When the world continues to discuss China’s impact even when there are other issues to consider, China has clearly ‘arrived’.
CHINA’S
unrelenting growth is continuing to fuel speculation about the
implications of its spectacular rise for the rest of the world.
Its
irrepressive re-emergence as a major world power shapes and colours
private discourses, academic analyses and bilateral and multilateral
discussions, whether or not intended originally to discuss China.
It
permeates strategic discourses behind closed doors, casual coffeeshop
talk and everything in between. The recent Germany-Malaysia Security
Forum in Kuala Lumpur, sponsored by Konrad Adenaur Stiftung (KAS) and
organised by ISIS Malaysia, was an example.
Germany’s political
foundations like the KAS are affiliated with their respective political
parties, and with the KAS it is with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s
rightwing
Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
It is significant
that even with a conservative CDU government, Germany has no qualms
about the rise of China. German delegates instead looked constructively
ahead to an even more prosperous China with which to work, above and
beyond any ideological differences.
A Malaysian delegate
privately remarked that Germans had been trading successfully with China
for centuries. China had been a major world power then and, after a
period of isolation and internal upheaval, it is becoming a major world
power again.
Countries East and West that have had similarly
positive experiences with China feel the same. Those that might have
upset China through war, invasion, occupation or squabbling over tiny
islets might feel differently, but exactly how an unprovoked China would
perceive them today is another matter.
A larger conference in
Berlin some years ago attended by delegates from various countries, and
sponsored by Germany’s Defence Ministry, was similarly positive about
China. At that time, Merkel’s government comprised her CDU, the equally
rightwing Christian Social Union (of Bavaria) and the left-of-centre
Social Democratic Party (SPD) of her immediate predecessor, Gerhard
Schröder.
Since then, Merkel’s CDU-led coalition had substituted
the SPD with the
Free Democratic Party (FDP), a centrist party that
became another right-of-centre party. That Germany’s formal posture
towards a
rising China has not changed indicates that its positive
outlook on China is deep-seated and enduring, unaffected by political
ideologies in Germany or China.
Nonetheless, some classic
questions about a rising China and its impact on Asia and the world
linger. These tend to refer to developments such as the increasing
defence expenditure of countries in East Asia.
Other slick
assumptions are that Asean countries are “hedging” against China, and
the world has moved from the Westphalian concept of national sovereignty
to that of “responsibility to protect”. The former is untested and the
latter is still disturbing.
It is easy to make a superficial
connection between these issues and a rising China, and then to conclude
that there is an arms race in the region, and the arms race must
therefore have resulted from a region alarmed by China’s rise.
These
points had been raised erroneously 20 years ago, and they will still be
raised 20 or more years from now. The problem with these simple-minded
assumptions is that they neglect both the key details and the big
picture.
All countries spend continually on defence, routinely
preparing for contingencies from any quarter and not just to arm against
any particular threat. This happens everywhere all the time, regardless
of the prevailing strategic situation in a country or region.
A
Malaysian delegate explained that it was part of the normal course of
running defence establishments, when countries need to renew their
ageing arsenals or when they become more developed and can afford to
spend more. It might be added that defence procurement is the most
lucrative industry in the world, so it easily acquires a logic and a
momentum of its own.
However, at a time when Philippine and
Chinese officials have had uncomfortable brushes with each other over
the disputed Scarborough shoal in the
South China Sea, blips in national
defence budgets may appear suggestive.
But alarmist presumptions
about regional threats and the need to “arm” against them can easily
acquire a logic and a momentum of their own as well, however
unjustified. At the same time, some parties may be hoping to see
conflict in the region to profit from it through the arms trade,
strategic leverage or recruitment of allies.
Such a prospect militates against this region’s collective interests and several of its abiding realities.
First,
the political stability and economic prosperity of countries in East
Asia depend on the stability and propensity for growth in the region as a
whole. Injury to the region’s prospects also hurts individual national
prospects.
Second, the countries in East Asia, particularly those
of Asean, are clearly dwarfed by China. No amount of individual
“arming” can address the gulf in national defence capacities between
them and China.
Third, Asean countries are still unable to act as
one militarily even if by doing so their collective clout can achieve
some “balance” with a hulking China. Age-old border issues, disputed
maritime territory and other niggling bilateral concerns have prevented
any sense of an Asean security entity from developing until now and for
the foreseeable future.
Fourth, the immature presumption that
smaller countries in East Asia can always bank on
the US for protection
is both mistaken and dangerous, because that notion becomes very
destabilising whenever it is proven untrue.
The notion of a US
acting as a countervailing force against China derives only from those
instances when US and indigenous concerns coincide in ways that are
dissimilar to China’s. When US and
East Asian interests diverge, as they
will at certain points, the regional strategic picture will change.
US-China
joint interests have grown tremendously and will continue to grow.
They may already have surpassed the shared interests between the US and
East Asia minus China.
The US itself is the sole superpower with
an agenda and priorities of its own. Beyond a limited convergence of
interests with other countries, it will not deign to act as a servant or
bodyguard of smaller nations.
China remains inundated with
domestic problems of its own. These span pressing social, administrative
and environmental concerns as well as restive provinces and an economy
running out of steam.
Meanwhile, it has witnessed
the collapse of
the Soviet Union that had suffered excessive arms expenditures, and a
troubled US economy weighed down by overspending on foreign wars.
Pragmatic Chinese leaders today would know better than to repeat those
mistakes.
Modern China’s success also depends considerably on a
peaceful East Asia that has enabled it to boost its exports worldwide.
And since the regional peace has also been maintained by a US military
presence in the Asia-Pacific, China as its greatest economic beneficiary
might perhaps be asked to help pay for that presence.
When I mentioned that to Martin Jacques, the British academic and author of
When China Rules The World, he chuckled. But that is a modern-day reality that a country like Germany may be able to understand.
Clearly,
not all Western views of a rising China are created equal. The
differences between the German and US views are interesting, and they
become more telling when Germany is a leading country and the strongest
economy in Europe.
Perhaps that has something to do with Germany not having to “guard” its status as the sole superpower in the world.
Behind The Headlines By Bunn Nagara
