China-SE Asia: Shades of tribute
diplomacy By David
Fullbrook
Basket-case masters though they are,
Laos' and Myanmar's leaders are likely to remain secure
if they kow-tow to a resurgent China that, above all
else, favors stability. With the West withdrawn, China's
Southeast Asia relations recall the tribute diplomacy
prevalent when dynasties such as the Tang, Yuan or Ming
called the shots. Thus it seems that more enlightened
governments will not take over in either Laos or Myanmar
while China walks tall.
Stabbed with sanctions
by the West, Myanmar's generals have little choice,
distasteful as it may be, but to fall in with China. In
return for providing listening posts for Chinese
eavesdroppers and friendly ports for its warships,
Myanmar receives lots of cheap weapons and enjoys the
ambiguity of possible intervention by Chinese troops if,
unlikely as it is, Western soldiers roll into Yangon.
China's deployment last year of 200,000 troops to its
Myanmar border to replace armed police (see the three-part
ATol series China
Moves on Myanmar, November 2003), and a similar rotation
along its North Korean frontier (see the six-part series On the
Borderline
,
September-October 2002), were not without agendas.
Myanmar's opposition forces, even if they could
unite, pose no threat to a regime backed by China.
Effectively abandoned by the West, the opposition's only
hope is to plead its case in Beijing, promising warm
amity, smooth trade and consistent policy.
Laos
also has little choice but to lean on China's brawny
shoulders. An alliance with Vietnam largely rests on
personal links among aging leaders in both countries;
traditionally Laotians and Vietnamese have not been
close. Turning south is unpalatable as their Thai
cousins are thought to be arrogant. In any case, China
has far more largess to distribute while favoring status
quo.
Laos and Myanmar are also both rich in
natural resources, especially timber, minerals, gems and
perhaps in the not-too-distant future electricity. These
commodities are all available at friendly prices for
China's greedy economy. With their survival contingent
on China, the regimes often acquiesce.
A decade
ago China's neighbors were tentatively embracing the
West. Since then China's diplomats have been parleying
to parry Western influence, successfully building
stability along its borders, helped not a little by
growing wealth, generated by 25 years of reforms
delivering something not far short of an economic
miracle that wins respect, buys influence, and forges
better swords.
Central Asian oil and gas will
flow to China's energy-hungry, booming east coast via a
pipeline under construction. China's armed forces are
upgrading with huge quantities of Russia's finest
weapons. Relations with Russia have not been warmer
since before Nikita Khrushchev's and Mao Zedong's 1958
quarrel. With Russia and the Central Asian states China
forged a loose security pact called, tellingly, the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization that has survived the
basing of US forces in Uzbekistan. To the south Pakistan
remains friendly and detente is blooming with former
Soviet-ally India.
But it is in Southeast Asia
that China began its return to Asian dominance.
Relations with Thailand have been warming for
three decades. Thai-Chinese are among the biggest
investors in China. Bangkok Bank, above which is the Thai consulate, has by far the largest foreign bank branch on Shanghai's Bund. China shares Malaysia's
championing of so-called Asian values and is a major
buyer of Indonesian gas and oil, not to mention a
growing investor in energy, banking and other sectors.
China spent 30 years from 1949 consolidating
after a century of weakness almost unparalleled in its
long history. Failure to reassert itself internationally
as a major power through exporting communist revolution
begot a new strategy. In the 1970s it switched to
playing the benevolent, generous big brother, reaping
results almost immediately.
With the US
commitment to Southeast Asia doubted after its
withdrawal from South Vietnam, Thai leader Kukrit Pramoj
visited Beijing in 1975 to mend fences. Deference and
politeness, characterized as simple Thai courtesy,
echoed that shown by emissaries sent on tribute missions
through the centuries from kingdoms south of China. His
hosts were pleased.
While one Chinese hand
carried carrots, the other held a stick, which struck
Vietnam in 1979. Like imperial military incursions it
was a mixed success, yet it served purpose, sending a
warning. China can afford such excursions, but for its
neighbors the costs weigh heavily. Acquiescence, as the
kings south of China's southern imperial frontier found,
is bearable.
Relations with Thailand and its
Southeast Asian allies warmed further during the 1980s,
with China promising to defend Thailand if Vietnamese
troops, leering over the Cambodian border, invaded.
Cheap arms also went down well. China wielded deciding
influence in negotiations that saw Vietnam exit Cambodia
and a coalition government emerge.
China's rhetoric in relations with
Asian neighbors has a distinctly imperial tone. Take
July's spat with Singapore over the visit of then prime
minister-in-waiting Lee Hsien Loong to Taiwan. Feeling
affronted by Lee's visit, China, which has built a grand
imperial embassy in the Lion City, scolded Singapore.
Free-trade talks may be slow-tracked as a result (see Beijing's warning
shout
, July 27).
When the tempest of economic collapse
struck Asia in the late 1990s, China held its currency
rock-solid, providing a welcome steadying influence
against the resented bitter medicine proscribed by the
International Monetary Fund. Ironically China's currency
devaluation in 1994 probably contributed to Asia's
meltdown a few years later.
Thailand's
supine acceptance of a free-trade agreement that
benefits China to a much greater degree can be
characterized as tributary (see Thailand in China's
embrace
, April 9). Thailand has for centuries aimed to ally with
the dominant regional power. Prior to the 19th century
this was China, then the British Empire, briefly Japan,
followed by the United States. Since the 1970s it has
been drifting toward China.
The Association
of Southeast Asian Nations is unlikely to strike a
free-trade deal with China for a few years yet. But it
is not lost on China's tough trade lawyers that with
each passing year China's strength grows exponentially
to that of ASEAN, allowing it to dictate ever more
advantageous terms.
Preoccupied with breakneck
domestic development and all the challenges that brings,
China is deferring the Spratly Question - for now.
China, Taiwan and four Southeast Asian states claim part
or all of the South China Sea's Spratly Islands, thought
to sit atop rich gas and oil reservoirs.
As each
year passes China's expeditionary prowess grows and its
economic envelopment of Southeast Asia deepens, further
eroding its latitude for disobedience. The Philippines
may yet rue the day it ejected US forces. Should push
come to shove, US-led intervention, in light of the Iraq
debacle, looks unlikely while the South China Sea
remains open to international navigation.
Paradoxically, while China's external power
waxes, internally it wanes as provinces jockey with
Beijing for power, citizens protest and frontier
territories, far from Beijing, march to their own beat.
Indeed it is along its fraying borders that China's
power is at its weakest yet strongest.
With
Western intervention extremely unlikely in the absence
of massive oil discoveries, Laos' and Myanmar's leaders
have only to fear China - fear that its economy may
falter, precipitating chaos that may force China to
withdraw into itself.
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