1/8 The year started with a major Western assault on China over its handling of Covid-19. China was on the defensive. 2020 is ending with China riding high and the West in a huge mess. The most obvious reason is that China handled Covid brilliantly and the West failed miserably.

2/8 But it is much more than that. The West finds itself in a profound existential crisis which is multi-dimensional. The decline of its global hegemony is the most important factor. It can't come to terms with or accept China's rise. Three countries illustrate the West's crisis.

3/8 The US is patently in decline. China is the central reason. So the US abandoned the 45 year-old policy of engagement with China in favour of outright opposition and decoupling. This will fail. China's rise is simply too fundamental. But America is far from recognising this.

4/8 The UK is behaving like a headless chicken. It has left the EU but it has nothing to replace it with. At Trump's behest it rejected China. The UK has a colonial-style dream of being part of an Anglosphere. Dream on. It lives in the past with no sense of the present or future.

5/8 Australia was a British colonial creation in the heart of Asia. When the West ruled the world, white Australia ignored East Asia as inferior and irrelevant. Only the West, especially the US, mattered. With China's rise, it saw a huge buyer of its resources.

6/8 But it never respected China, still saw it as inferior. That is why Morrison has utterly misjudged China's power and the threat it poses to Australia's prosperity. It thought it could insult and abuse China with no payback. The Australians are living in a world long gone.

7/8 As China continues to rise - as it certainly will - the Western dilemma will become ever more acute. For a period the West chose a form of partial engagement. As China got stronger, it has adopted a strategy of containment, abuse and dismissal. This will certainly fail.

8/8 The West must accept China's rise, learn to respect the fact that China is different and always will be, and find ways to live on friendly and respectful terms with it. As things stand, countries like the US, UK and Australia are simply not on the right page of history.