The Times: China may one day lead the world but it will never be popular
The Times published an article written by Asia Editor, Richard Lloyd Barry, titled “China May Lead the World One Day, But It Will Never Be Popular”.
According to the writer, Chinese President Xi Jinping has everything that an emerging superpower leader could dream of.
His economy is still on its way to surpass the US economy as the largest in the world, and its armed forces acquire submarines, high-tech missiles and aircraft carriers, and his country is transforming from a local power to a regional power and then an international power.
President Xi is respected, but he fears him in many ways.
The writer believes that one thing is missing: he does not enjoy love, nor does he enjoy his country.
According to the Pew Research Center in Washington, China is untrustworthy and unpopular or hated by more people than ever before.
A recent survey also found that more people in the world’s industrialized countries hold more “negative opinions” about China than at any time in the past decade.
But this does not make a big difference in Xi’s standing at home, according to the article.
History indicates that regardless of economic wealth and military might, a superpower always needs some form of love for it, its artistic products, and its popular culture.
Despite all the damage caused by the British Empire, for example, the writer says that it left behind systems of government, law and education that served its former colonies.
The writer believes that despite modern China possessing indisputable cultural assets and making it internationally beloved, it lags behind its strategic competitor, the United States, and its close neighbors, such as Japan and South Korea, in other areas.
The Coronavirus pandemic has exposed China to a lot of criticism, as some believe that it has leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, in addition to concerns about the way Beijing dealt with the epidemic in the beginning.
