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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
© Copyright 2008 Malladi Rama Rao. All rights reserved.
By Malladi Rama Rao
Sinologists are obsessed these days with Hun Chinese obsession to dominate other nations in their vicinity. Scholars of all hues admit that today’s China is different and yet harp on Mao’s favourite Chinese adage: “If the east wind doesn’t prevail over the west wind, then east wind will prevail over the east wind”.
Take for instance its Nepal policy. Beijing had supported King Gyanendra when he was fighting the Maoists. And armed his army to the teeth. Says David G Wiencek, President of International Security Group: “Although the Maoist insurgency was explicitly based on the Chinese model, Beijing denied any links and had gone out of its way to distance itself from Nepal’s Maoists for the sake of advancing its border interests”. A reality check Kathmandu, however, tells us that Beijing had maintained ‘ties’ with the Maoists too. So, when the Maoists slipped into the driver’s seat in Kathmandu, China changed sides with effortless ease, rolled out the red carpet to Prime Minister Prachanda on his maiden overseas visit to Beijing, and increased its aid to Nepal to 120 million Yuan, up from 80 million Yuan given earlier.
Pragmatism has been the hallmark of Chinese foreign policy. Socialism or the so called Third Worldism has no place in its scheme. Nor does it have any place for Western agenda of free markets and democracy, according to Alex E Fernandez Jiberto and Barbara Hogenboom of the University of Amsterdam, who have made a close study of China’s growing economic and political power. For China, trade is a tool as it set about globalising its economy, courting governments aggressively with no political questions asked and with no concern for the local civil societies. A departure from the ‘idealistic sixties and the seventies when liberation movements were the flavour of the day. And this stooping to conquer has forced Chinese government to set up a Department of External Safety to worry about companies and workers in the line of fire in countries hit by political turmoil.
China has adopted ‘daguo xintai’ (great power outlook), shed its long held ‘shouhaizhe xintai’ (victimised nation feeling), and has begun to straddle the world proving Napoleon right for once. Two centuries ago, the great warrior had said: “There (China) lies a sleeping giant. Let her sleep. For when she wakes, she shall shake the world”. The sleeping giant has woken up by the realisation that being a big shark in the sea of foreign direct investment (FDI) alone is not enough and that it must promote investments to tap new energy resources needed to sustain the scorching pace of its development.
A Chinese foreign policy expert argues that his country will never indulge in hegemonic behaviour even when it enjoyed hegemonic power. Peace and development across the world and the Chinese economic goals can flourish side by side, according to him. Nepalese traders who go regularly to Tibet and beyond with their merchandise are unlikely to agree with the scholar. A report in a leading News Portal of Kathmandu says, the Chinese adopt a take it or leave it approach. “All their (Chinese) documents are in Chinese. Raise any question. The standard reply is refer to Beijing. They are producing clones of our local brands. Even for Vanaspati. All this poses a threat to our nascent industry”, a trade chamber was quoted as saying.
Interestingly, Nepalese scholars like Tara Dahal, have been viewing their country as a ‘Transit State” between India and China with immense trade possibilities. China too appears to subscribe to the view since it has begun to talk about plans to extend the Shanghai – Lhasa railway line into most of Tibet and into Nepal. There are 28 passes on Nepal – Tibet border but only three are open and functional through out the year. The Raxual-Kathmandu-Khasa road links India, Nepal and China It is a 390 lm long road. But Barhabise-Kodari part of Northern Nepal road turns into a long puddle during the rainy season. Marketing and trading infrastructure is also absent on either side of Nepal-Tibet border. Yet, King Gyanendra who first spoke of the ‘grand concept’ first at the Afro-Asian summit in Jakarta in April 2005, and his ‘democratic’ successors are convinced that ‘transit state’ route is the ‘development manna’ for landlocked Nepal as it battles to protect national economy from two evils- regional competition and cross border smuggling.
Trade pundits, however, point out that low cost goods from China are flooding the Kathmandu Valley and the plains of Terai, both officially and unofficially. “For us the threat is from China. India is no match in dumping (goods by China), and quantity-wise”, they say, pointing out that India itself has become a huge grey market for cheap Chinese goods that range from toys to computer chips and even photos of Hindu Gods and Goddesses.
In a sense, the Nepalese business community is echoing the views expressed in an Australian E-Journal of social and political debate. Writing on June 20, 2005, Tony Henderson, a freelance writer and chairman of the Humanist Association of Hong Kong, said ‘When it comes to China and the stance of its neighbours, caution is the by-word; trade is the catch-word”. According to him, ‘expressions of benign intent included in China’s media releases, while acceptable, may be seen more like a silver lining in a Nimbus –like thunder cloud, because China’s history is not quite that depicted in its rosy statements to the world’.
Take river waters, for instance.
The Himalayas give rise to all the main rivers of Asia and form a natural boundary on the south-west just as the Altai Mountains do on the north-west. Countries that share China’s rivers voice strong complains about uncaring attitude of the Communist big brother, who runs his empire even in the 21st century like a Sicilian Mafioso.
What has happened to the Mekong has been well documented. From its headwaters on the Tibetan Plateau, the river, known in Tibet as Dza-Chu, China as Lancang Jiang and Thailand as Mae Nam Khong, traverses 4800 km before it falls into South China Sea. The river basin is nearly the combined size of France and Germany. Initially, China refused to join the Mekong initiative and later on in the Mekong River Commission (MRC). It became a ‘dialogue’ partner only in 1996. From April 2002, China began providing daily water level data to the MRC during the flood season. It is still reticent in providing information about dry season flows and the operation of its dams.
Many Sinologists believe that Chinese leaders still take a passive approach to world affairs. According to them, China tries to maximise its interests through minimal involvement abroad and opts to claim the high moral ground. Two American strategic experts Evans S Medeiros and M Taylor Fravel don’t agree. “In the last 10 years, Chinese foreign policy has become more nimble and engaging than at any other time in the history of the People’s Republic,” they say (Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003). Accompanying these ‘changes in substance’ has been a new Chinese campaign to publicise and promote the country’s foreign policy.
Liu Huaqiu, director of the State Council Foreign Affairs Office, seconds their theory in his in-depth analysis of China’s foreign policy as well as its major readjustments and diplomatic achievements since 1949 (Qiushui Magazine, December 1, 2007). His hypothesis is that the basic goal of China foreign policy is to adopt a ‘positive’ attitude towards safeguarding world peace in a bid to ‘create a long term peaceful international environment for China’s socialist modernization drive’.
It may be true. What is equally true is that China operates without any political strings and adopts a policy of trading, investing and providing aid without regard to ‘whether its partner is a democratic visionary or a tyrant’. And as the experience of the world from Darfur to Zimbabwe and from Pakistan to Bangladesh, Myanmar and North Korea shows, China’s silence has been boosting tyrants. It is giving the dictators the means to resist the global pressures.
The United States contributed no less to the emergence of trade centric China. Under President Bill Clinton, the White House went out of its way to allow commercial interests to dominate other concerns in shaping policy towards Beijing. That is beside the point and going into Sino-American ties only offers a digression. The fact of the matter is that China plays on both sides of the local divide when necessary with no qualms whatsoever as pointed out at the outset in Nepal. It just did the same ‘in-thing’ over the years in India, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, for instance. Also it picks up ‘willing proxies’ like Pakistan against India, for instance, in the classic Chinese mode of ‘breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting’.
All this quest is for a strategic reach. And the pursuit is for access to and control over raw materials across three continents to secure the badly needed edge in the present day unipolar world. To what extent success comes China way is a moot point since its long term ally has failed to achieve its own goal of strategic depth beyond the Durand Line. What is not, however, is its lack of commitment to counter terrorism. Noted Sinologist, Bhaskar Roy opines that China’s commitment to counter terrorism has always been suspect particularly from 2002.
The issue came upfront early August with a court in Los Angeles taking up a case against ‘The Bank of China Ltd’, the third largest Bank of mainland China. The charge is that the Chinese bank was knowingly involved in financing Islamic Jihad and Hamas between 2004 and 2007. The money ‘transfers’ route was West Asia – US- Guangzhou- West Bank, Israel and the Gaza Strip. Such money laundering after 9/11 fits in well with the image of China as the modern day Robert Clive out to make a fast buck in league with gun runners, narco traders, insurgents, terrorists and black marketers and to carve out ‘a new empire’.
China has its own ‘in-house’ Islamists and insurgents in Xinjiang. Therefore, the least expected of Beijing is an understanding, if not sympathy for countries like Sri Lanka and Myanmar, where hundreds of innocents have fallen victims to the Mao’s dictum- power through the barrel of a gun. Double dealing is a standard fare in the text books for sleuths but how can a country that lays claim to super power status justify double dealings with the very nations which it is courting and is offering strategic infrastructure to secure for itself an elusive strategic reach through Gwadar, Sittwe and Hambantota.
About the Author
Malladi Rama Rao is an analyst and writer on the Indian political scene and geo-political and security issues of South Asia. He directs a Weekly Feature Service in English, Syndicate Features, in colloboration with his wife Vaniram. He is also the India Editor of Asian Tribune.
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