To Understand China, Look to America’s History

In the Wall Street Journal, Katherine Epstein, Member in the School of Historical Studies, turns to history to analyze U.S. hand-wringing over the global telecommunications threat posed by Chinese manufacturing giant Huawei.

Epstein highlights the similarities between strategies the United States used to contest British hegemony in the twentieth century and the strategies Beijing is using to contest American hegemony today, writing "a century ago, the U.S. was the China of the age: an up-and-coming revisionist nation chafing against the established powers, importing and pirating what it could, free-riding on the security provided by the existing hegemon, and legitimizing its behavior with the pious conviction that it was on the right side of history. Could it be that the Chinese understand U.S. history better than Americans do? It’s easy to be moralistic about China, but in the quest to find a sound U.S. strategy, we need less pearl-clutching and more imagination."

Read more at the Wall Street Journal.