The last thirty years have seen the sensational, worrying, astounding, terrific rise of Chinese influence and power. Which adjectives you use depends on what side of the political fence you stand. The response internationally has largely been bipolar with most western nations unsure about whether they should be scrambling for new market opportunities, or standing up against China’s non-democratic regime.
Living in Australia, I would say the tone definitely wavered between being opportunistic and horrified. Opportunistic about how much coal, iron ore, expensive tertiary education and milk powder we could export. Horrified about human rights abuses, censorship, Tibet and Hong Kong. As enthusiastic as Australia is about building friendly ties and trading agreements with this economic powerhouse, there has also always been a tone of caution, a notion of distrust, a sense of otherness.
However support it or not, China’s time is here and I don’t think anyone would deny it’s growing super power status. Aside from its global economic influence, China’s has become especially active in foreign aide and development with the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and One Belt One Road Initiative.
As Xi Jinping said during his speech at the recent 19th Party Congress:
“The Chinese nation … has stood up, grown rich, and become strong — and it now embraces the brilliant prospects of rejuvenation … It will be an era that sees China moving closer to centre stage and making greater contributions to mankind.”
This is not a statement that any policy maker or expert in international relations would have forecasted twenty years ago, but for the Chinese, it’s been a long time coming. Note the word ‘rejuvenation’ in Xi’s speech.
For people that have studied Chinese history, they would know that throughout it’s 2000 year history, China was the super power in Asia. Before the modern era , China saw itself as the best, most powerful, most civilised and most developed country on earth. Before the Industrial Revolution in Britain, it was actually wealthier and most technologically sophisticated than Europe. But just as European commerce and technological progress sped up, China’s stagnated, leading to the first of it’s many defeats during the first Opium War.
The century from thereon forth is dubbed as the “100 Years of Humiliation” in China, as it lost further wars and territories to the European Powers and Japan. This finally came to an end with the defeat of the Japanese in the Sino-Japanese War during World War II.
The China that emerged was poor, agrarian and fragmented though as civil war ensued between the Communist Party of China and the democratic Nationalist Party of China. This lead to the founding of the Peoples Republic of China we know today, and the separation of Taiwan — the last base of the Nationalist Party. From that day forth, it has always been the Chinese dream to reclaim its world leader status, as if anything that happened between was just a slight of history.
So when looking at China, it shouldn’t just be as a recently developed, newly powerful country, acquiring greater influence on the world stage , but as an old world power struggling to regain it’s former might and glory. The former is how the West perceives China. The latter is how China perceives China.
The West sees China’s rise as an inevitable trend. China sees China’s rise as destiny.
