The West must change its tactics on China

Beijing has stealthily sabotaged international organisations like the WHO to build a new order

It’s tricky to get ready for battle when the enemy has a gun to your head. America can’t boycott China over coronavirus without committing economic suicide. It can’t fly fighter jets to warn Beijing without risking World War Three – and without importing aircraft parts from Chengdu factories. Nor can it use diplomacy to turn the heat up on the People’s Republic of China. Trump’s vow to suspend World Health Organisation funding is an attempt to kick the sand of chaos into a situation where its rival has the advantage. Dangerous tactics? Certainly. But Washington is running out of options.

Such realpolitik analysis of the situation is, naturally, nowhere to be found in this week’s helping of anti-trump hysteria served up by the commentariat. The withering of the Western nation state and the uncorruptable goodness of global bodies like the WHO are so taken for granted by the liberal media that

China’s colonisation of both has barely registered as a story. But elite mythology about China’s eventual assimilation into the liberal order has crumbled in the harsh light of this crisis like a Shang dynasty mummy.

There is an old Chinese saying that the devious route can get you to your destination even quicker than the shortcut if your enemy does not suspect. Such sums up the despicable brilliance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Rather than scrambling to expand its borders, like Germany in 1939, or invade a rival, like Japan in 1894 and 1937, over the last 20 years, the CCP has stealthily sabotaged the “international community” with a view to building a new world order.

So far China has practically bought Africa’s UN votes in exchange for aid, contorted the UN Human Rights Council’s norms, and rendered outdated organisations like the EU obsolete, by seducing member states with preferential bilateral partnerships like Belt and Road.

This week, however, we are witnessing the fallout of the CCP’S boldest new ruse – installing stooges at the helm of once semi-credible bodies. That the WHO should praise China, having swallowed its faulty intelligence in January that investigations had found no evidence of human-to-human coronavirus transmission, is as absurd as it is unsurprising.

Sadly, the rot reaches the roots. The WHOS and UNS of this world are vast, drab bureaucracies reared in the image of corporate 1950s America. In that sense they share a curious history with the other bane of Trump’s life: the US multinationals busy trading away their long-term viability for short-term stockholder enrichment in China. Perhaps that is why big globalist business and big globalist politics have the same bloated aura of doomed hyper-expansionism.

There is an even more basic problem. Global interventions cannot correct the deepest dysfunctions of a nation state. Take the view that a slick environmental campaign can force China to close its dangerous wet markets – if only Brexit and Trump had not blown up the Blairite dream of a united Western front. What naivity! Beijing’s reopening of wet markets is not just about it denying culpability, but protecting its entire power system. Since the first dynasty of 221 BC, China has been a imperial autocracy reliant on support from rapacious business barons and fiercely independent provinces. Wet markets are hugely lucrative for rural governors, and lend credibility to Chinese pharma firms that are even now touting coronavirus treatments derived from wild animals.

We may not be able to police the world’s second power, but we can better protect ourselves. Trump gets this. US calls to sue China – which owns $1 trillion of America’s debt – betray a level of patriotic denialism. But the president is also supporting limits on stock buybacks for firms getting federal lockdown help – an endemic practice in a get-rich-quick 1980s business culture that he believes has partly powered the stampede of American firms to China.

Britain hasn’t got the memo. The CCP’S claims that it has received assurances from our Government that it will not attempt to politicise Covid-19 is a grave warning that the Tories risk falling between two stools – rejecting the old internationalism, but not having the stomach for the new nationalist era either. But we must urgently embrace the latter, preparing for the tech Cold War around the corner, treating healthcare as part of our defence sector, and ending reliance on Beijing for crucial products and infrastructure.

My favourite Chinese legend is that of Duke Huan of Qi, who lived in the 7th century BC. To conquer the neighbouring states of Lu and Liang, which specialised in brocade weaving, Huan made brocade his land’s official dress. Lu and Liang stopped producing all other things – including grain – to meet the demand. One day, the duke banned brocade, in favour of silk. With no export revenue and no grain to feed their people, Lu and Liang collapsed. The story speaks to the CCP’S belief in self-sufficiency, and the vulnerability of those who prize fantasy riches over internal strength. It is a lesson the West must learn fast.