Misunderstandings with China could see the west sleepwalk into another cold war

Editorial: The list of western concerns is long, but so is the list of global challenges. China is, whether the west likes it or not, indispensable

China has insisted its recent launch was a space vehicle, not a hypersonic missile (AFP/Getty)

It is difficult to believe that something as large and ostentatious as a hypersonic missile could be the subject of possible misidentification, but so it would seem.

News reports based on numerous western intelligence services suggested China had indeed tested out such a weapon. capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, during the summer. Apparently it flew, faster than the speed of sound, through low-orbit before landing close to its target – broadly speaking a success, given the technological challenges involved.

Perhaps bashful, the Chinese authorities deny it was a missile, but merely a “reusable spacecraft”. From the point of view of its nervous neighbours and other world powers, it seems a distinction without a difference. They know what China is capable of these days. It is now a rival, and to some an enemy.

Where once America and Europe, in the then-prevailing spirit of internationalism and globalisation, welcomed China as it rejoined the world economy and emerged as an industrial superpower, now every act, innocent or otherwise, is viewed with suspicion. Much of it has been justified.

China has become emboldened in its abuse of treaty obligations and human rights in Xinjiang province (the Uighur Muslim people), Tibet, Hong Kong and now towards Taiwan. The people’s republic is continuing to lay claim and annex maritime rights and territory across the South China Sea, at the expense of Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, among others.

The Belt and Road economic partnerships reaching halfway across the world are one of the ways China projects its power and influence, and buys votes at the United Nations. Myanmar and Afghanistan are the latest nations to enjoy the strings-attached attentions of Chinese business. In the past, at least, China has manipulated its currency and practised protectionism. To this day China’s semi-command, investment-first economy is underregulated and, in the private sector, dangerously overleveraged. Censorship and nationalistic authoritarianism is a way of life.

The list of western concerns is long, but so is the list of global challenges where China is, whether the west likes it or not, indispensable. Covid, ironically enough, has been the most obvious recent one, given that that is where the coronavirus originated, and where future safeguards against similar outbreaks will need to be imposed by the Chinese authorities.

The campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is rendered far weaker if the world’s largest polluter is excluded, or excludes itself, from the action. The decision by President Xi not to attend means that the Cop26 conference next month is going to have to work even harder to achieve the kind of changes that are so urgently needed. America, Australia, Japan and South Korea, especially, need China to exercise whatever control it can over Kim Jong-un.

It is not in the interests of western powers to drive Russia and China closer together. And China too needs to understand western grievances about espionage and the military build-up, and the possible abuse of its technological prowess in everything from 5G to nuclear power.

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As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, of the G20, the WTO and with the largest military and largest economy in the world (adjusting for currency distortions), China cannot be bullied into anything.

There is a balance, then, and it is difficult to discern what can be achieved, for the people of China or the rest of the world, by the present draft towards a new cold war. What Beijing sees in fresh alliances such as Aukus and high-profile naval exercises near her waters is disrespect, an attempt at encirclement, political interference in Chinese affairs and a painful reminder of western imperialism, Japanese occupation and dismemberment.

The west has no such intentions, but it has failed to make that apparent, and there is misunderstanding and confusion on both sides, as with the nuclear missile/reusable spacecraft. That lack of transparency, unfortunately, is how cold wars begin.