China: the West will abandon its values

Article in the Global Times, China’s nationalistic mouthpiece. While complaining that the US is riling up international public opinion against China regarding the Hong Kong “security” law, the paper claims that

The biggest pillar for Hong Kong’s status as an international financial center is its role as a window to the Chinese mainland as well as its special relationship with the mainland economy… the US is unable to provide enough compensation to offset the losses if Western countries become alienated from China. Values still have a strong appeal, but they cannot replace the fundamental interests of a country in pursuit of development.

In other words, western governments will abandon traditional western civic values in favor of profit. Given the track record of those western governments the last 40 years, which saw China-centric globalism and mass migration gut the American middle class and create massive wealth inequality, they probably have a valid point.

The only thing that could counter this kind of rational, nationalist self-interest in a rising China is a sensible, countervailing nationalism in the West. But the West has lost its nerve. Western Progressives believe that Western civilization is oppressive and evil. We are too consumed with “identitarian” politics to countenance actual nationalism.

You’d think the LGBTQ2IA crowd would be very concerned about this trend, since China has no problem upholding its values by force, and preventing the celebration and promotion of what it views as degenerate. (When a biopic of Freddy Mercury was released in China, they censored away the gay.) You almost get the sense that for the CCP, values are in fact more important than economic development. And so they ought to be; no nation can survive or compete in the long run without that emphasis. Too bad we in the West have refuse to understand that.