The West is currently its own worst enemy. As Western states frantically go to China whilst competing with each other for China’s friendship, all of them miss the most basic point, that China is not cooperating with us as a genuine partner of goodwill, but competing with us for political and global control. I find myself a bit ridiculous having to write this as I see the West conjuring up an open-ended policy of friendship with China – or at least that is what the West is presenting to us. The Chinese don’t like to publicly seem they are giving way to any conditions, but even if so, why trust China?
This website has so far covered the most recent significant Western state trips to China, namely Germany’s and then France’s. Both Germany and France are trying to increase economic and trading activity with China and Macron even went a step further saying that France would not intervene if China invaded Taiwan. Macron’s comments were rebuked with a trip by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock who declared that China’s invasion of Taiwan would be met with repercussions in Europe. The latest and most significant trip by a Western state to China is the current US trip by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen following Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Yellen’s trip has resulted in a lot of positive and optimistic comments from both sides, but judging by history, these kinds of conclusive declarations are common to such meetings, and China always kept doing the same things it did before. You may read as an example Xi’s speech after meeting President Obama in 2014, saying he wanted to build a relationship not based on conflict.
Since that speech, China militarised the South China Sea with artificial island bases, increased its harassment of its neighboring countries over border disputes by increasing sea and air patrols, augmented its military defenses on the East coast while also augmenting its navy and air force, took away of what was left of Hong Kong’s autonomy, and threatened multiple times to start a war against anyone who stops it from taking over Taiwan. Yet, it is obvious that China would march in this track – there’s absolutely no surprise on this. What’s surprising is that the West looks complacently at China’s muscling of its hegemony and chooses the exclusive option of cooperation instead of direct competition, maybe, hoping at the same time that China will become softer and more liberal in the process.
By now, hopefully, I don’t think there is anyone in power in the West who seriously thinks that more economic engagement with a dictatorship will lead to it becoming more soft and liberal. The West has only made authoritarian countries richer whilst they have become more authoritarian: Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia. These three roughnecks who butcher and imprison their own people, also dream of a Dollar alternative while striving their best to make sure that US Dollars and Euros flow into their coffers. For all his talk and bluster, Muhammed Bin-Salman didn’t ask for Yuan in exchange for his oil as he struggled to reduce production in order to artificially inflate oil prices – he wanted more Dollars not Yuan. Talk on the BRICS-gold alternative currency to the US Dollar, is simply preposterous.
In reality, foreign and Western investors do not seem to be as excited about China as their Western leaders. Clearly, foreign direct investment in China is abating compared to previous years, and the slowing down contrasts with what seems to be ever-booming FDI in the US. China’s official data is admittedly showing that its economy is slowing down. Yet, the situation in India is different with an economy doing well although FDI still needs to pick up pace. India already offers a better alternative to China for big multinationals in terms of the rule of law – as was clearly evidenced by China’s crackdown on its own big tech companies last year, and ever-increasing regulations – yet these may not be the reasons why foreign investment would be swayed from China. China also has deep structural economic problems and is facing various problems such as a crisis in its banking sector along with problems of private debt, an imploding real estate bubble, and a depreciating currency which is now no longer as advantageous as it used to be for its economy that it is ever increasingly become more dependent on consumption rather than exports. By many standards, China is still a developing country, especially when considering its poverty rate and people’s income but after years of exponential growth and taking most of its population out of poverty, China’s days of huge economic leaps forward may also be over.
China may very well build its own anti-Western alliance to keep increasing its hegemony. It is doing this openly and clearly at every step of the way of its foreign policy, such as by for example mediating in talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia and bringing them closer together. It purports and propagates an alternative to the US-Dollar along with this dream of creating a gold-backed BRICS international currency – why wouldn’t it? Such a currency would be dominated by the biggest trading partner in the block, obviously China. The ironic thing is that Russia doesn’t want a new international gold-backed BRICS currency because it wants to become a colony of China, but because it has restricted access to US Dollars and the Yuan is the best US Dollar derivative it can get from official sources.
The West should have learned enough lessons after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to know that despite the fact that China trades with the West, it is also at the same time working to replace the West’s global economic supremacy for political reasons and eventually to change the international rules-based order in its own interests. Additionally, by now the West should have understood very well that China is more desperate for our currencies than we are to invest our own money in its economy. On the other hand, the West is doing very little if nothing at all to consolidate and strengthen the international rules-based order. Cooperation between Europe and the US is deeply lacking on the international political front while China is building its collective hegemony of anti-Western authoritarian states. The West is by far much stronger than China and its gang of murderous dictators but it is by far and surely more naive and complacent.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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