Should We Be Afraid of China?

by zikipediq

Friday, March 19, 2010 at 06:49 AM EDT

Inexorably, despite global protests, China’s goes on with colonization of Tibet. Also inexorably China enters the African continent by cooperating with countries such as Zimbabwe or Sudan, which West considers beyond the pale. China, whose economic dynamism is impressive, helped derail the climate summit in Copenhagen. Because of its energy needs China proved a reliable ally for Iran, despite its aggressive and repressive threat of programmed access to nuclear weapons. Deaf to international pressure, the Chinese government has put to death Amal Shaikh, a British citizen convicted of drug trafficking and suffering from severe mental disorders. Confronted with the former British colonial power, RPC has made it a matter of sovereignty. On Christmas Day, the intellectual dissident Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to eleven years in prison for circulating a petition favorable to democracy. We could go on but we better stop here the list and ask the question: is China dangerous?
China is stronger, more powerful and influential and for that reason the peculiarity of its governance is becoming more visible to our eyes. China has never been so dangerous for the Chinese than during the Great Leap and in the Cultural Revolution – that is when we were not familiar enough with PRC. Paradoxically, and despite the excesses warned above, there is an even worse and extremely painful point which affects the provocative way China treats the issues on human rights: there are no softer and more peaceful dissident than Liu Xiaobo in its efforts to improve human rights status; just as the Gao Xiaosheng’s evaporation last year. Gao Xiaosheng is a pro human rights lawyer who took on defending victims of earthquake in Xishuang: The Chinese Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, interviewed by foreign journalists on the question where was Gao Xiaosheng last year, replied simply: « He is where he should be » – which represents a denial of rights, even by Chinese standards. These types of harm have always existed but today their impact is amplified.

In addition, there was always a militant Chinese presence in Africa, competing with Taiwan and the USSR, but the means and economic issues are now at a completely different scale, even worse. Think of the Chinese diaspora of more than one million people living in Africa – and not only in Zimbabwe or Sudan. The Chinese method of governance calls ours into question because it is awfully efficient and we Westerners are demoralized by the Chinese resourceful success. The effect of democracy devitalization that follows is even more dangerous because it removes from the Chinese scenario the perspective of improvement on freedoms situation in the short term. There is furthermore its projection capability abroad and the fact that China gives a global dimension to its economic interests – interests that affect the West: oil, Iran, tolerance to nuclear North Korea.
To what extent is China potentially aggressive? By reason of its nationalism exacerbation and the non-compliance to international standards? Think about the repeated humiliations to European leaders – the latest was Gordon Brown concern for the execution of British citizen, mentally handicapped, Shaikh Amal.

China has become the world’s largest exporter, the main workshop, the major laboratory, the key farm and the World’s Bank. It takes place in the concert of nations without respecting the rules of the game. So, must we be afraid of China? Is it not an unfair and premature conclusion?

The example of its development is totally new: An asymmetric society whose Leninist system of governance coexists with wilderness capitalism. The emergence of an illiberal capitalism – a non-democratic capitalism – disturbs economists as it worries political experts. Some, resigned, wonder if China has not found even the right formula. Hence, here arises the idea of devitalization of our democratic model, a society that has lost faith in itself challenged by the arrogant success of the unpredictable neophyte.

The issue that harass minds is: an unscrupulous country takes advantage of its special economic status without respect for human rights, while it freezes on a nationalist project that weights international system – not yet a rogue state but deaf to international pressure. And beyond that, is its development socially sustainable and to what extent China is potentially aggressive taking into account the mass effect of its demographic power?