By Minxin Pei
Recent tensions between China and the West are likely a sign of things to come. Western policymakers will have to get used to it.
Recent diplomatic and economic disputes between China and the West have caught many by surprise. It wasn’t all that long ago that China could do no wrong. Besides its seemingly unstoppable economic growth, the country was said to be acquiring soft power, earning respect and charming its way around the world. Its leaders were regarded as smart, sophisticated and far-sighted. Its diplomats were praised as diligent, knowledgeable and smooth.
It’s doubtful that such adjectives would be applied to them today.
Economically, Beijing’s mercantilist trade policy is seen by many as one of the principal causes of global economic imbalances. Its foreign policy is criticized as assertive and bullying. Meanwhile, China’s harsh response to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a leading dissident languishing in a Chinese jail cell, has struck nearly everybody in the West as excessive and counterproductive.
So what’s going on? How could a country that had been relatively effective in calming fears of its growing power and portraying its rise as ‘peaceful’ so suddenly engage in such nasty disputes with the same Western powers that have played an essential role in its astonishing economic ascendance? Is this dramatic downturn in relations between China and the West a temporary aberration or a new normal state of affairs?
Before trying to answer this question, it’s necessary to point out that the Chinese themselves—both its leaders and ordinary citizens—don’t see their recent conduct as assertive at all. In their eyes, China has merely been defending its legitimate national interests. There’s nothing wrong with claiming the South China Sea as part of China’s ‘core interests,’ resisting US-led pressures for currency revaluation, confronting Japan over disputed islands, or expanding its economic reach in resource-rich developing countries.
And this is precisely where the problem lies. At one level, it can be seen as a problem of conflicting perceptions: the Chinese and the West simply see the same set of issues from starkly different perspectives. At a deeper level, however, the growing tensions between China and the West originate from more powerful and enduring dynamics. As long as such dynamics continue to shape Chinese definitions of their interests and Western responses, the world is likely to see repeated disagreements or even acrimonious confrontations between China and major Western powers.
The most important—and obvious—dynamic at work is the rapid shift of the balance of power between the West and China. An inevitable consequence of this shift, which has strengthened China rapidly in relative terms, is how Chinese elites perceive their interests and pursue them. Before China acquired its current economic, diplomatic and military capabilities, some realists in the West predicted that China would act like a great power when it became one, regardless of its rhetorical commitment to a ‘peaceful rise.’ Recent Chinese foreign policy conduct seems to have vindicated this forecast.
Photo Credit: Alex / Flickr
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Drita Cico
China for a long time very carefully and professionally observed the West,
copied and applied West achievements especially after ’70s.
It is not honest at all from the side of China to provide extensively to the West its cheap, not qualitative products, with a very bad and strange smelling air of its products Made in China. This happened around 2000. This led to crises or closure of many private activities in Europe, while China made a lot of money in e few years and is “frantically” becoming ready to “buy” the West, when West had somehow snare in its throat. All that at the time when the West was in its first step of global crises, exploited two years ago because of reaching its economical saturation point of its free market application.
Europe needs a well-organized and united bourgeoisie responsible not only for its own business, but for the Europe as a whole.
The time of torn door policy is over.
The bad smelling air of products made in China or elsewhere reminds me what my oldest son Parid told me sometime ago about the great Romans of 2000 years ago.
I asked Parid, where are today these great Romans. He replied me that they disappeared. Astonished, I said: How? Parid told me that they were degraded because of drinking wine, kept for years in barrels with lead content, therefore they gradually got sick and died.
China must be satisfied with its huge domestic trade. This will bring a much better life for all of Chinese people, so they will become “fat” people, lazy
and thus less sly and ambitious as they have been towards us, after WW II.
On the other hand, Europe from the West to Russia should make its life fully based in its economy characterized so far by its very good products made in Europe. So, we will keep on our factories, get people employed and improve our lives and protection from outside Europe.
We whites should be careful and never forget that we live in the time of
revanche from other races in a growing stage and level.
We, whites, should be able to read inside the spirit of other races and act
according to the reality.
That, I think is an united Europe from the West to Russia (including Russia), and “closure the door around Europe” and live in it with open eyes.
In figurative way we are in the position of Roman’s protection with shields over European heads.
It is a popular expression, which I have heard since I was little girl in my town Korca, that is:
“When the gypsy had become with a lot of money, he killed his father”.
Drita Cico, Mrs., 52 years old
Electronic Engineer
RADIOTELEVIZIONI SHQIPTAR
Head of Radio Tirana Monitoring since 1981
& Short Wave Frequency Manager from 2005
RADIO TIRANA
TIRANA, ALBANIA
yang zi
very funny.
who do you think you are? in this globalization age, the elite in the West (you are not included) makes money globally, they are the ones profiting from China. you on the other hand, will be left behind eating dust by your fellow man, just like poor people in China, who is marginalized by the rich in China.
Small Head Filling Big Hat
Albania? Of all white European nations, this is surely one nation with such an oddity to claim itself as an integral part of a pedigree white, Christian-Protestant mainstream Caucasian brotherhood.
Just look at this country’s embarrassingly misfit role in the EU: a 4th-world impoverish economy, leftover medieval Islamist-fascist feudal state credential, an ex feverishly Stalinist-communist-anti-imperialist/capitalist-state turned ardent pro western nation which owes its existence only as a convenient tool of the west to subvert & dismember the old Yugoslavia (an ultra nationalist Slav-based neutral state acting stubbornly & inconveniently as a bulwark against Nato’s eastward expansion & more……
With this famously shameful past behaviours (turning so easily & effortlessly left & right in search of political & economical largesse), can we take any utterances seriously from any of its nationals? Dreaming of a Greater White Europe? Wishful dreaming, for Albania is never considered a rightfully & legitimately an integral part of mainstream European nation in the first place!
Yan Xiansheng
Without the “cheap” and “not qualitative” (nevermind your grammatical blunder) goods that the world recieves from China, people throughout the world who cannot afford western-made (and much more expensive) products would suffer drastic decreases in their standards of living. Imagine, sir, if you would, a department store you may be familiar with (preferably one frequented by people from all walks of life). Now, imagine that same store without any goods made in China. Not only would that leave only goods at the very least twice or three times more expensive than goods made in China, but if the Chinese goods were truly removed from the market, the overall market supply of almost all manufactured goods would be significantly reduced. As a result the already more expensive western-made goods would be even MORE expensive. Perhaps you, as what, an engineer and manager have the kind of income that could sustain purchases of such expensive goods. Consider, however, that there is a far greater population that cannot afford to live in such a world without seriously reducing their consumption.
Would a little more quality control be nice? Certainly, but financial feasability is no joke.
John Chan
This article is a typical production of anti-China machinery disguised as impartial analysis. After reading the article, one cannot help to conclude that the people in the anti-China camp are born double-talker, a man with two faces, and people talk from both sides of their mouths. As illustrations in the article demonstrated that the anti-China clique set specious high bars for China on their own, then they fabricated facts and distorted truth to blame China failed the high bars, after that they use those created failures to demonize China and its people with strong racial undertone. The article indicated that everything the West did is for the freedom in trade, liberty, etc. When China did the same thing, it is destructive, danger to the world and mercantilist. How worse can anybody be than those guys on the Wall St. who brought poverty, misery and chaos to the whole world while they are lining up their pockets with billion of dollars they scammed out from ordinary Joe of the world. China’s defence against the US and Japan aggression is exaggerated as “an-assertive-china-the-new-normal” with peace threatening implication. The author and the people in the anti-China camp are nothing but moral vacuumers.
The world will be a lot more peaceful without those busy bodies like the author and the people from the anti-China camp sowing discord and inserting wedges in everywhere in the world.