Friday, December 14, 2018

China No Longer Cares What Its Critics Think

Many political observers believe that under President Xi Jinping, China has become both too powerful and yet too insecure to be willing to brook compromise — or the kind of measured efforts that could assuage its foreign critics. Credit Pool photo

New York Times: An Emboldened China No Longer Cares What Its Critics Think

BEIJING — Two Canadians detained in an apparent act of prosecutorial retaliation. A prominent pastor, an internationally renowned Chinese photographer and China’s top international police officer all held by the authorities. Hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang locked up in camps for mass indoctrination.

These and the detentions of many others — including billionaires, lawyers, even the American children of a Chinese fugitive — suggest that the ruling Communist Party no longer cares much about the risk to its international stature posed by harsh actions against its opponents.

Already there are signs that this hard-line approach might be costing China support overseas, alienating even the moderate voices in the United States and elsewhere who have for decades argued that engaging the Chinese leadership is vastly preferable to confronting it.

“It undermines the work of those who have tried to be neutral,” said Kerry Brown, a professor at King’s College, London, and author of a 2016 biography of China’s leader, “C.E.O., China: The Rise of Xi Jinping.”

Read more ....

WNU Editor: Truth be told, China never really cared what its critics think. When I was living in China in the 1980s, the Chinese made it very clear to me and in numerous other outlets that the long term goal of China was to be a world superpower. To reach this goal meant doing the necessary compromises and sacrifices to accomplish it, and kudos to the Chinese, they have accomplished this goal in Asia. They are the Asian superpower, and they are now setting the sights on the Middle East and Africa. And as for the critics with their complaints who are now paying attention to what China is doing .... too little and too late.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok, the China of today isn't a surprise to folks cultured in realpolitik. Those folks are older now nearing retirement and of course white. So they are ignored by the media and academics and trashed as racists.

China's rise was 100% predictable. Its future is too.
She will seek to dominate the globe economically, politically and miltarily to suit her interests and they will use methods that horrified those old realpolitik people. See what China is doing to Uyghurs now. They have tolerated slave labor of Han's at home and will do it more brutally with those they conquer or dominate.

Scratch a Chinese nationalist and the inner Ghengis Khan is displayed.

jimbrown said...

When critics = whole world, your capital will end in flames or you fall into civil war.

These two option's are China's future.