– There will be an agreement with China – NRK Urix – Foreign News and Documentaries

– There will be an agreement with China. That this disease was released from China. They should have responded faster. They should have informed the outside world more quickly. The spread could have been different if they had.

Professor Ringen is located at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. A few years ago, he published the book The Perfect Dictatorship over China in the 21st Century.

Tough western speech

He believes that after the pandemic there will be another speech from the West.

– When the dust settles, it will be a very strong speech from the west. Until now, it has been difficult for Western countries to speak plainly to China about the dictatorship and its international aggression, due to China’s economic strength.

Now that balance of power is something different. So it may be easier for the outside world to speak directly and clearly to Chinese leaders, says Ringen.

Boycott and human rights

In the 1980s, Norway and many other countries introduced economic, cultural, and sports boycotts of South Africa. Because the apartheid regime suppressed the black majority in the population and rejected them to participate in free elections.

Now many people in Norway want to boycott Israel’s products because of the country’s treatment of Palestinians.

But few have advocated boycotting China. Although the single-party communist state has around a million Muslim Uighurs in prison camps, it represents widespread human rights violations and refuses to allow the entire population to participate in free elections.

– Norway on her knees against China

– It has long been shameful to see how Norway has been kneeling before the Chinese authorities. We should have stood up a long time ago. Perhaps this could be a change now, if the West manages to speak with one voice to China. Then the situation for Norway will change, says Stein Ringen.

He does not believe that China can change the mood in Europe for its own benefit. Europeans and the European Union have long been waiting for a situation where China is on the defensive, he says.

China’s diplomatic insults

Principal investigator Hans Jørgen Gåsemyr works at both the Norwegian Institute for Foreign Policy and the Department of Comparative Policy at the University of Bergen. Nor does he believe that China has done particularly well in Europe after the crown crisis:

– They are often quite miserable in international public relations. The Korona crisis shows that part of what they are trying to do is counterproductive. They don’t get good results.

Goose ants especially refer to controversial statements and the support of Chinese diplomats in France, Sweden and Germany.

– They have created important conflicts that have provoked strong reactions in these countries.

“Chewing gum under the sole of China’s shoe”

Australia has also reacted strongly to the degrading publicity in the Chinese media after Australians spoke out in favor of an independent investigation into the crown outbreak in Wuhan. Here Australia was referred to as “chewing gum under the sole of China’s shoe.”

Scientist and Asia expert Stein Tønnesson at the Institute for Peace Research expects one internally settlement in China after the pandemic. He fears that a superpower agreement could be absolutely devastating for both world peace and the world economy:

– An ideological agreement on the pandemic between the great powers will not be healthy. But on the other hand, it is very healthy if you get an internal agreement in China.

Fear of Chinese surveillance exports

The Chinese authorities have long worked on developing a system to monitor the entire population. Both where they are and what they do. People who violate traffic regulations or criticize the Communist Party receive negative points and, for example, they can be denied travel by plane and train.

Tønnesson fears that such surveillance systems may now become a Chinese export product:

– China creates state control systems that become attractive products for other states that also want authoritarian control. Such technology solutions have been sold to Russia, and probably also to several other countries.

– I am afraid that this pandemic will strengthen the need for this type of authoritarian control. And that resistance to using them will decrease in a wide range of countries, says Tønnesson.

A recent study shows that, for the first time in twenty years, there are more undemocratic than democratic countries in the world. Tønnesson fears that China will contribute to this development:

“We can see an intensified authoritarian trend in the world through state imports of Chinese control systems,” he says.

China can assume the leadership of the USA. USA

There is nothing better than the United States seems to have abdicated from the role of leader of the free world:

– The kind of president the United States has received, and the strong polarization of American politics, has undermined confidence in democracy in a wide range of countries around the world. And it made it much easier for authoritarian leaders to direct their states in an authoritarian direction. Many now see China as a new world leader, says Tønnesson.

Hans Jørgen Gåsemyr also sees this trend, but believes that this is not a development that China necessarily wants:

– China does not have the capacity or the will to assume the leading role in the world traditionally in the hands of the United States. So if we see a China that is now emerging in areas where it has not been very present, it is rather the result of the withdrawal of the United States. China does not want to lead the world. But they would like to promote their own interests, says Gåsemyr.