We’re not dead yet. We’re not yet enslaved either.
Not for lack of trying. Western countries should do everything possible, as consistently as possible, to decouple economically from China, to weaken and block China’s efforts to expand its power over other peoples and nations, and to counter the party-state’s many outright assaults on other peoples and nations, whether these take the form of boat-ramming, cyberattacks, or kidnapping of Chinese nationals on foreign soil.
Instead, Western governments zig and zag and take five steps forward and four steps back.
De-decoupling
The Diplomat, which has published many reasonable analyses, has also just published an article by one Wang Wen announcing “The End of Western Decoupling From China” (January 29, 2026). It seems that if the anticommunists are to be given a hearing within its pages, so must the procommunists.
What is the proof that Western decoupling from China has ended? Exhibit A is the diplomacy of the likes of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. These are not towers of strength.
Starmer’s arrival in Beijing was not merely about pragmatic bilateral cooperation driven by commercial interests. It signified a structural shift in Western policy toward China—and the end of a strategic narrative of containment.
Of course, the rigid demands of economic interests have long rendered the containment strategy a self-inflicted wound…..
The latest consensus in Western business circles is that “decoupling” from China is impossible. Instead, the focus has turned to [how best to] promote trade. This consensus forms the underlying logic for the collapse of the Western blockade….
Starmer’s actions demonstrate a new trend for middle powers to defend their interests through diversified partnerships. The series of visits to China by leaders of U.S. allies since December 2025—including French President Emmanuel Macron, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, and Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo – outlines a collective alienation from the U.S.-dominated alliance order….
The practical needs of global governance are a key reason why the containment strategy has lost its legitimacy. China and the U.K. share similar positions on global issues such as artificial intelligence, climate change, and public health, and cooperation in these areas is precisely the key to ending the containment strategy….
In today’s world, where economic globalization is irreversible and global challenges are increasingly severe, a clear signal is emerging: the Western world is moving away from the illusion of bloc confrontation. A new era centered on pragmatic cooperation and pluralistic coexistence has arrived.
Every paragraph of this article contains disingenuous distortion and layers of fog. Perhaps the reader can help out by writing a paper on “the practical needs of global governance” or how best to end the containment strategy.
One cannot dispute the plain fact of what Starmer, who “agrees with” China on such key issues as global warming, is up to, and what other heads of state are up to. I disagree that their courting of the totalitarian state must represent permanent policy or that the lapses of these politicians mean that sounder policies have lost their legitimacy (legitimacy with whom?). Whoever comes after Starmer and the others may do better.
I also disagree with Wang Wen’s view that a course of steady and judicious appeasement of totalitarian dictatorship is just what the world needs, that such appeasement is not itself a “self-inflicted wound,” and that the Chinese government wants only “cooperation” and “coexistence.”
Perhaps the author could…if I may suggest…look at all the things that the Chinese Communist Party has been doing?
Who is Wang Wen?
Is Wang supremely cynical or just suicidally naïve? Does his article represent an honest assessment or a propaganda job for the Chinese Communist Party?
The Diplomat tells us that he “is professor and dean at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, as well as the dean of the School of Global Leadership, Renmin University of China.”
Wang Wen has also been a contributor to a CCP propaganda outlet, Global Times.
In those pages he has assured the world that Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in 2022 would “accelerate the process of China’s reunification,” that “the stronger China is, the more peaceful and developed the world will be,” that “China’s concept of human rights focuses on results, not theory,” that China is “in the fast lane to realize carbon neutrality,” and many more goodies.
Also see:
The Diplomat: “Hong Kong Must Not Be Forgotten in China-UK Talks”
