When the West believed in the convergence of China

It was the time of happy globalization.The one where, in Europe as in the United States, many thought, in the wake of the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama, that the fall of communism would mark the end of history and the final victory of liberalism.The one where Western leaders imagined that the entire globe was going to converge on the same model - from democracies open to trade and multilateralism -, to which China was naturally complying with.

A man embodied these hopes: Bill Clinton, president of the United States between 1993 and 2001. In 1999, the Democrat, then in the last months of his second term, was looking for success at the international level.The entry of China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) appears to be a potential legacy for posterity.On March 9, 2000, he became lyrical during a speech delivered at Johns-Hopkins University in Baltimore (Maryland).

"Supporting China's entry into the WTO goes beyond our economic interests.(...) This is the most important opportunity we have had to create a positive change in China since the 1970s "and the normalization of relations between Washington and Beijing, assures the tenant of the White House."The question is not whether we approve or disapprove of China's practices," he continues, after having mentioned the threats that Chinese rise makes weigh "on Taiwan and his neighbors", abusesof man or the intentions then lent to Beijing in matters of nuclear proliferation, "but to know what is the most intelligent thing to do to improve them".

For the President of the United States, China, by joining the WTO, does not simply accept to import more American products."She accepts [also] to import one of the most expensive values to democracy: economic freedom," he wants to believe.

Political microclimate favorable to Beijing

This speaking marks the culmination of a spectacular evolution on the part of Bill Clinton.Eight years earlier, in his speech of acceptance of the Democratic inauguration, in July 1992, he was indeed severe with regard to his republican opponent, outgoing president George H. W. Bush, who had to manage in 1989 theCrisis born from the bloody repression of the movement in favor of freedoms, crushed on the Place Tiananmen, in the heart of the Chinese capital.Bill Clinton promised not to "pamper the dictators, from Baghdad to Beijing".

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