Tue, Feb 19, 2008 page8

• China's rise will mean turbulence

  • By Sushil Seth
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  China seems to be everywhere these days. Apart from Japan which is seeking to counter it with the US alliance, China's geo-political pre-eminence in Asia-Pacific is now well-established.

  True, the US is still the dominant military power regionally and globally. But the Asia-Pacific region is quietly accommodating itself to China's new and rising status.

  China is not only looming large in its Asian neighborhood, it is also establishing its presence in Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia and South America, hunting for resources (oil, gas and raw materials) to fuel its economy, selling its wares, making investments and accumulating political capital.

  It has emerged as the US' biggest foreign lender, buying its treasury bonds and securities with its more than US$1 trillion in foreign currency reserves (and rising), amassed, in large part, from the US' growing trade deficit.

  In other words, it is lending a good part of what it earns from its US exports back to the US, thus enabling its consumers to continue buying Chinese goods.

  China is now in a position to bring down the mighty US dollar by shifting its dollar holdings into other currencies, and create panic in international markets.

  In practice, it might not do this for fear of losing heavily on its dollars assets. There is no way it can dispose of its dollar assets quickly enough to escape heavy losses.

  Besides, a significant depreciation of the US dollar will affect China's exports into the US market by making them dearer.

  But that is another story.

  The point is that China's rise is a great challenge for the world, especially the US, as the former has ambitions to overtake the latter as the world's only superpower.

  With the US mired in Iraq and elsewhere, China has used its time and resources well to expand its political and economic clout, even right into the US backyard of South America.

  One would hope that the US is aware of China's rearguard action. But being already over-stretched, the US is keen to maximize the area of political cooperation on Iran, North Korea and elsewhere.

  Washington is, therefore, inclined to overstate the mutuality of interest, and underplay differences and concerns from China.

  But this situation is unlikely to last as China becomes even more ambitious and the US starts to clearly see the danger.

  China believes it can carve out a new role with new strategies to overcome strife and conflict, both internally and externally. In a Foreign Affairs article, Zheng Bijian (鄭必堅) called these strategies China's "three transcendences."

  The first strategy, as he puts it, "is to transcend the old model of industrialization and to advance a new one ? based on technology, economic efficiency, low consumption of natural resources ? low environmental pollution, and the optimal allocation of human resources."

  Going by the state of China's environmental degradation, this strategy is apparently not working.

  The second strategy "is to transcend the traditional ways for great powers to emerge [like Germany and Japan in the past], as well as the Cold War mentality."

  China, on the other hand, "will transcend ideological differences to strive for peace, development and cooperation with all countries of the world."

  However, if the grab for islands in the South China Sea (the Spratlys, for instance) is any indication, China is behaving no different from the ways of the old powers (Germany and Japan) by seeking to use a mix of coercive strategies to have its way.

  The only difference is that China has been relatively successful so far in not having to use military means.

  But as its power grows and it faces resistance to its coercive diplomacy, China will be as ruthless in pushing its way (even including the projection and use of power) as the old powers.

  Which is already happening with Taiwan, with hundreds of Chinese missiles targeted in that direction.

  The third strategy, according to Zheng, "is to transcend outmoded models of social control and to construct a harmonious socialist society."

  Again, going by the reports of recurring unrest in different parts of China, the so-called harmonious society is either sheer propaganda or sheer delusion, which is even more disturbing.

  Therefore, all these claims that China has somehow found the Holy Grail of peaceful rise and development are fanciful -- to say the least.

  In other words, China's rise is bound to cause turbulence and strife in the years to come, with the US seeking to hold its position as the reigning superpower.

  There is, however, a view that China can be accommodated peacefully in the world order, because the existing system has been kind to it as evidenced by its economic growth and growing political status. Therefore, it will have no reason to subvert or sabotage it.

  But with China's growing ambitions, it is unlikely to be satisfied with incremental benefits accruing to it from a system that was devised by others to maintain and sustain their supremacy.

  Beijing will want to put its own stamp on the system and to maximize its own goals and ambitions of global supremacy.

  In a recent Foreign Affairs article, Professor G. John Ikenberry argues: "The United States cannot thwart China's rise, but it can help ensure that China's power is exercised within the rules and institutions that the United States and its [European] partners have crafted over the last century."

  He adds, "The United States' global position may be weakening, but the international system the United States leads can remain the dominant order of the twenty-first century."

  This is based on two implicit assumptions. First, China will continue to see the existing international order as largely to its advantage.

  Second, if it doesn't and seeks radical transformation, it will find the US-European order strong enough, by virtue of its combined power, to deter China from challenging it.

  As Ikenberry puts it, "The key thing for US leaders to remember is that it may be possible for China to overtake the US, but it is much less likely that China will ever manage to overtake the Western order."

  This is assuming that the Western order will generally act together, which is a tall order to make over any period of time.

  If China manages to remain stable and continues to grow? (a big if, considering its multiple problems), it will also have the potential to play power politics with the global system, including between the US and Europe.

  The idea that China will play its role within an existing international order crafted and controlled by dominant Western powers seems a bit overdrawn, if not an outright case of wishful thinking.

  It would make more sense to treat China as a power keen to reshape the global order by putting itself in the center. China will take this directrion as its power grows.

  And this will mean strife and turbulence. And countries like the US and others with high stakes in the existing international order will have no option but to confront the new danger from a resurgent China.

  Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.
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