Two articles with wide perspective, not too new but we know the concerns having ling been brewing:
I am no expert but FWIW my take is that we are moving towards a sort of clash of the titans. On one side, the west with its freedoms of speech, democracy, social mobility etc. On the other, and not just different but diametrically opposed, is China, a centralised autocracy with a managed and controlled politics and society of 中国特色社会主义 “socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Historically, China has learned to view her political autonomy as threatened by 1. foreign incursion (Jurchen, Mongol, Manchu to name but a few), not to mention the trade by force insult of the 19th century perpetrated by Europeans and America. And 2. the ever present danger of its own peoples coalescing into substantial groups with primary loyalty not to The Party but some/any other source. That is a big reason (not the only one but at least a good excuse) behind the oppression of minority peoples (Tibetan, Uyghur). Into this second category fall the Falungong and Christian followers, sadly.
China, like Russia I suppose, feels that its way of life and rule is the best for its society. The citizens of China will be able to rise economically (the ever replete rice bowl = calm acceptance of curtailed personal freedoms). In actual fact, there is no history of the concept of individualism or personal freedom in China. These things in the west look messy, uncontrolled and all too often disastrous in China’s view. A but myopic maybe but not without reason.
There is much fear and sabre rattling going on now. Hopefully, some wise heads with influence are working on a compromise that we can all accept to agree to disagree and all just get along in this increasingly beleaguered world
A lot of people in ‘the West’ are stuck in a ‘cold war’ mentality: us and them, capitalism vs communism. This has always elided the actual political and economic differences. When you look inside SMEs in China, for example, you actually find tremendous strengths in terms of governance and management, that have far more in common with northern European models than those European models have with the anglosphere: a comparatively highly interventionist and regulatory state, staff representation in ownership and control, etc…
If you can escape this old-fashioned ‘us and them’ outlook the world looks a very different place. If you’re an economist sitting in a poor country now looking for a development model that really works you are very unlikely to prefer America’s prescriptions - or those of its surviving Bretton Woods machinery - over China’s. And because China now also has a lot more funding to offer, it doesn’t take a genius to work out where your best ally is. Especially if, when you look at really successful societies in ‘the West’, you see social breakdown in the US and UK, but decent sable societies in places like Norway - which actually has higher state ownership in its economy than China (by some counts, the Norwegian state is responsible for over 80% of GDP - apart from oil, it has about 70 state-owned companies, and even in its ‘private sector’ around a third of listed shares are owned and controlled by the state).
France, incidentally, also has over half of its economy in the state sector, plus a very large non-capitalist private sector too (mutuals, co-operatives, etc). As a shocked Brit said to me at a social do soon after we moved to France, when I explained to him both this and the way French business is regulated: “It’s communism really, isn’t it?”
In my opinion, this view is a myth.
One only has to look at what is happening in the USA right now - and to a lesser extent in the UK to see that freedoms of speech, democracy, social mobility are declining and under increasing threat.
Indeed - no bi-polar view captures the reality. We can ask, for example:
Is the elevation of parliamentary democracy and freedom of the press based genuinely on principle - or is it based on the fact that it usually amounts to no more in practice than the freedom of the wealthy and privileged to gain ownership and control of almost all mass media, and therefore virtual control of the outcomes of a form of democracy that only allows people to participate remotely, by voting every 5 years ?
True. We and they both, (except that distrust goes back even further.)
“Is the elevation of parliamentary democracy and freedom of the press based genuinely on principle”?
@Nigel-at-BUF-House makes the cogent point “ freedoms of speech, democracy, social mobility are declining and under increasing threat”.
Overall, democracy itself, albeit not 100% perfect, is being eroded by we ourselves (ignoring any devious infiltration by enemy players). So where will it go? We need a new manual.
Seems we are not alone in our worries.
“This war is a moment in history which will either put us more together or divide us,” said Vera Jourová, vice president of the European Commission for Values and Transparency. “I call it the ‘big meeting,’ because suddenly the West has started listening to the East.”
And,
On the “A Decade of Democracy: China and Russia” panel, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, said it was a mistake to see the war as a “struggle between autocracies and democracies.” Each country has a different narrative that has its own merit, he said. “If we’d sit down and speak to each other, we would get different perspectives.”
“The Moore case would in practice strip people of the right to fair elections by placing electoral power in the hands of a small group of officials at the state level who set district maps. In a presidential election, these officials could determine what slate of electors gets put forth to the electoral college, regardless of the outcome of the state’s popular vote.“
Something pertinent, I think, is that there is as yet no outright support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by China. In fact, China has repeated more than once that a negotiated peace should be worked on without delay. Nor, and this is tangible, have Chinese made missiles, drones or other weaponry been used by the Russian combatants or found in Ukraine. Iranian, yes. North Korean, maybe. But strikingly, Chinese no.
I know you may be thinking about China’s obstructive vetoes and that China is only thinking of their own interests in resuming the global market economy but I feel this is significant.
I do not know if they would or will but China could step up to being their long desired recognisable ‘global power’ and being the one to ‘persuade’ Putin to end this fiasco.
Taiwan may be a problem for the future but war in Ukraine, and its effect on the world is the urgent issue.
As far as I recall, post-Mao, and especially in recent years, China has pretty consistently advocated peace and non-intervention. This no doubt serves its own political and economic interests - precisely because as I mentioned above, its ‘soft’ power is winning the world over without military intervention. But I think it’s also related to the fact that
China, although never completely subdued, was among the victims of Europe’s empire-building.
I wrote recently in another thread about the way the real history of the British Empire has been concealed from Brits themselves. Surely one of the most egregious examples of Britain’s atrocious behaviour were the Opium Wars against China: forcing another country to repeal its own anti-narcotics laws so British firms could profit by hooking more people and selling them dope.
It’s a gangster-ism related to the control of trade through the British ‘Navigation Laws’ - another innocent-sounding description of what often amounted to the extension of slavery throughout the Empire (and after its official abolition), by forcing countries to sell their produce exclusively to British firms, via British ships, at prices fixed by Britain at subsistence levels - thus trapping the producers into continuous, inescapable work for the benefit only of their foreign masters.
This is why we should always speak of ‘slavery and colonialism’ together: there is no hard distinction between them, they are both manifestations of the same exploitative economic model.
I am too close to this issue to be objective but am I the only one who thinks a foreign power that exerts political and physical pressure on residents of another country, in that other country, should be rebuked unequivocally?
Is this not how Putin slithered in before we took him for the global threat to our way of life?
Your point is well made, but at least the US has a semblance of democracy. Xi is a dictator and will stamp on us given half a chance. US Corporate greed has fed the Chinese Frankenstein for nigh on thirty years and now we’ll struggle with the fallout.
BTW, I heard a comment on the radio a couple of days ago that China’s labour costs etc. has helped, if not been fundamental, to keeping inflation under control. I hadn’t considered that and I didn’t reflect too much on it, apart from thinking it does make sense. Another bloody variable in our already complicated future
Armed forces minister James Heappey said he had been aware for some years that UK veteranshelping the People’s Liberation Army.
The BBC reported that up to 30 former pilots from across the military had been training air crews in China and the Ministry of Defence [MoD] had issued an alert warning against them taking part.
There are fears the Chinese could be better taught how to shoot down Western aircraft.
“What they were doing was not illegal unless of course they explicitly compromised secrets that are under the Official Secrets Act and there is no evidence that they have, but nonetheless we are going to strengthen the law through the National Security Bill to make sure that when people are told that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing it becomes an offence if they then continue to do it.”
Here’s another interesting thing, which I hope MI6 is looking at verrrry carefully.
Jerermy Hunt’s wife, Lucia Guo, was born in Xian (where the terra cotta warriors are) 1978. Her family, parents, grandparents, all still live there.
The capital of Xian is Chengdu, with a population of 8.5 million predominantly of Han Chinese ethnicity , of which ~65,000 are Muslim minority Hui. Xinjiang, where the persecution of the Muslim Uyghur minority amounts to genocide, is ~1,000 to the north but in centralised China that is not far. Muslim character street signs have been removed in Chengdu. Controlling language is always an important step in governing control of the population in China. It is a frightening time for the Hui people of Xian.
It doesn’t hurt to ask, on what side of the fence the wife of a UK MP stands. With her family still in Xian, (and unlikely to be wealthy if the state of the lady’s teeth as seen in photographs would indicate) there is a possible pressure point for the CCP. The Hunt couple met in Warwick at a business function by the online education founded by Mr Hunt that made him a millionaire. Ms Guo was at the University of Warwick helping to recruit students from her homeland to study at the university. It was in instant romance, of course.
So, Ms Guo has established connections in China. Connections or relationships, 关系 (guān xi), is extremely important in China and critical to getting important things done. I do not know where Mr Hunt stands on the 5G Huawei network but I hope that GCHQ is keeping careful tabs on intercontinental chatter from the flat above No.10.
Some of the payments reported to have been offered to pilots have been worth as much as £237,911.
There are currently ~30 retired airforce pilots training Chinese pilots in the Chinese airforce.
“None of the pilots recruited by the Chinese operated the F-35, the most advanced and expensive fighter jet in the British fleet. But several have flown older-generation warplanes like the Typhoon, Harrier, Jaguar and Tornado, according to the official. Though the pilots train their Chinese counterparts on Chinese planes, the Chinese were eager to learn about British and Western tactics and procedures.”
Already subject to The Official Secrets Act, why did the RAF not have them sign non-disclosure or ‘no competitor training’ contracts before they retired/left?
