A rising China has now started facing resistance
In recent months, a curious device appeared at the checkout counter of a local convenience store in Toronto. It was a tappable Alipay terminal. That, of course, is part of the Chinese multinational Alibaba’s e-commerce empire. As this was the year of Chinese tourism in Canada, the immigration department had allowed the use of the platform at some locations to facilitate transactions by Chinese visitors. Meanwhile, India’s PAYTM has an established presence in Canada, but a visitor from India will soon realise the Canadian app is not compatible with its Indian version.
China’s influence in the West has spiked in recent years, and the Alipay terminal is just an instance of how it has infiltrated everyday life, and not just with products in the aisles of Walmart. Countries like Canada ceded space to Beijing, with an eye to partaking of the Chinese dream. Never mind uncomfortable details like Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma being a member of the Communist Party, as Bloomberg recently reported; another pointer to the opacity of their companies and their place in the State structure.
China has often used a muscular, at times ham-fisted, approach to its relations, so much so that diplomacy was a misnomer in its dealings. All of that appeared to have worked as Donald Trump assumed charge as the 45th President of the United States and commentators lavished attention upon China as the new champion of a globalised order. This year, that course appears to have corrected.
Nations that until now wimped out in the face of China’s aggressive ambitions, are showing some sense. The detention of Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver is a flashpoint in that trajectory, and the retaliatory arrest of three Canadians by China, including a diplomat, is bolstering that approach. The assertion that Canada is a victim of a battle between the US and China is erroneous simply because even the country’s spy agency CSIS’S chief has taken the unusual step of publicly panning Beijing’s attempt to monopolise the next generation of Internet of Things technology, among other areas. Many countries are shadow banning Chinese tech majors from critical infrastructure projects, as with India, where those moves aren’t being telegraphed but implemented by the back door.
The wild card, in this regard, as with much that is of strategic significance today, is Trump. His suggestion that if China bows on trade, it could get concessions, does not augur well for this unofficial coalition of democracies that is gathering to weather the Chinese storm. But the trend may not be reversible despite the present occupant of the White House’s tweets.
Canada’s tourism minister recently cancelled a proposed visit to China. And this week, at the very convenience store where the Alipay device was front and centre, the machine lies unplugged on a shelf. That may well be symbolic of a year when China finally faced resistance and its visions of domination start to run out of juice.