Another look at US’ China Policy

By S.p.SETH

China is looming large in the reformulation of the US’ policy toward the Asia-Pacific region. Using the forum of East-West Center in Hawaii, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, recently stressed that the United States was keen for active engagement with Asia.

And it would like to be actively involved in building up Asia’s security and economic structures and for collaborative action on issues like nuclear proliferation, climate change and food security.

At the same time, she emphasized the important role of regional forums in these matters.

Without mentioning China, she pointedly said that no country, including the US, should try to dominate regional institutions. But emphasized the beneficial role of US engagement in the region.

In other words, the United States is back in Asia to re-engage with the region.

What exactly has led the US Secretary of State to reassert US engagement with Asia?

First, under the Bush administration, the US preoccupation with Iraq, Afghanistan and generally “the war on terror”, led to a slackening of interest in Asia.

The Obama Administration is keen to dispel that view, which has gained increasing currency.

Second, the Bush presidency was more given to unilateral initiatives in preference to multilateral forums, like the ASEAN, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the East Asia Summit, United Nations and so on.

China, on the other hand, had reversed its aversion to regional forums, having earlier feared their domination by the United States.

With their new economic and political clout, they found these forums very useful for expanding their regional role.

In other words, the US pre-occupation with Iraq and Afghanistan, and indifference to the potential of Asian regional cooperation, proved a blessing for China.

In the process, China was able promote and expand its role as a ‘benign’ power supportive of regional institutions.

For instance, China has been able to cobble together a free trade area with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

It is, timely, for the US to be showing new interest in engaging with Asia.

Until now, the Obama Administration seemed to be focusing mainly on forging a new regional and global partnership with China.

The underlying assumption was that China’s partnership was necessary to resolve tricky issues like nuclear proliferation in North Korea and Iran, climate change, global financial crisis, and the undervalued Chinese currency.

But there apparently has been a growing sense of frustration with China’s cavalier and arrogant response, climaxing at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

The US feels that China sabotaged the conference, and humiliated President Obama.

And now has come the Google affair. So far, the Internet giants like Google, Yahoo and others have been toeing the Chinese line in censoring their contents as required by the Chinese authorities.

But when the Chinese hackers started attacking the Gmail accounts of human rights activists and stealing source code and data from Google (and 33 other technology, industrial and chemical companies), the Google decided to blow the whistle.

Its legal officer David Drummond said on the company’s blog: “We have taken the unusual step of sharing information about these attacks with a broad audience not just because of the security and human rights implications of what we have unearthed, but also because this information goes to the heart of a much bigger debate about freedom of speech.”

Which has “…led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China.”

Google has thus put this issue in a larger context of freedom of speech and human rights. And they have the support of the Obama Administration.

Robert Gibbs, Obama’s spokesman, said, “We support Google’s action. Our concern is with actions that threaten the universal rights of a free Internet.”

And now Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has come out strongly in favor of Internet freedom.

She recently said, “Countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet user, risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century.”

China obviously takes a different view. According to the State Council Information Office, “Our country is at a crucial stage of reform and development and this is a period of marked social conflicts.”

As a result, “Properly guided internet opinion is a major measure for protecting Internet information security.”

This is an interesting admission that China is undergoing acute social conflicts.

In other words, despite President Hu Jintao’s slogan of a “harmonious society”, China is going through unpredictable social crisis.

What it means is that despite all the hype about China’s uninterrupted and on-going rise, its future is subject to the vagaries of how this crisis is managed and resolved.

Considering that China is a top-heavy one-party state, it lacks the political shock absorbers and the process of political mediation exercised through popular elections, combined with alternative political structures and necessary constitutional forums.

No wonder, the Party sees Internet as a serious threat to the Communist Party rule and will go to any length to disrupt and control it.

But, the Internet will always remain a challenge because of the multiple ways in which determined users can find ways around the official censoring of its contents.

Google’s threat to pack up their bags in China has created a serious strain in US-China relations.

It has come on top of persistent attempts by Chinese hackers to get into the Pentagon and other US agencies in an on-going cyber warfare of sorts, with serious implications.

It has led the US and some other Western countries to beef up their security systems against such intrusions. Australia is the latest country to set up a separate agency to deal with it.

The extent of Chinese hacking is widespread. According to some reports, the FBI has estimated that as many as 180,000 Chinese are engaged in hacking and they attacked the Pentagon systems 90,000 times in 2009 alone.

The US is the most prized target of Chinese hackers.

China’s cyber army (irrespective of Beijing’s denial of any official link) is part of a wider strategy to wear down the United States, at a time when it is overstretched militarily, financially and, to some degree, psychologically.

Having followed Deng Xiaoping’s advice to bide its time and build its strength, China appears to believe that its time has come to assert its power as the new Middle Kingdom.

And it is in Asia that it is building up its military power to challenge the United States in the next decade or so.

It is developing weapons systems to deny the US access to some of the waterways in Asia, like South China Sea.

There have already been some naval incidents in the South China Sea between China and the US.

China is developing a whole set of weapons to not only deter the US but, if necessary, to even take it on. These include submarines, new generation of combat aircraft, cruise missiles, and even ballistic missiles to target US aircraft carriers.

It is about time, therefore, that the US is going to actively engage with Asia.

China’s Hype and Reality Do Not Square Up

By S.P.SETH

The much-hyped up talk of US-China global partnership hasn’t taken long to experience some reality check.

The Copenhagen climate change conference showed that, despite US efforts to forge a cooperative partnership with China on global issues, Beijing was determined to pursue its own national interests as it saw them.

Indeed, its delegation, including Premier Wen Jiabao, humiliated Obama by simply ignoring him or not turning up for meetings.

Obama’s recent China visit was supposed to have created the basis for a global partnership. China simply made use of it to promote its global image, and to gain favor with domestic audiences.

Obama’s visit appeared to have christened China as the second superpower.

Indeed, President Obama was careful not to dwell on human rights violations in China by simply espousing universal principles of “freedoms of expression and worship, access to information and political participation.”

But the Chinese simply ignored all this and censored the “sensitive” bits for their television audiences.

Why is the US putting up with all this and still seeking common ground with China on global issues?

Some US Sinologists and policy makers have been laying down the rationale for a change of policy for quite some time.

This is best summed up by Professor John Ikenberry in a Foreign Affairs article:

“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 partners have crafted over the last century, rules and institutions that can protect the interests of all states in the more crowded world of the future.”

He adds, “The United States’ global position may be weakening, but the international system the United States leads can remain the dominant order for the twenty-first century.”

The Copenhagen conference showed, if it wasn’t clear already, that China would use international forums to pursue and advance its own national interests.

Therefore, the idea that China can somehow be persuaded to work within a Western-devised international system is not workable.

It doesn’t mean that the US shouldn’t engage with China.

What it means is that it should be aware that China’s objective is to displace the United States as the global superpower, and to create an international system more in tune with its own global aspirations, as opportunities arise.

And it is sensing these opportunities.

What has led to this situation?

The first and foremost is that for nearly a decade the United States has been engaged in two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

While it is slowly disengaging from Iraq, Afghanistan is becoming an ongoing and costly affair, both in terms of casualties and commitment of more troops and resources.

At the same time, there are serious bushfires in Somalia and Yemen in an ongoing war against Islamic terrorists.

In other words, the United States is increasingly getting mired in crises outside its borders.

Which has given China an opening to expand its political horizons and influence out of proportion to its actual power.

In other words, the United States needs very badly to extricate its unsustainable military involvement in all these areas.

Even as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been consuming US energies and resources, it has been hit by an economic crisis, the worst since the Great Depression of the nineteen-thirties.

Even though China too has suffered badly from this global economic downturn, with its exports down by about 25 percent, it has sought to minimize its economic woes through a crash economic stimulation program.

This might create more economic and social problems at a later time. But, for the present, it has further enhanced China’s status as an emerging superpower.

However, there is another reality that is escaping notice with all the hype about China’s growing power. In all its haste for statistical economic growth (even those figures are sometimes dodgy), China’s rulers have ignored the imperatives of social equity and justice.

The system seems to work for the rich and the powerful in cahoots with the party apparatchik. And it is underwritten by systemic corruption at all levels.

According to China’s National Audit Office, Chinese officials siphoned off $39 billion by way of embezzlement and other forms of misuse of funds during the first eleven months of last year.

And this included money laundering and issuing fraudulent loans, sale or purchase of state land or mining rights. Corruption is estimated to cost about 10 per cent of government spending.

John Garnaut, China correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald, has examined the case of a county in Anhui province where “the top cadres are dividing up the taxpayer spoils over hot pot, gambling, saunas and prostitutes, usually in this order.”

And he adds, “It’s not just carnal pleasures that are for sale, but investment projects, procurement contracts and almost every key position in the bureaucracy.”

Garnaut believes that this “sorry state of affairs is replicated across China’s 1600 rural counties”, as well as in urban areas, “although usually in less blatant form.”

Such widespread corruption is a serious threat to social stability—which is supposed to be the raison ‘d’être of Communist Party’s political monopoly.

No wonder that China’s rulers are always on the edge, fearing any challenge to their monopoly power. The eleven-year jail sentence for the prominent dissident Liu Xiaobo on subversion charges, is an example of this.

Liu was the co-author of the call for political liberalization in the country,called Charter 08. And he was detained just before the Charter was published in December 2008. Many Chinese intellectuals have since signed it.

Apart from calling for reforms to usher in democracy, the Charter makes a searing analysis of China’s deplorable state of affairs.

It says: “The political reality… is that China has many laws but no rule of law; it has a constitution but no constitutional government. The ruling elite continues to cling to its authoritarian power…”

And: “The stultifying results are endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law, weak human rights, decay in public ethics, crony capitalism, growing inequality between the wealthy and the poor, pillage of natural environment…”

This is not all. There is also “the exacerbation of a long list of social conflicts, especially in recent times, a sharpening animosity between officials and ordinary people.”

With such creaky social and political foundations, one has to be very skeptical about the hype regarding China’s great power status.