Pierre-Antoine Donnet explores the moral dilemma the world now faces that will define the decades to come: how it responds to China.

The “workshop of the world” has made our lives more comfortable in terms of affordable goods but that dependence makes it difficult to respond to the multifaceted threat that China now poses. Its breakneck development menaces the environment and efforts to limit climate change. Its suppression of the civilization of Xinjiang and Tibet and political suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong are an affront to Western values. The growing risk of an invasion of Taiwan and Chinese claims in the South China Sea pose a threat to the international order.

From the Uighurs tragedy underway in Xinjiang, the oppression of freedom in Hong Kong, the huge environmental problems that the rapid expansion of the Chinese economy is creating such as deforestation as well as soil, river and air pollution, the growing risk of an armed confrontation between China and the United States over Taiwan that could trigger a third world war…these are just some of the example of how China has become such a big predator.

Pierre-Antoine Donnet, born in 1953, is a French journalist and editor-in-chief of Agence France Press. He is a specialist on China.