The international democratic community is worried about China’s “wolf warrior” role, which has been condemned by many countries. The US, which used to think that appeasing China through engagement could guarantee stability and peace, finally started to change its tune during the administration of former US president Donald Trump.
Japan, which has always patiently complied with China’s demands, also began to change while former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was at the helm.
Italy, which was the first G7 member state to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative, seems to have woken up from its China dream.
Former communist bloc members the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia have also made about-faces and are saying “no” to China.
By comparison, Germany might be the biggest and most confusing anomaly.
Communist China under President Xi Jinping (習近平) is throwing its growing military weight around. As well as having a dictatorial personality cult around Xi, it is lighting fires everywhere in the region, be it the Taiwan Strait, the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台) or the India-China border.
Today’s China is coming to resemble Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime, which gave Germany a short-lived glimpse of glory before dragging it into long years of war, ruin and collapse.
How paradoxical it is that the country under the leadership of former German chancellor Angela Merkel, who was born and grew up in communist East Germany, on the one hand treated the country’s Nazi past as a painful memory, but on the other walked arm in arm with Xi’s communist China for the sake of profit.
In the international arena, any talk of keeping politics separate from economics is mere self-deception.
Hungarian-American investor and philanthropist George Soros wrote: “I consider Xi Jinping the most dangerous enemy of open societies in the world.”
At a time when the US, Australia and Canada are experiencing economic friction with China, and when a European Parliament delegation sent out the message that appeasing Beijing would encourage the aggressor, Germany, itself a member of the EU, still appears to be getting along well with “quasi-Nazi” China.
For example, according to Deutsche Welle, an investigative report published on Nov. 6 by German public broadcaster ARD and the Welt am Sonntag weekly newspaper revealed that two German manufacturers had exported “dual-use” (military or civil) engines to China that were eventually found to be installed in warships.
Should this kind of “dancing with wolves” be promoted and praised, or should it be resisted and condemned? Will it ultimately bring stability and harmony to the international community, or will it bring discord and disaster?
Merkel, who was on Oct. 26 formally dismissed from her post and has since taken over an acting role until a new government is formed, is regarded around the world as China-friendly.
Post-Merkel Germany is to reach a critical moment of choice — will it turn back to the camp of democracies and stand in opposition to communist China, or will it continue to nonchalantly chime in with Beijing, nurturing and strengthening China in the hope of reaping all the benefits and emerging unscathed in the event of any blowback?
It might not be long before we find out.
Chang Kuo-tsai is a retired associate professor at National Hsinchu University of Education.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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