China is on a roll. Not so much because it is a superpower or because it will become one soon. It is because Beijing has succeeded in mesmerizing a gullible world about its "success." Partly because a great many countries are not comfortable with the way the US is projecting and using its power. And they are keen to envision another power center to counter the US. China seems to fit the role with its growing economic and political power, although it is nowhere near the US.
China is still largely a third world economy. Its communist rulers are living on a vision of the past when it was a great civilization, the "Middle Kingdom." Its leaders are buoyed up by that vision, regarding China's humiliations during the colonial era (from the Opium Wars to the Japanese invasion) as simply an aberration needing correction.
The recent "Anti-Secession" Law against Taiwan is part of that corrective process to "reunify" the homeland. Japan is also a target for heaping humiliations and committing wartime crimes against China. Europe, though, is not targeted because it is keen to be co-opted. The US is a serious obstacle but it is too powerful to confront. But it might be contained diplomatically with some help from Europe.
As David Shambaugh has said, "Both China and Europe seek ways to constrain American power and hegemony, whether through the creation of a multipolar world or through multilateral institutional constraints on the US."
In the Asia-Pacific region, China is not only seen as a dominant power but also a benign one. According to the Jakarta Post, "It will not be long before China is well and truly the US' peer in global politics." It is a benign power because its "resolute pursuit of positive engagement rather than intimidation with Southeast Asian nations has allowed it to be embraced as an asset to mutual prosperity and regional stability."
And what about China's "Anti-Secession" Law to threaten Taiwan? The Jakarta Post is not worried, attributing it to the country's domestic political compulsions. It says: "? the nuances of domestic politics often require tough talk. As a civilian leader who is consolidating power, it was important for President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) to show a strong stance towards the issue of Taiwan. Within the intricate realm of domestic politics in China, Hu needed to show strong resolve. Hence the saber-rattling about the potential use of force should Taiwan declare its independence."
Even Australia, a staunch US ally, is increasingly mindful of China's sensitivities in view of its growing economic ties with the country. Beijing is dangling the prospect of a free-trade agreement with Australia, once Canberra recognizes it as a market economy. That shouldn't be a problem. Not only that, but Canberra is even willing to regard China as a democracy of sorts.
According to Australian Defense Minister Robert Hill, "China is, of course, not a democracy of our type [but] China does have forums that include appointed and elected representatives."
Canberra is so keen to please China that Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has reportedly banned Falun Gong supporters from protesting outside the Chinese embassy. On Taiwan, Australia seeks to maintain ambiguity of sorts regarding its commitment under the US alliance if it were attacked by China, though it is hard to see how Canberra will get out of it.
As a prominent Australian foreign analyst has said, "? for us to remain uninvolved we would have to take a decision contrary to all our history and strategic culture." With impressive testimonials about its economic and political credentials, why wouldn't China start envisioning itself as a new Middle Kingdom?
And this is precisely what it is doing. According to some press reports, the Chinese Politburo recently invited two Western-trained professors to a special meeting to analyze the rise and fall of nine world powers since the 15th century. The contents of the meeting are, not surprisingly, a secret but some idea of how China will go about becoming the new imperial power can be gleaned. Beijing doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of the European colonial powers.
As a senior Chinese diplomat has put it, "?China is going to be different, because the world has changed. It's not like in the past when powers had to expand territorially in order to get markets."
Beijing will do it through free-trade agreements, long term production and supply contracts for energy and raw materials -- ?as with Australia -- ? and flooding the international markets with its low-cost products without the fear of anti-dumping provisions, once it is recognized by more and more countries as a market economy.
And it will do it through diplomatic coercion and projection of political and military power, including threatening its use, as is happening with Taiwan. Much of the world seems to think that China is the future and they don't want to be left behind. It is like in the 1970s and 1980s when Japan was the rising economic power, set to overtake the US by the turn of the new, 21st century.
But Japan, the world's second biggest economy, was -- ?and still is -- a political pygmy. With China it is different. It is following a well-coordinated economic and political strategy to expand its sphere of influence and create an Asia-Pacific Co-prosperity Sphere. And this strategy does include acquisition of territory by simply laying historical claims to disputed areas, as with Taiwan, South China Sea islands and waters, border disputes with neighboring countries and so on.
To reinforce some of these claims, Beijing simply passes domestic legislation to invoke unilateral legal validity. As China becomes stronger, it might become indistinguishable from the old colonial countries in terms of greater territorial aggression and grab.
The underlying assumption about China's superpower status is its political and social stability under its communist rulers. Its oligarchs are engaged in the stupendous task of transforming an essentially rural and regional society of 1.3 billion people into an urban nightmare of uprooted people without traditional social and cultural connections. They are creating a vast urban jungle of social Darwinism based on the survival of the fittest.
But the problem is that its many losers will still need to fend for themselves. And they might do this (as is already happening) by creating a parallel world of crime and criminal culture. Through large-scale urbanization involving social, religious and cultural dispossession through the very act of abandoning their rural communities, these elements will become ungovernable.
And with an inflexible and regimented political system without intermediate level participatory institutions and structures to mediate and absorb growing social and economic tensions, it will be a brave person to predict that China will remain a stable political entity over the medium term.
Sushil Seth is a freelance writer based in Sydney.
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