US-China contest for supremacy

By S.P.SETH

The recent China visit of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, is an important development. This is the second of his two recent trips, the first one around the time of the sinking of the South Korean warship, believed to be Pyongyang’s doing.

During that visit, Kim obviously gave his own version of the incident, apparently absolving his country of any wrongdoing. China maintained neutrality on the issue, counseling both sides to maintain calm.

Which disappointed South Korea and the United States, as they believed, on the basis of an investigation into the issue, that North Korea was responsible.

When the United States and South Korea subsequently conducted joint military exercises to emphasize their preparedness and resolve, Beijing was not impressed. It sought to bar the United States from conducting joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, because it constituted a threat to China’s security. (South China Sea is already being billed as China’s territorial lake.)

Apart from warning the United States, China was also implicitly cautioning Seoul against involving foreign vessels in Yellow Sea.

Another message is that the Korean peninsula is China’s security zone and the US involvement could trigger a Chinese response, like in the Korean war of the early fifties.

Indeed, the Xinhua news agency report of Kim Jong-il’s visit, not so subtly, pointed out the link, with the North Korean leader having said, “Through this visit the [North Korean] side had yet another in-depth experience of the preciousness…of the friendship created by older generations of revolutionaries of both countries.”

The spirit of the Korean War was thus invoked, when China halted the US military advance toward the Yalu river.

Against this backdrop of such fraternal ties going back many years, the Chinese press ran a flurry of editorials defending a stable relationship with North Korea.

What it means is that China is veering toward more assured support for North Korea and the Kim Jong-il dynasty.

The reinforcing of the 1950s fraternal ties, forged during the Korean War, is not a good portent.

The Korean War had also intensified the Cold War.

This time, it will be China, and not the former Soviet Union, that would hold the opposing flag.

The US is aware of the new danger China is posing to its naval dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. To counter China’s challenge, it is cultivating and expanding political and military ties with regional countries, like Indonesia and Vietnam.

China, for instance, is not pleased with an impending agreement between Washington and Hanoi to share nuclear fuel and technology for Vietnam’s plans to build 14 nuclear power stations over the next 20 years.

The two countries reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding in April about co-operation on nuclear power, including access to “reliable sources of nuclear fuel.”

China has accused the United States of “double standards” when simultaneously pushing its non-proliferation campaign, and disturbing “the preset international order.”

The US obviously is activating regional resistance to thwart China’s moves to declare Asia-Pacific region as its own bailiwick, as it has done with South China Sea, Yellow Sea and the Korean peninsula.

Although the regional countries are careful not to antagonize China, they are unlikely to be enthused about a sudden chorus from China of its regional primacy.

And why is China ignoring its neighbors’ sensitivities and concerns? Wang Hanling, a maritime expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has an explanation.

According to him, Beijing used to be concerned that the South-East Asian states might gang up against China to promote their own competing claims.

But not any more. Because: “We found our neighbors had territorial-water disputes to wrangle over and national interests to defend, which makes it very difficult for them to build a unified front against China.”

Moreover: “Even if they succeed in joining together, they are still not strong enough to defeat China.” In other words, they are easy to ignore.

It is in this overall context of China’s virtual declaration of its own Monroe Doctrine that the renewal of the Chinese-North Korean friendship (harking back to the fifties) appears part of a pattern to assert China’s security parameters.

China seems determined to drive out the US navy from regional waters. Robert D. Kaplan argues in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs: “China’s strategy to deny the U.S. Navy entry into certain waters is designed not only to keep U.S. forces away generally but also, specifically, to foster its dominance over Taiwan.”

China’s Taiwan strategy is two-fold. First, it is seeking the economic integration of Taiwan with the mainland to a point where its existence as a separate sovereign entity will be difficult to sustain.

The present Taiwanese government, wittingly or unwittingly, is helping the process.

Second: simultaneously, the military pressure on Taiwan is steadily built up by targeting increasing number of missiles.

At the same time, China’s own military build up is designed to deter the United States from weighing in significantly.

Kaplan highlights the seriousness of China’s military build up by pointing out, among other things, that it is “… constructing a major naval base on the southern tip of Hainan Island, smack in the heart of the South China Sea, with underground facilities that could accommodate up to 20 nuclear and diesel-electric submarines…”

China is also developing anti-ship missiles to target US aircraft carriers and other surface vessels.

Some China scholars have felt over the years that China’s transition to great power status need not lead to conflict, like it happened during the two World Wars.

The main argument has been that China is a beneficiary of the existing global system as facilitating its rapid economic growth.

Professor G. John Ikenberry, a proponent of this argument, put it this way in an article in Foreign Affairs: “Technology and the global economic revolution have created a logic of economic relations that is different from the past--- making the political and institutional logic of current order all the more powerful.”

But things are changing too fast, even in the last two years since Ikenberry wrote his article. China’s military build up continues apace, and it has started to assert sovereign claims over important waterways.

While Western economies (including that of the United States) are struggling to recover, China seems to grow increasingly confident about its new place in the world.

In this state of affairs, Professor John Mearsheimer is closer to truth than Sinologists like Ikenberry.

According to the former, “If China continues its impressive economic growth over the next few decades, the United States and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war.”

We are already witnessing a trial run of this in the Asia-Pacific region.