Memo to Mélanie Joly from the John Robson Realpolitik Agency re improving relations with China.
Dear Ms. Joly,
It’s keen being foreign minister of a G7 nation, isn’t it? But also a lot of bother, with so many ways to look silly by shaking hands with murderous tyrants nobody warned you about. And now the communist regime in China says they want to be friends again, but aren’t they sort of meanies? To help you navigate this confusing file, where being chirpily well-meaning doesn’t seem to cut it, we offer a few pointers.
First, yes, it’s the same China that’s been meddling in our elections and for some reason the public is a bit sensitive about wilful blindness here.
Second, as a committed multiculturalist you may not know they do things differently in other places. Here, government consists of goofily spending endless amounts of money on anything that seems cool and more will magically appear, you can ignore yucky stuff like defence, and nothing seems to have real consequences. But in Beijing they have a less, uh, relaxed view of the world.
Third, in case you haven’t actually read “Xi Jinping Thought” just because the foreign minster of a G7 country should know how the head of the world’s most powerful and aggressive tyranny thinks, in theory as a Marxist he should regard feudal ideology as a latticework of deceptive repression. Instead he openly insists that China has always been way better than anyone else and, despite an inexplicable drop in its influence about 250 years ago, it naturally rules the world. To the current communist leaders, good relations necessarily involve you kowtowing.
Sixth, therefore, when they say they want good relations they don’t mean in the vague “kumbaya” way you and your colleagues do, except when the PM goes into one of his snarling fits. They need you to be terrified of them.
Eighth, you must not do so. Appeasement does not work. (Get an aide to brief you on “Adolf Hitler” and “the 1930s.”) The reasons for “strained relations” are the Chinese regime’s meddling in our elections, kidnapping our citizens, building a huge army, navy, and nuclear force to achieve their explicit goal of ruling the world by 2050, and a nasty outbreak of “wolf warrior” diplomacy a few years back when they decided they were so strong they could talk to foreigners in the ferocious manner they use with one another.
Ms. Joly, you are indeed in a tough spot. You could turn the task over to someone who seems more naturally suited to it, although frankly among your cabinet colleagues no names spring to mind. Or you could stand firmly in defence of Western values while rearming your country.
Hard work? Definitely. But after all you are the foreign minister of a G7 country and nobody said the job would be easy. Or if they did they were goofy. Make sure you aren’t too. This stuff is real.