The World Can Change China
Historically, pressure from the West has led to many of the country’s toughest and most influential reforms.
Patriotic, but pushovers?
Photographer: China Photos/Getty Images
The behavior of Chinese officials at last weekend’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Papua New Guinea, reportedly barging into the foreign minister’s office to try to cut mildly critical language on trade from a final communique, seemed intended to signal that China won’t budge an inch on U.S. demands. Commerce Minister Zhong Shan has declared that those who assume Beijing will cave to President Donald Trump’s bullying “don’t know the history and culture of China.” As a matter of fact, they might understand it better than he thinks.
Although Chinese nationalists like to cite the “century of humiliation” China suffered at the hands of marauding imperialists to explain why it’ll hang tough now, the fact is that reform in China has rarely come about in the absence of a challenge from the outside world. At key moments in China’s history, external pressure has been the indispensable impetus to change.