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US-China relations
OpinionWorld Opinion
Lanxin Xiang
Opinion
Lanxin Xiang

Trump era could herald the end of ideology in US-China relations

Donald Trump’s convergence with Chinese political thought could provide a catalyst for resetting bilateral ties

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President Donald Trump (left) shakes hands with President Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 29, 2019. Photo: AP
Lanxin Xiang
Lanxin Xiang is Ngee Ann Kongsi Professor in International Relations at S.

Convergence theory has long been a Western fantasy in conquering the world with liberal democratic values. It proposes that societies, especially as they industrialise, tend to become more alike in various aspects of social organisation, including work, class structure, family patterns and culture.

However, convergence theory oversimplifies the complexities of social change and ignores the unique cultural and historical contexts of different societies. It does not adequately account for power dynamics between nations and it overestimates the potential for developed nations to impose their values and structures on less developed ones.

More importantly, this theory assumes a one-way path for non-Western countries to converge to a Western-style system. When China avoided such convergence in its economic take-off, the response in the West was not to accept that the theory was flawed, but to blame China for not converging. Officials from the Joe Biden administration, for example, effectively justified its hostile China policy on Beijing’s “failure” to converge.
China was supposed to follow a predetermined trajectory and adopt Western values and systems as its economy grew. But such logic makes no sense and exposes instead a superior moral attitude, typical of Biden’s “democracy versus autocracy” framework for handling foreign policy.
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