The US Attempt At Seducing China ...

The first of a set of US-China bilateral meetings are taking place in Washington as we write. From a US perspective, they are part of a programme to get Chinese buy-in to collaboration with the US in policing the world’s troubled economic and strategic order.

The logic of this is global co-dominion as Chinese power increases. The primary focus, of course, is currently economic. Past US assertions about Chinese currency manipulation have been largely forgotten. The US now needs China to help it climb out of its financial crisis.

Some observers suggest that the Chinese are now locked into an economic  ‘death embrace’ with the US and must co-operate in order not to be harmed - much to their own frustration. There may be some truth in this. The other main agenda items are:

• the creation of a sufficiently shared position on climate change in advance of the Copenhagen Summit
• US encouragement for China to make the structural changes that would increase domestic consumption more quickly
• collaboration in bringing North Korea into line
• encouraging China to trust that the White House can control Congress in avoiding increased protectionism
• getting back some mutual trust in the investment by the corporations of each in the other.

The US is also offering to assist more vigorously in getting China greater representation at international organizations such as the IMF.

The Chinese are more cautious about all this than the US where Obama’s bouncy enthusiasm for deeper ties must be seen for what it is – an attempt to take advantage of a high point of mutual dependency to suck Beijing into a role as East Asian regional ally.

The idea is that just as India is recognised as Indian Ocean regional hegemon and partner in promoting free markets, so will China be in East Asia. A deal also offers security stability for the more politically liberal pro-Western economies that line China’s Eastern maritime border.

The US see this mutual dependency becoming ever stronger so that China becomes locked into its hegemonic system. The alternative is that China consciously takes a more nationalist and independent route.

A neo-nationalist stance, despite frustrations over the conduct of Western economic policy, seems unlikely under China's current leaders but nationalist feeling is growing in the younger generation.

Interdependency may imply greater partnership now and co-dominion later but it also implies an acceptance of China’s junior status for some time to come and the loss of an opportunity to compete aggressively on equal terms now.

Obama is flattering China by saying that the 21st century will be shaped by the US-Chinese relationship. Under this model, India, Russia, the EU – and perhaps later Brazil, Indonesia, the Gulf and some supposed African Union – act as out-riders within the US hegemonic system or just outside it.

China is implicitly being offered the choice of its inclusion within the tribe or an implicit isolation outside it, although (at least) Russia, the Gulf, the African Union and perhaps other ‘blocs’ may not always choose the American way.

Under current conditions, with acceptance that the Western system will not collapse over night and following the US-Indian rapprochement and a probable US-Russian entente, the Chinese leadership may consider this is a good deal which draws maximum benefit from America's temporary weakness.

However, we must suppose that China will not be seduced by Obama's charm - it will continue to invest in its strategic naval capability, be cautious of excessive interdependence, be sensitive about Western attempts to tell it how to run its empire and continue its economic incursions overseas.

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Chinese Influence In Southern Asia

There is a useful analysis of Chinese influence across Southern Asia in the Financial Times today. For all its ideological blindness on occasion, the Financial Times still remains a sound source for background to international affairs. This led us to our own assessment of the situation in the Indian Ocean.

The matter for concern here is not just China but the response of India to China. India sits outside the SCO, half-allied to the West, placing pressure on Pakistan through the US, supporting the faltering war on terror and developing its own programme to ensure that it is a naval power in the Indian Ocean.

China Competes

Most geo-political discussion has resolved itself around the Chinese-American relationship which is often co-operative on economic matters but barbed and tense on military issues and on Chinese competition with the West for natural resources and third world influence.

More attention should perhaps be given to the potential for stresses and strains between India and China (much as the Financial Times suggests) as the Chinese invest substantial funds in recreating the American and British imperial model of controlling oceanic nodal points of strategic interest.

It is not China that is being contained by the West but India that is being contained by China. Investment in Tibet increases the ability of Chinese troops to threaten North India where the Tibetan government-in-exile is given refuge. Nepal is now no longer simply an Indian protectorate.

In Nepal, Chinese influence may eventually increase with Maoist influence. This weekend also saw 23 policemen killed in a Maoist insurgency in central India that has gone on for over forty years. This is not China’s doing but India will be wary of where this may lead in any change of political conditions in China.

The Chinese also compete with the US for influence in Pakistan and may find fertile ground for increasing that influence if Pakistani resentment of Indian influence on US counter-terrorism policy grows.

China’s influence is also growing in Sri Lanka and it competes with India, albeit less successfully, in Bangla Desh. Burma is effectively a protectorate against Western influence and there are clearly attempts to build a presence in most of the important island groups in the region.

The expansion of the Chinese and Indian navies must thus be seen in the context of the arrival of the Chinese in the Indian Ocean, ostensibly to protect vital trade routes from the Gulf but also as a rather obvious assertion of Chinese attempts to assert a geo-political challenge to the US.

It is as if the Chinese, unwilling to challenge the US across the vital barrier of the Pacific, have displaced themselves into what they may have seen as a natural vacuum after the withdrawal of Soviet fleets from the Southern hemisphere, one vital to the supply of basic resources from Africa and the Gulf.

India – Too Big To Beat

Of course, whether the Indians would recognize the Indian Ocean as a vacuum is another matter. Yet these tensions should not be exaggerated. India in itself is far too big to beat.

The more overtly pro-Western and smaller nations on China’s periphery (Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Australia) are probably much more edgy than India about the struggle between the US and China for regional hegemony.

The Europeans no longer have much to say in this zone and the Russians do not care anymore, so the liberal democratic states of the region must look to Washington for protection.

In the current climate, perhaps in the long run, China and India probably have more in common in their dealings with the West than not. However, the geo-political strategies of both become more relevant to each other if either should, for whatever reason, implode or weaken internally.

Chinese issues are quite focused – the Western provinces, Tibet and the working class in the pressure cooker of its industrial zone. India has some serious internal problems - various class insurgencies, Islamism in the north and communalism, especially where modernisation is creating resentment.

In general, India has integrated its internationally-orientated economy with the West, working through its diaspora, trading on its English language skills and high level of middle class education and reinvesting internally for its domestic market through a broadly economic liberal system.

China, meanwhile, trades globally on price and reinvests the surplus in acquiring cheap natural resources. Both are dependent on the international trading system to some extent - China more so.

What we are seeing is an adjustment rather than a confrontation. The Chinese are, at least for the moment, protecting essential economic interests rather than carrying out an ideological crusade. There is no reason for this not to be collaborative if both sides respect the interests of the other.

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The Uighurs

We note the outburst of inter-ethnic violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang Province (China). The initial clashes resulted in at least 156 deaths and 800 injuries, with significant destruction of property.

It has been the worst ethnic and provincial violence since the cultural revolution, presenting Xinjiang as a problem of equal importance to that of Tibet. The revolt was not quickly suppressed, with Han Chinese turning themselves into a mob at one stage to wreak vengeance on the Uighurs.

The situation seems to be one of complete failure by one side to comprehend that the other side does not feel that colonial modernisation and settlement is progressive and beneficial – a situation repeated all over the world when one ethnic group uses superior resources to drive into the territory of another.

The ambivalence of the US towards this crisis is widely noted. On the one hand, after the Iranian crisis, it looks decidedly odd for the US to be so hesitant to support the self-determination of the Uighurs.

On the other hand, the US clearly does not want to upset the economically important relationship with China and it is aware that Uighur self-determination has been associated with radical Islamist insurgency (the Uighurs held at Guantanamo remain a diplomatic nightmare for Washington).

The Uighurs are particularly resentful because they believe that they get less attention than the Tibetans just because they are Muslims. It is certainly true that they do not have a diaspora in California like the Iranians or a New Age/Buddhist ‘namaste’ bloc in the American middle classes like the Tibetans.

The detained Uighurs have also helped associate the Uighur cause with the 9/11 assault. This has boxed the anti-Chinese Republicans into a corner in protesting their cause.

Finally, it seems as if, though the Han Chinese are the ‘oppressors’ by dint of invasion, it is the Uighurs who are resorting to violent resistance in the first instance.

Americans have a bit of a blind spot to resistance against settlement as we see in the Palestinian case, almost certainly because it raises difficult questions about their own state-creation process. All in all, the Uighurs cannot expect much outside help in the short term.

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