Can we afford an opaque superpower?

By Sandip Kumar Mishra

Richard Nixon wrote in a Foreign Affairs article in 1967 that "we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations." After five decades and especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems that we cannot afford to keep an opaque China forever in the family of nations.

Apart from other reasons, the international community expected that engagement with China would lead to China becoming democratic and open. But unfortunately the expectation remains still elusive.

Not only has China's ruling regime been able to sustain its inconsistency between economic liberalization and political authoritarianism, its undemocratic and non-transparent political regime has achieved significant economic success through its forced mobilization of resources and twisting of the rules and practices of international trade.

China's economic success has been so stark that it is the number one trading partner of more than 120 countries and has been referred to as "the factory of the world." In recent years through various projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) China has acquired substantial space in the global economy.

China's economic attractiveness is so profound that often we just ignore the opaqueness of its political regime and its authoritarian practices ― or we have probably learned to live with them as if there is no other alternative.

However, the way China behaved irresponsibly and had criminal negligence in dealing with the spread of the new coronavirus, it's an opportunity to rethink our engagements with China. China's actions and inactions have been responsible for COVID-19 becoming a pandemic which could cost the world as much as $4.1 trillion or almost 5 percent of GDP as per Asian Development Bank estimates.

It is also said that the crisis will lead to a world that's different from the one we've known until now. It's beside the point whether the virus should be called the Chinese virus or the Wuhan virus and also premature to accept conspiracy theories which claim that China knowingly or unknowingly unleashed the virus.

The moot point is that China must be squarely blamed for suppressing and hiding the information about the virus. China is now part of the family of nations as it was never before and its negligence is going to cost huge for every family members. The whole process has led not only to an increased mistrust toward China, but also to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The role of the WHO was allegedly compromised because of the Chinese pressure and rather than assessing independently the situation, it just toed the Chinese line. If the allegations are true, it's really serious that the WHO worked as per the dictate of the not-democratic state and compromised its duties.

It's important to underline that an unknown virus may originate in any country and start spreading. However, a responsible state would take note of it and inform its own people and the international community as soon as possible. Early and immediate information is crucial in the fight against such viruses.

However, it's quite obvious that even though China knew about the virus and its nature (person-to-person contagious) as early as in December 2019, Chinese authorities deliberately tried to suppress the information.

China claims that it took time to share information of the virus with the international community as it wanted to ascertain the nature of the virus by having enough scientific data. But the claims seem unconvincing.

China should have shared information and involved the international community to ascertain the nature of the virus. If China had behaved responsibly, it would have at least made the world aware about the virus before the Chinese New Year which fell on Jan. 25. It's important because millions of Chinese usually travel abroad and millions of foreigners travel to China on the occasion of the Lunar New Year.

These mistakes are quite consequential. Now the virus has become a pandemic and countries across the globe have been struggling to deal with it. Huge human and economic losses are going to be incurred by the international community.

The politics in the majority of countries in the world are not like China which fully closed down Wuhan and all other reported hotspots in China to contain the spread of the virus. Thus, an authoritarian China might come out of the crisis, but the international community is going to keep reeling under the pandemic for a long time.

In the midst of the crisis, China's place in the family of nations must be evaluated. Although it's impossible to think that the post-crisis world would immediately distance itself from China or abandon their economic interests and interdependence on China.

However, it would be proper to learn a lesson from the crisis and pin down China for being undemocratic and non-transparent. The International community must create a collective mechanism through which China's opaqueness could be dealt with. Otherwise, the international community must consider minimizing their relations and dependence on China.

The current pandemic clearly indicates that we cannot afford to have an opaque and undemocratic rising superpower in the family of nations. But are we ready to read aloud the writing on the wall?

Sandip Kumar Mishra (sandipmishra10@gmail.com) is an associate professor at the Centre for East Asian Studies, the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.