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Pinning the tail on the dragon: how China is seducing the world

By Kate Reid-Smith - posted Monday, 21 June 2010


It seems everywhere you go these days China is the hot topic of discussion. Everyone seems fascinated by every detail of the Middle Kingdom, underlined by the allure of access to potentially the world's largest super markets. Whether ranging from investment in offshore resource companies to alleged cyber-espionage, or China's 21st century military and strategic intentions, China's future looms large in global foreign and defence policy debates and Australia is no exception.

For the past decade or so, the world has been engaged in a rekindled diplomatic love affair with China. It began not long after the so-called ending of the Cold War - whenever that was - as global geopolitics changed pace. Engagement with old foes and former enemies alike rapidly replaced containment, and new mutual pursuits of security and stability, through mutually beneficial bilateral international relationships, exploded throughout the globe.

In the aftermath of 50 years of global ossification, everyone expected the old Cold War stalwarts of the US or newly-emerging Russia, to take the global political ball and run with it, and assumed both would probably fill the inevitable post-Cold War power vacuum. By the late 1990s however, it was becoming increasing clear that the opposite was the case, and neither were up to the task. International relations as the world had become accustomed to was in disarray, or was it?

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China's past future reflections

At the same time the world watched, and waited with baited breath, as the other Cold War survivor, China, set about reclaiming its territories and expanding its territorial sovereignty: first Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, and then Macao from Portugal in 1999.

As the British entourage sailed out of Hong Kong harbour amidst global media fanfare, the big question on everybody’s lips was which way would China go? Would it follow the Soviet implosion? Would it start to lean towards the West? Two years later both were moot points when Macao's handing back hardly rated a mention anywhere in the international political arena.

Western interests scrambled to find substantive post-Cold War foreign policies, especially those better able to cope with a changing world political order. China on the other hand, adhered to its Confucianist-based foreign policy principles known as the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence that had ostensibly not changed since 1955.

(The Five Principles remain: mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in respective internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. In 2004 the Chinese government released an updated version with additional concepts such as taking advantage of military superiority.)

The expected Chinese war machine had not come in guns blazing as many had predicted, amid seemingly western indifference to the proceedings themselves. By 2000, it was rapidly becoming obvious that both were key benign components China could publicly manipulate. So much so that by 2010, “brand China” is undisputedly a profitable and marketable commodity.

Movie successes including Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (although Taiwanese), are accompanied by the Hollywoodisation of Chinese leading actors such as Jet Li and Jackie Chan, and the introduction of Mandarin language into mainstream western media entertainment. Chinese design is the latest aesthetic, and Chinese characters are the tattooed body art of choice among western women.

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In art galleries, exhibitions and museums around the world, Chinese art and archaeological treasures share spaces next to western counterparts, and the Terracotta Warriors are now almost as well known as the pyramids. Chinese tenors, classical Chinese music orchestras, traditional acrobatic shows and opera productions, all undertake sell-out global tours while other Chinese community cultural traditions, such as bestowing dragon blessings on newly-opened businesses, are on the increase.

At the same time, China has established its version of Catholicism, appointing Bishops and training clergy, and Chinese Christian aid is expanding. In Kenya for example, western missionary observations suggest 75 per cent of some water pipeline projects are controlled by Chinese Christian interests. China also has newly emerging philanthropic pursuits including building medical centres and schools in poverty-stricken nations most recently in Timor-Leste.

Intellectualism has flourished, and proactive expansion of China’s offshore international education policies seems aimed toward a more inclusive future global think-tank arena, although China has been intensely studying all aspects of other nations since the 1950s anyway. Confucianist Institutes, ostensibly Chinese language and cultural learning centres, are popping up throughout the world in places as eclectic as the middle of rural Wales to Perth in Western Australia, or New York City.

China also seems to be leading the world in scientific research, as a plethora of English-language journals publish scholarly articles and reports written by Chinese authors. Increasingly a major player in global-domestic telecommunications industries, Chinese Huawei technologies are challenging established industry players such as Cisco Systems.

China also operates a peacekeeping training academy incorporating disaster relief management, and is training other nations' security and military personnel in rescue operations. In some instances their nationals have also been serving on Chinese warships, or have been afforded preferred observer status to joint and combined military exercises across air, land and maritime battle scenarios, with Russia and India among others.

When all of these components are combined, they facilitate China's understandings of others' intentions and threat perceptions, giving China what is known in military-speak, as a second-track capability. It is a means of filling in the knowledge gaps that the West on the other hand, does not have. The sticking point remains as to what China's past and current directions are working towards achieving in the future, most of which is unknown. So perhaps it is better to focus on some of that which is known.

China's 21st century?

China's international participation in a wide variety of areas including peacekeeping, aid and development and post-disaster relief, have all earned western praise, but China already knows that influential consensus-building is no longer being determined solely via economic links or ideologies. Emotive arguments surrounding human rights are already an early casualty. Many in the West publicly support Tibetan freedom but ignore the plight of West Papua. A duplicity that has not gone unnoticed by China as it raises questions about the validity of western moral argument.

While western nations continue to focus on regions having intrinsic strategic value to immediate individual national security concerns, China appears to have been doing the opposite, often establishing ad hoc bilateral relationships that on the surface at least, seem to have little relevance to China's security. At the same time, the social effects of adopting western-stylised modernisations, have not put a dent in China’s political structure, nor changed its regulatory behaviours, although it has expanded China’s social controls not the least of which includes what constitutes Chinese citizenship as the 2006 relocation of some Timorese-Chinese to Macao proved.

(After the 2006 unrest in Dili, China deployed commercial Chinese airliners to extract Chinese citizens from what it perceived was a burgeoning civil war. Some of those relocated included Timorese-Chinese who did not speak Chinese, nor had previously identified themselves as culturally Chinese, but who had some form of Chinese ancestry. The end result was several families - particularly those with profitable business interests - were given Chinese citizenship, and relocated lock, stock and barrel to Portuguese speaking Macao.)

Since China's readmission to the UN Security Council in 1971, more than 80 per cent of individual nations throughout the globe now recognise China's One-Nation Policy. The fact that most fall within either 20 degrees north-south of the equator provides a clue to China's holistic, longer-term strategic viewpoint. Most of these nations are geographically situated along prime orbital tracking routes, along which all of the world's space technologies and satellites must traverse.

In terms of sustained economic growth, after three successful decades there is little argument that China's modernisation program is second to none, and China's capable reputation for reverse engineering anything remains intact. However China remains focused on pursuing self-reliance, and this also suggests building up infrastructure support in any way, shape or means, is being borne out by shifts in China's foreign investment strategies.

Now purchasing vast offshore resource companies rather than just the resources themselves, actively hollowing-out various other world sectors continues, whether through direct investment, bailing out international mining giants and minnows alike, executive headhunting practices, wiping out other nations manufacturing industries, or offering cheap outsourcing services. China has learned how the West does business and more to the point, learned how to exploit weaknesses therein. Take for example, best Western trade practices that send manufacturing prototypes to the manufacturing country in question. In China's case however, often the market is already flooded with similar Chinese-made products before that particle Western market has even got off the ground. The Chinese can potentially argue they are merely following the good graft of capitalism meaning gaining competitive advantage.

So what does this mean for Australia's future international relations with China?

Australia-China international or transregional relations?

As cracks appear in high-level bureaucratic disputes among Australian political, business, defence and intelligence interests over China assessments, the rise-of-China threat thesis appears less about direct threat scenarios against Australia, and more about China's competitive influential edge. While sheer geography as home to one-fifth of the world's population, underlies its potential to become a great power in military terms, China's geopolitical savvy is proving more effective than anything else.

To many in South-East Asia it might appear that the Rudd Government's 2009 White Paper (PDF 1.84MB), singling out China as a potential future threat while reinforcing the outdated Australian-American alliance, is a strategic viewpoint descending into a back-to-the-Cold-War-future strategy. Indonesia was already publicly commenting that it would remain neutral if there were any Chinese-related clashes. China on the other hand, immediately went on the public relations offensive.

However, Australian security policy planners should err on the side of caution, especially when continuing to interlink defence spending as some form of military power index on China's part. While analysts argue that a Chinese build up is responsive to US power, the other main threat is also that of China's expanding political influence through non-interference in domestic affairs, and in that international relations scenario, China is winning.

Prudence should also be applied to China's duplicitous behaviours in trade. While China feels it is entitled under free world trade practices to invest in other countries without restriction, China's recent implementation of a broad anti-monopoly law prohibiting foreign capital access to China's domestic market (unless compliant with China's own strict policies), suggests the opposite may be true for foreign investment in China. In yet another paradox in a country re-establishing itself as a global mercantile empire and rife with state-imposed monopolies, these actions suggest China's economic liberalism may only last as long as economic dynamism is required in consolidating its own greater market concentrations.

Perhaps Australian investors should also take note that there are no longer-term bets that investment reciprocity will become a major factor of China's international relationships in the immediate future.

Despite China's expanding international trade position, western interests need to remember that China's national security remains insular and focused around domestic control. China's pursuit of power remains tethered to its national security, and there is no way in the world that China would be selling off its assets to foreign interests, let alone foreign government-backed corporations.

While China's defence and security forces remain defensive in application, China's massive army and air force is not particularly mobile, nor does it have the capacity to mount large-scale deployable operations at this stage. China has set about modernising several maritime sub-sectors of commercial and military development. Maritime expansion programs are transferring focus from inshore to offshore interests, and along the way, China is successfully expanding its list of welcoming ports, for that other vitally important role of any nation's navy - waving the diplomatic flag.

The impetus for upgrading Chinese presence in global port infrastructures, accompanying other multi-pronged Chinese maritime interests, is obvious. Such port visits allow China to acquire some perceived regional power influence. An important and cost-effective concept especially when having a lack of credible force projection.

Conclusion

As national security can be divided between external and internal concerns, it appears in relation to China at least, that the Rudd government is more focused on the former, rather than the latter. While the preservation of Australian-Chinese international economic and trade relationships takes precedence, the parade of Chinese investment led by mining industries suggests other aspects potentially affecting the quality of Australian life, are slowly encroaching. As Australia's second largest trading partner, for Australia to create, gain and sustain its own influence with China, there are areas that must be developed alongside shifts in Australia’s own domestic psyche.

Strategists, policy makers and politicians, need to accept and realise more responsive rather than reactionary approaches, remembering that China is exponentially growing in areas that only matter to its geopolitical adolescence right now. That includes China taking advantage of depressed global asset valuations to secure supplies of raw materials, and using easily exploitable foreign investment loopholes including foreign ownership.

China is still pursuing self-reliance with a focus on gaining global geostrategic influences through its no-political-strings-attached investment resources and development projects, particularly in the Pacific, Africa, and South America. China's growing military, economic and particularly political influences, are increasingly undermining the concept for western strategists that the more things change the more they stay the same.

The extent of China's global reach recently hit home when the Chinese Premier remarked that in light of the current global financial crisis, China was most concerned about it's US assets, but did not make the same remark about Australian assets. How Canberra accommodates these and other facts that China is already a bargaining influence in South-East Asia and the Asia-Pacific, and may well become the dominant East Asian power, is important.

There are changes that cannot be ignored in the region, and how Australia responds to those changes is a key element of Australia's future survival. That in itself should remain a paramount issue of responsive government policy.

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About the Author

Kate Reid-Smith is a former military intelligence officer now Darwin-based academic researcher. Since 2004 she has been investigating China’s regional political expansion, with emphasis upon the Sino-Timor-Leste international relationship. She is currently looking at the impact an increased US military footprint in Australia and south-east Asia will have on this and other regional international relations.

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Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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