Like democracies hobble across to China - a future parable

A parable, ‘like democracies hobble across to China’ will be a humiliating one.

Open debates, right of dissenting opinions, individual liberties, rationale of individuals and universal rights are founding values of democracies. With those values those democracies are going back and forth about how to develop their survival mechanisms against Communist Party of China (CPC). Weather the issue of GDP’s percentage in defence spending or what is the best European substitute for Xi Jinping’s one belt and one road initiative are determined by going through those reasoning.

Meanwhile the CPC has understood for decades that is the very thing it wants to avoid in its decision making.

One particular and recent remarks by Nobushige Takamizawa, a senior Japanese bureaucrat, nudges us to the right direction of this article. He stresses out lack of highlight in public opinion regarding why Japan needs to increase its defence spending is as the main reason why Japan cannot increase its defence spending. Along the same line in Australia, a Senator, Penny Wong, accuses Prime Minister Morrison that his political vendetta against China is driven by his political motives back home. Across Europe and America, more or less, it is the same story - open debates and respecting dissenting opinions is the way forward to policy make.

Need of tiers of bureaucrats, experts and civil society activists within a given democratic nation to highlight a certain issue in public rational in order to direct incentives into that direction for policymakers is needed. It is exactly where the democracies are failing now miserably. Worsening it further, as a retired US Admiral James Stavridis rightly points out, western policymakers have increasingly been riding the tides instead of making the right calls reflecting country’s interests. Majority of democratic politicians lack real substance. Political apathy somewhat explains it all.

But how could those individuals with reason do not know what their obligations are? Individuals armed with inalienable reason ought to at least know what theirs and their country’s interests are. One might think that they have already reasoned that ten percent of their GDP in defence budget is not worth it. But yet again, how one could answer, why the majority of people, in a country like Australia, not seriously reflecting about the aftermath of Southern China Sea Battle, if there is one - a grave humiliation when the US's Seven Fleet cannot be found anywhere near in Pacific Ocean – a Australian Senator Jim Molan rightly asks that question.

Meanwhile, since Mao, the political system of China has been so focused on long term strategic planning, five years, ten years and twenty years and so on. Now Chinese submarine fleet outnumbers the US. Defence analysts know all the investments of CPC are so focused in right times, right places at right amounts. Yet CPC’s defence spending is still within the reasonable limit of its GDP. At the same time, the CPC has uplifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in China in last decade alone. Its investments in front-end technologies are second to none. China is leading the world with renewable energies also. More than a billion of people are experiencing the benefit of CPC’s long term strategic economic planning. The CPC has diversified its foreign investments in Israel, across Middle East, across Africa, across Asia, across Europe and across America.

I argue, democracies cannot point fingers at CPC for its Human Rights records in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang, and Uyghur while the actions of western collisions, since only WWII, have resulted millions to perish across Muslim nations and elsewhere, displacing hundreds of millions perhaps and it is ongoing. As in the claim of South China Sea those places are strictly come within the boundaries of mainland China. Those are just political jargons to distract western electorates further.

All this lead me to ask whether CPS’s political system and thinking is far more superior to any of democratic systems around. If the rationality is so innate to individuals how could we understand deteriorating human rights conditions across democratic nations? How could we comprehend the reactionary movements of western policymakers to mass migrants from North Africans and refugees from those war tone nations?  How could we understand the rising need of far right movements across European nations to contain the dreams of its populations? How could we understand the numbness of those individuals to deeds of their nations in Middle East and elsewhere?  How could we understand the happiness of those individuals whom their welfare system is funded by laundering money elsewhere via their financial institutions? How come the United Kingdom have started to scramble into smaller states?1

Feeling-good lies of democratic values, a type of Francis Fukuyamian version of end of civilisation, are crumbling before our eyes. It is become increasingly evidential that universal right could only exist after rights of each and individual nations are established within their boundaries with infusion of some global and native cultures by their native means and might - kind of Samuel Huntingdon’s type idea.  

It is time to wind down the public money spent by democratic nations to manipulate local and global public opinions agaisnt China. If that will ever happen? I sense it is a wishful thinking. It seems all democracies, sooner or later, have to ultimately hobble across to China and to Communist Party to sell their wine, rare earth or beef.

As a policymaker, if you are too late, you will only bring humiliation upon your country, citizens, electorates and yourself. 

It would certainly make easier for you if you reason with yourself before it is too late. 

If not, one day in future, your phenomena will be known as how democracies hobble across to China.

Author - A.V. Anuradha Samapth
MA in International Security and Law from Denmark & BA Hon in International Politics from UK
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/amarasinghevidanage

1. A separate argument was made in 'Needs as the foundation ofInternational Relations' that most of crisis in developed democracies can be traced back to China's economic and political dominance as a major player in International Relations. Developed, so-called democratic, nations are trying but failing to compete with CPC because of restraining natures of their domestic capacities. Looming China's global presence is so overarching that it ought to challenge every and all traditional physical and mental establishments.