Onwards to Fareed Zakaria’s critique of China’s new, more assertive style of diplomacy in the Washington Post. He thinks it’s working against China’s interests. After citing a number of recent examples he remarks:
China’s current foreign policy is far removed from its patient, long-term and moderate approach during the Deng Xiaoping era and after. Back then, the central objective was to ensure that the country’s meteoric economic rise did not trigger resentment and counterbalancing from other nations. President Hu Jintao’s adviser Zheng Bijian coined the term “peaceful rise†to describe China’s aspirations and strategy. Now Chinese diplomats embrace conflict and hurl insults in what is known as “wolf warrior†diplomacy.
What is striking about China’s strategy is that it has produced a series of “own goals†— leading countries to adopt the very policies Beijing has long tried to stop. There have also been serious consequences for its global image, greatly diminishing its soft power. Negative views toward China among Americans soared from 47 percent in 2017 to a staggering 73 percent in 2020. If you think that’s a U.S. phenomenon, here are the numbers for some other countries: 40 percent to 73 percent in Canada, 37 percent to 74 percent in the United Kingdom, 32 percent to 81 percent in Australia, 61 percent to 75 percent in South Korea and 49 percent to 85 percent in Sweden. If there is a single theme in international life these days, it is rising public hostility toward China.
President Xi Jinping has transformed China’s approach, domestically and abroad. He has consolidated power for the party and himself. He has reasserted party control over economic policy, in recent months putting curbs on the most innovative parts of the Chinese economy (the technology sector) while lavishing benefits on its most unproductive one (the old state-owned enterprises). And he has pursued a combative, unpredictable and often emotional foreign policy.
In doing all this, he is dismantling China’s hard-earned reputation as a smart, stable and productive player on the world stage. It all brings to mind another period of centralized politics and aggressive foreign policy — the Mao era. That did not end so well for China.
I think he’s got it almost completely backwards. They’re playing to the house. They don’t care about the European Union, Australia, or the United States. The care about how they’re perceived in China. When a Chinese diplomat shouts down American diplomats who’ve been droning on about human rights, carbon emissions, or whatever interests the present U. S. administration, it’s received well by the Chinese people. It is seen as strength and an appearance of strength can bolster actual strength.
I’m not actually afraid of China. I’m afraid of the United States, its incompetent political leadership, and its uneducated, timorous elite who are assiduously pursuing what they perceive as their own interests at the expense of those of the rest of us.
The main change in both Chinese and Russian diplomacy is that they will no longer tolerate hectoring and public lectures about their alleged failings. It’s not just them. A little while ago the Armenian President stopped a BBC reporter in mid-diatribe about Armenia’s failings and launched into a long critique of the UK, US, EU treatment of Julian Assange. Like the US diplomats in Alaska, the BBC correspondent just shut up in bewilderment.
China and Russia no longer regard the US and its close allies as reliable negotiating partners. The US is described as “nonagreement capable,” and that is largely true. The US routinely cancels agreements whenever they become inconvenient. What one administration negotiates, the next routinely cancels.
Zakaria is one of the all too many American “experts” who get nearly everything wrong. China is currently having huge successes in its BRI/OBOR projects, and it has nearly gotten Russia into a NATO like treaty. We are getting our brains beat out.