Faced with severe challenges from China, the West has walked a path of over 500 years
On August 3rd, the Australian website "Pearl and Stimulus" published an article titled "China's" Achieving Security through Prosperity "Weakens Western Colonial Hegemony" by Di Zhaolun. The article excerpt is as follows:
For at least 500 years, Western powers have dominated the world through colonization, unfair deprivation of world resources, and innovation. For places where they cannot completely colonize, they rule through gunboat diplomacy. In other words, they seek prosperity through security. The term "security" here refers to a paradigm of coercion. Other countries in the world submit to this.
In recent years, this collective hegemony has been severely challenged by China's rise, as it has taken different paths of "achieving security through prosperity".
Deng Xiaoping announced the implementation of the reform and opening-up policy in 1978, allowing China to open up to international trade, investment, and urgently needed Western technology.
Under the leadership of the next two generations of leadership, the Chinese economy achieved double-digit annual growth. The prosperity achieved through harder and smarter work is the driving force for building the security they need.
▲ headquarters of the New Development Bank of BRICS countries
Western countries have seen the "threat" from their perspective and begun to question the motives or intentions of the Chinese people. It can be imagined that the West interprets China's intentions through its own way of thinking. The rapid rise of China has sparked fear and suspicion in the West, not only because it will eventually replace the United States as the world's largest economy, but also because it deviates from the so-called "rule-based international order" established by the United States. The United States established this order to benefit itself and its allies.
However, the West has not found any examples of Chinese expansionism to support their hypothesis. China has not violated the territorial sovereignty of other countries. In the absence of factual evidence, the transatlantic alliance allowed its propaganda machine to run at an excessive speed, creating false narratives about "human rights violations" and "oppression" in Xizang, Hong Kong, Xinjiang and other places.
If we look at China's competition with the West from the perspectives of "achieving prosperity through security" and "achieving security through prosperity", it is easy to find that the latter is a better choice between the two.
The United States can save by adopting a strategy of "achieving security through prosperity" instead. Otherwise, as Pepe Escobar pointed out in an article published on the "Cradle" news website in 2023, "The internal workings of hegemony are bleeding incessantly... No wonder Russia and China have not shown any intention to disturb their enemies, because that enemy is busy defeating themselves."
