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As world powers wrangle this month at the United Nations about how to handle Irans nuclear plans, China is attempting to balance its thirst for Iranian oil and natural gas with its ambition to be a diplomatic heavyweight.
By news.yahoo.com

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Last week, I officially quit from my job. I am currently in the middle of an one-week hiatus before starting my new job. As such, I’ve had some time to watch Ted Koppel’s piece on China (People’s republic of capitalism) and part of Paul Merton’s trip to China. I think Ted Koppel’s 4 part mini-series on China was simply brilliant. For anyone who is trying to learn about future US-China relationship, that series would be a good place to start off. As I watch the series, I really begun to think about several major questions. How did China change so quickly? Were the policies of economic liberation really as great as people think they are? Why are Chinese businesses so competitive now and can they be this competitive in the future? Why is the politburo so paranoid about social stability and order? Can democracy and more importantly human rights be delivered in the country without stopping the economic progress? And most importantly, what would happen if the current economic growth in China stop? Ted Koppel brought up the point that it should not be too surprising if there will be another huge revolution/revolt that uproots the system when that happens. Considering the current rein on power that the communist party has on the China, that really seems to be a far-fetched idea. I watched some documentary from Mao’s time (China – Mao Bloody Revolution Revealed) and also on Deng in the past 24 hours and have a slightly different prospective.

There have often been a lot of criticisms in the Western media regarding human rights in China. A lot of that is well deserved. As shown in Koppel’s documentary (and also could be confirmed by anyone that lived in China for more than a month), the amount of corruption and the driven for greed is astounding; and has caused so much injustice in the country (many in the form of human right violations like forcible eviction). Koppel’s interview with billionaire Vincent Lo really revealed some interesting points. Mr. Lo basically made several major points
- while he is not happy about China’s human rights record, but they have to start somewhere.
- the autocratic gov’t has gone from socialism to become the world’s most business friendly government with a constitution of economic development.
- this current autocratic system has delivered 300 million people out of poverty in 30 years and democracy could not have done that
- assurance of stable gov’t + policies allow investors like himself get involved in the Chinese economy and deliver more wealth to the country
So, does that mean we should accept or tolerate such human right abuses and lack of democracy in the country.

For this, I watched a documentary on Mao by Phillip Short of BBC and reflected also on past documentaries I watched + what I know from growing up in China. There have been several documentaries made about Mao in the past 15 years as foreigners became allowed to interview people close to Mao at that time. None of which are flattering to Mao. Simply put, there have been 4 major man-caused disasters since the founding of CCP in the 1920s. The first two were the Japanese invasion in 1937-1945 and the civil war in 1946-1949. The next two were both caused by Mao himself in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. I knew that things were really bad during the years of great leap forward, but didn’t really know how bad they were until seeing that 20+ million people died of starvation from 1958-1962. It was especially disconcerting to read that cannibalism was quite common during that period (mostly of dead people, but also of living in some cases). Even through all of this mass starvation, the gov’t continued the insane policies of exporting grains to other countries to pay off Soviet debts and to look self sufficient in front of outside nations. I guess my family was not as affected by those years because we lived in the cities. However, the urban dwellers had their turn in front of the gun when Cultural Revolution came. All through China, urban youths were sent to the countryside to help the motherland. The intellectuals and the slightly wealthy urban dwellers and supporters of sacked leaders were all publicly humiliated and beaten. There were many stories of deans of universities and principals of schools getting beaten to death or committing suicide after being tortured. Worst of all, some of the most precious art, literature and historical places were destroyed by the brainwashed youth also known as the Red Guards. Personally speaking, my mother’s parents were both severely persecuted because of their educational background. The Mao era had none of the war and foreign occupation that plagued the country for the 100 years before that. However, it was replaced by a psychotic leader that managed to brainwash much of the population and destroyed all possible political opponents through radical ideological movements (Cultural Revolution and other major purges). Other than Zhou Enlai and Zhu De, all of the other major revolutionaries like Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping and many other generals were purged, humiliated and tortured. The administration was infected by leftist radicals like the Gang of Four, Mao himself and Lin Biao to a lesser degree. The succession of Deng Xiaoping over Hua GuoFeng in late 1970s was the first time in the recent Chinese history where a succession happened over a unified China without blood spilling or purges. And thankfully, they have finally put in a system that would allow for peaceful transition of power and that would prevent future emergence of charismatic leader (like Mao himself). If this series of events sound crazy, one has to realize that this was nothing new in the Chinese history. Unfortunately, Chinese history is marred by continuous cycles of internal war, mass starvation, political purges by emperors and village rebellions that led to new deification of rebellion leader as an emperor God.

In Koppel’s documentary, he interviewed a bunch of villager who insisted that life is better now than it has ever been. Their explanation was that “the army no longer forces people to join. And we are no longer forced to move off our land.” And the oldest women in the village said that right now is the best time to live because they have enough food to eat and enough clothes to wear. Some may think these are extraordinary statements or that the Chinese population has set their standards way too low. However, one only has to look at the past to see how much things have moved. When my parents were in their early 20s, they were working at textile factories and villages in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. All form of higher education were stopped (even most lower level of education were stopped), so their dreams of going to university were sitting in vain. When my grandparents were in their early 20s, China was involved in the two major wars of this century. A lot of their friends were killed by Japanese brutality and then by the civil war. When my great grandparents were in their early 20s, China had just became a republic and was in the midst of constant infighting between local warlords. It should not be hard to see why the Chinese gov’t fears change and instability so much. Deng Xiaoping what happened to China in the 60s and 70s when the country went into policies without pragmatism and caution. His philosophy of control, pragmatism and caution has been passed onto all of the current leaders. Outside of the TianAnMen Square crackdown, one can hardly argue against this period of peace, political stability and economical growth in China. A lot of people on the top are fearful that if their current hold on power is taken away, the country will go back into chaos like prior to 1978.

It is very easy to credit Deng Xiaoping and recent administrations for China’s success in the past 30 years, but are they really that responsible? Looking back at the period right after Mao’s death, the Chinese population was ready to open itself up to the rest of the world and embrace capitalism. I think that opening up the country to Western investment and technology was the smartest thing that the gov’t did once the relations were normalized with the Western countries. From his past experiences at the top, Deng Xiaoping saw the need for pragmatic engagement with the West over extreme ideological warfare. According to this well written article by Hoover Institution, the Chinese people were hungry by then for political reform. They were even acting out illegally in many cases to make money for their families. During the late 70s and early 80s, the younger generation were kids when the great leap forward happened and teenagers when the cultural revolution happened. I think they became disillusioned of class struggle and socialism after being starved and later sent to the farms. The older generation still had enough memory of the period of society prior to 1949. I think both generations had suffered enough by then and really wanted to work hard to make lives better for their kids. Even today, the older generation in China are the younger generation of the late 70s, so they still remembered the chaos, starvation, poverty and hard times. They don’t really mind to work super hard to ensure better future for their kids. And I think Ted Koppel’s documentary was a perfect illustration of what every poor Chinese family are willing to do for their kids. He made a perfect point later in an extra interview that “Chinese people probably deserve to go to the hall of fame for enduring hardship and suffering”. When you look at Ted Koppel’s interview with the owner of Lifan, you can see the prototypical hardened Chinese entrepreneur that is willing to do whatever it takes to make it in the capitalistic world. You also hear about this with many of the other successful business men in China. They have succeeded because of their hardened experience during the great leap forward and the cultural revolution. They know that the only way forward is to beat out your competition in any possible way. So, I think that China is thriving in the world economy now, because the people that are driving the economic growth are the same people who were hardened through the Mao-caused disasters. It is beating out competitions around the world like Japan did in the 50s/60s because it has a very driven group of people willing to endure hardship. I think that the recent regime’s main role through all of this time is to continue a stable environment to allow Chinese people to better their own lives. Deng and the following leaders were smart enough to not stop a good thing when it has already started. The only thing that prevented this from happening for the 100 years prior to that were continued chaos, utter lunacy in power and the numerous wars. And maybe Deng’s policy of maintaining stability and not stopping good things is the best anyone can ever hope a government to do. The question as we move forward is whether or not China can continue to strive in the world market when the future generation that came in after the start of the single child policy become the drivers of the economy. Can the Chinese population still work hard and endure suffering when most of the people grew up being spoiled and pampered by their parents.

So in the past 30 years, we have gone from a society of total chaos and starvation to a society of vibrant growth with large degree of personal freedom. It is hard to imagine that China will ever go back to the Mao days. In fact, I read a recent article where Chinese tourists started to complain about lack of freedom after a day of visit in North Korea. Today’s North Korea is probably where China was at the time of Cultural Revolution. In fact, the evolution of North Korea from a state that was wealthier and more industrialized than South Korea in the 60s to the pariah state that it is today is a very good parallel to what happened to China in the 60s and 70s. Knowing all of this, the question is what holds in the future for China in terms of democracy and human rights. I think it was very interesting that Ted Koppel mentioned in several places that what he saw or many of the interviews that he was happening could not have happened 15 years ago or even 5 years ago. This shows a gradual change in the personal freedom that we are seeing in the ordinary citizens. For example, I don’t think the administration would be able to survive the internal backlash from a crackdown like the one in TianAnMen Square. Actually ever since the death of Deng Xiaoping, no civilian leader will ever have the same power to control the military. That is a good thing, because the politburo members have to retire after 2 terms of power. And we are certainly seeing a lot of checks and balances within the PSC to prevent a God-like leader ever appearing again. As the power at the top have slowly faded from Mao to Deng to Jiang to Hu and to Xi Jinping in the future, the question is whether or not we can have a peaceful transition to some form of electoral based system. I think that a transition to elecoral based system will happen in the next 20 years, but I hope it does not come as a result of a violent national uprising by the disenfranchised over the wealth gap between the haves and the have-nots. Even though today’s system is causing a lot of corruption, injustice and wealth gap, it has vastly improved the lives of most Chinese people. I think that a complete repudiation of this system would cause chaos and economic disaster in the short term.

Even so, I do hope for some kind of repudiation in the future. I think that the mistakes that Mao made in the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution will never be properly revealed to the Chinese public unless this system is shaken. Deng continued the legacy of Mao and the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party by maintaining that Mao’s contribution to history was 70% good and 30% bad. I cannot see CCP go any further in repudiating Mao because 1) that would take away their legitimacy in power; 2) the population just doesn’t care anymore. And I think my second point is probably the sadest of all. Even from my parent’s generation, they have grown up with the view that Mao was this great leader that unified China but made some mistakes along the way. Leaders like Liu Shaoqi and Peng Dehuai have been rehabilitated, but they have never received the credit they deserved for bringing China out of the Great Leap Forward and trying to run the country. Most of the blames for the Cultural Revolution should rest upon Mao rather than the Gang of Four or Lin Biao. Even though he unified the country and kicked out the foreigners, he also set the nation back to stone ages with his insane economic policies and political movements. In the future, 95% of the new generation of Chinese would grow up never know about how bad things were between the early 1950s and 1978. And I think that is a mistake, because they need to learn about the past to not repeat it again in the future. So, I hope that as people demand for better rule of law and more freedom in the future, the government will incrementally become more open about its past. More transparency from the gov’t on these matters is certainly better than having its own citizens watching documentaries of Mao on youtube (some of which are quite biased). There is a major bubble forming in the Chinese economy. Once that bubble bursts, the gov’t needs to be prepared for millions of unemployed college students hanging around the country. It would need to also continuously change to prevent another million people from protesting in front of TianAnMen Square. Because the next time it happens, I doubt the army would be listening to the civilian commands.

In conclusion, I think that even though China is going through a really healthy period of peace and growth, there are some looming signs of danger up ahead. Having looked back through its recent history, I understand the politburo’s obsession with stability and caution, but also think that they need to continue to change to maintain this stability. Nobody really knows what would happen if the Chinese economy bubble bursts. I hope that the country does not go back to chaos, because that would set the country back many years. I would recommend all of the links that I have mentioned in this blog entry. They are great places to start in understanding Modern China.

By Feng

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So, according to this article on times online, the Israelis actually made the unprecedented move to come to China to try to persuade Chinese support for sanctions. That in itself is nothing new, but the Israelis are basically saying that they will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and that all hell with break loose if they do. According to the article, they have even let a Chinese general to inspect their strike force to show that they are capable of accomplishing this mission. Basically if you’ve followed the commentaries of Robert Baer, the Israelis will move to take out the nuclear facilities if UN doesn’t deliver on further sanction. Clearly, Israel regards this as existential threat (this entry is not to agree or disagree that point). Even so, it is still a curious strategy to straight out tell China that “you better help us, because we are so desperate that we will do something so dramatic that you will get hurt in the process and we don’t care what anyone else thinks about it”. It amounts to basically blackmailing the world’s leading creditor.

I’m curious to see how China will react to this. I personally think they should support further sanctions in the hope of stopping this from escalating further into a wide conflict that would basically take a large part of Middle East oil out of commission. The world’s economy is just recovering and can’t handle a dramatic energy crisis like this. However, would supporting a harsher sanction right now stop the Iranians and appease the Israelis? What if the Israelis come back to ask for more sanctions if this round does not solve anything? These are all things that China needs to think about.

By Feng

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China’s challenge in defining the security role it will play in the region and the world in the coming years is to harmonize its own view of its security intentions with that of the outside world, writes Michael Lostumbo.
By rand.org

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The story of how President Obama engineered a grass-roots campaign, mobilizing formerly disengaged U.S. citizens with new media and new technologies, has reached almost mythological proportions. Less well known is the story of similar grass-roots efforts emerging in local communities around the world, write Cherl Benard and Edward O’Connell.
By rand.org

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As China unveils the world’s fastest high speed train and its French designed railway terminals. (here), perhaps it is time to look back at PLA’s long forgotten Railway Engineering Corps (REC).The Wuhan TerminalThe REC was commissioned in August 1948 and “civilianized” in 1982 (here) by merged into the Ministry of Railway. In the 1970s, the REC peaked at 15 divisions and a total of 400,000
By Coatepeque

article found via google.com

NewsBlaze

China is primed to be the world's economic and military leader in the 21st century, but in my humble opinion any country that isn't enamored of chocolate is …

See all stories on this topic
By NewsBlaze

originally published at chinesemil.blogspot.com
Chinese military is learning the importance of a good public relation in world’s media

BEIJING — China’s Defense Ministry will launch its first official Web site next month in what state media said Thursday was an effort by the secretive military to be more transparent.

China has long been tightlipped about its military strength and capacity, drawing criticism from other countries wary of the Asian giant’s growing power and skyrocketing military spending, although Beijing says it is purely for defense.

The Web site — in English and Chinese — will run on a trial basis starting Aug. 1, which marks the anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army, the world’s largest with 2.3 million members, the official China Daily said.

Its editors say they hope to make it as informative as the U.S. Defense Department’s Web site, the newspaper reported.

The Web site appears aimed at reassuring Asian and Western nations that the PLA is becoming more accessible to the outside world, dxperts told the China Daily.

“As more attention is being given to online information, the Chinese army has moved one step forward in its public diplomacy,” Professor Li Xiguang, dean of Tsinghua University’s journalism school, was quoted as saying.

The Web site’s launch “is a major step for the PLA to open up to the outside world,” Sr. Col. Huang Xueping, deputy director of the ministry’s information office, said in an interview with the newspaper. The office was only set up last year.

The site will “cover a large amount of information,” featuring regular activities and background of the Chinese military.

China’s military spending has jumped by double-digit percentages for nearly two decades. This year, Beijing announced a 14.9 percent rise in military spending to 480.68 billion yuan ($70.27 billion), though it was a smaller increase than previous years.

That spending puts it on par with Japan, Russia and Britain, but it is still dwarfed by the U.S., which spends nearly 10 times as much.

In recent years, China has been increasing its international military ties as it attempts to modernize its army. Earlier this year, Chinese warships were sent to patrol waters off Somalia as part of the international effort against piracy.

But China’s military growth has also been the source of friction, with multiple confrontations at sea this year between Chinese vessels and U.S. naval ships, including a collision between a Chinese submarine and a U.S. sonar device.

In March, the U.S. Defense Department released a report saying Beijing’s rapidly growing military power was shifting the military balance in the region and could be used to enforce its claim in disputed territories. While tensions have eased between the two sides, it warned that “much uncertainty surrounds China’s future course, particularly regarding how its expanding military power might be used.”

The military is also planning to establish more information offices nationwide and hold more press conferences, spokesman Huang said.

The first batch of military press officers, selected from the different armed forces, graduated in March from a boot camp on public relations, the China Daily reported.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hYxj3x4MNZykJ7QpBZPPu62haydwD99K2C0O0

By polaris

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….

East Asia Forum

via Thinking about the Asia Pacific Community.

Authors: Hadi Soesastro (CSIS, Jakarta) and Peter Drysdale (ANU, Canberra)

The idea that regional architecture in Asia and the Pacific is not up to the tasks it now needs to serve has been around for some time. It has been inspired in part by worries about the untidiness in the competing structures — across the Pacific, of APEC, and within East Asia, of ASEAN +3 and the East Asia Summit (EAS). There has also been a hankering after ‘robust’ regional institutions modelled on the arrangements in Europe or North America, however unsuited they are to Asia Pacific circumstances.

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What is different about the thinking that led to Prime Minister Rudd’s Asia Pacific Community proposal is that these worries are incidental to its main strategic motivation. The Rudd idea is grounded in the reality of the big shifts taking place in the structure of regional and world power. These shifts in the structure of power have two main implications.

First, Asia’s growth is changing the structure of the world economy and shifting global economic power, and ultimately, strategic weight towards Asia, in particular China and India. Economic and political changes in Asia and the Pacific challenge the primacy of some dimensions of American power. These developments underline the gap in the framework for regional political and security dialogue in Asia and the role that such dialogue could play in helping to manage the long-term change in the structure of Asian economic and political power and political security relations between Asia and America.

Second, the scale of Asia’s impact on the global economy means that there is urgency in energising regional efforts to deliver on Asia’s global responsibilities – in the financial and macro-economy, in trade policy and on climate change – and how that might be assisted through regional structures.

Until the collapse of world financial markets and world trade in the global financial crisis, the East Asian region, including Australia, was preoccupied with managing all aspects of the China boom – the pressure on energy, resource and food markets, the macroeconomic pressures, the looming foreign direct investment and commercial presence – and beginning to think about its long-term political consequences. India too was more and more caught up in the wave. All was premised on the continuing strength of North American and European markets.

East Asian economies should have been more conscious of their role on the world stage and the need to reposition quickly to manage the global system consequences of their own economic success and the dangers presented to its sustainability that the huge imbalances had created on the way. East Asia bore no responsibility for America’s squandering the beneficence of East Asia’s success – the apparently never-ending supply of cheap credit negligently guarded by the private and public custodians of the developed world’s financial system. But in this and in many other global system-making or system-destroying economic and political affairs, East Asia had significant prudential responsibility and it failed collectively at every stage to exercise it.

The reason for this failure is simple.

Despite the emergence of East Asia as a major economic force in the world – China, Japan and the rest of East Asia through to Australia and New Zealand reaching out to India – the East Asian economies collectively could not step up to the mark because regional structures were still not up to the task of effective global participation. The stage was still set for the wrong play – reactive responses to regionalism in other parts of the world, the trivia of regional FTAs and ‘mickey mouse’ financial cooperation – and there was no platform on which to perform globally.

In East Asia, like elsewhere in the world, the risks that we now face in recovery from the global financial crisis, not only economically but also politically, are a consequence of failure in the architecture of governance, including regional architecture, that frustrated a coherent East Asian and international response to the big problems of the day in their global context.

The global financial crisis and the emergence of the G20 has changed all this dramatically and propelled the G20’s Asian members to assume a new role and their proper responsibilities in managing the world economic order. ASEAN is the fulcrum of Asian cooperation arrangements, including APEC, ARF, ASEAN+3 and the East Asian Summit (EAS) but, with the rise of the bigger powers in Asia, and the G20, this is changing.

How can regional architecture be restructured to relate effectively to the new global arrangements?

The starting point is to understand that, while they may have failed to connect Asia’s regional with its growing global interests and responsibilities and they have other weaknesses, the regional arrangements we have in place are huge assets in going forward. APEC is entrenched as the primary trans-Pacific arrangement. ASEAN+3 and the East Asian Summit have assumed an important role in developing the Asian regional agenda. APEC, in its first twenty years, has provided a workable strategy in trade and economic diplomacy in East Asia and the Pacific supporting policies of liberalisation and structural reform, organised around the principle of open regionalism (a strategy well suited to the development, objectives and diversity of the Asia Pacific region). But after the Asian financial crisis and the global financial crisis, these regional arrangements (APEC, ASEAN +3, ASEAN+6) must now relate more strategically to the global arrangements (the G20 group). And there is a whole new political and security agenda to navigate within the Asia Pacific region.

Clearly, the Asia Pacific Community idea needs to relate to these established regional structures – APEC and East Asian arrangements – if it is to be both accepted and serve its underlying political-security purpose. It will only be worthwhile and practical if it limits dialogue to the major players. Hence, although it cannot encompass all APEC’s membership, or all the membership of EAS, a dialogue on political and security affairs needs to represent both as they are presently constituted. It needs to link to, be coordinated with, and draw on the base of all of the established trans-Pacific and East Asian arrangements.

While none of the existing regional institutions addresses all of the key dimensions of regional cooperation that they now need to – providing a collective forum for regional leaders to address the full range of regional and global issues; dealing effectively with the consequences of economic integration, particularly its trade and investment but also its financial and macro-economic dimensions; addressing issues of political change and security; and educating the public and opinion leaders about the region – nor should any one organisation need to perform all these roles. Each of these forums has evolved to serve some or other of these roles and they can all make an input across the range of issues that are now important.

This points to the need for a new heads of government meeting that transcends APEC and EAS (encompassing the Rudd and Hatoyama proposals) that can address the full range of regional and global issues, including issues that might arise in APEC, EAS, ARF or other regional forums and feed into the G20 and other global processes. This summit could eventually constitute an Asia Pacific Council, underpinning the continued development of the regional community. It would not need its own secretariat but draw on APEC and the ASEAN-based groups to develop issues for consideration.

There may be sensitivities in creating a new summit involving a limited number of countries, the ‘larger’ players in Asia and the Pacific. But so long as it is structured so that it is representative of all the regional arrangements, these sensitivities need not be important. The most practical proposal and most logical starting point is that this summit should begin by including the Asia Pacific members of the G20, and meet adjunct to the APEC summit. A dialogue among these countries does not entail creating an additional institution as G20 leaders will continue to meet beyond the current financial crisis, encompass the core players in APEC and EAS and meet in conjunction with the annual APEC summit . These are all  important considerations in taking the next steps towards realising vision of an Asia Pacific and East Asian Community.

The clear message is that ‘no one wants more meetings’ and that there is ‘no appetite for additional institutions.’ But there is strong support for developing more effective alignment of regional strategic purpose, a sentiment that is at the core of the idea of an Asia Pacific Community.

If this is an idea that seeks to anticipate and shape our regional political and economic future, it is an idea that cannot be put on hold, take a decade to implement or wait until the United States signs on to EAS, an ASEAN-based, primarily Asian-oriented and still nascent grouping.

The next APEC meeting in Japan, provides an excellent opportunity to convene a side-dialogue of this group, including India, on these issues, likely just prior to the G20 meetings in Seoul, to lay the foundations for a representative Asia Pacific Council that can give leadership to taking the Asia Pacific Community idea forward.

Dr Hadi Soesastro is a senior economist with CSIS in Jakarta and Peter Drysdale is Emeritus Professor in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University. The original version of this essay was submitted as background to the Asia Pacific Community Conference held in Sydney at the instigation of Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, 3-5 December 2009.

China News, News in China, Latest News, Daily News | World News – Times of India

via China wants ‘improved’ Indo-Pak ties, but denies interference.

“We want a gradual improvement in the Indo-Pak ties for the stability of the region. We will support the relevant moves,” Chinese foreign ministry said, hinting it has ‘no intention’ to interfere in the matter.

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.”

Energy and Geopolitics in China: “

The world was surprised when China emerged in 2004 as a major importer and consumer of oil. Today, that surprise has been replaced by growing concern that the China of tomorrow may be in a position to challenge the United States not only for economic leadership but for political leadership as well.

read more

How to Build a Navy: “Strategypage reveals how China is now the world’s largest shipbuilder, proving she has what it takes to potentially create a world class Navy:
Sooner than anyone expected, China has surpassed South Korea as the world’s largest shipbuilder. Currently, Chinese firms have orders for 54.96 million CGT of ships, compared to 53.63 million CGT. Thus China has 34.7 percent [...]“

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.

US and China, locked in equal embrace | John Gittings: “

Obama’s trip comes at a time when the US needs China as much as China needs it – and neither nation can afford to let go

When President Obama arrives in Shanghai tomorrow he will be carrying the baggage of a relationship between communist China and capitalist America that dates back more than 60 years.

‘There is no such thing as America not intervening in China,’ Mao Zedong told a US diplomat in 1945 – and offered to fly to Washington to talk about the future with President Roosevelt. Mao’s proposal, made a year before the Chinese civil war in which the US backed Chiang Kai-shek’s rule, never reached Roosevelt. What might have happened if they had met is a fascinating counter-factual question of history.

After the communist victory in 1949, two decades of hostility ended with Nixon’s visit to Beijing in 1972 when China became a useful ally for Washington against the Soviet Union. Since then the relationship has fluctuated but has always been seen on the Chinese side as essential – less consistently so by the US.

What is different today, and what takes the Obama administration into new territory, is that it is at last a relationship of equals: the US now needs China as much as China needs the US.

The contrast with the last presidential state visit to China, by Bill Clinton in 1998, is striking. That event was more show than substance, carefully choreographed to give the president a much-needed boost after the Monica Lewinsky affair. Clinton urged the virtues of democracy upon President Jiang Zemin and offered to act as a go-between for him and the Dalai Lama. It looked good at the time but the Tibetan offer came predictably to nothing and six months later Jiang launched a crackdown on the Chinese democracy movement.

Within another six months, the US air force bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, provoking a wave of genuine anger across China. George Bush, in his presidential campaign, would label China as a potential strategic threat, not as a partner.

It was the shock of 9/11 that gave China a grim golden chance to make itself more useful to the US (and target its own Muslim dissidents in Xinjiang province) by signing up to the war on terror. Yet in spite of Chinese entry into the World Trade Organisation, Beijing knew that the relationship remained less than equal: in the wry expression of a senior Chinese diplomat ‘we think it is better to remain number two’.

Today’s relationship occupies a completely different world in which there is talk of a Sino-US G2, and even suggestions that China might become No 1. The past rhetoric of both sides – ‘empty cannons’ as Chairman Mao once called them – seems dated. China is not going to make too much fuss about continued US arms sales to Taiwan (when was that island last in the headlines?). Human rights in China – never a huge concern to Washington (only a month after the Beijing massacre in 1989, a secret US envoy was sent to Beijing to maintain relations) – will be mentioned for form’s sake by Obama. But the priorities identified by Obama earlier this week are the only ones that really matter: ‘climate change, economic recovery, nuclear non-proliferation’.

The US says it seeks a ‘comprehensive partnership’ with China in what Jon Huntsman, new US ambassador to Beijing, calls ‘the most important bilateral relationship in the world’. This is music to the ears of Chinese foreign policy advisers in Beijing who have often worried about the underlying ‘inequality’ in US-China relations.

The presidents whom they advised, Jiang and now Hu Jintao, can privately tell internal critics that their long-term strategic policy of putting the relationship with the US first has paid off.

More openly, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has warned the US military establishment that China should be regarded as a partner, not an adversary.

Does China perhaps have the upper hand in this relationship, as it measures another 8% growth in GDP against the limping US economy? Hardly so, if we consider the real implication of the familiar statistic that China now holds $800bn in US Treasury bonds.

Obama may ask Beijing to revalue the Renminbi; Hu may ask Washington to ‘focus on its own financial deficit’, but the Chinese surplus rides on the American debt as if on the back of the Old Man of the Sea: neither can let go of the other.

And China’s extensive growth over almost two decades is not only unhealthily dependent on foreign markets, but has been bought at the expense of a deteriorating environment and a worsening rich-poor divide.

US presidential visits to China have always had a showbiz element – ever since Richard Nixon stood on the Great Wall and declared that it was truly a great wall. We may expect a wave of Obama-fever in the Chinese media: every tabloid paper – and there are a lot of them now – will want to have Michelle on the front page. Yet the widely read Huanqiu Bao (Global Times) says that the Obama visit ‘won’t shake the world’ and that most Chinese people have ‘neither strong concerns nor high expectations’. In a more equal Sino-US partnership, fewer heads may actually turn for the presidential motorcade.

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.”

China’s shipbuilding industry ranks in world’s top three: “According to statistics, by 2007, China’s shipbuilding output accounted for 23 percent of the world’s total, ranking third in the world. China now has three enterprises ranked among the top ten shipbuilding enterprises in the world, and 15 …”

World Briefing Asia: China: U.S. and Chinese Generals Clash: “A meeting between a Chinese military leader and an American army general turned rancorous as the Chinese leader gave a lecture on the failure of the United States to respect China’s interests.

“

World Briefing Asia: China: U.S. and Chinese Generals Clash: “A meeting between a Chinese military leader and an American army general turned rancorous as the Chinese leader gave a lecture on the failure of the United States to respect China’s interests.

“