Opinion Jabin T Jacob writes: Spy balloons and China’s narrative war against America’s superpower status

Clearly, there is an escalation in confrontation from the economic front in US-China relations to their security front. The balloon, which the US had tracked since its take-off from China’s Hainan island, is now thought to have been deflected off course by weather conditions. But the US has also argued that while unplanned, the Chinese sought to make use of the opportunity to gather intelligence.

It is easy to focus on the security implications of the confrontation and to fear a step-up to actual physical confrontation — both the India-China confrontation of 2020 along their disputed boundary and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggest that big countries are not shy of risking kinetic conflict.

However, it might be more worthwhile in the current instance to look at how China is shaping a particular narrative around US behaviour.

The frequent Chinese references — such as Wang’s at Munich — to Washington’s apparent disregard of norms of international relations and international law achieve several objectives for the Chinese. One, it draws attention to or serves as reminders of actual instances of American violations of international law and norms of which there are admittedly plenty — from the invasion of Iraq on false pretences to Abu Ghraib and other CIA black sites, for example.

Two, it deflects attention from similar Chinese violations — such as its incarceration of Muslims in Xinjiang province or its transgressions across the LAC with India. Or, at worst, it builds a case for Chinese misdemeanours to be ignored because the rest of the world is unable to do anything about American ones.

In a roundabout way, this last factor actually also serves Beijing’s purposes by putting it on the same footing as the US — that is, as a country that is capable of ignoring international norms because it has the power and the resources to do so.

However, in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) worldview, its continuance in power at home also depends on it setting itself apart from the US as a more worthy, more moral power — whatever its definitions of “morality” might be. Thus, it is important to show the US as somehow small or mean and unqualified for the burdens of superpower status. Thus, Wang’s reference to the US as being “hysterical” as if it is a power incapable of rational action.

A more sophisticated, and perhaps, easier approach that the Chinese have used is of drawing attention to their own long history and civilisational heritage. While China’s so-called “century of humiliation” at the hands of Western and Japanese imperial power was supposed to have been the result of the shortcomings or weaknesses of some of this same civilisational legacy and Marxism-Leninism is supposed to be the cure, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping has taken a different view. At the 20th CCP Congress last year, he talked of integrating Marxism “with China’s fine traditional culture” calling the latter “the crystallisation of the wisdom of Chinese civilisation”. Earlier, at the 19th Party Congress in 2017, he had offered “Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind”.

It is no wonder, then, that in his remarks at Munich, Wang used a Chinese saying — “A virtuous man acquires wealth in an upright and just way” — to highlight the apparently unfair American attempts to counter China’s economic rise. Yang Jiechi, Wang’s predecessor as the CCP’s top diplomat, made similar remarks at another stormy bilateral meeting in Anchorage, Alaska in March 2021, declaring “we thought too well of the United States, we thought the US side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols”. These Chinese remarks have nothing to do with what the Americans did or did not do but are about highlighting China as a civilisational power that follows diplomatic niceties even when it has to deal with the “barbarian” West.

They allow China to create the impression that the Americans somehow lack civility and are thus also undeserving of being treated like a global superpower.

This is thus an entirely different kind of conflict — a narrative one — that the Chinese are engaged in with the US. It is also one that speaks directly to at least three sets of countries: To those with a similar length of history and civilisational legacy as the Chinese — Iran, for example, or even US partners like India and Egypt; to those who have been at the receiving end of such legacy such as countries in Asia suggesting that they behave themselves; and to those in other parts of the world who might have similar problems with the US’s interventionist methods. This might be a conflict underway that the US might be ignoring once again as it did China’s mercantilism and influence operations over the last few decades.

The writer is associate professor, Department of International Relations and Governance Studies, and Director, Centre for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence, Delhi-NCR