What the US most resents about China is that it is successful in delivering results for its own people and resists US interference.
Writing in the Financial Times, political columnist Janan Ganesh argues that China is largely responsible for its own success and not due to the generosity of the US, for example in admitting China to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The US colonial attitude to China and many other countries goes back a long time. In 1949 US Republicans and many Democrats believed and still believe that China was “lost to the US”, as if China was ever America’s to lose.
That arrogance continues today in what Americans see as their “manifest destiny”, their “exceptionalism”, the God-given right to interfere in other countries. This not is not just reserved for interfering in Chinese affairs like Hong Kong and Taiwan. There is a long list of the US interfering, waging wars and attempting or successfully overthrowing governments in its own region, from Cuba to Honduras to Guatemala to Haiti to Chile and now Venezuela. After that came wars and the promotion of insurrections outside its own region — in the Philippines, Vietnam and the Middle East.
The US insists not only on regional but global hegemony in the guise of democracy, a ruled-based order and “values”. What a farce was Joe Biden’s democracy summit.
The US denies even regional hegemony to China.
As Ganesh argues, the US will fail in its concerted campaign against China because China is “too vast and ambitious to have been contained for long, with or without WTO membership”.
Read the full article here.
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.