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: After Russia and America, could China could be the next superpower in Afghanistan? The country may have $1 trillion worth of mineral deposits. But they will be tough for US companies to exploit.
By business-standard.com

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Mar.23 (written by By Zhu Chenghu and released by China Military Power Mashup) — Eight years ago, then U.S. President George W. Bush, while delivering a televised speech at Congress, solemnly announced: “Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” Since then, the “global war on terror” dominated by the United States has started and led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that are yet to end, as well as the extensive readjustment of international relations worldwide.

Eight years have passed. The international counter-terrorism situation today is less optimistic and has run into even greater trouble. Although countries have intensified the anti-terror efforts, terrorism has nevertheless tended to become increasingly more violent. How can such things happen? One of the most important reasons is countries are divided over a standard to define terrorism.

The international community has put forward no less than 100 definitions of terrorism, but none has been accepted by all countries as a universally recognized standard. International communities have reservations about the U.S. “global war on terror”. Scholars in some countries believe that the United States has been pursuing self-interest in the name of “global war on terror”: expanding its overseas military bases, enlarging its sphere of influence, interfering in other countries’ internal affairs, rivaling for control of strategic resources.

There is no doubt some countries apparently have double standards on the definition of terrorism. In Russia’s Beslan school hostage crisis in 2004, a group of armed men and women burst into School Number One, took about 500 students, their parents and teachers hostage and herded them into the school gymnasium, subsequently killing many of them. Russia defined the crisis as a terrorist attack and dispatched Special Forces for rescue operations. But Western countries said that it had yet to be confirmed if the armed people were terrorists or not.

The hostage crisis is a prominent manifestation of confusion brought about by the divergences of standards on terrorism. Admittedly, various countries face threats of terrorism different in nature and degree. But an international anti-terror alliance can never be formed effectively if some countries bluntly and flagrantly interfere in others’ justified anti-terror campaigns in the guise of “human rights” on one hand but pursuing their own interest in the name of combating terrorism on the other. As a matter of fact, the great expectations of the global anti-terror cause can only be met when all countries proceed from an overall situation of international security, adhere to unanimous anti-terrorism standards and work together to cope with the threat of terrorism to humankind. Double standards on anti-terrorism provide a room for international terrorism to exist and develop.

In defining terrorism, two things should be taken into consideration. First, whether it is aimed at innocent civilians and second, whether violent actions are taken. According to these standards, we can see China is facing a very severe situation in the fight against terrorism.

China’ geopolitical environment is one of the most complicated among all big powers. At present, a major terrorist threat to China is the “East Turkestan” forces. In fact, as early as the start of the last century, separatist forces in Xinjiang had created unrest repeatedly — at the instigation of and with the support of hostile foreign forces. After the peaceful liberation of Xinjiang, separatists who had fled abroad colluded with those who stayed and watched for their chance to conduct sabotage and other terrorist activities. Especially since 1990, under the influence of the three extreme forces of extremism, separatism and terrorism, the “East Turkestan” forces have turned to violence as their chief means of operation, and have masterminded and organized a series of violent, bloody incidents such as assassination, arson and attacks.

Some countries neighboring China contain terrorist groups, which also provide breeding grounds for terrorist forces on Chinese territory. In fact, the “East Turkestan” forces have won the support of Al-Qaeda. According to media reports, an arrested “East Turkestan” terrorist suspect confessed he had been sent to Afghanistan to be trained by al-Qaeda and he had personally seen Osama Bin Laden at close range. Instructors not only taught him how to use various kinds of light weapons, but also trained him to drive tanks.

These are all terrorist activities that have already constituted real threats to China. From the perspective of future development trends, China will likely face other threats, such as nuclear, biological, information and electromagnetic terrorism. Take attacks on energy resources as an example. As China’s economy grows, the nation has become increasingly

reliant on energy imports. In order to ensure petrol and natural gas supplies, China has laid a very long oil pipeline from Kazakhstan to Xinjiang, in addition to the domestic “West-East Gas Pipeline” project. Therefore, ensuring the pipeline’s security has become a very real issue.

Obviously, China cannot be a land of peace amid widespread international terrorism. Against the present backdrop, many countries have readjusted security policies. In the past, anti-terrorism has mainly been the mission of national security departments; now, the United States, Britain, Russia, India and other countries have listed “anti-terrorism” as an important mission for their armed forces. China also attaches great importance to military participation in anti-terrorism operations. So far, China has launched many joint anti-terror military exercises with Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and other countries.

We should say that the fight against terrorism in a big country with 1.3 billion population is in itself a major contribution to world peace. China’s experiences in fighting terrorism can also exert a favorable influence and display a demonstrative effect for other countries, especially developing countries. Then, what else can we do while facing a situation of such complicated terrorist activities?

Since terrorism is an international cancer, international cooperation must be beefed up to deal with the threat. China has carried out anti-terrorism cooperation with the United States and other countries, and it is likely to explore the possibility of cooperation with more countries in the future as the situation develops.

Domestically, the top priority is strengthening anti-terrorism legislation and including anti-terrorism action in law. The anti-terror mechanism should be improved on and emergency plans be mapped out so as to enhance the efficiency of coping with terrorism threat and achieve better results. The building of anti-terrorism armed forces should be consolidated so as to improve actual combat capabilities of rapid response, rapid strike and rapid solution. In addition, China can involve the general public in anti-terror campaigns. Of course, we must get rid of the breeding grounds for terrorism if we are to fundamentally and completely eliminate the threat of terrorism from China.

Terrorism is the common enemy of every country and fighting terrorism is in the common interests of humankind. No place in the world is immune to terrorism, and China is no exception. In order to deal with terrorism, the international community need to show goodwill and sincerity, give up double standards, properly resolve their own issues and discover a way to deal with it on the basis of mutual cooperation.

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By admin

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Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie pledged military cooperation with Afghanistan and Nepal here Thursday when meeting his counterparts from the two countries. In meeting with Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, Liang said China and Afghanistan had developed smooth relations since establishing diplomatic ties in 1955 and China appreciated the staunch support given by Afghanistan on …
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Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao pledged Thursday to extend aid and economic support for Afghanistan’s reconstruction, while calling for both nations to jointly fight terrorism and drug trafficking.
By us.rd.yahoo.com

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The leaders of Afghanistan and China on Wednesday signed agreements on trade and economic cooperation, and vowed to work harder to combat terrorism in Central Asia.
By us.rd.yahoo.com

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Beijing – Chinese President Hu Jintao and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, on Wednesday held talks that were to focus on security and China’s economic assistance to Afghanistan….
By us.rd.yahoo.com

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China on Thursday called upon the international community to render more support and provide more assistance to Afghanistan, and voiced its support for a leading coordination role by the United Nations in the reconstruction of the south Asian country. The appeal came as Li Baodong, the permanent Chinese representative to the United Nations, was speaking to a UN Security Council meeting on the …
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Feb.21 (China Military News cited from Chinadaily and written by Qin Jize and Li Xiaokun) — washington appears determined to surround China with US-built anti-missile systems, military scholars have observed.

According to US-based Defense News, Taiwan became the fifth global buyer of the Patriot missile defense system last year following Japan, the Republic of Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Germany.

Quite a few military experts have noted that Washington’s latest proposed weapon deal with Taiwan is the key part of a US strategic encirclement of China in the East Asian region, and that the missiles could soon have a footprint that extends from Japan to the Republic of Korea and Taiwan.

Air force colonel Dai Xu, a renowned military strategist, wrote in an article released this month that “China is in a crescent-shaped ring of encirclement. The ring begins in Japan, stretches through nations in the South China Sea to India, and ends in Afghanistan. Washington’s deployment of anti-missile systems around China’s periphery forms a crescent-shaped encirclement”.

Ni Lexiong, an expert on military affairs with the Shanghai Institute of Political Science and Law, told the Guanghzou Daily yesterday, “The US anti-missile system in China’s neighborhood is a replica of its strategy in Eastern Europe against Russia. The Obama administration began to plan for such a system around China after its project in Eastern Europe got suspended”.

Tang Xiaosong, director of the Center of International Security and Strategy Studies with Guangdong University of Foreign Studies noted that the ring encircling China can also be expanded at any time in other directions. He said that Washington is hoping to sell India and other Southeast Asian countries the Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-3 missile defense system.

Analysts say that China is closely monitoring US-India missile defense cooperation since any integration of India into the US global missile defense system, would profoundly affect China’s security.

However, according to former Chinese Ambassador to India Pei Yuanying, India is unlikely to be part of any such US scheme against China.

“New Delhi needs to develop relations with the US, but it wants to be an independent international power on the international arena,” he said.

Pei said it was necessary to take multiple aspects of China-US relations into consideration. “The US has followed the policy of engagement plus containment with China for a long time and that overall policy will not change during Obama’s term,” he said.

Defense News quoted John Holly, Lockheed’s vice president of Missile Defense Systems as saying the outlook for the missile defense market remains sound.

Pointing to missile programs in Pyongyang, Teheran, Moscow and Beijing, Holly said “the world is not a very safe world and it is incumbent upon us in the industry to provide (the Pentagon) with the best capabilities.”

Beijing has frequently criticized US missile-defense development and has been making efforts to restrict missile defenses through the United Nations forums.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told a UN disarmament conference in August in Geneva that “countries should neither seek for absolute strategic predominance nor develop missile-defense systems that undermine global strategic stability.”

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By admin

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Feb.01 (China Military News cited from Xinhua) — A Chinese medical team has relocated its operation site to a shelter in the Haitian capital where it will provide services more directly and conveniently to earthquake victims, the team’s leader said on Monday.

The Mais Gate shelter is located near the Port-Au-Prince interantional airport and can accommodate as many as 5,000 people, Wang Yurong, head of the team, told Xinhua.

Inside the shelter, both living and working conditions are crude, he said. There are tents provided by international donors and improvised cotes made by locals with tree branches and plastic sheets.

The aim of relocating the team’s operational site from a downtown plaza to the shelter is to provide more direct and convenient services to the earthquake victims, said Wang.

On Monday, the team treated 536 victims and 60 percent of them were women and children.

Since its arrival in the quake-ravageed Caribbean nation on Jan. 25, the team has provided services to more than 1,800 Haitians, and trauma, diarrhea and gynecological diseases were the most common conditions it had treated, according to Wang.

Yang Zhengzhou, an epidemic specialist in the team, told Xinhua that the Mais Gate shelter is pretty much crowded, with garbage littering everywhere and waste water flowing around.

There are many mosquitoes and flies, but they can hardly resist the pesticides and will die instantly after pesticides are used, he said.

Chinese doctors decided to teach the locals with epidemic prevention methods rather than simply giving them the equipment and medicine, said Yang.

The Chinese team gathered 10 volunteers in the shelter and taught them how to prepare the medicines and how to use the sprayers.

Under the team’s instructions, the volunteers conducted a thorough sterilization of the shelter. Thus, even after the Chinese team leaves, locals can do the epidemic prevention work by themselves.

The Chinese team consists of 40 medical workers, among whom are internists, surgeons and anti-epidemic experts from China’s military medical service.

They have participated in other UN peacekeeping missions and the massive rescue mission after a devastating quake hit southwest China’s Sichuan province in 2008.

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By admin

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Feb.01 (China Military Newx cited from Bloomberg and written by Viola Gienger and Tony Capaccio) — The U.S. military is drawing up a new air-sea battle plan in response to threats such as China’s persistent military build-up and Iran’s possession of advanced weapons, according to the Pentagon’s latest strategy review.

The Air Force and Navy are seeking more effective ways of ensuring continued access to the western Pacific and countering potential threats to American bases and personnel, according to the Quadrennial Defense Review to be released later today.

The joint Air Force-Navy plan would combine the strengths of each service to conduct long-range strikes that could utilize a new generation of bombers, a new cruise missile and drones launched from aircraft carriers. The Navy also is increasing funding to develop an unmanned underwater vehicle, according to the report.

Z-9 Helicopter and anti-submarine torpedo

The battle plan is among a range of new initiatives outlined in the review, which is conducted every four years to revise U.S. military strategy for the coming decade or more. The new report places top priority on the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq and against terrorist threats elsewhere, while also preparing for future threats.

“This is truly a wartime QDR,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in a cover letter for the report. “For the first time, it places the current conflicts at the top of our budgeting, policy and program priorities.”

Two-War Capability

The review deemphasizes but does not abandon the Pentagon’s doctrine that calls for the military to be able to fight two major wars nearly simultaneously. It acknowledges this mission but says planning should focus more closely on other scenarios, such as irregular warfare including conflicts involving insurgents or drug traffickers and even humanitarian disasters.

“In the mid- to long-term, U.S. military forces must plan and prepare to prevail in a broad range of operations that may occur in multiple theaters in overlapping time frames,” the Defense Department says in the review.

Air-defense missile of PLA Navy Type 052B Destroyer

“This includes maintaining the ability to prevail against two capable nation-state aggressors,” it states.

Alluding to China in his cover letter, Gates cites longer- term threats such as “the military modernization programs of other countries.” He also hints at dangers such as al-Qaeda in referring to “non-state groups developing more cunning and destructive means to attack the United States and our allies and partners.”

Tensions With China

U.S. officials have often called on their Chinese counterparts to provide explanations and assurances that their moves are purely defensive. The two countries resumed military talks last June, then China halted visits again over the Defense Department’s Jan. 29 announcement of a new arms sale to Taiwan.

China is developing and deploying “large numbers” of advanced missiles, new attack submarines, long-range air defense systems and capabilities to wage electronic warfare and target computer systems, according to the report, which echoes an assessment of China’s military power issued almost a year ago.

China’s refusal to provide adequate assurances of its intentions raises “a number of legitimate questions regarding its long-term intentions,” the Pentagon says in the review.

Citing “more complex” security conditions in the region, including North Korea and terrorist threats in Southeast Asia, the review calls for “a more widely distributed” and flexible U.S. presence in Asia that relies more on allies. Partners would include Australia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Threat From Iran

In the Middle East, Iran is fielding small attack boats in the Persian Gulf, a development that U.S. officials have cited in the past. That compounds the threat to naval operations from the acquisition by Iran and other nations of weapons such as quiet submarines and advanced cruise missiles that can target ships, according to the report.

Iran also has provided drones and shoulder-fired missiles to the Islamic militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Russia and other nations have contributed to the spread of surface-to- air missiles, the department said.

Among the solutions proposed are more ways to deploy U.S. forces abroad, such as naval assets, “in regions facing new challenges.” Existing bases also need to be either hardened to protect against potential attacks or reinforced with back-up locations or by dispersing them in multiple places, the department concluded.

The Pentagon has about 400,000 U.S. military personnel stationed overseas, either in war zones or elsewhere. The review emphasizes “taking care of our people” serving in multiple long deployments that take a “significant toll” on them and their families.

Other Concerns

In addition to supporting existing wars, the Quadrennial review emphasizes the need for more unmanned aircraft, intelligence, special forces, helicopters and long-range strike capabilities as well as skills such as foreign languages and training of foreign military forces.

PLA Army Type 05 SPH

The U.S. military, especially the Navy and Air Force, also should find better and faster ways to strengthen the defense systems of foreign allies and partners as needed, the Pentagon said.

The Pentagon should continue to maintain a nuclear arsenal as a “core mission” until “such time as the administration’s goal of a world free of nuclear weapons is achieved,” according to the report.

The potential threat of cyber attacks and the need to conduct “high-tempo operations” will require more expertise in that field and centralized command of cyber operations, the department said.

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By admin

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China has signaled to set up foreign military bases including one in Pakistan, a Chinese government website said.

“Setting up overseas military bases is not an idea we have to shun; on the contrary, it is our right…it is baseless to say that we will not set up any military bases in future because we have never sent troops abroad,” said the report.

The report also said, “As for the military aspect, we should be able to conduct the retaliatory attack within the country or at the neighbouring area of our potential enemies. We should also be able to put pressure on the potential enemies’ overseas interests. With further development, China will be in great demand of the military protection”.

It is clearly aimed at piling up pressure on India and to counter US influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“As for the military aspect, we should be able to conduct the retaliatory attack within the country or at the neighboring area of our potential enemies. We should also be able to put pressure on the potential enemies’ overseas interests. With further development, China will be in great demand of the military protection,” said the report.

A military base in Pakistan will help China keep a check on Uighurs who are fighting for an independent nation in Xinjiang, which borders the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/China-mulls-military-bases-in-Pakistan/H1-Article1-502952.aspx

By polaris

Changing China

via Can China help stabilise Pakistan?.

World Politics Review: Articles

via Can China Deliver in Pakistan?.

The success or failure of President Barack Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy will depend on numerous international factors, but few loom larger than Pakistan. However, Washington has little credibility and leverage in Pakistan, where mistrust of the U.S. runs high. Enter China. Pakistan’s instability jeopardizes critical Chinese interests, and the time has never been more ripe for Beijing to lean on its longstanding ally….

China Military Power Mashup

via China taking on growing role in U.N. peacekeeping missions.

December.02 (China Military News cited from Washington Post and written by Andrew Higgins) — After bulking up its armed forces with new missiles and other advanced weaponry, China recently invited U.S. and other foreign military officials to inspect a less bellicose side of the People’s Liberation Army: a fleet of bulldozers.

Through clouds of smoke generated to simulate the look of a war zone, a PLA engineering brigade showed off its earthmovers, mine-clearing gear and other nonlethal hardware at a base north of Beijing.

The display, put on shortly after President Obama left Beijing last month, represented what China sees as an important part of its answer to a question that shadowed Obama’s eight-day Asia tour: How will China use the formidable power generated by its relentless economic growth?

The engineering unit that staged the show is spearheading China’s growing involvement in international peacekeeping, a cause that Beijing for decades denounced as a violation of its stated commitment to noninterference in the affairs of other nations but that it now embraces.

Today, about 2,150 Chinese military and police personnel are deployed in support of U.N. missions. They serve around the world, from Haiti to Sudan.

A ‘peaceful rise’

Though the peacekeepers represent only a fraction of the PLA’s more than 2 million soldiers — and account for a minuscule part of the Chinese military budget — China’s enthusiasm for peacekeeping signals a clear desire to project an image as a responsible and peaceable great power. And even if, as some experts say, China’s total military spending is perhaps double the stated amount, it is still less than a third of the United States’ basic military budget, which excludes spending toward the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We promise that we will fulfill our duties to safeguard peace,” Senior Col. Yi Changhe, an engineering brigade commander, told the visiting foreign defense officials.

When Germany and later Japan emerged as military powers on the back of surging economies more than a century ago, a calamitous reordering of the world order followed. China, pursuing what it calls a “peaceful rise,” points to the PLA’s peacekeeping activities as evidence of its benign intentions.

But while increasingly willing to let its soldiers don the blue helmets worn by U.N. peacekeepers, China has shown little enthusiasm for the U.N.-sanctioned mission that currently matters most to Washington — the war in Afghanistan.

Wariness toward NATO

When the United States wanted to fly a group of Mongolian trainers to Afghanistan in October, China objected to letting the aircraft go over its territory. Beijing eventually gave the flight a green light — but only after ammunition was taken off the plane, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

Though authorized by the United Nations, the Afghanistan mission is led by NATO, an organization China views with deep wariness. Beijing blames NATO for the 1999 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo war.

China’s shock at NATO’s military campaign in the former Yugoslavia helped prod Beijing into playing a bigger role in U.N. peacekeeping, said Bates Gill, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and co-author of a recent report on China’s peacekeeping activities. China, he said, is “highly unlikely” to send soldiers to Afghanistan to help “what is essentially a NATO operation, albeit with a United Nations blessing.”

Beijing recently enrolled a small group of soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq in a mine-clearing course at the PLA’s University of Science and Technology in Nanjing and has expressed interest in helping to train Afghan police. But it has balked at providing direct support for NATO’s campaign against the Taliban. China has focused its resources on supporting operations run directly by the United Nations. It has more troops and police deployed on U.N. missions than the United States, Russia and Britain combined. Of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, only France makes anywhere near as big a contribution to U.N. peacekeeping.

Washington has generally welcomed China’s increasing readiness to join U.N. operations, though a Pentagon report this year noted that the capabilities that allow China to participate in distant peacekeeping and humanitarian missions could also “allow China to project power to ensure access to resources or enforce claims to disputed territories.”

Obama, during his visit to Beijing, described greater international engagement by China as a necessary and welcome by-product of its economic strength. “A growing economy is joined by growing responsibilities,” he said after talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Presence in Sudan

China has moved far from what, under Mao Zedong, was a policy of steadfast opposition to military interventions by foreign powers. In the 1950s, China actively resisted U.N.-backed military missions, most notably during the Korean War, when its soldiers battled U.S. and other foreign troops fighting under the U.N. flag in support of South Korea.

Chinese troops serve in 10 countries, from the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, but they are most active in Africa, where China has ramped up its diplomatic and economic presence as it seeks oil and other resources to fuel its economy. They focus on providing engineering, medical and logistical help. A top U.N. official who visited the Chinese capital recently said Beijing is considering sending combats troops overseas for the first time.

Chinese personnel have a reputation for tight discipline and have not been tarnished by the sex and corruption scandals that have afflicted peacekeepers from some other nations. Critics, however, note that the largest number of Chinese peacekeepers — nearly 800 military and police personnel– are stationed in Sudan, which provides substantial amounts of oil to China and whose government Beijing has strongly supported despite widespread outrage over the killings in the western region of Darfur.

Speaking after a conference on peacekeeping last month in Beijing, Alain Le Roy, the U.N. undersecretary for peacekeeping operations, called Chinese troops “very professional” and said the United Nations has “no concerns” about their role in Sudan. Beijing’s close diplomatic ties to countries such as Sudan, he said, give it leverage that “we will try to make the best use of.”

IntelliBriefs

via To please China, US slights India.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/216752/To-please-China-US-slights-India.html

US President Barack Obama’s China visit has put the writing on the wall in bold: China is the next superpower the world must watch out for. Clearly, the US realises there is little it can do to prevent China’s phenomenal rise and growing influence; it has therefore decided to partner that growth. And, what better way than to use a presidential visit to Beijing to declare America’s most serious geopolitical rival Asia’s Big Boss and cozy up to a major global player in a rapidly multipolarising world. Admittedly, none can deny that China has been moving in that direction with very sure steps; it was only a matter of time before the US acknowledged that. Following his summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Mr Obama therefore said, “The Sino-US relationship has never been more important in our collective future.”

Except, the declaration comes at a huge cost for India which, following the Indo-US nuclear deal, was being hailed as a strategic partner of the US, a counterbalance to China’s alarming growth in the region and in the world. While the deal clearly mortgaged India’s nuclear freedom, the Manmohan Singh Government drew false comfort from becoming a “strategic” partner of the US. Mr Obama’s joint statement with Mr Hu now categorically indicates that far from being a possible counter-China presence in Asia India is, in fact, a subject of joint US-China monitoring, a perception Mr Obama has merely offered to “share” with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the latter’s forthcoming visit to the US.

The Obama-Hu statement begs serious and immediate attention. In a highly inexplicable, unprovoked and offensive manner, the joint statement says both “support the improvement and growth of relations between India and Pakistan”. The casualness with which India has once again been hyphenated with Pakistan is alarming, to say the least. It was indeed an arduous diplomatic drill for India during the 1999 Kargil conflict when the world in unison reprimanded two nuclear neighbours for baring their fangs at each other. However, global capitals soon realised that Indian restraint alone had prompted US intervention which forced Pakistan to back off. In the subsequent years, courtesy some hectic diplomacy by its leadership, India was able to convince the world that it was a mistake to measure the two nuclear armed states with the same yardstick. India’s economic growth and political credibility in the decade that followed finally gave world powers the confidence to de-hyphenate the two South Asian neighbours and deal with India as an emerging global power and with Pakistan as a failed Talibanised state.

As a country that calls India a strategic partner — an unstated tool to contain Chinese hegemony — the US would have surely known what the re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan on Chinese soil meant. Mr Obama may be new in office but surely an American President cannot be ignorant enough about India’s sensitivities to ask China — long seen as Pakistan’s aide in its conflict with India, its prejudices and ploys no state secret — to monitor an arena in which Beijing itself has geopolitical stakes. Is Mr Obama not aware that had it not been for Chinese help Pakistan, a rogue state, would never have acquired a nuclear weapon? Is he also unaware that China is engaged in huge infrastructure building in northern Kashmir so that Pakistan maintains a strategic edge over India? This, apart from the infrastructure build-up along China’s own disputed borders with India that have put a huge question mark on India-China relations of late.

Today the creator of a nuclear monster like Pakistan, with its own reasons to keep India down, has been entrusted the task of monitoring “good relations” between a failed state and a responsible democracy like India. Indeed, India’s stature vis-à-vis Pakistan has been reset to 1998 when a US-China joint statement by Mr Bill Clinton and Mr Jiang Zemin, ordered the two to “resolve peacefully the difficult and long-standing differences between them, including the issue of Kashmir”. Short of saying ‘intervention’ that statement had asserted that the US and China were “ready to assist in the implementation” of the resumption of dialogue between the two countries.

Times — and the language Americans would use with India — were to change in subsequent years, remarkably so after Mr Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000. Notably, after a five-day visit to India, Mr Clinton stopped over in Islamabad only for a few hours. The de-hyphenation had begun. Then came 9/11. With a terror attack on US soil, American engagement in the Asian arena was to change forever, an engagement that would leave India only as a bystander. In hindsight, India’s distance from what transpired in Afghanistan and Iraq and with what is now happening in Pakistan helped it stay above the conflict and prove to the world that the problem in South Asia is not an India-Pakistan border/territorial conflict but an alarmingly growing fundamentalist Islamic terror machinery that knows no borders.

Mr Obama’s visit to China comes at a time when India-China relations are at their pre-1962 worst and when US-China relations are at their all-time best. In such a scenario, for an American President to discuss India with China in the context of peace, stability and sustainable development in the region is patently offensive. Agreed, Mr Obama has to keep China in good humour. After all, the American and Chinese economies have become so interlinked that all other issues, including meeting the Dalai Lama, must be kept on hold. The compulsion is more serious on the American side. Also, it is quite evident that Mr Obama’s AfPak policy is headed nowhere. He is therefore seeking more partners in this theatre of conflict. By ceding China that strategic space the US can make a dignified exit out of a war it could never really fathom. The possible trade off: China minds Iran and North Korea.

In the process, if India’s strategic stature just got dwarfed in Beijing it has only the Manmohan Singh Government to blame. For, its first tenure saw India sign off crucial political leverage with the US in an inexplicably rushed nuclear deal. Its second tenure has seen its abject failure to counter growing Chinese belligerence on the border issue. Laughably, instead of outright rejection or outrage India’s feeble response to the China-US statement is that it is “committed to resolving all outstanding issues with Pakistan through a peaceful bilateral dialogue…A third country role cannot be envisaged nor is it necessary.”

China’s role on world stage is no cause for alarm, says Obama: “

Barack Obama introduced himself as America’s ‘first Pacific president’ as he launched his four-nation tour of the region, vowing to deepen ties with Asia and arguing that China’s rise should be welcomed rather than feared.

Kicking off his visit in Tokyo, he also sought to thaw the chill in relations with his hosts, America’s closest allies in the region. The new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, has vowed to make Japan less dependent on the US, but the two men agreed to put off the issue of resolving the future of US forces in Japan.

However, police in China are reported to have detained dozens of dissidents in a crackdown ahead of Obama’s arrival there today. Human rights campaigners said that at least 30 activists who were expected to apply for the right to hold protests directed at the Chinese government during the US president’s visit were arrested.

Reformers worry that Obama will play down China’s poor human rights record in order to maintain good relations on issues such as the economy. ‘We get the impression Obama doesn’t want to talk about human rights on this trip, but it is precisely because of his visit here that these people are being rounded up and detained right now,’ Ai Weiwei, a Beijing-based artist and social commentator, told the Financial Times.

Speaking yesterday during the first stop on his nine-day Asian tour, Obama told an audience of 1,500 in the Japanese capital: ‘I want every American to know that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct effect on our lives at home.’

American officials have portrayed the trip as an opportunity to develop relationships and make progress on non-proliferation, climate change and the economy, and are playing down expectations of any agreements.

As in his previous foreign affairs speeches, Obama emphasised his personal ties in the region – referring to his birth in Hawaii, time in Indonesia and boyhood travels in Asia – and the administration’s break with unilateralism.

‘We welcome China’s efforts to play a greater role on the world stage – a role in which their growing economy is joined by growing responsibility,’ he said. ‘Power does not need to be a zero-sum game and nations need not fear the success of another.’

He held out a hand to North Korea again, calling for it to denuclearise; and to Burma, if it undertakes democratic reform and frees political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Burma’s prime minister will be present at the president’s meeting with Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) leaders in Singapore.

Obama also announced that the US will sign up to a trans-Pacific free trade agreement. That may help to deflect accusations of protectionism, which are likely to be aired throughout his tour. He stressed the need for ‘balanced’ growth and said Asian countries should not be dependent on exports to the US.

The economic crisis has underlined the interdependence of ‘Chimerica’ in particular and the trade imbalance that has left China with vast US dollar holdings. Washington wants the Chinese currency, the yuan, to appreciate further; Beijing will repeat its concerns that US debt could endanger its dollar holdings.

But Obama’s Chinese visit is about more than money. The world’s two largest carbon emitters are meeting just weeks away from the Copenhagen climate-change conference.

China’s influence on North Korea and Iran are central to Obama’s non-proliferation agenda. Its handling of Afghanistan and Pakistan will also be high up in discussions.

Obama’s China policy is essentially his predecessor’s; the relationship is increasingly amicable. But some fear attempts to broaden it could mean less meaningful engagement.

‘Bush’s approach was: you are rising in the international system and need to take on more responsibility,’ said Victor Cha, director of Asian affairs in the National Security Council under George Bush and now at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. ‘Obama is heaping on all these very, very high expectations – on issues like climate change and currency – and I think they are expectations that China cannot possibly meet.’

China sees itself as a vulnerable developing country as well as a rising power. And shared anxieties – such as those over proliferation – do not equal identical interests. “China’s own interests in those hot spots [North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan] make it deeply conflicted about playing a larger role on the world stage,” said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt of the International Crisis Group. “While the United States frames China in terms of its growing responsibilities as a major power, China continues to think primarily in terms of its own interests.”

To some observers, the administration is also too keen to please Beijing, wasting leverage rather than smoothing the path to greater gains.

Obama’s decision not to meet the Dalai Lama last month – aides say he will do so in future – ‘doesn’t send a signal that the US wants to work with China; it sends a signal they have basically got us,’ said Cha.

China: A Superpower Stirs:
By ANDREW BROWNE

Beijing

The wooden treasure ships commanded by Admiral Cheng-ho, a Chinese Ming dynasty eunuch, were among the largest vessels ever built, nautical monsters that by some accounts carried nine masts.

Bigger by far than the ships of Christopher Columbus that set out decades later for the New World, they were the flagships of an armada that ventured as far as the east coast of Africa on seven naval expeditions. The first embarked in 1405 bearing some 30,000 men; the seventh in 1430.

Then the expeditions suddenly stopped. Cheng-ho’s adventures had helped to ruin Ming finances. The emperors put a halt to sea trade and closed the shipbuilding industry; China looked inward for the next four centuries. The expeditions to the “Western Seas” were a glorious aberration.

Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, the world is looking to China to assume an unfamiliar role of global leadership. At a time when American prestige is fading, China’s status is rising.

Jon Krause

President Barack Obama arrives in China next week seeking help on everything from climate change to North Korea’s nuclear threat. At meetings of the Group of 20 nations, China’s opinions are urgently sought on issues such as banking reform and executive pay. Persuading China to take a lead will be a challenge.

History has done little to prepare this country for the kind of leadership that an anxious international community seems so ready to thrust on it.

Unlike the U.S., China doesn’t aspire to remake the world: Its longstanding mantra is “nonintervention” in the internal affairs of other countries. Even under Chairman Mao’s reign, China never sought world domination, like the former Soviet Union—although it stirred up revolution in other parts of Asia and beyond. Now that China has largely discarded socialism, it’s hard to find a definition for what remains of its ideology, values and world view.

Recently, at a dinner in a Beijing restaurant of a group of young Chinese professionals—several of them Communist Party members—somebody raised a question that should have been simple to answer. Can anybody list the “Three Represents”? The reference was to the political theory of former President Jiang Zemin, which has been written into the state constitution and is taught in schools. Not a single hand went up. Could anybody name two? Nobody. One? With difficulty.

A hard-nosed pragmatism is generally considered to be China’s guiding principle at home and abroad: whatever produces growth in gross domestic product.

China’s aloofness from the world was interrupted when the West came knocking. In 1793, Lord Macartney was dispatched to China by Britain’s King George III to open the country to trade. He arrived with presents meant to dazzle the court of the Qianlong emperor—mechanical clocks, chronometers, telescopes and mathematical instruments. The 600 packages required 200 horses and 3,000 porters to transport.

“There is nothing we lack,” the emperor famously told the royal emissary. “We have never set much store on strange and ingenious objects.” The British forced open the doors to trade with gunboats; an enfeebled China was carved up by Western powers in what China calls its “century of humiliation.”

It’s easy to forget, driving by Beijing’s Olympics-inspired landmarks—the Birds Nest Stadium, the Water Cube, the colossal CCTV Tower—that until quite recently China had closeted itself again.

For most of the first 30 years of Communist rule in China, which started in 1949, it was hard and often outright impossible to get a visa. Businessmen were granted access once a year for the Canton Trade Fair. In neighboring Hong Kong, tourist buses would deliver groups of camera-toting Americans and Japanese to the border to catch a glimpse of “Red China” on the other side. The rare Chinese official who ventured to the West was a curiosity, much like North Koreans today.

China was in turmoil. To divine what was going on inside the country, foreign intelligence decamped in Hong Kong to monitor local radio stations.

Deng Xiaoping put an end to Chairman Mao’s era of murderous seclusion—its endless class struggles and man-made disasters, including the world’s worst famine—with his “Open Door” reforms in 1978.

The decision to open the country to foreign trade and investment, initially through Special Economic Zones along the coast, set China on its path of supercharged economic growth. China is shortly expected to overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy.

China’s achievements have provided a beacon for much of the developing world: its success in lifting 300 million people out of poverty; its fight against disease and illiteracy; its embrace of technology that has put Chinese astronauts in space. All this, while allowing an unprecedented flowering of personal freedoms.

Now, as the global economy emerges shakily from the worst recession since World War II, China is attracting admiration from new corners.

While the Western world hurtled towards the financial abyss, China was moving ahead cautiously. It has emerged from the crisis with an economy growing powerfully. Its banks are unpolluted by toxic assets; hardly a ripple disturbs its vast pools of national savings. This year, property markets in Beijing and Shanghai are sizzling.

There are hopes, too, that China will use its new strategic heft—and its apparently deft touch—to help resolve the most pressing security issues of the times. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the U.S. national security adviser under Jimmy Carter, proposed a drastically slimmer G20—a G2, the U.S. and China—to deal with the nuclear threat posed by Iran and North Korea; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; India-Pakistan tensions; climate change.

When he arrives in Beijing, Mr. Obama will be clutching a geopolitical “to-do” list that looks quite similar. America’s broad goal has been to persuade China to assume the global responsibilities that go with its growing economic influence in a way that strengthens, rather than threatens, existing international arrangements. China, urged former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, should become a “responsible stakeholder.”

Yet China’s official commitment to a “harmonious world” is often at odds with an assertive America fighting two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. More often than not, it has meant that China has been a reluctant follower not a leader. Critics say that China’s record in the world’s trouble spots, from North Korea to Iraq and Darfur, suggests that it defines its responsibilities in ways that enhance its economic interests.

On North Korea, China has been heading diplomatic efforts to try to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear program. But it is hesitant to threaten the flow of Chinese oil and food that keeps the regime alive. Skeptics in the U.S. say that China holds back because it fears a collapse of North Korea that would not only unleash a flood of refugees across its border but also place U.S. forces face-to-face with its own.

Similar tensions between China’s economic interests and international obligations play out in Africa, where Chinese companies are investing massively in energy and raw materials to fuel China’s growth. The “no-strings” investments from Nigeria to Ethiopia fly in the face of Western efforts to link investment with improvements in human rights and the environment. In Sudan, China has sent peacekeepers to the war-torn region of Darfur, while bolstering the government by buying oil and selling arms.

Iran may provide the biggest test to date of China’s willingness to lead. Washington and its European allies see China’s role as critical in the effort to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program. So far, China has resisted tougher sanctions against a country that is its second-largest oil supplier after Saudi Arabia.

China’s leaders wrap their great power aspirations in modesty. They point out that China is still a poor developing country, with one tenth of the per capita GDP of the U.S.

Yet China is rapidly modernizing its military forces. Every schoolchild in China knows the story of the Dowager Empress who used funds earmarked for the navy to build stone boats at the Summer Palace in Beijing. The story has become a metaphor for national weakness, and a call to arms.

A military parade last month to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China sent a powerful message to China’s 1.3 billion people. The intercontinental ballistic missiles that rumbled down Beijing’s Avenue of Eternal Peace, and the tanker planes that lumbered overhead, signaled that China not only was at last a strong country, but also could project power beyond its shores.

These days, China’s appetite for “ingenious objects” from the West knows no bounds. It has 650 million mobile phones; it has passed America as the world’s largest auto market.

No emerging nation on earth has seized the opportunities of global trade more enthusiastically than China. Its decision to join the World Trade Organization in 2001 launched its economy into a new orbit. Surpluses from foreign trade—particularly with the U.S.—have helped China rack up more than $2 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves.

So what does China want to do with the enhanced status that it craves, and which the world seems equally anxious to concede to China?

Some two-and-a-half millennia ago, the Chinese philosopher Laozi wrote: “Governing a large country is like frying a small fish.” The advice was aimed at the scholar-officials that ran China—a Mandarin class that became a model of governance for the ancient world. The light touch has never been a hallmark of Communist rule, or of its statecraft. That matters greatly in a world in which influence and legitimacy derive more than ever from the attractiveness of a country’s governing ideals.

Last month, the Frankfurt Book Fair offered the world a glimpse into the internal workings of the Chinese state, and a case study on the limitations of China’s “soft power” and its ability to lead.

China was invited to the fair as the guest of honor. The Chinese government had invested millions of dollars in the event, lining up some 2,000 Chinese writers, publishers and artists to attend. All went well until organizers invited two Chinese dissidents to a prefair symposium titled “China and the World—Perception and Reality.” Furious Chinese officials threatened to boycott the event and backed down only when organizers withdrew the invitations.

“We did not come to be instructed about democracy,” Mei Zhaorong, China’s former ambassador to Germany, icily declared.

“Two principles also apply to the Frankfurt Book Fair,” said a German foreign ministry spokeswoman. “Guests are treated like guests, and art without freedom is inconceivable.”

Obama to press China on Afghanistan: “As US President Barack Obama prepares to make a final decision on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, his visit to Beijing next week will be an opportunity to press China to become more involved in the conflict”

The coming isolation: “India has to gird up to face internationally new tough times, warns N.V.Subramanian.

http://www.newsinsight.net/archivedebates/nat2.asp?recno=1910

11 November 2009: As the Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, meets Manmohan Singh tomorrow purportedly as a ‘friend’ and so does the US president, Barack Obama, later, it should be clear to policy-makers here that India is entering a period of strategic isolation. The isolation is on account of two facts, one longstanding, and the other of more recent origin.

The current reason for the isolation that this writer perceives coming arises from the presidential change in America, although that change is more than nine months old. Obama is not the close friend of India (although he is fairly close to the Indian-American community and has an incredible fondness for Hinduism) that his predecessor George W.Bush was. For example, he is not as keen on the Indo-US nuclear deal as Bush was, who was its architect.

Without promising ENR technologies to India, Obama is benchmarking further progress on the deal on India entering the non-proliferation regime, and his officials are in Delhi (proper non-proliferation ayatollahs) to soft-soap Manmohan Singh on it before he visits the US as Obama’s state guest. This writer has already warned of this in previous commentaries, and urged him to go to the US with limited or no expectations (Commentary, ‘Manmohan Singh’s US visit’).

But not only is Obama less friendly to India than Bush, he is a weaker president, and he is being steadily daunted by the problems he has inherited (Afghanistan, the economy) and by the new ones that have arisen in this presidency (for example, the Fort Hood shooting, which suggests an internal crisis with Muslim community integration almost as dangerously significant as the 9/ 11 attack that was externally inflicted). This writer had warned that China, for one, would see through Obama’s growing weakness and exploit it to India’s disadvantage, and this happened with Obama’s Dalai Lama meeting, which he dropped out of under Chinese pressure, although the White House denies it. Almost simultaneous with Obama chickening out of squarely facing the Tibetan issue, China has inexorably raised the pressure on India on Arunachal Pradesh and the Dalai Lama’s visit to it, orchestrating a barrage of criticism against the Dalai Lama and against India in the controlled Chinese media, and making threatening references to the 1962 war that India lost to the PLA. But in a reversal from before, India has withstood Chinese threats, and permitted the Dalai Lama to go ahead with his programme, although with the usual qualification that no political activity is being undertaken during the tour. The fact remains though that Obama has softened on the Chinese on Tibet because he needs them to save the US economy, and this has tilted the balance in China’s favour vis-a-vis India. If China benefits against India, so will Pakistan, etc. The linkages are very well-defined to be repeated again (see Commentary, ‘Fighting on two fronts’).

That is the current reason for India’s looming isolation. By the looks of it, India is also going to be isolated in Af-Pak, and it may have to fall back on the Northern Alliance-II option (Commentary, ‘Northern alliance II?’). The longstanding reason (mentioned earlier in the piece) for India’s recurrent isolation is that it is unable to influence international outcomes, not at least since Indira Gandhi liberated Bangladesh, absorbed Sikkim, and so on.

A friendly US president (George Bush) had to do all the heavy lifting to get the nuclear deal past the American Congress and the NSG (the Americans privately then complained that the Indians were doing very little successful international lobbying for the NSG waiver; the watchword is successful), and when that president’s Republican party was voted out, his Democratic successor has commenced to reverse it all. India cannot put all its eggs into one presidential basket. And of course the most ignominious example of India being unable to influence outcomes is its failure to win a permanent UN Security Council membership.

But China is not the only state to perceive India’s isolation as a friendly US president is replaced by an unfriendly if not hostile successor, on top of which India’s inability to influence outcomes is well-advertised. Australia, among others (and importantly, the South East Asian countries), has perceived India’s helplessness perfectly (it is another matter that Australia is also adrift), especially Rudd, a China-lover, or at least a former aficionado. Australia voted with China against India when the Arunachal Pradesh issue came up in the ADB, and Rudd, being a liberal politician like Obama, won’t dare befriend India at the price of annoying the Chinese. It is small consolation that Australia says Arunachal Pradesh is indisputably India’s when it voted otherwise in the ADB. Added to the fact that Obama is tilting China-ward, Australia would have no option but to go the American way. So forget any breathtaking breakthroughs when Rudd meets the PM tomorrow. No Australian uranium will reach India in a long time, unless, that is, India is able to influence outcomes.

What should India do with this approaching strategic isolation? Stay calm. Deng Xiaoping would have advised that. Where India can stand up to bullying, it should, on NPT, CTBT, FMCT, etc, on Tibet (the Tibet question must be opened; it is inevitable), on Kashmir, and so forth. America and the rest of the West will realize sooner than later (twelve to eighteen months maximum) that China’s rise is anything but peaceful, that there will be middle-kingdom hegemony, no less, if it is not reined in, and that counterweights are necessary to it, like democratic unthreatening India. So tomorrow, when the PM meets Kevin Rudd, and later Obama, he should be friendly but not conceal that he is steeled to face adversity. India survived an adverse Cold War so it will be more of the same for a while longer. But in this Dengian calm, India should consolidate on both the economic and military spheres and strive for internal political unity within competitive democratic politics.

N.V.Subramanian is Editor, www.NewsInsight.net

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Is China Ready to Be a Global Power? Or Headed Toward Collapse?: ”

For Global Times, David Shambaugh writes a piece asking, “Is China ready to be a global power?”:

President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, and US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman have all made speeches this year calling on China to be a greater global partner of the US. More could be done by China in some of the aforementioned areas. With respect to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs, Beijing could use more of its influence and leverage behind the scenes to halt these programs.

Of course, Beijing is chronically adverse to using sanctions and other coercive measures, but it could still more clearly make the case to the governments in Pyongyang and Tehran that they will face ever-increasing international isolation unless they opt to trade their nuclear ambitions for normalizing their positions in regional and international affairs.

Then there is Afghanistan and Pakistan – two countries where China’s national security interests are directly affected and where the international community has a common mission to destroy Al Qaeda and the Taliban and bring stability and security to Afghanistan and the Pakistani border region. Yet where is China?

[...] The issue of China’s role in the global climate change negotiations is also an important opportunity for Beijing to show it is part of the solution and not just part to the problem.

Specific numbers on emissions caps need to be added to Hu Jintao’s positive speech to the UN in September, prior to the UN Climate Change Conference Copenhagen in December.

This is likely to be an issue high on the agenda in Obama’s discussions with Hu.

While Politico ponders, “Is China headed toward collapse?”:

But there’s a growing group of market professionals who see a different picture altogether. These self-styled China bears take the less popular view: that the much-vaunted Chinese economic miracle is nothing but a paper dragon. In fact, they argue that the Chinese have dangerously overheated their economy, building malls, luxury stores and infrastructure for which there is almost no demand, and that the entire system is teetering toward collapse.

A Chinese collapse, of course, would have profound effects on the United States, limiting China’s ability to buy U.S. debt and provoking unknown political changes inside the Chinese regime.

The China bears could be dismissed as a bunch of cranks and grumps except for one member of the group: hedge fund investor Jim Chanos.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009.