State run China Daily
emotes over U.S. arms sale to Taiwan.
China Daily, People's Republic of China
America's Hegemony on Truth is a Fallacy
Is the United States engaged in a 'soft war' against the
People's Republic of China? For the state-controlled China Daily, scholar Wang Wanzheng
argues that America's credibility has been 'ruined' and that
it should reconsider the universality of its perception of the truth.
About a month ago, I had a discussion with a friend who
studies the United States
on disputes between Washington
and Beijing at the climate summit in
Copenhagen. Don't believe in such superficial
phenomena, he said. This is a drama with China
and the U.S. in
the lead roles. In other words, China
and the United States
pretend to be at odds to dismiss global worries that the G2 rules the
world.
Evidence to justify his opinion is a concept conveyed by U.S.
President Obama, that Sino-U.S. relation are some of the most important in the
world. Also contributing to my friend's view was Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, when she said that the two countries are "in the same boat" in
handling global issues.
If his theatrical theory once seemed true, it has been refuted
by recent U.S.
policies. Obama has consistently challenged Sino-U.S. trade relations, threatening
to trigger a trade war with a policy that seeks to contain China's
development. He has also announced a weapons deal for Taiwan,
despite the fact that tension across the Taiwan Strait
has relaxed. This policy is an interference with Chinese sovereignty and its
own process of reunification.
The Obama Administration also took the opportunity, made
possible by Google, to attack China's
management of the Internet. By seeking to promote the value of Internet freedom
to the Chinese people, this U.S.
policy distorts China's
international image and at the same time intentionally influences mainstream
values within China.
Major
General Peng Guangqian describes Sino-U.S. relations today a "smart
war." In his view, the Obama Administration has launched a war that
"softly offends China
while strongly defends the U.S."
Fransois Jelay, an expert on political geography and head of
France's Center for Strategic Analysis, summarizes America's new China policy as
"soft containment."
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Both men emphasize that the "softness" of
current Sino-U.S. disputes lay in the cautious and flexible approach to
addressing them. But I must say, it's important not to underestimate the
general context of these escalating Sino-U.S. disputes.
Think about this from a global perspective. In the period
since the economic crisis, the trend of an ideologically strong West and an
ideologically weak East has significantly changed. The power and prestige of
neo-liberal theology is gone, the reputation of the "Washington
Consensus" has been ruined, and American laissez-faire capitalism has been
forced into self-reflection. After the bursting of the financial bubble, the
Western ideological bubble is set to pop next.
Reshaping America's
image by revitalizing U.S.
soft power has become Obama's fundamental imperative. At the same time, with
its strength and international influence, China
has put forward its own soft power strategy. At the eleventh Conference of
Ambassadors, President Hu clearly pointed out that China
should be more influential in politics, more competitive economically and friendlier
in image.
Consequently, what worries me the most is that soft
conflicts between the U.S.
and China will
eventually explode. The question is, can the revival of U.S.
soft power and China's
new soft power strategy be reconciled? The answer is, absolutely not.
The West has long ruled the world through three major
hegemonies: wealth, power and truth. The first two belong in the category of hard
power, while the third is soft. Struggle for wealth and power is like
"dividing a cake," while competition for truth is like "making a
cake." Whether or not a country is from West or East, strong or weak, it
has the right to pursue, transmit and share truths with other nations - and
only by these means can humanity reach the summit of civilization.
The United States
has taken the lead in stirring up a soft conflict with China,
attempting to defend the hegemony of Western truth. But the global financial
crisis has already proven that once civilization has been dominated by a single
state or group, that state or group will become a scourge.
For the U.S.
,
the only choice, the correct choice, is to emancipate the mind, give up on its
perceived monopoly on truth and sincerely promote dialogue between civilizations
and create good fortune, not only for our two nations, but for the world.
*Wang Wanzheng is a post-doctoral scholar
with the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, and chief editor of the
magazine 'Current Affairs.'
