By NESTOR MATA
MALAYA
MALAYA
‘This is what one of America’s leading China watcher foresees the rivalry between the U.S. and China not only in the Asia-Pacific region, but in the rest of the world during the 21st century.’
WHEN US President Barack Obama and China’s President Xi Jinping candidly talked about mutual hopes and fears during their friendly meeting in California last month, China watchers and academics described it as “a great leap forward in diplomacy.”
One such China watcher, Noah Felman, a Harvard academic, saw the friendly meeting of the two leaders of today’s biggest powers in world in a new perspective. He said that the “Cold War” rivalries of world powers during the last century will be replaced by what he calls a “Cool War” between the United States and China during the 21st century. What he sees is a future of economic cooperation and geostrategic rivalry between them, and that “…the tension between them is less dangerous today than a generation ago.”
While President Xi called this “a new type of great power relations, ” President Obama put it this way: the United States should engage the nations of the world rather than to confront them; to rely on diplomacy rather than on aggressive, let alone coercive, measures; to draw on multilateralism rather than unilateral moves. With regard to China, containment was “not an option,” nor was the realpolitik of power balancing embraced, according an Obama White House insider’s report. Instead, the Obama administration will pursue a three-pronged policy based on: a welcoming approach to China’s emergence, influence and legitimate expanded role; a resolve that a coherent stance on China eventually coalesced to see that its rise is consistent with international norms and law; and an endeavor to shape the Asia-Pacific environment to ensure that China’s rise is stabilizing rather than disruptive.
If, indeed, this is how America’s China policy will eventually develop, then the hopes voiced by China watchers and academics that war between the United States, as the world’s superpower, and China, as the global would- be hegemon, will not be inevitable. At least, it will just be a Cool War!
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I have just read “China Goes Global: The Partial Power,” written by David Shambaugh, a professor of political science at George Washington University, and one of America’s leading China watchers, a first-rate book that foreign policy makers and those in the non-academic world, media analysts and commentators, will surely savor.
In his book, Shambaugh attempts to answer the question: “To what extent has China gone global in its diplomacy, support for global governance, trade and investment, soft power and military reach?”
His answer is based on interviews with key players in China and around the world and on extensive research. First, he gives a synopsis of China’s internal debate about its global identity among Chinese academics, a scholarly elite with strong nationalist streak who believe that security comes from across-the-board self-strengthening. As a result, China’s foreign policy statements focus more on its moral right to once again be treated as a great power.
Shambaugh describes China as a “partial power,” meaning that it punches below its weight and fails to qualify as a great power. He characterizes China as a “cautious diplomatic actor.” In terms of global governance, he says, China is “moderately revisionist,” challenging some of the way institutions that have governed state relations since World War II are run. But more generally, he notes, China is uninterested in tackling the problems of global governance except as they impact domestic interests.
On China’s military reach, Shambaugh recalls, China had to hire foreign companies to evacuate 35,000 people from war-torn Libya dues to lack of long-range aircraft and ships. This is indication that China has not yet focused on its interests in the far abroad. Beijing’s continuing ambivalence over international involvements and preoccupations with domestic development and protecting its irredentist interests (such as Taiwan Tibet and maritime claims in the East and South China Seas) will continue to have a limiting effect on China’s security role.
Even in the economic sphere, Shambaugh finds China to be a “partial power,” despite the fact that it is now the leading trade partners of 120 nations, and while its outward investment is growing Chinese companies still play a relatively small role in other markets. And he finds China’s use of music, art, film, fashion, global media, educational exchanges and efforts to promote China’s image abroad are deficient, largely caused by foreign perceptions of its authoritarian political system.
More, Shambaugh saw China’s assertions of promoting a “harmonious world” and “peaceful rise” gain little traction in much of east Asia, as its assertive behavior over territorial disputes since 2010 in the East and South China Seas heighten concerns that its rise will be more disruptive than Chinese propaganda asserts.
In conclusion, Shambaugh is convinced that unless China supplements its “institutional integration” by joining international organizations with “normative integration,” whereby it adopts the rules of the liberal world order that drive these multilateral arrangements, it is not ready for global leadership. And when and if it becomes a great power, while retaining all these negative characteristics, it will use its new found power and influence to alter the existing liberal order for the worse!
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Quote of the Day : “It is not power hat corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those subjected to it.” – Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
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