and Tony Blair has called on Western countries to come together to develop a coherent strategy to counter the rise of China as “the second superpower in the world”.
At the annual Ditchley lecture, the former prime minister called for a policy on… Beijing of “strength plus commitment”, while warning that the era of Western political and economic dominance was coming to an end.
He said Western powers needed to increase their defense spending to maintain their military superiority while expanding their “soft power” by building ties with developing countries.
At the same time, they urgently needed to end the “madness” in their domestic politics and restore “reason and strategy”.
“How did Britain ever get to a point where Nigel Farage and… Jeremy Corbyn came for a short but important time to shape our politics? Or America to a place where the fact that you were vaccinated indicated political allegiance?” he said.
“The madness in our own politics must stop. We cannot afford the luxury of indulging in fantasy. We need reason and strategy back in the saddle. And we need to do that urgently.”
About China sir Tony said it had already overtaken the United States in many areas of technology, while President Xi Jinping had made no secret of his ambition to return Taiwan to the rule of Beijing.
At the same time, President Vladimir Putin’s “cruel and unjustified” invasion has Ukraine showed that they could no longer automatically expect major world powers to abide by accepted international standards.
“As a result of Putin’s actions, we cannot rely on the Chinese leadership to behave in a way that we consider rational,” he said.
‘Do not get me wrong. I am not saying that China would try to take Taiwan by force any time soon. But we cannot base our policy on the certainty that this is not the case.
“And even if we let Taiwan sideline, the reality is that under Xi’s leadership, China is competing for influence and doing so aggressively.”
He said Beijing would struggle “not only for power, but also against our system, our way of governing and living” and that the West must be strong enough to defend its systems and values.
“The greatest geopolitical change of this century will not come from China” Russia,” he said.
“We are coming to the end of Western political and economic dominance. The world is becoming bipolar and possibly multipolar at the very least.
“It is the first time in modern history that the East is on an equal footing with the West.”
With China – but also with countries such as Russia, Turkey and Iran – by pumping resources into the developing world while building strong defense and political ties, Sir Tony said it was essential that the West did not forget the importance of soft power.
“We have a great opportunity. Developing countries prefer western affairs. They are much more skeptical of Chinese contracts now than they were a decade ago. They admire the Western system more than we realize,” he said.