Chinese official picks up ‘clash of civilisations’ theme in lecture to visiting US scholars
- Analysts from a Washington think tank say their recent reception in Beijing had a marked chill, reflecting the countries’ deteriorating relationship
- ‘Some of it was a bit extreme,’ the group’s president said of comments by their host, a Politburo member
An unofficial measure of the increasingly strained US-China relationship as the two giants battle it out over everything from trade and technology to visas and national security is atmospherics. And not surprisingly, on this decidedly unscientific “index”, things appear to be deteriorating quickly.
Scholars with the Peterson Institute for International Economics think tank in Washington, just back from China, said on Tuesday that their official reception at China’s Zhongnanhai leadership compound was markedly less hospitable than in years past.
“We got a 50-minute non-stop lecture, pausing only for translation, about this being a clash of civilisations,” said Adam Posen, the group’s president, who declined to say which member of the Politburo they met with. “And some of it was a bit extreme.”
Peterson Institute scholars said this lecture by their Chinese host focused on how the US was a “Mediterranean culture” based around belligerence and internal division, which explains why it has such an oppressive foreign policy. “Taking it at face value that someone wanted to spend an hour with us, and wanted to deliver a message, it was very interesting that that was the message,” he added.
The references follow competing visions of civilisation by US and Chinese officials in recent weeks. The US State Department’s policy planning director, Kiron Skinner, said on April 29 that rivalry with Beijing was “a fight with a really different civilisation and a different ideology”, and “the first time that we will have a great power competitor that is not Caucasian”. Her comments were sharply criticised by Chinese officials and China’s online community, as well as many in the US.
