China as an alternative global model

By S.P.SETH

When the United States’ political system was in gridlock over the question of raising the country’s debt limit, China’s official media couldn’t help lecturing Washington over its bad housekeeping.

Its news-agency, Xinhua, said, “It is time for the naughty boys in Washington to stop chicken games before they cause more damages.” In another commentary, the agency said that, “China has every right now to demand the US to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets.”

Well, imagine China’s glee in being able to talk down to the United States in its capacity as its principal creditor. China must have waited long for this day, not believing that the day will ever come.

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that China fancies itself as a preferred alternative global model. As the Economist observes, “So attempts to apply precepts devised by ancient Chinese philosophers to the modern world are in vogue. One popular revival is the [ancient] notion of tianxia, or ‘all under heaven.’”

“ Tianxia”, according to the Economist, “is widely understood as a unified world dominated by one country (call it the ‘middle kingdom’, perhaps), to which neighbors and those beyond look for guidance and pay tribute.”

How will this global system work? Apparently, one way is China’s ‘benign’ authority drawn from its moral and political example, and accepted by the rest of the world. There is a view in China that it once enjoyed such moral and political ascendancy widely accepted by rest of the world around it. And it is only a question of reviving and reasserting that dominance.

However much China might want a new Middle Kingdom, it is frankly a pipedream. First, the world has long since moved on from those times, if they ever existed as postulated by a new crop of Chinese scholars.

Second: any revival of China’s past brings it into conflict with the narrative of the country’s communist revolution that was based on rejection of the past. Indeed, its main premise was that China lost its way because it clung to its past and failed to reinvent itself in the modern world. That was said to explain its subjugation by the West and Japan.

And now to argue that China’s traditional past was right all along and should be re-established as a global order will need re-writing its history. That will be a stupendous task, if it could be undertaken at all. In that sort of re-writing, the communist revolution, and the state based on it, will become an aberration, making the country’s communist rule even more illegitimate.

Third: to elevate present-day China into a worthy global example, it has to have a certain moral stature and ascendancy. And, by no stretch of imagination, its communist regime is a standard bearer.

The country’s communist oligarchy is afraid of its own shadow. The way it has gone about rounding up dissidents and intellectuals and shutting up social media sites, fearing a possible onset of Arab Spring in China, is an example of its nervousness. The regime seems to be all the time worrying about some social cataclysm overtaking it.

For instance, according to the New York Times (quoting WikiLeaks), Chinese officials in 2009 sought the help of US embassy in Beijing to block Chinese citizens from visiting the Twitter website with postings of accurate pollution readings in the capital.

They feared that the comparison between their lower and sanitized readings and the Twitter postings by Americans might lead to “social consequences”—read social unrest.

Despite China’s impressive economic growth rate, the regime worries that its “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and ultimately unsustainable” growth could create social instability.

And they are right because unless statistical economic growth is translated into social justice for all, there is every reason that things could derail and collide as badly as happened recently between its two high-speed trains. Like the hurry in putting together the high-speed rail system into operation without the necessary preparatory work and in the midst of an endemic culture of corruption, the country’s entire economy is built on such creaky foundations that have not been adequately secured.

And these are becoming shakier by the day with reports of rising unrest and demonstrations in different parts of the country, including the capital.

There are many examples of social unrest arising from endemic corruption, widening urban-rural divide, huge income disparities, demolition of old urban dwellings to make way for new, often without adequate and timely compensation, arbitrary acquisition of rural land for urban and industrial development, iniquitous and arbitrary local levies in rural areas. choking cities and polluted rivers, lack or absence of transparency, an arbitrary justice system and the list goes on.

The government takes great care, through its wide network of security and surveillance system, that all the incidents of social unrest remain local and do not develop into a wider conflagration, as has happened in the Arab world.

There is no suggestion here that the Chinese regime, and the system underpinning it, is about to collapse, though the same could also have been said of the Tunisian and Egyptian dictators who had apparently perfected their respective systems of internal repression over many years. But when the time came, it wasn’t much use against people power.

The point to make here is that with all the steam building up within China’s pressure-cooker society, it has to find some outlet before being blown up. The one way to release is by introducing political reforms, such as popularly elected representative governments at all levels and constitutionally validated political institutions, so that people can vent their grievances and frustrations through legal channels.

The problem is that China’s communist oligarchs fear that this might not work in their favor, and they will lose their monopoly on power. Their self-serving argument is that the Western-style democracy is not suited to China and will lead to social instability and chaos.

Rather, it is the other way around. Because, if China’s scattered unrest here and there is not channeled properly through legal avenues, this is likely, at some point, to take the form of the Arab Spring now pervading in the Middle East with China’s communist rulers gone with it. It might not happen now but unless political reforms are introduced in China soon, it is bound to happen sooner or later in some form or the other.

China’s hegemony to face resistance

By S.P.SETH

The US Vice-President, Joe Biden’s, recent China visit appears to have been quite uneventful, apart from the reported fight between a visiting American goodwill basketball team (unrelated to Biden’s visit) and their Chinese counterparts. Is this a portent of things to come?

Considering China’s nervousness over their investments in the US treasury notes, Biden must have assured his hosts that the US remained a secure economic destination. It is reported, though, that the Chinese leaders didn’t need any assurance as they have confidence in the US financial system.

The US’s weakened economic position, with China as its biggest creditor, does give Beijing an important political and economic leverage in their bilateral relationship. Indeed, according to a report in the Times, at the Pentagon they are already practicing economic war games about this threat “that makes America vulnerable to a new kind of bloodless but ruthless war”.

The Times’ correspondent, Helen Rumbelow, writes, “At the end of that Pentagon session, [in 2009] the 80-odd players returned from their bunkers and assessed the damage.”

And the result: “China won, without so much as reaching for a gun.”

China increasingly fancies itself as a new superpower, with fewer constraints on its power. And it is reflected in Beijing’s refusal to become part of a regional architecture conducive to stability and cooperation.

Beijing reportedly is rebuffing efforts to set up protocols and institutions for crisis- prevention in the region. According to Kurt Campbell, the US assistant secretary of state: “We continue to underscore how important that is.”

He told the Sydney Morning Herald, “More and more, Chinese and the United States operate side by side [in the region]. There is a need to have predictability on the high seas and above the high seas.”

Hence the need “to put in place the institutions and policies to manage any incidents”; of which there have been quite a few recently on the high seas between the US and China and between China and its regional neighbors.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia reportedly made the same point recently when addressing the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Perth. She said, “This is about shaping a future…by developing institutions, norms, rules and habits of consultations and co-operation that minimize the risk of conflict or miscalculation, manage the frictions of a growing and changing Asia-Pacific…”

But China doesn’t seem interested. With its blanket sovereignty claims to regional seas and islands, it is not interested in a regional architecture that might constrain China.

Take the case of South China Sea and the island chains that China claims as its own. Some of China’s neighbors contest Beijing claims of sovereignty.

And there have been naval incidents between China and Vietnam, and between China and the Philippines over the ownership issue. The Chinese navy, for instance, cut off the cables of a Vietnamese survey ship in waters claimed by that country.

The Philippines too has claimed a number of Chinese naval incursions. Manila felt so threatened that it invoked its security treaty with the US.

China’s attempts to turn the whole of South East Asia into its regional enclave are forging closer strategic ties between the United States and Vietnam.

The spectacle of China’s heavy-handedness reminds one of Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere around the time of the WW11, which it sought to carve out by attacking and occupying its Asian neighbors.

China, of course, is seeking it to do it more cleverly without the use, so far, of brute force, but with the same intention of dominating the region to the exclusion of other powers.

This sort of bellicosity doesn’t square with China’s often-stated declaration that it was not a “hegemonic” power and would never aspire to be one, though, lately, one doesn’t hear much of this.

Beijing has found a way around it. By calling its regional claims as sovereign waters/territory, it ceases to be a hegemonic issue, as far as China is concerned.

It is a very flexible concept and can be enlarged as China becomes more powerful and its national interests expand politically and economically into the far corners of the world.

China is developing a blue waters navy to enforce its writ, and the recent test runs of its aircraft carrier is a forerunner of things to come.

Pentagon’s report, titled Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2011, paints a rather disturbing picture of things to come.

According to Michael Schiffer , deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, the pace and scope of China’s military buildup is “potentially destabilizing”, not only because of its new weaponry but also due to a lack of transparency.

The US, as well as, China’s neighbors are understandably worried. Their response is two-fold.

First, some of them are drawing closer to the United States to counter China’s threat. Second, they are also beefing up their own military forces for a credible deterrence.

For instance, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are reinforcing their defenses by buying new weapons and equipment, as well as renewing their defense ties with the United States.

Vietnam and the United States are creating new strategic linkages to counter China.

The Philippines is invoking its defense alliance with the United States in the face of China’s intrusions into its territorial waters around the islands it claims in the South China Sea.

If China continues to claim and assert its sovereignty over contested islands and waterways, and aggressively pursues its domination over its neighbors, Asia-Pacific region is slated to face turbulent times in the years ahead.

China, though, will face tough resistance to its new Monroe Doctrine for the region.

First of all, the United States is unlikely to let China turn the region into its enclave.

At the same time, China’s neighbors will not willingly become part of its Greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere.

China should know that because it fought against Japan when it sought to impose its domination on China and the region.

Where to for China?

By S.P.SETH

Without discounting China’s impressive economic growth, starting with the opening of its economy in the eighties, it has also done a good job of projecting itself as an alternative model to the faltering Western world with its economic malaise. But China’s alternative model is not what it is made out to be. To understand this, one needs to go back to the eighties when it all began under Deng Xiaoping.

Soon after Deng initiated economic opening, he had to contend with the ideological opposition of the Left-wing in the CPC worried about ‘spiritual pollution’ from the ‘tainted’ Western economic model of economic growth. He did prevail. But he wasn’t all that prepared for an incipient democracy movement making the death of the axed General Secretary Hu Yaobang as a rallying point. This students-led movement, inspired also by the Soviet leader Gorbachev’s perestroika, was emerging to challenge the system as well as the practice of communism in China, and favoring a democratic polity. And we all know what happened to this democratic movement with its brutal suppression by the army in June 1989.

One main lesson communist China’s leadership learnt from the collapse of the Soviet Union was not to go for the Gorbachev-style perestroika, as this would be the end of the Party’s monopoly power. When the Soviet leader visited China in 1989 in the midst of students’ movement for democratic reforms, Deng Xiaoping had apparently already made up his mind to crush the democracy movement as it was expanding its constituency to include other segments of the society and beyond the capital, Beijing. After the brutal crackdown in June 1989, China faced strong international condemnation and selective sanctions, imposed on the country by a number of countries.

Deng was not deterred and, after a brief hiatus, he sought to rally the Party around his policy of economic growth and China’s modernization. And he was successful in this. At the political level, however, he was determined to uphold the Leninist political system of the Party wielding all the power. He came to the conclusion that as long as China was in a growth mode with opportunities for employment in the country’s industrial economy, the communist regime will be able to maintain momentum and a measure of legitimacy. Besides, as economic growth picked up, it created an aspirational middle class with stake in the system. After Deng died, his successors have broadly followed the same guiding philosophy of stepping up economic growth, with the Party controlling political power.

However, the country’s political and social situation is getting more complex. The sectoral economic and social imbalances in the country have created serious distortions. The disproportionate emphasis on industrial economy has hit the agricultural sector, resulting in millions of rural workers migrating to cities in search of jobs. As a result the rural sector has lost many of its young and able-bodied people to the cities, thus hurting its economy as well as its social landscape.

In the cities, they either have very little or no access to local facilities because of original residency. Their wages are low (though this is changing gradually because of increased labor demand) and there have been reports of employers withholding wages and, at times, not paying at all. Since the employers are politically well connected, the workers don’t have access to legal processes. In any case, the legal system is subject to political interference and/or manipulation. At the same time, rural workers are blamed by the locals for rising crime in the cities.

Indeed, the rural sector has been subsidizing industrial growth in a number of ways. First: its labor force, working on industrial and construction sites, have been paid low wages. Second: the prices of rural produce have remained depressed to keep the industrial scene competitive. Three: the farming communities have been subject to local taxes and imposts at the whim of the party committees because they lack necessary muscle at the central level. Fourth: rural land on urban periphery has been acquired arbitrarily for industrial and construction sites.

In rural areas, which still have the most population in China, people are doing it very tough. They have been virtually left out of the country’s industrial economy, controlled and dictated by the rich and the powerful operating in a symbiotic relationship. The resultant economic distortions are widening economic and social chasm between the urban and rural sectors, and fostering severe regional imbalances with the coastal hub hogging the economic limelight. There is an obscene wealth gap between the rich and the poor, which keeps growing. The worsening environmental pollution is choking China’s cities and affecting its river systems.

Underlying all this is a corrupt system that pervades from the local levels to the highest organs of the state and the Party. It is not that the Party leadership is not cognizant of the endemic corruption that pervades the system. Indeed, President Hu Jintao only recently highlighted the danger from widespread corruption for the Party, and emphasized the need for drastic action. But the funny thing is that despite all these exhortations at the highest level, the corruption keeps on spreading its net wider and wider.

Since anyone and everyone in the Party is involved, nobody wants to bell the cat for fear of being ensnared in a serious nationwide crackdown on corruption. Therefore, the Party leadership makes routine exhortations about the danger of corruption to calm down people’s jittery nerves. But exhortations are not action and people’s cynicism is growing.

While the President talks of tackling corruption, Premier Wen Jiaobao talks of political reform and creating a responsive democratic system. Again, nothing happens and dissidents and activists keep on being rounded up. Sometimes, between the President and the Premier, China’s politics looks like a Judy and Punch show without any serious intent to deal with the two main issues that China faces. Which is: corruption and the need for a responsive and transparent political system answerable to the people.

Premier Wen Jiabao seems to have perfected his act of being the nation’s kindly grandpa who emerges at a time of major catastrophe to calm people’s nerves and assure them that everything will be all right and the culprits will be apprehended and punished. He recently appeared in this role after the collision of two bullet trains that killed at least 39 people and injured more than 200. But this routine is also wearing thin.

He started with apologizing for taking some time to appear for the occasion due to his 11-day illness. But it didn’t cut much ice with many people when pictures soon appeared on the internet showing him in perfect health at functions during the period of his presumed illness. Which doesn’t say much for the top leadership of the country.

The Chinese oligarchy’s standard approach to dealing with unrest in the country is to beef up its internal security apparatus, now at $90 billion. Despite this, it is not succeeding entirely. It is estimated that, so far this year, there have been 180,000 riots in the country. The one area where the state is finding it really hard is the internet, notwithstanding all the firewalls and other gadgets and programs to control and censor it.

The Chinese site, Sina Weibo, (like the Twitter) has given a new meaning to news and views. With about 200 million Chinese using it, this has also allowed other forms of media to push their boundaries. For instance, even the state broadcaster ignored the warnings about not reporting on the train collision disaster.

Its news anchor made a searing, on air, commentary on the state of affairs in the country, without making it explicitly political.

He reportedly said: “ Can we live in apartments that that do not fall down? Can the roads we drive on in our cities not collapse? Can we travel in safe trains? And if there is a major accident, can we not be in a hurry to bury the trains? Can we afford the people a basic sense of security?”

And, he added, “China, please slow down. If you are too fast, you may leave the souls of your people behind.” This says it all.

May be it is time for the world romanticizing about China to slow down too and get a better grip on the reality of that country.

Australia’s China conundrum

By Sushil Seth

With Australia’s economic fortunes linked to China’s economic growth, Beijing presumes that it has earned the right to hector Canberra on the state of its economy. And to add insult to injury, a junior diplomat at the Chinese embassy did the hectoring by telling a business forum that Australia’s “dual speed and patchwork economy” needed fixing with Chinese help.

In a wide-ranging critique, Mr Ouyang Cheng reportedly advised Australia to deal with “infrastructure bottleneck and shortage of skilled labor”. He maintained that China’s strengths in these areas could be utilized to “help accelerate Australia’s economic development.”

He cautioned that “Australia’s dual speed [basically the growing mining sector, and the depressed manufacturing and other economic activities) and patchwork economy would not only hurt its own economic development but also influence China and Australia’s long-term economic co-operation.”

These problems are “… also limiting China’s investment in Australia.” And he sought a new mechanism to engage Australia on economic and trade issues to “solve the difficulties of the Chinese enterprises in Australia during their projects application and operation.”

China feels that Australia discriminates when it comes to Chinese investment proposals.

Basically, China’s wants a bigger, if not decisive, say in the way it would like to deploy its capital and labor (if and when needed) in Australia. This will enable it to coordinate demand and supply of the commodities it imports from Australia, and curb their price hikes.

In a larger sense, China would very much like to integrate Australia’s economy in a supportive role to China’s economic requirements.

The flexing of China’s economic muscles is on par with Beijing’s approach to international relations evident in Asia-Pacific region and as far away as Africa and Latin America.

It is using its economic leverage to corner resources for China’s economic development by linking the resources sector of these countries to its economic growth and creating their dependence on China. And once tied in, these economies have very little leeway to chart an independent course.

With Australia, these are early stages but the trend is quite clear. Indeed, there is enough disquiet in Australia to warrant a Senate inquiry into the question of foreign investments, particularly in agricultural land where China has made some forays to mine in farm lands.

Australia’s relations with China are rather tricky. At one level, China is its largest trading partner, with two-way trade topping $100 billion last year, much of it in Australia’s favor.

At another level, Canberra regards China as a strategic threat. Which is leading it to further expand its defense ties with the United States.

It is also moving much of its navy and air force to the north and west of the country where its minerals and energy resources are concentrated and it is more vulnerable. Without naming the potential threat from China, it is taking necessary steps to secure its northern approaches.

Australia has committed to a major program of modernizing and updating its military hardware.

Obviously, Canberra wouldn’t expect to face this threat on its own but by being part of a joint and/or coordinated force with the United States and, possibly, Japan.

As Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, writes, “Moving more of our navy and air force to the north and north-west, and inviting a much bigger US military presence there, makes eminent strategic sense.”

But the question is: how will Canberra strike a balance between its primary economic relationship with Beijing and its security partnership with the United States? This is Australia’s China conundrum.

Professor Hugh White of the Australian National University favors Australia playing a bridging role by persuading both US and China to a shared and cooperative leadership in the region. In which case, Australia will not need to choose between them and might live happily thereafter.

He has argued that, “China needs to be persuaded that it, too, should settle for a shared leadership in Asia, a continued strong role for the US and growing roles for Japan and India.”

He apparently seems to realize the odds against this. Because, alternatively, he suggests that Australia might “like New Zealand, simply rely on neutrality and remoteness to keep us clear of Asia’s turmoil, and hope they keep away from us.”

But Professor White’s neutrality option doesn’t have many takers in Australia.

The US, of course, is pretty confident that Australia will be on its side. Australia is US’s military ally, and is taking steps to further expand strategic cooperation with the United States against the backdrop of a rising threat from China.

In other words, China will have to reckon with the reality of Australia not only siding with the US in case of a military confrontation between US and China but also actively contributing to meet all eventualities.

Australia is, of course, not being explicit about this, and hoping that the necessity to choose might not arise. But it is like an ostrich burying its head in sand.

Apart from the general contest for leadership between China and the US, there are regional flashpoints like Taiwan, Korea, and the one now emerging over the South China Sea. China is seeking to edge out its regional neighbors, like Vietnam and the Philippines, from competing sovereignty claims to island chains.

The Philippines has even invoked its alliance with the US to deal with Chinese encroachments into waters and islands claimed by it.

China knows that Australia is a US ally. But Beijing hopes to use its economic leverage through trade and investment to dent its alliance with the United States. However, if Australia were to opt for neutrality, China would be unlikely to take its claim seriously considering its vast network of strategic links with the United States.

China’s growing economic interests in Australia will give it a convenient handle to interfere in Australia’s affairs. Ouyang Cheng’s stern lecture to Australia requiring it to fix its economic malaise is a precursor of things to come..

In this sense, Australia’s economic fortune through its China connection might not be a blessing in the medium and long term. But, in the meantime, let us make the most of it.

China’s “Happy Blossoms”

By S.P.SETH

The Communist Party of China has coined and promoted many slogans from Mao Zedong’s time to the present day.

A slogan-driven regime treats its people simultaneously as morons and a dangerous rabble.

Mao said that China’s people were “poor and blank” and one could write beautiful things on a blank sheet of paper.

In other words, Mao wanted to write his own script on this blank sheet of paper after he prevailed in China’s civil war in 1949.

And at times this new script needed to be rendered into easy slogans to follow the supreme leader.

This practice still continues, though not on the same scale. Hu Jintao’s “harmonious society” slogan is a case in point.

Like previous Party slogans, this too is intended to hide a harsh reality. It tends to paper over the reality of multiple contradictions enveloping China, leading to growing social unrest in the country.

A slogan is and was also a diversion when things were not going right.

Hu Jintao’s “harmonious society”, for instance, is increasingly acrimonious.

This is evident from the harsh treatment of dissidents and protesters.

The government is worried about a potential popular upsurge against the CPC’s rule on the lines of similar movements in Arab countries against their corrupt and venal rulers.

Even as China’s oligarchs are trying to clamp down on a potential rebellion by targeting artists, human rights activists and others championing democracy, they worry about slowdown of China’s economy, and its social, economic and political consequences.

In the absence a popular electoral mandate, China’s rulers have sought to cultivate a measure of legitimacy by: (1) rapid economic growth in the hope that some of it will trickle down to the masses; and (2) make China into a powerful nation and thereby channel some of their energies into national pride.

Regarding the first: China’s economy is starting to slow down; while inflation, asset bubbles, structural imbalances, urban-rural divide, and the growing gaps in income are creating severe social problems.

China’s rulers are, therefore, worried that their main claim to legitimacy--- economic growth and social stability--- is witling down.

Since high economic growth is no longer sustainable, the Party needs a new slogan to divert people’s attention. The “harmonious society” is therefore, making a detour to become a “happy” society.

It started with Premier Wen Jiabao’s speech at this year’s National People’s Congress defining the Party’s goal to make prosperity more “balanced”.

The media and propaganda channels took it from there and started a happiness campaign.

As Keith Richburg reported from Beijing in the Washington Post, “On the May Day holiday in Beijing 17 giant screens and thousands of small televisions on buses and subways and in office buildings showed ‘happy testimonials’ from workers.”

And: “Beijing Television ran a series of short films called ‘Happy Blossoms’ documenting the apparently contented lives of teachers, factory workers and others.”

Not to be left behind, the local and regional governments are said to be “drawing up happiness indexes and competing with one another for the title of ‘China’s happiest city’”.

In other words, “to get rich is glorious” is becoming outdated (at least for the aspirational class, as they cannot reach there), replaced by “happiness”.

And the happiest people apparently are low paid teachers, factory workers and the like.

But if the Party is trying to hoodwink the masses with this new “happiness” mantra, while the rich and mega rich are getting richer, they might have another thing coming.

Therefore, the slowing economy has serious social and economic portents, which no amount of “happiness” sloganeering is likely to abate.

On the second point of nationalist pride as an exercise in legitimacy: the CPC has worked on it by highlighting China’s humiliation in the past by European colonial powers, and Japan. At times, it has been taken to a controlled feverish pitch, especially against Japan.

Against this backdrop of rage, China has told the world that (1) it will not be messed with any more and; (2) that it might be time to right the wrongs of the past.

This is what lies behind Beijing’s claim to a big chunk of the Asia-Pacific region (as its area of influence) and its seas; even though China’s wrath is being visited on its neighbors who have equally legitimate sovereign claims on some of these islands and sea around them.

Take the recent case of Chinese naval boats sabotaging Vietnam’s oil exploration activity in its maritime area, which China regards as its own.

Vietnam has accused China of creating confrontation in the South China Sea and thus escalating regional tensions.

According to the Vietnamese account, three Chinese boats deliberately severed their survey ship’s cable in Vietnamese waters by sailing through the area.

Vietnam has maintained that its navy “will do everything necessary “ to protect the country’s sovereignty.

China, on the other hand, maintains that the actions of its vessels were “completely” justified.

It has warned Vietnam against “creating new incidents”.

The US is said to be “concerned” about growing tensions between China and its neighbors.

Lately, China has indulged in some expansive military rhetoric.

Last year, there were statements from some generals about the need to protect China’s far-flung economic and political interests.

This year, General Liu Yuan, son of Mao Zedong’s one-time anointed heir Liu Shaoqi who was virtually hounded to death in the Cultural Revolution, has penned an essay glorifying war.

He has reportedly written, “Military culture is the oldest and most important wisdom of humanity.”

He adds, “Without war, where would grand unity come from? Without force, how could fusion of the nation, the race, the culture, the south and the north be achieved?”

This kind of ideology glorifying military culture and war is frightening--to say the least.

And this should also worry the Party that has always maintained that it alone commands the gun, and not the other way around.

Another general, Luo Yuan, has reportedly suggested punishing the United States by dumping US bonds; while Major General Zu Chenghu wants China to ditch its “no first strike “ commitment for the use of nuclear weapons.

As the transition to power of the new leadership in 2012 draws near, China is in a bit of a muddle.

There is an ideological tussle---inevitably involving power struggle--- going on between the “left” and “right” of the Party---the former evoking Mao and the latter urging further economic liberalization and political reform within the Party.

General Liu, who is the political commissar of the logistics department, is hitching his wagon to the “left’s” caravan by turning the clock back to the fifties with a call to: “Let’s start again.”

Is there an element in this of redeeming his father, who had become the enemy number one in Mao’s slogan of “Bombard the Headquarters”, that started the Cultural Revolution in 1966?

If so, even as China faces increasing social instability, the CPC too might be enteringa power struggle akin to a new cultural revolution.

It is unlikely to have the same intensity without the “helmsman”.

In other words, the ghost of the “helmsman” is no substitute for the real Mao.

But, as the proverb goes, China is living in interesting times.

US policy focus shifting to Asia-Pacific

By Sushil Seth

The US preoccupation with the war on terror and military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq over the last decade has distracted it from its focus on the Asia-Pacific region.

This may be changing.

The main reason is that China is making waves in the region, causing disquiet among its Asian neighbors. This was evident last year over a whole range of regional issues.

The Obama administration, when it came to power, was hoping to create a peaceful partnership with China. There were a series of high-level visits to China with that objective in mind.

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was there thanking China for continuing to buy US bonds.

She announced that human rights issues wouldn’t be allowed to derail US-China relations.

Premier Wen Jiabao, on the other hand, worried about China’s investments in US treasury notes in the light of economic recession in that country.

And when President Obama visited China, Beijing didn’t seem to regard it as anything special.

China appeared to regard all these special gestures by the new Obama administration as a sign of US weakness, and hence an opportunity to advance its own ambitions.

It reminded one of the Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Union when it sought to push its global agenda by underestimating the young President Kennedy, who took power in 1961.

When the Soviet Union installed missiles in the US backyard, it led to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the first nightmarish case of a possible nuclear Armageddon.

Which is not to suggest that China might be tempted to do something equally dangerous and outrageous.

The point is that the US is starting to have a rethink about its Asia-Pacific policy in the wake of China’s determination to push its own regional agenda. The response to US overtures for a peaceful partnership has been rebuffed.

The time has, therefore, come to consider that China is more interested in a hegemonic role, seeking to edge out the US, if possible.

China is not a partner but a serious challenger and a threat.

Australia, a US ally, spelled out the Chinese threat to the region in its 2009 defense white paper.

It is reinvigorating its defense ties with the United States and Japan, and starting an annual strategic dialogue with South Korea.

During a recent visit to Japan, Prime Minister Julia Gillard told the Japan National Press Club, “The region is in strategic flux, where changing power relativities are playing out against a background of historical mistrust and conflict.”

She emphasized, “Stability and security depend on the integral role of the US and on developing the right regional architecture to encourage co-operation on security challenges…”

She couldn’t have been clearer about the new destabilizing element in the region.

Canberra, therefore, has a challenge of its own to reconcile its strategic alliance with the United States and its primary economic relationship with China.

Beijing is not terribly happy over Australia’s security alliance with the United States, but is resigned to it.

As a sop to China, the Gillard government has agreed to the visits of Chinese navy ships.

But the central strategic tenet of Australia’s policy, its military alliance with the United States, remains with the goal of meeting a future Chinese military threat.

Japan and South Korea feel similarly threatened.

At the same time, other regional countries are busy developing their own options.

None of them believe China’s routine assertion that it is not a hegemonic power.

In the US, there is increasing realization that they should wrap up their military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to face the most serious challenge from a very assertive and, sometime, angry China.

The killing of Osama bin Laden is likely to hasten this process.

In a wide-ranging article on the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the New Yorker, Ryan Lizza writes, “ One of [Thomas] Donilon’s [national security adviser] overriding beliefs, which Obama adopted as his own, was that America needed to rebuild its reputation, extricate itself from the Middle East and Afghanistan, and turn its attention toward Asia and China’s unchecked influence in the region.”

Similarly, Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, has said, “ We’ve been on a little bit of a Middle East detour over the course of the last ten years.”

But, “… our future will be dominated utterly and fundamentally by developments in Asia and the Pacific region.”

This is not to suggest that the US and China are on a confrontation course in the short term.

Indeed, the two countries are periodically engaged in strategic and economic dialogue at high levels, designed to manage their often-prickly relationship.

And in this, China’s poor human rights record is emerging as a difficult issue.

A case in point is the recent strategic and economic dialogue between the two countries in Washington where China’s crackdown on dissidents and other human rights issues was prominently highlighted by the US side.

Indeed, a recent interview by Hillary Clinton to the Atlantic Monthly was released during the 2-day talks.

In this interview, Clinton labeled China’s human rights record as “deplorable.”

She also said, “They’re worried [about the Arab Spring of revolution], and are trying to stop history, which is a fool’s errand.”

Considering that she had earlier said, during her China visit, that human rights wouldn’t be allowed to derail Sino-US relations, this is quite a turn around in US attitude to China’s violation of human rights.

The two-day talks with the Chinese side, according to the Guardian, ended with “worsening relations over censorship and crackdowns on dissidents.”

The US appears quite serious on censorship and human rights violation by China, and is allocating funds on developing technology to overcome internet censorship.

It is interesting that among many words and subjects banned by Chinese censors, Hillary Clinton has joined the honored ranks.

According to the Guardian, Chinese internet censors “recently blocked search results for ‘Hillary Clinton’ after a speech championing internet freedom.”

China is paranoid about a “jasmine revolution” type popular uprising, which it believes has been encouraged by the United States all over the Middle East.

And it fears that the United States is up to no good with its advocacy of human rights in China.

Only a paranoid and insecure regime can conjure up such fears and conspiracies.

Therefore, it will always be difficult to create a partnership for peace with China’s oligarchs looking for phantoms everywhere.

Since they want to quarantine China from the prevalent revolutionary virus, their record on human rights is going to get worse.

Combined with their hegemonic designs on the Asia-Pacific region, the United States will have a difficult time managing relations with China.

Precisely because of this, the US needs to give grater attention to China’s so-called “peaceful rise”