As Hu Jintao visits Washington, China continues to persecute Christians, enforce the one-child policy, and lock up dissidents. And don’t forget its relentless military buildup and its expanding territorial claims.
A rich China–contra the Washington policymaking establishment–is not turning out to be a free one. But as long as we remain in thrall to the myth of China’s “peaceful evolution,” we will be incapable of defending ourselves against Beijing’s increasingly predatory behavior.
It is a Western conceit, applied by presidents from Nixon onwards to China, that more wealth means more freedom. President George W. Bush in 2005 enunciated the typical Washington view: “As China reforms its economy, its leaders are finding that once the door to freedom is opened even a crack, it cannot be closed. As the people of China grow in prosperity, their demands for political freedom will grow as well…. By meeting the legitimate demands of its citizens for freedom and openness, China’s leaders can help their country grow into a modern, prosperous and confident nation.”
The multinational corporations that seek profits in China continue to hype this view. Their lobbyists work assiduously to convince our elected representatives and government bureaucrats that China is becoming more like us. All we need to do is bide our time, they say.
This is so much ethnocentric nonsense. The reality is that as the Beijing regime grows wealthier, it is becoming ever more despotic at home and ever more aggressive abroad. Dissidents who once would have been released following Western appeals for clemency remain in prison. Fragile democracies in Africa, Asia and Latin America are increasingly corrupted by China’s moneybags foreign policy.
China’s leaders not only reject but now publicly deride “Western values.” Instead, they continue to impress on a servile population their own conception of man as subservient to the state and possessing no inalienable rights. They are obviously convinced that China can be rich and powerful, while remaining a one-party dictatorship.
And why shouldn’t they believe this, given the stellar performance of their economic model over the past few decades? With their labyrinthine system of trade barriers and their artificially undervalued currency they have rigged the “free trade” game in their favor. We do nothing as Beijing pursues an industrial policy that focuses on developing so-called “pillar” industries and uses export subsidies and other unfair tactics to give them a competitive advantage in world markets. In order to continue to compete, multinational corporations now feel compelled to bow to Beijing’s demands that they transfer their most advanced production technologies to China, compromising their own futures.
The Chinese leadership has been further convinced of the superiority of their economic system by the way that China has escaped the worst consequences of the ongoing recession and continued to grow over the past two years.
China remains bound to a uniquely totalitarian view of the state. Hu and his colleagues remain determined not only to remain in power indefinitely, but to have the People’s Republic of China replace the U.S. as the reigning hegemon. All they need to do is, as Deng Xiaoping once remarked, is “hide their capabilities and bide their time.”
While we do nothing.
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