The West should have a comprehensive China strategy.
In the wake of the Wuhan virus pandemic, the West is finally waking up to the reality that, after decades of unfettered access to our technology, research, educational institutions and market, the People’s Republic of China has become a threat to the post-Cold War liberal democratic order. Thirty-plus years of blindly pursuing “globalisation” since 1989—arguably the most ill-conceived foreign- and national-security policy Gestalt the United States and its allies have pursued to date—has left our critical supply chains dependent on decisions taken by Beijing, an adversary intent not simply on revising the existing balance of power but on replacing the US as both the largest economic and military power and the normative hub of the modern world. The post-Cold War belief that “history ended” and that ideological battles that had racked the West since the rise of Marxist socialism were settled once and for all led us down the rabbit hole of effectively unlearning the lessons that helped us overcome the Soviet communist challenge. Instead, for three decades the elite policy consensus was that China’s “export-driven modernisation” would eventually bring about the opening-up of the country’s political system, for as the Chinese middle class rose it would demand greater political participation, bringing in the end a true convergence between the West and the East—a transnational connectivity when it came to norms, values and attitudes. The brave new Friedmanesque “flat world” was to be the end game.
