the Reagan and H W Bush administrations,  , wrote , in 1999 that China was no longer a totalitarian state and that democratization was inevitable. China was a totalitarian dictatorship in 1999, and it has arguably grown even more so.
The second line of thought was that, post- Cold War, America would be capable of keeping up a unipolar world , ad infinitum.
30 years of democracy promotion and military overextension were fueled by the claims that our military was able to fight two major wars at once. The notion that we had reached the end of history, that liberal democracy was the final stop and would ultimately not be overtaken or seriously challenged for supremacy, was the subject of much hay.
This does not imply that all American policymakers have considered these issues. Richard Nixon had no idea what to do with the country becoming a democracy when he first arrived in China. It would not have been in their interests to try to change their communist tune because of how they operated inside their country.
China, then the most populous nation in the world, was in Nixon’s view inevitably going to rise, why not use this growing giant as a weight against the Soviets? Additionally, he was significantly less interested in creating a unipolar one and was comparatively uninterested in perpetuating the bipolar world, which he found to be too cumbersome.
Instead, Nixon , envisioned , a multipolar world with power centers in America, the Soviet Union, China, Western Europe and Japan. This was borne out of the realization that the planet has been in ruins for decades due to the bipolar world.
Even though Nixon could not have predicted what a world without polarization would bring, we do: it has required 30 years of unending war to keep it going, and even that effort is increasingly reminiscent of an attempt to grasp sand in one’s hand.
Nixon, with Henry Kissinger, mostly made foreign policy separate from the traditional establishment, which Nixon did not trust. And indeed, after they left office, the traditional ideas returned.
However, if America had continued to believe that multipolarity was safer, we might not have been surprised by the recent boom in Chinese electric cars or by China’s continued totalitarian rule.
Instead, by sticking to the notion that a unipolar world is ideal but expecting a bipolar world, all of the establishment’s efforts have been centered on Europe, as in their worldview America’s enemy when the world was bipolar, Russia, must be stopped in whatever it attempts.
However, this emphasis on Russia has come at the expense of ignoring China, which has a ten-fold larger economy than Russia.
Some in Washington DC may argue that they are doing both, but the recent aid package , proves , this to be false: nearly two- thirds of the “national security package” focuses on Ukraine while only a paltry 8 % goes toward the” Indo- Pacific region”.
All of this implies that the United States should work toward a multipolar world. Indeed, such a goal would be incredibly ostentatious, requiring world- building in places we have no business doing so.
Given that America and China are militarily and economically ahead of any other nations, as former Trump administration official Elbridge Colby has stated, the world is not currently multipolar.
However, the world is fundamentally changing, and many of the current measures to stop China’s rise are ineffective for long-term planning.
Former president Donald Trump ‘s , proposed , 100 % tariff on every imported Chinese car will certainly keep them out of the US, but they will not solve the broader issues brought to the fore by China’s rise.
To do that, we must first confront it. If we take China seriously and demonstrate that we are willing to fight for our country’s interests, we could prevent war and prevent the emergence of either a true bipolar or multipolar world ( as soon as other states or state groups join the party )
The shock over China’s EV revolution wo n’t be the last that the Chinese inflict on Americans if we are n’t going to show that we will compete, or if we do n’t address the reality of China’s rise as-is.
Anthony Constantini works for Defense Priorities as a contributing fellow.