Bilo je le vprašanje časa, kdaj se bo to zgodilo. Vprašanje pa je, ali bo po koncu evropske medijske protikitajske histerije temu preobratu smela slediti tudi evroposka politika, ki je pod popolnim ameriškim nadzorom. Upal bi si staviti, da še kar nekaj časa ne bo smela. Dokler EU ne bo gospodarsko, tehnološko in politično suverena, bo samo ekspozitura ameriških interesov v Evropi in svetu.

This is extraordinarily rare.

In fact, according to a key figure in the German business community (who is a dear friend of mine), it’s unprecedented.

An op-ed, two pages, centerpiece, in Germany’s most important economic newspaper (the Handelsblatt) that begs the German establishment to stop looking at China via the prism of propaganda. And it’s by their Shanghai bureau chief – not some outside contributor.

The title is “The China debate cannot continue like this!” and the article makes the case that it’s suicidal, from a German and European standpoint, to keep reducing China to false caricatures rather than facts.

In effect it’s rubbish in, rubbish out: if you tell people lies about China – whichever direction they go (anti or pro) – then obviously the policies that come out will be rubbish, designed for a mirage of a country that exists only in people’s imagination.

Needless to say, this is absolutely music to my ears because it’s literally the main point I’ve been making in my advocacy around China for now almost 10 years. Some are finally seeing the light…

I also believe, as I argued in my article “Are Western media turning China-friendly?” last year (https://arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/are-western-media-turning-china-friendly) that this type of coverage was bound to happen, and there will be more and more of it.

Why? For a very simple structural reason: China is now too powerful to coerce. The West, and Europe in particular, just don’t have the leverage anymore. Which means that if you tell China to do something and they don’t want to, they just won’t do it. Period.

In this situation, incapable of coercing, your only remaining choice is… convincing. And what do you need if you want to convince someone? Well, you need to understand them: understand how they think, how they behave, what drives them, what they actually want.

In other words: the moment coercion stops being an option, not only does propaganda stop being useful, it begins to be actively harmful as genuine understand becomes a strategic necessity. Reality is finally becoming profitable again.

Which means, if you’re a journalist reading this and you’re peddling some of your usual lies, describing China as some sort of cartoonish dictatorial dystopia that’s simultaneously on the verge of collapse yet a “threat” to the whole world (in short, if you write on China for The Economist or the FT), be on notice: the real threat to your country isn’t China. It’s you.