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OpinionComment
Li Xing
Li Xing

Opinion | Why the West must learn from China, not try to change or destroy it

  • Tensions stem from the fact China’s economic success and modernisation do not conform to beliefs derived from the evolution of Western modernisation
  • If Western critics can be guided by a spirit of cooperation and engagement, there will be no need to fear a rising China

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President Xi Jinping, centre, attends the opening session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 22. US ruling elites have never really made any effort to study how the Chinese political system is constructed. Photo: AP
Li Xing

Time magazine’s cover on November 13, 2017 stated in both Chinese and English, “China Won.” Ian Bremmer wrote in the cover story that, “As recently as five years ago, there was consensus that China would one day need fundamental political reform for the state to maintain its legitimacy and that China could not sustain its state capitalist system. Today China’s political and economic system is better equipped and perhaps even more sustainable than the American model.”

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In its 70th Summit in December 2019, Nato issued the London Declaration. It said, “China's growing influence and international policies present both opportunities and challenges that we need to address together as an alliance.” This was the first time in the organisation’s history that its summit listed China as an independent topic in the joint declaration.

In February, the 56th Munich Security Conference took place with a peculiar topic – “Westlessness”. It suggested a crisis of identity and existence in Western countries and a sense of uncertainty about the extent of the West’s global relevance in the age of a rising China and multipolar world order.

While the world witnesses China-US conflicts across a range of domains, America’s fear of China’s economic competitiveness and technological advance is not the essence of the problem. Rather, it lies in the fact the outcome of China’s economic success and modernisation does not conform to a set of beliefs in the West derived from the historical evolution of Western modernisation.

These beliefs assume several presumed causal relationships in which economic modernisation eventually leads a country into stages of secularisation, a plural society, political competition and electoral democracy.

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China to restrict visas for Americans ‘interfering’ in Hong Kong

China to restrict visas for Americans ‘interfering’ in Hong Kong
US ruling elites have never really made any effort to study how the Chinese political system is constructed and how political meritocracy, party-state dual leadership, the policymaking process, civil servant selection and evaluation, the party-population linkage, and more, actually function.
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