Fabio Massimo Parenti, an associate professor at Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Italian International Institute in Florence, and a foreign associate professor at the China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, has been engaged in contemporary China studies for 15 years. He teaches Chinese development and global shifts, globalization and social change, war and the media. He has a study on the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwestern China and several monographs in Italian, Chinese and English, including Geofinance and Geopolitics.

A portrait photograph of Fabio Massimo Parenti.

Fabio Massimo Parenti

There is a big difference between China’s development and the rise of Western powers. China’s peaceful development does not harm the interests of any other country and has not been achieved by waging war or exploiting people. The “Chinese miracle” of becoming the second largest economy in the world did not fall from the sky, nor did it resort to colonialism or imperialism. China’s transformation was realized through the efforts of its people and the Communist Party of China.

The Uniqueness of China’s Development Model

A key word in China’s diplomatic tradition is “coexistence,” which means rejecting confrontation between political entities and continuing to advocate ideas and practices that oppose competition and conflict between nations. In seven decades, the People’s Republic of China has become the world’s second largest economy, an amazing development not only because of its speed but also because of the longevity of the Chinese civilization.

Although the Chinese civilization is highly modernized and has learned from the advanced cultures of the Western civilization in its process of development, the difference is that China has a unique and long history. Continuity of history, philosophy and code of conduct, which is centered on the Confucian tradition and historically integrated with Taoism and Buddhism, pervades contemporary Chinese politics. As the British scholar Martin Jacques said, unlike other developing countries, China’s political system has not been Westernized. One has to know the real China in order to build a benign, peaceful and visionary partnership. That is the minimum requirement. In China’s vision, mutual understanding and respect should be a prerequisite for global governance and global governance should promote peaceful relations, which require commitment and dialogue.

Understanding China’s Peaceful Development

There are three main reasons for China’s peaceful development.

First, peace has always been the mainstream of China’s historical development. Intellectuals like American historian John King Fairbank and Italian economist Giovanni Arrighi emphasized that China had five centuries of peace from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, barring a few exceptions, but Europe had only about a century of sustained peace, from 1815 to 1914. In general, China was not an expansionist nation since ancient times, nor has it promoted an arms race like the West.

Second, peace and peaceful development are an important feature and vision of socialism and a prerequisite for national liberation and development. In modern history, China has been an important force against imperialism and a supporter of the non-aligned movement in the developing world.

Third, peace is the basic principle of contemporary Chinese diplomatic culture. Since 1954, China’s diplomacy has been guided by the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, namely mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

The Belt and Road Initiative: A Modern Example of China’s Peaceful Development

China proposed the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, which aims to build peaceful relations through exchange, dialogue and mutual understanding. Besides fostering commercial and financial interdependence, it is also a platform to promote political coordination, people-to-people exchanges and mutual understanding among countries. It was proposed to address inter-regional connectivity issues and covers the whole world. The history of exchanges and cooperation along the ancient Silk Road provides an important cultural foundation for the creation of this initiative.

The Belt and Road prioritizes the real economy, people’s livelihood over narrow interests and cooperation over competition. It replaces the bloc alliance with partnerships, where there is no political discrimination between countries. It also replaces confrontation with inclusiveness and requires no military alliances or investments. It is another example of China’s peaceful development. The West has never had a similar program in history, not even in its heyday.

Expansion of capitalism, through commercial, financial or geopolitical competition, seizes and destroys the assets of rivals, increases inter-state confrontation and creates space for “endless accumulation.” In the over-expansion, some of the overseas economic capital is actually acquired through financial or military operations where there is no fair competition, and the conditions are conducive to political corruption, so benefits are extracted at a very low price. This is the U.S. model.

China’s approach, by contrast, is not military expansion or the creation of a suffocating credit system. Instead, it establishes sustainable loan limits with its partners on the basis of negotiations, without any political strings attached like interference in internal affairs, and supports multilateralism and peaceful coexistence. This is globalization with Chinese characteristics.

From Neoliberal Globalization to Globalization with Chinese Characteristics

The new systemic crisis triggered by COVID-19 has also exposed the structural flaws in the Western system that accumulated over the past few decades, errors and weaknesses related to the political and economic model of neoliberal globalization. Disinformation, social divisions, underestimation and politicization of the pandemic by Western governments are a few examples.

Neoliberal globalization can be linked to the process of “counter-revolution to the Keynesian revolution” that began in the late 1970s when Western countries were suffering from stagflation and Keynesianism featuring government intervention failed. Over the decades, countries have become more interconnected but socio-economic inequality and other factors of instability have intensified. Examples of this are the systemic financial and economic crises in the 1980s, 1990s and the first 10 years of twenty-first century, the false “war on terror” in the name “humanitarian war” (in actuality it supported regional terrorism for strategic purposes), and regime change.

Today, the nature of neoliberal globalization is becoming clearer. With diminishing state intervention in the economy (promoting the deregulation of the market) and the government becoming the voice of business groups and their special interests, Western neoliberalism has revealed deep structural flaws that stand out when compared with the Chinese vision of a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind.

As I have said earlier, the history of neoliberal globalization, marked by systemic crises and “humanitarian wars,” has produced the most evil and destructive results since the 1990s.

On the other hand, China has accelerated the construction of infrastructure such as ports, railways, industry, digitalization and aviation, and strengthened international cooperation and research on global issues such as healthcare. The Belt and Road and China’s international influence continue to expand.

The Western model is aggressive and destructive. China’s peaceful development model is an alternative. Therefore, the United States and its allies have begun to disseminate “the China threat” theory to hinder China’s development. Their objective is to recreate and replicate the unipolar world system through joint military, financial, social and media actions, which is tantamount to playing with fire and losing their remaining credibility. While the West is subjecting itself and the world to constant turmoil and chaos, China is bridging the gap between nations in a constructive, reasonable and effective way for the benefit of all, not only for a few.