Even with increasing clout, China remains cautious in guarding her own narrow interests foremost in the global commons and is reluctant to assume true global leadership, according to an article "Chinese Foreign Policy: A New Era Dawns " by Anne-Marie Brady dated March 17, 2014 in The Diplomat, an online international relations journal.
China has repeatedly stated that the nation does not and will never seek hegemony. This is as much a reflection of her innate insecurity as a realist recognition that international norms are often violated when it suits overriding national interests (as in the US War on Terror) and that principles are often bent as much in the Age of Pax Americana as in the multipolar world that follows.
What the insightful article omits to put out, however, is that Putin has placed China in a quandary. China needs a resurgent Russia to weaken America's capacity to contain China in the Asia-Pacific. So China avoids condemning Russia's assertiveness over Ukraine.
On the other hand, China also refrains from supporting the Crimean referendum as this would set a dangerous example for, say, Tibet. So, abstention from casting a vote in the Security Council proved to be the only option.
Indeed, the winner over the Ukraine debacle appears to be China, as Eric Li points out in the South China Morning Post here
The Diplomat's article also debunks the whistling-in-the-dark thinking in some Western quarters that China is not yet and may never become a great power. If any one is still left in any doubt about China's global heft, China's recent acquisitions of multinational giants like America's biggest meat company Smithfield Foods and Alibaba's coming IPO in the New York Stock Exchange, likely to be the largest in the world, should be a sobering shower.
However, another common misconception is that China wishes to dominate the world and wants to change the existing world order.
This is at best half- truth. First, China has benefited hugely from the current West-defined trading regime and international order. She would be foolish to overturn it to some unknown alternative, even if she manages to win sufficient international support, which is by no means certain.
Second, there are so many political, social, ethnic, ecological, and external challenges China has to grapple with that it would be reckless to assume the burden of global dominance.
Third, China is gaining increasing global clout by being at the heart of globalized trade. There are 126 countries which have China as their largest trading partner, compared with 76 in the case of the United States. The RMB is fast becoming an international (and soon fully-convertible) currency. There are more currencies moving in tandem with the RMB than with the greenback. Click here In addition, China is now the world's largest creditor. Why should China need to spend blood and fortune to push the envelope for some uncertain gain at best, if not a massive backlash from the rest of the world?
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, the world has become so much more inter-dependent, inter-connected and multipolar for any one country to call the shots. The unipolar moment of Pax Americana has past. But it is not to be replaced by unipolar Pax Sinica. Therefore the use of the terms "dominance" or "leadership" is a little misguided.
All said, however, there is now little doubt that China's global influence is on the ascendant. But it would be rash to conclude that this only spells risks and not also opportunities for all.
