Foreign Affairs. January-February 2020

January/February 2020 19

tive. China is also seeking to build inter-

national institutions, such as the Asian

Infrastructure Investment Bank, following

the playbook of the United States after

World War II, when Washington spear-

headed the creation of the World Bank

and the International Monetary Fund.

Beijing has another reason to be more

active on the international stage. If China

refused to advertise its own institutions

while the West continued to advance the

values of liberal capitalism in China,

large swaths of the Chinese population

could become more attracted to Western

institutions. The current disturbances in

Hong Kong have failed to spread any-

where else in China, but they do illustrate

real discontent with the arbitrary applica-

tion of the law, discontent that may not

be confined to the former British colony.

The blatant censorship of the Internet is

also deeply unpopular among the young

and educated.

By projecting the advantages of its

political capitalism abroad, China will

reduce the appeal of the Western liberal

model to its own citizens. Its interna-

tional activities are essentially matters of

domestic survival. Whatever formal or

informal arrangement Beijing reaches

with states that embrace political capital-

ism, China is bound to exercise increas-

ing influence on international institutions,

which in the past two centuries have

been built exclusively by Western states,

to serve Western interests.

THE FUTURE OF CAPITALISM

John Rawls, the consummate philosopher

of modern liberalism, argued that a good

society ought to give absolute priority to

basic liberties over wealth and income.

Experience shows, however, that many

people are willing to trade democratic

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FA 19_rev.indd 1 11/18/19 9:07 AM