Opinion | Three realities for the West to understand about China

As China’s economy continues to grow, Beijing will not wish to change a system that works well, especially when it sees things differently from the US

The era of Pax Americana needs to be followed by an era of cooperation, with help from friends, to create global security and prosperity

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People's Liberation Army soldiers assemble during military training at the Pamir Mountains in Kashgar, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, on January 4. China needs to allay fears that it will use its growing military might to cow its neighbours. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:30am, 12 May 2021Updated: 3:34am, 12 May 2021

The fate of the world will be influenced greatly by what sort of relationship the United States and China develop in the coming years and decades. To forge a fruitful rather than angst-ridden, if not destructive, relationship for themselves and the rest of the world, the two countries need to fundamentally change the way they approach each other.

The US and the West more broadly need to recognise three realities about China. The first is that China is a giant economy that is only getting bigger and more technologically advanced.

With that increasing economic strength will come commensurate military power. China, at 19 per cent of the global economy, has overtaken the US as the world’s largest economy on a purchasing power basis. China and the US together produce more economic output than the next 12 economies combined, and the next 21 on a nominal exchange rate basis.

The second reality is that China has a different political, economic and social system from the US and the West.

China’s single-party rule by the Communist Party, its mixed economic system of “state capitalism” and its elevation of the common good over individual freedom might look undemocratic, unfair and repressive to US eyes. To China, it is a system that, aided by China’s integration into the world economy, has unleashed its economic development potential in the past four decades and helped to lift many of its citizens out of poverty.

China is not likely to want to change its successful model. Neither is it in the mood to be lectured to about the need to do so by countries whose politics appear to be increasingly dysfunctional and whose social compact is fraying.

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