For more than two decades, the loyal readers and listeners of Pierre-Antoine DONNET, recognised over the years as one of the great experts on the Chinese world of China and the Asian world, have been eagerly awaiting their annual rendezvous annual appointment with the new publication by their favourite author.
And each time, their patience is rewarded with the publication of the new “AP Donnet” of the year, an illuminating work that sheds light on global geopolitics and the Chinese world, each time with a new point of view. The author’s biography is impressive, marked by an immense culture enriched by the perspective of the journalist (former editor-in-chief of AFP and currently of Asia magazine), who is committed to covering both the ins and outs of Chinese politics, as well as the geopolitical data of the visible or covert relations it maintains with its allies and global competitors.
This new publication sounds like a warning signal for all democracies that are asleep and withered by too much arrogance and naivety: “a danger that is both deadly and imminent for Europe and its industry in the face of the Chinese war machine.”
As his illustrious predecessor Alain Peyrefitte* had already largely anticipated, China has not only awakened, but has unleashed a veritable economic and technological tsunami, and technological tsunami, making it “the world’s leading economic and commercial giant ahead of the United States, a true factory of the world and soon its laboratory”. Also, the central thesis that the author maintains remains that the real long-term threat to the West is not Russia, ” admittedly an inconvenient partner”, but China.
In his six brilliantly documented chapters, Pierre Antoine Donnet illustrates his conviction by analysing the causes and consequences of the Chinese strategy, including a feeling of humiliation (the West did not taken it seriously), leading to a desire for revenge, the dream of a “peaceful” awakening fuelled by the blindness of our elites, the structural distrust of the “regime” towards the democratic model that it constantly discredits in order to sow chaos, the obsession with the stability of the “one-party” system, leading to absolute control of information (700 million surveillance cameras) …. The fascination with gigantism and the adventure of excess…
In this geopolitical game of Go, China can count on the de facto vassalisation of Russia and the blindness of the American president, president, “the laughing stock”, weighed down by his intemperance and his disproportionate ego.
This threat most often advances quietly, quietly, in the logic of influence and domination where it excels, but Xi Jinping’s global objectives and ambitions clearly remain become the world’s leading power: it is moving towards its goal patiently, with an undervalued currency, while attacking European and Western industry head-on and unfairly, European and Western industry, by rearming intensively, and by preparing for a long-term conflict, including the conquest by blockade of Taiwan and the taking of control of the Pacific.
Faced with these disturbing and painful realities, the question of the end of the game arises for the West. Has it already lost? The point of no return is near… but the author wants to believe that there is still time to find a “balance” in the ongoing competition; this last resort requires cooperation between all democracies, European and Asian, to build together strategic convergences by sharing their common values and with a view of China that is “free of our naivety”.
Pierre-Antoine DONNET is a former central editor-in-chief of Agence France-Presse, editor-in-chief editor-in-chief of ASIA magazine. A recognised expert on the Chinese world, author of an impressive collection of reference works (including Le choc Europe-Asie in
1998, Chine le grand prédateur in 2021) and winner of numerous awards, including the
Grand Prix Turgot for Chief Financial Officers in 2021.
Jean Louis CHAMBON
*Alain Peyrefitte, Quand la Chine s’éveillera .. le monde tremblera, Fayard,1973.