An isolated China is a more dangerous China by Pascal Lamy
China is becoming a more difficult partner for Europe. Isolating it would only strengthen nationalist forces in Beijing, however. While standing up for its principles, Europe should help China’s outward-looking forces. Sabres rattle in the South China Sea. Diplomatic sanctions scuttle a long-planned investment agreement between the EU and China. Chinese 'wolf-warrior' diplomats scorn their host countries. Not surprisingly, many Europeans have become wary of China. Since 2019, the EU has tried to capture its complex relationship with China by treating it simultaneously as a systemic rival, an economic competitor, and a partner in providing global public goods. While the EU has so far sought to find a balance between all three variables, the latest developments are pushing Europe closer to the stance of the United States, which primarily sees its relationship with China through a prism of confrontation. But isolating China further would be a mistake. While the EU must not be naive about Chinese intentions, a globalised China is less dangerous for Europe and the rest of the world than an autarkic China. Strategic planners in Washington see China as a more significant long-term threat to Western domination of the international order than the Soviet Union, whose centrally-planned economy was never more than half the size of the US economy. The Obama, Trump and Biden administrations have therefore all been trying to mobilise US allies to contain China’s growing power. In Beijing, such efforts bring back memories of the so-called century
of humiliation, stir up popular nationalist sentiment and accelerate China’s divergence from the West. These developments stand in stark contrast to China’s integration into the international system between the 1970s and early 2000s, when Deng Xiaoping pursued gradual domestic reform and opening up to the world. Francis Fukuyama, in the early 1990s, famously declared the end of history; from then on, economic and political liberalisation would go together. Such ideas informed Western decision-makers during the Clinton era, when China was admitted to the World Trade Organisation in return for opening its market and reforming its economy. Permanent most-favoured nation status allowed China to become the world’s manufacturing hub and to experience growth rates that made it the world’s largest economy by 2013 (in purchasing power parity terms). There was no concurrent political liberalisation, however. It has instead become clear that sustainable political change in China must come from within – an ever-receding prospect. Instead, domestic human and political rights have been severely repressed in recent years, especially in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and China has adopted an aggressive posture in its neighbourhood. The West and China are