Opinion | Why China’s model of development offers Asia an alternative playbook and need not inspire fear in the US

A friend of mine, someone I’ve known for decades, is a most patriotic American. But unlike what many in China might imagine lurks in America’s secret heart, he’s not rooting for China to sputter, much less collapse. He’s not hoping for economic disaster, Maoist reversion, Japanese invasion or a great jolt backward of any kind. On the contrary, he hopes China is now well clear of the worst of the past. Excluding nasty Communist Party hacks, militaristic admirals and the like, if the Chinese as a whole deserve anything, they deserve a break.

He is but one American, he believes, of many who know there’s more to China than the trade deficit, South China Sea and intellectual-property scamming that dominate the Western media narrative. The Chinese have brought to the world immense learning, thought-experimenting dialectically long before Hegel started synthesising his theses.

The Chinese government’s extravagant, glitzy Belt and Road Initiative may wind up derailed by political and financing potholes, but it strikes my American friend as exhibiting at least some genuine measure of optimism. At the very least, there must be more than one way of looking at it besides the inevitable Eurocentric assumption of old-fashioned empire-building that the West tends to excel at.

My friend recalls reading that China, not the US or Britain, is the top higher-education choice for English-speaking African students. Most Americans would be shocked to hear this, assuming as they do that their institutions of higher learning are the best in the world. Maybe this astonishing educational migration is due to programmatic Beijing subsidies as part of a self-serving soft-power push in Africa? Many Americans might suspect a communist brainwashing campaign. However, my friend notes, it is also possible some people might wish to go to China simply because they feel they might have much to learn there.