Beijing: Containment of China has become a priority for liberal democracies throughout the world because of the Asian giant's dismal track record of human rights and its apparent threat to the territorial sovereignties of its neighbours among others, as well as apprehensions that China is out to thrust its ways of thinking and values on other countries.
Moreover, the US-led global containment of China is hastening the process of isolation of Beijing in the global arena. Human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet have led the US and the EU to issue sanctions against several Chinese government officials and companies, reported The Singapore Post. Apprehensions about Beijing's intentions among China's neighbours like the littoral states of the South China Sea are understandable. Still, even faraway Nordic countries like Denmark and Norway which are members of NATO and Sweden and Finland which have applied for membership in NATO are now wary of China, reported The Singapore Post.
Gone are the days when these countries had signed MoUs with Beijing welcoming the establishment of the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in the northern regions.
Now with the reality of the 're-education camps,' a euphemism for torture centres, in Xinjiang, the protests against the violation of human rights in Hong Kong and the threat from Beijing to the security of Taiwan, there has been a fundamental shift in the view of Nordic countries to China; these countries are now losing trust in China and considering it a security threat.
There is also a concern in the liberal democratic countries about the threat to national security from China; as the Chinese leaders will not shrink from achieving their ends by force, reported The Singapore Post. Going by recent assertions of President of China Xi Jinping that Buddhism and Islam must adapt to the ways of the Communist Party of China, and the censor and control under which the church has to function in China, these apprehensions are not unfounded.
In Asia, which Beijing considers its backyard, Japan has emerged as the vanguard in resisting China, worried that it is about the Chinese threat. Prime Minister of Japan Fumio Kishida has been attending NATO summits. Japan actively supports the expansion of NATO to Asia.
With China frequently violating its southwestern borders with India, New Delhi has become a member of the US-led Quadrilateral Alliance, of which Japan is also a member as also Australia. In a message to China, the USA, the UK and Australia have formed the trilateral alliance in the Indo-Pacific. Australia is facing a growing threat from China in its zone of influence among the Pacific Island countries.
It is believed China is now at its most isolated since the imposition of international sanctions on the country in 1989, in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre. With autocratic tendencies manifest in the CPC leadership, liberal democratic countries worldwide are becoming warier of China, reported The Singapore Post.
One of the most embarrassing manifestations of this isolation has been the recent refusal by the UK of permission for a high-level Chinese government delegation to attend the Lying-in-State of Queen Elizabeth at Westminster Hall within the Parliament complex in London before the funeral at Westminster Abbey on September 19, 2022. —ANI