By NESTOR MATA
CHINA is a would-be hegemon in Asia. It’s now the world’s second largest Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and it will likely overtake United States’ GDP in the next decade. And next to the US, China is the world’s largest spender on defense. It aims to build a blue-water navy, including aircraft carriers, and it likely already has the missile and drone ability to deny the US Navy the ability to operate inside the “first island chain” (from southern Japan south through Taiwan and the Philippines to the South China Sea) without unacceptable losses.
But Chinese hegemony in the western Pacific is not inevitable, in the view of Robert E. Kekkey, an Asia-Pacific affairs observer and analyst. For one thing, China has many opponents, from the east to the north, including India, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and the United States. This might be enough to deter Chinese ambition, but, he pointed out, Japan has been struggling for decades and the US is overextended.
The US has never faced a greater challenger in its history as a world power, in the view of another China watcher, Hugh White. He recalled that the US emerged as a great power in the 1880s. In that time, it has faced four major challengers, namely, German nationalism in World War I, fascism in WWII, communism in the Cold War, and millenarian jihaddism in the war on terror. Only Soviet challenger ever came close to the US in terms of power resources, but Stalinist power collapsed. China, however, exceeds all these in the resources it can muster.
So, some kind of Sino-US compromise is the best shot to avoid a disastrous Sino-US conflict seems ever more likely, White pointed out. Chinese power in East Asia will likely have to be recognized at point in the next two decades.
The question now arises whether China can legitimize its incipient regional harmony and demonstrate to other local players that its regional dominance does not simply mean tyranny? This is a question that can be answered only by Beijing’s leaders.
There is a cautionary lesson for China in the way American hegemony is moderated by a reasonably liberal ideology that gives participant states a say in the larger framework, Kekkey pointed out. States like Germany and Japan are not subjects of the US, they are allies, and their exit option is real. If the US is an “empire,” it is rather a soft one. When France withdrew from NATO’s military integration in 1996, and when the Philippines voted the Americans out of their cases in 1992, the US did nothing, unlike when the Soviet Union “allies” tried to exit the Warsaw Pact, they were crushed.
As Chinese power over Asia rises, it will increasingly need to define its position as more than just real politik and nationalist-glory-seeking. If it cannot voluntarily win over its neighbours in cooperation, Chinese hegemony will be a little less more than despotism. Perhaps that is all Chinese leaders care for, but I doubt it, Kekkey said.
China’s soft power exertions suggest that Chinese Communist Party feels that that it wants to be loved more than feared, Kekkey concluded. But to this day, the CCP has no real legitimating language of power for its neighbourhood.
Hence, for all its might, it continues to stand alone.
Indeed, as David Shambaugh, another renowned Asia-Pacific affairs observer and analyst, “China is, in essence, a very narrow-minded, self-interested, realist state, seeking to maximize its own national interests and power. It cares little for global governance and enforcing global standards of behaviour (except its much-vaunted doctrine of non-interference in the internal affairs of countries). Its economic policies are mercantilist and its diplomacy is passive.”
China is a lonely strategic power, with no allies, and experiencing distrust and strained relationships with much of the world, but it is now emerging as a hegemon in Asia.
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The first wave of anti-corruption, anti-pork barrel and anti-amendment of the Constitution, including the notion of a second term for President Aquino, was seen in Cebu City last Sunday and followed by an anti-pork barrel signaturecampaign in Manila yesterday.
The first People’s Congress, which drew some of the country’s most prominent personalities, including Catholic Church bishops, nuns, members of Protestant, Muslim and other religious groups, and civil society, was convened at the Mariner’s Court Hotel in Cebu City. They approved a four-page final draft of a proposed law that would abolish the pork barrel system.
Then they moved on to the Cebu Plaza Independencia to kicked off the collection of signatures six million nationwide to abolish all kinds of pork barrel in government. It was in time for the commemoration of the “Sigaw ng Pugad Lawin”, the historic event that triggered the Philippine Revolution against Spain. The following day in Manila student leaders from various universities and national youth groups joined the signature campaign and the anti-corruption, anti-pork barrel, anti-amendment of the Constitution.
All of them reflected the mounting angry voices, apart from constitutionalists, lawmakers, lawyers, pundits and analysts, and friends and relatives of President Aquino’s family, and even netizens in the Internet, especially Aquino’s plan to amend the 1987 Constitution that was framed and ratification during the presidency of his mother Cory Cojuangco Aquino.
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Quote of the Day: “The voice of the people is the voice of God!” – Adage
Thought of the Day: “Soft power is a term now widely used for the resolution of international conflicts in international affairs. It is a concept developed by Joseph Nye of Harvard University to describe the ability to attract and co-opt rather than to coerce, use force or give money as a means of persuasion.”
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