Andrew Leung

Opinion | Beijing is debunking ‘China threat’ myth through trade and cooperation

China is working on the genuine concerns poisoning its relationship with the West, such as better market access, a level playing field and intellectual property protection

Through its actions for peace, China is showing the world that instead of being a threat, it is part of the solution towards a shared global prosperity

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Andrew Leung

Published: 5:30am, 15 Jan 2024

Notwithstanding President Joe Biden’s recent Beijing-friendly overtures, the looming US presidential election is set to intensify the perception of a “China threat” as the two main political parties try to outdo each other on China-bashing.

Donald Trump’s election campaign, for example, calls for a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods, as well as restrictions to stop American investments in China and Chinese purchases of US assets.

Western media and bookstores are also brimming with smearing narratives of China’s so-called plans to dominate the world, trade and intellectual property transgressions, human rights violations (including the so-called Xinjiang genocide), military expansionism, territorial ambitions, speculations about a Taiwan invasion and worse.

Against this predominantly one-sided discourse, political scientist Joseph Solis-Mullen’s recent book, The Fake China Threat and Its Very Real Danger, rebuts these allegations.

He lists a barrage of works by prominent authors warning of the “China threat” – including Michael Pillsbury’s The Hundred-Year Marathon, Graham Allison’s Destined for War and Hal Brands’ and Michael Beckley’s Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China – and boldly points out that these highly respected intellectuals are affiliated with powerful US or allied think tanks, some of which are known to be heavily funded by America’s military-industrial complex, including giant US defence industry conglomerates.

Regardless of the remarkable transformation of peoples’ lives under the Chinese Communist Party, China has neither the capability nor inclination to replicate the United States’ global military, technological, financial and media hegemony, which is supported by its Western allies and ubiquitous American culture, as Beckley himself enumerates in his other book, Unrivalled: Why America Will Remain The World’s Sole Superpower. The “China threat” narrative ignores this.