As the United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates visited China over the weekend for what was intended to be a continuation of a discourse between the two powers on the implications of their statuses as major military powers, the atmosphere between them preceding Gates’s visit has been one of uncertainty and mutual concern about the other’s intentions. The outcome of the meeting suggests that not much change has occurred, indicated in the suggestion from Gates that they will continue to talk about their talks – his earlier mandate from President Obama.
The leaders of the two countries are well aware, however, that there is deep interest, stretching into deep concern, as to whether these two powers will be able to come to some understanding about the course of their future relations, particularly about the role of military force in their conduct towards other regions and countries in which they claim to have political and diplomatic interests. Close to home, China has expressed concern about continuing United States arms sales to Taiwan which it actually claims to be part of ‘home’; while the United States has insisted that it is under an obligation, in terms of its historical relations with Taiwan, in the context of the acceptance by President Nixon in 1970 that “there is but one China,” to ensure the international security of Taiwan. On another issue, the United States has expressed concern and increasing frustration about China’s unwillingness to exert the political and diplomatic influence which it is supposed to have over North Korea, in respect of the issue of that country’s attitude to the development of nuclear weapons, and on its verbal threats to South Korea, and its more recent bombing of contested territory occupied by South Korea since the end of the Korean War. And the US has indicated its concern too at China’s sabre-rattling in the maritime areas and islands in which Japan has an interest, this giving rise to concern among many of China’s smaller near-neighbours.
In a wider sense, the United States has taken on board the concern of a country like India with what that country feels to be the increasing pace of the modernization of China’s military forces. India continues to smart over the Chinese crossing of what it deems to be its borders in 1962, that by common consent ended in victory for China. So in the present context, the United States response has been a de facto acceptance by the United States of India as a nuclear power, and a normalization of strategic relations between India and the US, initiated by President Bush and recently reinforced by President Obama, leading to a situation of an informal alliance between these two ‘democratic’ states. Yet, India obviously seeks to maintain its diplomatic autonomy in its sphere of the world.
China has insisted that American concerns and actions are unwarranted. The country’s defence chief and counterpart to Secretary Gates, General Liang, has asserted that China does not possess “an advanced military force,” and that in military terms, China is “at least two to three decades” behind the United States. And the Chinese have continued to maintain that they are strictly following the dictum of Deng Xiaoping, the protagonist of its recent development path, that China was dedicated to a “peaceful rise” in terms of economic and political power, and should strictly follow that strategy.
Commentators have recently been pointing out that the US and China find themselves in new political situations. On the one hand, the US, although it remains the only superpower – the country with a military reach to the far corners of the globe – is beginning to recognize that its influence is being constrained by the rapid rise of China, reinforced in the perceptions of other countries, by the economic difficulties in which the US finds itself. The implication is that the US will have to accustom itself to coping with multiple sources of power in different parts of the globe, not least in the Far East, where the US has held almost undisputed sway since the end of the Second World War. Further, they argue, China will play a leading part in the multi-country balance of power involving other emerging states as well as the traditional North Atlantic powers and a diminished Russia.
This fact constrains the US from the unilateralism which it has practised, and which even its own population seems to have doubts about as the US continues is travails in Iraq and Afghanistan. China, too, does not have the post-war guilt carried by Japan since its military defeat, nor that country’s commitments to the international community on the possession of nuclear weapons. And in addition, Japan remains in a depressed state economically, a situation affecting its political stability and decisiveness in respect of China’s actions.
Yet China’s emergence into the ranks of global power is unlikely to be as straightforward as might be thought. First, unlike the United States, its economic growth is not, as yet at least, as domestically self-propelling as was that of the United States in its years of economic emergence, and indeed until the mid-1970s. China’s recent development has been based, in substantial measure, on foreign investment, particularly from the United States, leading to a certain economic interdependence between the two countries. The current pas-de-deux between the two states in respect of their muted dispute on China’s currency strategy is indicative of a certain necessary mutual constraint in their current debate and policies on the issue. China is, at this stage, well aware of this interdependence, as can be seen in its effort to now step up policies inducing domestic investment and income generation as significant sources of its economy. And the United States, dragged by its multinational corporations into continual search for cheaper sources of production and a potential new market in China, is similarly inhibited from using economic pressure as an instrument for ensuring conformity by that country.
A first long-range concern of the United States, as indicated in recent statements both by Gates and Secretary of State Clinton, is the extent to which it will lose its ability to protect its post-World War II allies, particularly in Asia and the Pacific. The sense of the US is, that if it is appearing to cede too much diplomatically to China, then those allies will in turn seek to engage China directly for their own long-term survival. What was seen as China’s recent humiliation of Japan over contested islands has sent some tremors over South and South East Asia, and led to American reassurances there over its commitments.
From the point of what used to be called Non-Aligned states (including those in the Caribbean) willing to be diplomatic allies of China in the course of its rise before the era of economic globalization, a rethinking of relationships is obviously in train. In terms of the geopolitics of its part of the world, India was always a qualified diplomatic ally, and is already being cast, from the Western perspective, in a competition between a democratic emerging state and the authoritarian one of China. But for other emerging and developing states, that characterization is not taken particularly seriously, as China engages in investment and the search for mineral and agriculture commodities whether in Africa or in Latin America.
In the Central American and Caribbean countries, the battle over China versus Taiwan is virtually over. Costa Rica’s recognition of China in 2007 was an important signal; and China’s security assistance in a Haiti which still grants diplomatic recognition to Taiwan, is an indication of the country’s flexibility on these matters, sensing the inevitability of things, and the importance of demonstrating itself to be a major power continuing its touted policy of “peaceful rise.” Most Caricom states are essentially in a process of seeking economic aid, this being on standard terms indicated by China, though recent events in the Bahamas and Guyana have suggested a developing popular concern about them. But this needs separate discussion.
