A Rising China is Remaking Global Politics

China’s ascendancy to be a global superpower is inevitable in spite of four years of the former Trump administration’s adversarial policies and the threat of using anti-China alliances and coalitions for containment from the new Biden administration. By Lee Kok Leong, executive editor, Maritime Fairtrade

There is no denying that China is rising and sooner rather than later, is going to be a superpower. After years of going against the established world order, 2021 is the turning point when China is strong enough not to suffer any meaningful repercussion from western countries and their allies and in fact, has conditioned the world to expect and accept its belligerent behavior.

Recent examples, among many others, included refusal to provide the WHO team probing the origins of the pandemic with raw data on early COVID-19 cases; accusing, without evidence, a US lab in Maryland as being a potential source of the virus; France president’s warning on the lack of information about China’s vaccines and saying they might even lead to virus variants if they are not effective; and the sending of two armed ships into the disputed waters of Senkaku Islands to intimidate Japan.

But there is no country strong or brave enough to really stand up to China, not even the US. Yes, there are the usual strong condemnations but these are just mere rhetoric. In fact, the former Trump administration’s trade war had the unintentional effect of making China stronger by hastening internal economic reforms.

During 2019 at the height of the trade war, China’s domestic retail sales for the first time reached US$6.2 trillion, an increase of more than 42 per cent from 2015, a year before Trump took office.