SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: Why the West keeps smearing China (and why it won’t work this time) by Kishore Mahbubani

Why the West keeps smearing China (and why it won’t work this time) by Kishore Mahbubani
*Eng/中文 subtitles

• Many in the West still act like their job is to deliver the “gift” of democracy to China. Are we unable to see that there is more than one way to effectively and humanely govern a country?

• When China was weak and defenseless, nobody offered democracy. In 1842 the West forced opium into China in exchange for tea. That was the lesson Chinese people absorbed: when you are weak, the West takes advantage of you.

• Now that China is strong and its people have had the best 40 years of economic and social development in their modern history, the same voices switch to constant demonization. Anglo-Saxon media paints an “evil communist regime.” The goal of the Communist Party is not to revive communism. It is to revive Chinese civilization.

• The real competition is not with the Communist Party of China. It is with a civilization that, for most of human history, performed as well as the West. The last 200 years of relative decline (China and India both) was the historical abnormality, not the normal state.

• Year 2000: EU combined GNP was 7 times China’s. 
Today: roughly the same size. 
2050 projection: EU will be about half the size of China. Structural shifts this large do not happen often.

• Despite that reality, EU leaders still speak with open condescension. The hypocrisy is staggering. Kaja Kallas recently framed the China challenge in “cancer” language. The deeper root that almost no one wants to discuss is the old fear of the Yellow Peril. Good ole Sinophobia, fear, bigotry, and prejudice. 130 years ago the US Congress passed the Chinese Racial Exclusion Act for exactly that reason.

• Three realistic paths for the next 20–30 years: 
~20% chance the US and the West double down on maximum pressure to stop China’s rise. Unlike the Cold War containment of the Soviet Union, the rest of the world is not going to join this time. 

~60% chance the world muddles through the usual way. 

• Short-term pragmatic handling (including recent US approach toward China) can keep things relatively stable. 

~20% chance the West finally becomes enlightened: admits it can no longer dominate, forms real partnerships with other civilizations, treats them with respect, and accepts they will never become copies of the West.

-Kishore Mahbubani PPA is a Singaporean diplomat and geopolitical consultant who served as Singapore Permanent Representative to the United Nations between 1984 and 1989, and again between 1998 and 2004, and President of the United Nations Security Council between 2001 and 2002.