After the extravaganza this month marking the 60th anniversary of the People's
Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership has
unleashed what the domestic media heralds as "marathon autumn diplomacy" (malasong
qiuji waijiao).
Premier Wen Jiabao visited North Korea and Vice President Xi Jinping is winding
up a five-nation tour of Europe. In anticipation of United States President
Barack Obama's first official visit to China next month, CCP politburo member
Li Yuanchao and Central Military Commission (CMC) vice chairman Xu Caihou are
calling on the United States.
From early October onward, dignitaries including Japanese Prime Minister Yukio
Hatoyama, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin and Vietnam Premier
Nguyen Tan Dung paid high-profile visits to the Middle Kingdom.
While these summits and conferences serve a plethora of objectives, two related
leitmotifs merit particular scrutiny. Given that China is assured of an 8%
growth rate this year - the best economic performance of any major country -
the Hu Jintao administration is eager to play up the country's status as a
"quasi-superpower" that is also a responsible stakeholder in the world
community.
Moreover, in the run-up to the Obama-Hu summit, Beijing wants to boost its
bargaining chips with the United States by insisting on full equality in what
it sees as a developing Group of Two (G-2). It is therefore hardly surprising
that another thrust of Beijing's autumn diplomacy is to undercut the weakened
superpower's global clout.
Immediately after the military parade on Tiananmen Square on October 1, Premier
Wen flew to Pyongyang in an effort to persuade the Stalinist regime to return
to the six-party talks on denuclearization hosted by Beijing. While Dear Leader
Kim Jong-il reiterated the North's theoretical commitment to a nuclear-free
Korean Peninsula, the dictator only expressed his country's "readiness to hold
multilateral talks depending on the outcome of the DPRK-US talks", referring to
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Prior to Wen's arrival in North Korea, the Chinese Foreign Ministry broke with
past practice by disclosing that Chinese food and fuel aid to North Korea would
be on the agenda. While the premier failed to nudge Kim into making concessions
that would satisfy the United States, Japan or South Korea, the Chinese
leadership apparently succeeded in enhancing Beijing's ability to play the
"North Korea card" vis-a-vis these three countries.
New agreements on enhancing trade with the DPRK, which hit a record US$2.79
billion last year, were signed. Beijing's decision to prop up the Kim regime
was tantamount to withdrawing from participation in United Nations-authorized
sanctions against the rogue regime. The CCP leadership's message to the United
States seems to be: Washington has to work more closely with Beijing if it
wants to put pressure on Kim to halt its weapons program or to return to the
negotiation table.
If some in the global community are disappointed by Wen's expedition, Beijing
appears convinced that its role in hosting two seminal events this month - the
trilateral heads-of-government meeting among China, Japan and South Korea as
well as the conclave of the premiers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO) nations - would buttress its credentials as a promoter of global
friendship and stability.
The get-together of representatives of the three East Asian giants attracted
more attention than usual owing to new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's
advocacy of the creation of an East Asian Community (EAC). Yet partly because
the EAC would incorporate "pro-US" countries including India, Australia and New
Zealand, the CCP administration's feedback has been lukewarm. According to
Tsinghua University Japan scholar Liu Jiangyong, the EAC may be more viable as
an economic rather than a security-related concept. Professor Liu criticized
Tokyo for "putting too much stress on developing the functions of the US-Japan
alliance, and that [Japan] has [excessively] emphasized Western values".
The Hu-Wen team seems more interested in forging some form of strategic
partnership with Japan for persuading Tokyo to refrain from applying the
US-Japan defense pact to Chinese territories. After all, Beijing has always
been nervous about Tokyo's alleged role as a key agent of Washington's
"anti-China containment policy". It is perhaps for this reason that during his
tete-a-tete with Hatoyama, Wen raised the possibility of moving bilateral ties
one step forward by "ceaselessly injecting strategic input".
On the eve of his Democratic Party of Japan's landslide victory in the August
30 Japanese general elections, Hatoyama departed from tradition by underscoring
the imperative of striking a balance between Tokyo's relations with the United
States and China.
The eighth meeting of the SCO premiers in Beijing made considerably more
headway in terms of synergy and commonality of purpose. The heads of government
from China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan agreed to
tighten financial and trade cooperation to better combat the global financial
crisis.
For example, a special SCO fund is being established to resolve financial
shortfalls coming out of joint projects among member nations. Cash-rich Beijing
has put up $10 billion to help SCO nations that run into economic difficulties.
Apart from collaborative efforts to combat terrorism, the SCO premiers did not
dwell much on political issues. Yet it is not for nothing that since its
inception in 2001 the SCO has been characterized as a counter-balance to the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The fact that premiers from observer countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan
and Iran took part in the Beijing deliberations added an obvious geopolitical
dimension to the conclave. While Beijing has steered clear of overt criticism
of American policies toward Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, one message of the
SCO conclave seemed to be that, particularly if Washington were forced to beat
a retreat from Afghanistan and neighboring trouble spots, Beijing and SCO
members might be well-placed to fill the vacuum.
That Beijing is primed for a more active role at least in policy debates
surrounding the Afghan imbroglio is evidenced by a China Daily article written
by a senior expert at the official China Council for National Security Policy
Studies, Li Qinggong. Li called upon Washington to "first put an end to the
war" and then to "promote reconciliation among the Afghan government, the
Taliban and the country's major warlords".
Equally significant were bilateral talks between Putin and Chinese leaders. The
erstwhile communist allies signed a pact on mutual notification of plans for
launching ballistic missiles. Li Daguang, a military expert at China's National
Defense University, said this testified to the "special relationship" between
the two countries, which already enjoy an "all-weather strategic partnership".
The two sides signed trade deals worth $4 billion. Moreover, Moscow agreed to
sell China 70 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year. Equally important
is the fact that at least parts of these transactions will be settled in yuan
and roubles. This has fed speculation that Beijing and Moscow have joined hands
in undermining the "hegemony" of the American dollar.
China, of course, had signed similar agreements earlier in the year with
another of the BRIC countries, Brazil. Moreover, China and Russia are among
several countries that are conducting unpublicized talks with Middle East
nations on possibly ending the practice of pricing oil in US dollars. Instead,
oil-and-gas transactions could, in the future, be settled with a basket of
currencies that includes the euro, the yuan and the yen.
Jockeying for position between China and the United States was also evident in
Vice President Xi's trip to Europe - particularly in his first-ever visits to
Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania. On the surface, economics and finance were the
sole purpose of the tour. For example, Xi told a group of Hungarian politicians
and businessmen that China would "continue to encourage our enterprises to
import more from Hungary, and also hopes Hungarian companies will make greater
efforts to explore the Chinese market".
Yet Xi's effort to woo Central and Eastern Europeans came on the heels of
Obama's surprise announcement that the United States would stop building a
missile defense shield in Poland and Hungary. Politicians in the Czech Republic
and Poland, including former Czech president Vaclav Havel and former Polish
president Lech Walesa, have accused the Obama administration of capitulation to
Russia and leaving Eastern Europe vulnerable to bullying by Moscow. Xi's trip
can be interpreted as a not-so-subtle way of selling a "third alternative",
that is, China, to an important part of Europe that feels alienated about both
Russia and the United States.
To what extent has Beijing's autumn diplomacy attained its main goals? At least
in the near term, the Obama administration seems anxious to impress on China
that it is being treated as America's equal. This apparently underpins the
policy of "strategic reassurance" that Obama's China experts have been
sponsoring since the summer. For example, Obama declined to meet the Dalai
Lama, during the latter's recent American tour. It was the first time since
1991 that the Tibetan spiritual leader failed to see a US president while
visiting the American capital.
Last week, the US government cleared Beijing of complicity in the manipulation
of the value of the yuan. Washington said nothing about the fact that Beijing's
augmentation of economic aid to the DPRK was a violation of the spirit if not
the letter of United Nations sanctions imposed on the rogue regime after its
May 25 nuclear test. Further, senior US officials have continued to keep mum
over more evidence of Beijing's violations of the human rights of dissidents
and activist lawyers.
Moreover, there are expectations that in the wake of the US visits by politburo
member Li and General Xu, Sino-American cooperation in areas including the
training of senior personnel and military confidence-building might be
enhanced.
Yet the downside of Beijing's multi-pronged muscle flexing could also be
considerable. Take, for instance, China's intensifying border rows with India
and Vietnam.
Tension along the Sino-Indian boundary is rising even as a war of words is
being waged by media in both countries. It is notable that while India is an
observer of the SCO, its prime minister failed to show up at the meeting of the
group's heads of government in Beijing.
In mid-October, Premier Wen held talks with his Vietnamese counterpart on the
sidelines of the 10th Western China International Trade Fair in Chingqong,
Sichuan province. Both sides vowed to increase bilateral trade to $25 billion
next year. Yet while the two leaders pledged to "properly handle border and
South China Sea issues", little progress was made on resolving sovereignty
disputes over the Spratly Islands.
While Beijing's no-holds-barred projection of military and diplomatic prowess
could go some way toward enhancing its role as global power broker, it may also
have rendered the "China threat" theory more credible. In addition, the image
of the fire-spitting dragon could be so intimidating that China's neighbors
such as India and Vietnam might opt for closer links with the United States,
the sole country that seems capable of frustrating China's world-sized
ambitions.
Dr Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He
has worked in senior editorial positions in international media including
Asiaweek newsmagazine, South China Morning Post, and the Asia-Pacific
Headquarters of CNN. He is the author of five books on China, including the
recently published Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders,
New Challenges. Lam is an Adjunct Professor of China studies at Akita
International University, Japan, and at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
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