Photo taken on Jan. 12, 2019 shows the White House and a stop sign in Washington DC, the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
Today, the West is exporting its system in the same logic: some still believe they know best about the interests of the lands and peoples they once exploited, despite the fact that such forced system transplantation has usually not resulted in nothing but a continuation. of the tragedy.
by Xin Ping
BEIJING, Aug. 13 (Xinhua) — For centuries, the honest West has been obsessed with transplanting its culture and systems to other countries, causing untold death and suffering in lands it considered “uncivilized”. ” or “underdeveloped”. “
Colonialism is one such case. According to incomplete statistics, during the colonial period, the West took the lives of tens of millions of indigenous people in Africa, Asia and Latin America and enslaved 12 million Africans.
Today, the West is exporting its system in the same logic: some still believe they know best about the interests of the lands and peoples they once exploited, despite the fact that such forced system transplantation has usually not resulted in nothing but a continuation. of the tragedy.
Protesters take part in a demonstration outside the US Embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe, in October. 25, 2021. (Xinhua/Tafara Mugwara)
HLMUR APPLE
One of the most obvious failures is the transplantation of the Western democratic system.
Neither competitive elections nor multiparty systems have led to fair and efficient governance in developing countries. On the one hand, frequent election campaigns make politicians cater to their voters with unreasonable campaign promises, especially in countries with high poverty rates.
On the other hand, inconsistent policies for short-term gains, the inevitable by-products of frequent changes of government, prove fatal in countries that are in dire need of long-term development projects to achieve growth and modernization.
Another fatal danger is that the Western system is more prone to party rivalry than consensus. When competing political parties have to swallow their rivals’ electoral victory, they tend to work against rather than with the government, if not by attempting a coup.
In fact, coups have occurred more than 200 times on the African continent between 1950 and 2021, making disorder the norm. Widespread civil and religious wars, regional conflicts, economic and demographic declines, and the rise of terrorism have turned the so-called “Arab Spring” into an “Arab Winter.”
Several countries in Latin America continue to experience violent protests and political crises under so-called Western democracy.
Photo taken on March 17, 2020 shows US dollar bills in Washington DC, the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
THE TROJAN HORSE
In addition to Western-style democracy, financial support is often used as a key venue for exporting Western values and systems.
Western-dominated multilateral financial organizations have offered loans on the strict condition of introducing radical neoliberal economic reforms based on the Washington Consensus, a drastic economic strategy described by some economists as shock therapy.
For developing countries, without strong and competitive domestic industries, the so-called free market is only a one-way street: products from the West quickly flood in to further weaken local businesses.
As a consequence, Western countries deprive low-income countries of the opportunity to boost growth, create jobs or generate tax revenue, making debt repayments based on sustainable development a goal beyond their reach. . Look no further than a few Latin American countries. Economic growth halved in the 1990s after the initiation of reforms based on the Washington Consensus.
Economic failure enables the West to tighten its grip on developing countries. In Eastern Europe, state-owned giants without access to Western markets quickly went bankrupt after privatization, most of which were later bought by Western multinationals.
A man walks in front of the White House in Washington, DC, United States, on February 15, 2022. (Photo by Aaron Schwartz/Xinhua)
THE BOX OF DISCOURSES
In many cases, Western models of social governance are described by Western elites and media as the last straw for developing countries mired in crisis.
The “Let them eat Tweet” style of governance and unregulated social media have paved the way for the spread of populism where emotion can triumph over reason. Political participation is plagued by misinformation, resentment and a senseless war of words. Street demonstrations, far from being a symbol of freedom, have been used by political parties to overthrow their opponents. Angry voters, having voted against the current government, have their appeals ignored only by the other.
In Arab countries where the West successfully fomented anti-government protests and violence through Western-dominated NGOs (non-governmental organizations), the media and the Internet, people live either in economic stagnation or in constant chaos.
If a developing economy has been lucky enough to overcome the above traps, there is still another challenge that can destroy all their efforts: the Discourse Trap.
By setting the agenda and dominating the discourse, the West spreads concepts that are harmful to developing countries at their level of development. Discourse dominance is also used to stigmatize countries that the West considers potential adversaries. Labels such as “Tacitus trap”, “failed state” and “pariah state” can bring misery to a developing country for decades.
The fanaticism of the West to force the transplant of the system on developing countries is attributed to its outdated thinking. It does not care about the welfare of the developing world, but about maintaining its dominant position globally. As for the developing countries, the transplantation of the Western system has only proved a recipe for disaster and a scourge of misery. I wander
(The author is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for CGTN, Global Times, etc. He can be contacted at [email protected].)■
