As China started to be a more important part of our world, it seems like it is inevitable that China will challenge the old world order one day. As the matter of fact, many people think China will take over US in the next 20 or 30 years.
But before the Chinese age comes, one thing is going to be more clear: China doesn’t fully understand the game rule and want to play in its own way. Many people expect China to be more responsible will certainly get disappointed. Besides of the inactions in environmental protection, human rights and political reform, China also has its issues in economy: keeping the currency imbalanced and the inflation to maintain its over 8 percent GDP growth rate every year.
Such a great achievement in last three decades makes China feel proud and start to despise other nations. One appropriate example is how China deals with foreign affairs, especially when there are criticisms from the outside. As a existing superpower of the world, China shows very unconfident when it is criticized by western world with denying almost anything and also criticizing other nations interfering Chinese internal affairs.
Unlike the last two decades, China gave up its low key strategy and try to play a big role. Unfortunately not everything is going well besides business contracts. In 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference , China refused to to cut CO2 emissions intensity by 40–45% below 2005 levels by 2020 for its own good (video): cutting almost half of its carbon dioxide emissions means to shut down a lot of factories, which might slow down China GDP growth.
Even though before the Beijing Olympic Games it made a promise to open its Internet, China is still blocking many websites, including twitter, facebook and youtube. A more restricted Internet censorship network has been build to control all the speech from web portal to personal blog and microblog to make them harmonious. Although a government official said, “The speech in China is open and free”, the comment for this news is yet closed.
After Nobel committee announced that the 2010 Noble peace prize winner is Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident and lawyer who is in jail, China replies with blocking Nobel committee website, discrediting Liu in Xinhua and People’s Daily, two state-owned media, house-arresting Liu’s wife, and also warming other countries do not attend the ceremony. But China didn’t expect France would still attend it after they had signed a contract of 102 Airbus aircrafts.
French will not be the last one to slap China like this. China needs to accept the current rule in stead of changing it. The rule will always be changed, some day China will change it, but not now.
