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From distant Himalayan valleys to small tropical islands and tense Western capitals, an more and more assertive China is taking on conflicts around the world like by no means earlier than as the United States retreats.
China’s imposition this week of a controversial safety legislation in Hong Kong, defying a barrage of criticism from the West, provided one other instance of its rising confidence as a world superpower.
The confrontations are seen as a part of President Xi Jinping’s nationalist drive to return a once-weak China to its rightful place of dominance in the world and shed previous methods of discreet diplomacy.
They additionally come as US President Donald Trump alienates allies together with his America First insurance policies and riles China with a commerce struggle.
“There is a sense that the time has come for China to claim its spot under the sun,” mentioned Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.
That means assembly the name by Xi to “unsheathe the sword,” Tsang mentioned.
Territorial rows
The most dramatic flare-up in a trio of territorial rows lately noticed 20 Indian troops die in a combat with Chinese troopers in a disputed a part of the Himalayas final month.
Both sides blamed one another for the brawl, which was the deadliest conflict between the nuclear-armed neighbours in a long time and despatched relations plummeting.
China has in recent times additionally stepped up its claims to most of the South China Sea by constructing synthetic islands and establishing a heavy navy presence.
China this week held naval drills close to the Paracels, an archipelago in the sea additionally claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan, which stoked tensions additional.
The Pentagon voiced concern over the drills on Thursday, saying they might “further destabilise” the area, whereas Vietnam lodged a diplomatic protest.
And in the East China Sea, Japan mentioned Chinese bombers final month flew over uninhabited islands claimed by each after Japanese efforts to rename them.
Diplomatic tensions
China has additionally seen relations with a spread of Western nations plummet, because it has adopted more and more strident diplomatic ways.
The coronavirus pandemic initially compelled China right into a diplomatic nook, because it fought off blame for months after the virus first emerged in the central metropolis of Wuhan final 12 months.
But, after Western nations failed to manage their very own outbreaks, China went on the offensive, with Australia one in all its essential targets.
Australia enraged China by calling for an investigation into the illness’s origins, seen in Beijing as a US-backed try and discredit it.
China in flip slapped commerce sanctions on Australian items and issued a volley of intimidatory feedback, drawing accusations in Canberra of financial “coercion”.
China additionally formally charged two Canadians with espionage final month, more than a 12 months after their detention, in obvious retaliation for the arrest of a high government of Chinese telecom large Huawei in Vancouver.
The failure of Western nations to comprise virus outbreaks was a shot in the arm for China’s ruling Communist Party (CCP), mentioned Ling Li, a lecturer on Chinese politics at the University of Vienna.
The chaos overseas has “injected renewed energy to the CCP,” she instructed AFP, in addition to boosting its confidence and emboldening it to “act more proactively on all fronts.”
Human rights
That confidence has carried over into China’s response to scrutiny of its human rights file.
Beijing’s energy play in Hong Kong prompted a global backlash, with principally Western governments saying the safety legislation erodes the monetary hub’s distinctive freedoms.
China’s response to the world was terse: “It’s none of your business,” a high official mentioned this week.
China vowed to enact countermeasures after Britain provided a path to citizenship for tens of millions of Hong Kongers and the US revoked the metropolis’s particular commerce standing.
It additionally used a more recent tactic, countering the criticism by boasting the assist of more than 50 international locations at the UN Human Rights Council — most with doubtful democratic information themselves — when 27 principally Western nations slammed the transfer.
Last 12 months, when 22 nations criticised China’s mass internment of Muslims in the Xinjiang area, Beijing responded with an inventory of 37 international locations that supported its “anti-terrorism” technique.
Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of Beijing’s workplace for Hong Kong affairs, summed up China’s rising confidence when responding to the Western criticism of the metropolis’s new safety legislation.
“Gone are the days when the Chinese depended on the whims of others to survive,” Zhang mentioned.
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