The Chinese way is coming. But not where you would expect.
The world has now reached a crossroad.
With it’s rising economic development, China is also increasing its influence in the world. Ring of military bases around the world, mushrooming of Confucius centre in any country, “Chinallywood” and revival of the “Silk road” which is already described as the project of the century, are some of China’s epic projects for the decades to come.
Sounds familiar?
Like the United States did in the past, China is now massively investing beyond its borders to gain soft power.
The problem:
The Chinese government, and particularly their president (who is now legally the president of China for life) are the promotors of an ideology that bans basic human rights, free press and individual liberty.
But more than promoting it, they are in a position to convince others and execute flawlessly thanks to their huge economic success.
This, is scary as shit.
1) They have a huge competitive advantage.
The Chinese miracle is real and in the next 10 years China is poised to become the first economic power in the world.
What’s more terrifying in this, is that China has a real competitive advantage over the majority of the rest of the world. They don’t play by the same rules.
They play the really long game.
Every action, every project, every law are done not to satisfy the population but done for what’s good for China.
Tomorrow, not today.
Of course, you could say the absence of democracy helps in that, and I would agree to a certain extent, however more than democracy, its is the patience they show that is remarkable.
It is easy to understand that in the long run, a country with the best execution of their policies coupled with a strong economy and an “infinite” population will without a doubt dominate all the rest.
In our democracies our elected officials petty fight between them, destroying what the previous term had brought.
- How could anything of value come out of this?
- How could the west think big, when they are incentivized to think to the next term?
- How are we supposed to stay strong when we are incoherent and inconsistent?
It can’t, and this is my saddest point of all.
If this was happening on a company level it probably would have been outpaced by competition. Well, this is kinda of what’s happening.
I just think that our democracies are living on the advantages our predecessors had built in the past, and this advantage is just vanishing like snow under the sun, and Westerners might become the immigrants of the future.
Here is a very provocative pictures series talking about how China could look like with immigrations in 2050.
China is now being looked upon by other countries as another way to go rather than the Western model.
2) They became an alternative to the Western model, and a successful one.
Not so long ago things looked like this:
And it worked — in the 20th century, the numbers of democracies only rose to reach 6 out of ten countries in the world.
While you might say some of these democracies are puppet, or manipulated democracies, it is however much better than before.
The thing is that all these non-western countries had to rely on the West for finance, technology in exchange for trying to apply Western values and democracy into their country.
Well, today you have another supplier in the game.
This supplier is China, a giant with much ambition, that don’t care much of your political views, as far you are not against them.
We entered a golden age for dictators that want to fake democracy and officials who wants to “go fast.”
Again, this approach is more competitive compared to the Western one.
While one side is trying to convert you on their values in order for you to get what you want, the other side is offering you what you want, (at a hefty price yes), but without you needing to make a compromise on how you want to run the country.
It’s like getting “free” money without deluding ownership.
After more than a century of colonialism and US interventionism, it is obvious that leaders of other countries will take this deal. Even when dealing with a dragon.
Last, what is also pushing this trend forwards is that Western influence is declining slowly but surely due to economic reasons, internal divisions, lack of common vision and new populist leaders that are doing what China did 600 years ago. Closing itself.
3) The space is waiting to be occupied.
As a result, China has a highway to occupy the empty space left regarding all the other countries like Turkey, Brazil, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia etc..
The truth is they don’t need to conquer the “West”.
Just the rest.
The West (North America/ EU/Australia) is worth a little bit more than a
1 Billion people, while China is worth 1.4B.
With a bit more than 7B of people on Earth it means that there are around 4.5B of people left to be influenced.
The irony in this story is that all these governments now going for China were previously governments with which the West have been trying to influence and control over and over, and now since there is a backlash the monopoly on influence has been broken and these states are going for the alternative.
To make a parallel, it is a bit like on the consumer market, when after all these years the monopoly is broken and that a credible alternative appears.
All the frustrated users who had no choice until now, just go for this newcomer because they feel so much better and relieved to not being taken hostage.
4) Consequences.
Having a multilateral world is of course not a bad thing. It is a very positive thing that each country / regions can implement their own solutions to their local problems. The rebalancing of power being a good thing because of the diversity it brings rather than having a global power imposing its views and values on the rest.
However, the threat is that universal values of human rights, free expression and standards of political diversity will diminish greatly/vanish all around the Western block because of Chinese Imperialism and Technocrats approach to business and society.
In the end, the West could lose this cultural war, and become a remote island fighting for values that nobody wants to listen to anymore. The rest of the world behaving by the rules of realpolitik and in an authoritarian manner because it is way easier to govern than a democracy.
As Winston Churchill said:
“Democracy might not be the best system, but it is the best system we have found yet.”
The 21st century will test this assumption to the core, and its conclusion will come from the opposition between an autocratic regime thinking long-term and being an economic stronghold, versus democratic countries looking to adapt their own democracies to the digital age in order to regain momentum.
For this, they may want to look East again, but closer, in Estonia. The war will be fought on digital territory, between cyberattacks and owning the hardware/software to control access to the data which is access to our behaviours, as Facebook leak showed it.
For this, China is again on good tracks, but this will be the object of another article.
Thanks for reading.
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