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.

The limit of China’s Influence?: “As the conflict between the Kokang army and the Burmese Military subsides, two unexpected developments have unfolded — The speed of the Burmese military advance and the limit of China’s influence over the course of the event.Before the current clash began, the Burmese military seized all reinforcement routes between the Kokang army and its allies making speedy reinforcement difficult. A force”