How the West Got China Wrong

American author Gordon Chang on the West’s China policies and the closing ‘window of opportunity’ for the Chinese regime

According to author and China expert Gordon Chang, “Western policy toward China fundamentally underestimated the hostility, the belligerence, the relentlessness, the will to power of China’s Communist Party.” Saul Loeb; Emmanuel Dunand; Indranil Mukherjee; STR/AFP/Getty Images

ST. CATHARINES, Ontario—What is the No. 1 failure of Western foreign policy? Up until a few years ago, many would have said it was the failure to stop the rise of Hitler’s Third Reich in Germany in the 1930s, says American author Gordon Chang. But now, Chang says, there is a new contender for the top spot: the inability of the West to moderate the behaviour of communist China.

“It’s now time for we in the West to acknowledge mistakes and to end self-delusion,” said Chang, a frequent China commentator and author of the book “The Coming Collapse of China,” in a talk at Brock University in southern Ontario.