By Shen Yi
Catalonia in Spain recently suffered violent protests like those in Hong Kong. We still remember that certain people in the West called the large demonstrations in Hong Kong “a beautiful sight to behold.” Suppose these people support the Catalonia protestors, the result will be an unstable society; and if they don’t, they are applying double standards to the Hong Kong and Catalonia problems.
Some Western countries have dug a hole and fallen into it themselves. They might be able to defend themselves, but they won’t fool the world.
From London to Catalonia, protests have led a counter charge to certain Western countries which preach democracy and freedom. Such irony is a slap in the face of certain countries that are biased against China and Hong Kong.
We could interpret such a scenario with the political decay theory proposed by US scholar Samuel P. Huntington. If the governments of Western countries fail to run their countries effectively in the context of the information revolution and if their incompetence is not properly improved, we may see the world experience a great change at accelerated speeds unseen in a century.
The root cause of such contradictions is the economy. Steve Bannon, Trump’s 2016 campaign chairman, claimed that China’s export surplus hurt workers in the US and the UK.
Bannon is partly right as the industrial worker stratum in developed countries collapsed in the course of globalization. But he should also understand that it is the profit chasers in Wall Street that should take responsibility, not China. They worship money more than they worship God, not to mention their devotion to US national interests.
These Western countries know about their problems, but they chose to solve them in a way that’s to no avail: fabricating an enemy and transferring their domestic contradictions onto other countries.
Such tricks as provocative propaganda and subversive infiltration yielded some outcomes at the beginning. But they will sooner or later stir a counter charge if they get out of control.
The paradox of the West in dealing with Catalonia and Hong Kong problems has demonstrated the fact it is impossible to straighten out the contradictions in a lie without hurting oneself.
There is no necessity for China and other countries to join the boring “who’s worse?” game initiated by the West. They have more worthwhile things to do, such as improving national governance and perfecting their governance system, working for the well-being of the people and building a common community of shared future for mankind.
The author is the director of the cyberspace management center at Fudan University
