tirsdag 4. februar 2020

TIME FOR EUROPE AND U.S. TO FACE CHINA'S GLOBAL THREAT—TOGETHER | OPINION

In the era of Trump, lots of disagreements simmer between Washington and Berlin: military expenditures, the Nord Stream Two pipeline from Russia, US trade tariffs on German cars, the Iran nuclear deal. But Americans and Germans can agree that prevailing assumptions about Chinese internal political developments over the past three decades since Chairman Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping's reforms, were wrong. Markets, capitalism, free trade, and openness have not made China the important and cooperative stakeholder in the international system they had hoped. Instead, China tramples on intellectual property and heavily subsidizes its economic sectors.

Chairman Xi Jinping's crackdown on political foes, including top party officials and generals, and on the Muslim population in Xinjiang and beyond, suggest that China's political system may be incompatible with the West. One hopes that these differences will not lead to the 21st century version of the Peloponnesian Wars between the democratic Athens and the austere and autocratic Sparta. Well, in the end, Athens lost, but the weakened Sparta was conquered by Rome.