China wants to be seen as a global superpower. Dealing with it will require acknowledgement that it is one
In August, a Pentagon report stated that China had reclaimed about 3,000 acres – about the size of 150 soccer fields – along the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in the last 18 months. Just three months prior, China had only reclaimed about 2,000 acres. The same report said that the other claimants – Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan – had reclaimed a total of about 100 acres…over 45 years.
The revelation came just one month ahead of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s state visit to the United States, where the issue was effectively left unresolved with both sides reiterating their respective positions. U.S. president Barack Obama: “Land reclamation, construction and militarisation of disputed areas…make it harder for countries to resolve disputes peacefully"; Xi: “Islands in the South China Sea, since ancient times, are China’s territory. We have the right to uphold our own territorial sovereignty and lawful and legitimate maritime rights and interests.”
“In the U.S., the China hands warn, ‘You can’t do anything that would create too much friction. We are working on them on so many other things,’” says Paul Haenle, Director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. “There’s another voice that is getting louder that says, ‘For us to have a long term relationship with China that is stable and positive, we might have to tolerate friction along the way. That might require us to step up our presence in the South China Sea and do things that makes the Chinese very uncomfortable like exercising freedom of navigation, doing more joint military exercises etc.’
“China will ultimately have to decide if they want to push their territorial claims. Ultimately, it’s about how we want to affect Chinese behaviour and decision-making. Based on the State visit, we will see some of these things play out.”
Living with a powerful China
Haenle made those observations at the recent SMU Social Sciences and Humanities seminar “An assessment of U.S.-China relations after the state visit” where he explained the change in Sino-U.S. relations following China’s rise in the 21st century. Where matters between the two powers once centred around bilateral issues such as Taiwan, trade and human rights, they have since moved on the broader and transnational ones such as ensuring global economic stability, addressing climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, and counter-piracy etc.
While the U.S. can address and engage China as an equal – indeed, the Chinese media had a field day with pictures of Xi being given a 21-gun salute amidst the pomp and pageantry at the White House – smaller nations cannot but help feeling nervous about Chinese expansionism. While countries in the Asia-Pacific region desire the stability offered by American presence, Haenle states quite clearly that these nations are not looking to choose between one superpower or the other, rising one.
“One of the points I often have to make to American audiences is that countries in the region are not looking to choose between U.S. and China,” says Haenle, who served as China director in the George W. Bush administration. “Ultimately, they want good relations with both. The American strategy has to be more nuanced than that of a zero-sum approach, which is why there’s a debate within the U.S. about whether America has the right framework in place.
“Some have called for ‘security balancing’, which is what I call neo-containment. It involved blocking China with India. My main argument against that would be that our allies and partners don’t want that. Ideally, we want to have constructive relations with our partners and China.”
The U.S.-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Chinese-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) initiatives are often held up as competing instruments for influence in Asia. Haenle advises against that line of thinking.
“In my meetings with the State Department and the White House, I was encouraging them to take the issue of infrastructure development – it’s become an issue for disagreement between U.S. and China, but there’s no reason it should be – and turn it into an area of agreement.
“I would like to have heard President Obama say something like: ‘We welcome China’s greater contribution to infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region.’ That would have been helpful. It could perhaps begin to put the U.S. and China together on an issue where they were once on opposing sides of the table and have them on the same side of the table.
"Countries in Asia are not looking to choose between U.S. and China."
Haenle points out that Congress wouldn’t approve U.S. participation in AIBB anyway, while China is too protectionist to gain entry into TPP. Haenle expresses hope that China could one day join the TPP to spur domestic economic reform in the same way it did with the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
In dire (Taiwan) straits?
While there is hope for Sino-U.S. cooperation on trade matters, the issue of Taiwan remains a potential flashpoint. With the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) holding substantial leads in polls ahead of next January’s presidential and parliamentary elections, the spectre of military escalation in the Taiwan Straits hangs over the relationship between Beijing and Washington, D.C.
If Taiwan becomes a hot potato, Haenle warns that the Obama administration might have a hard time dealing with the fallout.
“When I was the China director,” he recalls, “(former Taiwanese president) Chen Shui-bian took up lots of our time. There was always something I had to address every day. When President Ma took office, and both sides were able to take the ’92 consensus (that there was only “one China”) and use that in a way to communicate, the issues completely died out. I hardly had to deal with Taiwan at all.
“The current administration has hardly had to deal with the Taipei-Beijing relationship, so if (DPP presidential candidate) Tsai Ing-wen wins the Presidential election and the DPP wins the parliamentay elections, there would be a lack of leaders in Washington who know how to deal with matters between Taipei and Beijing.”
Propaganda…at what cost?
In all, Xi achieved a main objective of the state visit, which is to deliver to the Chinese audience the message that the U.S. now accepts China as an equal. The Chinese foreign ministry website claimed that the two heads of state will work together to build what China describes as a “new type of great power relations (新型大国关系)” with the U.S.
“It’s interesting because President Obama never once used that phrase,” Haenle clarifies. “This has been a Chinese idea from which the U.S. has distanced itself. This is very important to the Chinese because they want to be seen throughout the world as a great power.”
Such propaganda is unsurprising given the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) reputation for top-down control and opaqueness. Haenle, however, points out that a disturbing development: the head of propaganda used to sit on one of 12 small groups within the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee under the previous Hu Jintao regime; under Xi, that number jumped to six.
Given how such opaqueness – or poor communication, depending on one’s opinion – caused market panic during August’s yuan devaluation, it begs the question: has Beijing learnt anything?
“Xi Jinping defended it,” Haenle points out. “I imagine that people like (People’s Bank of China Governor) Zhou Xiaochuan are good at their jobs. But are they being listened to? Who are making these decisions?
“How much influence do the real experts have on decisions such as the economy? Are they being marginalised? If you ask the experts they will probably say the communication was done poorly and the markets were caught off guard, which necessitated the government intervention.”
Haenle concludes, “I don’t know if they’ve learnt their lesson.”
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Last updated on 23 Oct 2017 .
