During the 1990s, China began engaging in "great power diplomacy." China's exchange of visits with leaders of major nations became common. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US, however, the frequency of these exchanges declined dramatically. Now, after the US-Iraq war, China seems to be reviving its suspended great power diplomacy. In addition to close contacts with the leaders of Russia and France, it is also intervening in the North Korean issue. Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) will be visiting Russia this month. Is China reviving its diplomacy policy?
Prior to the onset of reforms, China's military and economic strength fell far behind that of the US and the Soviet Union. The fact that China at the time saw itself side by side with the US and the Soviet Union in a triumvirate of superpowers was the result of ideology -- it used opposition to capitalism, colonialism and US imperialism as rallying points to attract followers among third-world countries.
Reforms, however, implied China was accepting Western capitalist logic and abandoning the communist revolutionary world view, thus undermining the power of this ideology. Following the onset of reforms, China has grown militarily and economically strong. It has been supporting both North Korea and Iraq based on previously established alliances. With the support of Muslim countries in Central Asia, it advocated a set-up with one super power and many strong powers in the hope of being able to take a multi-polar approach to fighting uni-polarism.
This Chinese view of itself as a great power expanded beyond the 1990s, and most recently, Beijing's successful bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games, together with the 2001 APEC meeting in Shanghai. These events represent the peak of China's status as a great power.
The Sept. 11 attacks, however, was a watershed between two eras. The US' pre-emptive strike strategy messed up the progress of Chinese and Russian strategic cooperation to the north of China. In Central Asia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has also been neglected and pressured in the name of anti-terrorism. On top of this, the US has returned to Southeast Asia, making Singapore the logistics base for its Seventh Fleet. It has also strengthened military cooperation with all Southeast Asian nations, thereby weakening the influence of ASEAN.
If we add Japan and Taiwan, overt and covert military allies of the US, we see that China's great power strategy has all but collapsed. China, alarmed that its status as a great power was going up in smoke, found itself in an awkward situation. This was apparent in China's diplomatic activities -- the number of overseas visits by the Chinese president fell drastically last year. Nor did China lend a helping hand to its long-term allies North Korea and Iraq.
Five international wars provide concrete evidence of how China's position as a great power arose, wavered, and then collapsed. The Falklands War in 1986 boosted Chinese confidence in the idea that its status as a great power would be guaranteed so long as it fully modernized its military. Even though US high-tech military strength in the Gulf War in 1991 frightened and shocked China, it was never shaken in its decision to strengthen the nation by way of military buildup. Instead, it accelerated the pace of modernization, emphasizing missile-guidance techniques and other high-tech military equipment.
A few years later, however, we could see China beginning to doubt this direction. In 1999, key officers in the Chinese army proposed the idea of "unlimited war," a sign of worry over the gap between the Chinese and US armies. In the war in Kosovo in 1999, when NATO bypassed the UN in order to initiate so-called humanitarian intervention, the severity of the Chinese crisis became more obvious. Because China was militarily too weak, the UN was the only platform that could guarantee its great power status.
The diametrically opposed US and Chinese views on the anti-terrorism issue, which emerged during the meeting between US President George W. Bush and then president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) in Shanghai prior to last year's Afghan war, can be seen as China's last attempt at fighting the US. After that war, China maintained a low profile in diplomatic matters until the war on Iraq, where the US ignored the UN Security Council and took unilateral action against Iraq. After the war, the US also added Syria to the list of countries in the "axis of evil."
Most weapons in the axis of evil countries come from China. This has made China worry that keeping a low profile and cooperating with the US will not guarantee its security, which is why it has once again become active in the diplomatic arena.
What I want to point out here, however, is that, in the past, China engaged in its great power diplomacy to create a system with several strong powers, so that it could compete actively for domination with the US and Europe. Now, it is doing so in the hope of uniting several nations in an attempt at passive self-protection. Conservative US estimates say that 750 cruise missiles, 23,000 bombs and over 200,000 ground troops with high-tech equipment were deployed during the Iraq war. By comparison, the number of missiles developed by China over several years fade to nothing, and its foolish efforts at building a high-tech military become meaningless.
In the wake of the US-Iraq war, an international system dominated by the US alone is emerging, and the traditional Metternich-Kissinger-style peace, which stresses the need of a multipolar power balance to maintain world peace, is coming to an end. Nations one tier below US dominance are facing a dilemma -- should they submit to US dominance and give up their opposition, or should they resort to political manuevering and use the UN to hold the US back, while attempting to build alliances.
Judging from German and Russian silence on the Iraqi reconstruction issue, the softening of French attitudes toward the US and the serious political challenge that SARS poses to the Chinese leadership, the outlook for an alliance between several strong states to balance the US does not seem too bright.
In East Asia, the asymmetrical strategic competition between China and the US will probably cause China to extend their past relationship of step-by-step, partial cooperation.
When it comes to Taiwan, China will not dare make any rash moves, and a relative calm will settle in the East Asian region. Over the long term, however, China's battered power ambitions will be transformed into continued accumulation of potential conflict factors. Japan, Taiwan and other nations that are in conflict with China over issues of power must not neglect this fact just because the current situation is to their advantage.
Lin Cho-shui is a DPP legislator.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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