Reset of relations at hand as the West wakes to China reality

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the floor of parliament. Picture: AAP

For decades, the relationship between China and the West rested on illusion and pretence.

Western politicians fooled themselves into thinking that the Chinese system, centrally directed and authoritarian, would in time resemble their own, open and democratic.

For its part, China camouflaged its global ambitions. Obeying Deng Xiaoping’s maxim to “hide our capabilities and bide our time”, it built itself into a manufacturing colossus and the world’s largest trader, amassed “hard” military power and projected “soft” influence, sometimes covert and bought with cash.

This game of make-believe is winding down.

Last week’s trip to China by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose father engineered his country’s opening to the People’s Republic, will likely go down as one of the last in a series of largely futile Western efforts to “shape” China’s rise by encouraging its adoption of liberal Western ideas. He arrived with plans to open talks on a “progressive” free-trade agreement that stresses gender equality, labour protections and environmental rights. He was politely shown the door.

At the same time, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was underscoring a new era of realism. With China in mind, he introduced legislation to limit foreign interference in the country’s political life. The impact has been swift: on Tuesday, Labor Party senator Sam Dastyari pledged to resign amid an uproar over his links to a real estate billionaire affiliated with the Communist Party.

Australia exemplifies both the advantages and potential hazards of a more hard-nosed approach to China.

Some predict a new Cold War. That’s possible, if Western disillusion gives rise to such strong anti-China sentiment that it derails ties.

But a dose of honesty could also lead to a more sustainable relationship, one based on a frank acknowledgment of differences rather than hopes for an East-West merger based on common values.

That mythical prospect — that China will become “more like us” — has held up debate in the liberal West about the larger questions posed by China’s economic and military ascendancy.

What is the appropriate response to an increasingly predatory Chinese state that takes advantage of Western openness to acquire technology even as it shelters its own markets behind protectionist barriers?

How do free societies push back against an authoritarian system that advances its geopolitical interests with clandestine influence campaigns? China co-opts the elites in target countries like Australia by offering them corporate sinecures and consultancy contracts. It buys up Chinese-language news outlets and infiltrates the Chinese diaspora through Communist Party agencies — all the while blocking Western media content at home with its Great Firewall and restricting Western influence by placing foreign NGOs under police administration.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has hastened this reckoning. At a party congress a few weeks ago, he made clear that China is supremely confident in its own ways and proclaimed a “new era” in which it will move “closer to the centre of the world”. Western politicians are finally coming to view China for what it is, not the country they wish it to be.

The new sense of clarity has spread to Europe. “It is always useful to call a spade a spade,” write Francois Godement and Abigael Vasselier in a paper on China-EU relations for the European Council on Foreign Relations that, among other things, recommends tougher screening for inbound Chinese investment.

In a sign of growing alarm at Chinese political interference, Germany’s intelligence services have published details on how Chinese spies have gathered data on officials and politicians using fake social media profiles.

The US House and Senate are working on bills to restrict Chinese investment in technology companies. The Trump administration is readying a raft of punitive trade measures. And among US academics, debate is simmering over the threat to free expression presented by Chinese government-funded Confucius Institutes on college campuses.

In a report for the congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy, Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig connect Chinese and Russian efforts to shape public opinion around the world. The billions these countries spend to influence media, culture, think tanks and academia, they argue, goes beyond “soft power”. They label it “sharp power”, which should be seen as “the tip of their dagger”.

Australia will be a test of how far Western countries will go to defend democratic values. Fee-paying Chinese students keep the country’s higher education system afloat; Chinese purchases of Australia’s raw materials, along with tourist spending, underpin its growth.

The People’s Daily attacked the new laws on foreign interference as “hysterical paranoia”. A Foreign Ministry spokesman accused Turnbull of poisoning ties.

Turnbull was unmoved. Echoing a slogan often attributed — incorrectly — to Mao, he declared in Mandarin that the Australian people will “stand up” for their sovereignty. Once China gets over its outrage, a reset of relations with the West is attainable, this time based on candour and clear-eyed pragmatism, not wishful thinking.

The Wall Street Journal