[Chinese] On Shambaugh's collapsism and relationship with 江泽民, 曾庆红

[ChineseTiger1986]

so You don't like the current China economy raise? and prefer the proletar way of life? My uncle (he's already dead now) said that he had to catch mouse / rat from the farm to get extra meat in '60. Because you could only get meat ration once a week. And... oh, there was no car, so you have to walk or ride a bike. He said that there was no rich guy, only poor guys at that time, because everyone were poor.

So, It seems that you like that kind of lifestyle.... interesting.

We didn't 100% copy the western capitalism, while USSR did.

Hence you can see the result here.

 

[TaiShang]

Badmouthing China is not the mainstream in the West
By Zhu Feng
March 26, 2015

A new wave of "China collapse" theories has emerged in the Western media recently. Unlike the earlier theory, which was proposed in 2001 by Gordon G. Chang, a Chinese-American lawyer famous for his book "The Coming Collapse of China," the current wave is being spearheaded by a handful of renowned scholars, such as David Shambaugh, a professor at George Washington University and Michael Auslin, resident scholar and director of Japanese Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

However, their arguments are nothing new, and the basis for their "China's collapse" idea is just China's economic slowdown, growing social tensions, internal power struggles and financial and property bubbles, which have been around for 20 years already. Considering that the Western academia tends to "doubt China" in their mainstream ideology, their discords with China should not be taken seriously.

As long as China maintains its rising momentum, such bad-mouthing will always exist, since China's rise will end the four-century old "Western centralism" and make the East an equal rival to the West.

For all China's achievements, we cannot expect Western observers to send flowers or give encouragement. In this current international system with limited resources and intensive struggles for interest, other countries are prone to criticize and even contain China.

A simple review will lead us to three types of "China collapse" theories. Gordon G. Chang represents the wickedest type. His assertions entirely reflect "Western centralism," along with its arrogance, prejudice and selfishness. In the past few years, Chang has relentlessly attacked and accused China on various occasions, claiming China was engaging in "strategic expansion." He even compared China to the Soviet Union during the Cold War and Japan and Germany before World War II.

In comparison, Auslin focuses more on preserving the U.S. hegemonic interest in the Asia-Pacific. He thinks China's current policies on Japan and North Korea, in addition to its moves to safeguard its sovereignty are "disastrous" to regional security. Auslin's idea represents some of the pro-Japan theorists' views, and at the same time, it reflects how China's rise has initiated debates in the United States about how Washington could continue to preserve its world order.

David Shambaugh's assertion, then, mirrors a deeply rooted idea in the United States that a rising China unchained from the U.S. intentions and way of behaving is "big trouble."

However, these theories that badmouth China hardly represent mainstream China policies in Washington, and are also inconsistent with the White House's policy on China. U.S. President Barack Obama said at the latest APEC Summit held in Beijing last year that the United States "welcomes the rise of a prosperous, peaceful and stable China."

Although there are solid differences in ideology between China and the United States, the common interests of humanity in the current era of globalization far outnumber the disputes between two countries. Hence, overplaying the "China collapse theories" is against the shared interests between China and the United States.

In the West, most wise and objective China experts and senior government figures recognize the "powerful and stable" Chinese system, including the Chinese government's resolve to reform, the ruling party's abilities in social governance, the Chinese people's dependence on the party and the government for development, and the room for growth in the Chinese economy.

In my opinion, few serious U.S. scholars would be tempted to agree with the "China collapse theory." By contrast, the mainstream idea is that the United States cannot afford to take the huge and negative impact from a collapsing China, so Washington has to maintain its "competition amid cooperation" strategy with Beijing.

That being said, however, the extreme ideas proposed by Shambaugh and others deserve our attention. What we should pay attention to is not how they perceive China, but what their China perceptions are based on, and whether such a basis will influence or even challenge the current U.S. policies towards China.

The writer is the executive director of the Collaborative Innovation Center of South China Sea Studies at Nanjing University.

The article was translated by Chen Boyuan. Its original unabridged version was published in Chinese.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.