China’s bullying disposition is coming out – Part 2

China, as believed by many, holds important relationships with other pariah states all around the world.
However, the ties regard also western governments, leaders, and corporations, which profit from the hegemony of the CCP.
Westerns are in addition influenced culturally by China, usually without any kind of awareness.

In my previous article, I showed how PR China’s foreign policy was coherent with its internal regime, in terms of violence and coercion. The ones who are aware of the Chinese authoritarian outlook are disgusted and think the West can’t deal with a similar nation, as it was with the Nazis and the Soviets in the 20^th century, and only a few rough states could have relationships with them, but incredibly, it’s not like that. China keeps important ties with semi-isolated states such as North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Belarus. The war in Ukraine led also Russia to reinforce the alliance with Beijing, increasing also trade dimension, which could double, compared to 2013 data. We can speak also about the neo-colonialist project in Africa, South America, and Pacific Asia through the debt trap and intensive mineral extraction, but we may have a further occasion to speak about.

Nevertheless, the ties with Western countries and corporations exist and are incredibly solid, regardless of the criminal disposition of the Chinese Communist Party. Before the 70s, the Western hemisphere recognized the Republic of China (Taiwan) as the only legitimate Chinese government; however, the 1969 Chinese-Soviet crisis split the communist sphere and pushed away China from the Soviet Union, so US President Richard Nixon started a dialogue policy with Mao, visiting Beijing in 1972, and the two countries enjoyed a historical table tennis match between the national representatives. The USA recognized PR China as the legitimate China instead of Taiwan (which is currently recognized only by a few states, like Vatican City). Till the end of the century, relationships held an up-and-down trend with agreements on many local issues such as the Vietnam-Cambodia war as both supported the Khmer Rouge regime against Vietnam and many tensions about historical events, the Tiananmen Square massacre of 4^th June 1989 in particular.

Chart showing China’s economic weight in international trade since 2001, as China joined WTO (data by World Bank, 2013)

2001 was a turning-point year for China-West relationships: after 9/11 the USA relied on China as a strategic partner in the counter-terrorism war, but most of all, China officially entered the World Trade Organisation, opening wider channels with the West, and many corporations definitively transferred their factories in China. President Trump declared an ideal “trade war” on China and its unfair competition, denouncing Hong Kong repression, the Uyghur genocide, and the infiltration of China into America, but relations didn’t get so worse, and Joe Biden didn’t change it factually too. Moreover, Biden’s son Hunter is believed to have dealt with Chinese state-affiliated oil and coal groups, as New York Post reported in 2020, and later other agencies confirmed.

In Europe relationships are even better: if the British Conservatives, like Iain Duncan Smith, Ben Wallace, and the favorite new leader Liz Truss, have always been skeptical of bilateral ties, many other leaders have maintained friendly bonds, and we are not speaking about some isolated stereotypical left radicals. Angela Merkel, one of the most praised figures for her pretended competence and integrity, has always been in contact with both China and Russia, supporting EU-China trade, Huawei’s new 5G software, and denying an international alliance against Beijing proposed by the USA. This approach seems to be repeated by Emmanuel Macron and new Chancellor Scholz. In Italy, the 5 Stars Movement is believed to be a hard sympathizer of CCP, as former PM Conte declared that China “was coherent with the Italian democratic values and principles”, while another former PM, D’Alema, praised the Asiatic nation on a state-affiliated TV for “ensuring stability and lifting millions out from extreme poverty”. Someone should tell him that Environment Vice-Minister Wu Xiaoqing declared in 2007 that more than 300 million rural inhabitants hadn’t access to safe water and more than 100’000 hectares (1000 km², the dimension of a city like Rome or London) of land, were used as garbage dumps. Finally, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau in a 2013 interview stated: “I admire China, as the government is pushing an eco-friendly agenda to be completed soon”. Nowadays, China emits 25% of greenhouse gasses in the world and the Yangtze River brings to the sea 55% of global waste accumulating in oceans.

As governments allowed China into the globalized world, big businesses had free hands to outsource their production, even though China “attracts corporations only to copy strategies and industrial machinery, then kicking them out when their state-run businesses have become competitive”, US Senator Marco Rubio stated. As new Chinese groups such as Alibaba, Huawei, and Shein reached the American and European markets, copying brands such as Amazon, Apple, and H&M, these same corporations landed on Chinese soil thanks to many factors such as lower wages (according to the Australian Fashion Report, the minimum income in clothing industries was 150$ per month in 2016) and looser environmental laws. According to many NGOs, several industries (especially in the fashion field) are exploiting workers with the complicity of the Chinese government, which is believed to provide low-cost forced personnel, probably Uyghurs or other minorities, who are deported to the peripheries of the country, kept away from their traditions and beliefs, to become unanimated working machines.

Picture depicting ByteDance employees with the flag of Chinese Communist Party, the so-called CCP (photo by NatEase Hao)

However, the main issue is the infiltration of China into western societies: aside from evergreen topics such as the social credit system, CCP has entered the free world, spying and then indoctrinating it. Huawei and Xiaomi have been accused by a Lithuanian vice-minister to be capable to censor certain online resources and to transfer navigation data to a server controlled by China. On social media, the regime ideology is spreading in the same way Putin emailed his beliefs through Sputnik, RussiaTV, or Ria Novosti. If Russian agencies have been forbidden to share content in the EU area, many Chinese media such as South China Daily Morning or the Global Times are still free to make propaganda. Further, Donald Trump and other American Congressmen claimed the popular social media TikTok was created to spy and confuse younger generations, as TikTok developer, ByteDance, is believed to be a state-controlled agency. Tiktok is also believed to spy on the free world lifestyle and hide many national issues, such as the Uyghur genocide. The same younger generations risk being exposed to the same propaganda in colleges: the Confucius Institute provided all around the world donations and collaborations with the most prestigious colleges, while in Hungary PM Viktor Orban agreed with China to open a Fudan University siege in Budapest. Moreover, it has been proved that BLM, many climate change activists, and other social justice progressive groups have received endorsements from China, as Beijing sees it as a perfect tool to destabilize and weaken Western countries.

Now, we face an aut-aut doubt: continuing to deal with China and be accomplices of the regime or standing up against the CCP, although it would change our lifestyle and routine. Many brave countries have started to rediscuss their relationships with China: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have just left the Eastern European Cooperation Group, whose goal is to link East Europe countries with China, and also the Czech Republic is set to leave the group. Both US President Donald Trump and Joe Biden signed bills against Uyghur genocide and HK protests repression, both Republicans and Democrats supporting them. Both UK Conservatives candidates Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have promised a hostile disposition against China, while many Members of Parliament proposed to strip Huawei 5G net out of Britain. Australia has already done it and they are monitoring the developments in Salamone Islands, where China forced the local government to allow its army on the archipelago’s territory, with the alibi of protecting the Chinese minority. A lot is still to be done, especially corporations should rethink their production chain, but the entire free world expects the new “Evil Empire” to experience once again the same fall which heat the Soviet Union.

Sources:

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/russia-chinas-junior-partner/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-china-laptop/

https://www.agenzianova.com/news/germania-la-cdu-abbandona-la-strategia-di-merkel-per-la-cina/

https://formiche.net/2021/01/lega-contro-conte-sulla-cina/

https://www.ilfoglio.it/politica/2021/06/15/news/d-alema-nuovo-idolo-della-propaganda-cinese-2522891/

http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/213422.htm#:~:text=300%20Million%20Villagers%20in%20China,Water%20%2D%2D%20china.org.cn&text=One%20third%20of%20China’s%20900,environmental%20official%20said%20on%20Friday

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/justin-trudeau-s-foolish-china-remarks-spark-anger-1.2421351

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-climate-change-policies-environmental-degradation#chapter-title-0-7

https://www.verdict.co.uk/yangtze-river-plastic-pollution/

https://www.thewirechina.com/2020/05/03/marco-rubio-on-how-china-has-changed-capitalism/

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/china-83-major-brands-implicated-in-report-on-forced-labour-of-ethnic-minorities-from-xinjiang-assigned-to-factories-across-provinces-includes-company-responses/