Deft Chinese Diplomacy Reflects Asian Dynamism
Analysis by Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON — China denounces U.S. trade policy as protectionist one day after the Bush Administration threatens to take Beijing to the World Trade Organisation for coddling its semiconductor industry.
A top World Health Organisation official praises China for coming clean on recent outbreaks of avian bird flu and contrasts the response to Beijing's reticence last year to report the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The Chinese Foreign Ministry wraps up the latest six-way talks on ending the Korean nuclear crisis by urging all parties to make "concerted efforts" to reach an agreement.
All of these incidents, taken from news reports over the past few days, underscore the emergence of China as the dominant force in Asia and "despite the enormous U.S. military presence in Japan and Korea," the diminishing ability of U.S. leaders to shape events and drive the political and economic agenda in the region.
These trends, according to a senior Asian diplomat and a former Pentagon official, reflect the dramatic shift in U.S. diplomatic priorities to the Middle East in response to the events of Sep. 11, the growth of trade and cultural exchange within Asia, and a conscious decision by China's leaders to engage the world community at all levels.
"They're now prepared to do things they never did before," said Kishore Mahbubani, Singapore's permanent representative to the United Nations, pointing to China's proposal for a free trade agreement with South-east Asia and its unusual admission that had botched its handling of the SARS outbreak last year. "They feel they wasted two centuries, and now they feel their moment is coming."
"Clearly the great power in Asia is not the United States," added Kurt Campbell, the senior vice president of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and the deputy assistant director of defence during the Clinton administration.
"The most astonishing thing to me is how confident and forward-leaning Chinese diplomats are in the multilateral arena," Campbell added. Those diplomats, he said, "well appreciated" that multilateral organisations can be "their vehicle to extend Chinese dominance in Asia".
Both men spoke at a March seminar on contemporary Asia sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation here. To be sure, said Mahbubani, the forward-based U.S. military forces in Asia play a critical role as the "single most important factor for stability" in the region, and do not face any pressures to leave.
But he argued that U.S. prestige has been damaged by its dominant role in the U.N. Security Council, which only responds to global events "when the interests of the rich and powerful are affected". And if "the greatest power of the day doesn't want change, it freezes the organisation," creating gridlock, he said.
That "structural flaw", continued Mahbubani, has been replicated in the International Monetary Fund, which is often used to press U.S. economic demands on developing countries. "Lots of questions remain in East Asia about the role the IMF played in the Asian financial crisis," he said.
As a result, Asia has experienced a "renaissance" in which Asian journalists are challenging the "culturally bound" perspective of Cable News Network (CNN) and other Western media outfits, and once-formidable barriers between rival nations are being erased.
One of the most dramatic signs of this change can be seen on the border between Vietnam and China, which was heavily militarised just a few years ago, Mahbubani said. "But now the armies are gone, the landmines are gone, and there is a flourishing trade."
This growing integration in Asia, coupled with the economic strength of South Korea, China and other countries, make the region a far more realistic model for the Middle East than the vague plans for a liberal, democratic society put forward by the United States in Iraq, suggested Mahbubani.
Americans, he said, operate under the assumption they can "take a successful pattern of development and parachute it" into a country like Iraq and generate a major transformation. But if countries in the Middle East follow the Asian pattern, where cultural differences have dissolved into cultural affinities, "I can tell you the likelihood of success is much much greater".
Campbell, who managed the Pentagon's relations with East Asia during much of the 1990s, agreed there is a "very deep and growing ambivalence to the United States" in Asia.
But he disagreed with politicians who say that a 'regime change' in Washington will reverse this trend. "That's not the case. . . this is structural and continuing," he said. Ironically, said Campbell, Asia was seen as the rising power in the world in the years after the end of the Cold War.
In the early 1990s, he said, neo-conservatives seeking to redefine U.S. power saw Japan as the future dominant power. But the Japanese challenge was "shortlived".
In the late 1990s, the focus shifted to South-east Asia, which was experiencing unprecedented growth rates of nine to 10 percent a year. Many U.S. analysts believed that the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) would be a "driving force" and provide a check to both China and Japan, he said.
Then, after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, analysts began to predict that the United States would re-emerge as the dominant power in the region.
This was particularly true of the foreign policy advisers to President George W Bush, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleeza Rice. These two people, who are now respectively the deputy defence secretary and Bush's national security adviser, were collectively known as the "Vulcans".
"The Vulcans were thinking about Asia as the next great game," said Campbell. "Asia was where the action was going to be." But that changed on Sep. 11, which shifted the Vulcans' focus to the Middle East, and especially Iraq. (Inter Press Service)
