Xi Jinping educates the Chinese to paranoia, we will pay the price – Corriere.it

There is still some chance that the Chinese breakthrough on Covid positive spillovers in 2023. The world economy could finally free itself from the heavy ballast that was China’s low growth: as the world’s second largest economy, its slowdown made us all a little less dynamic. Unfortunately, every good news has its counterweight: if growth restarts in Beijing, we will again have an inflationary effect on the prices of raw materials, energy in the lead.

But looking instead at the long-term consequences, the West will pay a price for the paranoid indoctrination to which Xi Jinping subjects its population. The absurd reactions of the Chinese government media against the very modest preventive measures taken by Western governments – tests on travelers arriving from China – are part of a now consolidated phenomenon which consists in describing a world populated by enemies, committed to damaging and weakening the rise of the Asian giant. Instilling in a people paranoia, a persecution complex, resentment for alleged discrimination always has consequences: this has been seen in the past in some Islamic countries, and of course in Russia.

The bet of the optimists – and of the regime of Beijing – that the Chinese economy can finally recover, just as there was a powerful rebound of all Western economies when we came out of our lockdowns. Accepting a cost in terms of victims, in exchange for prospects of growth and well-being for the majority: after all, this was the tragic pact that many politicians had to make even in our liberal democracies right from the start. With different results. Within the United States, for example, Republican governors (Texas, Florida) from the outset they accepted a greater dose of health risk in order to reduce the socio-economic costs of the restrictions. In Europe, Sweden chose the republican model. In Asia there were recipes more moved towards a high level of restriction (although agreed and practiced through social consensus, not imposed from above: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan), others more liberal such as India. Budgets are complex, to be honest it will take decades to get a clear idea of ​​the effects of those measures.

China is the extreme case par excellencefor almost three years it represented the pole of the maximum restrictions; now converts quickly to normal but maintains this post-lockdown transition much faster and more sudden than we did. He takes risks: the first test comes soon with the Lunar New YearIt is the most important holiday of the year, a period in which traditionally several hundred million people travel (the majority on public transport: planes, trains, buses) to reunite with families. That massive movement of people could generate a huge contagion and cause repercussions on liberalization itself.

Western countries try to protect themselves with mild, legitimate and dutiful measures. The furious reaction of the Chinese media is absurd: they rail against us because we require the same swabs that the Beijing government has always imposed on those traveling in China. While we don’t dream of slamming the test positives into long and hard quarantineas China has always done with us. This furious reaction is both unacceptable and largely predictable. For years, Xi has now embraced the language of hostile conspiracy, the idea that Westerners do and will do everything to block the rightful rise of the People’s Republic. His control over the media allows him to reverse reality, to hide from the Chinese that the treatment imposed by Western countries on their travelers is much more benign and benevolent than what they have done and continue to do to our travellers.

The more serious point is another. Having lived in China from 2004 to 2009, I have vivid memories of a time when government media narratives were friendlier towards us. At the height of China’s economic boom, propaganda embraced a positive view of globalization and therefore also of the West, whose opening up was seen as a great opportunity for the Chinese. Ever since the days of Deng Xiaoping, i.e. since the 1980s, young Chinese people have been encouraged to study at our universities to gain access to a higher level of knowledge. All this was part of an optimistic vision of the future and of the relations between China, America and Europe.

For years, however, a different discourse has prevailed in propaganda, on the bad intentions of a West determined to inflict new humiliations on China (references are frequent to the century of humiliations, the nineteenth century marked by the opium wars). This reversal of perspectives is dangerous. Often in history authoritarian regimes prepare the ground for aggressive actionsbeginning to indoctrinate their population about the wickedness of the opponent.

Western governments should not watch these propaganda barrages passively. Starting with the last one the casualty of warthat is anti-Covid tests on travellersBrussels and European capitals, as well as Washington, should demand that Beijing stop launching unfounded accusations at us, and give a less offensive version of the facts towards us. To suffer without reacting to the lies of hostile, imprudent propaganda.