For Gerhard Schröder, the former German chancellor, Vladimir Putin was and is a good guy. How can someone who fills your pockets by sitting on the board of directors of Gazprom not be? The atavism that governs us makes it a universal rule that when someone's behavior is incomprehensible to us, we follow the trail of bills to unravel the skein.
China, like Russia, has informal ambassadors. Lobbyists around the world who tell us that the Asian giant is the model to follow. Academics, former politicians, former rulers and other professionals who profit from their relationship with the Asian giant. Some sit on the boards of large Western corporations, others have career paths that apparently do not mark their relationship with China. But they all have in common the exercise of that proselytizing function. And it is that in that country they have also studied the political scientist Joseph Nye and took note some time ago of the concept of soft power –export of values, culture, social model– as a complement to hard power –force– and the most effective method of influencing the world.
That soft power – which the Americans have exercised for more than a century – requires money and prescribers. If you have the first, it is easy to count on the second. The petromonarchies of the Gulf are also in this effort. In his case, putting on the payroll or directly corrupting the upper echelons of Western sport to whiten their reprehensible slave regimes with world championships, golf circuits or any other event that can be priced. I mean, everything. Paying and making people happy is more efficient than dismembering journalists in foreign embassies. Although the first does not prevent the second from happening from time to time.
On the occasion of the 20th congress of the Communist Party of China (PCCh), the eyes of the world have spent a few days observing the political assembly of that dictatorship and speculating about its intentions. Everything is written about this: more concentration of power than ever in the hands of Xi Jinping and the will to continue applying a foreign policy that maximizes its economic, technological and military capabilities. Normal for any country that can afford it. Only that China is for us a systemic rival recognized as such by the EU since 2019 and described as a challenge by NATO in 2022 for trying to build an alternative to the world order more in line with its interests and values.
Geopolitics is made of many ingredients and moral judgments do not usually count among the main ones. But that is not to say that strong assertions cannot be made and that whoever tries to discuss them as a lobbyist deserves the strongest intellectual contempt, no matter how long and prestigious his career on other fronts may be. The simplest are the following: China is not a democracy nor does it have any intention of being one, its leaders have absolute disregard for human rights and the country is an empire of legal arbitrariness subject to the whim of the leader and his henchmen.
Defending China honestly requires a lot of courage. Because we must dare to say openly that human rights, democracy and that the law is equal for all are third division values. That the important thing, for the sake of efficiency, productivity and accumulation of capital and wealth, is that the ruler can make his cape a coat at any time and in any matter. And that includes mass disappearances and persecution of critics and dissidents. As there are those who write that if the Chinese were not happy with Xi Jinping there would be protest demonstrations, we should remind ourselves of these details that for some are of no importance.
To act as a lobbyist for China, the first thing is to declare yourself as such. And from there add naturally that the best system of government to defend the economic and social interest is the dictatorial one, regardless of its costs. Faced with a statement like this, one can vehemently disagree and even get angry. But he has no choice but to accept that whoever argues in this way is honest in his reasoning and consistent with his interests. And that he has no qualms about accepting that the rights of man are nothing more than a tradable value subject to the rules of a bear market. One way of skating like another. Skating, in gerund.
