Notwithstanding President Joe Biden’s recent Beijing-friendly overtures, the looming US presidential election is set to intensify the perception of a “China threat” as the two main political parties try to outdo each other on China-bashing.
Donald Trump’s election campaign, for example, calls for a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods, as well as restrictions to stop American investments in China and Chinese purchases of US assets.
Western media and bookstores are also brimming with smearing narratives of China’s so-called plans to dominate the world, trade and intellectual property transgressions, human rights violations (including the so-called Xinjiang genocide), military expansionism, territorial ambitions, speculations about a Taiwan invasion and worse.
Against this predominantly one-sided discourse, political scientist Joseph Solis-Mullen’s recent book, The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger, rebuts these allegations.
He lists a barrage of works by prominent authors warning of the “China threat” – including Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred-Year Marathon, Graham Allison’s Destined for War and Hal Brands’ and Michael Beckley’s Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China – and boldly points out that these highly respected intellectuals are affiliated with powerful US or allied think tanks, some of which are known to be heavily funded by America’s military-industrial complex, including giant US defence industry conglomerates.
Regardless of the remarkable transformation of peoples’ lives under the Chinese Communist Party, China has neither the capability nor inclination to replicate the United States’ global military, technological, financial and media hegemony, which is supported by its Western allies and ubiquitous American culture, as Beckley himself enumerates in his other book, Unrivalled: Why America Will Remain The World’s Sole Superpower. The “China threat” narrative ignores this.
The idea of a China threat has so permeated America’s body politic that a record level of Americans (58 per cent) surveyed by the Chicago Council now views China’s development as a world power as a critical threat to the US, out of surveys dating back to 1990. The view of China has also gone down in many other nations, according to the Pew Research Centre.
Western double standards, bias and prejudice aside, China’s global slide in public opinion springs from a number of genuine and deep-seated grievances.
First, trade and investment relationships with China have become somewhat one-sided, lacking sufficient reciprocity in terms of access to China’s market. Italy’s decision to terminate its partnership with the Belt and Road Initiative is a case in point.
Second, improvements notwithstanding, the protection of foreign investors’ intellectual property, especially in hi-tech businesses, still leaves much to be desired.
Third, owing to differences in national politics, China’s perceived “wolf warrior”, tit-for-tat diplomacy has irked some governments and their electorates. Witness Australia’s anger with China’s severe trade sanctions in response to Australia’s call for an international investigation into the origins of China’s Covid-19 outbreak.
Meanwhile, China’s economy is facing severe headwinds, including a demographic cliff, housing and local government debt, youth unemployment, a global economic slowdown and obnoxious geopolitics fuelling a decoupling or “de-risking” from China.
China is strengthening measures to address some of the genuine concerns poisoning its relationship with the West, such as better market access, a level playing field and intellectual property protection, with a view to creating, in President Xi Jinping’s words, “a market-oriented, legal and international first-class business environment”.
Foreigners are regularly welcomed in China, including international students. Alipay recently partnered with travel service providers to launch special China tour packages for international tourists. The government is promoting Xinjiang as a tourist destination. The more foreigners visit Xinjiang, the more the world will see through the West’s manufactured delusion of a “genocide”.
At the annual work conference last month, Xi told China’s diplomatic envoys that they should tell the China story well and build more bridges with not only governments but also ordinary people.
Additionally, Track 2 – backchannel – diplomacy through dialogue between think-tanks and influential individuals could work wonders in mitigating the anti-China hyperbole. In this, the Centre for China and Globalisation, China’s premier global think tank, is a trailblazer.
At the end of the day, what counts in international relations is where countries depend on for their economic livelihoods and development. By 2018, China has become a bigger trading partner for 128 of 190 countries than the US, according to the Lowy Institute. China is also the world’s largest manufacturer and central to the global supply and value chain.
At the Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing last October, attended by more than 140 countries and 30 international organisations, Xi vowed to bring about a multidimensional, high-quality, green and integrity-based Belt and Road Initiative, benefiting every participant.
China is also part of the Brics group (which also includes Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa) that over 40 countries have expressed interest in joining. Similarly, more countries are joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, founded by China and Russia, and which covers more than 40 per cent of the world’s population.
Supported by its Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative and Global Civilisation Initiative, China is starting to actively broker peace and development across the globe. The historic rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and China’s diplomatic role in calling for a resolution of the Ukraine war and the Gaza humanitarian crisis come to mind.
China is showing the world by its actions and their outcomes that instead of being a threat, it is part of the solution towards a shared prosperity for mankind.
Andrew K.P. Leung is an independent China strategist. [email protected]
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