United States Secretary of State Antony J Blinken has said China poses longterm challenge for international order.
Blinken, who spoke at the Johns Hopkins University, linked this to the People’s Republic of China’s aspiration to reshape the international order.
He added that China has the economic, the diplomatic, the military and the technological power to achieve this.
The end of the Cold War, Blinken said, brought with it the promise of an inexorable march toward greater peace and stability, international cooperation, economic interdependence, political liberalisation, and human rights.
He said: “Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China poses the most significant long-term challenge because it not only aspires to reshape the international order, it increasingly has the economic, the diplomatic, the military, the technological power to do just that. And Beijing and Moscow are working together to make the world safe for autocracy.”
He said as this competition ramps up, many countries are hedging their bets.
“The influence of non-state actors is growing – from corporations whose resources rival those of national governments; to NGOs providing services to hundreds of millions of people; to terrorists with the capacity to inflict catastrophic harm; to transnational criminal organizations trafficking illicit drugs, weapons, human beings.
“Forging international cooperation has gotten more complex. Not only because of rising geopolitical tensions, but also because of the mammoth scale of global problems like the climate crisis, food insecurity, mass migration and displacement.
“Countries and citizens are losing faith in the international economic order, their confidence rattled by systemic flaws,” he said.
He accused some governments of using rule-shattering subsidies, stolen IP, and other market-distorting practices to gain an unfair advantage in key sectors.
“Technology and globalisation that hollowed out and displaced entire industries, and policies that failed to do enough to help out the workers and communities that were left behind.
“And inequality that has skyrocketed. Between 1980 and 2020, the richest .1 percent accumulated the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent.
“The longer these disparities persist, the more distrust and disillusionment they fuel in people who feel the system is not giving them a fair shake. And the more they exacerbate other drivers of political polarization, amplified by algorithms that reinforce our biases rather than allowing the best ideas to rise to the top.
“More democracies are under threat. Challenged from the inside by elected leaders who exploit resentments and stoke fears; erode independent judiciaries and the media; enrich cronies; crack down on civil society and political opposition. And challenged from the outside, by autocrats who spread disinformation, who weaponize corruption, who meddle in elections.
“Any single one of these developments would have posed a serious challenge to the post-Cold War order. Together, they’ve upended it,” Blinken said.
He explained that the need to maintain orderliness made President Joe Biden call for an “inflection point”.
The United States, he said, is leading in this pivotal period from a position of strength grounded in humility and confidence.
“Humility because we face challenges that no one country can address alone. Because we know we will have to earn the trust of a number of countries and citizens for whom the old order failed to deliver on many of its promises. Because we recognize that leadership starts with listening, and understanding shared problems from the perspective of others, so that we can find common ground. And because we face profound challenges at home, which we must overcome if we are going to lead abroad.
“But confidence – confidence – because we’ve proven time and again that when America comes together, we can do anything. Because no nation on Earth has a greater capacity to mobilize others in common cause. Because our ongoing endeavor to form a more perfect union allows us to fix our flaws and renew our democracy from within. And because our vision for the future – a world that is open, free, prosperous, and secure – that vision is not America’s alone, but the enduring aspiration of people in every nation on every continent.
“A world where individuals are free in their daily lives, and can shape their own futures, their communities, their countries,” Blinken said.
