Beijing should give Hong Kong some space if it wants to boost China’s global credibility

The Trump administration’s rude slap-down of the largely symbolic ­Paris climate accord has stung eyes and optimism around the world. We move from having a US president known for “leading from behind”, as ­Barack Obama’s hyper-caution was termed, to one who proposes to lead by “running from reality” – as Donald Trump’s approach looks to become infamously known.

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Both deserved their breaks. France, which wisely and courageously opposed the US invasion of Iraq, received in return a pummelling from the George W. Bush ­administration. For its independence of thinking and other ­virtues, it warrants respect, not scorn. China, so often the target of blanket ideological reportage from the US media, is clearly gaining in international esteem. This is not only good for China but for almost everyone. The less brutally Trumpian it is in style, the greater its potential gain.

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The new Beijing is not like the old Moscow. Its appetites seem fairly logically pipe-fitted to the voracious needs of its vast populace. It is investing in infrastructure like there is no tomorrow, not invading Eastern Europe or arrogantly holding up its system as some universal model to be worshipped. (For a long time, America itself would have been better advised to go heavier on infrastructure renewal and lighter on tedious political evangelism).

At the same time, China faces problems. In America, we worry about the health of our political system; and in China, there is a comparable worry: whether its current configuration is adaptive enough to meet today’s pressures and future challenges. The communist economic blueprint has been discredited, having produced more inequality, not less. And, despite President’s Xi’s efforts to pump vitality into the Marxist idea, at China’s centre is a vacuum in belief for which a voracious nationalism alone may not compensate.

Some observers now point to a corresponding upsurge in religiosity in China. In The New York Review of Books, Harvard professor Roderick MacFarquhar – the venerable historian and politician scientist who is anything but a panda-hugger – gives credence to surveys that claim China has 200 million Buddhists and Taoists, 50 to 60 million Protestants, 10 million Catholics, and 20 to 25 million Muslims. Add in various other forms of worship and maybe a third of mainland Chinese “admit to a need for a faith to sustain them”, as MacFarquhar put it.

Statistical guesses about China always require caution – trust them wholly at your peril. But it’s good to see evidence of what might be termed spiritual entrepreneurship, as the Chinese have pulled off such brilliant economic entrepreneurship. A wary MacFarquar does cite a lot of government surveillance of these activities, and some harsh oversight; but what was most surprising in his essay – titled “China’s Astounding Religious Revival”, a sensational review of Ian Johnson’s new book The Souls of China – is the government’s evidently considered decision to try to maintain control over religion without strangling it.