Will the US and its allies accept China’s olive branch?

AN important development in global politics took place recently when after the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th (CCP) congress, President Xi Jinping on Oct 27 said China is willing to work with the US to find ways to get along for the benefit of both countries.

His position on this conciliatory message – despite the continuous stream of anti-Xi and anti-CCP rhetoric from western media and some western political leaders – was clear and unambiguous.

This was so that as major powers, China and the US should strengthen communication and cooperation to help provide stability to the world.

This offer of peace and collaboration in international relations from China appears to have been ignored or rejected.

For those following western media on its China coverage, it was not surprising that the weeks leading up to the 20th party congress, which ended on Oct 22, should see a crescendo in the anti-Xi and antiChina coverage.

A daily barrage of headlines from western mainstream media appeared to sensationalise every possible bit of reportage to mislead, instil fear and anxiety, and denigrate China’s leaders and the CCP.

Many of the stories ran from the melodramatic to the farcical, with rival media trying to outdo each other in convincing their readers of the existential threat that China poses to the rest of the world.

Other “analytical” stories focusing on Xi and the CCP appear framed to lead to the regime change objective which mainstream western media has increasingly set up as its main mission in reporting on China.

Perhaps the most prominent was one recently proclaiming that “AntiXi protest spreads in China and worldwide”.

This report, like others lambasting Xi for his authoritarian leadership and repressive rule, has typically picked on interviews conducted with some anonymous critics of the Chinese government – in this instance a total of eight mainly overseas Chinese students – to claim that the anti-Xi protest movement is now worldwide although there is no evidence of such a development in China or anywhere else in the world.

The same Western media proclivity to half-truths, lies and falsehoods in its reporting on China is nothing new.

It has been applied against every country and leader that the US and its allies have identified as anti-US and anti-West, and sought to destroy since the end of the Second World War.

This list includes Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Afghanistan, Palestine, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Patrice Lumumba, Salvador Allende, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

Is regime change more the western target?

Today the target of western media is focused on Russia under Vladimir Putin and China under Xi.

With China, the objective is not simply to discredit and bring down Xi and to seek regime change.

The bigger target is the nation and its people whose advances in the last two decades are seen as threatening western dominance in key sectors which the west sees as its levers to unquestioned leadership and control.

Thus, in disparate and seemingly unconnected areas such as space exploration, economics, social development, culture, science, technology, computer chips, artificial intelligence, geopolitics and governance, the role of western media is not only to stress the bad news about China.

Even the common global challenge that climate change provides is not immune to the badmouthing of China’s record and questioning of its motives and objectives.

In serving as the propaganda machine as well as the handmaiden of the west in deflating Chinese achievements and sustaining the “yellow peril” narrative by encouraging xenophobic and sinophobic sentiment, western media has been quite effective, as shown in the latest Pew survey report, on views and perceptions of China in the West though not around the rest of the world where the views held of China – less influenced by western media – are generally positive.

War or peace: Does sitting down help?

But what will be the true cost and end product of this anti-China campaign?

According to the Biden administration’s latest US National Defence released in Washington the day after Xi’s call for peace, China is now identified as the US’s main enemy.

In response, the report called for significant new spending on US conventional and nuclear weapons “for decades to come”.

In justifying this latest strategy, a senior defence official – echoing Donald Trump and Joe Biden – argued that China is the US’s “pacing challenge” because it is “the only competitor with both the intent and increasingly the capability to systematically challenge the United States across the board, militarily, economically, technologically, diplomatically”.

At the recently held Athens Democracy Forum, American social scientist Professor Jeffrey Sachs, who has the Sunway Sustainable Development Centre in Kuala Lumpur named after him, described the US as “the most violent country in the world” since 1950.

Sachs noted that “The real struggle of the world is to live together and to overcome our common crises. Also that ‘the solution in (this world) is to speak with each other more … Our political elites in the US do not speak with Chinese political elites except to point fingers or to yell at them. If we would sit down to speak with each other, we’d actually get somewhere.”

Unfortunately sitting down together will not bring about peace when militarisation and hate and fear-mongering continue unabated.

Sachs is too optimistic about the possibility of the US changing its global geopolitical strategy or its relationship with China.

It is clear for now that Biden’s administration is determined to take out China by any means possible, whether peaceful or otherwise.

US views China as the only competitor with the capability to systematically challenge the United States across the board, militarily, economically, technologically, diplomatically