While China isn't taking over the world militarily, it is doing so economically, and that’s troubling to the West, according to an op-ed in The New York Times.
On Friday, President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet at Rancho Mirage, Calif., in an effort to build on a relationship that is both complex and crucial for both nations. But while the news media has focused recently on alleged Chinese hacking, the authors of a new book say the U.S. needs to view China first as an economic hegemon.
Heriberto Araujo and Juan Pablo Cardenal, authors of the book "China's Silent Army,"
say China's attempt this past week to buy American pork producer Smithfield Foods and French resort company Club Med are indicative of the West's problem.
Concerns also have been raised by key U.S. lawmakers after Japanese conglomerate
SoftBank Corp. announced in October that it was seeking approval from the United States for a $20 billion purchase of a 70 percent stake in Sprint, America's third-largest cellphone provider. SoftBank's offer raised concerns due to the company's links to the Chinese telecom firm Huawei, which is controlled by elements of the Chinese military.
In fact, the authors say "the aggressive worldwide push of Chinese state capitalism" is much more worrisome than the country's cyber attacks on American firms or its territorial disputes with Japan.
"By buying companies, exploiting natural resources, building infrastructure and giving loans all over the world,
China is pursuing a soft but unstoppable form of economic domination," the authors say.
China's annual investment to the European Union was less than $1 billion before 2008, but has been more than $10 billion over the past two years. Investment in the United States leaped from under $1 billion in 2008 $6.7 billion in 2012, says the Rhodium Group.
Rather than seeing this as a threat, the authors write, European governments, who are dealing with their own economic crises, see China as someone who can help by either buying sovereign debt or by making investments in their countries that create jobs.
A state-owned Chinese firm manages the main terminal in Greece's largest port and another owns 10 percent of London's Heathrow Airport. Only the U.S. is pushing back, with its Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is limited to countries that meet American standards on free competition, labor, environmentalism and intellectual property rights.
But actions by the United States, such as not approving the Keystone oil pipeline, have forced Canada to go to China to sell its crude.
And it's not just an economic advantage China is enjoying. Canada's economic ties seem to have blunted criticisms of human rights abuses in the communist country. Canada was once one of China's sharpest critics on human rights abuses.
"As China becomes a global player and a fierce competitor in American and European markets, its political system and state capitalist ideology pose a threat," the writers say. Western governments must stick to the rule of law, political freedom and fair competition, they say, to prevent long-term damage.
"It is China that needs to adapt to the world, not the other way around," Araujo and Cardenal say.