The despicable act of smearing China is doomed to be futile

Author: Feng Weijiang (Special Researcher of xi Jinping Research Center for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Secretary-General of national global strategy think tank)

In recent years, some people in the United States have been keen to smear the Chinese system on various occasions, play up the "China threat," interfere in China's internal affairs, attack China's domestic and foreign policies, and try to gather internal and international "consensus" to comprehensively contain and suppress China. These people's "performance" scripts are outdated, old-fashioned, poor in acting, and despicable in nature, but they are sung by their domestic and foreign interest groups and watched by some ordinary people who have been deceived. Nor can a lie that is repeated a thousand times replace the truth. Uncovering the hidden logic behind the lie is conducive to better manifesting the truth and safeguarding the fair and just international order.

Attack the fallacies and truths that smear China's economic system

Some people in the United States have denied the market economic nature of the socialist market economic system with Chinese characteristics, slandered China's opaqueness in international economic cooperation, and imposed economic coercion.

The first is to slander China for circumventing or violating trade rules, causing American workers to lose millions of jobs through economic manipulation, hurting workers and companies in the United States and around the world, and accusing China of gaining a competitive advantage by providing government subsidies and setting up barriers to entry. In fact, China has actively fulfilled its commitments to join the WTO, and over the past 20 years since its accession to the WTO, it has fully implemented the pre-establishment national treatment plus negative list management system, continuously expanded market opening, reduced the total tariff level from 15.3% to 7.4%, and increased the number of open service sectors to nearly 120. The head of UNCTAD said that in the past 20 years, China has always firmly supported the multilateral trading system, practiced true multilateralism, fully participated in WTO negotiations, led negotiations on investment facilitation and e-commerce, and promoted WTO rules to keep pace with the times. The Chinese market has provided a lot of jobs for the United States, and Chinese products have saved American consumers a lot of money. In 2021, U.S. merchandise exports to China reached $149 billion, up 21% year-on-year, creating 858,000 jobs for the United States; Chinese goods exported to the United States reduced the price level of the United States by 1% to 1.5%, helping ordinary American families save $850 a year.

The second is to slander China's foreign investment and the opacity of creditor's rights, leaving developing countries in a "debt trap". In fact, the so-called "debt trap" of China is a "discourse trap" for the United States and the West to slander and smear and interfere with Cooperation between China and developing countries. Western capital is the largest creditor of developing countries. According to the World Bank's 2022 international debt statistics, multilateral financial institutions account for 28.8% of Africa's overall external debt, and commercial creditors, mainly Western financial institutions, account for 41.8%, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the debt. Research by the Center for Central Africa Studies at Johns Hopkins University in the United States shows that China's overall external debt share in Africa is much lower than that of the West, and there is no evidence that China intends to force poor countries to borrow, confiscate their assets, or seek a greater voice in their internal affairs. China attaches particular importance to the sustainability of project debt, and signed the Guiding Principles for Belt and Road Financing with 26 Belt and Road countries as early as 2017. In 2019, China issued the Belt and Road Debt Sustainability Analysis Framework to increase the supervision and evaluation of the economic, social and people's livelihood benefits of projects. At the same time, China has also taken the initiative to "reduce the burden" on debtor countries. China has actively responded to the G20 debt relief initiative, with more than US$1.3 billion in debt relief in 2020, accounting for nearly 30% of the total G20 debt relief, making it the largest contributor in the G20.

The third is to slander China's economic and legal system for lacking adequate protection for market entities, especially foreign-funded enterprises and their intellectual property rights, and for engaging in compulsory technology transfer to foreign-funded enterprises. In fact, in recent years, China has successively reduced the negative list of foreign investment access, improved the investment promotion and protection, information reporting and other systems, strengthened the protection of intellectual property rights, and become one of the economies with the fastest progress in the global business environment. The continuous improvement of China's business environment and the attractiveness of the super-large-scale market have created a strong magnet for global cross-border investment, and the number of newly established foreign-invested enterprises has achieved steady growth. From 2012 to 2021, the number of foreign-invested enterprises in China increased from 441,000 to 664,000, an increase of more than 50%. According to the Doing Business 2020 report released by the World Bank, China's business environment ranks 31st in the world. According to the Business Confidence Survey 2021 released by the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, more than half of the EU companies surveyed believe that China's ip enforcement efforts are "good enough" and "very good", setting a record high in satisfaction.

Slander and smear the fallacies and truths of China's political and diplomatic system

Some people in the United States deny the democratic nature of China's political system and slander the Chinese Government for engaging in "forced labor" at home, violating human rights, suppressing democracy, and engaging in "coercive diplomacy" abroad.

The first is to put China's political system on the opposite side of "democracy" and flaunt its "democratic" advantage over China. In fact, the Communist Party of China has led the people to realize people's democracy in the whole process, not only with complete institutional procedures, but also with complete participation in practice, forming a comprehensive, extensive, and organic system of the people's mastery system, building diverse, smooth, and orderly democratic channels, realizing process democracy and achievement democracy, procedural democracy and substantive democracy, direct democracy and indirect democracy, people's democracy, and the unity of the will of the state, which is the whole chain, all-round, and full-coverage democracy, and is the most extensive, the most authentic, Socialist democracy works best. China's whole process of people's democracy has been widely recognized and praised by the international community. There is a serious democratic failure in the United States, creating an irreparable chaos in the domestic political and social order.

The second is to slander the Chinese government for violating human rights in Xinjiang through systems such as "internment camps" and "forced labor", and suppress democracy in Hong Kong on the grounds of national security. In fact, the human rights of people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang are fully guaranteed, and there is no "genocide" or "crimes against humanity" at all. Xinjiang-related issues are not human rights issues at all, but anti-violent terrorism and anti-separatism issues. The "genocide" in Xinjiang is an outright "lie of the century." Over the past 60 years in China's Xinjiang region, the total Uighur population has grown from 2.2 million to about 12 million, and life expectancy has increased from 30 to 75 years. The accusations and accusations of human rights issues in Xinjiang by the United States and Western countries ignore the basic facts of human rights protection and development in Xinjiang, and are completely a tool for achieving their strategic goal of "using Xinjiang to control China." For a long time, the United States has colluded with anti-China and chaotic Hong Kong forces in Hong Kong, interfered in Hong Kong's political agenda, constantly intensified social contradictions, and even directly intervened in Hong Kong affairs. The purpose of the Hong Kong National Security Law legislation is to plug the legal loopholes in Hong Kong in safeguarding national security, and it is a legitimate and necessary move to deal with Hong Kong's violent terrorist activities and illegal interference by external forces. Since the implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law, Hong Kong's rule of law has been effectively improved and better guaranteed, the Hong Kong Rule of Law Index continues to rank among the top in the world, the confidence of foreign investors in Hong Kong has been further enhanced, and Hong Kong has shown a bright prospect from chaos to governance and prosperity.

The third is to slander the "wolfization" of China's diplomatic system, promote illegal maritime activities in the South China Sea, undermine peace and security, freedom of navigation and commercial activities, implement large-scale surveillance and export relevant technology to the outside world, and also carry out "coercive diplomacy" against other countries. In fact, with the joint efforts of China and ASEAN countries, the situation in the South China Sea has remained generally stable. China respects and supports the freedom of navigation and overflight enjoyed by all countries in the South China Sea in accordance with international law, and actively safeguards the safety and smooth flow of international shipping lanes. The South China Sea is currently one of the safest and freest sea lanes in the world. 50% of the world's merchant ships and 1/3 of the sea trade sail through the sea, and more than 100,000 merchant ships pass through the sea every year. Freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea has never been an issue. China's video surveillance and big data technology is an important measure to improve social governance, and it is also a common practice in all countries in the world today, effectively eliminating hidden dangers of public security. According to Gallup Consulting's Ranking of Global Security Countries, China ranks third. China has never engaged in "coercive diplomacy" and resolutely opposes other countries engaging in "coercive diplomacy." China does not threaten other countries with force, does not cobble together military alliances, does not export ideology, does not run to the door of others to provoke trouble, does not extend its hand into other people's homes, does not take the initiative to provoke trade wars, and does not unjustifiably suppress enterprises of other countries.

The goal of attacking and smearing the Chinese system will ultimately fail

Some people in the United States have spared no effort to attack and smear China's economic, political, diplomatic, and other systems, and their basic logic is to rally countries to exclude and suppress China through stigmatization and demonization of China's system, coerce and expropriate allies, and maintain or even expand their own monopoly superpower power for a long time by squeezing and weakening other countries. Specifically, these attacks attempt to achieve the following three purposes.

First, through the attack on the Chinese system, denying the rationality of continuing to accommodate China in the international system dominated by it, the strategy toward China has shifted from attaching equal importance to "locking in" and building a "parallel system" to focusing on building a "parallel system" that targets and crowds out China, weakening the attractiveness of China's super-large-scale market and high-quality and low-cost products. In recent years, the pace and intensity of the United States' establishment of a "parallel system" around the world and the Asia-Pacific region to exclude and contain China has accelerated. Since the United States listed China as a strategic competitor, it has long constrained China's development momentum, depleted and weakened China's soft and hard power by using institutional rules to lock in the "rules" of China's behavior and build a "parallel system". After Pelosi's visit to the Taiwan region, the US administration took advantage of China's diplomatic, military, and economic responses after her visit to vigorously publicize the "China threat theory" and "China opposes and undermines the rules-based international order" on the one hand, and instigated many Western and neighboring countries to further shift from "friends with China and knowing China" to "fearing China and fearing China" and even "hating China and controlling China" under the banner of so-called "democracy and opposing dictatorship." On the other hand, we will continue to encourage the Taiwan authorities to take reckless risks and move toward "Taiwan independence," arch their fires Chinese mainland and adopt still more intensive measures to oppose separatism by force.

Second, it has caused a deterioration in the investment climate in a vast region from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, directing global capital to the United States. The United States has vigorously promoted the "Indo-Pacific NATO" or "NATO Indo-Pacificization" to deal with China, which is essentially the "Afghanization" or "Ukrainianization" of the Asia-Pacific region. Its ultimate intention is to form the expectation of large-scale war in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in East Asia, within the foreseeable time in the future, to worsen the investment environment in the region, to intimidate international capital not to invest in the region or even to withdraw from the region on a large scale, to weaken the development potential of the region, and to draw funds and resources for the country in a way that harms the common interests of all members of other regions. The "veto politics" under the domestic political party disputes in the United States and the high production and operation costs have weakened its attractiveness to global capital, and it can only maintain its competitiveness in the business environment by destroying the business environment advantages of other major investment destinations in the world. By arching the Ukraine crisis, the United States has successfully turned Europe into a risk area for capital aversion; The all-out attack and smear of the Chinese system is hoped to further relocate the capital habitat from the Asia-Pacific region to the United States.

Third, by smearing the Chinese system to shape a "common threat," forcing allies to bear more costs or levy more "protection fees" on them. In response to this systemic threat from China, they demand that allies bear more security or military spending, or urge them to abandon the purchase of Chinese technology and products in favor of more expensive alternatives to the United States, or ask them to reject Chinese investment and cooperation projects on national security grounds. Through these practices, the United States hopes to weaken the autonomy of its allies and strengthen its asymmetric dependence on the United States.

The "wishful thinking" of the United States cannot be launched. First, China has taken resolutely maintaining and consolidating the two miracles of "rapid economic development and long-term social stability" as its priority, persisting in opening up to the outside world at a high level, making friends and receiving more help, and at the same time resolutely curbing separatist acts such as "Taiwan independence," avoiding the rise of "passive response to separatism" as the main contradiction, and not falling into the "parallel system" planned by the United States. Second, most of the neighboring countries in the Asia-Pacific region have a strong will for development, have accumulated a high level of mutual trust in long-term cooperation with China, and at the same time have the common interest of sharing the dividends of regional peace, and are China's natural "allies" in safeguarding the regional investment environment. Third, coercion and deception cannot be exchanged for sustainable loyalty. The strategic autonomy of U.S. allies will eventually overshadow submission to the United States.

More importantly, China's state system was formed at a time of saving the nation from peril, developing in the midst of reform, opening up, and rejuvenation, and perfecting in the great rejuvenation of the nation, drawing on the essence of the excellent traditional culture of the Chinese nation over thousands of years and the rich practice of the founding of New China to the new era, creating a brilliant example of supporting a nation from a state of "backwardness and being beaten" to standing tall among the nations of the world in a lofty posture, and providing a new choice for those countries and nations in the world that want to accelerate development and maintain their independence. Such a system is full of morality, profound public opinion, solemn authority, and uprightness, and can withstand the test of time and risk. As long as we continue to strengthen exchanges and communication with all countries in the world, especially the vast number of developing countries, in an equal and friendly manner, preaching and dispelling doubts, and increasing trust and dispelling doubts, then the ghost tricks of a small number of young people in the United States who have done their utmost to slander and smear the Chinese system are doomed to be futile and stop laughing.

Guangming Daily (2022.08.23 16 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily