China Is Not As Strong As Many In The West Like To Believe It Is

Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech during a high-level event in the Assembly Hall at the United Nations European headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, January 18, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Milton Ezrati, National Interest: No, China Is Not as Strong as It Seems

Despite commentary to the contrary, Beijing's success isn't perfect or unstoppable.

American opinion has moved away from its once-benign view of China. That older view, still favored by many business people, held that a prosperous China would threaten its neighbors less than a poor China, and anyway would offer the United States great economic advantages. Accordingly, this view recommended that the West engage China in a friendly way and accommodate Beijing as much as possible. The newer view has responded to overwhelming evidence that Chinese development is far from benign, that China flaunts common trade practices, steals technological secrets on a huge scale and spies outrageously. Moreover, this new view contends that Beijing acts aggressively in Asia, seems to have set itself on a thinly-veiled imperialist project that it calls the “Belt and Road,” and shows no regard for human rights in Hong Kong and—still more outrageously—in its Xinjiang region. This new view frequently paints China as a dangerous economic, military, and diplomatic juggernaut, so unstoppable, in fact, that the United States, short of a disastrous military confrontation, has little choice but to engage China in disarming ways and accommodate it where it can.

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WNU Editor: China has aspirations to be the world's super power. But aspiring to be one is not the same as becoming one. For the moment China is the world's second largest economy, and that position gives it a lot of influence and attention. But the rate that China has grown in the past three decades is now at an end. And if (heaven forbid) the economy goes into a recession, there are going to be political and social consequences that may dwarf what is happening in Hong Kong right now. Is China ready for that day? IMHO the answer is no.