Time for US ideologues to abandon their 20th century Cold-War mentality

Talking about a China threat has long been a way for confused ideologues to grab attention, but such claims are clearly out of date, indicative of a zerosum-game attitude and ColdWar mentality.

Former White House strategist Stephen Bannon was the latest in a long line of people to ramp up the threat rhetoric in a speech at the J-CPAC political summit in Tokyo earlier this month, making groundless accusations based on pure conjecture. Bannon argued that the United States was now a tributary state of China after decades of acquiescence on China’s economic development and that changes were now taking place as China was being pressed on the trade deficit between the two countries.

It is absurd to say that the US, with the world’s largest GDP, a strong dollar and considerable influence on the world stage, is an economic tributary to any country. On the contrary, it is the US that has been taking advantage of its own economic hegemony and pointing fingers at China’s economic interests.

The US has disregarded WTO rules and refused to drop its “surrogate country approach” in anti-dumping investigations by labeling China a non-market economy. As for trade imbalances between China and the US, the latter should reconsider its trade policy to make full use of its competitive advantage, such as expanding high-tech exports to China.

While the US has a deficit with China in goods trade, it had a surplus in services of $55.7 billion in 2016, about 40 times that of 2006.

Bannon also called on the US and its East Asian allies to unite to constrain China’s “frightening,” “audacious” and “global” ambitions.

By painting China as an imaginary enemy, based on a fabricated threat, Bannon’s agenda is clear: to unify US allies, undermine China’s relations with its neighbors and justify American hegemony.

As Western countries have played such a leading role in the economy and technology in recent history, many of their politicians seem to have developed a sense of superiority and seem unwilling to treat certain non-Western countries equally.

With a Cold-War mind-set, they have a prejudiced attitude to socialist politics, ideology and values, and wrongly see China’s development as a threat.

China, however, has always followed a path of peaceful development and has never sought hegemony or engaged in expansion. History has shown that China’s development will bring more opportunities to other countries, not threats.

In the past five years, China has contributed a series of plans on international relations, global governance, economic globalization and security cooperation under the framework of “building a community with a shared future for mankind.”

Those plans are being translated into action, especially in terms of open cooperation under the Belt and Road initiative.

Nothing can stop China’s rejuvenation, but a rising China will not become a threat to world peace and development. China will continue its efforts to contribute to global development and uphold international order. In addition, China is pushing for a bigger say for developing countries to improve the global governance system against hegemony, unilateralism and power politics.

It is now time for commentators and politicians to face reality, give up paranoia, attention-seeking and misplaced jingoism and bring an end to the China threat mind-set.