BEIJING — When China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, told the United States late on Saturday that it should “correctly treat China’s development,” what did he mean?

The reprimand came after the U.S. State Department on Friday called on China to “fully account for those killed, detained or missing in the 1989 bloody military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square,” The Associated Press reported. Mr. Hong also told the U.S. to “discard” its “political prejudice” toward China.

China often emphasizes that it seeks peaceful development. But the authors Heriberto Araújo and Juan Pablo Cardenal believe there is more to it.

In an opinion piece in The New York Times, they write that the state capitalist model behind China’s increasingly successful global push threatens the values of the established democracies.

“While China is not taking over the world militarily, it seems to be steadily taking it over commercially,” they write. “In just the past week, Chinese companies and investors have sought to buy two iconic Western companies, Smithfield Foods, the American pork producer, and Club Med, the French resort company,” they write. (A third, high-profile example last week is a deal between the city of London and a Chinese company, ABP, to develop the Royal Albert Dock for about $1.5 billion, for Chinese and Asian businesses.)

China has been able to amass a lot of cash that it is using to buy strategic assets around the world, the authors write, “ultimately” through the use of Chinese savers’ deposits in a financially repressed economy (the financial repression is imposed by the state).

“It is important to remember what is really behind China’s global economic expansion: the state. China may be moving in the right direction on a number of issues, but when Chinese state-owned companies go abroad and seek to play by rules that emanate from an authoritarian regime, there is grave danger that Western countries will, out of economic need, end up playing by Beijing’s rules,” write the authors of “China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking The World in Beijing’s Image.”

“As China becomes a global player and a fierce competitor in American and European markets, its political system and state capitalist ideology pose a threat. It is therefore essential that Western governments stick to what has been the core of Western prosperity: the rule of law, political freedom and fair competition,” they write.

“They must not think shortsightedly,” they add. “Giving up on our commitment to human rights, or being compliant in the face of rapacious state capitalism, will hurt Western countries in the long term. It is China that needs to adapt to the world, not the other way around.”

What do you think? Does China’s state-led development pose a threat to fundamental democratic values around the world? Will China adapt as it invests abroad, or can it, will it, should it, bring its values with it?