Why China should care about its image in the West
Tom Plate says the anti-China syndrome in the US runs deep. While America’s approach to the bilateral relationship needs to be based on more realistic expectations, not to mention some humility, Beijing must also consider what it can do to ease tensions
The American general and statesman Colin Powell, at his secretary of state confirmation hearing years ago, bluntly told Congress: “China is not an enemy, and our challenge is to keep it that way.” But America always needed China’s help – and now it needs it more than ever. Things below the bilateral surface look ominous and many of us are bracing ourselves for a big chill in the next jarring yo-yo in relations.
The problem from the American side is that, while it is true that not everyone wishes China well, even those who do are now worried.
One of our clearest thinkers on this topic is Harvard’s William H. Overholt. His worry is what China is doing to itself – that its economic achievements are so phenomenally ahead of its lagging political development that, before too long, something will have to give.
Overholt is brilliant on China. Once, when an unbroken Western chorus line of so-called China “experts” scoffed at Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, this Westerner who loves Asia (he lived in Hong Kong for 18 years, worked at the Nomura Research Institute and later held a similar job in Singapore) presciently wrote The Rise of China. This was in 1994 – the first book in English to predict China’s astonishing success. Was he ever on the money!
But it is his latest book, China’s Crisis of Success, that is now essential reading: it goes the other way and sees internal trouble for the world’s new superpower, especially for China’s president, whom he admires for boldness and courage. In his tough actions against opponents, he says, “Xi Jinping has chosen the most risky political strategy of any leader of a serious country today.”