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Bandung setting for possible
China-Japan meet
By Antoaneta
Bezlova
BEIJING - Winding up his China
visit last week, the leader of Africa's most
populous nation, Nigerian President Olusegun
Obasanjo, described China's rise as a "beacon for
global development". It is a mantra Beijing is
most willing to put on display as Chinese
President Hu Jintao arrives in Indonesia this
weekend to attend the 50th-anniversary celebration
of the Bandung Asian-African Conference.
It was that conference in Bandung,
Indonesia, from April 18-24, 1955, of 29 Asian and
African states, that ultimately led to
establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961
- a group of nations independent of and neutral at
the time of the US-Soviet Cold War and resisting
superpowers' efforts efforts to recruit them into
their own blocs. Their aim was to promote economic
and cultural cooperation and to oppose
colonialism. China played a prominent part then
and strengthened its friendly relations with other
Asian and African nations. It plans to do so
again.
President Hu's trip is expected to
reinforce perceptions of China as a leader of the
Third World - a non-Western and non-colonial
emerging superpower, eager to expand its scope of
geopolitical influence by generous packages of
aid, ample economic contracts and a long-standing
commitment to diplomatic neutrality.
"The
brilliant achievements China has gained on its
road to peace and development over the past
half-century all the more represent a successful
practice of the Bandung spirit," said an editorial
in the People's Daily, the official newspaper of
the Chinese Communist Party.
China was
among the 29 countries from the Asian-African
world that attended the 1955 conference in
Bandung. The conference, organized without the
participation of countries from the industrialized
West, marked the first move by developing
countries to form an alliance and assert their
political force and independence.
China's
delegation, led by its then-premier Zhou Enlai,
threw its support behind African and Asian
independence movements, as a way to counter US and
Soviet influences in the Third World. The trip was
a diplomatic success for a communist country that
had just emerged from years of World War II and
civil-war chaos and international isolation.
"Premier Zhou Enlai helped dispel doubts,
defuse puzzles and quiet down disputes with his
charisma of personality, political wisdom and an
attitude of equality," said the People's Daily.
"The illustrious manifestations of the Chinese
delegation at the Bandung conference can be
regarded as a monumental work in New China's
diplomatic history."
The Bandung
conference adopted a declaration on promoting
world peace and cooperation that Beijing says
represents the foundation for China's foreign
policy, namely the five principles of peaceful
co-existence. The principles are mutual respect
for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual
non-aggression, non-interference in each other's
internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and
peaceful co-existence.
Beijing credits the
"Bandung spirit" for the explosion of trade and
cooperation between China and Asian and African
countries. In 2004, trade between China and other
Asian and African countries amounted to about
US$400 billion - about one-third of China's total
foreign trade, according to Chinese State
Councilor Tang Jiaxuan.
"Apart from
promoting the establishment of the China-ASEAN
[Association of Southeast Asian Nations]
free-trade zone, we have also launched the
China-Arab and China-Africa cooperation forum and
made considerable progress with Arab and African
countries," Tang said at a meeting in Beijing
organized to commemorate the 50th anniversary of
the Bandung conference.
While Beijing
continues to stress the need for developing
nations to band together as a counterweight to the
industrialized West, these days China's
initiatives are propelled not by ideology but by
efforts to secure natural resources and political
influence.
In Africa and Asia, as in many
other parts of the developing world, China is
redrawing its geopolitical alliances in ways that
can serve its rise as a global superpower.
Having crossed the threshold of being an
aid recipient to becoming a donor nation, China is
expanding its own aid budget in order to buy
influence in Africa and other developing countries
- a bid to get support for Beijing's plan to
assert political authority over Taiwan, and
persuade other nations to side with it during
arguments with the United States in global bodies
such as the United Nations.
As world
commodity prices continue to soar, Beijing is also
using its aid budget to win lucrative economic
contracts. It recently offered Angola a $2 billion
soft loan in order to win a contract to develop an
offshore oilfield, for which India also was
bidding.
China is now by far the largest
donor to Pakistan, providing up to $9 billion in
various forms of aid over the past two years. In
addition to bilateral grants, Beijing has also
pledged $100 million to the Asian Development Fund
and the Africa Development Fund.
In a
reflection of Beijing's rising global profile,
China has also deployed peacekeepers to war-torn
Liberia, and pledged to cancel debts of $1.3
billion owed by 31 African countries.
At
the golden jubilee of the Bandung conference on
April 24, President Hu is expected to reassert
China's credentials as the vanguard nation of the
developing world. As the only Asian nation and the
only developing country with a permanent seat and
veto power on the 15-member United Nations
Security Council, China now faces a delicate
situation as the UN pushes for an expansion of the
council's permanent members to make the body more
representative of the world today.
India
and Japan are among the four primary candidates to
join a future revamped council but China has made
it clear that it is not in favor of hasty reforms
and doesn't support an imminent expansion.
Beijing's tacit nod to three weeks of
anti-Japanese protests in China increasingly is
perceived in Asia as an attempt to thwart Japan's
goal of becoming a permanent UN Security Council
member.
The escalating China-Japan row
could overshadow the Bandung celebration because
it will be the first time the Chinese and Japanese
leaders appear together since relations turned
sour - recent anti-Japan demonstrations in China
are said to mark a 30-year low.
China's
Foreign Ministry would not say whether President
Hu would meet with Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi on the sidelines of the
Indonesian summit this weekend. Instead, it called
for a new type of dialogue between Asia and Africa
and a "new type of strategic partnership".
"Under new circumstances, Asian and
African countries should further strengthen
cooperation to take advantage of new opportunities
and handle new challenges," Deputy Foreign
Minister Wu Dawei told a press briefing.
(Inter Press Service) |
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