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Geopolitics

Deconstructing Western Fears Of China

How should the West face the rise of China? Culling some insight from a Chinese review of “Angst vor China” (Fear of China), the latest book by Germany’s best-known China expert.

U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen arrives last year in Beijing.
U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen arrives last year in Beijing.
Shi Shiwei

BEIJING - The German journalist and best-selling author, Frank Sieren, is one of the West's leading China experts. His latest book Angst vor China (Fear of China) was published last September in Germany.

Much like his earlier works, this book has a striking and provocative title and covers a large range of topics: nuclear development in China, how the Chinese challenge is affecting the American manufacturing industry, global competition for petroleum resources, China's aeronautic projects, Tibet, China's water pollution and the Sino-US economic relations in the broadest sense. The author uses straightforward language, and a writing style that is strong on storytelling.

Sieren's viewpoint is both consistent and surprising to Chinese readers when compared to the common attitudes toward China we hear throughout the mainstream voices in the West. Utterly absent are the usual suspicion, fear, prejudice and preconceptions. The book argues that the West being forced to face an increasingly powerful country so different in its value system, culture and ideology is actually a good thing for the West.

He describes a China already so strong economically that is now also busy trying to establish its corresponding political position of strength. This is bound to create conflict with the West as it seeks to secure strategic resource supplies to assert its economic development.

Overly optimistic

Nevertheless, China is not an enemy. At most, it's a competitor; and as such, the right strategy for the West is not to demonize or isolate China, but to cooperate with it, and recognize the reality of China being part of the multipolar world. Furthermore, the West should regard the competitive pressure from China's rise as a way to reinforce its scientific and technological innovation and its economic edge so as to maintain its leading economic and political status.

Sieren's book winds up actually exaggerating the success China has achieved up to now. He is also overly optimistic about the future prospects of China's economy. However, his purpose is very clear. He is not judging the Chinese economy and politics as a Western expert or giving suggestions in policy-making, but is telling the West, and in particular the Germans, that China's development is both a challenge and opportunity for the West.

Sieren has lived in China for 17 years. He first worked as the correspondent of Germany's business weekly, the Wirtschafts Woche, specializing in economics. He later became a presenter for the talk show, Asiatalk on Deutsche Welle-TV.

But unlike other European experts on China who mostly come from the sinology departments in academia, Sieren graduated from the Department of Politics of the Free University Berlin. This perspective helps forge his strategic thinking, while his precise Western-oriented values enable him to offer a relatively objective and calm analysis of China's complex reality. He isn't just introducing or interpreting China, but rather speaking directly to the West about how it should face China. And Sieren's driving message is clear: approach this major new world power as a challenge, not a threat.

Read the original article in Chinese

Photo - Chairman of Joint Staff

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Geopolitics

Yes, Xi Jinping Is Now More Powerful Than Mao Zedong Ever Was

After being re-elected as head of the Communist Party last year, the Chinese leader has been unanimously re-elected to another five-year term as head of state. Now, wielding more power than any other past Chinese communist leader, he wants to accelerate the rise of Chinese influence around the world.

Photo of huge portrait of Xi Jinping

Huge portrait of Xi Jinping is displayed in the National Day mass pageantry celebrating the 70th founding anniversary of the People's Republic of China

Yann Rousseau

-Analysis-

BEIJING — Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has been re-elected to a third five-year term at the head of the world's second largest economic power. Nobody was surprised.

The vote took place during a legislative assembly convened to rubber stamp decisions of the authoritarian power, during which 2,952 parliamentarians unanimously approved Xi's re-election before rising, in perfect choreography, to offer a prolonged standing ovation to their leader. As usual, Xi remained completely neutral in the face of the enthusiasm.

His victory was a mere formality after his re-election last fall as the head of the all-powerful party, which controls all of the country's political institutions, and after legislative amendments to erase term limits that would have forced him out.

Xi Jinping, who took over the presidency in 2013, "is now the most powerful leader in the history of the People's Republic, since its founding in 1949. Institutionally, he holds even more power than Mao Zedong," says Suisheng Zhao, a professor and Chinese foreign policy expert at the University of Denver.

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