If China had a monopoly on superintelligence and could therefore easily, near-costlessly, and with very high probability of success take over the world, obviously they would do so.
So, I guess I endorse a more contingent version of the argument given in your addendum.
What does "take over" even mean in the case of a fully controlled superintelligence? Presuming the modern state - which is something like 500 years old; *maybe* 1000 if you count the Song; far younger than civilization in any case - will survive the singularity seems absurd to me. Maybe the AI takes over, or a particularly coherent group of a few dozen humans take over, but the CPC is a gestalt of *tens of millions*. It is a miracle that it is as coherent as it is, and it really isn't very.
"China takes over the world" is about as plausible as "Anthropic or OpenAI 'wins' the race to superintelligence and therefore America takes over the world". No - one particular faction of the group formerly known as Americans might take over the world. And the faction is considerably narrower than even all the employees of the relevant lab.
What's your explanation for "China derangement syndrome"? In other words, if the CCP does not in fact aspire to dominate the world, why do so many authors (including some of the authors you quote in the bulletted list) falsely believe the CCP aspires to dominate the world?
One guess—people see the "communist" in "Chinese communist party" and they infer that the CCP must subscribe to messianic Trotskyism, where it's the duty of a communist government to export communism to the rest of the world. There was a time when the Soviet Union subscribed to this ideology, but your read (and Kissinger's) is that contemporary China does not.
Was thinking of adding this to the post but thought my view wasn't very specific and might distract—but basically I think that
1. The American public and elites are highly ideological rather than realistic when it comes to foreign policy, and they really dislike non-liberal-democratic regimes. So to some degree they're quick to believe in the nefarious aims of regimes with other ideologies. (With the Iran war, I feel like many normal people respond more favorably to the idea of invasion for regime change than invasion for defense from future nuclear threats, for example.)
2. Further, a lot of Westerners just seem to find the Chinese culture and people off-putting in various ways. The Congressional record from discussion of the Chinese Exclusion Act (the first immigration control in American history) points to this, along with other similar discussion. I think this is a pretty broad thing: I was speaking to a badminton coach the other day who complained about the effectiveness of Chinese coaches, in a similar way to what I have heard from a Russian piano teacher, and which you hear generally, that the Chinese or other East Asians have a slavish or robotic mentality.
3. Then, like you said, they might make an analogy ideologically Soviet Empire (also communist), or racially/culturally to the Japanese Empire (also Asian).
These are very good explanations. I would argue that derangement about Chinese expansionism and nefariousness is just one symptom of the larger phenomenon of derangement about "losing our place" to China. Yet this also is a mystery to me. I go back and forth myself about whether this phenomenon has a few general causes or many idiosyncratic causes. A general cause would be that Americans in general are committed to the millenarian idea (cf "city on a hill") that America has a central role to play in history and the final triumph of liberty; the rise of China raises the possibility that history is cyclic and poses a threat to American exceptionalism. But I've seen other explanations, that provide diverse reasons for people from various groups to develop "China derangement syndrome". For example, here are some claims that I've heard but do not necessarily endorse:
- Anglos think that Chinese people blame them for the century of humiliation (eg Opium War), and worry that they will become targets for revenge (cf people blaming China for fentanyl).
- Evangelical Christians object to the fact that the Chinese government is particularly hostile to American missionaries and the churches that they plant in China.
- Mormons are theologically committed to a religious narrative in which America is the true "middle earth", and China becoming "middle earth" again contradicts their church's narrative.
- Jews worry about Chinese global economic & political dominance being bad for Israel.
- Both Jews and Christians worry that Chinese cultural dominance would mean the sidelining of the Western, Judaeo-Christian memeplex to being footnotes of history.
- Various non-mainland Chinese (especially Taiwanese and Hong Kong Cantonese) have their own grievances with the CCP.
- Indians think Sino-American decoupling and perhaps conflict would help India catch up and rise to the top.
- Mainland Chinese immigrants (eg Alexandr Wang) feel the need to be over the top to prove their loyalty.
- Some American political and economic leaders feign China derangement syndrome. Some may view it as useful for pushing for reindustrialization and various preferred policy reforms. Others may think that having an enemy which is nominally communist will make leftism politically toxic domestically (analogous to how the American-Soviet Split aided domestic anti-communists). Others (perhaps influenced by Thiel) believe that having a foreign scapegoat is the only way to resolve the internal mimetic hatred between Left and Right.
Do you favor "general" or "diverse" explanations for this derangement?
I’m not the author, so I hesitate to interpose myself since the question is not addressed to me. However, I do want to flag that I have read work by Daniel Bessner and others (I want to say Sergei Radchenko, but I may be wrong) that suggests that the US similarly misconstrued Stalin’s ambitions after WWII. Stalin seemed to subscribe to a “sphere of influence” view of foreign relations, which the US foreign policy elites misinterpreted.
Chinese nuclear doctrine isn't strictly second-strike. For example, they've declared (conventional) attacks on the Three Gorges Dam to be equivalent to nuclear strikes, and would retaliate against those with nuclear weapons.
Some analysts believe China is no longer wedded to a second-strike policy re nuclear weapons. Kyle Balzer and Dan Blumenthal argue that the Chinese nuclear arsenal may not purely be part of a strategy of deterrence; it may also be a part of a strategy of compellance. See here: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/redeem/PyareLb-b-o
1. China is already conducting a nuclear-backed short-of-war coercion campaign across the western Pacific.
- Philippines: In 2012, Beijing seized Scarborough Shoal using low-intensity military force and economic boycotts of Philippine exports; the U.S. protested but backed off after Chinese escalation. In summer 2024, Chinese maritime vessels rammed Philippine ships within Manila's exclusive economic zone with no serious consequences
- Japan: China conducts near-daily naval operations around the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands to enforce Chinese "domestic maritime law." In August 2024, China violated Japanese territorial waters and airspace, then weeks later sailed an aircraft carrier through Japanese waters for the first time
- Taiwan: Beijing combines military and political intimidation with efforts to marginalize Taiwan's international standing and erode its coverage under international legal structures, while exploiting the implicit threat of amphibious invasion backed by limited nuclear escalation to deter U.S. and Japanese intervention
2. China views its nuclear arsenal as a coercive geopolitical instrument, not just a deterrent.
- Chinese military theorists now routinely call modernized nuclear weapons a "trump card" to impede external intervention in regional affairs
Chinese army training manuals for the land-based missile branch advise that raising nuclear readiness will "create a great shock in the enemy psyche"
- Many Chinese defense analysts have concluded that Putin's nuclear threats successfully prevented deeper NATO intervention in Ukraine, suggesting Beijing could replicate this model
- Chinese deterrence doctrine includes not just dissuading adversaries but compelling them to change their behavior
I would add to your summary by noting two things: (1) China has expanded its nuclear arsenal and (2) has invested in various expanded means of employing this arsenal, including in tactical settings.
On your post as a whole, I suppose I have two contradictory views.
On the one hand, there has always been a strain of universalism in America. This is reflected in the view that the US is based on a creed, an idea, about natural rights. That strain, which has existed from the very beginning of American history, is continuous with the messianism Kissinger refers to. China definitely seems to lack this.
On the other hand, through the early part of its history, when it was much weaker, Americans were more tempered in their willingness to employ force as a means of achieving national aims. This is expressed well by John Quincy Adams in his speech to the House of Representatives on July 4, 1821:
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [ie America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of Freedom and Independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
(New Englanders, who had a less universalist conception of American identity, were also quite reluctant about American expansion westward and southward during the early part of its history, believing that it would adversely affect the character of the American people. Sam Goldman’s excellent book After Nationalism discusses this.)
American attitudes towards expansion and foreign adventurism changed over time, but arguably this evolution tracks the growth of America’s power and its ability to impose its will on other countries through projections of its power. If this is correct, I think the question is this: If China were to win the A.I. race and were to become vastly more powerful as a result (this is a consequence of the views of A.I. boosters with respect to the importance of A.I. and may explain what they are worried about), can we be sure China’s ambitions abroad won’t increase as well? At minimum, there is uncertainty here, and China faces a problem of commitment.
Edit: You have now addressed this argument in the Addendum!
Obviously nationalist motivations behind "start WWIII for no reason" are dumb. I'm not going to argue about whether the AGI risk is real, but I do want to address the framing, because it seems popular in tech-contrarian spaces. What is popular among contrarians is an essentialist perspective that the Chinese are insular merchants -- Kissinger aside. That is a bad bet in our newfound WWIII AGI discourse, but also more conventional ones. I frequently see the assertion that the China is exceptional when it comes to things like ambitions, power, and interests. I don't buy it. I see people assert the CCP, or China, as temperamentally restrained seems founded in our present. It sounds very "End of History"-styled, more narrative than anything else.
People draw long cultural comparisons of civilizational scale by necessity. The CCP runs a state that is <100 years old, we may as well say South Africa AGI is fundamentally disinclined to be aggressive. There also seems to be an in-and-out weaving between Chinese people, China the civilization, and CCP the ruling kings. 'China does not proselytize' can be true, but this characterization also means to imply this is desirable, stabilizing, or even non-threatening when it is limited and contextual. There are those in Myanmar today who wish China would improvement its management of the country's conflict and bring peace and prosperity to their homes. Deng's "spanking" of Vietnam was a punitive invasion, Korea was a Big Deal, and Tibet was a large bite. To qualify all these as evidence of unambitious use of force, because they only hit their neighbors assumes too much.
'That was 50 years ago.' What does 50 years of imposed(?) AGI look like in the future and do we assume to live happily ever after? I don't know what it'd look like to be disfavored or deemed undesirable in the China AGI World Order, but I'm not so sure it'd be nice. China has not bombed the Philippines or Japan over, say, maritime conflicts, but they are not a pacifistic people by religion or by law. The PLA hasn't yet used all their modern force projection toys yet, but China explicitly states it plans to with a policy of aggression.
If China's rise and Fukuyama's enduring embarrassment have taught us anything, it is that the international system and human conflict within the system will persist. That doesn't mean starting WWIII is a good idea, but it does mean we should be cautious waving away potential threats because of a couple decades of recent history, including the largest naval build-up the world has ever seen.
Why did all those non-aggressive irrelevant Roman backwaters turn into something else? Kings change, interests change, capabilities change, and along with (or due to) them ideas and culture can change. There's no law of nature that says the anointed Chinabot must coordinate us kindly. It may be a most just system by turning the Anglos into paperclips first, but there are also many creative ways to be unkind or dominate.
> I frequently see the assertion that the China is exceptional when it comes to things like ambitions, power, and interests. I don't buy it. I see people assert the CCP, or China, as temperamentally restrained seems founded in our present. It sounds very "End of History"-styled, more narrative than anything else.
The argument here is generally not that *China* is exceptional, it is that the *United States* is exceptional. What interest did the British Empire have in spreading liberal oligarchy to India? Very little, clearly. How much did the Romans care how their client states organized things? They seem to have preferred non-democracies for pragmatic reasons - hard to bribe a whole polis - but they certainly didn't demand they adopt Roman administration.
"Civilizational" conflict is far from the only frame that lets you believe in your own world-historical importance. The Jacobins did it just fine from within a decidedly Eurocentric view; Bell Labs, quite clearly, was not primarily animated by a burning desire to "beat" the Soviets.
If China had a monopoly on superintelligence and could therefore easily, near-costlessly, and with very high probability of success take over the world, obviously they would do so.
So, I guess I endorse a more contingent version of the argument given in your addendum.
What does "take over" even mean in the case of a fully controlled superintelligence? Presuming the modern state - which is something like 500 years old; *maybe* 1000 if you count the Song; far younger than civilization in any case - will survive the singularity seems absurd to me. Maybe the AI takes over, or a particularly coherent group of a few dozen humans take over, but the CPC is a gestalt of *tens of millions*. It is a miracle that it is as coherent as it is, and it really isn't very.
"China takes over the world" is about as plausible as "Anthropic or OpenAI 'wins' the race to superintelligence and therefore America takes over the world". No - one particular faction of the group formerly known as Americans might take over the world. And the faction is considerably narrower than even all the employees of the relevant lab.
What's your explanation for "China derangement syndrome"? In other words, if the CCP does not in fact aspire to dominate the world, why do so many authors (including some of the authors you quote in the bulletted list) falsely believe the CCP aspires to dominate the world?
One guess—people see the "communist" in "Chinese communist party" and they infer that the CCP must subscribe to messianic Trotskyism, where it's the duty of a communist government to export communism to the rest of the world. There was a time when the Soviet Union subscribed to this ideology, but your read (and Kissinger's) is that contemporary China does not.
Was thinking of adding this to the post but thought my view wasn't very specific and might distract—but basically I think that
1. The American public and elites are highly ideological rather than realistic when it comes to foreign policy, and they really dislike non-liberal-democratic regimes. So to some degree they're quick to believe in the nefarious aims of regimes with other ideologies. (With the Iran war, I feel like many normal people respond more favorably to the idea of invasion for regime change than invasion for defense from future nuclear threats, for example.)
2. Further, a lot of Westerners just seem to find the Chinese culture and people off-putting in various ways. The Congressional record from discussion of the Chinese Exclusion Act (the first immigration control in American history) points to this, along with other similar discussion. I think this is a pretty broad thing: I was speaking to a badminton coach the other day who complained about the effectiveness of Chinese coaches, in a similar way to what I have heard from a Russian piano teacher, and which you hear generally, that the Chinese or other East Asians have a slavish or robotic mentality.
3. Then, like you said, they might make an analogy ideologically Soviet Empire (also communist), or racially/culturally to the Japanese Empire (also Asian).
These are very good explanations. I would argue that derangement about Chinese expansionism and nefariousness is just one symptom of the larger phenomenon of derangement about "losing our place" to China. Yet this also is a mystery to me. I go back and forth myself about whether this phenomenon has a few general causes or many idiosyncratic causes. A general cause would be that Americans in general are committed to the millenarian idea (cf "city on a hill") that America has a central role to play in history and the final triumph of liberty; the rise of China raises the possibility that history is cyclic and poses a threat to American exceptionalism. But I've seen other explanations, that provide diverse reasons for people from various groups to develop "China derangement syndrome". For example, here are some claims that I've heard but do not necessarily endorse:
- Anglos think that Chinese people blame them for the century of humiliation (eg Opium War), and worry that they will become targets for revenge (cf people blaming China for fentanyl).
- Evangelical Christians object to the fact that the Chinese government is particularly hostile to American missionaries and the churches that they plant in China.
- Mormons are theologically committed to a religious narrative in which America is the true "middle earth", and China becoming "middle earth" again contradicts their church's narrative.
- Jews worry about Chinese global economic & political dominance being bad for Israel.
- Both Jews and Christians worry that Chinese cultural dominance would mean the sidelining of the Western, Judaeo-Christian memeplex to being footnotes of history.
- Various non-mainland Chinese (especially Taiwanese and Hong Kong Cantonese) have their own grievances with the CCP.
- Indians think Sino-American decoupling and perhaps conflict would help India catch up and rise to the top.
- Mainland Chinese immigrants (eg Alexandr Wang) feel the need to be over the top to prove their loyalty.
- Some American political and economic leaders feign China derangement syndrome. Some may view it as useful for pushing for reindustrialization and various preferred policy reforms. Others may think that having an enemy which is nominally communist will make leftism politically toxic domestically (analogous to how the American-Soviet Split aided domestic anti-communists). Others (perhaps influenced by Thiel) believe that having a foreign scapegoat is the only way to resolve the internal mimetic hatred between Left and Right.
Do you favor "general" or "diverse" explanations for this derangement?
I’m not the author, so I hesitate to interpose myself since the question is not addressed to me. However, I do want to flag that I have read work by Daniel Bessner and others (I want to say Sergei Radchenko, but I may be wrong) that suggests that the US similarly misconstrued Stalin’s ambitions after WWII. Stalin seemed to subscribe to a “sphere of influence” view of foreign relations, which the US foreign policy elites misinterpreted.
Good comment. Thanks for interposing!
Chinese nuclear doctrine isn't strictly second-strike. For example, they've declared (conventional) attacks on the Three Gorges Dam to be equivalent to nuclear strikes, and would retaliate against those with nuclear weapons.
Source that leadership has "declared" this? I thought it would just that people assume so.
Some analysts believe China is no longer wedded to a second-strike policy re nuclear weapons. Kyle Balzer and Dan Blumenthal argue that the Chinese nuclear arsenal may not purely be part of a strategy of deterrence; it may also be a part of a strategy of compellance. See here: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/guest-pass/redeem/PyareLb-b-o
Summary for others below. I guess I'm fairly skeptical of China even invading Taiwan. I think the Polymarket price of 11% right now is high, for example: https://polymarket.com/event/will-china-invade-taiwan-before-2027
1. China is already conducting a nuclear-backed short-of-war coercion campaign across the western Pacific.
- Philippines: In 2012, Beijing seized Scarborough Shoal using low-intensity military force and economic boycotts of Philippine exports; the U.S. protested but backed off after Chinese escalation. In summer 2024, Chinese maritime vessels rammed Philippine ships within Manila's exclusive economic zone with no serious consequences
- Japan: China conducts near-daily naval operations around the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands to enforce Chinese "domestic maritime law." In August 2024, China violated Japanese territorial waters and airspace, then weeks later sailed an aircraft carrier through Japanese waters for the first time
- Taiwan: Beijing combines military and political intimidation with efforts to marginalize Taiwan's international standing and erode its coverage under international legal structures, while exploiting the implicit threat of amphibious invasion backed by limited nuclear escalation to deter U.S. and Japanese intervention
2. China views its nuclear arsenal as a coercive geopolitical instrument, not just a deterrent.
- Chinese military theorists now routinely call modernized nuclear weapons a "trump card" to impede external intervention in regional affairs
Chinese army training manuals for the land-based missile branch advise that raising nuclear readiness will "create a great shock in the enemy psyche"
- Many Chinese defense analysts have concluded that Putin's nuclear threats successfully prevented deeper NATO intervention in Ukraine, suggesting Beijing could replicate this model
- Chinese deterrence doctrine includes not just dissuading adversaries but compelling them to change their behavior
I would add to your summary by noting two things: (1) China has expanded its nuclear arsenal and (2) has invested in various expanded means of employing this arsenal, including in tactical settings.
On your post as a whole, I suppose I have two contradictory views.
On the one hand, there has always been a strain of universalism in America. This is reflected in the view that the US is based on a creed, an idea, about natural rights. That strain, which has existed from the very beginning of American history, is continuous with the messianism Kissinger refers to. China definitely seems to lack this.
On the other hand, through the early part of its history, when it was much weaker, Americans were more tempered in their willingness to employ force as a means of achieving national aims. This is expressed well by John Quincy Adams in his speech to the House of Representatives on July 4, 1821:
“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [ie America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of Freedom and Independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.”
(New Englanders, who had a less universalist conception of American identity, were also quite reluctant about American expansion westward and southward during the early part of its history, believing that it would adversely affect the character of the American people. Sam Goldman’s excellent book After Nationalism discusses this.)
American attitudes towards expansion and foreign adventurism changed over time, but arguably this evolution tracks the growth of America’s power and its ability to impose its will on other countries through projections of its power. If this is correct, I think the question is this: If China were to win the A.I. race and were to become vastly more powerful as a result (this is a consequence of the views of A.I. boosters with respect to the importance of A.I. and may explain what they are worried about), can we be sure China’s ambitions abroad won’t increase as well? At minimum, there is uncertainty here, and China faces a problem of commitment.
Edit: You have now addressed this argument in the Addendum!
China’s export-led label is officially outdated: https://igreaterchina.substack.com/p/chinas-high-quality-development-and?r=gf5z1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Obviously nationalist motivations behind "start WWIII for no reason" are dumb. I'm not going to argue about whether the AGI risk is real, but I do want to address the framing, because it seems popular in tech-contrarian spaces. What is popular among contrarians is an essentialist perspective that the Chinese are insular merchants -- Kissinger aside. That is a bad bet in our newfound WWIII AGI discourse, but also more conventional ones. I frequently see the assertion that the China is exceptional when it comes to things like ambitions, power, and interests. I don't buy it. I see people assert the CCP, or China, as temperamentally restrained seems founded in our present. It sounds very "End of History"-styled, more narrative than anything else.
People draw long cultural comparisons of civilizational scale by necessity. The CCP runs a state that is <100 years old, we may as well say South Africa AGI is fundamentally disinclined to be aggressive. There also seems to be an in-and-out weaving between Chinese people, China the civilization, and CCP the ruling kings. 'China does not proselytize' can be true, but this characterization also means to imply this is desirable, stabilizing, or even non-threatening when it is limited and contextual. There are those in Myanmar today who wish China would improvement its management of the country's conflict and bring peace and prosperity to their homes. Deng's "spanking" of Vietnam was a punitive invasion, Korea was a Big Deal, and Tibet was a large bite. To qualify all these as evidence of unambitious use of force, because they only hit their neighbors assumes too much.
'That was 50 years ago.' What does 50 years of imposed(?) AGI look like in the future and do we assume to live happily ever after? I don't know what it'd look like to be disfavored or deemed undesirable in the China AGI World Order, but I'm not so sure it'd be nice. China has not bombed the Philippines or Japan over, say, maritime conflicts, but they are not a pacifistic people by religion or by law. The PLA hasn't yet used all their modern force projection toys yet, but China explicitly states it plans to with a policy of aggression.
If China's rise and Fukuyama's enduring embarrassment have taught us anything, it is that the international system and human conflict within the system will persist. That doesn't mean starting WWIII is a good idea, but it does mean we should be cautious waving away potential threats because of a couple decades of recent history, including the largest naval build-up the world has ever seen.
Why did all those non-aggressive irrelevant Roman backwaters turn into something else? Kings change, interests change, capabilities change, and along with (or due to) them ideas and culture can change. There's no law of nature that says the anointed Chinabot must coordinate us kindly. It may be a most just system by turning the Anglos into paperclips first, but there are also many creative ways to be unkind or dominate.
> I frequently see the assertion that the China is exceptional when it comes to things like ambitions, power, and interests. I don't buy it. I see people assert the CCP, or China, as temperamentally restrained seems founded in our present. It sounds very "End of History"-styled, more narrative than anything else.
The argument here is generally not that *China* is exceptional, it is that the *United States* is exceptional. What interest did the British Empire have in spreading liberal oligarchy to India? Very little, clearly. How much did the Romans care how their client states organized things? They seem to have preferred non-democracies for pragmatic reasons - hard to bribe a whole polis - but they certainly didn't demand they adopt Roman administration.
"Civilizational" conflict is far from the only frame that lets you believe in your own world-historical importance. The Jacobins did it just fine from within a decidedly Eurocentric view; Bell Labs, quite clearly, was not primarily animated by a burning desire to "beat" the Soviets.