West should coexist with China, avoid ‘playing’ up Taiwan issue: Norway ex-minister

Erik Solheim, Norway’s former minister of international development, urges Western governments to learn from China, India not to impose ideas on others

The US also needs to accept that China is ‘not a military threat’, and should work with Beijing to promote common prosperity, he adds

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US and Chinese flags displayed outside a hotel in Beijing. Escalation of tensions driven by Washington’s tariffs is “not good” for countries around the world, an academic has noted. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:15pm, 13 Dec 2022Updated: 1:32pm, 14 Dec 2022

A former Norwegian minister has urged Western leaders to refrain from “forcefully” advancing their ideologies and to seek coexistence with China, while warning that countries should not “play” with issues such as Taiwan.

Erik Solheim, who served as Norway’s minister of international development from 2005 to 2012, said Western governments felt that countries would be better off if they adopted political systems used in the West.

Unlike them, China did not believe its system could be implemented across the world and India had not sought to build a global community founded on Hinduism, Solheim said.

“We in the West need to learn from China and India, not to be a missionary in our instinct, not to forcefully put forward our ideas, but to coexist with others,” he told a forum on Tuesday organised by the Hong Kong-based think tank Global Institute for Tomorrow.

Erik Solheim served as Norway’s minister of international development from 2005 to 2012. Photo: AFP

Solheim, also formerly the environment minister, stressed that the United States needed to accept that while China remained an economic powerhouse and competitor, it was “not a military threat”.