Tom Plate

Opinion | Using theory to guide US-China relations could be a recipe for disaster

If policymakers in Washington and Beijing are overreliant on theory, and if their theories are predicated on seeing the other system as inherently evil, then the result could be war in East Asia

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Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden stand together before a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 summit on November 14, 2022, in Bali, Indonesia. Photo: AP

Tom Plate

Published: 1:00am, 3 May 2023

At the end of the semester, for me – a typical worn-out university professor – a measure of peace and tranquillity against the raging insanities of our time can be found in a little quiet time in my library. It’s almost a ritual now: holding a sort of seance with my books, huddling with these silent but highly informative old pals, maybe opening marked pages, reading aloud a little, but always underneath weighing which ones to put into the next China course I will teach.

Had my just-ended US-China class been equal to the Olympian task of explaining to undergraduates why two otherwise accomplished superpowers just might be speed-walking toward self-destruction? Our social science – politics, economics, international relations – often relies on theoretical constructs to take on such big issues.

Will there be a big recession? What will China do next? Will the United States invade yet another country, and which one? When will the next pandemic hit?

A theory-based approach offers up the alluring notion that one or another theoretical system of ideas has the ability to scope out the current reality based on well-chosen interlocking principles, perceived laws or even mathematical formulas. And, once a given theory is in the air, it can shape how we perceive the world.

I worry I have been late to understand the evil that some theories can do. Instead of illuminating, they can blind. So, on the visit to my library the other day, I reached right for the top shelf and Richard Bookstaber’s acclaimed 2017 book The End of Theory. This is the kind of literary resident your library must have if you are, like me, a theory-sceptic.

His honest, minimalist message is that whenever “there is a high degree of complexity’, the best you can do is “figure it out as you go along”, adding that the probability of an economic theory proving definitive in a current crisis, or predictive of a future one, is inherently low.

Some people find this hard to believe. Policymakers who are wedded to theory will have none of this, of course, and there are armies of them in Washington, well armed with foundation and government grants, as there presumably are in Beijing. Alas, the theory crowd talks and thinks and even socialises in its own world. That world is theoretical.