Response to John Keane’s “Enter the Dragon” Image Credit: Flickr

Response to John Keane’s “Enter the Dragon”

Correspondence

In his tough-minded essay on China’s return to world pre-eminence, John Keane assesses how China “throws its cultural weight around on the global stage” while domestically “[t]he slightest whiff of a challenge to the CCP’s power can bring down the hammer”. China’s aggressive rejection of human rights is the result of three decades of indifference to its human rights violations from the international community, including Australia, as nations pursued the riches flowing from China’s economic opening.

In March 2021, geopolitical strategist Robert D. Kaplan wrote in Foreign Policy, “China knows that in a world where everyone trades with it – and therefore requires, at some level, its approval – states will pay lip service to human rights while acting on their economic interests.”

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