The China threat: Theory or reality?

CHINA’s rapid growth and increasingly assertive behavior are causing alarm in many parts of the world, but Beijing continues to ridicule what it calls “the China threat theory,” telling the rest of the world that it has nothing to worry about.

But the way China is sending that message is in itself worrying. With Japan, for instance, Beijing is indicating that improved bilateral relations would only come about if the Japanese stopped considering China a possible threat.

The latest Japanese defense white paper, published last August, said that China, “while advocating ‘peaceful development,’ continues to act in an assertive manner, including attempts at changing the own assertions incompatible with the existing international order.” Daily responded that relations between the two countries could not improve if Japan regarded China as a threat and continued to hold military exercises with the United States.

In February, Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence, at a US Senate intelligence committee hearing, listed Russia and China as sources of threats to the United States. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, dismissed Coats’ remarks, saying, “I don’t know why the United States has such a strong sense of insecurity.”

The China Daily followed up with a condemnation of “the comeback of McCarthyism” in the US.

Even Angela Merkel has been targeted in Beijing’s forceful campaign to convince other countries that there is no China threat.

The German chancellor said at a press conference that China mustn’t link its investments in the western Balkans to political demands. “I have no objections to the fact that China wants to trade and to invest,” she said. “We are committed to free trade, but it must be reciprocal.” She added that openness must come “not just from one side but from all sides.”

For insisting on reciprocity— China faces no restraints on its investments in Europe while it keeps many sectors of its own economy closed to foreigners—Merkel was accused by a China Daily editorial of “China threat rhetoric,” “cold war mentality,” “alarmist talk” and “political bias and prejudice against China.”

China is certainly right that there is an increase in suspicions of China and its motives.

In Europe, a recently released Responding to China’s Growing a wake-up call for many regard efforts within the continent. It was published by the Mercator Institute for China Studies, the largest European think tank with an exclusive focus on China.

“China’s rapidly increasing po