Accommodating China

It is astonishing how opinions of China in the West have changed over the last ten years. Hostility has steadily climbed, and now there seems little hope of a change of trajectory. This feels like a tragic mistake to me, one that will harm all of humanity, especially the western nations pursuing the policy.

 

The Chinese people have endured much hardship. European colonialism left its mark and the nation was slow to develop in the modern era. Hostility with Japan was followed by a civil war and then an inward looking regime. Mao did untold damage during the Cultural Revolution, pitting citizen against citizen, murdering many and impoverishing everybody else.

 

Only after Mao’s death were Deng and his successors able to drag the country forwards, and what has been achieved has been truly remarkable. As many as half a billion people, the population of any other continent except Africa, have been raised up from subsistence into a life with substantial modern comforts. Using the GDP type measures preferred by the West’s financiers, China has contributed more than half of global growth during the past thirty years or so. The Chinese are doing something right.

 

Since 1947 China has been following a path labelled communism, but, as far as I can tell, Marx would recognise almost nothing from his manifesto. It is more helpful to consider China in terms of its people, its governance, the apparent goals of its leaders, and the impacts on the populace and the rest of humanity. Some of these are negative, but many seem to be positive.

 

During my lifetime the Western press and politicians have peddled a series of simplistic narratives about China. First they were folksy and backward. I experienced my youth in blissful ignorance of Mao’s atrocities, mainly because communications were so much more limited at the time, and perhaps because propaganda wanted to avoid discussion of atrocities being carried out in our names nearby in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.

 

Once China escaped Mao, the narrative moved on, starting with disdain. Just like with Japan, we mocked early attempts to emulate western methods, and were then embarrassed by the ability to learn and even overtake our own standards. A sort of patronising admiration followed, including some do-gooding and some greed, as western companies spied the growing market and decided to take a share of the action. Then the Chinese learned to copy the elements of our methods we were less proud of, such as bullying and stealing and fixing the rules, and we started to cry foul, while still greedily grabbing what we could.

 

Then came Trump and the pointless fight back, lacking any goals or strategy beyond creating sound bites. China’s response has been to become as USA-proof as possible, and who can blame it? Biden’s team are more logical but possibly even more combative, and recent meetings have descended into acrimony. And how can China be sure that Trump, or worse, will not return?

 

It reminds me of the mistakes we all make as parents. Once our children are no longer cute and accepting, but instead demanding and rebellious, our reaction can lack maturity. When our offspring start to mimic our own flaws and to outperform us in other areas, it is hard for us to accept the required change in terms of our relationships. In some cases, we can resort to bullying and restrictions, generally making the situation worse for all sides.

 

Currently, it is hard to read any opinion about China that does not parrot the official negative propaganda. We hear about Hong Kong, Taiwan and Xinjiang without any attempt at seeing the Han Chinese perspective. How is the Chinese approach in Xinjiang more reprehensible to the American approach in Afghanistan, or for that matter towards its own indigenous population? The military build up is exaggerated and not seen as a logical response to US militarism, and explained as against an international law that our own side applies selectively. Economically, China’s inward moves are condemned, despite each step being a natural response to a provocation.

 

It is very sad for humanity. We should remember that the Chinese miracle did more than raise living standards for Chinese people. We all have China to thank for our abundance of cheap gadgets, and, more important, the rest of the developing world was being pulled up by Chinese bootstraps. Now this is all stopping and a new cold war is unfolding. Let us be clear: this is not China’s fault.

 

The silliest thing about the US policy is that it is bound to fail. The western economies are far more dependent on China than the Chinese one is on the west, even before the active Chinese decoupling taking place now. China must work out that military action by the west will surely not be a practical option, and at some point they will integrate Taiwan, thereby also securing dominance in one more critical sector, that of semiconductors. Demographics and education are strongly on China’s side.  Arguably, so is their political model, being more able to mobilise and push through aggressive measures: just look at Covid for evidence of that.

 

This tragedy is wholly unnecessary. I believe that China would be willing to accept a rebalancing of the world order that could lead to growing prosperity for a new generation. It is true that the small cabal of leaders at the heart of the Chinese communist party think first of their own power, but they are strategic and smart, and probably see that their best chance of holding on to power lies in continued development.

 

Viewed from China, external threats are everywhere. Their own shipping lanes are dominated by the US military, and hostile nuclear weapons lie nearby in Japan, Korea and Guam. The US holds the world economy hostage via the dominance of the dollar and overuse of sanctions. Cyber spies are ubiquitous. Increasingly, Chinese students and companies are no longer welcome in the west.

 

The new world order would need to rekindle the spirit of 1947. In terms of governance, a refigured and less skewed UN security council could find respect and be bolstered by international law that even the powerful accepted. Nuclear weaponry and other military spending could be curtailed by a rule that 50% of all new spending must be multilateral.

 

In economics, a true world bank could set monetary policy from a currency that no nation had excessive influence over, and a global Tobin tax could fund items of global importance, most notably climate change, but also cyber security, bioscience and poverty reduction.

 

The toughest nut to crack would be the social side. Neither China nor the US would find it easy to agree to any human rights charter that Eleanor Roosevelt might applaud, and especially not any enforcement mechanism. I would love a world moving towards global free movement, with transitional obligations on migrants towards their new and former domiciles. But I have to concede that we are long way from that utopia.

 

Apart from the social side, I believe China would support a fair new world order, and indeed would be happy to take a leading role in forming it. The EU offers a wonderful template and many effective diplomats. Sadly, the stumbling block is the USA. Biden has to keep at least one eye focused on 2024 and a possible Trump return. But even so, I find it very sad that I find no discussion at all of any alternative to the current unintelligent, imaginative and ultimately doomed China policy. I believe our children will look back on this decade as a historic lost opportunity.