China’s diplomacy will not be buried by fearmongering falsehoods

Whenever the West’s confidence wobbles, you can rest assured that voices will be raised warning of a “China threat”.

This week’s performance came in two acts.

First, the United States’ so-called “National Endowment for Democracy” unveiled an ill-intentioned and malignant report falsely portraying China and Russia as “architects of authoritarian expansion”.

Then came a familiar chorus of some Western commentators dusting off the claim that Asia is drifting toward a modern version of the “tribute system”, whereby recognition of China’s regional preeminence is reciprocated with trade access and economic largesse.

One almost has to admire the creativity. If reality refuses to fit the script, rewrite the script.

Or better still, rewrite history.

The irony is hard to ignore. The very countries that spent centuries establishing spheres of influence and colonial administrations using gunboat diplomacy now accuse China of reviving an ancient hierarchy that bears no resemblance to today’s international order.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian rightly scorned both narratives as deliberate distortions. The NED report, he said, recycles the familiar “China threat” trope while ignoring China’s consistent commitment to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.

And it is Western hegemonic thinking projected onto Beijing’s diplomatic philosophy of sovereign equality, mutual respect and shared development that is the root of the “tribute system” gibe.

What the scaremongering does reveal is the recognition that China has acquired not only economic weight but also the diplomatic confidence to propose meaningful reforms to the Western-designed global architecture to uphold international justice and fairness.

The “tribute system” offers a convenient narrative for the discomfort that accompanied that recognition for some. It compresses centuries of vastly different historical circumstances into a catchy slogan, allowing critics to bypass the tedious business of deconstructing and distorting contemporary Chinese diplomacy on its own terms. Inaccurate historical analogy becomes cognitive shorthand. Complexity disappears. Headlines practically write themselves.

Unfortunately for those who have leapt on it to attack China, history is not a Netflix series. Ancient East Asia cannot simply be remastered into a streaming drama explaining 21st century geopolitics.

Today’s international environment is governed by the United Nations Charter, global supply chains, multilateral institutions and sovereign equality. China’s partnerships across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe rest upon negotiated agreements, infrastructure projects, trade and investment. The historical comparison simply collapses under the weight of basic facts.

China did not build an overseas colonial empire. It has not orchestrated military alliances demanding ideological conformity. It has not exported regime-change or “color revolution” as instruments of foreign policy.

Perhaps the greater problem for some Western strategists is not what China is doing, but what China advocates.

A major developing country that repeatedly invokes peaceful coexistence, mutual benefit and development inevitably invites comparison with previous rising powers. But comparisons raise uncomfortable questions about whether influence must always be enforced with military interventions, whether prosperity requires ideological conversion, or whether major-country competition must inevitably produce confrontation.

The West’s own strategic mirror reflects less flattering images in this light. The unresolved turbulence left by the US across parts of the Middle East, its continuing disputes involving Venezuela, its renewed ambitions regarding Greenland and Canada as well as Europe’s self-inflicted security anxieties hardly suggest a model of geopolitical serenity. When domestic confidence weakens, external villains become politically useful.

Even the Western public appears increasingly skeptical of the purported “China threat”. Recent polling by the Pew Research Center shows growing uncertainty about the US’ approach to international affairs and changing international perceptions.

The easiest counter-strategy remains the oldest: if your own model encounters mounting questions, declare the competitor illegitimate.

Yet countries judge one another increasingly by deeds rather than alleged intentions, by trade expanded rather than the promises of development initiatives that never materialize, by tangible benefits delivered rather than narratives manufactured.

The loudest accusations often reveal less about their targets than about their authors.