Illustration: GT

Singapore's intellectual property chief Daren Tang on Wednesday beat China's nominee, Wang Binying, as director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Wang has served as deputy director general of WIPO for more than a decade, while Tang was a US-backed candidate. 

Some Americans attribute the result to their public opinion offensive. This shows that the US is stepping up efforts to curb China's influence in international organizations, including the UN.

Before the result came out, some anti-China hawks already started their public opinion offensive. On February 23, White House adviser Peter Navarro said in an article published in the Financial Times, "The US believes that giving control of WIPO to a representative of China would be a terrible mistake."

Is the US going backward? During the 2008 financial crisis, then US president George W. Bush attached great importance to China's role and called then Chinese president Hu Jintao to discuss having a G20 summit. The US took China's national strength into consideration and respected it. However, the US is currently adopting the opposite attitude - it wants to suppress China. In the increasingly globalized world, links between countries are getting stronger and yet the US' mindset is even less progressive compared to more than 10 years ago. 

The US wants to suppress China, but it cannot. This is not only because of China's national strength, but also China's stimulus to the world economy, its positive impact on the world's peaceful development and its contributions to solving global issues. The US and other Western countries cannot ignore and deny China's contributions in these areas.

The US' complete containment of China shows that it has almost exhausted its tricks. The trend in the world has changed radically, and it is no longer the era when the US dominated the world. China and many other developing countries are on the rise, which is an irreversible trend. The US' containment of China is swimming against the tide and doomed to fail.

But China still needs to remain vigilant against the US siege of China. Andrew Bremberg, permanent representative of the US to the Office of the UN and other International Organizations in Geneva, said that China is a country where "IP [intellectual property] theft and counterfeiting are rife" and does not have a history of protecting IP. 

However, China's achievements in IP protection are obvious. By the end of 2019, China had registered the world's largest number of invention patent applications for the ninth consecutive year. The US is using lies and smears to cover up its ulterior motives.

It is a pity that Wang lost, but this does not mean that China was beaten by US pressure. Other countries have seen China's determination to contribute to the international community. They will have their own judgments, instead of blindly listening to US slander. If the US walks further on the wrong path, it will only isolate itself from the times.