America must be thoughtful about how it plans to deal with China. Samuel Gregg writes:
The evidence that China’s gradual entry into global markets has not produced the results anticipated by many Westerners is overwhelming. By no measure of political, religious, or civil freedom can China be described as liberalizing.
The Chinese regime’s long-standing authoritarian character was enhanced when Xi Jinping replaced Hu Jintao as Communist Party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission in November 2012 and then as China’s president in March 2013. Xi then gave several speeches on the topic of China’s “rejuvenation.” Rejuvenation’s practical meaning was made manifest in a further centralizing of political authority, a crack-down on internal dissent, radical curtailments of already-limited religious freedoms, the mass imprisonment of “suspect” groups like the Uyghur Muslims, and an increase in the Party’s control over the Chinese military and security forces.
That pattern generally holds true for the Chinese economy. When China acceded to the World Trade Organization in December 2001, the hope was that it would move in the market-liberalizing directions that WTO members are supposed to go. But China has not been walking down that path of late, a fact recently confirmed by the Heritage Foundation’s 2020 Index of Economic Freedom which classified China’s economy as “Mostly Unfree.” Indeed, China increasingly behaves in a manner akin to an 18th-century mercantilist-state: the Chinese Communist Party not only integrates economic and military power on a scale which dwarfs that of Louis XIV’s France, but it also pursues policies which have been called “colonialism with Chinese characteristics.”
[Samuel Gregg, "What to Do About China?," Law & Liberty, April 17]
