Parallel Universes — Why Beijing’s celebrations didn’t leave the rest of the world in party mood
Parallel Universes — Why Beijing’s Celebrations didn’t Leave the Rest of the World in Party Mood
WRITTEN BY KERRY BROWN AND ASTRID NORDIN
15 July 2021
While the Euro football tournament was reaching its climax in early July, on the other side of the world in Beijing, China was gearing up for a somewhat different climactic moment. On 1 July, the ruling Communist Party marked its hundred years in existence before a crowd of over 70 thousand spectators, none wearing face masks, perhaps a symbol of the Party’s conquest not just of China, but also the pandemic. The once underground group with a few dozen beleaguered members in 1921 has now grown to a 92 million-strong outfit ruling over a fifth of humanity and the same proportion of global GDP. While this was only one event, it captured perfectly just how much the world today is split into two parallel universes.
On the one hand, China was proudly relaying the achievements imputed to the centurion Party that leads it. These, it is claimed, include the eradication of absolute poverty, the rise of the country to superpower status, and the maintenance and strengthening of national unity. Xi Jinping as the charismatic leader sitting at the heart of this regime is the lucky person getting all the plaudits because he happens to be in charge at this moment of commemoration. The Party as the winner is the key theme of this particular universe.
The US, UK, and the world gathered around China, however, see something very different. Recent statements from both the G7 and NATO suggest a bifurcated system with the US-led democratic team on one side, and a China-led authoritarian adversary on the other. In this great game, far from the happy harmony of win-win heralded by the Chinese side, for many in Western governments at the moment they are speaking like there can in fact only be one winner, and that has to be them. For these leaders looking at China from without, this anniversary is portentous because it shows that their dream of modernity ending with the victory of liberal democracies is either over, or experiencing a massive setback. In this context, China is, as the US FBI states, “a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States”. Nothing to celebrate about this, for them.
Understanding the cause of divisions
Mediating between either side is particularly hard because the attitudes of the West towards China arise from very different interpretations of where they are and what they are doing. An event like this July’s celebration in Beijing makes that crystal clear. It is easy to see that Chinese leaders regard their economic success today as a source of self-affirmation. They now stand second only to the US in terms of economic size because of the correctness of their governance system and their refusal to change to other options. It is equally easy to understand why Washington, London, Brussels, and others gaze at the festivities in Beijing with disapproving eyes. This is because they interpret this economic success on which the Party bases so much of its current legitimacy as being gained in a problematic way and therefore not being fully legitimate.
Exposed to scrutiny as never before, it will have to do better at speaking to the world than the bullying diplomacy of the ‘Wolf Warrior’ phenomenon witnessed over late 2020 and into 2021.
North America and Europe in particular feel like since the 1980s, they had engaged in a game with China where economic links were assumed to lead at some point to political changes. In this process, China was to end up looking more like the West politically. However, that did not happen. Under Xi, China looks even more resolutely committed to its one-party mode of governance with no sign of any change on the cards. This has created the impression that somehow China didn’t act in good faith or play the game of reform according to the accepted rules. Because of this sharp difference of opinion and attitude, in 2021, the world is in an ominous situation where China and much of the developed world are starkly opposed politically to each other. At the same time, they are also mutually dependent and reliant in terms of supply chains, combatting public health challenges and working on global issues like climate change. This is an intrinsically complex situation.
One of the main ways to see a route out of these tensions is to focus on attitudes on both sides and see how these can change in ways that accord with facts more clearly. Simply accepting mutual dependence as a geopolitical fact would give everyone the same starting point. It would also allow eschewing the neat language of a cold war, and of ‘decoupling’ China and the rest of the world — an option that is simplistic and almost certainly impossible. Going a step beyond this, there needs to be the acceptance that despite current misalignments, China and the outside world, particularly the one dominated by the US and its alliances, are in fact part of each other in ways they rarely if ever acknowledge. Far beyond simply material links, both have profoundly shaped one another through their interactions in recent decades. Both are the way they are because of how they have related to each other.
Facing the common mission
Acknowledging this mutual involvement means that the West and China can and should be more self-critical. They are directly implicated in many behaviours that they criticise in the other. The rhetoric surrounding the ‘War on Terror’ set a global scene where arbitrary and dehumanising incarceration of Muslim and minority ethnic populations has been repeatedly justified in numerous contexts. The same rhetoric is being now deployed to legitimise mass internment and repression in China’s ‘New Frontier’, Xinjiang. Likewise, the Chinese refusal to engage in dialogue around anything it labels ‘internal affairs’ not only undermines the ‘discourse power’ and influence abroad that its leaders clamour for but also lays the foundation for fear and suspicion of its international activities, including the Belt and Road Initiative that the G7 is now proposing to counter with its new ‘Build Back Better World’.
Nor can all the self-criticism come from one side. For the Communist Party’s 100th anniversary, prudence and humility might be pertinent virtues for tempering the ecstasy on the Chinese side and the resentment among the US, Europe and their main alliances. For Beijing, while it is natural to make a fuss about how far the Party has come, the last couple of years have given it some powerful hints at what occupying the number one slot in the global hierarchy might entail. Exposed to scrutiny as never before, it will have to do better at speaking to the world than the bullying diplomacy of the ‘Wolf Warrior’ phenomenon witnessed over late 2020 and into 2021. Xi says China wants to love and be loved. If so, Beijing needs to see that a great power sometimes has to spread warm feelings over many who might not reciprocate. It is not going to win many tournaments with the number of own goals it has been scoring lately, from the hard actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, to the harsh words towards Taiwan and anyone outside of China who does not speak the way it wants them to.
For the US and its allies, this anniversary should be a moment of accepting that attitudes need to change, and accepting that there are many areas where joint efforts are necessary, possible, and achievable — most urgently concerning climate change. With huge commitments to research and development in the 14th Five Year Plan running from 2021, China is now moving into a period where it desires to become a technology innovator. Much of that effort will be to address health and climate issues that the rest of the world can benefit from.
With increasing division and tension between China and the outside world, we need to see some major adjustments of gameplay on all sides to avoid the nightmare of an international order where the most significant actors are infected by resentment towards each other, and simply biding time until a final reckoning. There may be many in America, Europe and elsewhere that think there is nothing they see in China this July that is worth being cheerful about. However, if we fail now to understand the crucial and inextricable mutual importance of each other in sorting out the most pressing challenges facing humanity now, from climate to sustainability, and health, then the outcome for China and the rest of the world will not even be a draw — but a resolute mutual failure.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biographies
Kerry Brown is the Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Lau China Institute, and Astrid Nordin is the Lau Chair of Chinese International Relations at King’s College, London. Image credit: WIkimedia.