ASIA IN A TAILSPIN (Power Politics)

Chief Minister Prithviraj Chauhan says that giving Home to the coalition partner NCP, i.e, to R R Patil, was wrong. Mr Chauhan is definitely right and one can only sympathise with him. As in the case of Manmohan Singh, he is helpless amidst compulsion of coalition politics. Still, a lot can be done to check acts of terrorism if we learn from past blunders, plug the loopholes in the system of policing and governance and work hard for the safety and honour of the people.

If China has stirred up the hornet’s nest by its recent words and deeds and propelled virtually the rest of the world to start pregnant “how to deal with China” confabulations, it is the present Chinese leadership led by President Hu Jintao that is to be blamed.

In this context, one needs to see the comparatively recent Chinese over aggressive diplomacy when it comes to world leaders meeting the Dalai Lama. In 2008, China did away with its annual talks with the European Union for the first time in eleven years to retaliate against French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with him. This is documented in a recent study by authors from the University of Goettingen in Germany and published by the Social Science Research Network.

The authors’ survey covered exports to China from 159 countries between 1991 and 2008. “Our empirical results support the idea that countries officially receiving the Dalai Lama at the highest political level are punished through a reduction of their exports to China,” said the authors using data from the United Nations and World Bank. They found that ‘official’ meetings between the Dalai Lama and the leadership of a country resulted in a cut in exports to China from that country of an average of 8.1 percent. This effect lasts about two years. The most interesting aspect of the findings is that that they have only held true since 2002, when Hu Jintao took office as president.

Strangely, the state-owned Chinese media has taken note of the Chinese predicament of “befriending the distant while alienating neighbours”. In a rare and unusual criticism of Chinese foreign policy, Chinese Communist Party-controlled “People’s Daily Online” carried a commentary on November 12, 2010, noting that while China’s relations with far-away powers in Europe were improving, its relations with immediate neighbors were “not cordial”. The opinion piece “China befriending the distant while alienating neighbors?” by Li Hongmei quotes an old Chinese proverb in this context: “a distant water supply is no good in putting out a nearby fire”.

A day before Li’s article, the Global Times published an editorial titled: “China needs to mitigate external friction.” It said: “Before China reaches a certain level of industrialization, it has to spare some efforts to deal with various disputes and conspiracies. In its neighborhood, China needs to make sure regional disputes over material benefits do not escalate into ideological confrontations.”

Is China feeling its oats? Or, is it bravado that masks feelings of insecurity? For the first time in decades, Chinese foreign policy researchers see most of China's external problems emanating from its own behaviour, rather than foreign efforts to contain China's rise.

It is not just the case of China alarming its neighbors; its own citizens are getting alarmed by an increasingly assertive China. David Zweig, director of the Center on Environment, Energy and Resource Policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said many Chinese analysts are perplexed by the way China’s government and military are engaging with the world.

Zweig says: ‘These academics are deeply concerned. Even usually nationalistic, pro-government friends are hesitant to defend current policy. Is China feeling its oats? Or is it bravado that masks feelings of insecurity? In any case, the message is that for the first time in decades, Chinese foreign policy researchers see most of China's external problems emanating from its own behavior, rather than foreign efforts to contain China's rise.” One academic told Zweig he could not figure out why, when China had secured the release by Japan of a detained fishing vessel captain in September, it continued to demand an apology.

Clearly, China is being looked at as a regional bully not just by the perplexed neighbors but also by its own citizens who dare not speak out. What has muddied the waters further is the role of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The PLA is increasingly being seen by Chinese observers as an entity that is increasingly pushing its own agenda. Sample the following quote from Zweig: “Chinese observers’ views of the military are also critical, and in some cases almost hostile. They all agree that the PLA has begun to act as an interest group, pushing its own agenda by having its officers appear on television, in military uniform, speaking out on foreign policy...This is a new phenomenon and one that makes civilians anxious.”

China is increasingly following the Soviet Union by wasting the small amount of wealth it has recently gained by spending it on the military and space programs. At one stage, the Soviet Union used to spend 50 per cent of its GDP on the military. China is doing the same. This will inevitably slow down China’s economic development.

Spurred by visions of glory, China is investing heavily in military infrastructure to become a military superpower mightier than the US, forgetting in the process that military power depends completely on economic might. China is also forgetting that the economic might comes from private investment, not state planning and state investment.

It will be interesting to watch how the US responds to a fast rising Chinese clout in world affairs. That Asia has become Washington’s prime focus was evident by the four-nation Asian tour of President Obama in October 2010 that took him to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan. In each of these four destinations, China remained under sharp focus during Obama’s interactions with his interlocutors.

The Hu Jintao era has propelled China on to the road to superpower status in a much faster and surer manner than ever before since the People’s Republic of China came into being in 1949. At the same time, under Hu’s stewardship China has also emerged as a bully, an over-ambitious unpredictable power, an unreliable trade partner and a troublesome neighbor. It will have to be seen how Xi Jinping steers the Chinese ship when he takes over the Presidency from Hu in 2013. Things will start crystallizing in 2012 when Xi takes over as the head of the Chinese Communist Party. Till then the world will have to wait and watch how China the mystery unfolds further.

Winds of change are sweeping across Asia. China is the elephant in the room for most Asian powers – such a major presence that it can be missed only at the risk of the occupants themselves. Speaking volumes of the “China factor”, Japan and India embarked on a bilateral strategic dialogue in April 2011, and India- Japan-United States will also be starting their trilateral dialogue later this year. Other Asian powers too are busily working on their own strategic fortifications – with Vietnam-US negotiations on a civilian nuclear energy agreement as a major template of the changing geopolitical equations. The biggest driving force behind the fast-changing politico-strategic matrix in Asia is China.

The new-found swagger in Chinese diplomacy, coupled with its military posturing and break-neck speed of pushing transnational, even transcontinental infrastructural links, has made virtually every important Asian power suspicious of China. A diplomatic and strategic realignment has already begun in Asia as powers like India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam have stepped up their diplomatic outreach to one another to prepare an effective shield against China’s threatening rise.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s remarks on China came close on the heels of reports of some eleven thousand Chinese troops in Gilgit- Baltistan area of Jammu and Kashmir which India considers as its own territory. India’s Northern Army Commander Lt Gen K.T. Parnaik recently stated at a seminar that China's presence in PoK is increasing steadily and the Chinese footprints are "too close for comfort" for India.

At Japan’s initiative and insistence, the Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao held discussions with key Japanese interlocutors in Tokyo on April 7-8. Constructive and us ef ul discussions were held with Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Kenichiro Sasae and Deputy Foreign Minister Koro Bessho in Tokyo on April 8 on bilateral, regional and global issues. Rao also called on Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto. The two sides agreed that the new Ministeriallevel Economic Dialogue, announced by the Prime Ministers at their Annual Summit in Tokyo in October 2010, will be led by the Foreign Ministers of the two countries. The first meeting of the Dialogue will take place later this year. It was also agre ed to establish an India- Japan-United States trilateral dialogue on regional and global issues of shared interest. These consultations , agreed to earlier by the U.S., w ill be conducted by the Foreign Ministri es of the thre e countries. The ME A note d that Rao’s wide-rang ing consultations in Tokyo have prov ided a momentum to the “India- Japan St rate gic and Global Partnership”.

O n India’s growing proximity to Japan and the US, being a counterweight t o Chi na’s gro wi ng c lout in international affairs, India’s Ministr y of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Vishnu Praka sh said that this is not a zero sum game. India’s relations with any country a re a lso no t directed against any other country. As in the case of India-Japan and India-US ties are not being aimed against China , India’s relations with the RIC (Russia , India and China) are also not directed aga inst the US . Reiter atin g th es e sen t iments, the Joint Sec ret ar y at ME A’s E as t Asi a Div ision Gau tam Bambawale said that India, Japan and the US realised they had much in common especially in the East Asian region and they hence felt need for such a dialogue. The latter trilateral forum will not be a strategic dialogue of India-US- Japan.

Notwithstanding the recent diplomatic overtures, India has not discovered the China factor yesterday or even last year. China rankled the Indian strategists for well over a decade. The first major proof of India’s China fixation came during the NDA regime when two things happened. First, the then defence minister George Fernandes blurted out that it was China, not Pakistan, not anyone else, who was India’s enemy number one. Second, in the wake of India’s Pokhran II nuclear tests in 1998, the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee wrote a secret letter to US President Bill Clinton, which was deliberately leaked by the Clinton administration, saying that India had conducted these nuclear tests with an eye on China.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself shared unusually candid remarks on China in early September 2010 when he shared his view that China wanted to keep India bogged down in South Asia by playing on Indo-Pak tensions. Significantly, PM Singh’s remarks on China came close on the heels of reports of some eleven thousand Chinese troops in Gilgit- Baltistan area of Jammu and Kashmir which India considers as its own territory.

India’s Northern Army Commander Lt Gen K.T. Parnaik also recently stated at a seminar that China's presence in PoK was increasing steadily and the Chinese footprints were "too close for comfort" for India.