Over the last twenty years, Western leaders have believed that engaging China would help shape Beijing’s policies. When China cooperated, the West engaged. When China became obstructionist, the West engaged some more. This failure to push for genuinely reciprocal engagement has, as my think-tank colleagues John Fox and Francois Godement argue, allowed China to take the West for a ride. For example, why is a Communist dictatorship that spends £20 billion on hosting the Olympics, receiving £30-odd million in British development aid?
European nations have exacerbated this problem by engaging in an unseemly contest to become China’s new best friend. The Chinese have ably exploited this. As Fox and Godement put it, China “sees its relationship with the EU as a game of chess, with 27 opponents crowding the other side of the board and squabbling about which piece to move.”
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