The enemy looks strangely familiar
The United States and China: two countries universally perceived as opposites, but which, perhaps, are more similar than we think. Authors Francesco Costa and Simone Pieranni who both have recent books on the topic, talked to journalist Veronica Fernandez, about the mirrored narrative of the two countries.
A key moment in the conversation is 9/11, seen in Western culture as the deadliest terrorist attack in history, which catalysed debates on freedom and security. American storytelling changed radically afterwards: when the attack struck, the US was the world’s sole superpower, before the start of a decline marked by new enemies, economic crisis, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Out of this context grew the idea that someone was out to deceive America. Donald Trump, with his arrogant, macho posturing, fits neatly into the mood.
The same date marks a turning point in US-China relations, this time the product of a longer sequence of events. Until the 1980s, Chinese had a specific word for “passion for America,” Pieranni explains, and that sentiment still held before 9/11. It began to fray in 1999, when NATO’s bombing of Belgrade hit the Chinese embassy, and shifted again in 2001, when China joined the WTO and the globalisation we know today took shape. Beijing subsequently turned its attention to the Middle East and Africa, and after the 2008 financial crisis, concluded that the US-led world order was collapsing. America went from an object of admiration to a rival.
Alongside a colonial-like posture, the US and China share similar geographies: both are vast, containing wildly different ethnic and cultural identities, many of which have little awareness of what happens in other regions of their enormous countries. This produces matching sets of flattening stereotypes on either side, such as the caricature of “deep America” as white, racist, religious, and armed to the teeth, mirrored by a rising class of Chinese nationalist influencers who see themselves as every bit as individualist as Americans and have launched their own campaign against “woke culture”, just as segments of the West have done.
Finally, when it comes to foreign policy, the US has made a series of strikingly impulsive decisions, from the abduction of Maduro to veiled claims over Greenland, riding a wave of global chaos in which, as Costa goes, "Democrats are defending a world that no longer exists." China, meanwhile, has gained leverage by becoming the world's leading processor and exporter of rare-earth elements.
