By Dennis Etler
Soldiers from China's People's Liberation Army march on Red Square during a military parade, which marks the 75th anniversary of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Moscow on June 24, 2020. (AFP photo)
In 2008, during the Beijing Olympics, New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a column extolling China's advancements during the previous decade. In the op-ed entitled "A Biblical Seven Years," Friedman wrote: "As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers, and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads, and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones."
"Then ask yourself: Who is living in the third world country?
"Yes, if you drive an hour out of Beijing, you meet the vast dirt-poor third world of China. But here’s what’s new: The rich parts of China, the modern parts of Beijing or Shanghai or Dalian, are now more state of the art than rich America. The buildings are architecturally more interesting, the wireless networks more sophisticated, the roads and trains more efficient and nicer. And, I repeat, they did not get all this by discovering oil. They got it by digging inside themselves."
That was in 2008, but 12 years later Friedman, a well-known neo-liberal propagandist, has changed his tune. While in 2008 Friedman marveled at China's transformation, today he has joined the chorus of China's critics, stating that, "China went too far on a broad range of issues." Then he launches into a litany of complaints which are almost taken verbatim from Republican anti-China talking points.
In a recent op-ed for Fox News, Daniel Hoffman, an arch anti-China conservative, likewise cataloged a long list of China's transgressions. Let's compare what they had to say.
Hoffman: China is militarizing the South China Sea
Friedman: China has become more aggressive in projecting its power into the South China Sea
Hoffman: China is stealing our intellectual property as well as military and trade secrets
Friedman: US companies thought they had enough market share inside China that they would tolerate the stealing of intellectual property and other trade abuses China engaged in.
Hoffman: China’s willful effort to conceal the outbreak and severity of the coronavirus, while rejecting any sort of transparent collaboration against this global pandemic
Friedman: China hammered countries that dared to ask for an independent inquiry into how the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan.
Hoffman: China menaces Taiwan and democracy activists in Hong Kong
Friedman: China is imposing a new national security law to curtail longstanding freedoms in Hong Kong; and stepped up its bullying of Taiwan
Hoffman: Xinjiang is notorious for its so-called “re-education” camps, where China detains Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities against their will and violates their human rights.
Friedman: China intensified its internment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang
Hoffman: China exploits its “Belt and Road Initiative” as cover for debt-trap-diplomacy to project global influence
Friedman: China only has customers who fear its wrath.
So, what has changed for Friedman in the last decade? Why has China gone from a country that should be looked on favorably and even emulated to one that meets with near-universal opprobrium in the Western media, across the political spectrum? Has China really changed that much? Or is it the Western perception of China that has changed?
China is no different than it was before, it is the US that has become more aggressive, provoking China to take action. Obama's Asian Pivot forced China to shore up its defenses in the South China Sea, long regarded as its sovereign territory. The same applies to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Xinjiang. China's policies in those areas are in reaction to US attempts to challenge Chinese sovereignty in all three regions by supporting separatist forces bent on dismembering the PRC. As regards trade, China has undertaken reforms that have mitigated many Western complaints as it's moved up the value chain. The trade war initiated by Trump merely dredged up every alleged abuse the Chinese have been accused of in order to impose tariffs on Chinese imports, part of Trump's Make America Great campaign promise. And to put the icing on the cake both Hoffman and Friedman repeat the false narrative that China somehow concealed and covered-up the origin and spread of COVID-19 when the evidence is there for all to see that it did nothing of the sort. In fact, it was the West that botched up its own response to the pandemic not China.
So why Friedman's change of heart? The reason is simple, China's successes and the West's failures. Since 2008 China has gone from one success story to another. It is taking the lead in science and technology, deployed an e-commerce ecosystem that far surpasses anything in the US or elsewhere, is solving its many internal problems such as poverty alleviation and environmental degradation, establishing a 21st-century transportation network with more high-speed railways than the rest of the world combined, and spreading its knowledge and expertise to the rest of the developing world via its Belt and Road Initiative, all of which shows that China is picking up the mantle of world leadership dropped by the US and its Western allies.
China is rising while the West is declining and the West is running scared, be it a neo-liberal like Friedman or an arch-conservative like Hoffman. That is the real reason for the West's attempt to attack China from all sides. It is a desperate ploy that is bound to fail.
Dennis Etler is an American political analyst who has a decades-long interest in international affairs. He’s a former professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. He recorded this article for Press TV website.
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