What kind of relationship should China have with the West?
Author(s): Yawei Liu; translated by Sean Ding
Posted: 2008-5-22
Source:www.chinaelections.net
Source date:2008-5-22
Number of hits:2693
[Yawei Liu is the Director of The Carter Center's China Program. This piece was published in the tabloid arm of the People's Daily, the Global Times.]
Four decades ago, as far as the West was concerned China was a dreadful place. Wrought with anger and poverty, isolated, aloof and arrogant, China seemed obtuse in its oath to bury American imperialism and "repair" Soviet revisionism. In 1968, the West was equally appalling to the eyes of the Chinese: declining, corrupt, polarized, and belligerent, the West had placed its faith in the Chinese youth to overthrow their own regime.
Due to restrictions on the flow of information, China has been known to the West mostly through the sometimes biased individuals and organizations that abhor the Communist regime. Yet the mainland Chinese have not really understood the West either. Leaders and scholars in the West have long pictured a chaotic China whose government would collapse after the onset of the Cultural Revolution. However, what the Chinese public believed in 1968 was that the student protest in Paris was indeed a legacy of the Cultural Revolution itself, that the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had sounded the death knell for American imperialism, and that a government manipulated by Wall Street would soon be overturned. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Tiananmen Square criticizing the US atrocities in Vietnam and chastising racial discrimination in America. During the 1968 Democratic National Convention protest in Chicago, the Chinese state media even reported that poor, black, and young Americans had united together in a class struggle against the capitalist government.
The world, however, witnessed a series of rapid changes thereafter. The political and social turmoil throughout the globe in 1968 forced the West to reconsider its policies, and thus brought forth the restructuring of the world order. In Europe, the appeal of Democratic Socialism soared, and in the United States, Richard Nixon, who later ended the Vietnam War, was sent to the White House by the silent majority. In 1972, Nixon went to Beijing. Nixon felt that China's 700 million people should not be filled with anger, and that an isolated China would be a threat to world peace and stability. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping met with President Carter and initiated reforms that would eventually help China embrace the world.
Inaugurated by Deng, Nixon and Carter, China's reform and opening up policy is at its finest moment today in 2008. The Chinese people have accepted capitalism as well as its values and culture; they proudly declare that the differences in economy, race, and regime type should not become obstacles in mankind's pursuit of peace and prosperity. Nevertheless, such good will might not be fully appreciated by people in the West.
If China's reform and opening up was a result of the 1968 restructuring of interstate relations, what implications might the clashes between Chinese and Western values, as seen in recent events, have for China's future? Does it signal a new reconstruction of the world order?
As a popular poem on the internet titled "What do you want from us" hints, "When we closed our doors, you smuggled drugs to open markets; when we embrace free trade, you blame us for taking away your jobs./ When we tried communism, you hated us for being communists; when we embrace capitalism, you hate us for being capitalists. / When we have a billion people, you said we were destroying the planet; when we tried limiting our numbers, you said we abuse human rights…." This poem has reflected a question that puzzles many Chinese: exactly what kind of country does the West want China to become?
Indeed, from a grand historical perspective, the West has committed many appalling crimes in the early days of capitalism. Merchants and settlers violated human rights, exploited natural resources, and promoted colonialism and imperialism in developing countries. Since China was in fact one of the victims of this expansion, the West was loathed by Chinese peasants and workers, a people who subsequently became a massive social and political force in putting the Communists in power. Western countries would certainly not favor a regime dedicated to the resistance of capitalist expansion; however, in recent years when Beijing carefully initiated its reform and announced the country's appetite for GDP growth, some Westerners again began to criticize China. This time, for being an irresponsible country that pollutes the environment. Some extremists even claimed that China should be perished from the earth.
For both mainland and overseas Chinese, Westerners, once colonists, are in no place to suppress China's development with its prejudiced views. The Chinese insist leaders and people in the West should avoid double standards and they implore the West not to use human rights violations and democracy as fueled accusations in their fear of China's rise. If the Chinese people, especially the youth, viewed the West through such an emotional lens, the moral high ground of the West would soon be lost. Democracy, as well as the capitalist development model would eventually lose its appeal among the Chinese public.
While the West asks China to adopt universal values and achieve individual freedom and political democracy on a broader scale, China asks the West to give up its double standards of morality. In this context of mutual distrust, the conflicts between Beijing and the West will only escalate, perhaps to the point of a clash of civilizations. On one hand, with a long and rich history, China is a major economic power not willing to be manipulated by the West, and it will certainly not allow any attempts on its sovereign integrity. On the other hand, the West, firmly believing in its cultural values and economic models, will not gladly surrender its moral advantages and development successes to its counterpart. It will certainly not let China replace the West as the economic and political leader of the new century. As a result, misunderstanding will deepen. Prejudice will intensify. Hatred will ferment.
Out of this misunderstanding and hatred, potential hostility between China and the West would significantly impact the world order, perhaps even triggering a fundamental change. But what might such a change bring to the world? Although it is impossible to foretell, it is highly likely that China would again miss a strategic opportunity, which once in 1968 led the country to economic development and political stability. Though the West must learn to cope with the rise of different civilizations like China, the Middle Kingdom needs to seriously consider how to avoid an intensified battle with the West over culture and values. If China is not confident that fighting against the West will eventually bring a world order that is more just, more harmonious and more stable, perhaps it is China's duty to explore other options and discover a common ground between Chinese and Western culture. It is only through these efforts that the slogan "One World, One Dream" can become a reality.
To read the article in Chinese, click here.
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