The reality is that the West does not know how to back off. Backing off is seen as weakness. They have literally unlearned diplomacy and restraint. Look at what the Dutch, French and Germans are saying. There is no way they would have been saying any of these things 2 years ago, but they are saying them loud and clear now.
The interesting thing is, during the Bi Polar competition between the Soviet Bloc and the West. Nixon and Kissinger literally prepared
China as the
Ukraine of the East in case shit happens.
And the Chinese are more than willing to abide to and the CCP is more than willing to dump a few hundred million lives to fight the Russians even though both are " Communist " countries.
The smart and pragmatic move is to maintain not only good relationship with the Russians and not move East and bring Russian into the system and control them and use the Russians against the Chinese after the fall of the Soviet Bloc.
This would have hampered and stagnate China's rise and choke them really hard.
The TPP would have added another choke point. You control the land routes you control the maritime routes, there is nothing the Chinese could have done.
The only way the Chinese could have done is to wait shit out and wait for liberalism to destroy itself internally and just act like some weak nation.
But no, the West just fast forwarded everything for the Chinese.
