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Opinion | How China’s growing power and ambitions are burning the bridges of global cooperation
- It isn’t that governments don’t understand China, it is that there’s a growing realisation that Beijing is willing to impose its vision on others. The need for engagement and dialogue has never been greater
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In the past few weeks, China’s decades-long relationship with Europe has taken a significant hit as negotiations stalled over investment and human rights issues. Chinese fighter jets have flown dangerously close to Taiwan. And talks with India over their border dispute have reached a stalemate after the deaths of soldiers on both sides.
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Add to this the continued trade war with the United States and a clear trend emerges. At no time since China’s reform and opening up that began over four decades ago has its relations with the world been so strained. Beijing has alienated practically every major power in the Asia-Pacific – Japan, Australia and India – as well as most of Western Europe, Canada and the US all at the same time.
China’s growing ambitions are bumping up against its neighbours with increasing frequency, calling into question attempts by Beijing to establish itself as the leader of a new multilateral order. The backlash to this more aggressive approach has begun, and will only increase if Beijing continues down this path. China will increasingly feel more isolated, not by any grand Washington containment strategy, but by its own policies.
Wary nations that until recently have rationalised the costs for access to its booming market, now realise that unless they play by China’s rules, they will be punished economically and politically abroad while their citizens are harassed and physically threatened on the mainland.
That has prompted India and Japan to sign a defence logistics agreement; Australia, Japan and India to plan the Supply Chain Resilience Initiative; and a rise in regional defence spending.
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Trump and Xi trade barbs over Covid-19 as world leaders voice fears at UN’s 75th General Assembly
Trump and Xi trade barbs over Covid-19 as world leaders voice fears at UN’s 75th General Assembly
On the economic front, China’s market potential, its main leverage that has buffered the government from more opprobrium, has lost much of its lustre. While the after-effects of the Covid-19 outbreak appear to have slightly dented China’s economic growth, the promise of profits simply does not buy as much geopolitical goodwill as it used to, even as many advanced economies face recessions and a disastrous second wave of infections.
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