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Do reptiles live in China?

I recently heard from a person with integrity that at a study program for young people in China, one of the participants, the entire program was extremely skeptical, asserted that the buildings they visit and the cars passing through the streets are facades intended for their group, and that people who happen to pass by are extra actors. The participant is a journalist by profession from a, as we Balkans say, regulated country, and probably has a certain influence on the public there. After my friend asked why the Chinese authorities would make such an expensive backdrop, the journalist laconically replied that he believed that “China has a hidden agenda”. Structurally, this conspiracy theory is not much different from the one that reptilian people rule the planet.

This recent event is a great reference for me. The People’s Republic of China is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. It is a well-known feature of Chinese politics that it gives extra weight to anniversaries and celebrates them publicly. Thus, the anniversaries of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the People’s Liberation Army of China and the People’s Republic of China are celebrated as the three most important anniversaries. The argument gives the authorities continuity, as well as the possibility to compare things in a time period longer than one statistical year or one five-year plan. The Chinese have a developed sense that history is not related to human lifespan. That’s why the goals they set for themselves are centuries old.

I know that some fellow journalists from BiH, like the one at the beginning of the text, think that China has a hidden plan, different from the one publicly declared, such as the “Belt and Road” Initiative, and the triptych of global initiatives – development, security and civilization. At the base of this whole global Chinese outstretched hand is the idea that we will either fail together or move forward together, regardless of religious, national, ideological and other differences. Some believe that underneath it lies the Chinese desire to rule the world, to enslave states and nations. Those “some” usually come from those world centers from which the colonial conquest of the world started with the use of modern slavery, but they are also heard from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

That is why the experiences of Africa are important. That is why the messages sent by the recently concluded Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) are important. That is why we should look at the projects that China has done throughout the African continent, but also more widely, in some countries that we consider to be potentially significant partners, such as the United Arab Emirates. Is it possible that all these countries are under the delusion that China is a good and reliable partner?

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a European country, but many see it as a third world country. Today, various centers can cheaply exploit the national sport in Bosnia and Herzegovina to fight other people’s battles for their own interests. That sport will not make us more European.

Faruk Boric
editor-in-chief of “Voice of China