Why the West Fails to Cope With China's Rise | Dr. David Morris

## A changing balance and the costs of old narratives The global order is shifting from a Western-dominated system to a genuinely multipolar one, and that transition exposes the limits of how many Western states currently think about world politics. The conversation with Dr. David Morris foregrounds this shift not as an abstract strategic risk but as a lived economic and social reality: hundreds of millions — indeed billions — of people across Asia, Africa and parts of Latin America have raised their living standards over recent decades. That is a substantive gain for global justice and material well-being. The central policy problem is not simply whether China is “rising” but how Western liberal democracies interpret and respond to that rise. Persisting with Cold War-style threat narratives and zero-sum assumptions risks mismanaging a complex transformation that, on balance, could be governed through better institutions, clearer risk management, and a willingness to revise long-standing frames of reference. ## Seeing China from multiple vantage points A recurring insight in the exchange is that many Western analyses begin from an assumption of threat — an orientation that treats China’s growth first as a security challenge and then as an economic one. Dr. David Morris pushes back on that template by insisting on plural perspectives. He draws on long experience in Asia and a body of field research — including extensive interviews across Belt and Road countries — to argue that China’s trajectory must be read against the backdrop of globalization, economic integration, and internal reform. From the Chinese point of view, the post-1980s era of trade liberalization was an opportunity successfully seized. Integration into global supply chains and institutions like the WTO was a pragmatic path to development. This does not mean China is a liberal-democratic mirror of Western states. Yet treating its model as a monolithic security threat flattens both Chinese intentions and the responses of other regional actors. For many Asian states, multipolarity is not inherently menacing; it is an opportunity for coexistence, hedging and diversified relationships. The analytical task, then, is to understand how concepts like “core interests,” “non-intervention,” and “mutual respect” are operationalized in Beijing — and how they differ in practice from Western interventionist traditions. Doing so helps distinguish between predictable great-power behaviour and genuinely destabilizing practices that warrant collective countermeasures. ## The Belt and Road as a diagnostic case The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) frequently surfaces as a litmus test of China's external engagement. In the conversation, the BRI functions less as a conspiracy and more as an empirical arena where the competing narratives collide: Western skepticism versus Chinese claims of win-win infrastructure cooperation. Studying the BRI across Central and Southeast Asia reveals heterogeneous outcomes. Some recipient states have benefited from improved transport, energy and connectivity; others face debt sustainability questions and governance shortfalls. Importantly, diagnosing those mixed outcomes requires moving beyond binary judgments about benevolence or malign intent. Dr. Morris’s fieldwork suggests the right policy response is not blanket containment or unconditional embrace, but calibrated engagement that acknowledges both the material benefits and the strategic dimensions of large-scale Chinese projects. That means upgrading standards for project transparency, debt management and local capacity building — measures that global institutions and recipient countries can promote together. At the same time, Western actors should reflect on their own historical record: their influence in many regions also carried strings and created dependencies. Honest comparative analysis would improve policy design and credibility. ## Multipolarity, risk management, and institutions If the 21st century is becoming multipolar, the pressing task is risk management rather than ideological victory. The conversation repeatedly returns to the concept of structured, institutional risk mitigation. Multilateral institutions and rules over the last seven decades — for all their flaws — provide mechanisms for managing cross-border trade, finance, and security frictions. Yet their effectiveness depends on buy-in from major powers. One of the paradoxes highlighted by Dr. Morris is that China, which benefited enormously from the post-war system, presents itself as committed to multilateralism while simultaneously seeking a larger role and reforms that reflect its status. Meanwhile, parts of the United States have displayed retrenchment from institutional leadership at precisely the moment a rising power wants to be more engaged. This institutional tension is consequential. The breakdown of adjudicatory mechanisms, such as the appellate function of trade dispute bodies, has real operational effects: if parties cannot rely on neutral institutions to settle disputes, they are more likely to use power politics instead. The result is a dangerous feedback loop in which mistrust, unilateralism, and fragmentation increase the probability of escalation. The corrective, according to the conversation, is renewed emphasis on building durable, inclusive institutions that can accommodate a more diverse set of major powers — not by granting carte blanche dominance to any single state, but by re-legitimating neutral procedures that adjudicate disagreements and manage interdependence. ## Great-power competition and the limits of hard power Underlying many policy debates is an assumption that great powers will inevitably try to coerce others. The conversation acknowledges that China — like any great power — will defend core strategic interests and may use economic leverage when it suits national objectives. Equally, great-power behaviour is often suffused with double standards: declared principles can diverge from practice. That is why a careful empirical record is crucial. Dr. Morris notes that many Western countries only fully woke up to the implications of China’s rise after visible moments such as the global financial crisis and major diplomatic events. By contrast, countries in the Asia–Pacific had been living with China’s growing economic footprint for decades and thus developed more nuanced hedging strategies. Hard-power posturing — naval buildups, alliances and public rivalry — receives disproportionate attention relative to the mundane but potent levers of trade policy, standards-setting, and institutional design. If the United States wants to preserve global influence, it cannot rely solely on military alliances or rhetorical leadership; it must invest in rules, dispute-resolution mechanisms and public goods that underpin economic interdependence. Failure to do so hands China an opportunity to present itself as a provider of alternative governance arrangements, with all the attendant benefits and risks. ## Middle powers, non-aligned states, and the art of balancing One of the conversation’s most important practical themes is the role of middle and non-aligned states in a multipolar order. Countries that historically sought to avoid entanglement — so-called neutral or non-aligned states — are now facing pressure to pick sides. But Dr. Morris’s observations from the Pacific, Southeast Asia and Central Asia suggest that many of these countries prefer diversified engagement. Rather than being passive victims of great-power competition, they are active choosers of multiple partners, using economic opportunities to bolster resilience and bargaining power. Western strategies that presume to “manage” China by coercing smaller states or by offering truncated economic deals are unlikely to succeed. Effective policy should respect these countries’ agency, offer credible alternatives that are competitive on commercial and governance te

Why the West Fails to Cope With China's Rise | Dr. David Morris David Morris is CEO of the Australia China Business Council (Tasmania) and director of several companies and NGOs promoting trade, investment and inter-cultural understanding. He is also a Senior Research Fellow with Beijing Foreign Studies University. Previously, he was working as a diplomat, among other postings, he served in Beijing, representing the international organisation of Oceania. Today we are discussing David‘s recently published interesting book with the title “A New Era of Risk: Why We Need a New, Sustainable Internationalism to Manage the Rise of China.” Links: David's X account: https://x.com/dm_1earth 1EarthVillagers website: http://1earthvillage.org/ #M3 This multipolar world is coming. These countries are rising. Their living standards are rising. Hundreds of millions, actually billions, of people are living better today in those countries than ever before. So this is a good thing. This is a very good thing that the world is not as unequal as it was in the past. So how do we, in the Western countries that always benefited from the previous system, deal with a more diverse world, with a more multipolar world? There's no easy answer to this, but this is why I'm suggesting that we do need to rethink the narratives around international relations, because they've all been written in Washington, London, Brussels, and other places like Canberra— places in the West where we've had our particular view of the world. #M2 Hello everybody, this is Pascal from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm talking to Dr. David Morris. David is the CEO of the Australia China Business Council in Tasmania and the director of several companies and NGOs promoting trade, investment, and intercultural understanding. He's also a senior research fellow with the Beijing Foreign Studies University, and previously he worked as a diplomat. Among other postings, he served in Beijing representing the International Organization of Oceania. David recently published an interesting book titled A New Era of Risk: Why We Need a New Sustainable Internationalism to Manage the Rise of China. This is what we want to discuss today, so David, welcome. Hello, Pascal. #M3 Great to be here. #M2 -- 1 of 17 -- Great to have you and your book that came out recently, as I understand. It's kind of an evolution of your PhD dissertation, right? #M3 Yes, indeed. I've just received the hard copy, actually. So there it is. Wonderful. Yes. #M2 Yes. #M3 It's based on the research that I did for my PhD dissertation, which involved traveling across the Belt and Road around the world, visiting places in Central Asia and Southeast Asia, and, of course, spending time in China as well. I conducted more than 100 interviews with decision-makers and leaders, so hopefully, it brings some fresh information. #M2 So who was your main target with the research? Were you trying to research how the West approaches China's rise? Or were you trying to approach how China manages its own rise and its perceptions by the West? #M3 Well, this is a very good question. And it's the question everyone asks, because we assume that each author comes to a topic with their own bias and wants to present a particular view. And of course, I recognize that I come with my own biases as well. But I genuinely tried to understand a diversity of views. Being a citizen of the Asia-Pacific, I'm very much aware that Asia itself is such a diverse part of the world, and there are so many different perspectives. And so I wanted to bring, even though I was based in Europe for some of the time that I was writing this, a diversity of views to Western audiences, but also to audiences elsewhere. I wanted to try and understand: How does China see things? How do Western countries, and how do other countries in the middle, neutral, non-aligned countries, see their interactions with a rising China? So that's what I've tried to do in this book. Of course, I come from Australia. I no doubt came with some of my own biases, but it's a genuine attempt to understand complexity and diversity. #M2 And it shows in the book. I mean, you're not starting from a point where a lot of Western analysis begins, which is the "China threat" and managing China in the sense of how do we make sure that -- 2 of 17 -- China remains as constrained as possible. You're actually starting with what is this Chinese approach that they're trying. And you also focus a lot on the Belt and Road Initiative. Can you give us maybe your analysis of how you view China's rise, maybe more from a Chinese perspective or a Pacific perspective than from the West? #M3 Yeah, well, I think I could even start talking about it from an Australian perspective, if you like, because I was a diplomat with the Australian government in the 1980s and 90s, when Australia was very enthusiastically engaging, not just with China, but of course, with all of the key economies of East Asia in particular. And Australia was very busy building architecture, building regional cooperation. So building APEC, for example, which was an Australian initiative, and free trade agreements and other architecture that could help build an internationalism in the region, a sense of a regional identity, and habits of dialogue and cooperation. And so that was very much the philosophy of those post-Cold War days. And so as a young Australian diplomat, I was very much influenced by that thinking. And so our engagement in those days with China as a rapidly growing economy was a very positive one for Australia. Australia had a huge benefit from its trade with China. It grew over time to become what it is today, a $300 billion bilateral trade, a huge trade surplus in Australia's favor. Many Australians are very prosperous as a result of Australia's interactions, its economic integration, in a sense, with the rise of China, just as previously Australia had benefited enormously from the rise of Japan in the post-war era and had also economically integrated with Japan. So, for Australians, the story of China was a pretty positive one. Additionally, there's been a very positive experience of Chinese migration to Australia, with one and a half million Australians of Chinese ancestry, and that has been a very successful experience. So it wasn't until 2017, really, when everything changed. I was sitting in Beijing as a diplomat, but not working for my home country at that time. I was working for the Pacific Island countries of Oceania for the regional organization called the Pacific Islands Forum. I observed, sitting there in Beijing, how the world just changed with the election of Donald Trump, with the rise of geopolitical competition between the United States and China, and the impact that had on countries that were aligned with the United States, like Australia. So Australia was kind of stuck in the middle of that. Australia was very deeply economically integrated with China, but of course, as an ally of the United States and a very loyal ally of the United States, Australia has turned up to every battle that the United States has been in since 1917. So Australia considers itself to be deeply strategically integrated with the United States. And so in 2017, when Donald Trump declared China a strategic competitor and when the narrative in the West as a whole turned into this China threat narrative, that China was a threat to the West, this had a huge impact in Australia as it did elsewhere. And so -- 3 of 17 -- my thinking here, my approach to this was to try and step back from that, to try and not take a side or make assumptions that something suddenly was a threat that a year earlier had been seen as a massive opportunity. I was trying to dig deeper into why that might have happened. And so, of course, I studied, like many others have studied, the geopolitical competition that was emerging there between the US and China, but also trying to understand how China sees things. And I think China has benefited, like Australia, enormously from rising in that post-Cold War era, an era of trade liberalization, an era when the countries it was trading with were lowering barriers, unlike what we're seeing in the United States today. It was a period when China was able to integrate itself into global supply chains exactly as Japan had done, as South Korea had done, and the other great Asian economic development success stories. China was able to do that on an even larger scale. Now, we know that, of course, China is a different political system. It is not anything like a Western liberal democracy. But some of those East Asian countries don't necessarily resemble Western liberal democracies either. So I wanted to dig into how the Chinese see the development story. How do they see their integration? I did lots of interviews and lots of research trying to understand that. I think it's difficult to make broad-brush generalizations about China because it is relatively opaque to outside observers. Nevertheless, I think a broad generalization would be that China has seen the benefits of globalization and has benefited from globalization. And so it's actually relatively committed, arguably more committed than the United States, for example, which is clearly under Donald Trump stepping away from globalization and from the rules- based order that underpins that. China, on the other hand, sees many benefits. Now, that doesn't mean that China doesn't want to change the world order; of course, it does. China does not welcome a Western-dominated world order, a world order in which it has a secondary place. China clearly wants to be at the top table. It wants to be a leader. It argues that it seeks a multipolar world. And so I've tried in my research to understand how Chinese people see that. How do people across Asia see this question of multipolarity, which frightens people in the West? The European experience of multipolarity was disastrous, but the Asian experience of multipolarity historically has not been nearly as dangerous. Asians often look at multipolarity as offering the potential for mutual coexistence, for a diversity of powers to coexist. Of course, there's a lot of risk in that situation. If we're moving into a situation of multipolarity, it raises a large number of risks. And so my conclusion is we need serious risk management instead of the overblown geopolitical threat scenarios, with China saying the West is the threat and the West saying China is the threat. I think actually what we need is some serious risk management. #M2 I completely agree with the need for structures that help us manage risk. The problem that I see is that there are a couple of forces on all sides that would rather go to, I mean, they usually say -- 4 of 17 -- competition, but what they mean is just go head-on, right? And actually use the tools of power available. And I see approaches like this in both, I mean, clearly in the United States, but also in China, if you look at how China approaches smaller neighbors, especially the one that still baffles me and that I don't understand. And seriously, to all my Chinese friends, somebody needs to explain to me the approach to the Philippines, because the Philippines would be so easy to woo over. It would be so easy to have them as a friend, but I just don't get that one. But you also looked at the connections with these smaller states. How do you explain this from both sides, the US on the one hand and China on the other, that everybody seems to expect a clash in the Pacific? I mean, if you look at the military configuration, okay, that's one thing, but it extends into the economic realm, doesn't it? #M3 Yeah, it's a question of, firstly, the principles that underpin the approach, but then, of course, a healthy understanding, a healthy skepticism about how big powers operate. Because, of course, big powers can have a set of principles, but they can also implement them in an inconsistent