38 China The Economist April 16th 2022
Chinaseesno universalvalues
T
here is nothingmagic about the year 1945 to China’s Com
munist Party. President Xi Jinping offered this history lesson at
an online summit with the heads of European Union institutions
on April 1st. It was prompted by efforts by euleaders to explain
why Europe’s dark past obliges them to raise rights abuses with
China, and to urge Chinese rulers to use their influence to curb
Russian crimes of aggression in Ukraine. In particular, Mr Xi chal
lenged comments by the president of the European Council,
Charles Michel, that Europeans care greatly about human rights
because of the extent of suffering on their soil, notably during the
second world war and the Holocaust.
The Chinese have even stronger memories of suffering at the
hands of colonial powers, Mr Xi retorted. He listed hostile Western
acts, starting with the unequal treaties, as Chinese historians call
them. Signed in the 19th and early 20th century, these forced China
to open its markets and cede territory (at cannonpoint). He spoke
of colonisers hanging signs on gates reading, “No Dogs and Chi
nese Allowed”. Though there is no solid evidence that such blunt
signs existed, more verbose (and disgracefully racist) bylaws did.
These banned Chinese people as well as animals from French and
Britishrun parks in central Shanghai and other foreign enclaves.
After this lecture about Europe’s poor moral standing, Mr Xi re
called the massacre of civilians at Nanjing by Japanese invaders in1937. Such aggressions, he said, had left Chinese with strong feel
ings about human rights, and about foreigners who employ dou
ble standards to criticise other countries. China stands by its re
cord in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet, Mr Xi concluded. The eu
must undo an impasse, caused by titfortat sanctions relating to
China’s rule in Xinjiang, if it wants better relations, he said.
Diplomats in Beijing describe Mr Xi’s combative performance
as dismaying but clarifying. To be sure, it is not new for China to
denounce former colonial powers. At a conference in Bandung in
1955, China’s prime minister, Zhou Enlai, described his country’s
experiences of “colonial plunder and oppression” as he sought to
make common cause with African and Arab countries, most of
them newly independent. But the People’s Republic of China was
then a poor and isolated outsider. Until 1971 it was not even a mem
ber of the United Nations, a body founded in 1945 to defend a
rulesbasedorder largely written by the winners of the second
world war. (China’s unseat was held by the Nationalist regime
that lost the Chinese civil war to Mao Zedong’s Red Army in 1949,
heading into exile on Taiwan.) The un’s rules were explicitly de
signed to prevent a repeat of the second world war’s horrors, from
genocidal nationalism to mightmakesright acts of aggression.
To Mao and his heirs, though, other fights, from the Opium Wars
to Korea, have as many moral lessons to offer.
In its first decades of unmembership, China was cautious and
defensive, arguing that economic development takes precedence
over abstract political freedoms. Its interpretation of the unchar
ter emphasises state sovereignty over individual rights. Under Mr
Xi, China has gone on the offensive, using its economic heft and
everdeepening ties tocountries in the global south to blunt crit
icisms of its autocratic system in such forums as the unHuman
Rights Council. It seeks to redefine such terms as “democracy”,
calling China’s oneparty system more responsive to public needs
than dysfunctional Western democracy. In 2018 Mr Xi declared
that China must never take the “Western path” of constitutional
governance, the separation of powers and judicial independence.
In February this year Mr Xi signed a joint statement with Rus
sia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, that reads like a manifesto for a new
order. It held up the two authoritarian powers as leading advo
cates for “genuine democracy”. That pugnacious joint approach
has survived Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for all that Mr Putin’s
war tramples the territorial integrity of another nation—a suppos
edly sacred Chinese principle since Zhou’s speech in 1955.
Unabashed, Chinese diplomats have cast Western angst about
Ukraine as racist hypocrisy, when much nonEuropean suffering
is ignored. On March 28th a Chinese foreignministry spokesman
asserted, “It is an unacceptable double standard to sympathise
with refugees in Ukraine while turning a blind eye to refugees
from countries in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.” Such
Chinese assertiveness is prompting debate among richworld gov
ernments. Some diplomats ask whether it is wise to lecture China
about repression in Xinjiang at such a moment. Contemplating
the challenge from China and Russia and the need to recruit allies
to counter it, others question conditions attached to Western de
velopment projects in the global south, demanding transparency
or high environmental or labour standards, when China offers
loans with few questions asked. In the words of one diplomat:
“These two superpowers want to change the world. We are capable
of stopping it, but it depends on how many friends we have on our
side. That will require flexibility and compromises.” A matter of principle
In the face of such doubts, Gyude Moore, a former Liberian public
works minister now at the Centre for Global Development, an
American thinktank, calls it insulting to assume that Africans are
not interested in transparency or independent judges. He cites
lawsuits in Kenya and elsewhere that seek to make public the
terms of Chinese infrastructure loans, or that have successfully
prevented stolen elections. An international official argues that
the real problem is a lack of investment, as shrinking Western aid
budgets undermine reformers who cannot offer rewards for good
governance. But there is a simpler reason to defend universal val
ues consistently. A selective approach would confirm China’s sus
picion that, deep down, all countries are guided by interestsalone,
and use principles as a weapon. China’s challenge to thepost1945
order is in the open now. More cynicism is a weak defence.nChaguan
Xi Jinping tells European critics that former colonisers may not judge China