Opinion | How can liberal democracies best manage China’s re-emergence as a great power?

To cope with the redistribution of wealth and political power, democracies should strengthen defensive alliances, engage openly with Beijing and exercise strategic patience: given China’s demographic transformations, change may come from within

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Published: 1:00am, 4 Nov 2019Updated: 1:06am, 4 Nov 2019

This is a year of notable anniversaries for the People’s Republic of China: it is the 70th anniversary of its founding in 1949 and also the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square tragedy in 1989. There is also another, more obscure but significant, one.

In late 1979, at the request of the Chinese government, the United Nations launched an aid programme in China. This initiative signalled Beijing’s intention to look outwards for support for its modernisation programme.

I was among the UN staffers dispatched to start the programme. Despite frustrations with the bureaucracy, those were exciting and optimistic days. Foreign governments and companies competed vigorously to provide aid and promote trade. Everyone wanted to be in China.

Four decades on and that enthusiasm has been replaced by a deepening suspicion of China, which is increasingly portrayed as a threat to the democratic world. China stands accused, among other things, of intellectual property theft, currency manipulation, unfair trade practices, militarisation of maritime waters and suppressing dissent. The Hong Kong crisis is fuelling misgivings.

So, are liberal, democratic societies now trapped in an existential struggle with China in the marketplace of political ideas and economic competition? Or can they find ways to manage the global redistribution of economic wealth and political power that has come with China’s ascendancy without forfeiting the fundamental precepts of their own societies?

These are big challenges but not insurmountable.