Talk politics.

After the Covid-19 crisis is overcome (which it will be, sooner or later), what we'll be left with is going to be a different world. It seems this post-covid world will be less global and more regional than some people might've liked. This will be partly because more oxygen and more space will be used by China by that time, through the so called Beijing Consensus model.

Without having the pretense to be too exhaustive about this, let's say a few words about this Beijing Consensus. Well, there are two main vectors in that model: foreign and domestic.

The foreign vector, concerning China's economic contacts, will be mostly about their policy of economic growth and expansion. Like it or not, they'll be using the basic principles of capitalism for that purpose, but not necessarily those of the free market. This is determined by the Chinese preference to play on the international markets rather than allowing foreign capitals to play on their domestic market. Ie, fiscal protectionism.

As for the domestic vector, it's about China's economic organisation at home, and that'll continue to be dominated by statism and regulation.

Thus, when observed from the outside, China will seem capitalist. But when observed from the inside, it'll keep looking statist-socialist. But of course the Beijing Consensus is not just about the economic organisation of the great dragon.

Apart from these two economic vectors, this model is also characterised by the fact that economic growth is coupled with a growing regression in the domain of liberties and democracy. In other words, China will keep focusing on its GDP, while freedom and democracy will be viewed as an obstacle to the expansion of its economy. In this sense, both when observed from the inside and outside, China will firmly remain a totalitarian system with an authoritarian syndrome (because of the continuing overeating with power of its leader, Xi Jinping).

In this sense, the Beijing Consensus will be a re-play (although at a higher speed and intensity) of two things that have already contributed to the formation of the Chinese doctrine as we know it, anyway. The first thing is the Open-up strategy, ie opening the economy for the global markets, and that was started in the late 70s by Deng Xiaoping. The second thing is the bloody suffocation of civil rights and political reform (late 80s, Tiananmen Square, etc). What I'm saying is, the Beijing Consensus is a re-make of the Tiananmen approach, only now on steroids.

For the first time in centuries, the post-covid world will provide China with an opportunity to promote its own model of state organisation overseas, and present it as an alternative to the existing models. And this time China won't be content with playing second violin in the socialist camp, as it used to during the Cold War. Now it'll be pushing forward a project of its own, a refreshed sort of socialism, China-style, whose engine won't be so much the explosive industrialisation (as was the Soviet case), but rather the development of hi-tech manufacturing and services.

China's geopolitical bloating, of course, is a major challenge for the US, Australia, Europe, and a number of countries in Asia. Those are countries that have, more or less, adopted the Washington Consensus as their DNA (it mostly boils down to economic liberalisation, of which democratic progress is a useful, yet only secondary by-product).

But when it comes to parrying and containing China, things will get a bit complicated, as the Washington Consensus proves rather narrow because it deals with black-and-white categories (liberal democracy vs dictatorship, free market vs statism, etc). In China's case, there are lots of grey areas they can exploit. And a number of countries will find themselves in those grey areas - even though they're opposed to Chinese influence, they're far from being democratic (from the Philippines to Thailand to Vietnam).

While the world keeps depending on China's supply chain (ie the process of manufacturing, assembly and delivery), addressing China through the West European and North Atlantic language of democracy wouldn't impress anybody in Beijing. Still, it could make some countries in China's periphery to ask themselves some existential questions - but don't expect the answers to be very much to the liking of the US, Australia, or West Europe.

The debate on human rights and liberties is of course important, exactly because China has a criminal history of violently suppressing both human rights away from its core (the Uyghur in the Xingiang-Uyghur autonomous region, the Tibetans in the Tibet autonomous region), and in its very backyard (the Han Chinese in Hong Kong). But that's not the language that'll serve as the basis for a potential anti-China coalition in South-East Asia.

In fact, tackling China should happen differently. When we strip the Beijing Consensus of all the propaganda, we'd realise the long arm of that model has nothing to do with political ideoogy. Rather, it's mostly about pragmatic stuff like technology, and investment.

Let's face it, today's China is not the China of Mao, who was trying to turn his country from agrarian to industrialised. Today, China is focusing more on the tertiary economic sector (the services, from transportation to communication), and that sector is already making up to 50% of their GDP. Forget the peasants labouring in the field planting rice, building socialism and exporting propaganda. Today, China exports its product (and thus, its model), including through instruments such as the Asian Investment Bank for Infrastructure, through massive infrastructure projects and telecommunication services, and through neo-colonialist projects such as the New Silk Road. The China of the 21st century is now calling you from your pocket, looking at you from your laptop, and tomorrow it might be asphalting the street just outside your house.

You might've guessed by now that nothing of this is done as a charity. We've talked about the Economic Hit-Man model many times before. Well, now China is adopting it. Especially now in the Covid-19 crisis, and the subsequent recession, everyone everywhere will be starving for fresh money, and China will keep helpfully lending funds, essentially functioning as a quick-loans company. Even if the interest is too high, that'd still be the more painless option. The other is, upon inability to cover the debt, the Chinese state would be granted a tasty lease on what they've just built for you, for decades to come. Or get a share of the ownership outright. Neat, right? We've seen this game played over and over, only by other players. Now they don't get to complain.

The reality of the 21st century is, no one would be able to beat China in their own game of slogans and propaganda. Xi Jinping enjoys enough public exposition for his message, and unlike the awesomely hilarious British TV series Allo, Allo which I've used for the title of this post, he'll keep reiterating whatever he has to say.

As for the battle for technology and infrastructure networks, which will determine the future hegemons of the world, it's only just beginning. And like I said, it'll be waged inside your pocket and in front of your house.