Competition Without CatastropheSeptember/October 2019 107
In this respect, the Trump administration’s loud and largely unilat-
eral campaign against the participation o the Chinese company Huawei
in the development o 5G infrastructure may provide a cautionary
lesson. Had the administration coordinated with allies and partners in
advance and tried some creative policymaking—for example, estab-
lishing a multilateral lending initiative to subsidize the purchase o
alternatives to Huawei’s equipment—it might have had more success
in convincing states to consider other vendors. It then might have
been able to make the most o the two-year delay Huawei now faces
in rolling out 5G following its placement on the U.S. Department o
Commerce’s list o entities that cannot be supplied with American
technology. Future eorts to restrict trade with China in the technol-
ogy sector will require careful deliberation, advance planning, and
multilateral support i they are to be successful; otherwise, they will
risk undermining U.S. innovation.
PRODEMOCRACY, NOT ANTICHINA
U.S.-Chinese economic and technological competition suggests an
emerging contest o models. But unlike the Cold War, with its sharp
ideological divide between two rival blocs, the lines o demarcation
are fuzzier here. Although neither Washington nor Beijing is engaging
in the kind o proselytizing characteristic o the Cold War, China may
ultimately present a stronger ideological challenge than the Soviet
Union did, even i it does not explicitly seek to export its system. I
the international order is a reÇection o its most powerful states, then
China’s rise to superpower status will exert a pull toward autocracy.
China’s fusion o authoritarian capitalism and digital surveillance may
prove more durable and attractive than Marxism, and its support for
autocrats and democratic backsliders will challenge American values
and provide China cover for its own egregious practices, including the
detention o more than one million ethnic Uighurs in northwestern
China. Some may question whether the erosion o democratic gover-
nance across the world matters for U.S. interests; it does. Democratic
governments are more likely to align with American values, pursue
good governance, treat their people well, and respect other open soci-
eties, and all o this tends to make them more trustworthy and trans-
parent and, in turn, better economic and security partners.
Washington can best establish favorable terms o coexistence with
China in the political realm by focusing on advancing the appeal o