‘Blame it all on China’ – US and Britain playing a dangerous game with turn to scapegoating

Tom Plate decries the increasing tendency of political and media sectors to see Beijing as the cause of all their woes, as it goes against the openness that has made America great

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Published: 5:59pm, 15 Aug 2016Updated: 8:03pm, 15 Aug 2016

It’s the West’s overrated political and overheated media system that defaults to scapegoating – as does China towards the West – that’s becoming the problem. Illustration: Craig Stephens

“China, China, China”. Blame it all on China. Why not? The scoop from the US mainland is that economic dislocation and unemployment problems are starting to be branded by the political and media sector with that provincial if semi-official moniker: It’s China’s fault.

Well, yes – China is a problem and it does create problems with its trade wins (but it also creates a lot of opportunities, right?); but China is not the problem.

It’s our overrated political and overheated media system that defaults to scapegoating – as does China towards the West – that’s becoming the problem. Even the Brits have jumped into this dumb, self-defeating game – toddling along as if a clueless puppy on the heels of the new government of Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May.

British Prime Minister Theresa May postponed approval of the Hinkley Point nuclear plant at the 11th hour. Photo: AFP

She pulled an 11th-hour plug on a forward-thinking nuclear power installation deal with Beijing that had been negotiated by the previous government of David Cameron and formally agreed to in good faith by both. At that betrayal, the Xi Jinping (習近平) government is howling and I, for one, cannot blame them.

Sino-British ties at ‘crucial juncture’ after delay in Hinkley Point nuclear plant deal, warns Chinese ambassador

High-level agreements between governments should be mutually drilled and cemented into core national interests. After all, if every pact is to be subject to the revisionist whims of the next government, what’s the value of arduous international negotiations? In the British case, one might have thought the political-ideological distance between Cameron and May, previously a member of his cabinet, could not possibly have been so great as to recall a signature agreement with Beijing.