I've found there are largely two kinds of people in the world: those who have experienced something like food insecurity, housing insecurity, poverty or the like and those that haven't. People who have never experienced any of these tend to have a completely different outlook, attitude and relationship to money. People who have often have it in the back of their mind that at any point it can all go away. This is why you'll tend to find a lot of poorer people who will get a windfall and then splurge on a big TV or some other big purchase. It'll just whittled down by bills otherwise. And it never really matters how much you have. For many people that fear never leaves you. People who have never experienced that food insecurity (or the like) can almost never comprehend it.
I see China much the same way. Think about it. China was bossed around by the British Empire (it's literally the origin of the term "gunboat diplomacy"). With Mao's revolution there was a long period of famine. One of China's closest allies, the Soviet Union, collapsed around them.
The point of this is, from an outsider's point of view at least, there seems to be a similar kind of cultural fear, a fear of a return to instability, chaos, famine and being a plaything to the West.
So take Tibet. Many, myself included, see this as an invasion and occupation. That kind of criticism is seen through the Chinese lens as an attack on China itself, a threat to this period of prosperity and stability and a potential return to chaos.
Put another way: any criticism of China or foreign dependence of China is seem as a potential existential threat.
So I understand why China, say, protects its markets. But I also understand that China is "cheating" in an international trade sense and the developed nations don't have to put up with that. Nor should they. But developed nations and corporations are being bewitched the carrot of a market of over a billion people and that will never materialize so there's literally no point in turning a blind eye to China's human rights abuses or supporting the totalitarian regime.
I don't think it's exactly vassalization - I think it's more that the 'international rules based order' was created by the USA and EU, and as such, to an extent, represents their interests. If all markets are open, it gives current market leaders and incumbents a unbeatable advantage. What's more, rich countries typically play the system for all that its worth.
China is controversial because unlike Germany, or France, it plays the system to win, but it also has the growth potential (size, population) to upturn the global order. So when France cheats the system to protect french farmers or cheese or whatever, nobody cares, or when Germany's KfW behaves in a neocolonial manner, again, it's just not a threat to the global order. When China does stuff like this, even in milder forms, it couples with their extreme lack of basic soft-power competence (listen to chinese leaders speak, they sound like assholes) to make a stink.
Tangential point but slightly disagree: Germany has a presence in lots of fast-moving technological markets. Personally, I think the problem with software development in Germany (and many other places) is that software developers are put into the same basket as sysadmins, which in turn are still seen as glorified janitors by upper management. This is reflected in the lower salary compared to their American or even British counterparts.
> I think it's more that the 'international rules based order' was created by the USA and EU, and as such, to an extent, represents their interests. If all markets are open, it gives current market leaders and incumbents a unbeatable advantage.
This is the most succinct critique of the open market doctrine I have ever come across.
More accurate would probably be China is doing everything possible to create its own vassals via soft-power initiatives like Belt and Road, predatory debt lending, etc.
It’s kind of interesting you mention neocolonialism because that’s exactly how China’s actions in Malaysia have been described…
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2018/4/6/17206230/china-tra...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/magazine/a-malaysian-inst...
If our countries weren't so tightly intertwined with complicated trade partnerships and mutually beneficial enterprises, I'd be inclined to agree with you.
The scale is sliding though. On one side, you have countries which have had military force used against them for denying American companies favorable access to resources (Iraq, the Banana Republics of South America). On the other side, are countries who play ball be accepting American intellectual properties laws, don't interfere with American business interests, and make enough investments in America.
The people in those countries might not want to accept IP laws designed specifically to protect Mickey Mouse, but the alternative is economic arm twisting which is too much for most countries to handle. China is one of the few countries with enough power to stand up to the USA in this respect.
I don't mean to defend the US, but if you replacing "American" with "China" in that statement is basically the Chinese policy in a nutshell.
The expression is clear to the reader and conveys a conceptual expression of thought -- that of an idea of a new form of colonialism.
The opinion of whether or not, in what form, or to what degree it exists in the world are entirely different things from the word itself.
it generates probably 100 made up words a day.
your critique is meaningless.
Just look at the attitude that Google, Palantir, and similar have for Europeans. I bet there are times that Germany wished they had their own Baidu. China is doing what it can to stop from becoming an American vassal.