fischer175_Zhang WeiChina News Service via Getty Images_china normal life

China Won 2020

Dec 1, 2020 Joschka Fischer

After a rocky start, China has clearly ended 2020 on a high note, having brought the pandemic under control and strengthened its position both in Asia and on the global stage. Though the world has been spared another four years of Donald Trump, America and its allies will have their work cut out for them.

BERLIN – In future history books, 2020 will be known as the year of the great COVID-19 pandemic, and rightly so. But it will also be remembered as the year when US President Donald Trump’s vile tenure was brought to an end. Both episodes are closely connected and will leave lasting traces, partly because they unfolded during a broader global transition from the US-dominated twentieth century to a Chinese-dominated twenty-first century.

Against this backdrop, 2020 proved to be a highly successful year for China. To be sure, things didn’t look that way at its start, when a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, was rampaging through the metropolis of Wuhan. Serious failures by Chinese authorities permitted that outbreak to grow into a pandemic that has now killed almost 1.5 million people and brought the global economy to a standstill. Earlier in the year, it looked as though China’s central leadership was facing a deep crisis of confidence. Coming on the back of a trade war with the United States, COVID-19 momentarily brought the country to its knees.

Since then, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s forceful suppression of the democracy movement in Hong Kong has further increased Western distrust. The administrative clampdown under a draconian new national-security law ends the era of “one country, two systems,” and raises grave questions about the future of Taiwan.

We hope you're enjoying Project Syndicate.

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Already have an account? Log in

Support High-Quality Commentary

US President-elect Joe Biden may have promised a “return to normalcy,” but the truth is that there is no going back. The world is changing in fundamental ways, and the actions the world takes in the next few years will be critical to lay the groundwork for a sustainable, secure, and prosperous future.

For more than 25 years, Project Syndicate has been guided by a simple credo: All people deserve access to a broad range of views by the world’s foremost leaders and thinkers on the issues, events, and forces shaping their lives. At a time of unprecedented uncertainty, that mission is more important than ever – and we remain committed to fulfilling it.

But there is no doubt that we, like so many other media organizations nowadays, are under growing strain. If you are in a position to support us, please subscribe now.

As a subscriber, you will enjoy unlimited access to our On Point suite of long reads and book reviews, Say More contributor interviews, The Year Ahead magazine, the full PS archive, and much more. You will also directly support our mission of delivering the highest-quality commentary on the world's most pressing issues to as wide an audience as possible.

By helping us to build a truly open world of ideas, every PS subscriber makes a real difference. Thank you.

Subscribe Now

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 25 in all 25 Comments on this article

Rajiv Chopra Dec 8, 2020

I am not sure I agree that China won. Economically, yes. But, people are suspicious of them. We, in India, are wary. They are focused.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Yoshimichi Moriyama Dec 7, 2020

In reply to LETO ATREIDES below.

"For one thing, the Chinese have never reciprocated the warm feelings of the Japanese, viewing them with distrust and more than a little contempt. The Japanese nostalgia for China has been a classic case of unrequited love (Edwin O. Reischauer, The Japanese, 1978, p.417)"
This Sino-Japanese relationship of disdain and love does not apply simply to the postwar period but to the whole period of known history.
Vietnam and Korea are Confucian countries. They, particularly Koreans, have deep respect for China, but at the same time they are wary, because as they had not been separated like Japan from it by the sea, they had been sacked, bullied and exploited.

Japan should be blamed for whatever wrong it did but not for what it did not. China and Korea did not have any desire of military conquest on Japan though they as Confucian societies had enormous contempt of Japan, and it did not have any on either of them; so, though China had always been imperial and expansionary, and as Korea was content with the status of a Chinese tributary, as far as the trilateral relations were concerned, the three enjoyed international peace. It may well sound surprising because of the wide-spread misinterpretation of modern Japan to know that "Isolation was the usual rule for Japan (E. O.
Reischauer, East Asia: Tradition and Transformation, co-authored by Fairbank and Craig, 1976, p. 553.)"
This international peace was suddenly disturbed and shaken with the arrival of the imperialistic West in the middle of the nineteenth century. Great Britain and Russian were in imperialistic rivalry in three parts of the world, the Crimea, Afghanistan, and the Korean Peninsula. I do not want to make this comment long, so in a nutshell Japan and China had to fight mutually in the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), each representing the interest of Great Britain and Russia. Japan should not be thought war-like and China peace-loving, as Henry Kissinger, a panda hugger, tries to make us believe, because Japan defeated China. Russian influence increased in Manchuria after the war and the Chinese Boxers' Rebellion, so the Russo-Japanese War was the second round. It was not a Japanese victory; if it was anything, it was at best a draw for Japan. Japan should have been applauded but Wilhelm II of Germany warned of the Yellow Peril.
The pivot for Japanese foreign policy making was always to consider the interests of Great Britain and the United States and harmonize decisions with those of the two English speaking countries since Japan opened its door in 1868. Americans were allowed by Japan during the Pacific War to continue sending financial assistance to Jews who lived mainly in the Japanese section of the International Settlement in Shanghai. Jews who lived in other parts of China, Manchuria and Japan were protected. "The attempt to transfer the traditional admiration for Britain and the US to Germany did not succeed (during the Pacific War), because respect for the West could not be obliterated while Germany's racism arrogance offended so many Japanese (Ben-Amy Shillony, Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981, p. 176.)"
"When one realizes how tenuous and frail democracy is elsewhere in the world, and how strong the tendency towards arbitrary rule, one may conclude by wondering not why democracy failed in Japan, but rather how, despite the undemocratic tradition and the pressure of (the second Sino-Japanese and Pacific) war, a totalitarian dictatorship did not evolve there (Ben-Amy Shillony, ibid. Preface.)"

As for the Pacific War, I will appreciate if anyone reads my (Michi's) two comments at amazon usa: one on Hamilton Fish/FDR, the Other Side of the Coin: How We Were Tricked into World War II and one on Charles Beard/President Roosevelt and the Coming of War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities.

There are many other big lies China has told about Japan. But for now I will reserve them for another time.
- Leto Atreides Dec 7, 2020
  
  Not sure why my previous reply didn't show up. Your long winded reply misses the point. Imperial Japanese troops committed numerous atrocities in Asia during its conquest, which started long before WWII. No matter how one tries to spin, these conquests and the atrocities committed cannot be justified and whitewashed away.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
- Leto Atreides Dec 7, 2020
  
  Your long winded reply misses the point. No matter how you spin it, imperial Japanese troops committed numerous atrocities before and during WWII. Japanese conquest and occupation of Korea, Taiwan, China and other Asian countries cannot be justified, and the atrocities cannot be whitewashed away just because Japan provided financial aid to these countries post WWII. To move forward, there needs to be a common reexamination of history, and Japan needs to educate its young about the experiences of others under imperial Japanese occupation.
  - Yoshimichi Moriyama Dec 7, 2020
    
    The Japanese admit the atrocities Japanese committed.
    Do you think Japanese killed about three hundred thousand innocent Chinese in Nanjing in December 1937? What do you know about it? Do you think that Japanese kidnapped about two hundred thousand Korean women and forced them to work as prostitutes? Do you think that the Chinese Nationalist Government did not work any atrocities on Japanese people, on Englishmen,etc., breaching its agreement or treaty obligations?
    A new reply to this comment has been posted.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Leto Atreides Dec 6, 2020

Joschka Fischer's writings are usually clear-eyed. But in this article, he falls into the same bias trap as most western media. Australia has been proactive in bashing China since 2018. It was not about principle or rule-based system. It was about geopolitics and how Australian leaders chose to position Australia in relation to China and US. Europe stands apart from the US because it still argues for an international rule-based system, which requires fairness and principles. China's response to Australia and its recent airing of grievances is legitimate. When a relationship turns sour, it's rarely just the fault of one party. Airing of grievances is the first step to help each understand the other so that the relationship can be repaired. The party that insists that it has done nothing wrong is the one that has a serious problem, which is Australia in this case if one judges from the comments of Australian politicians. If Europe is to follow Australia's approach to its relationship with China instead of being principled and pragmatic, then it will only end badly for everyone.
- Mike W Dec 8, 2020
  
  Exactly. Australian politicians have been bashing China for years (in many cases without real evidence), but when its own war crime is exposed by China (with actual evidence), they get triggered immediately and demand apologies. If this is not double standard, I don't know what is.
  Also, the US imposed tariffs on China (determined illegal by the WTO), and China imposed tariffs on Australia. But China's approach is described as "barrel of endless tributes", while the US is still the "“benevolent” hegemon and the promise of liberty in the twenty-first century". You really don't see the irony?
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
zebbrad Dec 6, 2020

The author conveniently neglects to mention that Trump's opponent in 2016 (Hillary Clinton) also campaigned on being against the TTTP.....
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
very good Dec 4, 2020

"After a rocky start, China has clearly ended 2020 on a high note, having brought the pandemic under control and strengthened its position both in Asia and on the global stage. Though the world has been spared another four years of Donald Trump, America and its allies will have their work cut out for them."

I beg to differ.
1) One does not know exactly what has been happening in China concerning pandemic. As recently collaborated report surfaced, China under reported its CoV case in numbers, dates, and locales. Can one trust China or the CCP?
2) China has...strengthened its position both in Asia and on the global stage? Did Mr. Fischer mean got fired at in Wang Yi's visit to Japan or his purposely lateness at the meeting in S. Korea? Maybe Zhao Lijian's twitter caricature of the Australian solider and ridiculous detention of Australian lobsters, 212% tariffed red wine, wood, and coal brought China a strong position international?
3) Mr. Fischer apparently does not know China has many hidden financial time bombs waiting to explode.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Yoshimichi Moriyama Dec 3, 2020

China has derived a lot from the rather open trading system of the world. But it has not changed its thousands of year-old political culture of Tianxia or the whole world under the Chinese emperor. It is wrong of the West, if anyone is wrong, to expect such change from China or any other country. We are all bound by history.
China had been an autarkical society, to put it simply, that survived until today. But today its economic might cannot be sustained without participating in the world economy. The West and the free world would do very well to think of adopting a discriminatory trade against China to protect the Western values.

A group of South Koreans have set up a statuette of a Korean girl in the district of Mitte, Berlin. They have been telling the whole world for the past thirty years without feeling any compunction that the Japanese kidnapped about two hundred Korean women and girls and forced them to engage in prostitution with Japanese soldiers.
Of course it is a gigantic lie which Chinese and Koreans, both culturally Confucian, love to tell.
As for the truth, read my (Michi's) short comment on Chinese Comfort Women, titled American Humanism, on Chinese Comfort Women, amazon usa.
You can read a Japanese specialist's rather detailed report at www.seisaku-center.net/node/840 in both English and Japanese. You can also get to the site at "Tsutomu Nishioka/The Comfort Women Issue in Sharper Focus, pdf.
Marshall Wordsworth, Inconvenient and Uncomfortable: Transcending Japan's Comfort Women Paradigm is a short treatise.
Ikuhiko Hata, Comfort Women and Sex in the Battle Zone is a much more comprehensive, voluminous book. You can read three reviews by experts and two comments at amazon usa.

"...the best colonial master of all time has been Japan, for no ex-colonies have done so well as (South) Korea and Taiwan,...The world belongs to those with a clear conscience, something Japan has had in near-unanimous abundance (David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, Norton, 1999, pp.437-438.)" Japan spent far more money on the development and modernization of Korea that it extracted as economic profit. During the thirty-five years,1910-1945, the Korean population almost doubled; the average annual economic growth rate was more than at least three percent, some scholars say it was close to four percent, etc. Koreans had massive infrastructure built by Japanese; more important, they learned soft infrastructure from Japanese of how to build and manage modern society.
- Leto Atreides Dec 6, 2020
  
  Yes, conquest and enslavery of backward peoples can all be justified by the same type of arguments. China's policies in Tibet and Xinjiang are not going far enough in comparison.
  - Yoshimichi Moriyama Dec 7, 2020
    
    Thank you for your interest in my comment. Please let me reply not here but at the top as I would like many readers to read it.
    A new reply to this comment has been posted.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
- Yoshimichi Moriyama Dec 4, 2020
  
  typo: ...spent far more money...than it extracted...
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Ariel Tejera Dec 2, 2020

Two points in addition to those already mentioned in the article...

* Authoritarian rulers in western nations are trying to emulate the Chinese model.

*An increasing part of new wealth is being generated in Asia, in global terms.

The consequences of these trends just say it all.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Kien Choong Dec 2, 2020

The author attributes all 1.5 million Covid-related deaths to "serious failures by Chinese authorities", and none at all to failures among Western governments!

A more objective assessment would attribute the deaths to a random mutation in the coronavirus which was bound to happen at some stage in the history of evolution. In fact, we have reason to be grateful that the outbreak started in China. (It could easily have started anywhere in the world.)

Once its infectiousness was recognised, China did everything reasonably within its control to limit the impact on the world, going so far as to quarantine the entire city of Wuhan. Contrast this to the failure of numerous Western governments to do anything even after the infectiousness of Covid-19 was finally understood.

That this author cannot recognise China's responsible action shows how biased the author is. With such biased judgment, China will undoubtedly be deemed to continue failing, no matter how well China succeeds. (I'm being sarcastic!)
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
j. von Hettlingen Dec 2, 2020

Joschka Fischer says China - unlike the rest of the world - has had a “successful” year, despite “serious” failures earlier in January that had provokekd “a deep crisis of confidence” in the central leadership. The coverup of Covid-19 had allowed the virus to grow into a global pandemic, killing nearly 1.5 million people. The health safety measures have brought much of global economic activity to a halt. Thanks to “radical measures, China’s authoritarian one-party state quickly contained COVID-19 and put the economy back on track, enabling a near-complete return to normal life.”
The author says, China’s economy - the world’s second largest - is expected to grow by 2.1% in 2020, down slightly from the 2.2% growth projected in the last poll in July. That would make China the only major economy to grow in 2020, albeit at the slowest annual pace since 1976, the final year of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. Economic recovery picked up in the third quarter as consumers shook off their caution, and in the fourth-quarter GDP is expected to rise 5.8% year-on-year.
Trump will go down in history as the worst president in modern US history, overseeing the worst public health crisis in more than a 100 years, its biggest economic crisis since the 1930s and also its most widespread racial turbulence since the late 1960s. Though the world has been spared four more years of Trump, he has changed the world with his “America First” agenda - a transactional approach and zero-sum game in foreign policy - which have had repercussions around the world.
Meanwhile Beijing has sought to strengthen its regional and global standing, seeking to transition “from the US-dominated twentieth century to a Chinese-dominated twenty-first century.” In its trade war with the US, “China has given little ground (mainly a promise to buy $200 billion in US goods). The crackdown in Hong Kong seems to be working precisely as Xi had hoped it would.” Last month, China “mounted something of a geopolitical coup with the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a new trade agreement that will put it at the center of the world’s largest free-trade area.”
The RCEP is made up of 10 Southeast Asian countries, as well as South Korea, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, and “will connect China’s huge market to those of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – from Indonesia and Singapore to Vietnam – and will include important US allies such as Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.” The pact is seen as an extension of China's influence in the region, which Obama sought to contain with his Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The RCEP excludes the US - the only regional player to be left out - which withdrew from the rival trade pact - the TPP - in 2017, because Trump had vowed to dismantle his predecessor’s legacy. Obama’s deal “would have created something like the RCEP, only with America at the center and China left out. Witnessing this US act of self-harm, China’s leaders presumably couldn’t believe their luck, and Xi’s government has been working hard to exploit Trump’s generous gift ever since.”
China may emerge “stronger from this year of crisis, America has come out weaker.” Yet any “black swan” event could be a game-changer. Trump did not expect this “division, chaos, and weakness” a year ago. As stockmarkets soared, he was expected to win a second term. “Following a contentious election that Trump has tried to discredit, many around the world are wondering if President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration will be in any position to lead the US out of its downward spiral.”
It remains to be seen whether Biden would be able to unite the country. Perhaps the “two warring political camps will find common ground,” and put aside their partisan ideology. In these turbulent times of pandemic and escalating economic and geopolitical rivalries, America needs its friends more than ever, and America’s friends need it. Without a restoration of US global leadership under Biden, China will be well on its way to becoming the dominant force in the world, and that is not a comforting prospect for US partners and allies in Europe, the Indo-Pacific, and elsewhere.”
No doubt people in the West dread the idea of a China-centric world order. Beijing’s hardline measures by imposing anti-dumping duties of up to 212% on Australian wine, the latest in a slew of measures curbing imports from coal to copper to barley in retaliation against Australia, which had called for “an international investigation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2, its exclusion of two Chinese companies (ZTE and Huawei) from its 5G network, and negative reporting about China in the Australian media” all give us a glimpse of life under Chinese authoritarian rule.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
william etheridge Dec 2, 2020

China won nothing in 2020
Are barreling down wrong road, oblivious to evidence / lessons of recent history.
Not hard if you bother to look.
Freedom is noisy and messy but boy it works, is a beautiful thing!
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Leo Arouet Dec 1, 2020

China has lost 2020 the article must have been titled. China was the cause of the coronavirus, his country now faces a serious economic crisis, its growth has dropped to 4.8% from 9% in past decades. It has behaved like an evil dictatorship in pursuing and fighting freedom and press freedom in Hong Kong. Her model is not replicable, as it leads to poverty. American companies are pulling out. The millions of Chinese who got out of poverty are returning to it.
- william etheridge Dec 2, 2020
  
  Dead right
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Godfree Roberts Dec 1, 2020

"Serious failures by Chinese authorities permitted that outbreak to grow into a pandemic that has now killed almost 1.5 million people "

Twaddle.

There were no serious failures by Chinese authorities and none, certainly , to compare to those made by our own authorities.

Despite interference by (now dismissed) local politicians, the novel virus was detected long before it caused a single fatality, its DNA sequenced and distributed world wide.

The same virus was then circulating in Italy and the US Northeast, neither of whose health authorities detected it. Even when China raised the alarm, neither Italy nor the US took precautions.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Lothar Baier Dec 1, 2020

This comment was removed by a moderator. Replies to this comment may also be deleted. Please note that we moderate comments to ensure the conversation remains topically relevant. We appreciate well-informed comments and welcome your criticism and insight. Please be civil and avoid name-calling and ad hominem remarks.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Jerry Syder Dec 1, 2020

Joshka Fischer thinks that Americans will willingly go back to the days of European freeloading off American largesse and military power. Those days are gone thanks to Donald Trump, the only president in memory who stood up to deep state dinosaurs like Mr. Fischer, who show no regard for taxpaying Americans and their needs. If Europe wants to form a front against China, I'm sure the U.S. will join in on America's terms and not a return to Cold War protocol.
- Lothar Baier Dec 1, 2020
  
  This comment was removed by a moderator. Replies to this comment may also be deleted. Please note that we moderate comments to ensure the conversation remains topically relevant. We appreciate well-informed comments and welcome your criticism and insight. Please be civil and avoid name-calling and ad hominem remarks.
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
Tamer Kirac Dec 1, 2020

Great commentary, with a focus on economic rivalry.

It is hoped that Project Syndicate continues to enrich its' readers about "Chinese Century" through assessment of human rights, environmental issues and democratic freedoms in China.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.
jose Cheng Dec 1, 2020

"Forceful suppression of the democracy movement" is such a typical anti china biased run of the mill start to an otherwise possibly thoughtful article. This line is so far from the truth that it's not worth reading further. I am a liberal Canadian and live in HK. What happened in HK is hardly what this arthor described in his third paragraph opening. Its classic case of writers and opinion leaders who lazily buy into the anti china narrative as a premise of their discourse .
- Jonathan Lemieux Dec 7, 2020
  
  so, to be clear, you are saying that what happened in Hong Kong this year was not forceful suppression of the Democracy movement? Care to elaborate? Police have not been held to account. legal system being undermined, Opposition candidates being jailed. Many of the opposition winners in the 2019 district council elections having their voices ignored and/or kicked out of their seats. The Orwellian national security law/crackdown. National anthem law. THIS, you are going to tell me with a straight face, is NOT "suppression of the Democracy movement? I look forward to your explanation
  A new reply to this comment has been posted.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.

https://prosyn.org/0jhx58e

Cookies and Privacy

China Won 2020

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Support High-Quality Commentary

New Comment

Email this piece to a friend

Contact us

Log in/Register

Cookies and Privacy

China Won 2020

To continue reading, subscribe now.

Support High-Quality Commentary

Edit Newsletter Preferences

Set up Notification