Communist China, home to a fifth of humankind, is overrated as a market and a world power that in reality is, at best, a second-rank middle power, said a United Kingdom expert in Asian affairs. The mainland Chinese missile threat to Taiwan is much exaggerated, especially considering the very limited success of the far more massive and modern NATO missile strikes on Serbia. The expert pointed out that before strategic paranoia sets in, the West should note that the Chinese challenge is nothing like the Soviet one. Such regional threats can be constrained.
China matters about as much as Brazil for the global economy.
One would expect a tough negotiating stand on the terms of China's WTO entry, but not Western concessions merely because China made limited progress toward international transparency standards or make us feel guilty about bombing its embassy in Belgrade. He continued that with such an approach to Communist China, one would expect Western leaders to tell Beijing leaders that their authoritarianism puts them on the wrong side of history, but one would not expect Western countries to stop trying in the United Nations to censure human rights abuses or to fall over themselves to compete for the right to lose money in the mainland China market. Nevertheless, Segal concluded, until Communist China is cut down to size in Western imaginations and treated more like a Brazil or an India, the West stands little chance of sustaining a coherent and long-term policy toward it.