The Current World Situation Reveals Deep Structural Contradictions in the Western Society

Qu Xing

The Current World Situation Reveals Deep Structural Contradictions in the Western Society

Qu Xing

The current international situation is evolving with drastic changes, and the world economy is struggling with difficulties. Some countries in West Asia and North Africa are undergoing turbulence. The world “hot spot” issues keep on erupting, one after another. The social troubles in the West have become a frequent phenomenon. People are coming to realize that the West, being the initiator of a rampant economic crisis, is facing large-scale uncertainties. The turbulent situation in West Asia and North Africa is intensifying because of the meddling from the West, and at present, the unrest looks likely to be expanding. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not seeing quick conclusions, and now Libya is in a state of war. In the Western society, extremist ideas are growing unchecked and social disorders are unstoppable. The public is discontented with some reforms, and they also call the whole political system into question. All of these realities reflect deep structural contradictions faced by the Western society.

I. Current Economic and Political Difficulties in the Western Society

1. Europe and America are confronted with severe economic situations and their development model is no longer attractive.

The structural conflict between fiscal sovereignty in the Euro zone and a single European currency has become increasingly sharpened, and international rating agencies have given warnings to some European Union (EU) members concerning the economic situation in these countries. Last year the sovereigndebt crises erupted one after another in some Euro-zone countries. The EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had to render help, but the problems remain unresolved. On July 21, 2011, the EU and the IMF had to resort to a second bail-out for Greece, but the credit rating agency Moody’s considered that the probability of a default on Greece Government bonds was virtually 100%, and the Greek debt rating was cut by another three notches from Caa1 to Ca. Following the downgrading of Portugal’s sovereign credit rating from A1 to A3 in March 2011, the long-term Portuguese government bond rating was cut by Moody’s another four notches to the junk level of Ba2 in July 5, 2011. Eight days later, Moody’s lowered Ireland’s foreign currency and local currency government bond rating from Baa3 to the junk Ba1. Moreover, the sovereign debt problems in Italy and Spain have become worse. By the end of 2010, Italy’s gross government debt amounted to 119% of the GDP, two times that of the maximum ceiling of 60% set by the EU in its Stability and Growth Pact. Moody’s has put the Italian debt rating on its negative watch list, and both Moody’s and the Standard and Poor (S&P) have warned that Italy’s credit rating faces a risk of downgrading. Spain’s 2010 budget deficit amounted to 9.2% of its GDP, which runs three times more than the EU ceiling of 3%. Although the Spanish Government has publicly made the largest-ever budget cutting measures over the past 30 years, Moody’s, on March 10, still downgraded Spain’s sovereign credit rating from Aa to Aa2 and also put Spain on its negative watch list. France, the second largest economy in the Euro zone, is faced with a debt risk. According to the French Ministry for Budget and Public Accounts, the public debts in 2011 will reach 85.4% of its GDP and will continue to rise in 2012. In June, Moody’s proclaimed that three big banks in France might be put on a credit downgrading list.

In America, government expenditure relies on borrowing, people spend excessively, the economy is virtualized and local industries are continually shifting overseas. The bad consequences have been increasingly exposed. By the end of 2011, the U.S. national debt will be over 99% of its GDP, surpassing the internationally recognized warning line. On April 18, 2011, the Standard and Poor’s credit agency cut America’s long-term sovereign credit rating from stable to negative, and Washington’s solvency was for the first time put into question. On May 16, the debt ceiling of US$14.29 trillion was reached, and the two major political parties started a fierce scramble on the issue of a default. Although a final agreement was worked out on deficit reduction and default, the American sovereign credit rating was cut by the Standard and Poor’s from AAA to AA+. Stock markets world-wide were shaken into turbulence and the S&P said it did not exclude the possibility of a further downgrading of America’s sovereign credit rating.

Confronted with their financial and economic crisis, the Western countries, while pushing forward policies of austerity, are carrying out protectionist policies in order to shift their problems onto others. Since 2008, the U.S. Federal Reserve has pushed forward two-rounds of quantitative easing (QE) monetary policies and injected US$2.3 trillion into the market. As a result, the price for bulk commodities in the world saw a sharp rise, and Asia and other emerging economies have suffered from import inflation. The Obama Administration is now studying the possibility of QE3, and is carrying out without concealment protectionist policies of “buying U.S. goods” and“employing only Americans.” The protectionist tendency in the EU is also rising in the aftermath of the crisis. The incumbent IMF President and former French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde argued that protectionism was a necessary poison during the economic crisis.

The catastrophic effects of the world financial crisis on the global economy and the consequences to the people’s livelihoods have sparked many doubts regarding the West’s capitalist economic system as well as its development model. Early in 2011, former IMF President Dominique Strauss-Kahn said in an article, “the Washington consensus is now behind us.” Nancy Birsall, founding President of the Center for Global Development, and Francis Fukuyama, a Senior Fellow at Stanford University, pointed out that “if the global financial crisis put any development model on trial, it was the free-market or neo-liberal model, which emphasized a small state, deregulation, private ownership, and low taxes.”And they said further that “the American version of capitalism is, if not in full disrepute, then at least no longer dominant.”

“The American version of capitalism is, if not in full disrepute, then at least no longer dominant.”

2. Social contradictions are intensifying with endless protests.

The global financial crisis led to rising unemployment in the West, reduced social welfare, and ever-widening disparity between the rich and the poor. This has resulted in intensified social contradictions and increased dissatisfaction among the people. All the problems have evolved into questions about the Western democratic system, all of which have sparked frequent protests in Europe and the United States.

Over the past three years, 2.5 million people have lost their jobs in Spain, making the unemployment soar rate up to 20.9%. Among those unemployed, young people amount to 50%. The proportion of people living under the poverty line has increased to 20%. However, the political parties are nonetheless indulging in their rivalries and use the elections as political shows. Their failure to bring the country out of its current plight by constructive measures has utterly disappointed the people who started to call Spain’s political system into question. On May 15, 2011, a nation-wide demonstration called “anger”broke out, and over one million people took to the Spanish streets. Different from previous protests, this demonstration was against Spain’s current institutional malpractice, and the demonstrators shouted slogans of “rejection of the bipartisan system”, “opposition to corruptive democracy” and they asked for a “real democracy.”

From August 6 to 10, 2011, serious riots erupted in London, along with many other cities in Britain. The situation did not calm down until the British Government sent a police force of 16,000 with armed vehicles and arrested more than 1,000 people. Such a scenario is the result of long-term political frustrations, an economic stalemate, and deep social contradictions, and these problems are typical in today’s Western society. Similar social turbulences and riots happened in France, Greece, Portugal and Germany. Greece, suffering from the most severe sovereign debt straits, has undergone many social disorders, and this has forced the authorities to make reflections on the national system. On July 1, 2011, Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou said at the International Council of the Socialist Party that the crisis in Greece reflected a broader disaster in Europe and even in the whole world, and it is a political crisis and a crisis of democratic governance.

Since neither the left wing nor the right wing governing parties can find effective solutions to deal with these crises, the right wing extremists, populists and xenophobic forces have begun to flourish. In the European political spectrum, the right wing extremist parties have found their influence to be on the rise. With this growing right wing extremism, xenophobic riots have occurred in many countries across Europe. The cultures, traditions, religions and customs of immigrant populations are under more and more confinements. In March, 2011, an American Christian pastor in Florida trialed and burned the Quran. In May, 2011, Denmark tightened its border control to prevent immigration from North Africa. The latest terrorist attacks by the Norwegian right wing extremist Anders B. Breivik on July 22, 2011 killed 93 people, wounded more than 100, and horrified the whole world.

3. The freedom of the press is abused and the media credibility criticized.

The freedom of the press has been persistently boasted as the highlight and pride of the Western system. However, in July 2011 the phone hacking scandal of the British News of the World was exposed. The newspaper, in order to gain access to information, resorted brazenly to illegal measures such as phone hacking and bribery of the police. Thousands of people became victims of such illegal hackings, and the information they got even concerned the family members of victims of terrorist attacks. What should be mentioned in particular is that the News Group, with which the News of the World was affiliated, is one of the few media tycoons in the world. With enormous political power, it possesses 70% shares of the overall Australian media industry, about a 40% share of British newspaper sales and 6% of TV and radio news audience, and it owns heavyweight media players like Fox Net and the Wall Street Journal in the United States. What makes people alert is the scenario in which media works hand in hand with the political powers to control public opinion. The phone hacking scandal revealed the abnormal relationship between the Cameron Government and top executives in the News Group and its affiliated firm News of the World. It exposed the behind-the-scenes maneuvers by the media giant to gain political benefits and to eventually realize its business interests through its media resources. The Bloomberg Business Week wrote on its website that what the News Group scandal revealed was not the unscrupulousness with which journalists tried to dig up leads for their stories, but rather the infiltration through which the News Group was able to influence the whole Western media and Britain in particular.

Through the phone hacking scandal, people come to see the dark side where police collide with the media, politicians curry favor from the media for votes, and the media giants yield control over public opinion and policy-making through money and news media. People also can see the distorted relationships among Western politics, the government, the media and the public. The scandal has shaken the British people’s trust in the media as a whole. According to The Times, four of every five British people no longer have trust in the media in the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal.

II. Severe consequences caused by the excessive use of military force by the West in international relations

During the past 20 years since the end of the Cold War, the United States and Europe, on the pretext of humanitarian interference and anti-terrorism, have launched wars in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and interfered in Somalia and C?te d’lvoire through military means. Of all these actions taken by the U.S. and Europe, only a few have been authorized by the UN Security Council and in accordance with the spirits of related UN resolutions.

In March 1999, NATO, without any authorization from the United Nations, bombarded Yugoslavia for as long as 78 days and dismantled the country, causing hundreds of thousands of people to be homeless, and displacing one million Kosovan refugees. NATO launched the war in Kosovo under the pretext of stopping ethnic cleansing crimes committed by Yugoslavia. Former U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen claimed that over 100,000 Albanian young people were killed. The news media in the West at that time went even further to put the figure up to 500,000. However, eight years later, according to the figure published by the Serbian Government and approved by the United Nations mission in Kosovo, the total casualties of the dead and missing in the Kosovo conflicts was 8,700 from both Albanian and Serbian ethnic groups. The Racak Massacre site, which was utilized by NATO as the direct cause for its military interference, proved to be pre-arranged.

In 2003, in spite of the UN’s rejection of authorization a wide opposition from around the world, the United States and Britain launched a brutal war against Iraq on the pretext of weapons of mass destruction pursued by the Saddam regime and its collusion with Al Qaeda in terrorist activities. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell showed emphatically to the UN Security Council the so-called evidences Washington had obtained. After taking over Iraq, the United States and Britain turned the whole country upside down, yet they found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction possessed by Saddam, no contact with Al Qaeda, and no international terrorist activities. However, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, the country’s infrastructure has been totally destroyed, and Saddam Hussein has been publicly executed. Now Americans are ready to leave Iraq, a country in which the situation is far from peaceful and stable, the infrastructure remains paralyzed, and ethnic and religious reconciliation is far from being achieved. An Iraqi man expressed his anger to a journalist, saying that Americans are preparing to depart the country irresponsibly just as they came in irresponsibly.

The war in Afghanistan was authorized by the United Nations and in line with the resolution of the UN Security Council. Through this war, the United States overthrew the Taliban region which supported terrorism and killed Osama bin Laden, thus making remarkable progress in the fight against terrorism and winning wide-ranging international support. However, problems in Afghanistan remain unsolved, and the root cause of terrorism has not been removed. Al Qaeda activities and drug cultivation still run rampant. The tasks assigned by the United Nations remain unfulfilled and the peaceful reconstruction of the country has not yet been put on the agenda. Under such circumstances, America’s departure only makes it possible for Afghanistan, a country with desolated land and a frustrated population, to once again become a hotbed for extremism and terrorism.

Although the war in Libya was authorized by the UN Security Council, many have questioned whether NATO’s actions have been in accordance with the spirit of the UNSC Resolution 1973. In the Resolution, the authorization for “all necessary measures” is clearly specified, that is, “no fly zone” and “cease fire.” The conventional wisdom for “no fly zone” is to carry out air patrol to prevent the banned warplanes from taking-off, rather than to destroy completely the military facilities of the banned side. “Cease fire” means that both sides in a civil war should stop fighting, rather than one side ceasing fire while the other side keeps on attacking. NATO has overly helped one side against its adversary. The UNSC Resolution 1970 requested the enforcement of the arms embargo against Libya, with the purpose of preventing arms shipments into Libya instead of providing weaponry to one side of a civil war.

The United States and Europe claimed that the reason they pushed the UN Security Council to pass the Resolution 1973 was to reduce the civilian casualties in Libya and to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. However, NATO’s action in Libya destroyed the possibility of a political settlement and intensified the war in both magnitude and duration. It did not, as they claimed it would, produce a ceasefire. NATO’s air strike, instead of making fewer casualties and preventing a humanitarian catastrophe, killed more than 20,000 Libyan people, displaced millions of people, and badly damaged the country’s infrastructure. What should be noted is that the model of political system imposed on Libya by America and Europe through military force will not resolve the problems of governance in a post-Gaddafi Libyan order. It is expected that the country will be bogged down in long-term turbulence with complicated religious and ethnic relations and a fragile and battered economic base. All of this is on top of the zero-sum games that are played among various political forces, religious extremists and terrorists. In addition, the situation in Syria is evolving towards a dangerous scenario like Libya. Yemen is also in turmoil. Certain turbulences are also appearing in some relatively stable countries. All of these developments will exert long-term serious impacts on the security of the Arab states, North Africa and Mediterranean countries, as well as Europe.

III. The structural reasons for Western political and economic difficulties and its militarism

When talking of their political system, politicians in the West often assert that their governments, being elected by the people, can best represent the public opinion; their parliaments, being capable of sufficiently debating on national policies, can best avoid mistakes in policy-making; the ruling party, being under the scrutiny of the opposition, can best prevent a power corruption; and the society, being supervised by an open media with sufficient press freedom, can best give an early warning to various social deviations. However, how could such a perfect political system drive the national economies as well as the entire world economy into such a crisis, launch an obviously wrong war against the opinions of the most of the world population, and confront repeated corruption cases and large-scale riots caused by people’s dissatisfaction? The reason for all of these imbalances can be found not only in contradictions between the system’s theoretical design and actual implementation, but also due to a detachment between the changing situation and a renewal of the system.

1. The zero-sum game between the ruling party and the opposition at the expanse of public benefits

Under the Western-style democratic system, the relationship between the ruling party and the opposition is one of zero-sum, and the opposition’s political future depends on the failure of the ruling party. The reason is rather self-evident. With a higher degree of satisfaction from the people, the opposition has a smaller chance to defeat the ruling party and gain the power. On the contrary, with a poor performance of the government and a low satisfaction from the people, the opposition has greater odds of winning an election.

Because of such a zero-sum relationship, the opposition will always refrain from taking any measures to help the ruling party in its effort to properly govern. The vested interests of the opposition will spur it to obstruct the ruling party’s performance, thus harming the national interests and the popular wellbeing. For instance, the opposition tends to block any reform plan of the ruling party, no matter whether or not the reform is beneficial to the society at large. The purpose of doing so is to prevent the ruling party from gaining an upper hand through reforms. The opposition hopes that reforms could be made when it comes to power in order to add luster to its own popularity. The problem is that when the opposition comes to power by winning the election, the ruling party becomes the opposition, and as the opposition, it will treat any reforms with the same mentality and logic. As a result, the agenda will be discussed repeatedly, various reform plans will be debated and postponed in succession, problems will become increasingly hard to resolve, and the competitiveness of the country will gradually be weakened. Just as Time put it, America never lacks new ideas, nor does it lack the channels for debate or the outlets for rage. What it really lacks is consensus on how to solve problems.

No ruling party is able to win 100% satisfaction from the people for its governance. However, any social discontentment will be made an issue by the opposition. Prominent figures of the opposition are frequently seen in street protests, and they encourage the people to take to the street and call for strikes. The political games of this kind lead to public confrontations, inefficient governance, and constant falling of national economic competitiveness. The political scrambling among political parties creates a huge waste of public resources, wastes development opportunities, and brings about clashes in a harmonious society. It should be said that both the ruling party and the opposition are fully aware of such consequences, yet none of them are able to get free themselves from this basic logic of their political system. This is the institutional reason why there are so many prominent problems in Western society, while steps for reform are still so stagnant. As Barack Obama said in his comments on the latest partisan struggles on the American debt ceiling, the real danger for the U.S. economy is not from the outside, but rather it comes from those Congressmen who put the Party’s interests above those of the country.

In the Western political system, democratic politics have been alienated into election politics, resulting in numerous types of elections that are conducted almost every year. Politicians spend most of their time and energy on elections, and in this respect vast amounts of social resources are consumed. It has become the set rule that “every vote counts,” which compels politicians into making endless empty promises, all of which cannot possibly be fulfilled in reality, even if they are successfully elected. Politicians that have a truly wide-ranging strategic platform and make efforts towards the long-term and overall national interests in the neglect of immediate and local benefits usually fail to get enough votes; instead, voters want politicians who can promise them short-term gains. Therefore, the system decides that the vast majority of elected politicians will only pay attention to short-term effects, and those who have a long-term perspective and speak the truth will not be elected. This has become a sad reality.

To show their outstanding achievements and to gain popular votes, some countries in the West spend excessively beyond their debt repayment capability, placing heavy burdens on state finance and steering the national economy to the brink of collapse when sovereign debt crises occur. The governments have to seek help from others in order to prevent state bankruptcy. Help from the IMF and other international finance institutions, however, comes with strings attached, and governments have to implement effective austerity measures and reduce deficits within a prescribed period. And it is exactly these conditions that politicians find very difficult to meet. The tightened control over finance and the reduction of deficits entails cuts to public spending, less provision of welfare, and lower salaries that come together to spark greater discontent from voters. To a government in the West, these measures, if put into serious practice, are equal to a political suicide. Any newly elected government will undoubtedly take lessons from the previous government. By analyzing such an institutional factor, it is not hard to arrive at the conclusion that the austerity plans put forward by European politicians and the debt-reduction program promised by the U.S. administration are both only mere rhetoric and will never be genuinely fulfilled. This constitutes the biggest problem plaguing future world economic development.

2. The development model featuring unbridled market and credit consumption is unsustainable.

After the end of World War II, countries in the West formed their respective development models in the course of their economic and social management, with the Unites States’ neoliberal model as the most representative one. The subscribers to the neo-liberal model advocate privatization, liberalism, freemarket and finance-orientation, and they believe the market is omnipotent and deny any possible market defects and failures. They make one-sided exaggerations on the market’s capability for self-restoration and oppose state interference in the market. This neo-liberal economic theory and its related policies pushed America into an economic boom, but at the same time, it left lots of hidden problems. Piles of problems causing global financial crises, such as a lack of financial supervision, proliferation of derivative products, separation of virtual economy from real economy, to name just a few, are related to the pursuit of this neo-liberal economic model. All the current problems existing in the American economy (i.e., high unemployment, high debt, high mortgage foreclosure rate, low economic growth and low capability utilization) are consequences of neo-liberal economic policies.

The Europeans have another model for capitalist development that runs parallel to that of the United States. The European model is based on free competition with a balancing of competition and monopoly, on Keynes’ moderate government regulation while balancing the relationship between efficiency and fairness, and on the principle of social stability while regulating the relationship of economic growth and social welfare. From the 1950s to 1970s, the Western European countries, with the Keynesian theory of state interference and macro-economic regulation playing the leading role, achieved their economic boom, and at the same time they also came across problems like institutional rigidity, insufficient innovation and weakening competitiveness in the world. Since the 1990s, influenced by neo-liberalism from the United States, many European countries speed up their privatization and market liberalization. The European financial sector, which was much internationalized with an ever-increasing virtual economy, was immediately engulfed in the financial crisis after the subprime mortgage debacle began in America in 2008, and Europe actually suffered a greater setback in the financial terms than the United States.

The European countries are proud of their “most developed social security system.” The welfare system that runs “from the cradle to the grave” was once the label of the European model. However, excessive welfare also caused problems such as fiscal deficits, public spending exceeding economic growth, blind expansion of government credit, and debt-based excessive public consumption. European countries find it difficult to carry out their social security system during the financial crisis, and some governments have to practice austerity policies to cut spending on welfare. This constituted a severe blow to the people of Europe who were so accustomed to a life of high welfare. This has led to widespread expression of discontent, culminating in various riots. Take Greece as an example: the Greek Government, with a debt ratio of 142.8%, has to go with austerity. According to a poll, 58.7% of Greeks support the government austerity plan, however, 86% of the people are against a reduced pension and the removal of the 14th month salary. That is to say that it is alright for the government to have austerity, but only on the condition that no vested interests be hurt. This shows very clearly that there are structural contradictions existing in the system.

3. The alienation of media functions under the monopoly of the media conglomerate

The West frequently boasts that the media enjoys total freedom of the press and it is labeled as the king without crown and the fourth power in politics. It is theoretically sound and socially necessary that the media supervises the government, reflects the feelings of the people and gives early warnings to the society within frameworks of freedom stipulated by law. However in reality, the media in the West has become an industry under the control of monopolized capital and its function has been alienated in the process of seeking its survival and maximizing its vested interests.

The media in the West claims its independence from the government. However, the conglomerate that controls the media and the government are shared stakeholders. Politicians make use of the media in their attempts to win voters and increase popularity. After winning elections, they reciprocate support from conglomerates by giving them extra freedom in performance of their business, just as some conglomerate bosses are favored as political appointees because of their donations during election campaigns. This has become a legitimized form of corruption in the West. The media conglomerate treats their affiliated media group with subtle disciplines, and every media group knows very well that it has to toe the conglomerate line. Different media are affiliated with different conglomerates, and every conglomerate has a political party as its shared stakeholder. Therefore, the most distinctive feature in the Western media— that governments and politicians are commonly attacked in the newspaper — only tells us that different conglomerates attack their political adversaries on behalf of their political representatives. There is not much fair or impartial play in this game, let alone neutrality in reporting.

The cruel competition in the media market compels journalists to do their utmost in covering news stories and obtaining news access. In order to cater to the tastes of the public, some journalists resort to vulgar approaches by spying on celebrity for their privacy and cooking up gossip. In order to get leads, it is a common practice for the media to resort to unscrupulous hacking activities and story fabrication. In May 2003, the fabricated news by The New York Times forced the resignation of an executive editor Howard Raines. It was followed by more exposure of fabrication scandals by mainstream newspapers like The Boston Globe and USA Today.

The excessive freedom of the press leads to a weakening of supervision over the government. In this respect, Britain can be a prime example. There is no specialized watchdog for the press in the UK. Since there is no sufficient law in this respect, the print media is managed mainly by self-regulation and by the press complaints commission, an entity which was initiated and funded by the industry. Facts have shown that industrial selfregulation is weakened in the face of heated competition. The profit-driven nature of capital often overwhelms professional journalistic, misleads journalists from correct accession of information and topic selection and fuels extreme public opinions.

4. The tilting balance of power in favor of the West and Western ideology stimulates Western countries to use military force overseas

In formulating domestic policy, parliamentarians in the Western countries always engage in heated debates. There are different perceptions among the ruling party and the opposition on whether these debates can prevent government mistakes in its policy-making. Outsiders do not have to distinguish the right from the wrong, and they find it hard to do so if they could. However, in international affairs, the situation is different. Many international policies and motions can be passed without much debate, although they are evidently wrong motions violating the basic principles of international relations, interfering in others’internal affairs, and fighting against small and weak states. Such a phenomenon may appear strange, but it is in fact not strange at all.

After the Cold War, the imbalance of power in the world in favor of the West has made the Western countries free from restraints for launching wars. NATO remains intact following the end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact. NATO continues its membership enlargement with more diversified missions, and is the major player in launching wars on behalf of the West. At present, NATO has turned from a military alliance of mutual assurance among members to a military organization capable of launching any military action against any country at any time in the world, and it can engage itself on any issue with or without United Nations authorization. Owing to the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact as a counterweight, NATO has fewer considerations when deciding on whether to take military actions. With the development of modern science and technology, Western countries possess high-tech military capabilities like the “precision strike”, and this allows them to start devastating wars against small countries just like playing video games, with very limited or no casualties. Precision strikes cause relatively small civilian casualties and bring about less damage to infrastructure, all placing the aggressing party under reduced pressure from domestic politics and world opinions. Under such circumstances, the launching of a war does not require big responsibility nor bear severe consequences, and thus the decision to engage in war becomes a rather easy matter. As a result, wars are waged one after another and countries are destroyed one after another, leaving numerous war traumas unhealed in the war-torn countries for decades and many problems unsettled for protracted periods of time. Regional security and stability are certain to be continuously affected.

The Western countries are proud of their values and ways of governance. However, they give no serious considerations to whether their values and governance are suitable to other countries, in particular to countries which have suffered from protracted colonial exploitation, and to countries with fragile material conditions, and different social structures and cultural traditions. All countries that do not share Western values and systems of governance are treated by the West as alien, and the West, through various approaches, encourages social changes in these “alien” countries. When a street confrontation takes place between the public and the government, the West is bound to deliver its support to the public and exert high-handed pressures on the government, making the government unable to restore order under such abnormal circumstances. Demonstrations in these countries usually turn into riots, clashes and bloodshed, and the deterioration of the situation provides an excuse for even more international interference. In this way, the situation turns into a vicious circle. In fact, while the Western Asian and North African countries are in turbulence, protests and riots have also erupted in some cities across Europe. Let us imagine what would happen if the world media were to engage in frenzied coverage of such events, showing their support for the people’s confrontation with Western countries, exerting pressures on the European governments and condemning the law enforcement moves by the police against riot suspects. In such a scenario, it would be impossible for the countries concerned to see a rapid settlement of their social riots and turbulence.

In the Western political system, the relationship between public opinion and the rulers is a special kind of political phenomenon. The politicians overly sensitive to public opinions, and sometimes it even leads the country based on public opinion. It is only natural that politicians are concerned with public opinions, however their policy-making cannot be totally free from the lobbying of certain interest groups, for public opinion itself is at least partially manufactured by specific interest groups. Because of this, all political forces are engaged in a fierce battle over the manufacturing, guidance, and controlling of public opinion. Dissidents who fled to the West from some developing countries know this very well, and they readily accept Western ideology, make use of Western media to manufacture stories, exaggerate, and distort and even fabricate the situation in their home countries, all in order to arouse people’s interest and attract attention from Western politicians. When debating on domestic politics, all interest groups can find their representatives in parliament. Therefore the debates, generally speaking, are conducted in a balanced and adequate way. However the debates on other countries’ affairs tend to be one-sided and superficial, because in parliamentary debates or in the Western media, it is always the dissidents who are invited to speak. Instead of safeguarding their national interests, the dissidents always push for sanctions or condemnations against their home country. What they want is Western interference, and they try to make use of Western meddling in order to realize their political aspirations that cannot be achieved at home through normal approaches. Therefore, all declarations, statements, sanctions or decisions on military action passed through lopsided debates reflect only the demands of dissidents or separatists and damage the interests of the majority of the people in the target countries and the relevant state-to-state relations.

Problems existing in the present Western society are derived both from their political system and from an evolving international environment.

5. The original purpose of the system and the changing of the times

The above-mentioned problems existing in the present Western society are derived both from their political system and from an evolving international environment. Based on favorable geographical conditions and a colonialist accumulation throughout history, Western countries established their profound material foundation, gained advanced science and technology, and on this basis set up a set of values and modes of governance. Objectively speaking, the values and governance are in line with the conditions of Western society. These values created prosperity, stimulated people’s aspirations for participation in public affairs, met the public’s desire for information, and made competitive elections ways of letting out social pressures. When the government changes, all mistakes made by the previous government in policy-making will be wiped off, and as a result, a relative social stability in the West is maintained. Such a system has its advantages.

However, there are two sides of every coin. All matters, if going to the extreme, can and will convert to the opposite direction. When the check-and-balance turns to a zero-sum game between the ruling and the opposition, the real loser will be the effectiveness of public service; when a democracy with lofty objectives turns to a rivalry over power, the general public good is sacrificed; when the media turns to pervasive interest groups, the people’s rights to information and privacy will suffer; when“humanitarian interference” and “responsibility for protection” are used as reasons for wars, a heavier casualty is bound to be caused for the sake of protecting some people, and a greater humanitarian disaster is bound to be brought about for the sake of avoiding a humanitarian crisis; when the enjoyment of life turns to extravagant consumption beyond debt-repayment capability, an economic precipice will eventually become a reality. If the clashes of civilization are regarded as inevitable and other civilizations are considered threats, and if attempts are made to rule the whole world with only one value and to impose the model of governance by force, then countries are bound to have more wars and more poverty; the room for the development of mankind will become smaller and smaller, and people will find their thinking becoming more rigid and less creative in the face of challenges to their nature. Owing to all the above-mentioned reasons, Western society cannot but get bogged down in difficulties. Since the West has a dominating position in the world landscape, the whole international community cannot be free from all these problems.

The structural problems faced by the West not only have internal causes; they are also related to the change of the times. Under the conditions of economic globalization, an information revolution, and the rise of newly emerging countries, the West is facing a world completely different from the one prior to World War II and the one before the end of the Cold War. In dealing with these evolving trends and changes in the international community, the newly emerging countries have taken rapid steps in reforming their political and economic systems at home and in formulating and adjusting their world strategies in order to tap potentials provided by a changing world and to realize a fast growth in the process. However, the Western countries, elated by their Cold War victory, concluded that they had come to see the “end of history” with an arrogant and supercilious mentality, and their thinking turned increasingly conservative. The political system also became more rigid, thus losing the vitality for development. This is regarded as the deepest reason why problems keep on erupting in Western society.

In analyzing the current dire situation in the West and its deep-rooted structural problems, we are not saying that the Western system is already in decline or in a deathbed struggle, nor are we saying that the system is bound to be taken over by another system. We do not want to attribute all the problems in the current world to the West. Nevertheless, politicians in the West should realize that their approaches are unsustainable. Many problems faced by this world and by the Western countries are not rooted outside. On the contrary, they are to a large extent the products of Western mentalities and behavior. If no changes are made in their mentalities and behavior, the Western countries will find themselves bogged down deeper in straits with increasing problems.

IV. To take a rational view of the present political and economic difficulties in the West

All political and social systems have their own advantages and disadvantages. It is only natural for a system to experience ups and downs in the process of its development. What is crucial is whether a system is capable of growing with the times and making relevant readjustments in line with its evolving situation. The Western system is a system with a fairly strong capability for self-restoration. In the Western culture we see a strong awareness crisis and a matching spirit of criticism, although their social development is hindered by the zero-sum partisan games and by the debt-laden governmental expenditure and excessive public consumption. Western society could make prompt and coordinated responses when the public realizes their national security and future are in danger in the face of a deteriorating crisis. In fact, politicians in the West are now reflecting and making use of the experiences of other countries. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stressed in her remarks last June at the headquarters of the African Union that a “good governance requires free, fair and transparent elections, a free media, independent judiciaries, and the protection of minorities. And democracy must also deliver results for people by providing economic opportunities, jobs and a rising standard of living.” Well-known American scholars Nancy Birdsall and Francis Fukuyama also pointed out in their book that governments, in order to push for industrial growth and provide social security network, have to reform their public sectors and give a full play to their bureaucracy. China, with a top-down decision-making mechanism and strict management, was free from the disordered democratic procedure and was thus able to recover rapidly from the world financial crisis and achieve economic growth.

The current political and economic difficulties do not imply a West on the ebb.

The current political and economic difficulties do not imply a West on the ebb. In recent years all three major economies, including America, Europe and Japan, have grown at low level. These countries are confronted with multiple political and social problems, and the interventions taken on by these countries in the world have made them over-stretched. Because of these factors and characteristics, comments on a declining West have appeared repeatedly in newspapers. However, the Western economy is still growing, though its growth rate is much lower than that of emerging countries. The Western economies have a larger base; though they have a lower growth rate, their absolute amount of economy is increased hugely. For instance, the total GDP of the United States in 2010 was US$14.62 trillion, and it will gain an annual increase of US$540 billion in 2011 with a growth rate of about 3.7% as predicted by the Federal Reserve. China’s GDP in 2010 was US$ 6 trillion, and with a growth rate of 9%, it is expected to achieve an annual increase of US$540 billion, equal to that of the United States. Moreover, China cannot sustain such a high growth rate for a long time, and the United States will not always retain its current low growth rate. We should be sober-minded on this.

The West’s current political and economic difficulties do not imply a reduction in its strength. Although the current Western society is in trouble, it still has a solid economic base and its people are well educated. Western society is a society with comprehensive social infrastructure. It makes huge investments on research and development, has abundant reserves of energy and resources, has remained militarily superior, and it is able to formulate an international agenda and has big influence over the public opinion of the world. All of these outstanding advantages of the West are unmatchable by other countries. Newly emerging countries have very fast economic and social development, yet their disparity with the developed Western countries is huge in terms of the hard and soft power indicators such as GDP ranking, the ratio in primary, secondary and tertiary industries, the level of urbanization, fairness in the healthcare service, food safety, sustainability of the environment and natural resources, social stability index, and world reputation. Therefore, we have no reason to indulge in blind optimism.

The current political and economic difficulties faced by the West do not imply that the West will give up its dominance over world affairs. The existing international system and the rules of the game, with the West being the leading player, will not change because of the troubles it now faces. On the contrary, the West, when confronted with difficulties, will make greater efforts to safeguard their world status and interests by relying on the existing international system, and they will be more vigilant and resistant to any demand for a rewriting of the current rules of the game. The difficulties in the West will produce a stronger mentality for protecting vested interests and a stronger cautiousness against the rise of newly emerging countries. As a result, the West will be very sensitive to the expanding influence of the emerging countries in the world, and they will also be very watchful on any fresh interests by these emerging countries. Therefore, the Western countries will not pursue a strategy of contraction; on the contrary, they will carry out a world strategy that is more assertive in nature.

Different political systems should learn from each other and in the process of learning achieve respective improvements. Our world is incredibly diversified. The various histories, cultures, national conditions, levels of development, social patterns, and population compositions in different regions have achieved different balances among the peoples and between mankind and nature. At the same time, they have formed diversified social patterns and modes of governance. Such a diversification in social patterns and modes of governance is a product brought about by hard struggles between mankind and nature for the purpose of survival and development under various natural conditions. It is also a true reflection of the tenacious vitality of mankind and it constitutes a precious wealth of the international community. We believe that the Chinese system suits the national conditions of China. We do not deny that our political system needs improvement, and we hope that all political systems will be improved in the process of learning from and interacting among each other. The current world is a world of interdependence. We hope that the West will overcome its difficulties quickly through reforms, and a common development and prosperity will be achieved for the world.

Qu Xing is Professor and President of the China Institute of International Studies.