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Welcome back to DC Diary, our vlog. I hosted a think-tank discussion this week with the number two at Nato and the number two at US State Department. The topic was in large part how Western democracies have handled foreign policy in the age of coronavirus, and what struck me about some polling data I came across was, at least, one answer, which was not very well.
The data, which looked at public opinion in America, France, and Germany, showed China's perceived global influence has spiked in past months. That's since coronavirus has spread around the world in a pandemic that's infected more than 10 million people, killing more than 500,000 people, and destroying economies and employment across the world. It's changed life as we know it, and it started in China. And I'm talking to you from lockdown now.
In fact, it shows China has pretty much doubled its global influence between January and May. It's now seen in an overwhelmingly more negative light, according to that data, and that's a conclusion that is backed up by other polling that's also out this week. But nevertheless, more and more people look to China as the top global power in the world.
This comes in a week where Beijing is looking ever more assertive. Hong Kong still has 27 years on the clock left to run on a colonial era agreement, part of a deal that stipulated when the time came in 1997 for Britain to hand Hong Kong back to China that it would exist under semi-independence under a system known as one country, two systems. No more.
Hong Kong is now subject as of this week to the same national security law that the rest of the mainland functions under, and the US has already withdrawn its special trading status. Pro-democracy groups have already disbanded, businesses jittery, and the future of a financial hub is at stake. The Trump administration claims China is forcing countries all around the world to choose which side they're on, but the Trump administration is also piling on the pressure themselves. Economic sanctions are piling up. Countries in the European Union, outside it in Nato, India, the African union, they're all having to calculate their interests amid a competition that is operating in the absence of any unifying arms-controlled agreement. This one will run and run.
