Many readers may have seen the Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s BBC interview in which she was asked about her complimentary remarks towards the People’s Republic of China and that it was “not just Barbados that’s moving closer to China, it’s the whole of the Caribbean – I mean, investment from China has gone up many folds in the last few years.”
Mottley shot back: “It’s the whole world. If I look correctly, I think the Chinese hold a large, large percentage of assets within the United States of America and a large amount of their treasuries as well. So for you to focus on the Caribbean or Africa with China, without recognising the role that China is playing in Europe or the north Atlantic countries, is a bit disingenuous and really reflects more that we’re seen as pawns, regrettably, rather than countries with equal capacity to determine our destiny and to be part of that global conversation to fight the global issues of the day such as climate and the pandemic.”
The exchange was refreshing on so many levels not least because she defended the right of all countries, no matter how small, to craft and cultivate international relations to suit their own long term interests without undue regard for the elephantine and centuries old geopolitical rumblings between the three big powers, USA, China and Russia. Those who remember the heydays of the Non Aligned Movement might have gotten goosebumps.
The economic and political rise of China is the dominant story of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It is breathtaking in its speed and scale despite being seldom mentioned in a positive light by the western media. This has been achieved from the unleashing of free market economic activity starting in the early nineties with its roots in the thoughts of Deng Xiaoping who said “Black cat or white cat, if it can catch mice, it’s a good cat.” In other words it doesn’t matter if it’s capitalism as long as it works and is subservient to its political masters.
And it has worked stunningly: by 2008 China was exporting more in one day than it had for the whole of 1978 and is now the second largest economy in the world when in 1978 it was ninth. Between 1981 and 2004, 500 million Chinese were lifted out of poverty – more than the total population of the European Union. Maternal mortality (29 per 100,000 live births) and infant mortality (7.9 per 1000 live births) rates are now on par with the United States.
The West has watched these achievements with growing nervousness perhaps because they see China as a threat to the credibility of their own political and economic systems and because with great economic wealth comes military might as the US only too well knows. Coverage by Western media of China in the past few years has become increasingly shrill and at times unhinged as part of a narrative not seen since the late 1800s. At times it feels like Chinese are depicted as an alien life force rather than fellow humans. The one dimensionality of the coverage does not do justice to China, its remarkable history and culture and the achievement over the past seventy years to unify and develop a vast country with complex ethnic dynamics.
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a particularly ugly episode in China/West relations and Trump’s simultaneous blame game and denial of the risk rather than looking to cooperate with China probably cost many hundreds of thousands of lives. At the same time China’s image has been deeply damaged by what are seen as the initial mistakes it made and this has resulted in what a United Nations report called “an alarming level” of racially motivated violence against Asian Americans.
Chinese diplomacy has traditionally practised calm and cooperative rhetoric in the face of Western criticism. However in recent years it is being more aggressive in what has been dubbed Wolf Warrior diplomacy that looks to rebuff arguments and engage in ideological debate while turning the spotlight back on the West’s flaws. This was most notable in a recent US/China engagement in Alaska during which Secretary of State Antony Blinken was subjected to a 15-minute lecture by his counterpart foreign affairs chief Yang Jiechi on how the US was failing to deal with its own human rights problems. “We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world…” Other diplomats have been more extreme, with the ambassador to Sweden, in denouncing the award of a literary prize to a Chinese dissident stating, “We treat our friends with fine wine, but for our enemies we got shotguns.”
There is rhetoric and then there is the reality. As PM Mottley pointed out, America and the West have encouraged and benefited greatly from the economic rise of China. Mid-Western farmers rely on their market for 50% of their soybean production as part of what are annually over $30B in agricultural pro-duct sales. Chinese companies have made massive investments in US based pork farms. China’s share of the world luxury goods market – Chanel bags and Louboutin shoes etc – doubled last year reaching 20%. More Australian wines are sold in China than anywhere else. China is the second largest holder of US debt of over $1 trillion, and its largest trading partner by far. Even in Guyana we see an example of co-operation with the Stabroek Block consortium made up of two American IOCs ExxonMobil, Hess and China National Offshore Oil Corporation.
The West and China are so deeply interconnected and dependent on each other’s future prosperity and stability that they have no other choice but to work together and even look after each other’s interests. This includes the area of climate change where China may hold the key to CO2 reductions, not only because of the size of its economy but the command the Chinese Communist Party has over capital and the population. In the past few months the party has enacted some measures that would be inconceivable in Western societies. These include new regulations banning firms that teach school curricula from making a profit, raising capital or going public. Most recently it restricted the playing of video games by those under 18 to just three hours on the weekends with one state news outlet describing online gaming as “spiritual opium”. Quite specific to climate change as far back as 2008, the party instituted a system in Beijing that only permits odd number cars on the roads one day and even ones on other days. (Imagine that in Guyana!)
It would appear that America and its western allies are toning down their rhetoric towards China and that some understanding is emerging that constructive dialogue and cooperation on many pressing issues is necessary even if economic and military competition must persist. Both Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping declined to mention each other’s country by name in their recent United Nations speeches, and in a recent phone call Biden is said to have hinted at a summit although this was supposedly ignored by the Chinese leader. That alone may speak to the shifting power dynamics which will mean we are all likely to live in interesting times.
