Stretching back millennia and not a few hundred years as in Western democracies – ruling over populations almost five times as large as U.S. demographics – meeting time and again revolts, minority upheaval and break-away provinces, and foreign aggression in its long history, a Chinese perspective on world affairs should be a constant feature of Western geopolitical vision
It not always is...
Confusing China’s astonishing economic progress of the last 40 years with the Industrial Revolution which put the West on the path of democratic political evolution is the trademark of lazy thinking
Yes, China’s highest authorities made an audacious bet on the ability of its industrious and courageous population to meet the challenge of modernity, but only naïve Western visitors of China’s booming towns, especially on the coast, will assume the newfound wealth is evenly spread – this is hardly the case and profound inequality is probably today’s festering concern
Yes, China’s land mass and its tight grip on the borderlands – Mongolia, Tibet and Xingjian – seem to put competing Great Powers in the shade and China’s highest authorities certainly favor this perception. History however tells differently about struggles, encroachments and foreign interference, as China was pressured since the 1850’s, which was like yesterday on Chinese calendars…
On both accounts, Western commentators do well to seek out Chinese perspectives
Economic development has made great strides but the country’s population still has to benefit fairly from the newfound wealth – truly a national interest and the ambition of an entire future generation – not a playground for western financiers and industrialists today
The assertion of China’s geopolitical power should be welcomed, especially after stripping away some of the unwholesome propaganda, but the insecurity exposing its land mass is a lesson of history, compounded by the complexity of government, which no Chinese leader is about to forget