Western countries are largely aligned with the US, which is largely understandable due to shared interests and some strong common cultural elements. However, when I see black-and-white statements about how the rest of the world should oppose China and side with the US or how anyone who sides with China must be evil, I can't help feeling that such a view simply doesn't acknowledge the more comprehensive picture and the perspective of many outside the Western world.
China has significant investments in the Arab world, Africa, and Asia. Furthermore, from my perspective as an Arab and African person, China has historically been much less hostile to my region and people than Western powers like the US, UK, and France. In the last 100 years alone, the US has waged multiple wars on Arab and Asian countries. The UK and France both colonized Egypt near the beginning of the 20th century, and England only left Egypt in the '50s.
Between the severe exploitation of African and Arab nations, installation and support of dictatorships, and military aggression, what reason is there for Arab and African nations to side with the US over China? Yes, China has a litany of human rights abuses and is a dictatorship, but in addition to the fact that no global superpower is innocent, the domestic freedoms in the US simply have no bearing on its foreign policy.
What do I, an Arab and African national, gain from siding with the US over China just because the US has more domestic freedoms? When we look at foreign policy in the last 150 years, the US, UK, and France have been much more hostile, destructive, and exploitative toward my region than China has even come close to being.
So if the argument is that China is oppressive domestically, we could say the same about the US in terms of its foreign policy. If the argument is that China opposes democracy and independence of a sovereign nation in Taiwan, we could point to Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq as examples that the US and its closest allies are not much better or different.
This thread is meant to give a perspective that is far from uncommon where I live (in the Arab world), because sometimes I feel like some Western individuals and media outlets get so caught up in their own countries' interests and one-sided perspective that they fail to realize why many outside the West aren't so readily open to aligning themselves with them—as has been the case concerning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
While I'm no fan of China, I simply see no reason to regard it as worse than the US as far as foreign policy goes and a few reasons to potentially regard it as actually better in that area (e.g., being less hawkish and less inclined to wage wars, at least in recent history). If anyone has an argument as to why I or anyone else in my part of the world should, I'm definitely open to hearing it.
I don't think it's any secret around here that I very often don't see eye to eye with the U.S. government and our policymakers. I've also been quite critical of U.S. foreign policy, although that's a long history in and of itself.
The history of US-Chinese relations has certainly had its ups and downs. When Nixon visited China in 1972, it set off a chain of events in which relations warmed up to a degree, and China seemed more and more capitalist-friendly. It was a great boon for Western capitalists, who capitalized on cheap labor and also gained access to the largest market in the world. National security perceptions during the Cold War considered the Soviet Bloc the focus, while China was considered an ally against the Soviet Bloc, despite the fact that they were still ruled by the Communist Party. This perception still continued even after the fall of the USSR, which was kind of inexplicable at the time.
As I recall, both major US political parties supported closer trade ties with China as far back as the 1980s, although it really took off in the 1990s. Even despite the Tiananmen Square massacre, the US leadership turned the blind eye because there was a lot of money to be made for US capitalists. Those same capitalists threw caution to the four winds and outsourced entire industries, leaving immense economic wreckage in their wake - a lot of which we're still dealing with today. The trade-off is that we get manufactured goods at a slightly lower price than it would be if manufactured here. On the other hand, with everything being made in China, we put ourselves in a position where we're practically dependent upon them, at least in the short-term.
Western politicians and capitalists recklessly jumped into bed with the Chinese government, and didn't really seem to consider the consequences or the ramifications. They knew what they were getting into; they knew the track record of the government they were dealing with. Why would they try to seek out some kind of rapprochement with that regime just to turn around and say "we don't like you anymore"? It seems that whatever cozy relationship which once existed between the ruling classes of China and the United States has gone sour, for whatever reason.
As for how that affects the rest of the world, it's hard to say. I suppose it depends on which area of the world we're talking about. The Communists spoke out against Western colonialism and imperialism in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and this may have resonated with some people living in those regions. Although not all bought into Marx or Lenin, and the ideology itself was a bit of a hard sell on the world stage. I don't know if the Chinese are even going that route, or if they're just investing in these countries as any international capitalists would do.
The West is in a situation where they don't really hold the upper hand as much as they used to. The Soviet Bloc grew to be rather formidable at its peak, but eventually collapsed. The Chinese are also becoming more formidable, and if they form an alliance with Russia (and possibly other nations), it could weaken the West's hegemony in some nations and areas of the world.
I agree with you about the West's history of atrocity and supporting dictatorships throughout the world. Our track record is quite poor in that regard. But I also believe that the West overplayed its hand and got too arrogant and cocky for its own good. Now, we're facing recession and internal dissension at a disconcerting level. If the U.S. political and economic situation continues to spiral downward, then U.S. economic influence on the world will wane.
I've often thought that, one way other nations could have avoided or fended off Western hegemony is if they unified and formed a united front. Just a hypothetical question: What if all the nations of Africa came together and formed a singular military/political alliance, something like the EU and NATO rolled into one? They could pool their resources and form a strong enough bloc as to prevent any Western or other outside power from muscling in or interfering in their internal affairs. But that doesn't seem likely to happen at all.
But it seems clear that they're easier for the West to control while they remain small, but independent sovereign states, yet only on the surface. If we don't like how someone is running things, we find a way to replace them. But it seems our like or dislike of national leaders is proportionate to how much the business community likes or dislikes them. What an odd coincidence.
With China, it might be the same thing. Maybe their policy is driven by capitalist greed, even despite being officially communist. China seems driven by nationalism more than anything else.
