February 12, 2007
What does China want?
Over the past few days I’ve been in Beijing, talking to Chinese officials, generals and academics. I was with a small group of Americans and Europeans. Three of the Americans had worked in top foreign-policy jobs in the Clinton administration, and the Europeans included people who currently hold senior positions in the French foreign ministry and the European Commission.
The quasi-diplomatic nature of our “delegation” had a couple of effects. The first was that we got very good access. It also meant that the dialogue often had a curiously formal, indeed formulaic quality to it. The Chinese side were often laying out official positions – much as they would with a visiting government delegation. That can be useful and informative. But it also means that sometimes the real insights come when your hosts stray off their script. It is the stray remark, the occasional flash of temper, the unexpected question and the subtle change in wording that can be the most interesting bits of the discussion.
Anyway, here are some of the impressions I gathered about official Chinese thinking:
- Energy: The Chinese are very clear about their desperate need for new energy supplies. One of the officials we met said that the Chinese government now has three top priorities: the maintenance of social peace inside China, the protection of the environment and the pursuit of new energy supplies. These things are actually linked. To maintain social peace, the Chinese need the economy to generate lots of jobs - which means that it has to keep growing at breakneck speed. That requires lots of new energy supplies. But that is having a bad effect on the environment because 70% of the country’s energy comes from coal.
- Water: The Chinese are worried. This winter the Yangtse and Yellow rivers fell to their lowest levels for many years. Rural water supplies are running low and frequently contaminated. Global warming will not help.
- The army and Taiwan: The Chinese military sounds both confident and bellicose. We were told on several occasions that a declaration of Taiwanese independence would mean war. A senior general reminded us that the People’s Liberation Army had not lost a war since the Communist Party won power in 1949. The generals said that the Chinese were pursuing higher-tech weaponry in response to American arms sales to Taiwan. But, as one of them put it, “the Chinese PLA is resolute, confident and capable of handling any declaration of Taiwanese independence.” The PLA people sounded a lot tougher than the Foreign Ministry people – which is perhaps only to be expected. Foreign journalists based in Beijing seem to reckon that the PLA are also much more powerful. But even the PLA claimed that they had no intention of trying to get the American military out of Asia.
- Africa and Iran: The Americans kept trying to push the Chinese to say that they would help turn the screws on Iran over the nuclear issue. But the Chinese were not playing ball. They kept stressing the need for “peaceful dialogue”. Similarly, both the Europeans and the Americans tried to impress upon the Chinese the need for China to take a more “responsible” position in Africa - not selling arms to the Sudanese government, or propping up Robert Mugabe would be a good start. Again, the response was unyielding. The Chinese basically told us that we were hypocrites. The west had exploited Africa and propped up dictators when it was in western strategic interests to do so – so the Chinese are not taking any lectures from us now. I’m sure Mr Mugabe would applaud that sentiment.
- China and the West: The Chinese seemed both baffled and faintly irritated to be receiving a joint European-American delegation. As one Chinese academic put it – “In 2003 we thought that there was a major split in the west over Iraq, and that this would prove lasting. But I think we were wrong.”
- Nationalism: Beijing-based journalists reckon that China has taken a nationalistic turn under Hu Jintao, who became president in 2003. The days when the Chinese would lean over backwards to help foreign investors are over. These days foreign businessmen are finding the going increasingly tough. Chinese foreign policy is also increasingly assertive and is underpinned by an assumption that the west is ultimately hostile to the rise of China. One westerner I met, who teaches at a Chinese university, said he was disturbed by how many of his pupils had been told during the course of their education, or military training, that eventual conflict between China and the United States and Japan was inevitable.
What Does China Want? Who is China? This piece seems to be rather like talking in the UK to some ministers (in China State Councellors) their advisors, the eqivalent of the Chiefs of Staff in the Army and some professors at the LSE. The only “unofficial” quoted was not Chinese. Where did the delegation go? Who did they talk to outside Beijing (China is actually decentalised as much as the USA) What effort did they make to hear a range of views including those from the new middle class. Since social peace is one very important objective of the central government hearing more about what the people on Nanjing Road (Shanghai) and it’s equivalent in other cities might be important. Certainly my Chinese friends in China suggest this might be so.
Posted by: Peter Copping | February 12th, 2007 at 9:38 pm | Report this commentGood point, Peter Copping. In particular, there’s an assumption in the western media that Chinese nationalism is monolithic and solely a function of top-down manipulation by China’s leaders. The situation isn’t quite that simple. Get out there and talk to ordinary Chinese.
Having said that, the article is about China’s elites. They’re the ones who make “China’s” decisions. Hu’s attitude towards foreign businesses is no big deal. Most foreign enterprises have had it fairly easy here in the past few years. But the army is rather more worrying.
Posted by: Sid | February 13th, 2007 at 8:47 am | Report this commentMr Rachman comments in today’s FT article (although not in his blog) that America is not really interested in China, & fixated instead on the mess–a mess ‘made in the USA’–in the ME. (Well, placing your army in the middle of a someone else’s civil war will do that.)
So, right now, China can pretty much do as it pleases. Well, I can’t see any problem here. Consider the ineptitude of the Bush administration’s foreign affairs cadre, its lack of relevant linguage skills, its susceptibility to the influence of domestic lobby groups. Consider the hash it made of Iraq. We should be thankful–yes, thankful!–that the unhappy Middle East has received the bulk of America’s ‘attention’.
Posted by: Mary Seaton | February 13th, 2007 at 9:54 am | Report this commentWell, I suppose I should also attempt to answer the question “What does China Want?”
I would say things are going extremely well for China. America is tied down militarily in the Middle East, and, thanks to its rather draconian anti-terror & entry laws, viewed with suspicion globally, global economies are booming, Chinese goods in demand. Bush’s profligate ways have resulted in a transfer of wealth from the US to Asia in the form of the US deficit. Financial centres London and Hong Kong are the favoured places to raise capital because capital is no longer *IN* the US.
So I guess what China wants is: seven more years of George W. Bush & all that (who?) goes with him!
Posted by: Mary Seaton | February 13th, 2007 at 10:05 am | Report this commentNEW COLOSSUS
FT columnist Gideon Rachman makes a list of lessons learnt during a high-level visit to China. Let’s begin with the good part:China and the West: The Chinese seemed both baffled and faintly irritated to be receiving a joint European-American delegation.
Posted by: Clive Davis | February 13th, 2007 at 2:06 pm | Report this commentNow I am truly baffled. So Mr. Rachman wants to contain China, and he expects not to be considered an enemy of China. Quite demanding indeed.
What Rachman advocated, as harmless as it pretends to be, if Bush is not entangled by Iraq, could have done great harm to China. His sin is equivalent to Blair supporting Bush while US was the most unilateral, while France Germany took tremendous pressure to refuse to cooperate in UN.
China is no longer afraid of US. Regardless of what Mr. Rachman says, it will neither be a hegemon, nor a US poodle.
Posted by: Zhang | February 13th, 2007 at 3:08 pm | Report this commentMr Rachmann,
The Chinese army didn’t win the war they initiated with Vietnam in the late 70s. They may argue that they didn’t lose anything but on that score neither did the U.S. since Vietnam never invaded U.S. territory!
Also with regard to Africa and the environment how convenient and how puerile to use the argument “we have the right to make all the same mistakes you did”
Maybe the U.S. makes a lousy hegemon but I’ve got the feeling that the Middle Empire will be a lot worse.
Miles Taylor
Posted by: M Taylor | February 13th, 2007 at 7:51 pm | Report this commentUnfortunately the neocons believed their own–or maybe France’s?–propaganda. Because American never *was* the world’s only superpower it cannot cede power to the next ‘rising sun.’ There was a good article yesterday in the FT about multiple spheres of (regional)power which I recommend and IMO is closer to the reality of the situation.
What has thrown political analysts off is the fixation–and presence–of the US with/in the Middle East. To get back to China, I would say that as long as this continues the present environment will suit the Middle Kingdom perfectly…and American fixation with the ME will continue so long as the American Israel lobby–in alliance with American evangelicals–continues to dominate US Middle Eastern policy.
So China now has–and will have–pretty much everything it wants.
Posted by: Mary Seaton | February 14th, 2007 at 9:32 am | Report this commentI read Mr. Rachman’s article in today’s FT (Feb 20) with interest, but I have to ask the question — why do we have to view China’s soft power “ascention” as a zero-sum game with the US’s decline?
I’ve done a write up on it at my blog — www.americandetocqueville.blogspot.com. With appologies to Mr. Rachman for any harshness in tone (none intended, just asking a few questions), please go have a look!
Posted by: Jim | February 21st, 2007 at 1:02 am | Report this commentChina is never monolithic, and the current situation in Chinais like, most peaceful people are hijacked or fooled by some powerful interest groups who fear any change to status quo may lead to their collapse. In that, the west had better look deeper into China to distinguish the peaceful from the warlike. Time will prove all this as long as west keeps more patient.
Posted by: alan | April 17th, 2007 at 5:42 pm | Report this comment