The World Now Suspects China

The world now suspects China, thinking it is a bully thanks to sudden aggressive outbursts and a belief in Beijing that nothing can stop it in its global agenda.

A report from the Institute for Strategic Studies of Military Schools (IRSEM), a French Ministry of Armed Forces-linked think tank says China’s much-publicised efforts to show global dominance is giving away its strategies.

The report titled “Chinese Influence Operations” says Beijing is striving to impose its authoritarian model onto the free world but it is isolating itself on the global stage after taking an aggressive stance on the diplomatic front in recent years.

‘This behaviour has sparked rising blowback even from countries traditionally on friendly terms with the Chinese regime.

“China is its own biggest enemy when it comes to influencing,” the report states, because it does not help China in making new friends.

The authors found that China’s relations with the West have markedly deteriorated around 2017, and this is seen in its relations with Sweden.

BAD PR IN EUROPE

The European country is the first Western country to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese after the Communist Party took control of China.

The appointment of a new ambassador, Gui Congyou in 2017 in Sweden quickly deteriorated the favourable public opinion China enjoyed in Sweden.

Sweden played the Chinese dissidents issue and this offended Gui who threatened a diplomatic row and pressured a Stockholm hotel to cancel a Taiwanese National Day celebration. These had disastrous effects while the Swedish foreign ministry summoned Gui 40 times since 2017.

AUSSIE TROUBLE

China is also facing a downfall in Australia, which imports a third of China’s exported goods, with a shift in their relations.

China was adamant in hitting Australia with tit-for-tat trade sanctions over attempts to probe the COVID-19 as a ‘Chinese flu’.

The same is happening in some other parts of the world, including Africa, where Chinese nationals are at times victims of attacks.

EXECUTIONS

Similarly, in Canada, China is still fighting for the release of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou. China took the arrest so strongly that it threatened to execute Canadian citizens arrested in China.

In Southeast Asia, some countries have taken a step back from Chinese influence because of Beijing’s bullying in the South China Sea.

The pattern shows that China is telling the world that it is a huge and powerful country and everyone has to follow what it decides, whether the decision is in favour or not of the country’s affected.