In late 1978, China’s Supreme Leader Deng Xiaoping initiated two major policy shifts that would transform China and the world order in decades to come. In a communist party encounter in December of that year, the leadership declared that China would shift its focus from political struggle to economic development. Within days, China and the United States announced that they would establish diplomatic relations.
These two events marked the end of China as a hermitage where a billion people lived in extreme poverty and the beginning of its evolution into a superpower.
It was no coincidence that the country’s economic reform and opening up to the outside world went hand in hand. “China cannot develop independently from the world,” said Mr. Deng.
Now both policies are in jeopardy. China’s current Supreme Leader Xi Jinping just started his third term as the president of the country reversed many of the policies that propelled China’s economic rise. During his visit When he came to Moscow this week, Mr Xi also brought his country closer to Russia while alienating countries that helped develop China over the past four decades.
The prospect of international isolation unnerves many people in China. They worry that China has fallen into the “wrong” camp, just as it did after the communist party took over the country in 1949 and joined the Soviet bloc, only to have a falling out and then a border collisionwith the Soviet Union.
With the visit of Mr. Xi has made China clear to the world which side it has chosen. It has also made it much easier for the United States to convince American allies to work together to contain China.
“The rift between the two camps is getting sharper,” Hu Wei, a political scientist from Shanghai, said in an interview. “I have long said that if China cannot make a flexible choice in the war between Russia and Ukraine, it will become further isolated.”
Immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year, Mr. Hu, in a commentary, criticized China’s stance on the war. He predicted that the West would be more united, NATO would continue to expand and that China could become an international pariah if it did not distance itself from Russia. His article was censored in China.
The “Iron Curtain” would “fall again, not only from the Baltic to the Black Sea, but also to the final showdown between the Western-dominated camp and its competitors,” he wrote. “If China does not take proactive steps to respond, it will face further containment from the US and the West.”
That is already happening. In a recent speech, criticized Mr. Xi western countries for their “comprehensive containment, encirclement and suppression of China” led by the United States. He said it has “posed unprecedented serious challenges to our country’s development”.
China is experiencing sharp declines in both exports and foreign direct investment, as many multinational companies are moving part or all of their supply chains out of China. The economic policy of the country has become much more unpredictable under Mr. Xi, especially during the “zero covid“lockdowns last year. And the combination of US trade tariffs and export controls has made navigating China difficult for multinational corporations.
The Biden administration has tried to persuade others to coordinate its China policies, especially by blocking access to advanced technologies. American allies, including Japan and the Netherlands, have pledged not to sell their most advanced semiconductor machines to China. The United Kingdom, after doubting the infrastructure of the 5G expansion for a while, decided not to buy any equipment from Huawei.
“The Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have reinforced the negative perception of China within the European Union,” a group of Chinese researchers wrote in a report. “China’s image in Europe is influenced by its association with Russia.”
Liberal-minded Chinese privately whisper that China’s refusal to condemn the Russian invasion, and Xi’s friendship with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, have made the United States’ alliance-building much easier — and their own lives much more difficult .
Chinese businessmen have found it difficult to expand in the West as many countries have established strict regulations regarding Chinese investment. Manufacturers have had to move parts of their supply chains abroad if they wanted to retain Western customers to reduce their exposure to China. Many Chinese workers have lost their jobs as a result.
Chinese tech companies are under a lot of pressure. Quote concerns about national security, the US government is urging ByteDance, the Chinese internet company, to sell TikTok, its popular app for short videos, or face a ban in the country. The US already has that forbidden its use in government machines, just like Canada, UK and EU countries. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify in Congress today.
Feng Yujun, a professor and a top Russia expert at Fudan University in Shanghai, argued in a December speech that China has overpaid economically and politically for its ties with Russia, according to a translation of his speech.
“We must maintain not only a long-term friendly cooperative relationship with Russia, but also a constructive partnership with the United States, because our relationship with the US will determine China’s overall international environment in the future,” he said.
Mr. Xi has quickly changed the direction that Mr. Deng was taking. He did not follow the former leader’s lead that China bides its time and hides its capabilities as it develops itself. Instead, Mr. Xi bragged China technical power when almost everything was built on top of western technologies.
He has also turned China’s collaborating diplomats into confrontations warriors on the international stage. Under him, the Chinese government has repeatedly tried to use its economic weight to force someone company or any government who dared to criticize it.
Mr. Deng was once asked why China placed such importance on its relationship with the United States. He replied, “Looking back over the past few decades, any country that has enjoyed good relations with the US has become prosperous,” according to a memoir by a top United States expert, Li Shenzhi, a well-known liberal intellectual.
Under Mr. Xi, China’s relations with the United States have become hostile. Instead, he calls Putin a “dear friend” and seeks to strengthen economic ties with Russia, whose output is close to that of southern China’s Guangdong province and with whom China had a bitter, humiliating history during both the imperial and the communist period. periods.
Mr. Hu, the scholar, said in the interview that it was not true that the US had always tried to contain China. The US admitted China to the World Trade Organization. It increased trade with China. It provided technologies and management expertise when China had none. Why have relations between the US and China soured? he asked. Who should be responsible?
“I will not discuss this because it is a sensitive issue,” he said. “I don’t think the responsibility lies with the US”
He says China has no reason to complain that the United States is no longer helping it. “Why should I help you if we’re not friends anymore?” he asked. “Isn’t it foolish to make your competitor stronger?”
Ultimately, foreign policy decisions should be made based on whether they help China achieve modernization and improve people’s lives, Mr. Hu said — not whether a leader likes a particular foreign country or not.
For the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, Mr. Have a sequel article. He asked whether Putin would still have continued his “special military operation” had he known how it would turn out.
“History is not concerned with ‘what ifs,’ and what is lost can never be found again,” he wrote. “We can only learn from the lessons, do our best not to stubbornly stick to our course and never repeat past mistakes.”
He concluded: “The most tragic thing is to witness a nation that does not remember its past mistakes.”
His article was about Russia, but he might as well have been talking about China.