THE FOREVER WAR AGAINST COVID-19 JULY/AUGUST 2021 july/august 2021 • volume 100 • number Can 4 • China can china Keep keep Rising? rising? FOREIGNAFFAIRS.COM JA FA_2021_cover final3.indd All Pages 6/1/21 11:56 AM Volume 100, Number 4 CAN CHINA KEEP RISING? Xi’s Gamble 10 The Race to Consolidate Power and Stave O Disaster Jude Blanchette China’s Economic Reckoning 20 The Price o Failed Reforms Daniel H. Rosen The Robber Barons of Beijing 30 Can China Survive Its Gilded Age? Yuen Yuen Ang Becoming Strong 40 The New Chinese Foreign Policy Yan Xuetong The Plot Against China? 48 How Beijing Sees the New Washington Consensus Wang Jisi The Taiwan Temptation 58 Why Beijing Might Resort to Force Oriana Skylar Mastro COVER: DAN Life of the Party 68 BEJAR How Secure Is the CCP? Orville Schell July/August 2021 FA.indb 1 5/28/21 8:39 PM ESSAYS The Forever Virus 76 A Strategy for the Long Fight Against COVID-19 Larry Brilliant, Lisa Danzig, Karen Oppenheimer, Agastya Mondal, Rick Bright, and W. Ian Lipkin The Fulbright Paradox 92 Race and the Road to a New American Internationalism Charles King A Better Boom 107 How to Capture the Pandemic’s Productivity Potential James Manyika and Michael Spence A Measure Short of War 118 The Return o Great-Power Subversion Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth Myanmar’s Coming Revolution 132 What Will Emerge From Collapse? Thant Myint-U Antimonopoly Power 146 The Global Fight Against Corporate Concentration Barry C. Lynn The Threat Reflex 159 Why Some Societies Respond to Danger Better Than Others Michele Gelfand ON FOREIGNAFFAIRS.COM Ashraf Ghani on the Maya Wang on China’s David Miliband on the path to peace in growing techno- age of impunity and Afghanistan. authoritarianism. how to fight it. July/August 2021 02_TOC_Blues.indd 3 5/31/21 12:33 PM REVIEWS & RESPONSES Spies Like Us 168 The Promise and Peril o Crowdsourced Intelligence Amy Zegart Chronicle of a Defeat Foretold 174 Why America Failed in Afghanistan Christina Lamb Anti-imperial Subjects 180 Asia’s Unnished Rebellions Adom Getachew “Foreign Aairs . will tolerate wide dierences of opinion. Its articles will not represent any consensus of beliefs. What is demanded of them is that they shall be competent and well informed, representing honest opinions seriously held and convincingly expressed. It does not accept responsibility for the views expressed in any article, signed or unsigned, which appear in its pages. 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Box 324, Congers, NY 10920 ³ª´: Facebook.com/ForeignA¡ airs ¯: The contents o Foreign A airs are copyrighted. No part o the magazine may be reproduced, hosted, or distributed in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Foreign A airs. To obtain permission, visit ForeignA¡ airs.com/permissions Foreign A airs is a member o the Alliance for Audited Media and the Association o Magazine Media. GST Number 127686483RT Canada Post Customer #4015177 Publication #40035310 FA.indb 6 5/28/21 8:39 PM CONTRIBUTORS WANG JISI is one o China’s most inuential scholars o international relations. After working as a laborer in the countryside in the 1960s and 1970s, Wang studied at Peking University. He went on to teach in the school’s Department o International Politics and is now presi- dent o its Institute o International and Strategic Studies. A former member o the advisory board o the Chinese Ministry o Foreign Aairs, in “The Plot Against China?” (page 48), Wang considers how a tougher U.S. line on China looks from Beijing. ORVILLE SCHELL has been studying China since he was an undergraduate at Harvard in the 1950s. In the decades that followed, he served as The Boston Globe’s “man in Asia,” wrote for The New Yorker and other magazines, produced television programs, and headed the Graduate School o Journalism at the University o California, Berkeley. The author o 15 books, Schell now directs the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society. In “Life o the Party” (page 68), he examines the long and surprisingly diverse history o the Chinese Communist Party. A leading chronicler o Myanmar, THANT MYINT-U has written four books on the country, including the acclaimed Hidden History of Burma. He has also worked for the UN in various capacities, serving on three peacekeeping operations and as chie o policy planning in the organization’s political department. Thant Myint-U is chair o U Thant House, a leading education and discussion center in Yangon named after his grandfather, and from 2011 to 2016, he served as an adviser to the president o Myanmar. In “Myanmar’s Coming Revolution” (page 132), he argues that despite the recent turmoil, the country can still break free o its past. THANT ADOM GETACHEW, a political theorist at the University o MYINT¥U Chicago, was born in Ethiopia, grew up in Botswana in a community o fellow African expatriates, and moved to the PHOTO: United States a month before 9/11. Her early experiences with both pan-Africanism and the resurgence o American THUREIN power shaped her scholarly pursuits, including her book Worldmaking After Empire, an intellectual history o decolo- nization. In “Anti-imperial Subjects” (page 180), she AUNG reviews Tim Harper’s Underground Asia, which delves into the Asian radicals who resisted European imperialism. 02_TOC_Blues.indd 7 6/1/21 12:20 PM Return to Table of Contents CAN CHINA KEEP RISING? “ he East is rising,” Chinese very forces that could tame inequality leaders took to declaring around and corruption in the country, Yuen Tthe time U.S. President Joe Yuen Ang reveals. Biden entered oce, “and the West is Other risks loom beyond China’s declining.” The second part o that borders. Two o the country’s most declaration may draw eye rolls or angry important scholars convey how the objections in Washington and allied world today looks from Beijing, with capitals. But the ¾rst has become a point Yan Xuetong outlining China’s growing o near consensus: a self-assured China, willingness to challenge U.S. dominance bolstered by years o dazzling economic and Wang Jisi explaining why “most performance and the forceful leadership Chinese observers now believe that the o Xi Jinping, has claimed its place as a United States is driven by fear and envy world power and accepted that long- to contain China in every possible way.” term competition with the United And Oriana Skylar Mastro argues that, States is all but inevitable as a result. amid such distrust, “for the ¾rst time in But past performance does not three decades, it is time to take seriously guarantee future results. On closer the possibility that China could soon use examination, the obstacles to China’s force” against Taiwan. continued success look daunting—as Xi This year, Beijing is marking the himsel is well aware, which accounts 100th anniversary o the Chinese for both the urgency and the audacity Communist Party with ample “national- o his agenda, argues Jude Blanchette. ist bravado” and “an avalanche o ocial “Ambition and execution are not the party histories portraying China as a same thing,” Blanchette writes, “and Xi monolithic powerhouse,” writes Orville has now placed China on a risky trajec- Schell. Yet in tracing the course o tory, one that threatens the achieve- China and the party over the past ments his predecessors secured in the century, Schell makes clear that such post-Mao era.” A similar dynamic is at triumphalism obscures a more compli- play in the economic realm. Daniel cated and varied past. Perhaps more Rosen notes that Beijing’s recent policy important, it masks uncertainty about record is one not o world-beating China’s future. mastery but o failed attempts at sorely —Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, Editor needed reform followed by panicked retreats to central control. Meanwhile, China’s ocial e¡orts to overcome “its own Gilded Age” have been hamstrung by Xi’s simultaneous suppression o the FA.indb 8 5/28/21 8:39 PM CAN CHINA KEEP RISING? On closer examination, the obstacles to China’s continued success look daunting. Xi’s Gamble The Plot Against China? Jude Blanchette 10 Wang Jisi 48 China’s Economic Reckoning The Taiwan Temptation Daniel H. Rosen 20 Oriana Skylar Mastro 58 The Robber Barons o Beijing Life o the Party Yuen Yuen Ang 30 Orville Schell 68 DAN BEJAR Becoming Strong Yan Xuetong 40 ILLUSTRATIONS BY TK FA.indb 9 5/28/21 8:40 PM Return to Table of Contents nothing less than the remaking o the Xi’s Gamble global order on terms favorable to the .