[P2P-F] Fwd: China

Fri Jul 1 19:38:00 CEST 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: James Quilligan <jbquilligan at comcast.net>
Date: Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 12:17 AM
Subject: China

June 30, 2011 11:04 pm
Working out what China wants

By Philip Stephens
   [image: Pinn illustration]

We know what the west wants from a resurgent China. We have a pretty good
sense of what China doesn’t want from the west. What’s missing from this
story of global geopolitical upheaval is a clear idea of what China wants
from its rise to great power status.

Like many European and American commentators I spend a fair amount of time
listening to Chinese scholars, officials and diplomats. A few years ago such
figures were a rare sighting on the international conference circuit. And
visitors to Beijing were left feeling that their interlocutors had been
carefully screened to admit only one view of the world.

Not any more. Some months ago I listened to a Chinese vice-minister casually
acknowledge divisions at the illustrious Central Party School about
relations with Washington. Some among the keepers of the ideological flame
thought the US would only ever understand the currency of raw power; others
that China’s self-interest still lay in co-operation as well as competition.

Chinese academics speak quite openly, albeit off-the-record, about the
conflicting currents in Beijing – between nationalists and liberals,
generals and party leaders. The implications of the coming generational
change at the top of the party are keenly debated.

One leading scholar was heard to say recently that Hu Jintao, who steps down
next year as China’s president, had been little more than a “petty
bureaucrat”. The west was in for a surprise when the generation of
president-in-waiting Xi Jinping took office. These young leaders had been
shaped and hardened by Mao’s Cultural Revolution. They would not be shy of
wielding power.

Others are not so sure. One prominent (and very rich) business leader argues
that the grinding process of getting to the top in the Chinese system
militates still against a radical break with the past. What’s clear from
most such conversations, though, is that Deng Xaoping’s admonition that
China should hide its strength is nowadays observed more in the breach than
the observance. Talk that China wants to take back charge of its East Asian
neighbourhood is no longer met with protestations about a misreading of more
benign intentions.

The west, which, absent a coherent European policy towards the rising
powers, mostly means the US and Japan, is pretty clear what it wants from
the new China. It was summed up in the worn, but still useful, phrase coined
by Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, when he called for Beijing to
behave as a “responsible stakeholder”.

This sees China taking its place in defending and developing the rules-based
global order. Beijing has a point when it protests this is a western
construction. Yet the US can argue that it has provided the essential
framework for China’s rise.

On the other side of the fence, Chinese policymakers make few bones about
what they don’t want from the west. Top of the list is any hint of a
challenge to China’s territorial integrity. Support for more autonomy in
Tibet or Xinjiang or for Taiwanese independence is a hostile act – an effort
to foment the break-up of the Chinese state.

Second on the don’t-want list is a confrontation that would disturb the
course of China’s rising prosperity. As much as it is now more assertive
than Mr Deng might have liked, Beijing is anxious to avoid any rupture
abroad that might jeopardise growth and social order at home. China will
retaliate against, say, US arms sales to Taiwan, but within
carefully-calibrated bounds.

A third taboo is western lecturing about China’s political and social order.
David Cameron was reminded of this this week when he received Wen
Jiabao<http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/9a467244-a0e0-11e0-adae-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1QQe3BysY>in
10 Downing Street. The British prime minister got a public dressing
down
from the Chinese premier. China had had enough of British “finger-pointing”
about human rights.

The snub was calculated. Accompanying officials let it be known that Mr
Wen’s subsequent stopover in Berlin was much the more important leg of his
European trip. This was partly, of course, because of the much more valuable
trade and investment relationship between Germany and
China<http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d0244274-1a71-11e0-b003-00144feab49a.html#axzz1QQe3BysY>.
But Angela Merkel, it seems, is also careful to make rather less of a public
fuss about dissidents.

Beijing does not want to see any extension of intervention in the affairs of
sovereign states. If China joins in telling others how to behave, others
will claim legitimacy in telling it how to behave. Liberal internationalism
also makes it harder for Beijing to strike dodgy deals with dubious regimes
producing vital natural resources.

Chinese officials will agree there is sometimes a balance to be struck.
Beijing has signed up to United Nations principles on the rights of citizens
as well as states. But it will only go so far. Thus, while it allowed UN
authorisation for intervention in Libya, Mr Wen insists the western military
action was a mistake not to be repeated elsewhere.

So far, so clear. It is when you ask about China’s ambitions for its place
in the world that inscrutability sets in. Yes, China wants a role
commensurate with its history as a great and ancient civilisation. Yes, its
economic rise has greatly expanded its strategic interests. But does it want
to shape a different international order? How far will it extend its
military reach? Does it see its own political and economic model competing
more widely with western liberal capitalism? These are questions that rarely
elicit illuminating responses.

Inference provides some of the answers. The activities of the People’s
Liberation Army in the South China Sea and the present tilt of military
spending point to the desire to push back US forces. A close alliance with
Pakistan<http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/417a48c4-a34d-11e0-8d6d-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1QQe3BysY>underlines
the strategic weight given to safeguarding China’s supply lines
to and from the oil-rich Gulf.

A strategy of divide and rule suggests a conscious desire to capitalise on
Europe’s present weakness and undercut the Atlantic alliance. The more China
rises, the wider will be the spread of its interests.

How wide? China is not bidding to fill the role of global hegemon recently
vacated by the US. There are too many natural constraints on its power –
think geography, India and Japan as well as the US. Beyond that, we do not
really know. But then nor, I suspect, does China.

philip.stephens at ft.com

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