How stable is China?

By S.P.SETH

One thing noticeable about China these days is the cockiness and arrogance of its rulers. It is reflected both at home and abroad.

In the latter case, there is a new sense of entitlement about China’s central place in global affairs.

And when President Barack Obama spent three days in China, more than any of the countries that he visited in his recent Asian tour, it simply reassured Beijing about China’s manifest destiny as the new Middle Kingdom.

In China’s relationship with the outside world, this arrogance is reflected at several levels.

At one level, a deep-rooted sense of historical humiliation of European and Japanese occupation in the past creates an exaggerated sense of nationalism.

And it requires constant reassurance of China’s new perceived great power status and a compulsion to reassert its “sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

For instance, it is constantly evoked in relation to Taiwan, with China prepared to use coercive diplomacy with other countries to assert its position.

Beijing also uses coercive diplomacy to prevent other countries from having any kinds of dealings with the Dalai Lama, and Rabiya Kadeer, the leader of the Uighur community in exile.

In the case of Tibet and Xinjiang, even though these regions are already part of China and are recognized as such by most of the world, Beijing still remains paranoid.

As an example, the revived tensions on India-China border recently were, in large part, due to New Delhi’s refusal to bow to pressure from Beijing to not allow the Dalai Lama to visit Tawang, a town on India-China border and the centre of a major monastry of Tibetan Buddhism.

In the same way, China-Australia relations recently reached a crisis point when Canberra granted a visa to Rebiya Kadeer, the Uighur leader, to attend the premier of a documentary about her life at the Melbourne Film Festival.

What it means is China’s enhanced new world status is becoming a dangerous mix of national pride and paranoia.

An example is a series of recent naval incidents in South China Sea with the Chinese ships harrassing the US navy. Vice Admiral John Bird, commander of the Seventh Fleet, recently told the Sydney Morning Herald that the jostling of a US ship in March by Chinese vessels had been followed by other lesser incidents.

He said, “I would like to believe China learnt from that but, to be truthful, at any time they could do that again…”

He added, “They have made it clear they consider the South China Sea to be more or less theirs.”

It is not difficult to see that such brinkmanship can get out of hand.

At the domestic level too, there is a sense of entitlement that the people should be grateful to the Communist Party for having done such a wonderful job of economic growth and national glory.

Therefore, whenever there is some resistance to and criticism of the Party’s policies and authoritarian ways, China’s oligarchy is increasingly reacting with even greater intolerance and repression.

When Hu Jintao became President, there was some expectation of political liberalism, at least within the CPC. But that has been dashed.

For instance, after some semblance of activity among a handful of human rights lawyers, most of them “are either in jail or have had their licenses removed”, according to Mo Shao-ping, one of the activist lawyers.

Professor Fan Yafeng, another defender of human rights, has been sacked from China’s Academy of Social Sciences. He believes that, “The Government has given up all political reforms. Their only aim is to protect their own interests.”

In his view, China is closer to its “crisis point” than many people believe.

The government is targeting any group that has the potential of emerging as an organized opposition to its authoritarian rule.

A case in point is the crackdown on informal church groups, “house churches”, which operate outside official control.

China’s Christian population is estimated now at about 130 million people, and the government keeps a tight control over the church organizations.

But “house churches” have resisted government control, thus inviting persecution with eviction from their buildings and detention and imprisonment of some of their leaders.

The government obviously sees them as a serious threat with their capacity to mobilize support inside and outside the country.

The mushrooming of ‘black jails’ to detain people petitioning the central authorities against injustice at local levels, is another example of increasing repression.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, An Alleyway in Hell, “…provincial and municipal level officials have developed an extrajudicial system to intercept, abduct, and detain petitioners in black jails.”

It adds, “Their emergence since 2003 constitutes one of the most serious and widespread uses of extra-legal detention in China’s recent history.”

It is difficult to believe that the central leadership is not aware of such illegal activities. Indeed, this looks like outsourcing the dirty work of official agencies.

The government is so much obsessed with managing the country’s image that it simply refuses to see how bad things are.

Wherever one looks, the situation has the makings of a serious social crisis. For instance, the abduction of children doesn’t seem to grab the attention of the authorities, the way it should in any civilized society.

The unemployment is ever rising; another twenty million added with the closure of many factories making goods for export.

Which puts further strain on an already depressed rural economy, as most of these unemployed were rural migrants working in urban industrial economy.

China’s economic stimulus package might show healthy economic growth with inflated stock market indicators and property valuation, but they are not doing much, if anything, to stimulate employment.

The social services sectors like health, education, and welfare are starved of funds.

The stimulus package seems intended as a stopgap arrangement, awaiting the revival of the export sector.

And that might not happen, at least not for some years, because the United States has serious debt problems.

Commenting on the wastefulness of some of the stimulant money, Zhang Xin, an investment executive, points out that “…in Pudong [Shanghai’s business district], vacancy rates are as high as 50 per cent and they are still building new skyscrapers.”

Such wasteful spending on construction projects, and to fuel stock market frenzy, is contributing further to corruption, which is already a national disease.

Even the much hyped-up talk of a significant decline in poverty in China has to be approached with caution, when 800 million farmers are not part of the urban industrial economy.

According to Irene Khan of the Amnesty International, the case for China’s alleviation of poverty is overblown.

At the same time, China’s industrial and business sector is controlled by party apparatchik in cahoots with their favored industrial and business barons.

Therefore, the general image of a prosperous China requires some serious questioning.

The country, under its communist rulers, is a robber-baron economy working for the powerful operating in a moral vacuum.

As Xu Zhiyong, an activist, has reportedly said, “…If China reaches crisis point… it will be because of the accumulated rage from social injustices.”

And this rage is frequently expressed through demonstrations, protests and anger in different parts of the country.

Admittedly, it is not an organized nationwide movement yet. This is because the government maintains a tight surveillance mechanism with exemplary punishments for those stepping out of line.

Most people have a sense of where the line is. For instance, any advocacy of democracy, and questioning of the CPC’s monopoly power, can be dangerous, and even traitorous, because the Party and the Nation are synonymous.

That is where the danger is. Because, any build up of social rage can easily be channeled into national hysteria over some perceived slight and/or humiliation of China’s national pride; leading to an international crisis or worse.

However, there is a danger here for the Party too. Because the same organized hysteria is also capable of being visited on the CPC, if it fails to live up to China’s imagined place in the world.

What it means is that in the next decade or so, China’s rulers will need to perform some magical feat of maintaining social stability by channeling people’s rage into chauvinist pride.

It will be a delicate operation, with unpredictable results for China internally and for the world.

Japan’s new Asian role

By S.P.SETH

Japan’s Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, is seeking to push his concept of a new East Asian community. The new government is keen to redefine Japan that is different from the ousted Liberal Democratic Party’s model.

And the one way they are doing is to refocus its primary role in an Asian context. This is where the East Asian community comes in to create an Asian version of the European Union.

There are, however, some problems here. First, there are already quite a few Asian forums engaged in regional cooperation.

The two that come to mind immediately are the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia is promoting another version of Asia-Pacific Community as an omnibus organization to deal with anything and everything.

Which means that a Hatoyama promoted East Asian regional community will need to cut through a plethora of existing organizations.

That might not be an insurmountable problem but it still is a difficult challenge.

At a more fundamental level, Hatoyama’s proposal is an independent initiative, apprenly without reference to or approval of the United States, Japan’s strategic ally.

Indeed, it doesn’t even include the United States.

Hatoyama has been critical of global capitalism. He is of the view that, “in the post-Cold War period, Japan has been continually buffeted by the winds of market fundamentalism in a US-led movement that is more usually called globalization.”

And this has brought about the global financial crisis.

Which has led many people to believe “that the era of US unilateralism may come to an end. It has also raised doubts about the permanence of the dollar as the key global currency.”

Hatoyama-proposed East Asian community will, therefore, have a common currency, like the euro zone, as an alternative to the dollar.

He first raised his proposal with President Hu Jintao of China last month. As Hatoyama reportedly recounted, “ I told him I would like to form an East Asian community by overcoming differences—among them a territorial dispute over oil and gas fields under the East China Sea.”

He added, “I said we should make it a sea of fraternity instead of a sea of disputes.”

In other words, Hatoyama primarily sees an East Asia Community as Sino-Japanese regional condominium.

Obviously, this would also include other countries from East and South East Asia. The United States wouldn’t be in it. India, Australia and New Zealand would be included, according to Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.

Okada has indicated that the US might be included at a later date.

But the US doesn’t like to be excluded. Kurt Campbell, US assistant secretary of state, has said,”… the United States is going to be part of this party. We are an active player and we’re going to want an invitation as well.”

Which means that if Japan’s new government is excluding the United States, it is likely to create difficulties in its relations with the that country.

Already, the Hatoyama government’s insistence on a fundamental review of the US bases in Okinawa is creating complications.

The US Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, during his recent Japan visit, said that the alternatives to arrangements already negotiated “are either politically untenable or operationally unworkable.”

Tokyo will also soon end its refueling mission in the India Ocean for the war effort in Afghanistan.

However, there is no suggestion that the US-Japan security alliance is in any danger. Japan’s Foreign Minister, Katsuya Okada, has emphasized the importance of US-Japan relations.

He, however, believes that their alliance faces some “specific challenges.” And: “ We would like to solve the challenges in a positive manner.”

Japan is becoming a bit of a problem for the US for its insistence on creating an assertive space in its bilateral relationship with the United States.

The Washington Post recently quoted a senior State Department official as saying that “… the US had ‘grown comfortable’ thinking about Japan as a constant in US relations in Asia. It no longer is, he said, adding that the hardest thing right now is not China, it’s Japan.”

As for its East Asian community initiative, it didn’t initially excite China, but they were not opposed to it. But China is quite supportive now. As Hu Zhengyue, its assistant foreign minister, has said, “We believe that to establish an East Asian community is the future direction of promoting East Asian co-operation. It is the trend.”

In its present nebulous stage, China doesn’t have to worry about it too much. Initially, it will be for Japan to put some flesh on its proposal by way of its membership, charter and so on.

The exclusion of the United States will give China a predominant regional role. But the proposed inclusion of India might be a balancing exercise.

However, it would remain to be seen how China might react to India’s inclusion.

At the present stage, they don’t need to do much apart from generally supporting the concept of an East Asian community, with the prospect of further complicating US-Japan relations.

Even though Japan’s alliance with the United States is its ultimate security shield, especially against China’s rising power, the new government apparently thinks that a more equitable rearrangement of military ties will give Japan greater space and credibility as an Asian power.

The initiative for an East Asian community, without an American imprimatur, is a step in that direction.

There is also a sense that, as things stand, China is setting the pace in the reconfiguration of regional power. Japan, therefore, needs to take an independent initiative to stake its claim to reshape the new regional architecture.

And such reconfiguration would be based on cooperative regionalism for which Europe provides the model.

The European model looks like the test case where historical animosities, as between France and Germany, were subsumed. And the same could happen between China and Japan in an evolving East Asian community.

But there are important differences. The most important is that the European Community (and the NATO alliance) evolved against the backdrop of the Cold War, with the Soviet Union as a common political, strategic and ideological threat.

Asia-Pacific region doesn’t have any such cohesive imperative. A common danger is generally a very strong adhesive.

The second factor is that Asian countries are at different levels of economic development and with different political systems.

Third, Germany’s post-war political system and its leadership not only acknowledged the country’s war crimes but also comprehensively apologized on behalf of the German nation.

Through its political system and incorporation in the European Union (and membership of the NATO), Germany largely won the trust of its neighbors.

In the case of Japan, that sort of comprehensive apology for its war crimes has been lacking. Which is likely to raise questions from time to time.

Fourth, as China’s power and influence grows, its tendency will be to tame and/or subvert regional organizations to serve its national interests.

Therefore, an East Asian community of equal partners (on the lines of the European Community), is unlikely to eventuate.

Beijing would like it to be its own version of the East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

In the medium and long term, however, much will depend on the US political will and strategic commitment to remain engaged in the Asia-Pacific region.

In the ultimate analysis, it is the capacity of China’s political system to hold together the country that will determine the region’s new architecture.

And it will be a bold analyst who might put a wager on it in the midst of all sorts of reports of social unrest.

Will there be a US-China naval showdown?

By S.P.SETH

If one were to go by the apparent bonhomie in US-China relations since the Obama administration took over, it would be fair to surmise that there has been a significant shift in the US policy toward China in favor of not only cooperative but, indeed, collaborative relationship.

But this is only part of the story, as we shall see later.

An important change on the US side was detected during Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s China visit. She asserted that the US’ concerns about China’s human rights record would not derail progress in other areas.

Beijing greatly appreciated this.

China was also encouraged and felt proud by the inclusion of two ethnic Chinese in the Obama cabinet, with Steven Chu as Secretary of Energy and Gary Locke as Secretary of Commerce.

This is a double-edged sword.

Beijing believes that the Chinese ethnicity and heritage should transcend all other loyalties of overseas Chinese to serve the cause of the old motherland and its communist political order.

This was bluntly articulated by Wang Zhaoguo, a Politburo member and a former head of China’s United Front Department, at the Eighth National Congress of Retuned Overseas Chinese and their Relatives.

He reportedly congratulated them for using “blood lineage”, “home-town feeling” and “professional linkages” to achieve “outstanding results in uniting the broad masses of overseas Chinese.”

Obviously, Steven Chu and Gary Locke are outstanding US citizens and their patriotism is beyond question. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be where they are today in the United States.

But such calls on overseas Chinese to put their ethnicity above their citizenship can be counterproductive in the United States, or anywhere else where ethnic Chinese are living by raising the specter of a “fifth column.”

However, the Sino-US bilateral relationship presently looks like going through a honeymoon period of sorts. It was dramatically demonstrated when over 250 high level Chinese officials descended on Washington in late July for their annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

In his opening speech to the assembled Chinese officials, President Obama highlighted the importance of the relationship when he said, “The relationship between the United States and China will shape the 21^st century.”

The US and China are seen in some quarters as the duumvirate (G-2) in the matter of managing the world economy.

Emphasizing convergence in their respective responses to the global economic crisis, Jim Steinberg, deputy secretary of state, has said, “I think it’s demonstrated that there is no decoupling, that we need each other.”

During her China visit, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton expressed her appreciation for China’s investments in US treasury bills and bonds.

China is now said to be the country’s biggest foreign creditor.

But what has happened so far is simply the change in atmospherics, without any substantive improvement.

Take, for instance, the question of trade imbalance, with China stockpiling billions of surplus US dollars.

During the presidential election, candidate Obama accused China of manipulating its currency to gain export advantage, costing jobs in the United States.

In the new atmosphere, the United States no longer uses the word “manipulation” of currency. But they still maintain that the yuan is undervalued.

In other words, the huge trade imbalance and the resultant billions of dollars in currency reserves that China continues to accumulate, still remains a serious issue.

And then there is the climate change question. While China is making a lot of noise on controlling carbon emissions in the future, it is not willing to accept binding cuts.

This could develop into a very serious issue if the carbon emission control legislation, being developed in the Senate, were to impose tariffs on products from countries, like China, that do not accept binding cuts to their emissions.

However, the US seems keen to have China’s support on some contentious international issues. For instance, the United States is hoping to have China on board with new sanctions on Iran, if it were necessary.

While China supports nuclear non-proliferation and Iran’s inclusion in it, it is not keen on UN Security-Council mandated sanctions.

Indeed, China hosted an official visit from Iran’s Vice-President, Mohammad Reza Rahimi, only a few days ago. The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported Premier Wen Jiabao enthusiastically commending the progress in Sino-Iranian relations at a meeting with the visiting official guest.

He said, “The Sino-Iranian relationship has witnessed rapid development, as the two countries’ leaders have had frequent exchanges, and cooperation in trade and energy has widened and deepened.”

Even with existing sanctions in place, two-way trade between China and Iran rose 35 per cent last year, to $27 billion.

And in the last five years, China has reportedly signed about $120 billion worth of oil deals with Iran.

In light of such high stakes in economic ties with Iran, it doesn’t look like that China will come on board with the United States in any significant way, if required.

North Korea, though, has increasingly become an area of shared concern. Washington has come to rely heavily on China to persuade or coerce Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear ambitions.

Despite Wen Jiabao’s recent visit to North Korea, the latter remains obdurate. But Beijing is not willing to go all the way to bring down the regime in Pyongyang for fear of a flood of refugees into China.

China’s political leverage in the hermit kingdom is limited, as it doesn’t seem to have access to any alternative political centre, if it exists at all.

Therefore, the US reliance on China in regard to North Korea seems as unproductive as any other available course.

Even though the political rhetoric on China is sounding quite positive, there is considerable concern on its rising military power.

Lately, there has been a panic of sorts in the US military circles over China’s development of a ‘killer missile’, believed to have “the range of a ballistic missile and the accuracy of a cruise missile” , to target US aircraft carriers.

According to Randy Schriver, a US military analyst, “The Chinese would have the ability to hold our carriers at a great distance—it almost makes the aircraft carriers obsolete.”

Vice-Admiral John Bird, commander of the Seventh Fleet, is worried too, though he doesn’t think that China’s ‘killer missile’ will make aircraft carriers obsolete.

He said, in Sydney that, “Challenged with that threat you might adjust your approach, but that is a far cry from making carriers obsolete.”

But John Bird does think that China’s naval capability “has grown much faster than any of our predictions.” And many of these new capabilities “are intended to counter” the US navy, with weapons systems “targeted to our carriers and larger ships.”

Referring to some provocative naval incidents in the past few months in the South China Sea, he said, “They [China] have made it clear they consider the South China Sea to be more or less theirs.”

And he is quite right because China passed legislation in the nineties to assert that claim.

South China Sea is, therefore, likely to increasingly become the testing ground of China’s maritime power.

Basically, according to Vice-Admiral John Bird, “…the Chinese would like to see less of the Seventh Fleet in this part of the world.”

He suggested that China aimed ultimately to displace the US in the Pacific.

In other words, despite all the recent political bonhomie between the US and China, the inherent logic of an eventual naval showdown at some point in the future is hard to ignore.

China’s Rise Spells Turbulence

By S.P.SETH

China’s communist rulers put up a big show to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of their revolution. But the show was not open to the people of the People’s Republic of China, except on TV screens.

The residents with houses and balconies with the parade view were barred from looking out. The hotels were barred from having guests.

This says a lot about the regime that doesn’t trust its own people while celebrating the country’s achievements over a sixty-year period. What are they afraid of?

Obviously even after China’s impressive economic growth and growing military might, the regime still worries about its popular legitimacy.

They don’t seem quite sure if the implied social contract they have made with the people for legitimacy, based on economic growth, is working or not.

China’s communist oligarchy seeks legitimacy for monopoly of power indefinitely, without popular participation. The exclusion of people from the sixtieth anniversary celebrations is a classical example of both arrogance and paranoia.

There are two elements to China’s strategy to keep people on its side. The first is continuing economic growth to absorb the growing pool of unemployed people. The recent economic slowdown has put a damper on it despite the large economic stimulus package.

The hastily-packaged stimulus spending is creating further distortions in an economy already lopsided to fuel real estate and stock market fluctuations as well some shoddy infrastructure spending.

The government is now reining down some of it for fear of fueling inflation. But with so much dependent on maintaining economic momentum to contain social instability, it seems like the government is all the time trying to plug a leaking boat which might flounder some where along the line.

And since there are no measurable yardsticks of popular support like democratic elections and supportive institutions, the government is always second-guessing its people.

There is widespread social unrest across the country. The government has stopped publishing annual statistics of such protests because the situation is getting worse.

This is not to suggest that there is an imminent threat to the Party’s power but there is a steady, though scattered, groundswell of frustration and anger.

And this is coalescing around corruption. At its recent party meeting, the leadership admitted that the corruption has “seriously damaged the party’s flesh-and-blood bond with the people and has seriously affected the solidity of the party’s ruling status.”

Corruption is everywhere in the country. The Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, has reportedly listed China as the second worst country in bribery out of 22 in its 2008 report.

Corruption now is institutionalized and because it involves all levels of the Party and government, it is becoming increasingly difficult to root out.

And even when some big fish is snared occasionally and punished severely, it is generally attributed to political vendetta.

And this general sense of malaise and corruption is not helped when the sons and daughters of top party leadership control some of the biggest business conglomerates in China.

For instance, the former president and party general secretary Jiang Zemin’s son is reportedly the country’s telecommunications tsar. Li Peng’s family is controlling the power sector. Zhu Ronji’s son is into banking. And President Hu Jintao’s son recently sold automated ticket machines to Beijing city government.

All these princelings might be shrewd businessmen and women in their own right, but it is only fair to ask if they would have made it to the top business league but for their political connections?

No wonder that corruption and nepotism have become the focus of people’s frustration and anger against the system.

And because the problem is systemic and entrenched at the highest levels in some form or the other, there is lack of concerted action to deal with it.

Therefore, despite impressive economic growth as an exercise in legitimacy, the Party is not so sure about its rapport with the people.

At the same time, the rural masses of the country have largely missed out from economic growth, with resources mainly directed to China’s industrial economy.

Indeed, they have been subsidizing industrial growth through diversion of rural land, water supply, relatively depressed prices of rural products and export of cheap labor to work on urban construction and industrial sites.

There is widespread paranoia at the Party’s top level about danger lurking everywhere, evident in the exclusion of people from official celebrations.

Which manifests itself even more severely when dealing with ethnic minorities like the Tibetans and Uighur people.

Indeed, the Party is not averse to using mainstream Han population against these marginalized minorities to whip up national hysteria, inside and outside the country. This was evident at the time of the Beijing Olympics.

At the same time, there is a deeply felt sense of historical humiliation inflicted on China during the 19^th century, as well as the Japanese invasion and atrocities of the last century.

Therefore, when Mao declared China’s liberation and the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949, he also proudly announced that this was the moment when ‘China has stood up’.

In other words, China’s “liberation” was essentially couched in nationalist terms.

However, Mao got distracted with his power plays leading to purges, disastrous experiments of economic and social engineering like the Great Leap Forward culminating in the lost decade of the Cultural Revolution.

It was only after Mao’s death that China’s leadership got a clear sense of direction under Deng Xiaoping about building up the country into a modern and powerful state. And to achieve this it was imperative to create a growing and modern economy.

The only successful model for this was to harness aspects of capitalism to build up China.

Apart from economic growth, nationalism (increasingly as xenophobia) is another important plank in the Party’s exercise in popular legitimacy.

The sixtieth birth day military parade, with China’s armed might on display, was intended both to rally people around the Party as the architect and builder of China’s national power; as well as to serve notice on the world that China really means business when it comes to defending and promoting its perceived national interests.

And these national interests are not static but expanding with its global power.

Deng Xiaoping advised that China should bide its time while getting on with the task of building a strong and powerful nation.

Today’s communist leaders believe that China is now in a position to flex its muscles but without going overboard as it still has quite some way to go to attain military parity with the United States.

But the upcoming generation of new communist leadership material is quite jingoistic in terms of China’s national interests.

Wang Xiaodong, an influential leader of the China Youth and Juvenile Research Centre, for instance, is quoted in the Australian newspaper (in a report from its China correspondent) to say that the younger generation “will globalize its [China’s] national interests, and this will affect not just our close neighbors but the whole world. It [China] must gain the capacity to protect those interests.”

The process of expanding China’s national interests, and to secure them with greater projection of its military power, has already begun evidenced from the scramble for resources.

Its stark manifestation was the jostling of a US ship in the South China Sea, and similar incidents of lesser intensity.

Communist China’s 6oth birthday was a massive display of its power, with obvious message for the world.

And if the Party comes under pressure from increased social unrest (as seems likely), the temptation to turn up the nationalist heat to rally people around the flag might be irresistible.

And this is not what the world looking for from a rising China.

The Dalai Lama, Taiwan and China

By S.P.SETH

The Dalai Lama’s recent Taiwan visit was comforting for its typhoon ravaged people. But it infuriated China. An official spokesman commented that, “Under the pretext of religion, he has all along been engaged in separatist activities.”

Elaborating, he said, “Obviously, this is not for the sake of disaster relief. It’s an attempt to sabotage the hard-earned good situation in cross-strait relations.”

Considering that President Ma Ying–jeou has been bending over backward to please China, he obviously made some hard political calculations when allowing the Dalai Lama’s visit.

He was losing political ground to the opposition Democratic Progressive Party from the torrent of criticism in the country over his administration’s slow and tardy response to the devastating tragedy of Typhoon Morakot.

And knowing how close the Ma administration is to China, they must have explained to Beijing their need to contain political damage that might worsen if the Dalai Lama was refused to visit Taiwan in his role of imparting spiritual solace.

Beijing might not have found it satisfactory but the thought of another possible DPP comeback at some point must be sobering.

The Typhoon Morakot has killed up to 800 people, destroyed property and dislocated communities.

In the midst of all this destruction, the government seemed still unsure how best to respond as if the gravity of the situation had not sunk in.

On such occasions when Nature’s wrath strikes, and the government is woefully incompetent and inadequate, people’s minds turn to spiritual nourishment.

The local leaders (mayors and local government chiefs) were more responsive to their people’s need for some sort of spiritual comfort at a time of tremendous grief.

Which led them to invite the Dalai Lama to serve that need.

Whether or not they were politically motivated is not the issue here. The issue is that they spotted the dire need for spiritual solace and decided that the Dalai Lama was the one to fit that role.

And he played that role with great aplomb and sincerity, judging from the people’s enthusiasm at his meetings.

Indeed China too, in its present state of obsessive greed and consequent moral/spiritual void, can use the Dalai Lama for the good of its people to perform such a role.

China’s ruling oligarchy has so demonized him that they refuse to see any role for him. For them he is a separatist, a political monk and a traitor, at worst.

And what has he done to deserve these epithets? Simply because he seeks autonomy for Tibet as part of China.

Which translates into an autonomous Tibet being able to deal with its regional affairs, while the central government in Beijing controls its defense, foreign dealings and currency.

With such sovereign control over Tibet, is it possible to imagine that it would pose a threat to China’s territorial integrity?

In a country of 1.3 billion people, an autonomous Tibet’s population of about 6 million will be a tiny minority.

And if Beijing can be paranoid on this score, then there is something seriously wrong about the polity and psychology of such a state.

Indeed, judging by the Dalai Lama’s public pronouncements he comes out as a very pragmatic and practical man. For instance, he is always hosing down the hotheads in the Tibetan Youth Congress who advocate independence for Tibet.

The Dalai Lama has reportedly said, “But I always ask them: How are you going to attain independence? Where are you going to get the weapons? How are you going to pay for them? How are you going to send them into Tibet? They have no answer.”

This is certainly not a guy who has some delusion of grandeur about Tibet’s capacity to become independent through an armed struggle with the hugely powerful China.

He acknowledges China’s great power role. They already have the “manpower, military power [and] monetary power.” But, he says, “Moral power, moral authority is lacking.”

In other words, China would need some moral and spiritual foundation to underpin its heedless and relentless pursuit of greed.

Because, in its absence, it will lose its social and cultural cohesion and bring on itself the social chaos that its leadership professes to fear so much.

And for this, China can certainly use the Dalai’s Lama’s moral authority.

According to Pico Iyer, who has studied the Dalai Lama over the decades, “…the Dalai Lama has always been adept at pointing out, logically, how Tibet’s interests and China’s converge—bringing geopolitics and Buddhist principles together…”

China, therefore, should tap his spiritual and moral authority and make him a partner in its moral regeneration.

Which would require them to stop demonizing him as some sort of an evil phenomena.

An autonomous Tibet might give some substance to China’s otherwise phony claim of ethnic and cultural diversity.

They should stop waiting for the Dalai Lama to die and replace him with their own compliant nominee.

Indeed, in his death, he might become a more potent symbol of retrieving Tibet’s identity, with not inconsiderable public support internationally.

At 73, the Dalai Lama is still going strong, and is likely to be around for many years.

If Beijing can get over its pathological hatred of him, he might be able to play a useful role in broadening and humanizing China’s image.

And with his considerable spiritual following in Taiwan, he might even be able to play a useful bridging role with the mainland.

The point is that China’s paranoid leadership needs to relax and let Taiwan breathe freely.

Even with a broadly shared culture, people can still decide to live as separate nations. Take the case of Australia and New Zealand. They have the best of relations as separate countries with a shared cultural heritage.

Why can’t China feel more confident with an independent Taiwan, with both countries deepening their shared cultural, trade and other activities?

Granting autonomy to Tibet might be the first step to make China feel more at ease.

Troubled China-India relations

By S.P.SETH

Recent press reports suggest that tensions between China and India are once again on the rise on their disputed border. China claims a vast swathe of India’s northeastern state of Arunchal Pradesh as its territory.

The ongoing border talks between the two countries haven’t done much to resolve the dispute. They simply froze the border dispute to unfreeze other aspects of the relationship.

But it does crop up now and then with renewed tensions to remind the world that all is not quiet on India-China border.

Apparently, things have heated up to a point where Professor Brahma Chellaney, of the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi, has said, “Things are getting really intense and from the Indian perspective outrageous.”

The border issue is part of a much more complex relationship.

Beijing has never taken kindly to the presence of the Dalai Lama and his entourage in India, even though New Delhi regards Tibet as part of China.

At the same time, it infuriates Beijing when India is paraded so often in international talkfest as its Asian rival.

They tend to be dismissive of these claims, considering that China is stronger than its presumed Asian rival.

But Beijing can’t stop the world from projecting India as a competing Asian power.

This has been China’s problem ever since its “liberation” in 1949. India keeps popping up in some way or the other.

New Delhi’s initial role (in the early fifties) to sponsor communist China into international community was grudgingly accepted, but its credentials doubted.

Its role in facilitating autonomy for Tibet in the fifties was regarded as doing the US bidding. And India increasingly came to be seen as an American proxy.

China is unforgiving that India somehow continues to exist as a single national entity. And by virtue of its size and potential is regarded as China’s Asian rival.

Indeed, the successful creation of Bangladesh in early seventies with Indian help, sent Beijing into a rage; with Premier Zhou Enlai questioning (in an interview with a British journalist) the very basis of India’s nationhood, calling it a British creation.

New China News Agency (NCNA) then warned India on December 17, 1971, that others might do to India what it had done to Pakistan.

In other words, India too could be dismembered, apparently with Chinese help.

It was, therefore, not entirely surprising when it was reported recently that a think tank linked to the Chinese military called for India to be split into 30 independent states.

It further said that if China “takes a little action, the so-called great Indian federation can be broken up.”

This (the breaking up of India), in its view, would be in China’s interest, and foster regional prosperity.

And it could be accomplished though the agency of China-friendly countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal helping “different nationalities” (in India) establishing their own independent states.

Beijing is obviously rattled by India’s move to strengthen its military presence along their joint border after reports of Chinese military intrusions, describing it as “unwise military moves.”

New Delhi, on the other hand, has reiterated their joint commitment (with China) to “resolve outstanding issues, including the boundary question, through peaceful dialogue and consultations, and with mutual sensitivity to each other’s concerns.”

How serious is the border situation?

It is serious enough and one cannot rule out border incidents involving some military clashes. China periodically tests Indian resolve and defenses, with increased military activity.

New Delhi is equally determined to hold on to its border posts and territory to deny China any territorial advantage.

These border military clashes, if they were to occur, might develop their own momentum to create a bigger crisis.

But, by and large, it is likely to be a controlled affair.

However, as pointed out earlier, the border dispute is part of a larger problem for China. Which is that India, with its size and potential, denies China the right to become the acknowledged Asian supremo.

Japan is easily dismissed these days because of its chronic economic and political malaise.

Besides, whenever it tries to raise its head, China whacks it down with the stick of its historical guilt. Which Japan has a knack of re-visiting on itself through its insensitivity and incompetence.

On the other hand, despite all its problems, India tends to loom large. Which is terribly annoying for China.

And as long as this is the case, China finds it difficult to fit India into its scheme of things.

The only way out of this predicament is to somehow slice it into different national entities. They will be more manageable like Pakistan, Bangladesh and other smaller neighbors of India.

The problem, though, is that it is easier said than done.

True, India is plagued with some insurgent and rebel movements in its far-flung regions, including Maoist rebels (of Indian variety). But they have been around, in some form or the other, for a long time.

But it does stretch the Indian state and constitutes a serious problem. However, India has managed it so far.

Its democratic political system gives it the necessary flexibility and responsiveness to try autonomy deals of varying success, unlike China dealing with Tibet, and Xinjiang.

But If China could accentuate these contradictions in India, it would pin down New Delhi in its neighborhood and within the country.

China, for instance, could funnel economic and military aid to these rebel movements through countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and any other country inclined to play China’s game.

China has done this in the past.

But the Maoist policy of creating ‘revolutionary’ disorder was discontinued under Deng Xiaoping to concentrate on China’s modernization.

Therefore, any reversal of this policy to put India in place will require serious deliberations at the highest level.

Because, such adventures can create all kinds of unpredictable complications at a time when China is still in the process of consolidating and expanding its power.

Besides, looking at Pakistan’s parlous state, it doesn’t seem like an effective Chinese proxy against India.

Bangladesh too has its own problems.

At the same time, India might not be an easy pushover.

Which brings us to the threat of creating 30 independent states out of India.

Obviously, it is a warning of sorts to India that China can create serious trouble if New Delhi sought to be ‘unreasonable’.

In the immediate period, this clash might lead to some local clashes.

In the long term, China might continue to question India’s nationhood, and hope for its fragmentation into multiple nation states.

In other words, there is no hopeful scenario for stable China-India relations.

China’s Overkill

By S.P.SETH

Isn’t it ironic that more China becomes a major global player; the more it shows signs of insecurity? One encounters this all the time whether its communist leadership is dealing with dissidents, the Dalai Lama and, more recently, Rebiya Kadeer, leader of the World Uighur Congress.

Rebiya Kadeer (62), who lives in exile in the United States and is the mother of 11 children, is accused of igniting the recent riots in Xinjiang, triggered by the killing of some Uighur workers at a factory in Guangdong.

How she did all this from thousands of miles away in the United States is hard to comprehend! But Beijing is adamant, calling her a criminal, and a terrorist.

Earlier, she spent five years in a Chinese jail even though, at one time, she was said to be China’s richest businesswoman.

The point, though, is that when the Chinese leadership decides to go after some person(s) or group, they don’t worry about the plausibility of their accusation.

Indeed, the ferocity with which they pursue their victim (in this case, Rebiya Kadeer) is breathtaking.

Sample this interview with one Pan Zhiping, a researcher at Xinjiang Academy of Social Science. Talking about Rebiya with the Weekend Australian, she described her as “rotten meat, the kind that only attracts flies… The human rights she advocates are evil rights, murderers’ rights.”

Whatever might be the academic credentials of Pan Zhiping, she certainly is an apt pupil of China’s political establishment.

While an ordinary Chinese academic might verbalize the establishment’s anger, the government always has a ready- made case to condemn their victim.

They have already procured and flashed letters on TV from her two children and other relatives (including some of her grandchildren) to testify that Rebiya started the riots in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.

Does Beijing really think that the world is so gullible as to believe this stratagem of pitting children against their parents?

But Chinese leaders have a history of believing their own propaganda by equating coercive confession as willing admission.

Rebiya’s children are the convenient pawn in this political chess game, and the regime has no moral qualm in these matters.

She said, while visiting Australia, that, “It is shameful that the Chinese Government has tried to turn the children of a mother against her.”

And added, “… It is immoral violence. It is a forgery, transparent propaganda.”

Incidentally, five of her 11 children are living in China. Two of her sons are in Chinese prisons.

Rebiya Kadeer’s Australia trip has infuriated Chinese authorities for allowing a “criminal” and a “terrorist” into Australia in disregard of Chinese representations.

She has been in Australia to attend the premier of a film based on her life (The 10 Conditions of Love) at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

The Chinese diplomatic mission in Australia tried unsuccessfully to stop this documentary being screened in Melbourne.

As a retaliatory measure, Chinese films, that were part of the Melbourne Festival, were withdrawn.

The Australian ambassador in Beijing was summoned to explain, and Melbourne’s Lord Mayor was threatened that his city’s sister-city relationship with Tianjin might be ended.

But the Australian authorities stood their ground both on the screening of the film and the grant of visa to Rebiya Kadeer.

But she hasn’t been granted audience with any of the officials and ministers here.

Rebiya Kadeer has almost overnight become the Dalai Lama of the Uighur people.

Like the Tibetan people, the Uighurs fear ethnic cleansing and cultural decimation.

One must say it defies common sense why China, a strong country of 1.3 billion people, cannot devise a workable policy of accommodating its ethnic minorities like the Tibetans and the Uighurs?

But then the Communist Party of China has always sought to deal with its presumed enemies by demonizing them.

Which brings us to the insecurity inherent in a system where the ruling party has monopoly power.

The CPC’s insecurity borders on paranoia. It believes that it alone can ensure social stability and consequent economic growth in the country.

Hence, any challenge to its power is a challenge to the nation, because both the party and the nation are indivisible.

And Beijing demands utmost loyalty not only from Chinese citizens but also from citizens of other countries with Chinese descent.

The party is, therefore, seeking to rally overseas Chinese as well around the flag. Which is a dangerous exercise, as it tends to elevate national chauvinism to a transcendental level.

At a recent congress of the overseas Chinese, Wang Zhaoguo, a Politiburo member, reportedly called on the delegates to use “blood lineage” of their common Chinese descent “to achieve outstanding results in uniting the broad masses of overseas Chinese.”

And to emphasize the indivisibility of national and party interests, he told the delegates to “do a better job of uniting the force of the circle of overseas Chinese around the party and the government.”

This is quite a dangerous exercise that Beijing is embarking on quite openly.

The Chinese diplomatic missions are already quite active in organizing and mobilizing overseas Chinese in their respective countries. This happened during the anti-Tibetan rallies and about the time of the Beijing Olympics.

But Wang’s brazenly open call on the Chinese citizens of other countries to rally around the flag, the party and the government is a sinister development.

Has Beijing realized that this could create a backlash against Chinese living in other countries by raising concerns about their loyalty?

And if Beijing persists with such politics, it won’t be long before some of them start being seen as a potential fifth column.

China might feel emboldened that with its new reach and power, the benefits of rallying millions of overseas Chinese around the flag far outweigh any potential danger from hostile reaction in other countries.

It probably thinks that no Asian country (where most of the overseas Chinese live) will dare create trouble for its “blood lineage” for fear of crossing China.

If this is the line of thinking dictating China’s policy, it is not a good omen for the region and the world.

Such overkill is the mark of a blustering but essentially paranoid country.