Published: 2:30pm, 8 Jul, 2022
We live in an epoch dictated by technology. News of all kinds comes to our smartphones whether we wish to see it or not.
In the op-ed “Why China has more to lose from decoupling than America” (June 29), George Magnus wrote that the “People’s Republic would not be where it is today without globalisation. International trade, investment, and capital market access drove economic growth, while knowledge transfer … enabled technological levelling up”.
On decoupling, he went on to say, “China might not have initiated the disengagement process, but it seems committed to seeing it through”.
Unless I have been reading the wrong material, China, through public forums, has been consistent in its world view and strategic thinking since the dawn of the century – in that its government has been advocating world peace, collaboration between countries and their people, non-interference, free trade, inclusiveness and tolerance. In fact, it is campaigning for and enshrining decent values and practices for the social good.
Yet unless I have missed reading the right articles published by the West, I see in the West the promotion of isolationism, exclusionism, protectionism, racism, economic sanctions and gun crimes.
Perhaps the article needs a new title: reversing the positions of the two countries in the heading would have been appropriate.
Philip S.K. Leung, Pok Fu Lam