July 27, 2012
Straitstimes
SINGAPORE - In 2016, China's share of the global economy will be
larger than America's in purchasing-price-parity terms. This is an
earth-shaking development; in 1980, when the United States accounted
for 25% of world output, China's share of the global economy was only
2.2%. And yet, after 30 years of geopolitical competence, the Chinese
seem to be on the verge of losing it just when they need it most.
China's
leaders would be naive and foolish to bank on their country's peaceful
and quiet rise to global preeminence. At some point, America will
awaken from its geopolitical slumber; there are already signs that it
has opened one eye.
But China has begun
to make serious mistakes. After Japan acceded to Chinese pressure and
released a captured Chinese trawler in September 2010, China went
overboard and demanded an apology from Japan, rattling the Japanese
establishment.
Similarly, after
North Korean shells killed innocent South Korean civilians in November
2010, China remained essentially silent. In a carefully calibrated
response, South Korea sent its ambassador to attend the Nobel Peace
Prize ceremony for the imprisoned Chinese human-rights activist Liu
Xiaobo in December 2010.
China has also
ruffled many Indian feathers by arbitrarily denying visas to senior
officials. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao subsequently calmed the waters in
meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but such
unnecessary provocations left a residue of mistrust in India.
But
all of these mistakes pale in comparison with what China did to the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in July. For the first
time in 45 years, the Asean Ministerial Meeting (AMM) failed to agree
to a joint communique, ostensibly because Asean's current chair,
Cambodia, did not want the communique to refer to bilateral disputes in
the South China Sea. But the whole world, including most Asean
countries, perceived Cambodia's stance as the result of enormous
Chinese pressure.
China's victory proved
to be Pyrrhic. It won the battle of the comminique, but it may have
lost 20 years of painstakingly accumulated goodwill, the result of
efforts such as the Asean-China free-trade agreement, signed in
November 2002. More importantly, China's previous leaders had
calculated that a strong and unified Asean provided a valuable buffer
against any possible US containment strategy. Now, by dividing Asean,
China has provided America with its best possible geopolitical
opportunity in the region. If Deng Xiaoping were alive, he would be
deeply concerned.
It may be unfair to
blame China's leaders for the Asean debacle. More likely than not,
over-zealous junior officials pushed a hard line on the South China
Sea, whereas no Chinese leader, if given the choice, would have opted
to wreck the AMM Communique. But the fact that it happened reveals the
scope of China's recent poor decision-making.
The
'nine-dotted line' that China has drawn over the South China Sea may
prove to be nothing but a big geopolitical millstone around China's
neck. It was unwise to attach the map in a note verbale responding to a
joint submission by Vietnam and Malaysia to the United Nations
Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in May 2009. This was
the first time that China had included the map in an official
communication to the UN, and it caused great concern among some Asean
members.
The geopolitical opportunity
implied by inclusion of the map has not been lost on America, which is
why the US, somewhat unusually, has made another effort to ratify the
Law of the Sea Convention. Having tabled the nine-dotted line at the
UN, China walked into a no-win situation, owing to the difficulty of
defending the map under international law. Indeed, as the eminent
historian Wang Gungwu has pointed out, the first maps to claim the
South China Sea were Japanese, and were inherited by Nationalist China.
Domestically,
too, the nine-dotted line may cause problems for the government by
presenting critics with a useful weapon. Any hint of compromise will
expose officials politically. In other words, a few rocks in the South
China Sea have put China between a rock and a hard place.
There
is no doubt that China will have to find a way to compromise over the
nine-dotted line. In private, it has begun to do so. Even though the
line covers the waters northeast of the Indonesian-owned Natuna
Islands, the Chinese government has given Indonesia categorical
assurances that China does not claim the Natuna Islands or their
Exclusive Economic Zone.
These private assurances calmed relations with Indonesia. So why not make similar overtures to other Asean states?
The
legacies of Deng and his predecessor, Mao Zedong, are very different.
But the People's Republic's two most important leaders did agree in one
area: both bent over backwards to make territorial concessions to
resolve border disputes. This explains why China was so generous to
Russia, for example, in its border settlements.
Mao
and Deng could do this because both provided China with strong
leadership. The challenge for the world now is that China has become
politically pluralistic: no leader is strong enough to make wise
unilateral concessions.
Nothing will
happen in China until the leadership transition is completed in
November. The new administration of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will need
some time to settle in. But America is waking up. So, too, will the
rest of the world in 2016. The big question then will be: Is China as
geopolitically competent as number one as it was when it was number two?
Kishore
Mahbubani is Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the
National University of Singapore and author of the forthcoming book The
Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World.
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