Cooperation and engagement better than confrontation and containment

By Eugenio Bregolat | China Daily Global | Updated: 2019-06-13 08:47

For meaningful dialogue between civilizations, the West should stop trying to impose its values on other countries

The eminent historian Jonathan Spence said that it is high time for the West "to stop looking at China through Western glasses". And the great anthropologist Franz Boas said that "societies have to be examined with the observer divesting himself of prejudices based on his own culture and background". Ignorance and strong prejudices about Asia, and especially about China, are frequent in the West, even among well-informed and sophisticated citizens. The West has to stop trying to impose its values, its economic and political systems, on countries belonging to other civilizations with different political cultures, different histories and different socioeconomic conditions and stop seeking regime change in those not amenable to its directions.

In February 1972, during his first visit to China, then US president Richard Nixon told Chinese premier Zhou Enlai: "We believe in our principles, you believe in yours. We do not ask you to accept our principles, as you do not ask us to accept yours."

Henry Kissinger wrote: "Nixon tried to moderate our instinct to know what is best for others." And asked: "Is the US mission the spread of democracy to China, or cooperation with China to bring about a peaceful world?"

Until China attained resounding economic success in the last few decades, the West held that only democratic societies can generate riches. China has proved this assertion wrong. For the first time a socialist country has delivered enormous economic growth, in fact the fastest and deepest economic development process in world history. In 40 years, from 1978, when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping introduced his economic reforms, to 2018 per capita income in China has risen from $150 to more than $10,000. China achieved this result with an original economic system, a mix of market and a strong public sector, and its own political system.

We have seen how attempts to export Western liberal democracy have not worked in a number of Middle Eastern countries. It is not enough to remove a dictator to transform a society into a flourishing liberal democracy. On the other hand, Western countries are losing their arrogance after they proved unable to anticipate and prevent the world economic crisis that started in Wall Street in 2008; after seeing the mother of all democracies corner itself with Brexit; after seeing the United States reneging on the world order it had created and after experiencing the self-doubt that has led them to criticize the decay and dysfunction of their own political systems.

Relations among countries can be based either on cooperation and engagement, which lead to peace, or on confrontation and containment, which lead to conflict. In the nuclear age war among big powers would spell collective suicide. And lack of concerted efforts to overcome collective challenges, such as global warming, could be equally suicidal. Cooperation and engagement have as their indispensable underpinning geostrategic trust, which requires as its first condition respect for political and economic systems and cultures different from one's own, giving up any attempt of regime change and accepting that it belongs to the people of each country to decide how they wish to be governed, in exercise of their sovereignty.

President Xi Jinping has called for "a new concept of international relations" and for "a community of shared future for mankind". These ideas dovetail with those expressed by Nixon and Kissinger.

On Jan 12, Kissinger wrote in The New York Times: "This generation of leaders has the opportunity to shape the trans-Pacific relations into a design for a common destiny, much as was done with trans-Atlantic relations in the immediate World War II period."

In 2012 Kissinger proposed the creation of a Pacific Community, with the US and China as founding members. Peaceful coexistence, multilateralism and multipolarity should be some of the building blocks of the new concept of international relations which would lead to a peaceful and prosperous world.

The author is former ambassador of Spain to China. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.