Why Japan’s rise was praised while China’s is being demonized?

Crescent International

Rabi' al-Thani 29, 1442 2020-12-14

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

Muslim analysts have rightly asked why Japan and South Korea’s rapid economic growth was never framed in the same negative manner as China’s economic development is today.

According to Professor Peter Frost “Japan’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased by a rather amazingly large average of 9.2% between 1956 and 1973, and even after the world recession caused by the rise in oil prices in the 1970s, still grew by an average 4.1% up through 1989. Helped by record outputs of such manufactured goods as ships, electronic equipment and cars, the ‘economic miracle’ quickly transformed this small island nation into one of the world’s top economic giants.”

During the Second World War, Japan fought against the US from 1941 to 1945.

Thus, the US and its surrogates should naturally have been worried about Japan’s rise.

Elementary research of media headlines of the 1980s reveals that Japan’s economic growth was marketed positively and no one was ringing conspiratorial alarm bells about the rising Japan and its threat to the Western world.

Why?

Prior to responding to this question, we want to make clear that we do not necessarily endorse China’s economic, political and social model.

Beijing’s capitalism camouflaged as communism has serious philosophical flaws and contradictions with an Islamic worldview, but this is not the question being analyzed here.

This analysis aims to explain the foundational basis behind the anti-China rants in the West and its corporate media today.

Returning to the China-Japan comparison, it is important to remember that Japan was defeated by the US in World War II.

Since 1945, it has remained under Washington’s political and military domination.

It is within the US sphere of influence.

China on the other hand is outside of the Western political domination.

NATO regimes assumed that by inviting China into the capitalist economic framework and detaching it from allying with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Beijing would sooner or later fall under Western political domination.

This did not happen, and China utilized Western know-how and investments to rebuild itself economically, but without allowing NATO regimes to dictate their political policies.

It is not by accident that the leadership of the Islamic Revolution in Iran has since day one branded Western regimes as global arrogance.

Alarmist and negative framing of China’s economic rise is rooted in the fact that Western regimes do not accept progress and development which takes place outside of their domination.

If Beijing were under Western political dominance, China’s rise would be applauded as a positive development.

This practical reality should be a sober reminder to Muslim leaders and rulers that no positive Muslim contribution to the world will be accepted by NATO regimes unless they accept Western domination.