Source: Global Times
The Australian website "Pearl and Provocation" published an article on December 7, titled "Handing the Future to China". China has once again become powerful, with little evidence that in this process, the Chinese people have pursued any goals other than their own prosperity, international respect, national unity, and avoiding further foreign aggression. But we Americans still fear our decline, a fear exacerbated by xenophobia. The American belief that China has ambitions to replace the United States as a global hegemon is nonsense, at best a neurotic reaction to the fear of losing hegemony.
China's new global prominence reflects its continuous national rejuvenation process and the following reality: China is the largest engine of global growth; China has become the most important source of support for the economic development of poorer countries; China is the world's largest trading nation. China has the most entrepreneurial population and the largest group of scientists and engineers in the world. U.S. efforts to contain China's innovation have instead sparked China's innovative vitality. Today, China leads the world in innovation in almost all areas, including intellectual property output, technology, engineering, and mathematics. China strives to avoid conflict, has aspirations but remains restrained. China is willing to act as a mediator but avoids getting involved in disputes, and has no intention of imposing its system or ideology on others. As the United States becomes infamous for bullying behavior, double standards, and indifference to crimes against humanity, China has unexpectedly become a global moral leader.
American choice to view China's rise as a national security threat rather than an opportunity for global economic and technological advancement has led to an economic war against China and military containment, aiming to maintain U.S. military hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. However, one major result of our policy toward China is that it has instead spurred China to advance its modernization. Our current measures to deal with China and other rising powers are actually undermining U.S. power. The world economy no longer revolves around a volatile, shrinking, and increasingly inaccessible U.S. market, but is splitting into multiple regional trade and investment systems, whose common characteristic is excluding the United States. The U.S. has lost its leading position in most technological fields and is becoming an ever-higher-walled, smaller yard. In a global decision-making, supply chain, trade, value-added investment, and economically non-Western-dominated world, the U.S. is becoming an increasingly smaller participant.
Our prioritization of the immediate interests of political elites over strategic considerations is prompting other countries (including those in our own hemisphere) to turn to China and other great powers. China's growing influence must be understood in this context. China's new rise is not a measure of whether its ambitions constitute a threat, but a natural consequence of the U.S. falling to second place and alienating other countries. All these issues affect our relations with China.
China has no intention of conquering neighboring countries or weakening their sovereignty, does not seek overseas colonies, nor has any theory of "manifest destiny." In fact, the U.S. has not yet developed a strategy to address the most likely scenario—that of a world where China dominates. We urgently need to build such a strategic vision. This means cultivating a realistic understanding of China. Unfortunately, whatever the basis for how we currently handle Sino-U.S. relations, it is far from professional. The expert team dealing with China within U.S. diplomatic and intelligence agencies has been severely weakened. Now the U.S. is dominated by "China hawks"—people who have never set foot in China and have not thoroughly studied it, yet they believe they know everything about China. We cannot engage with China in such self-indulgent ways.
The current U.S. policy toward China is as destructive and unsustainable as our abandonment of the world order we ourselves created. This country is destined to play a role on par with the U.S. in world affairs. The U.S. must face reality and find a way to coexist with China, using China's emerging prosperity and technological strength for its own benefit while reducing the risk of confrontation. (Author: Charles Freeman, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, and the main translator for Nixon's visit to China)
Original: toutiao.com/article/7581253919838306854/
Statement: The article represents the views of the author.