Meanwhile, this containment
strategy is empowering aspiring nations to take advantage of it to rise
to regional prominence without necessarily wanting to be at America's beck and
call. This could make America's efforts to re-balance the region more
complicated.
The author therefore argues that a G2 detente between the U.S. and China,
perhaps without speaking its name, may be a better answer to regional
stability, even as China had shown lukewarm response to such overture at the
beginning of Obama's first administration.
At the same time, against increasing challenge to China's claimed sovereignty
over certain islands and rights in the South China Sea, China's military hawks
are drumming up offensive rhetoric, according to a Reuters report of 17
January, 2013 here.
Although these hawks may not be able to dictate China's state policy, their media
and hence public influence adds spark to a volatile mixture of military and grand-standing
manoeuvres that may turn into a wild fire of military conflicts. These could
sweep across the region and beyond to a full-blown war between the world's
existing super-power and its perceived challenger, which either side remains
most anxious to avoid.
The elephant in the room is a tectonic shift of geopolitical balance. Security
dilemma dictates that a military solution could well escalate to mutual
destruction or worse.
It's now time to re-think a better way to maintain a sustainable world order to
accommodate the historic rise of China. Containing China militarily and
diplomatically, or re-balancing by another name, may not be a very smart solution.
Admittedly, China will have to reform politically sooner rather than later. Both President Hu and Party Leader Xi have used very strong words to underline the urgency for social and governance reform, if not political reform, as the very survival of the Party and the nation is at stake. However, it is also clear that China remains unconvinced that the Western model of multi-party democracy, with all its fault-lines, could with advantage be copied in China’s unique circumstances.
However, China appears amenable to a raft of reforms in its economy and society as highlighted in a 468-page report Click here of the World Bank, exceptionally co-authored with the Development Research Centre of China’s State Council. These include liberalizing and strengthening the financial system, reform of the state-owned enterprises, the development of green materials and technologies, and the promotion of civil society. Helping China to deliver these reforms is likely to transform China into a more welcome partner while a containment policy is bound to result in the opposite.
Similarly, partnering with China in exploiting the kinds of technologies targeted in the Five Year Plan (2011-15) such as green technologies and materials, telecommunications, bio-technology, and manufacturing upgrades, is likely to result a win-win outcome.
Moreover, as a report “Global Trends 2030 – Alternative Worlds” here by the Washington D.C.-based National Intelligence Council points out, by 2030 the developing world will account for over 50% of the world's economy with China displacing the United States as the largest economy. Power will become more diffused in a multi-polar world, including individuals and other non-state actors, characterised by unprecedented urbanization, rise of the middle-class, new, disruptive, or lethal technologies, resource constraints, more aging populations, and risks of more crises and conflicts. America will lose its global dominant position but is likely to remain primus inter pares amongst all nations. By all accounts, a great re-balancing of the world will be taking shape, perhaps not dissimilar to the European "long peace" set in motion by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which was also a multi-polar period of rapid social, economic, technological and political change.
In this context, an economically- predominant developing world will include not only the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), but also a host of other EAGLEs (Emerging and Growth Leading Economies) such as South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico, Turkey and Taiwan. Additionally, a BBVA research report here indentifies a dozen other emerging giants that are next to take flight by 2020, such as Poland, Argentina, Thailand, Pakistan, Columbia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Vietnam and the Philippines. They are all likely to share power and influence in a multi-polar world.
The world has become not only multi-polar but much more inter-connected and inter-dependent. It begs the question whether the traditional thinking in terms of a fixed alliance or bloc of states is past its sell-by date. It is conceivable that different groupings of diverse states and non-state actors, across ideological or political divides, could step up cooperation on a project-by-project basis, to address some of the critical common problems facing the world today. These include climate change, resource depletion, energy efficiency, water scarcity, ecological degradation, poverty alleviation, disease control, piracy, terrorism, as well as problems of aging and urban sprawl. As the largest non-allied power, China has a leading role to play.
Additionally, China’s engagement with Africa has thrown up salient lessons for all stakeholders. On the one hand, as Deborah Brautigam points out in “The Dragon’s Gift” (*) , following decades of aid addiction, many poor African countries have achieved real poverty alleviation and economic progress as a result of China’s infrastructural investments in their countries. On the other hand, China’s African footprint has aroused a great deal of local antagonism against the lack of corporate social responsibility, including, for example, encroachment on local informal economies, environmental disregard, want of job creation, and poor labour relations. Helping China to overcome these problems, in partnership with the United Nations Development Program and other non-state actors, is likely to yield mutual and common dividends.
What is more, as U.S-China bilateral relations will define the shape of the 21st century, partnering with China to address the above global issues may achieve the ultimate aim of bringing China into shaping and sharing a more sustainable world order built on multi-lateral cooperation rather than confrontational rivalries. This is what a containment strategy is unlikely to deliver.
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(*) “The Dragon’s Gift – The Real Story of China in Africa”, Deborah Braugtigam, Oxford University Press, 2009
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