Living with China
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Living with China Regional States and China through Crises and Turning Points
Edited by
Shiping Tang, Mingjiang Li, and Amitav Acharya
LIVING WITH CHINA Copyright © Shiping Tang, Mingjiang Li, and Amitav Acharya, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States - a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–61670–7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Living with China : regional states and China through crises and turning points/Shiping Tang, Mingjiang Li, and Amitav Acharya, editors. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–61670–7 (alk. paper) 1. China—Foreign relations—1976- 2. China—Foreign relations— 1976—Case studies. 3. China—Relations—Asia—Case studies. 4. Asia—Relations—China—Case studies. 5. China—Relations— Pacific Area—Case studies. 6. Pacific Area—Relations—China—Case studies. I. Tang, Shiping. II. Li, Mingjiang. III. Acharya, Amitav. JZ1730.A55L59 2009 327.51—dc22 2008048149 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Integra Software Services First edition: July 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
Preface Introduction: Understanding “Living with China” Shiping Tang 1
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Explaining China’s Proactive Engagement in Asia Mingjiang Li
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2 The PLA’s Role in China’s Regional Security Strategy Da-peng Qi
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3 The Politics and Economics of China’s Economic Presence in Asia: A Preliminary Empirical Assessment Ruobing Liang
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4 India and China: Confidence Building through Crises Swaran Singh
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5 Indonesia-China Relations: The Politics of Reengagement Rizal Sukma
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6 Japan: Reengaging with China Meaningfully Haruko Satoh 7 Coping with Complexity: Trends in Thailand’s and Malaysia’s Relations with China Joseph Chinyong Liow and Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman 8 Pakistan-China Relations: The Shadow of Kargil and 9/11 Fazal-ur-Rahman 9 Waltzing with Goliath: Philippines-China Engagement in Uncharted Waters Aileen San Pablo – Baviera 10 Russia and China: The Politics of Solving Problems Alexander Lukin
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129
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11 South Korea’s Evolving Relations with a Rising China: Symbiosis or Mere Cohabitation? Jae Ho Chung
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12 Grand Strategic Fit and Power Shift: Explaining Turning Points in China-Vietnam Relations Alexander L. Vuving
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Conclusion: Living with China, but Loving It? Amitav Acharya
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About the Contributors
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Index
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Preface
Debating China’s rise and its implications for Asia and beyond has become a cottage industry, and much ink has been spilled regarding whether China is going to be a benign or malign power and how other states ought to deal with China. By and large, pundits—usually outside Asia—have advanced their preferred policy recommendations for handling the “China Problem” based on their theoretical or intuitive readings into the history of the rise and fall of great powers, without paying much attention to the real world. Few have looked into the actual process through which regional states have managed to live with a rising China and how their dynamic interaction has shaped the region so far. Theory-driven and prescription-driven discussion has its inherent limits. Without solid empirical understanding of how other states have actually been trying to live with a rising China, we cannot possibly know the virtue of all those prescriptions. This volume fills a vacuum by examining ten countries’ actual experience of living with a rising China in the past two decades or so. Many contributors to this volume have direct access to and have been often consulted by policy-making bodies in their respective countries and thus have intimate knowledge of how their countries live with China. This volume is the final product of a project funded by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. We thank the dean of RSIS, Ambassador Barry Desker, for his keen support of this project. The final product could not possibly be in this shape without the critical comments from discussants of each chapter during and after the conference, held for this project in March 18-19, 2007 at RSIS. The editors and the authors wish to thank the following individuals for their comments on the volume: Rajesh Basrur, Richard Bitzinger, Leszek Buszynski, Heungkyu Kim, Ho Khai Leong, Kwa Chong Guan, Lam Peng-er, Lijun Sheng; Chih-yu Shi, Leonard Sebastian, Tan Seng Chye, Tan See Seng, Sarah Tong, and Guihong Zhang. Finally, we wish to thank the supporting staff of RSIS, Adeline Lim, Tan Eng Chong, Peter Ng, and Caroline Ng. Their outstanding support made the conference for this project a smooth sail.
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Introduction: Understanding “Living with China” Shiping Tang1
n the early 1990s, when China’s economic growth became impossible to ignore, many regional observers became anxious about how China was going to exercise its growing power. Along with the anxiety about China’s power and intentions, various proposals for handling the “China Problem”—from containment, to engagement, to congagement, to hedging—also began to dominate policy conversations in the region.2 So far, however, much of the debate on the China Problem has been not only Western-centric but also heavily theory driven (partly because it was Westerncentric). There has been an outstanding dearth of regional voices in the debate and, at the same time, an outstanding lack of solid empirical work on how regional states have coped with the rise of China.3 By and large, pundits outside the region have advanced their preferred policy recommendations based on their theoretical or intuitive readings into the history of the rise and fall of great powers, without paying much attention to the real world. In other words, few have looked into the actual process through which regional states have managed to live with a rising China and how their dynamic interaction has coincided with one and a half decades of relative peace and robust growth in the region despite shocks from the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the fallout from the September 11 terrorist attacks, SARS, and the Bird flu. With more than a decade since the rise of the debate on China now may be a good time to assess what has really happened between China and regional states. Because regional states are more sensitive to China’s behavior, they should also be the most qualified to make that assessment. This volume is the product of such an attempt. Its stories of how regional states have actually lived with China in the past decade or so are told by scholars from individual regional states. Importantly, many of these authors have intimate knowledge gained from active involvement in shaping their
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own countries’ interactions with China. By telling their side of the story, they project a distinctive regional voice in the ongoing debate. Although we intentionally exclude case studies on the United States and other Western hemisphere states, we do seek to contribute to the discussion about China’s rise outside the region—in an “inside-out” way. As stated above, most of the existing works on the rise of China and its relations with neighbors have been very much Western-centric, if not U.S.-centric. While many are based on extensive interviews with observers and government officials in the region, they certainly have not captured the whole picture. The voices of scholars, often with first-hand knowledge about the policy-formulating process of their governments and the grassroots shift of attitude toward China among the populace, provide a special perspective on how the U.S.-China relationship affects the interaction of regional states with both China and the United States. While the U.S.-China relationship— not surprisingly—features prominently as many regional states calculate their China policy, their calculations also seem to be quite different from those of either Washington or Beijing, as Amitav Acharya notes in his concluding chapter. In the rest of this introduction, I first underscore the questions and the approaches taken in this volume. I then extract some common themes that have emerged from the individual chapters, with the conviction that these common themes can serve as possible guidance for building cooperation among states and a foundation for more theory building. Next, I summarize the major findings of the individual chapters. A brief concluding section follows.
Questions and Approaches This volume is broadly interested in three sets of questions. How have regional states and China interacted? How has this dynamic interaction between China and regional states shaped China, regional states, and the region itself? What lessons can we learn from these interactions? Such an enterprise emphatically requires an empirical approach toward the problem of “living with China.” To distinguish our volume from the existing literature, that is, Western international relations (IR) theory-driven approach or a general historical survey, our project takes a unique case-studies approach. Each contributor from a regional state is to select two or three major crises or turning points in his or her country’s interaction with China. Crises can be cases in which China and a particular regional state work together to resolve, exacerbate, or even take advantage of the crisis (for good and bad reasons), and turning points can be for better or worse. We justify this approach not only to differentiate this volume from the existing literature on living with China but also because crises and turning points are more telling cases for understanding how China and regional states have managed to live with each other.
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To accommodate the diversity and complexity of challenges faced by China and regional states in dealing with each other, we adopt a broad definition of crisis and turning point in this volume. A crisis is simply an emerging major conflict of interest that can cause significant deterioration in a bilateral relationship, from serious dispute to a possible use of force (i.e., actual conflict). A turning point is an event that, in hindsight, has significantly shaped the course of events followed. This volume also seeks to contribute to theorizing about international politics. Contrary to the increasingly deductive approach in the United States and the grand theorizing approach in Europe that have traditionally paid less attention to empirical facts, we believe that empirical facts provide the ultimate foundation for theorizing about international politics. We also reject light and simplistic application of realist, neoliberal, or constructivist arguments to empirical facts. Instead, we let each author come up with his or her own rigorous explanation for the empirical facts. In this way, we not only avoid imposing crude and superficially theoretical explanations but also provide proto-theories for further development. Because each author is allowed to formulate explanations in his or her own way, we also adopt an eclectic approach for theorizing IR. As such, we obtain a wide spectrum of explanations in terms of the approaches being deployed. Precisely because of this diversity, some of the common themes that have emerged from these individual chapters not only are compelling but also present broader themes that can be pursued more theoretically.
Cooperation Building in International Politics: Some Common Themes Cooperation, defined as “a reaction to conflict or potential conflict” and “successful efforts to overcome conflict, real or potential,”4 has been a constant theme in international politics. Offensive realism asserts that cooperation among nations will be extremely difficult, if not impossible.5 In contrast, both defensive realism and neoliberalism argue that cooperation among nations is possible. Unfortunately, much of the defensive realist and neoliberal writing on cooperation has been too structural, and too centered on the United States or Europe, to the extent that a recent contribution to this topic makes the claim that “[Gorbachev’s effort] is perhaps the only case in which such actions [i.e., reassurance gestures] helped to bring about a fundamental change in a once-adversarial relationship.”6 The empirical cases presented in this volume challenge the notion that cooperation in international politics has been extremely rare. From the chapters on individual countries’ interactions with China in the past three
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decades, it becomes clear that China and regional states have indeed managed to build more cooperative relationships, and several interesting common themes emerge.
Cooperation Building: Issue Linkage Vs. Issue De-linking In the general IR literature, linkage of issues has usually been touted as an effective tool for building cooperation.7 An important common theme revealed by the individual chapters has been a major reason why China and regional states have been able to move into a more cooperative relationship: they have managed their relationships by delinking different issues. In other words, rather than striving for a grand bargain to resolve many disputes in one bold stroke, China and the regional states have generally been pragmatic enough to move forward with things that can be resolved for now, while leaving aside issues that cannot be resolved. This dynamic generated more goodwill (trust) and spillover effect. This tactic is especially important in improving China’s relationships with India, the Philippines, and Russia. In light of the empirical evidence from this volume, the notion that linkage of issues is an effective tool for building cooperation may be misleading. The idea of linkage being effective in building cooperation is also flawed on theoretical grounds. Fundamentally, it is based on the flawed understanding that cooperation is the result of more trust. In reality, cooperation is not only a product of more trust but, perhaps more importantly, a producer of trust; cooperation leads to more trust.8 If this is the case, delinking is more conducive to cooperation while issue linkage is counterproductive. Delinking means building cooperation in some areas so that more trust can be accumulated, and this increased trust will then spill over and facilitate more cooperation. Delinking is good because it contains issues, limits the areas of dispute, and resolves things gradually. In contrast, issue linkage means many instances of quid pro quo, thus limiting the chances of obtaining cooperation in some issue areas via piecemeal cooperation building. Issue linkage is essentially a coercive measure to extract concessions from the other side, and “cooperation” obtained from such a process can be only tactical concessions, not genuine cooperation based on goodwill to forge a more cooperative relationship. As a result, even if one side succeeds in coercing the other side into concession through issue linkage, the chance for achieving a more cooperative relationship is reduced because such an outcome generates resentment rather than trust from the other side. More likely than not, the other side will want some payback next time, rather than a more cooperative relationship. Certainly, while issue linkage was one of Henry Kissinger’s favorite tools for getting the Soviet Union to agree to some concessions during the Cold War years, he had no intention to build cooperation with the Soviet Union.9
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Domestic Politics and Cooperation In sharp contrast to the growing body of neoclassical realism literature on the impact of domestic politics upon war and conflict,10 the literature on the impact of domestic politics upon peace and cooperation has been dismal. This reflects not only a general bias for war studies within IR, but also a general structuralism bias within the existing theoretical literature on peace and cooperation.11 Two observations that emerge from the empirical cases testify to the crucial role of domestic politics in driving states’ cooperation with each other. A salient issue in some of the regional states’ interaction with China has been the presence of a sizable population of ethnic Chinese, most notably in Indonesia and Malaysia and, to a lesser extent, in the Philippines and Thailand too. While the case studies on Indonesia and Malaysia/Thailand do not exclusively focus on the problem of ethnic Chinese within their domestic politics, they highlight that the perception of each country’s public and elite concerning the problem of ethnic Chinese inevitably influences their perception of China. This observation is not surprising. The literature on ethnic conflict makes it clear that the presence of one country’s major ethnic group in another country as a minority group (e.g., ethnic Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia, or ethnic Russians in Ukraine and Kazakhstan) may pose a very sensitive challenge for the two states in managing their relationship. One can easily imagine that real or perceived ill-treatment of the minority group by its host state can provoke a public outcry in the state in which the group holds a majority. For instance, China reacted strongly to the 1994 riot against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, and the Chinese leadership faced strong public pressure to act more forcefully during the rampage against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia in 1998. Such dynamics can easily exacerbate the tension between the two states. Worse yet, the deteriorating relationship between the two states will then come back to exacerbate the tension between the two ethnic groups.12 For this problem, the best outcome is for countries with a sizable ethnic Chinese population to treat the ethnic Chinese as full citizens rather than second-class citizens or aliens. Rizal Sukma’s chapter on the Indonesia-China relationship indicates that a potential way forward is through democratization. Sukma documents that Indonesia’s effort to reconcile with its ethnic Chinese population followed Indonesia’s democratization, which is by no means over. Because a democratically elected government no longer needs the ethnic Chinese population and China as an enemy to shore up its legitimacy, as an authoritarian regime under Suharto did, a democratic Indonesia is in a better position to offer affirmative action to its ethnic Chinese population. This theme certainly goes against the widely held notion that democratization increases the probability of war. Indonesia thus presents an interesting case for understanding how a country’s
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democratization promotes affirmative action for its minorities and, arguably, that only a democracy can provide this equal citizenship for all its citizens. Of course, the better the relationship between Indonesia’s majority population and its ethnic Chinese population, the easier it would be for China and Indonesia to manage their relationships. As such, democratization may actually facilitate rather than jeopardize cooperation building among states.
Asymmetric Power, the Security Dilemma, and Cooperation Other than India, Japan, and Russia, most of China’s neighboring states are middle-sized to smaller states. The security dilemma is a key concept for understanding both conflict and cooperation in international politics.13 Considering that distribution of power is central for realism, it is perhaps surprising that asymmetric power has never been seriously considered in conjunction with the security dilemma. Indeed, much of the security dilemma literature implicitly assumes a symmetric distribution of power between the two actors.14 Because asymmetric distribution of power between two states is usually the norm rather than the exception, however, asymmetric distribution of power should be treated as an important physical regulator of the security dilemma.15 Understanding how asymmetric distribution of power regulates the security dilemma will provide us with some much-needed insight into how to manage the relationship between a (regional) great power and its smaller neighbors. The security dilemma theory suggests that in a relationship of asymmetric power, the weaker party will be more sensitive and thus more likely to overreact. As a result, to alleviate or at least contain the security dilemma, the stronger power needs to be more reassuring and self-restraining.16 Unfortunately, more power not only tends to lessen the incentives for the stronger state to be moderate because the cost of conflict will be relatively lower for it, but also tends to make it less willing to be constrained because it can overcome the constraint. Meanwhile, because the weaker state is more sensitive, and thus more likely to overreact, it may take some defensive measures that will be deemed hostile by the stronger power. One such measure is perhaps particularly alarming for the intraregional stronger power: the weaker state forms a tight alliance with an extraregional great power with whom the intraregional stronger power does not enjoy a friendly relationship, thus arousing the intraregional stronger power’s fear of being contained by the weaker state and the external great power. The delicate triangular relationship between the United States, the Southeast Asian nations, and China is one good example of this situation.17 The stories told by some of the chapters testify that there may be some genuine lessons to be learned about how to manage the relationship between a great power and its smaller neighbors.
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It seems that a key reason why China and ASEAN states have been getting along with each other well is that ASEAN states have been able to hedge against the possibility of an aggressive China without overreacting and thus alarming China, perhaps because there is an ASEAN as a regional institution18 and there is a robust U.S. military presence in the region. Thus, while there have been prominent voices outside the region that call for a hard containment approach toward China, ASEAN states have generally rejected such an approach. Instead, ASEAN states have favored an engagement approach toward China (with a dose of hedging, of course),19 with the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) being a major platform both for socializing China and letting China understand ASEAN and multilateralism in general.20 As China gradually learned about ASEAN, ARF, and the intentions of ASEAN states, ASEAN states were able to alleviate China’s fear and build up China’s confidence that ASEAN states are not hostile to China. In this sense, ASEAN states really have had a powerful “pull” effect in shaping a more benign and proactive regional strategy from China, as Li Mingjiang’s chapter in this volume argues. Meanwhile, as China comes to accept the ASEAN way, ASEAN states have been able to increase their confidence in China’s benign intentions. The net result is that China and most ASEAN states have improved their relationship greatly since the mid-1990s. The same can be said about China and its Central Asian neighbors within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Reconciliation: Identity and Interest The prominence of constructivism in the general IR literature has obscured a fundamental problem within the literature—the lack of rigorously pursued empirical cases for supporting Wendt’s claim that “anarchy is what states make of it.”21 We believe that reconciliation, defined as the process through which former opponents reshape their hostile relationship into a stable peace,22 should serve as the ultimate testing ground for contructivism’s claim. If states that were bitter enemies can reach robust reconciliations, then anarchy can indeed be fundamentally (re)made. The case studies presented in the volume present four cases of reconciliation between China and some of its neighbors: the more successful one between China and Russia, and three with varying degrees of success between China on the one side and India, Japan, and Vietnam on the other side. In addition, China’s relationship with Indonesia can be taken as a case of relatively successful reconciliation, considering the acrimonious relationship between the two for a very long time, even though the two countries had not fought a war against each other. These case studies indicate that reconciliation is possible: former bitter foes can be made into amicable neighbors; partners, if not friends or allies. But
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the causes for these instances of remaking anarchy might have been far more complex than constructivism imagines. The case studies in this volume certainly support the notion that identity is critical for remaking anarchy. As Haruko Satoh points out in her reflective/constructivist interpretation of the Sino-Japanese relationship, the two countries’ different interpretations of the history of the wars between them has certainly played an important role in their division. As such, a convergence of the interpretation of history is a must if a robust reconciliation is to materialize between China and Japan. However, the case studies by Alexander Lukin, Alexander Vuving, and Rizal Sukma also support the notion that the beginning of reconciliation can be very “realist” or instrumental: states can reconcile only if they believe that reconciliation is in their interest. The fairly successful reconciliation between Russia and China, and to a lesser extent between China and Vietnam and between China and Indonesia, all began initially because both sides felt the need to repair their relationship. Hence, the results support Norrin Ripsman’s argument that making peace requires realism, although maintaining peace may require neoliberalism.23 Moreover, because identity itself is a social construct, it may thus a construct (i.e., result) rather than a cause of cooperation. In this sense, the differences between realism, neoliberalism, and constructivism have been exaggerated. For one thing, it is simply difficult to see how cooperative institutions can emerge without some reassurance-driven cooperation beforehand, and how a common and cooperative identity can emerge without some cooperation and cooperative institutions beforehand. As such, a dialogue among these different “-isms” is not only possible but also potentially very profitable.
The Structure of the Volume The rest of the volume following this introductory chapter is divided into three major parts: chapters on China itself, chapters on regional states’ interaction with China, and a concluding chapter. The first part serves to provide some background for the second part, which constitutes the bulk of the empirical studies of regional states’ interaction with China. The concluding chapter provides a more holistic interpretation of the interactions between regional states and China.
Chapters on China The volume contains three chapters on China’s regional strategy written by Chinese scholars. In the first chapter, Li Mingjiang seeks to explain China’s proactive engagement with its neighbors, now that many have argued that China has formulated
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a more-or-less coherent regional strategy.24 The central question to be addressed in this chapter is how China has been able to formulate a generally coherent regional strategy. What were the major (good) ideas behind China’s regional strategy? Where did those ideas come from? And what made those ideas into the official policy? The author highlights three critical factors that have driven China’s more coherent regional strategy: the strategic imperatives of economic development, China’s constant apprehension of a possible U.S.-led encirclement of China, and the “pull” effect from most of China’s neighboring states (especially ASEAN states, but also Russia and Central Asian states). The author further emphasizes that these factors work not independently but interactively to shape China’s regional strategy. In the second chapter, Qi Dapeng addresses the role of the Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) in China’s regional strategy. Qi explores two key questions. First, what kind of role does the PLA play in China’s regional strategy? Second, what are the challenges to the PLA’s fulfilling its assigned roles in China’s regional strategy? Qi argues that national development has gradually replaced national survival as the focus of China’s national security strategy, reflecting China’s increasing confidence in its survival and future (which is, of course, underpinned by a general improvement in China’s security environment). Accordingly, the PLA has been assigned the new mission of ensuring China’s development interests. Compared to the single-minded emphasis on the means of military confrontation and conflict in safeguarding China’s national survival in the past, the PLA’s new mission now emphasizes more strengthening of military confidence building and cooperation. The author acknowledges that there is some inherent tension between the need to reassure China’s neighbors and the United States on the one hand and the need to deter Taiwan from going independent and to conquer Taiwan if necessary on the other hand. He concludes by exploring possible measures to build more trust between the PLA and other armed forces in the region. In the third chapter, Liang Ruobing addresses the politics of China’s growing economic presence in the region. Over the years, many pundits have argued that many of China’s initiatives in regional economic integration (e.g., free trade agreements with ASEAN countries, and the often discussed FTA with South Korea and Japan) have been underpinned by a political rather than an economic motive. Admitting that all high economics is politics, Liang Ruobing seeks to explore how much politics has really influenced China’s economic interactions with regional states. The preliminary results, not surprising to economists, indicate that while political motives might have propelled some of China’s economic initiatives to forge a close relationship with its neighbors, politics has very little impact on China’s economic presence in the region. Its economic presence is fundamentally supported by economic forces such as division of labor, comparative advantage, and the global production network.
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Chapters on Regional States’ Interaction with China The second part of this volume contains nine chapters, each on a particular regional state’s interaction with China through crises and turning points. (For the list of the crises and turning points examined within the chapters, see Table I.1.) The individual contributors have been advised to keep the following five sets of questions in mind and touch upon them when they examine the individual cases. These questions also provide the common thread that links the individual chapters together. First, do regional states see a coherent and consistent regional strategy from China? If so, what are the major characteristics of such a regional strategy? More importantly, how do regional states judge the nature, the intention, and the strategic rationale behind such a regional strategy? Second, how have regional states reacted to some of the major policy initiatives or behaviors of China? Specifically, what has been the major strategic thinking (or rethinking) behind regional states’ policies toward China? Do regional states mostly make their policies toward China based on their more narrowly defined national interest, or do they derive some of their policies toward China from a desire to socialize China? How have external events (e.g., the 1997 Asian financial crisis, September 11) been driving some of the policies toward China? Third, how has China reacted to some of the major individual or collective policy changes or initiatives from regional states? What are the complaints and recommendations from regional states, if there are any? Fourth, how do the regional states’ policy elites assess their own country’s China policy? Are they satisfied or dissatisfied with what they have so far Table I.1 Crises and Turning Points between China and its Neighbors Examined in the Volume, 1989–2005 Countries
Turning Points and Crises
Indonesia and China
1997 Asian financial crisis, 1998 riot against ethnic Chinese, and 2004 Tsunami 1998 India nuclear test, 1999 Kargil crisis The tenure of Koizumi, 2001–2006 1999 Kargil crisis, September 11, 2001 1994–1995 Mischief Reef dispute 2001 border demarcation, September 11, 2001 Oil pipelines from Russia to China Koguryo dispute, 2001–2005 2000 border demarcation Vietnam’s balancing act between the United States and China, 1998–2005
India and China Japan and China Pakistan and China The Philippines and China Russia and China South Korea Vietnam
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achieved (together with China)? What will be the major lessons they draw for their own country and for China in managing their future interactions? Finally, what implications for the region does this dynamic interaction hold? Do China and regional states hold a generally optimistic or generally pessimistic view about the future of the region? What implications does this dynamic interaction also hold for other great powers, both outside and inside the region (e.g., the United States, Japan, and India)? With these questions in the background, Swaran Singh opens this part with a chapter on India-China relations. Singh argues that the plurality of Indian society makes Indian perspectives vulnerable to different internal and external pushes and pulls, thus making India’s living with China complicated. He notes, however, that the two countries have managed to patch up many things, although deep distrust still lingers. Singh examines two major turning points in the bilateral relationship, India’s nuclear tests of 1998 and the fourth India-Pakistan war in the Kargil sector in 1999, to highlight the process and outcome of their confidence building. He concludes that these confidencebuilding efforts have greatly increased the probability that the two countries will be able to overcome similar challenges in the future. Rizal Sukma examines the dynamics of interactions between Indonesia and China by focusing on three cases: China’s responses to the 1997 economic crisis, the May 1998 riots in Indonesia, and the 2004 Tsunami disaster. Sukma argues that recent improvements in bilateral relations have been primarily the function of dramatic changes in Indonesia’s domestic politics, although China’s changing policy toward Southeast Asia in general and toward the ethnic Chinese issue in particular has also contributed to the coming of an atmosphere of trust and comfort in Jakarta’s reengagement with China. He concludes by arguing that despite these improvements, the future course of Indonesia-China relations will continue to be subject to the persistence of Indonesia’s domestic ambiguity toward China, emanating from the question of the Indonesian ethnic Chinese minority and Indonesia’s perceptions of China’s intentions and policy in Southeast Asia. Haruko Satoh takes a more reflective/interpretive approach (i.e., more akin to constructivism) toward the more troubled relationship between Japan and China. She argues that Prime Minister Koizumi’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine might have been the Bitburg for restarting a genuine reconciliation between Japan and China. Precisely because Koizumi had made the visit to the shrine such a prominent issue during his tenure, a more open debate on the meaning of history within Japan became possible and, perhaps, inevitable. In light of the fact there has already been some “new thinking” toward Japan from China, Satoh argues that a genuine reconciliation between Japan and China becomes likely, perhaps more so than ever before.
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Joseph Chinyong Liow and Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman contributed the only comparative study in this volume. Among Southeast Asian states, Malaysia and Thailand represent two countries for which “living with China” in the post – Cold War era has not posed a major problem. Thus, it is interesting to explore whether there have been common factors that have made the two countries’ relationships with China relatively free of major ruptures. The two authors find that although the exact circumstances were different, there has been a major and common turn in Thai and Malaysian perspectives on China since the end of the Cold War. Whereas both countries viewed China as a major threat for much of the Cold War, they no longer do so in the post – Cold War period. The two authors attribute the shift to the interactions between China’s diplomacy and Malaysia’s and Thailand’s general acceptance of China’s rise and its essentially peaceful nature. As such, both countries see the rise of China as bringing more benefits than perils to the region. Fazal-ur-Rahman focuses on Pakistan-China interactions during two major crisis situations, the conflict in Kargil in 1999 and the military standoff in 2001-2002, both between Pakistan and India. Through a detailed description of how Pakistan and China handled the two crises, Fazal-ur-Rahman offers a nuanced picture about the changes and continuities in Pakistan-China relations in the past decade. He underscores that China has been following a consistent policy in South Asia since the early 1980s that aims at securing good-neighborly relations, peace, and political and strategic stability in the region, and that China’s policy toward Pakistan has been shaped by this overall policy toward South Asia. Aileen San Pablo – Baviera traces the transformation of Philippines-China relations by examining two cases: the disputes over territory and maritime jurisdiction in the Spratly Islands and the problem of intrusions and illegal fishing by Chinese fishermen in Philippine waters. She details how the two states have handled these disputes and then explains why they have not prevented the two states from nurturing a normal and even cooperative relationship. She contends that the global and regional strategic environment, bilateral interactions, and domestic politics in the two countries have all shaped the way Beijing and Manila interact with each other. Alexander Lukin goes behind the sound Russia-China relations and explores how the two countries have been able to manage problems between them. Lukin argues that there is a fairly high level of trust between the two countries and that the high level of trust manifests itself not in the absence of any differences but in the ability of the two countries to solve these differences in the spirit of cooperation and on the basis of compromise and mutual benefit. Lukin examines three thorny problems in the Russia-China relationship in recent years: the problem of Chinese immigration into Russia’s Far East, border demarcation between the two countries, and the issue of Russian oil export to China. He concludes that strategic considerations, individual leaders’
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timely and resolute interventions, domestic politics, and willingness to cooperate and compromise on both sides, particularly on the part of China, all have contributed to the process of problem solving. Jae Ho Chang examines the impact of the recent controversy over the ancient kingdom of Koguryo upon South Korea’s perception of China. Chang emphasizes that the dispute has the potential to significantly damage the generally warm relationship between South Korea and China. While the two governments were able to dampen the dispute, it continues to lurk below the surface. Chang thus suggests that South Korea’s mode of response to the rising China, although certainly geared toward active engagement, is not firmly fixed and continues to evolve. He further highlights the possibility that South Korea may have entered into a phase of “reawakening” in terms of perceiving and constructing its relations with China in the wake of the Koguryo saga. Alex Vuving pursues a more analytical approach toward the relationship between China and Vietnam. He seeks to answer the question how Vietnam and China have been able to overcome so much historical hostility and reach the current level of cooperation between them. Vuving examines two major turning points, a near resolution of the long border dispute between the two countries and Vietnam’s delicately balanced relationship between China and the United States (i.e., Vietnam has been able to get close to the United States without raising much alarm from China).Vuving argues that this is primarily due to a “grand strategic fit” between Vietnam, China, and the United States that has gradually emerged after the Cold War, and he supports his interpretations with empirical facts.
The Concluding Chapter: A Broader Perspective The concluding chapter by Amitav Acharya asks the broader question: what does this dynamic interaction between China and the regional states mean for the region, China, and the United States? As a constructivist, Amitav explores whether there are some emerging norms or codes of conduct for this interaction and what are the potential implications of these emerging norms or codes of conduct for peace, stability, and security institutions within the region. All these questions are of critical importance to China and the regional states, if we assume that much of the region’s future hinges on how these states and China manage their future interactions.
Concluding Remarks The China Problem poses, as the cliché goes, both a challenge and an opportunity for the region’s prosperity and stability. So far, it seems that the region has responded to the challenge of China’s rise fairly well. Almost all the analysts
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from regional states see that their countries have managed to live with China better, not worse, except perhaps Japan from 2000 to 2007, echoing the major conclusion in several existing works on China’s foreign policy.25 The problem also presents a challenge and an opportunity for the region’s intellectual future. For one thing, China’s rise provides an important impetus for debating the larger question of the future of the region. Unlike Western powers, China has always been part of the region. Unlike Imperial Japan and even the post-WWII Japan that had and has debated whether Japan should remain part of Asia and/or become part of the West, China has never seriously doubted the meaning of its geographical location. China seems to have always been certain about its regional identity, leaving only its exact role in the region to be debated or constructed. Moreover, having lived through its romantic revolutionary era that sought to remake the region by exporting revolution, China now firmly recognizes that the region can be (re)made only by the coevolution of all the states inside the region, including China. The intellectual community of the region has yet to be able to project a distinctive regional voice in this debate on relations with China. We hope that this volume will stimulate more in-depth and rigorous research into the question of coping with the challenges posed by a rising China. Finally, the China Problem also presents IR theorists with a fertile ground for theoretical innovations. As summarized in the beginning of this introduction, some common themes are visible among the different countries’ experiences of living with a rising China. These common themes can and should be explored in a more theoretical setting.26 We thus also hope that the publication of this volume will stimulate more theoretical innovation in IR theory, especially on the theory of cooperation building.
Notes 1. Shiping Tang is senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. He has finished a book manuscript titled Defensive Realism: Toward A Coherent Statement. He is now working on another book titled Social Evolution of International Politics. He thanks Amitav Acharya and Mingjiang Li for their critical comments on an earlier draft. 2. By “the region” or “regional states,” we mean the region in which China’s behavior is most concentrated. Thus the region includes East Asia (Northeast and Southeast Asia), Russia and Central Asia, South Asia, and Oceania (i.e., Australia and New Zealand). 3. Three notable exceptions are Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross (eds), Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power, London: Routledge, 1999; David Shambaugh (ed.), Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005; David C. Kang, China Rising: Peace, Power, and Order in East Asia, New York: Columbia University Press,
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4. 5. 6.
7.
8.
9. 10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
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2008. Even these three books, however, are mostly (co)authored by scholars outside the region. Robert Keohane, After Hegemony (pp. 53-54), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, New York: Norton, 2001, Chapter 1. Evan Braden Montgomery, “Breaking Out of the Security Dilemma: Realism, Reassurance, and the Problem of Uncertainty,” International Security, Vol. 31 No. 2 pp. 151-185 (Fall 2006). Emphasis added. For a challenge to this theme, see Shiping Tang, “Correspondence: Uncertainty and Cooperation in International Politics,” International Security, Vol. 32 No. 1 pp. 193-197 (Summer 2007). See, for example, Robert Axelrod and Robert Keohane, “Achieving Cooperation under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions,” World Politics, Vol. 38 No. 1 pp. 226-254 (October 1985). For a detailed exposition of this thesis, see Shiping Tang, Defensive Realism: A Systematic Statement (unpublished book manuscript), Chapter 5. See also Andrew Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, Esp. Chapter 2. Henry A. Kissinger, The White House Years, Boston: Little, Brown, 1978. For a more recent review of this literature, see Randall L. Schweller, “The Progressiveness of Neoclassical Realism,” in Colin Elman and Miriam F. Elman (eds), Progress in International Relations Theory (pp. 311-347), Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003. For instance, Charles L. Glaser,“Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-help,” International Security, Vol. 19 No. 3 pp. 50-90 (Winter 1994–1995); Montgomery, “Breaking out of the Security Dilemma”. For detailed discussions on China’s reaction toward riots against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, see Daojiong Zha, “China and the May 1998 Riots of Indonesia: Exploring the Issues,” Pacific Review, Vol. 13 No. 4 pp. 557-575 (2002) and the chapter by Sukma in this volume. The seminal original contribution on the security dilemma is Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976, Chapter 3; Id., “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics, Vol. 30 No. 2 pp. 167-214 (January 1978). Much of the existing discussion on the security dilemma, however, suffers from confusion. For a more rigorous reformulation, see Shiping Tang, “The Security Dilemma: A Conceptual Analysis,” Security Studies (2009, forthcoming). Collins’s discussion on the interaction between China and the Southeast Asian states after the Cold War is a rare good treatment of this subject. See Alan Collins, The Security Dilemmas of Southeast Asia, London: Macmillan, 2000, Chapter 5. For a general treatment on the impact of asymmetric distribution of power on state relations, see Brantly Womack, China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. This implication fits with the axiom that “more power brings more responsibility.” Unfortunately, like Metternich, many statesmen understand “more responsibility” to mean more intervention rather than more reassurance
16
17. 18. 19.
20.
21. 22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
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and moderation. Metternich cited in Jervis, “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma,” p. 169. For a good discussion, see Collins, The Security Dilemmas of Southeast Asia. This is a possible function of international institutions that neoliberalism has yet to pay much attention to. Jusuf Wanandi, “ASEAN’s China Strategy: Towards Deeper Engagement,” Survival, Vol. 38 No. 3 pp. 117-128 (Autumn 1996). Indeed, hedging is an integral part of the engagement approach. For the socializing effect of ASEAN and ARF, see Rosemary Foot, “China in the ASEAN Regional Forum: Organization Process and Domestic Models of Thought,” Asian Survey, Vol. 38 No. 5 pp. 425-440 (May 1998); Alstair Iain Johnston, “Socialization in International Institutions: The ASEAN Way and International Relations Theory,” in G. John Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno (eds), International Relations Theory and the Asia-Pacific (pp. 107-159), New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Alex Wendt,“Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization, Vol. 46 No. 2 pp. 391-425 (Spring 1992). Reconciliation or conflict resolution is different from conflict termination or settlement. Conflict termination or settlement does not necessarily lead to reconciliation and sometimes may actually lay the seeds for another round of conflict (e.g., the Versailles Treaty). Norrin M. Ripsman, “Two Stages of Transition from a Region of War to a Region of Peace: Realist Transition and Liberal Endurance,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 49 No. 4 pp. 669-693 (December 2005). Works that reach this conclusion, among others, include: David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Security, Vol. 29 No. 3 pp. 64-99 (Winter 2004/2005); Avery Goldstein, “The Diplomatic Face of China’s Grand Strategy: A Rising Power’s Emerging Choice;” China Quarterly, No. 168 pp. 835-864 (December 2001); Evan Medeiros and M. Taylor Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82 No. 6 pp. 22-35 (November/December 2003); Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, “China’s Regional Strategy,” in David Shambaugh (ed.), Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (pp. 54-74), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. See, for example, Shambaugh, Power Shift; Kang, China Rising; David Lampton, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Money, Might, and Mind, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. For an earlier treatment in a broader context that remains relevant, see Collins, Security Dilemma in Southeast Asia, Chapter 5. For a less sanguine assessment, see Robert Sutter, China Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils, Boulder: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. For why common themes (i.e., analogous things) are fertile ground for theorizing laws, see Marion Blute, “History Versus Science: The Evolutionary Solution,” Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol. 22 No. 3 pp. 345-364 (Summer 1997).
1
Explaining China’s Proactive Engagement in Asia Mingjiang Li1
uring Mao’s era, China hardly had a coherent or consistent policy toward its neighbors, largely due to Beijing’s involvement in the Cold War superpower imbroglios as well as China’s own revolution-based foreign policy.2 Even up until the 1980s, it is believed that China was still “a regional power without a regional policy.”3 However, with the end of the Cold War, particularly since the mid-1990s,4 China has been able to perceive its contiguous areas as one combined geopolitical identity in its foreign policy deliberations for the first time in its history and has gone to great lengths to flesh out a policy framework, the main feature of which is an all-round proactive engagement in Asia. In recent years, official Chinese pronouncements and media outlets have frequently used terms such as “friendly and good-neighborly” (mu lin youhao), “benevolence toward and partnerships with neighbors” (yi lin wei shan, yu lin wei ban), and “enrich, harmonize, and reassure the neighborhood” (fu lin, mu lin, an lin) to describe China’s approach toward its neighboring states. Self-proclaimed altruism in these official terms notwithstanding, it seems hard to argue that Beijing has been paying only lip service to its commitments in the region. In the past decade or so, China has demonstrated considerable willingness to proactively engage its Asian neighbors. This new orientation has been manifested in Beijing’s actions in promoting confidence-building measures (CBMs), settling border disputes, practicing relative self-restraint, reassuring neighbors of China’s benign intensions, and actively participating in regional economic, political, and security dialogues and institutions.5 Observers have used terms such as “charm offensive,” “new diplomacy,”6 and “soft power approaches” to describe China’s new regional posture.7 Partly as a result of this new posture, China’s image among its Asian neighbors has improved remarkably. Of course, such sanguine descriptions do
D
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not negate the fact that there are many competitive elements in China’s regional policy and that there is still lingering mistrust among China’s neighboring countries toward Beijing.8 Existing literature on China’s new Asian policy tends either to be descriptive or to focus on implications for the United States. Instead of presenting a repetitive account of the facts,9 this chapter attempts to analyze some major factors that have shaped China’s new policy orientation toward its neighbors. These factors are by no means exhaustive, but arguably among the most critical ones. The first section discusses the profound impact of China’s priority of domestic economic development on its choice of regional policy. In addition to the commonly mentioned precondition of a stable regional order for economic development, this chapter also explores how the growth and expansion of the Chinese economy are shaping Beijing’s regional posture. The second section analyzes China’s regional strategic choice in response to its perception of U.S. policy toward China and the region. I argue that China’s constant apprehension of a possible United States – led encirclement or coercion policy against China has pushed the latter to go all out to win the political trust of its neighbors. The third section analyzes the “pull” effect from China’s neighboring states. These factors do not work in complete isolation. Instead, their interaction will be discussed throughout this chapter. A central thread in all these arguments is that China’s regional policy conforms to and is part of China’s grand strategy of achieving the ultimate rise— a long-cherished national aspiration to significantly increase its material power and international influence.
Regional Strategy in the Age of Economic Modernization Scholars of international relations (IR) have posited numerous connections between domestic politics and international strategies. In contemporary China, such a link is most evidently illustrated in China’s constant emphasis on creating a stable regional environment for the sake of its domestic economic development. In addition, with the continuing growth of its economy, China now seeks access to overseas markets and a secure supply of energy and raw materials, increasing the importance of its neighbors. A closer engagement with its neighbors is also expected to boost China’s “western development” scheme, a strategy through which leaders in Beijing hope to rectify the widening regional disparity within China.
Regional Peace for Economic Development Despite the fact that the Chinese economy has been growing rapidly in the past three decades, Beijing is aware that there are still many internal as well as external
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obstacles to overcome if it is to sustain the momentum of its rise; it has to work hard to ensure that there are no major disruptions to its ascent. A stable and peaceful external environment is perceived as one of the most crucial factors in guaranteeing the eventual realization of this grand strategy. China’s neighbors are important in the minds of the Chinese leaders. First of all, the absence of any intractable conflict between China and its neighbors is a prerequisite for China to concentrate on its domestic programs. Second, a trouble-free region is less likely to instigate rivalry between China and other external major powers. Third, a stable regional environment is a precondition for smooth economic activities between China and its neighbors. It is no accident that China started to reevaluate and reorient its policy toward its neighbors roughly at the same time that its reform and opening-up policy was initiated, which was at the end of 1970s and early 1980s.10 Chinese leaders continuously emphasize the inevitable trend of “peace and development” in world politics as a justification for the feasibility of focusing on economic programs and efforts to promote stability in the outside world. As a largely regional power, the implementation of this international strategy has to focus on Asia in order to maximize political, economic, and security benefits.11 The end of the Cold War and the effects of economic reform made it not only possible but also imperative for China to further shift gears in its regional policy. The need for domestic economic development to bring about a stable regional environment has been unequivocally articulated in political documents that are intended to be the guidelines of China’s political economy. In 1997, the 15th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Congress political report cautioned that China was still in the primary stage of socialism, characterized by a low level of productivity, regional disparity, backwardness in education and technology, and a huge gap with the developed world, which demanded economic development to take center stage in the foreseeable future. The document thus recommended that a good-neighborliness policy should be China’s long-term strategy, stressing that contentious issues between China and its neighboring countries should be solved through friendly consultation and negotiations for the sake of maintaining overall peace and stability. For problems that cannot be solved at the moment, they should be shelved temporarily.12 Five years later, the 16th CCP Congress report highlighted that the first 20 years of the twenty-first century would be “an important period of strategic opportunity” to turn China into a relatively well-off society. Beijing vowed to strengthen regional cooperation and push the exchanges and cooperation with regional states to a new high.13 Leadership change has not disrupted this strategic philosophy in China’s regional policy. In August 2006, Beijing convened a central foreign-affairs conference. President Hu Jintao stressed that decades of reform and opening up has resulted in ever-increasing connections between China’s domestic development
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and foreign affairs. He emphasized that foreign affairs would have to serve the core work of domestic economic development, particularly during the “important period of strategic opportunity,” a policy prescription which necessitates a proactive approach to construct and maintain a peaceful and stable international and regional environment.14
Meeting the Needs of Economic Expansion: Overseas Markets and Resources By the mid-1990s, the Chinese economy had reached such a level that it had to pay more attention to foreign markets and resources, particularly energy resources and various raw materials. The surrounding regions were considered to be an important market for Chinese manufactured goods as well as convenient and reliable sources of energy and raw materials. The exact weight of Asia in China’s international economic ties remains obscure due to three factors. First, some Chinese companies that are involved in China’s foreign trade or investment in Asia have not registered with the Ministry of Commerce; thus their business activities in other Asian countries are not reflected in the official Chinese statistics. Second, there is always the danger of overestimating the volume of trade between China and many Asian countries due to the fact that China imports a lot of raw materials or semifinished products for reprocessing in China and then exports these goods back to those countries, creating the “double counting” problem. Third, in the official data, trade and investment through Hong Kong are recorded as part of China’s economic relations with Asia. But a significant proportion of Chinese trade and investment through Hong Kong is diverted to other regions. Notwithstanding these caveats, Asia remains one of the most important regions for China’s international economic exchanges. Official Chinese data are still worthwhile to be used as a good reference because they serve as part of the ground for policy making. According to the Ministry of Commerce, in recent years, China’s imports from Asia accounted for more than 60 percent of its total import15 and exports to Asian countries amounted to around half of China’s total.16 The importance of regional markets can also be seen from the fact that many of China’s largest trade partners are located in its neighboring areas. Regional markets have become especially important for China in diversifying its trade when economic and trade friction with the United States and Western countries has become more salient in the past decade. A secure supply of primary goods, energy, and raw materials is also an important concern for China in relations with its neighbors, especially those in Central and Southeast Asia. From 2001 to 2005, China’s import of primary goods, both in terms of volume and percentage, has steadily increased.17 Regional states can be expected to be more reliable suppliers of these materials. At the 2003 Shanghai
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Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao proposed to set up a free trade area among member states of the organization. China’s active involvement in Central Asia has largely stemmed from its need for secure and diversified energy supplies to safeguard its rapidly developing economy.18 The China – ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) is also partly expected to help China secure a supply of energy and raw material resources from this resource-rich region.19 As the Chinese economy continues to grow at a phenomenal rate, there is growing impulse to invest in foreign economies. Starting from 2000, outbound Chinese investment has been increasing substantially.20 In this corporate Chinese “going out” frenzy, Asian countries are the first choice for many Chinese investors. In recent years, Chinese investment in Asia accounted for roughly over 50 percent of China’s total investment overseas, far surpassing Chinese investment in other regions.21
Developing China’s Border Regions: The Importance of Neighboring Countries The initial idea in China’s opening-up program aimed at attracting foreign investment into the Chinese economy was to introduce international capital into the coastal areas, with the hope that after the saturation of foreign investment and the development of those coastal regions, foreign investment would move further inland, to the interior provinces. However, this grand design of policy failed to materialize. From 1999 to 2004, foreign direct investment (FDI) into China’s middle provinces stood at only about 10 percent, while the western provinces received less than 5 percent.22 FDI continued to pour into China’s coastal areas despite the rise of labor cost. Partly due to a shortage of FDI, China’s western areas have lagged far behind its coastal regions economically. The huge economic disparity across its interior regions has had a profound adverse impact on China, such as increasing income gap and living standards, social injustice, the difficulty of establishing nationwide social welfare programs, and social instability. Beijing has realized that this widening gap has to be curbed before the situation gets out of control. One solution to this regional disparity is to further strengthen the economic activities with neighboring countries, many of which are geographically close to China’s poor border provinces.23 Starting from the late 1990s, Beijing started to encourage interior provinces along its major rivers to initiate more opening-up measures (yan jiang kaifang) and the provinces along China’s borders to step up economic exchanges with neighboring countries (yan bian kaifang). It was expected that closer economic ties with surrounding countries would help its western provinces to catch up with their eastern counterparts.
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In this context, China began to take a more active stance in developing economic ties with Northeast Asian countries in the hope of triggering the economic recovery of the three northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning. One of the purposes of forging closer ties with the rest of Central Asia is to boost economic development in China’s poverty-stricken northwestern region. It is also expected that Southwest China’s Yunnan, Sichuan, and Guangxi provinces could benefit from more trade with South and Southeast Asia. Initiatives proposed by Yunnan with regard to the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) cooperation has received strong support from leaders in Beijing.24 Initially an economic policy, once in place, the policy of opening up to neighboring countries necessitated the central government to pay more attention to the political and security dimensions of China’s relations with its surrounding neighbors.
China between the United States and Regional States If the priority of domestic economic development shaped the foundation of China’s “good-neighborliness” policy, then the intensity of Beijing’s engagement with its neighboring countries can perhaps be better explained by geopolitical and strategic considerations. An important strategic goal for China was to guard against any possibility of the formation of a regional coalition to contain China’s rise, particularly if the coalition is led by the United States. This apprehension was most evident in the 1990s. A number of factors contributed to Beijing’s anxiety, including the deterioration in Sino-U.S. relations, the popularity of the “China threat” thesis in the United States, perceived U.S. heavy-handedness toward China, and uncertainties about regional states’ strategic orientation. Beijing believes that actively engaging neighboring states could be an effective political instrument to project a more benevolent image of China to its neighbors so as to fend off any possibility of the United States initiating an implicit or explicit encirclement policy against China. An associated long-term goal for China is to consolidate its strategic backyard to play a more important role in international politics.
China’s Perception of U.S. Strategic Intentions In the post – Cold War era, Sino-U.S. relationships have been fraught with mutual misgivings, distrust, and even hostilities. Initially, Chinese anxiety originated from United States – led international sanctions and the perennial scrutiny of China’s human rights record in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen suppression. Top CCP leaders believed that the United States was poised to politically “Westernize” China and “split” China by blocking its
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reunification efforts with Taiwan and meddling in Tibet. A flurry of unfortunate episodes in Sino-U.S. relations in the 1990s—the U.S. Congress’s moves to block China’s bid for the 2000 Olympic Games in 1993, NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the collision of a U.S. EP-3 spy plane with a Chinese jet fighter in April 2001—also reinforced the Chinese perception that Washington would not hesitate to adopt a coercive approach toward China under certain circumstances. A particular concern for the Chinese leaders is Washington’s efforts to maintain and enhance its bilateral alliances with many of China’s neighboring states. Beijing clearly understands that dominance of its neighboring areas by the United States would not only significantly circumscribe China’s role in regional affairs but also, more importantly, militate against China’s modernization drive. China has been particularly apprehensive of the strengthening of the United States – Japan security alliance since 1996. With growing skepticism in Japan’s continued commitment to a peaceful foreign policy, Beijing took special umbrage at the new treaty’s call for Japan to assume greater responsibilities in crisis situations in Japan’s periphery, claiming that the change in United States – Japan alliance was targeted at China.25 At the beginning of this century, many Chinese elite believed that they still have good reason to be wary of U.S. intentions. Annual reports by the United States – China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC), a bipartisan body established by the U.S. Congress, have continuously depicted China as challenging the United States economically, politically, and militarily, particularly in Asia.26 President George W. Bush’s perception of China as a “strategic competitor” in 2001, when he first came to power—particularly his pledge to protect Taiwan militarily—further contributed to China’s anxiety over the U.S. strategy toward China. China has paid close attention to Washington’s and, to some extent, Japan’s moves to woo India and Australia into some sort of loose strategic alliance to constrain China. Some Chinese analysts maintain that the increase in U.S. military presence in Central Asia after 11 September 2001 not only has an adverse impact on China’s efforts to build regional cooperation through the SCO but also poses a challenge to China’s western region, its “western development,” and its energy supply.27 Beijing is also concerned with the fact that the United States has expanded its defence and security ties with some Southeast Asian nations, including Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, all in the name of antiterrorism. Many Chinese analysts suspect that Washington desires to gain predominance in Southeast Asia under the pretext of counterterrorism.28 Most Chinese observers concur that these U.S. moves are designed to create structural restraints to China’s influence in East Asia and that the U.S. security challenge is the biggest variable in China’s Asian policy. There are, of course, nuanced differences among Chinese analysts. Some believe that the United
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States, a hegemonic power that still seeks to consolidate and expand its preponderant position globally, is indeed committed to at least partially containing China.29 A popular argument by many Chinese analysts is that the United States has been pursuing a two-pronged strategy toward China in the post – Cold War era. On the one hand, Washington is keen to develop commercial ties with China in order to benefit from China’s economic growth and seek cooperation with China on major international traditional or nontraditional security issues. On the other hand, Washington has evidently pursued a hidden or partial containment policy or, according to more moderate observers, a dual strategy of engagement and containment, to curb China’s influence.30 Others regard U.S. strategic moves in Asia as a de facto encirclement of China. For instance, even when there was already a significant improvement in China’s security situation in the region by 2003, some Chinese analysts still argued that China was essentially encircled by the United States through its alliances in East Asia, its military presence in Central, Southwest, and Southeast Asia, and its enhanced military cooperation with India, Pakistan, and Mongolia.31 These pessimistic views are reportedly shared by top Chinese leaders as well. Former Vice-Premier Qian Qichen opined in October 2002 that the United States was strengthening its containment moves against China and that Washington would never change its dual strategy toward China.32 President Hu Jintao, reportedly in a private conversation, warned that the United States had “strengthened its military deployments in the Asia-Pacific region, strengthened the U.S. – Japan military alliance, strengthened strategic cooperation with India, improved relations with Vietnam, inveigled Pakistan, established a pro-American government in Afghanistan, increased arms sales to Taiwan, and so on.” He added: “They have extended outposts and placed pressure points on us from the east, south, and west. This makes a great change in our geopolitical environment.”33
Engaging Asia: China Moving to Hedge Against the United States In the post – Cold War era, Beijing clearly understands that maintaining a normal relationship with Washington is imperative to China’s grand strategy of ensuring an uninterrupted rise. Also, the Chinese leadership realizes that China is simply too weak to challenge U.S. supremacy in East Asia and the world. Open confrontation with Washington would be detrimental to China’s interests. An aggressive regional posture to challenge U.S. preponderance would only play into the traps of neoconservatives in the United States and force Asian states to move even closer to Washington. Although China genuinely wants to pursue a strategic détente with the United States, the regional strategic milieu complicates China’s choices. The persistent “China threat” rhetoric in the United States is perceived by Beijing as
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extremely harmful to China’s international reputation and its relations with neighboring states.34 China’s own assertive actions during the territorial disputes in the South China Sea in the late 1980s and early 1990s only served to further exacerbate its image in Asia and led to the growth of the “China threat” among some political elite in the region. Throughout the 1990s, many Asian nations were uncertain of China’s long-term strategic intentions and sensitive to China’s external behavior, and they intentionally strived to keep the United States in their regional security architecture to serve as a counterweight to China.35 In short, the strategic situation was rather ominous for China. In light of this strategic environment, Beijing realizes that it could not simply take the risk of depending on the whims of the United States. Many Chinese analysts still believe that China should discard any wishful thinking of building a strategic partnership with the United States and instead should prepare for the worst possible scenario.36 In view of this, China has sought to strategically reassure, politically engage, and economically integrate with its neighbors in order to “hedge against downturns in Sino-U.S. relations”37 and to ensure that its neighbors do not “fall within the ambit of another power antagonistic to China.”38 Chinese strategies in this regard include working with other major powers, reassuring regional states of China’s benign intentions and actively participating in multilateral institutions—in sum, behaving like a responsible power.39 This multipronged policy is premised on the assumption that if China can have normal working relations with other powers, they would be less likely to form a regional coalition against China. Also, if China develops good ties with states in the region and neutralize their positions, they would be less inclined to gang up with external powers against China’s interests.40 Beijing understands only too well that in order to reassure neighboring states, China has to seriously first address their security concerns. Resolving border disputes has been one of the priorities on the agenda of China’s regional policy. China has successfully resolved its land border disputes with all neighbors except India, delimiting over 20,000 km of previously volatile borders. In Central Asia, China has tried to bind SCO member countries more closely to China and ultimately diminish or undermine the influence of the United States.41 This has been done largely through political and security cooperation with these local states. For instance, China signed with other members of the “Shanghai Five” the Agreement on Confidence Building in the Military Field along the Border Areas in 1996, and the Agreement on the Mutual Reduction of Military Forces in the Border Areas in 1997. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has also participated in joint military exercises with its Central Asian counterparts in recent years. In addition to these military measures, political relations between China and its Central Asian neighbors have improved markedly, as evidenced by the frequent summits, ministeriallevel meetings, and numerous working-level consultations. China published its first defense white paper in 1995 largely as a result of pressure and persuasion
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from neighboring countries, especially Southeast Asian nations. In the first, as well as subsequent, defense white papers, Beijing repeatedly reaffirmed its goodneighborliness foreign policy to rhetorically reassure China’s Asian neighbors that the rise of China is not a challenge or threat but an opportunity for regional stability and development.42 In 1997, China proposed a “new security concept” that emphasizes equality, mutual trust, dialogue, confidence building, and institutionalized multilateralism. This initiative was aimed to build a benign China image and weaken United States – dominated security arrangements in Asia, which highlighted military alliances. Chinese proposal of conducting an East Asian military dialog was also aimed at mitigating regional states’ complaints that China was not interested in multilateral military-to-military consultations. In the case of the South China Sea, Beijing boldly decided to engage the ASEAN states collectively, in an aboutface from its previous position that the disputes had to be addressed bilaterally, eventually signing the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. Acceding to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation is also a good example of China’s effort to reassure its neighbors. The strategy of reassurance goes beyond the security arena. In the economic arena, Beijing won considerable kudos from many Asian neighbors during the Asian financial crisis in 1997 by not devaluing its currency. Since then, China has further stepped up actions to alleviate regional anxiety over its economic competitiveness and reassure everyone that China intends to practice self-restraint and create win-win situations. In this sense, China’s economic engagement with its neighboring states cannot be purely understood from an economic perspective. This is illustrated in the negotiation of CAFTA, especially the “early-harvest” scheme, which is regarded as a Chinese concession to Southeast Asian countries.43 China’s decision to launch a free trade area with ASEAN was made largely in response to ASEAN states’ anxiety and worries over the adverse impact of China’s rapid economic growth and competitiveness.44 In this sense, it can be interpreted that CAFTA was “political confidence-building” for both sides.45 On the part of China, one consideration was to create conditions that would enable regional states to benefit economically from China’s rapid growth and larger flow of regional trade. Beijing hoped that if regional states saw their economic ties with China beneficial to their economic future, they would be more willing to deepen their political and strategic relationships with China. Taking initiatives in multilateral diplomacy has also been viewed as useful to “tie down and impede possible U.S. efforts to engage in sharp pressure or containment of China.”46 In the past decade, China has taken an active role in ASEAN-related dialogues and cooperation mechanisms, for instance, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN ⫹ 3 (ASEAN plus China, South Korea and Japan), ASEAN ⫹ 1 (ASEAN and China), and numerous track-two consultations. In the 2003 ARF meeting, China proposed to create the “ARF Security
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Policy Conference” among military personnel in the Asia-Pacific. The proposal was interpreted to be China’s move to reduce the influence of the Shangri-la Dialogue, which is heavily influenced by the West, and possibly a proposal for an alternative security mechanism.47 Many Chinese moves with regard to ASEAN have far exceeded the requirement of creating a stable regional environment and the demands of China’s economic influence. They are primarily driven by political and strategic security considerations. There are, of course, other strategic considerations for China to proactively engage its neighbors. Engaging Asian neighbors, especially East Asia, is perceived to be important in pushing for a multipolar world.48 Engaging its bordering regions is also regarded as an important move to strengthen China’s global posture. For the time being, the Chinese leadership clearly understands that China is still a major regional power with some, albeit limited, global clout. Having a solid foundation in the region and playing an influential role in regional international affairs are not only necessary but imperative for China to be a world power in the future. China’s foray into the region also has to do with its concerns over the Taiwan issue. This is similar to the mid-1990s when Beijing was increasingly worried about Taiwan’s influence in Southeast Asia. A more profound consideration has to do with the worst-case scenario of Taiwan moving toward independence and the subsequent U.S. involvement. With the possibility of Taiwan independence looming large, Beijing’s effort to develop closer ties with regional states can be viewed as a precautionary move to neutralize regional states in any possible conflict across the Taiwan Strait.
The “Pull” of Regional States It takes two hands to clap. China’s “charm offensive” in Asia could not have worked without regional states’ accommodation of China’s interests and concerns. The “pull” effect, which has been undervalued by scholarly analyses, plays a crucial role in China’s interactions with its neighbors. Behind these pull efforts are regional states’ shared political values, principles or norms to maintain regional stability, priority in domestic economic growth, and anxiety over regional domination by one single power. It is safe to say that without this pull factor, China’s regional posture would be significantly different from what it currently is. The Tiananmen incident of 1989 was a watershed in China’s regional posture. The political crisis not only triggered the diplomatic isolation of China but also engendered a dramatic breakthrough in China’s regional policy. In the face of sanctions imposed by the United States,49 China placed top priority on improving relations with its neighbors, an effort reciprocated by political willingness from most of its neighbors. Asian reaction to the Tiananmen suppression was quite different from that of Western governments. With the exception
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of Japan, they did not openly criticize the Chinese leadership. The South Korean government simply stated that the incident at Tiananmen Square was “regrettable.” Southeast Asian nations were largely reticent or claimed that it was China’s “internal affair,”50 and did not hesitate to engage China.51 Even Japan, initially an ally of the United States in ostracizing China, decided to withdraw from the Western coalition an year after Tiananmen. The action provided China with considerable leverage to break off the estrangement strategy of the West. Regional states’ tolerance and engaging attitude made it possible for China to take bold steps to improve its relations with the region.52 Noting the muted response from ASEAN on the Tiananmen crackdown, Beijing even treated the South China Sea as less important in its foreign policy agenda.53 The first round of regional activism resulted in China restoring or establishing diplomatic ties with a number of Asian countries, including Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, and South Korea, in a rather short period of time. China also succeeded in improving relations with India, the Philippines, Russia, Mongolia, and Vietnam. Beijing moved swiftly to secure diplomatic relationships with the newly independent Central Asian countries, including Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. China also began to take a more active role in ASEAN activities, as evidenced by former Foreign Minister Qian Qichen’s participation in an ASEAN meeting in 1991, the first step toward China – ASEAN institutionalized linkage.54 Without the nurturing efforts of regional states, one can hardly imagine such a process of interaction between China and its surrounding states.55 As the repercussions of Tiananmen started to die down, talks of the “China threat” began to emerge and gain momentum in the West. While many in the West advocated a “containment” or “constrainment” policy against China, regional states clearly resisted an explicit “balance of power” approach toward China.56 Instead, they pursued an engagement policy.57 Even Vietnam, which traditionally viewed China as the most plausible threat to its security, did its best “to cultivate friendly bilateral relations and is engaging in talks over a number of contentious issues” with China.58 There are a number of reasons why regional states chose to engage China. Perhaps the most significant factor is a genuinely shared conviction among Asian states that some sort of regulated cooperation and consultations, instead of unbridled rivalry and competition, works to the benefits of all. There are also many practical concerns on the part of regional states. For instance, many neighboring states have concluded that, given the rise of China is inevitable, the best strategy is to socialize and enmesh China into regional norms and institutions in order to forestall the possibility of either Chinese disruption or domination in the region. As the Chinese economy keeps its phenomenal rate of growth, regional states have come to realize that China is increasingly becoming the “engine” of regional economic growth.59 Toward the mid-1990s, seeing the
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regional economic integration in North America and West Europe and increasing economic competition, ASEAN countries began to consider closer economic ties with China in order to sustain their own economic growth.60 Another incentive for regional states to engage China is a fear of the worst-case scenario in which China experiences dramatic domestic political and economic setbacks that may result in internal fragmentation or even civil wars. Such a situation would be catastrophic for the regional economies. With the exception of Japan and Taiwan, Asian states that share China’s border also prefer some kind of Chinese role as a hedging strategy to balance the influence of other extra-regional powers. Many Asian states, especially those in East Asia, still depend heavily on U.S. security protection. But they are worried about both a U.S. withdrawal from the region and U.S. sole domination over regional affairs. Thus, being receptive to China’s participation and influence is part of regional states’ long-term strategy of maintaining a balance of influence among the major powers. This kind of thinking varies significantly from country to country. Russia, besides its fears over Chinese immigration into its Far East territory, sees China as a strategic partner in balancing the domineering position of Washington.61 Although both Japan and South Korea maintain close security ties with the United States, they also want to keep some balance in the Sino-U.S. rivalry, and so engage China economically and politically.62 In the case of South Korea, Seoul seeks to “further expand its burgeoning ties with China,” while at the same time maintain its alliance relationship with Washington.63 In Central Asia, the newly independent states face four pressing tasks: solidifying their nationhood, maintaining political stability, securing economic growth, and reducing their dependence on Russia.64 China is perceived as a help in achieving many of these goals. This “balance of influence” strategy is perhaps most evident in Southeast Asia. No matter what terminology scholars use to describe ASEAN’s strategic calculation—a dual strategy of “deep engagement” and “soft balancing” toward China,65 a “counter-dominance” strategy toward all external powers,66 or an “enmeshment” policy to draw in all major external powers67—it is commonly acknowledged that ASEAN intends to provide a neutral platform for regional cooperation and competition. Part of this strategy is to engage and socialize China with ASEAN norms and rules in order to hedge against potentially aggressive Chinese domination, which in practice provides much room and an “invitation” for China’s active participation into regional affairs. China, after a short period of hesitation, has gleefully accepted the invitation. Realizing that it has neither the capability nor the possibility to be the predominant power in the region,68 Beijing has come to understand that active participation in regional affairs and multilateralism can only serve China’s strategic interests of maintaining a stable regional order, reassuring its neighbors and expanding its political influence.
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After a few years of participation, Beijing had also realized that regional multilateral institutions, such as the ARF, ASEAN ⫹ 3, APEC, as well as many other track-two consultations such as the Council for Security and Cooperation in Asia-Pacific (CSCAP), were not the political tools of Washington. Beijing found out that ASEAN states were quite accommodating to China’s interests. By the end of the 1990s, Chinese suspicion and misgivings toward these multilateral security arrangements had given way to receptivity and then proactive participation. China even spearheaded the formation of two important regional forums, the SCO and the Boao Asia Forum. In the process of interacting with regional states, China has not only learnt of their engaging attitude toward Beijing but also agreed with neighbors on various norms that should govern regional order. China’s involvement in the ARF demonstrates this point well. China initially had reservations about the ARF due to four considerations: possible Washington domination, internationalization of the Spratly Islands dispute, the inclusion of the Taiwan problem in discussions, and concerns about military transparency.69 That caution was overcome when Beijing discovered that the forum would be steered by neither the United States nor Japan but ASEAN. Beijing gradually came to realize that discouraging “a containment-oriented American posture is one of the key goals being pursued by ASEAN through the ARF.”70 The institutional features of the ARF, which models on the “ASEAN Way” of informal format, extensive consultations, consensus building, and incrementalism, has made it possible for China to participate in a comfortable manner.71 China realized that it need not play coalition-building politics in the forum.72 The measures chosen for the first phase of the ARF, confidence building, were “rather modest” in scope and reflected ASEAN member states’ willingness to “develop the ARF in a manner and at a pace that is comfortable for China and the ASEAN states”.73 The third phase, conflict resolution, was later changed to “elaboration of approaches to conflicts” to accommodate China’s opposition of a too-rapid institutionalization of the ARF and China’s apprehension that any security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region would call for “the collective intervention in disputes among countries or seeking immediate settlement of all concrete security problems.”74
Conclusions In the past decade, China’s regional policy has indeed undergone profound changes and its essence could be summarized as a proactive engagement of its neighboring regions. It has been argued that this “soft” approach constitutes an important part of China’s new international grand strategy.75 There are, of course, numerous reasons why Beijing would adopt this new regional approach. For instance, some Chinese scholars maintain that it is simply impossible for
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China to emerge as a global power if it is entangled in many unending territorial disputes with its neighbors. Few analysts would explicitly attribute the origins of this new posture to China’s altruism or any cultural pacifism that some people tend to believe. Beijing’s proactive engagement of its neighborhood stems from its scrupulous calculations of palpable interests, notably economic gains and strategic advantages in the face of pressures from the United States. China’s regional strategy was also made possible by regional states’ accommodation of China’s concerns and the congruence of expectations between them and China. In short, China’s regional activism has been necessitated by domestic priority on economics, intensified by external strategic pressures, and nurtured by accommodation and reciprocity of neighboring states. Apparently, these factors are not deeply embedded to render any longevity of Chinese policy. However, one can perhaps reasonably argue that the two conditions, economic priority and U.S. strategic pressure, are likely to persist in the foreseeable future. The Beijing leadership has unequivocally stated that China needs to concentrate on domestic socioeconomic progress well until the middle of this century in order to catch up with some of the medium-level developed countries. U.S. strategic pressure on China is unlikely to subside significantly. In fact, as China rises, more conflict and mutual suspicion in Sino-U.S. relations could be in the offing. The neighboring areas will be crucial for Sino-U.S. relations as well as the realization of China’s rise, as President Hu Jintao reportedly pointed out in an internal speech in 2004 that “China’s opportunities— and challenges—lie in [its relations with] peripheral countries; the latter provides China with hope, but can also be a cause of instability.”76 In this sense, Beijing will have to continue to consolidate its strategic backyard and constantly send political signals to Washington that China can be trusted in this region.77 It is highly possible that in the next few decades China may have to adopt roughly the same framework of regional policy. This explains why in its relations with nearby areas—either multilateral institutions or individual states—China has stressed the strategic dimension in a bid to solidify the foundation of these relationships and to prevent them from becoming ad hoc or expedient.
Notes 1. Mingjiang Li is an Assistant Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. 2. Bin Yu, “China and Its Asian Neighbors: Implications for Sino-U.S. Relations” in Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang (eds), In the Eyes of the Dragon: China Views the World, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999. 3. Steven I. Levine,“China in Asia: The PRC as a Regional Power” in Harry Harding (ed.), China’s Foreign Relations in the 1980s (p. 107), New Haven, CT: Yale
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4.
5.
6. 7.
8.
9.
10.
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.
16.
17.
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University Press, 1984. It is even asserted that, as late as 1998, China had no coherent regional policy. See Denny Roy, China’s Foreign Relations (p. 158), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. There are different opinions concerning the beginning of the new policy. Goldstein puts it at 1996, while Foot puts it at 1997. See Avery Goldstein, “The Diplomatic Face of China’s Grand Strategy: A Rising Power’s Emerging Choice,” The China Quarterly (2001), pp. 835-864; Rosemary Foot, “China’s Regional Activism: Leadership, Leverage, and Protection,” Global Change, Peace and Security, Vol. 17 No. 2 (June 2005), pp. 141-153. It is perhaps better to regard this change as a gradual process that started in the mid-1990s rather than a sharp turning point marked by a specific date. There are numerous Chinese works that describe this change in China’s regional posture. For literature in English, see, for example, David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Security, Vol. 29 No. 3 (Winter 2004/05), pp. 64-99; David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong: The Need for New Analytical Frameworks,” International Security, Vol. 27 No. 4 (Spring 2003), pp. 57-85. Evan S. Medeiros and Taylor Fravel, “China’s New Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82 No. 6 (2003), pp. 22-35. Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy: Its Evolution, Characteristics, and Aspiration,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 27 No. 1 (2005), pp. 102-122. See Nicholas Khoo and Michael L. R. Smith, “Correspondence: China Engages Asia? Caveat Lector,” International Security, Vol. 30 No. 1 (Summer 2005), pp. 196-211. David Shambaugh provides a comprehensive review of the changes in China’s regional policy. See his article “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order”; see also Michael A. Glosny, “Heading toward a Win-Win Future? Recent Developments in China’s Policy toward Southeast Asia,” Asian Security, Vol. 2 No. 1 (2006), pp. 24-57. Shiping Tang et al. (eds), Lengzhan Hou Jin Ling Guojia Dui Hua Zhengce Yanjiu [Neighboring States’ Policies toward China in the Post – Cold War Era] (pp. 12-13), Beijing: World Affairs Press, 2005. Ibid., (p. 12). Jiang Zemin, Report to the 15th CCP Congress, 12 September 1997. Jiang Zemin, Report to the 16th CCP Congress, 8 November 2002. Hu Jintao, Speech at the Central Foreign Affairs Conference, 23 August 2006, Xinhua News Agency. Cited from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce online database, available at zys.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/b/200509/20050900360740.html, accessed on 31 January 2007. Cited from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce online database, available at zys.mofcom.gov.cn/aarticle/b/200509/20050900360693.html, accessed on 31 January 2007. Figures from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce online database, available at zhs.mofcom.gov.cn/tongji.shtml, accessed on 31 January 2007.
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18. Philip Andrews-Speed and Sergei Vinogradov, “China’s Involvement in Central Asian Petroleum: Convergent or Divergent Interests?” Asian Survey, Vol. 40 No. 2 (March-April, 2000), pp. 377-397. 19. Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy”. 20. Chinese Ministry of Commerce Report, available at hzs.mofcom.gov.cn/ accessory/200609/1157678176299.pdf, accessed on 2 February 2007. 21. Data from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce online reports, available at hzs.mofcom. gov.cn/accessory/200609/1157678009981.pdf, accessed on 2 February 2007. 22. See Chinese Ministry of Commerce online database, available at zys. mofcom. gov.cn/aarticle/b/200511/20051100705047.html, accessed on 2 February 2007. 23. Lu Yanjun, “Dui Lengzhan Hou Zhongguo Yu Dong Nan Ya Guojia Guanxi De Zhanlue Xing Sikao” [A Strategic Thought on the Relationship between China and Southeast Asian Countries after the Cold War], Around Southeast Asia, 2004: 4, pp. 1-6. 24. Author’s interview with Yunnan provincial officials in December 2006. 25. Zhang Guocheng, “Ling Ren Guanzhu De Xin Dongxiang: Ri Mei Xiugai Fangwei Hezuo Fangzhen Chuxi” [New Moves Worth Watching: A Preliminary Analysis of the Revisions of Japan-U.S. Defence and Cooperation Guidelines], People’s Daily, 14 June 1997. 26. USCC, Report to Congress of the U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2002, available online at www.uscc.gov. 27. Liu Jinzhi, “Bawo jiyu, jiasu fazhan” [Grasp the Opportunity, Expedite the Development], Studies of International Politics, No. 1, 2003. 28. Saw Swee-Hock et al., “An Overview of ASEAN-China Relations” in Saw SweeHock et al. (eds), ASEAN – China Relations: Realities and Prospects (p. 6), Singapore: ISEAS Publications, 2005. 29. Sun Jianshe, “Dangqian Zhongguo Zhoubian Anquan Huanjing Yu Zhong Mei Guanxi” [China’s Current Peripheral Security Situation and Sino-U.S. Relations], Shijie Jingji Yu Zhengzhi Luntai [Forum on World Economics and Politics], Issue 3, 2003. 30. Wu Guoguang and Liu Jinghua, “Containing China: Myth and reality” [Weidu Zhongguo: Shenhua Yu Xianshi], Strategy and Management [Zhanlue Yu Guanli], No. 1 (1996); Niu Jun and Lan Jianxue, “Zhongmei Guanxi Yu Dongya Heping” [Sino-U.S. Relations and East Asia Peace], in Yan Xuetong and Jin Dexiang (eds), Dong Ya Heping Yu Anquan [Peace and Security in East Asia] (p. 47), Beijing: Shishi Chubanshe, 2005; Rosalie Chen, “China Perceives America: Perspectives of International Relations Experts,” Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 12 No. 35 (2003), pp. 285-297. 31. Tang Xizhong et al., Zhongguo Yu Zhoubian Guojia Guanxi [China’s Relations with Neighboring States], Beijing: China Social Sciences Press, 2003. 32. Qian Qichen, “The Post-September 11 International Situation and Sino-U.S. Relations,” Xuexi Shibao [Study Times], Beijing: Central Party School, October 2002, p. 6.
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33. Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley, China’s New Rulers: The Secret Files (pp. 207-208), London: Granta, 2003); cited in Rosemary Foot, “China’s Regional Activism”. 34. Fu Liqun, “Several Basic Ideas in U.S. Strategic Thinking,” Beijing Zhongguo Junshi Kexue, 1 (20 February 1997). 35. Evelyn Goh,“Meeting the China Challenge: The U.S. in Southeast Asian Regional Security Strategies,” Policy Studies 16, 2005, The East-West Center, Washington. 36. Zhou Jianming,“Bixu Cong Zuihuai De Kenengxiing Lai Kaolu Women De Guojia Anquan Zhanlue: Zhuyi Guancha Meiguo Dongxiang” [Our National Security Strategy Has to Be Based on the Worst-Case Scenario: Watching Closely the U.S. Moves], Global Times [Huanqiu Shibao], 11 May 2001. 37. Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, “China’s Regional Strategy,” in David Shambaugh (ed.), Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (pp. 54-74), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 38. Evelyn Goh, “Meeting the China Challenge”. 39. Yong Deng, “Reputation and the Security Dilemma: China Reacts to the China Threat Theory” in Johnston and Ross (eds), New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006. 40. Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, “China’s Regional Strategy,” p. 51. 41. Michael Vatikiotis, “The Architecture of China’s Diplomatic Edge,” The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. XII No. 2, Winter/Spring 2006, pp. 25-37. 42. Rosemary Foot, “China’s Regional Activism,” p. 147. 43. Alice D. Ba, “China and ASEAN: Renavigating Relations for a 21st-Century Asia,” Asian Survey, Vol. 43, No. 4, 2003, pp. 622-647. 44. Joseph Yu-shek Cheng, “The ASEAN-China Free Trade Area: Genesis and Implications,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 58 No. 2, June 2004. 45. Sheng Lijun, China – ASEAN Free Trade Area: Origins, Developments and Strategic Motivations (p. 16), Singapore: ISEAS, 2003. 46. Robert G. Sutter, China’s Rise in Asia: Promises and Perils (p. 9), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. 47. Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy”. 48. Yan Xuetong, “Zhongguo Waijiao Xu Lizu Zhoubian” [China’s Foreign Affairs Should be Based on Periphery], Liao Wang Xinwen Zhoukan [Outlook News Weekly], 13 March 2000; CICIR ASEAN Research Team, “Zhongguo Dui Dongmeng Zhengce Yanjiu Baogao”[A Research Report on China’s ASEAN Policy], Xiandai Guoji Guanxi [Contemporary International Relations], Vol. 10, 2002. 49. For Beijing’s bleak assessment of its external situation, see Chen You-wei, “Viewing a Changing World from the PRC Embassy Window in Washington, DC,” Journal of Contemporary China, Vol. 11 No. 30 (2002), 161-172. 50. Seiichiro Takagi, “The Asia-Pacific Nations: Searching for Leverage” in Ramon H. Myers, Michel C. Oksenberg and David Shambaugh (eds), Making China Policy, 2001. 51. Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross (eds), Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power, 1999. 52. Alice D. Ba,“China and ASEAN: Renavigating Relations for a 21st-Century Asia”.
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53. Lee Lai To, China and the South China Sea Dialogue (pp. 14-15), Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. 54. Bin Yu, “China and Its Asian Neighbors: Implications for Sino-U.S. Relations” in Yong Deng and Fei-Ling Wang (eds), In the Eyes of the Dragon: China Views the World. 55. For regional states’ different approach to China’s human rights, see Chen Jie, “Human Rights: ASEAN’s New Importance to China,” Pacific Review, Vol. 6 No. 3 (1993), pp. 227-237. 56. David C. Kang, “Getting Asia Wrong”. 57. Alastair Iain Johston and Robert S. Ross, Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power, London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 58. Kim Ninh, “Vietnam: Struggle and Cooperation” in Alagappa, Asian Security Practice, p. 462. 59. Cao Yunhua and Xu Shanbao, “Mu Ling Waijiao Zhengce Yu ZhongguoDongmeng Guanxi” [Good-Neighborly Policy and China – ASEAN Relations], Dangdai Yatai [Contemporary Asia-Pacific], Vol. 2, 2004. 60. Alice D. Ba, “China and ASEAN: Renavigating Relations for a 21st-Century Asia”. 61. Alexander Lukin, “Russian Perceptions of the China Threat” in Herbert Yee and Ian Storey (eds), The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. 62. Wenran Jiang, “The Japanese Assessment of the ‘China Threat’ ”; Taeho Kim, “South Korea and a Rising China: Perceptions, Policies and Prospects” in Herbert Yee and Ian Storey (eds), The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality. 63. Jae Ho Chung, “China’s Ascendancy and the Korean Peninsula” in David Shambaugh (ed.), Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics. 64. Philip Andrews-Speed and Sergei Vinogradov, “China’s Involvement in Central Asian Petroleum: Convergent or Divergent Interests?”. 65. Evelyn Goh, “Meeting the China Challenge”. 66. Amitav Acharya, “Engagement, Containment, or Counter-Dominance: Malaysia’s Response to the Rise of China” in Johnston and Ross (eds), Engaging China. 67. Evelyn Goh, “Meeting the China Challenge”. 68. Joseph Yu-shek Cheng, “The ASEAN – China Free Trade Area: Genesis and implications”. 69. Kuik Cheng-Chwee, “Multilateralism in China’s ASEAN Policy”. 70. Amitav Acharya, “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-dominance?” in Alastair Iain Johston and Robert S. Ross, Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (p. 143). 71. Alice D. Ba, “Who’s Socializing Whom?” The Pacific Review, Vol. 19, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 157-179. 72. Rosemary Foot, “China in the ASEAN Regional Forum,” Asian Survey, Vol. 38 No. 5, 1998, pp. 425-440. 73. Amitav Acharya, “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-dominance?” in Alastair Iain Johston and Robert S. Ross, Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (p. 141).
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74. Ah Ying, “Cooperation in Security and Security through Cooperation,” People’s Daily, 16 July 1997; cited in Amitav Acharya, “Containment, Engagement, or Counter-dominance?” in Alastair Iain Johston and Robert S. Ross, Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (p. 141), London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 75. Chong-Pin Lin, “Beijing’s New Grand Strategy: An Offensive with ExtraMilitary Instruments,” China Brief, Vol. VI, Issue 24, 6 December 2006. 76. Xiao Shi, “Heping Jueqi Strategy Has Become State Policy,” The Mirror (Hong Kong), May 2004. 77. Jane Perlez, “The Charm from Beijing,” The New York Times, 9 October 2003.
2
The PLA’s Role in China’s Regional Security Strategy Da-peng Qi1
Introduction Even in the long run, it is difficult for China to become a genuine global military power. More likely, the deployment of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will not go beyond China’s territory and its outreach will generally fall within the Asia-Pacific region. In other words, China will remain a regional military power for the foreseeable future. However, with the PLA’s modernization getting more support from China’s rapid economic growth, how the PLA will play its role still matters a great deal. This study attempts to explore the historical evolution of China’s national security strategy and how it has changed the PLA’s role accordingly. Then it traces the possible future direction of the PLA by examining its past practices and the challenges it has faced. This chapter consists of five sections. The first section briefly examines the changing focus of China’s security strategy and the PLA’s role in the strategy, providing a foundation for subsequent discussion. The second section outlines the PLA’s new thinking that defines its new (regional) role. The third section discusses the latest development of the PLA’s regional role and assesses the result from which the PLA has exercised its new thinking. The fourth section analyses key problems and challenges the PLA has to deal with in the future. The fifth section explores how the PLA can carry out its mission while managing potential challenges.
The Evolution of the PLA’s Role in China’s National Security In the first two decades after its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) faced blockades and embargoes imposed by the United States and its military alliances, as well as potential invasions by Kuomintang (KMT)
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forces from Taiwan. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet Union deployed over one million mechanized troops along the China-USSR border to prepare for a swift and deep invasion of China. In addition, both the United States and the Soviet Union plotted to attack China with nuclear weapons. In sum, almost right until the end of the Cold War, China faced clear and present security threats. Naturally, such a security environment made preserving national survival the focus of China’s national security strategy. Not surprisingly, the task of the PLA during this period was to fight for national survival, with its war against Vietnam in 1979 being the sole exception. After the Cold War, national survival was no longer an imminent problem for China, and its external security environment improved steadily. National development has replaced national survival as the focus of China’s security strategy.2 Accordingly, facilitating an environment for development has been the top objective of China’s security strategy. As Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping put it, “The central objective of China’s grand strategy in the past two decades can be captured in just one phrase: to secure and shape a security, economic and political environment that is conducive to China’s concentrating on its economic, social and political development.”3 The strategic doctrine of the PLA, however, has generally lagged behind this shift in the national security strategy. In light of a series of events such as the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, secessionist activities on Taiwan, and the EP-3 incident in the South China Sea, as well as the U.S. intention to comprehensively contain China before the events of September 11, 2001,4 even more than 20 years after China’s opening-up, PLA leaders continued to reiterate the PLA’s anti-aggression mission in their lectures. China’s Constitution mandates: “The armed forces’ tasks are to strengthen national defence, resist aggression, defend the motherland, safeguard the people’s peaceful labour, participate in national reconstruction, and do their best to serve the people.”5 This sluggishness kept the PLA from changing its way of thinking and it for some time failed to recast its strategy according to the major shifts in China’s security strategy. Since the mid-1990s, the increase of China’s national power and selfconfidence in the international arena, steady improvements in China’s foreign relations (including relations with the United States after September 11), and growing economic integration and interdependence with regional states have come together to propel China to fundamentally reassess the role of its military in its national strategy. It was within this context that Chinese president Hu Jintao called for new missions for the PLA in late 2004. The new doctrine mandates the PLA to perform three core tasks: (a) to provide a solid security guarantee for sustaining the important period of strategic opportunity for national development; (b) to provide a strong
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strategic support for safeguarding national interests; and (c) to play a major role in maintaining world peace and promoting common development.6 Experts and officials in and outside of the PLA have interpreted the new doctrine to have one single focus: to ensure China’s developmental interests. Fundamentally, President Hu’s remarks demand the PLA to put preservation of national development interests at the top of its agenda while ensuring national survival. The PLA welcomes this fundamental shift in its missions. General Xu Cai-hou, deputy chairman of the Central Military Commission, emphasized that PLA’s new missions fit with the new changes in China’s security environment and reflect new needs of the national development strategy.7 The PLA has now firmly departed from the old strategy that centered upon national survival and entered upon a new one that centers upon national development. PLA’s strategic doctrine has finally achieved harmony with this shift of focus.
The PLA’s New Thinking on its New Regional Role The following points of China’s security strategy are most relevant for understanding the PLA’s emerging new thinking about its role. First, China emphasizes that force cannot bring about peace and prosperity, nor can it ensure security. As such, China rejects the possibility of “rising through war” and accepts that the peaceful development of China is its only viable option. Hence, China strives to build a “democratic, harmonious, just and tolerant” world based on the deepening mutual interdependence among states under regional integration and globalization. Second, drawing from “common security,”“mutual security,” and “cooperative security,” China now emphasizes mutual trust and coordination, aiming to build a fair and effective cooperative security mechanism that can prevent conflict and war and minimize nontraditional security threats.8 Third, attaching great importance to relations with its neighboring states, China rejects the possibility of an exclusive sphere of influence in the region. China should continue to firmly observe the guideline of “being friends and partners with neighbors” and the policy of “fostering an amicable, tranquil, and prosperous neighborhood,” and work hard with its neighbors to build a new political-economic structure of open cooperation. Under such a structure, while states still compete and have conflicts of interest, they do not have to fight each other. Fourth, in dealing with territorial disputes (land or maritime), China’s basic position is that it has indisputable sovereignty over those areas. China, however, emphasizes the principle of “putting aside differences and developing the disputed area jointly” through consultation on an equal footing and on
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the basis of universally accepted international law. As mutual interests and mutual understanding increase from joint development, any hostile resentment among the relevant parties can be defused, mutual trust can be increased, and an environment more conducive to a mutually agreeable final resolution of the disputes can emerge. Along with the shift in the focus of China’s security strategy, the PLA has gradually formulated a “new thinking” on its role. Contrary to its old position of solely focusing on warfare and mutual deterrence, the PLA’s new thinking now places more emphasis on cooperation among states, reflecting the reality of mutual interdependence among states and the ever-increasing regional integration. First of all, rather than military confrontation to safeguard national survival, the PLA’s new thinking now emphasizes protecting national development based on military confidence building and security cooperation with others. The PLA believes that it should actively participate in bilateral and multilateral security cooperation and make more effort to achieve regional security and stability through enhancing mutual trust and equal consultation. These can lay a strong foundation for further improving regional security for common development. Second, as a guiding principle on how to deal with crises, conflicts, and wars, the PLA, considers that deterrence rather than combat should be the first option.9 China should prevent and deter conflicts and wars with close coordination between military struggle and political, economic, diplomatic, cultural, and legal endeavours. The PLA will continue to adopt a purely defensive and nonaligned policy and pursue a defensive nuclear strategy.10 China will not follow the path of Western colonial powers who upheld the idea that where their forces go is where their businesses go.11 Third, the PLA advocates that the new style of military relations—open, nonconfrontational, and not directed against any third party—should replace the outdated style of military alliance characterized by Cold War mentalities. As mutual interests expand, military relations should gradually keep pace with overall relations between countries. Otherwise, mutual suspicions in military and security fields can become obstacles or threats against broader cooperation. Fourth, despite still facing traditional military threats, the PLA will not engage in any arms race. For instance, in 2006 an international debate on whether the United States had broken out of MAD (mutual assured destruction) and obtained a dominant position caused little repercussion in China.12 Almost all experts in the PLA argue that it is impossible for China to achieve a favorable regional military balance against the United States. Furthermore, any such effort by the PLA could stimulate the United States and other regional states to further strengthen their armaments, which could lead China into a security dilemma. Hence, the PLA should not enter into a nuclear arms race with any other armed forces.
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Fifth, the PLA thinks that emerging nontraditional security issues such as terrorist activities, natural disasters, and transnational organized crime provide opportunities for confidence building and security cooperation with other armed forces. Sixth, PLA modernization should keep pace with overall national progress and world trends in military affairs, meet the need to safeguard territorial integrity, and match international responsibilities in peacekeeping, countering terrorism, and safeguarding sea-lanes through multilateral cooperation. Of course, while working hard to promote regional military cooperation, the PLA still needs to ensure that it is well prepared for military conflict posed by possible threats from Taiwan secessionists and others. This remains a basic mission of the PLA.
The PLA’s Role in China’s Regional Strategy: The Latest Development In the early 1990s, military-to-military (mil-to-mil) cooperation was a small part of China’s cooperation with other states. As China moves toward a more proactive regional strategy, however, the PLA has also moved toward more extensive bilateral and multilateral cooperation with its regional counterparts, emphasizing three fronts.
Building Military Trust with Neighboring Counterparts For a very long time, a number of complicated territorial disputes have been obstacles to China’s security cooperation with its neighbors. Since 1991, however, China has resolved a series of border disputes with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Russia, Tajikistan, and Vietnam. China has also reached several agreements on territorial dispute management with India and ASEAN countries (Table 2.1). These developments have greatly facilitated the PLA’s proactive engagement with its relevant counterparts in military confidence-building measures, disarmament, and defense cooperation in border areas. These advances in military confidence building have also turned formerly tense frontiers into today’s frontiers of economic development. For example, China and Vietnam are currently implementing their bilateral program called “Two Corridors, One Circle.”13 The China-PhilippinesVietnam joint development of the South China Sea is now entering a substantive phase. In 2006 China and India also reopened a border trade route at Nathu La Pass, which links China’s Tibet with India’s Sikkim. At the same time, the PLA has gradually built more trust with its regional counterparts through other channels such as defense consultations, highlevel visits, military technology assistance, joint exercises, naval ship visits, and personnel training and exchanges.
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Table 2.1 Military Cooperation Initiatives between China and Regional States (1994–2005) Year
Agreements
1994
Agreement on Prevention of Dangerous Military Activities (Russia and China) Agreement on Confidence-Building in the Military Field along the Border Areas (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and China) Agreement on Confidence-Building Measures in the Military Field along the Line of Actual Control (India and China) Agreement on Mutual Reduction of Military Forces in the Border Areas (Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) Agreement on Frontier Defense Cooperation (Mongolia and China) Agreement on Joint Patrol in the Beibu Gulf/Gulf of Tonkin (China and Vietnam) Memorandum of Understanding on Maritime Affairs Cooperation (the Philippines and China) Memorandum of Understanding on Maritime Cooperation (Indonesia and China)
1996 1996 1997 1999 2005 2005 2005
The PLA has held a series of defense consultations with Thailand, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, the United States, and Japan in recent years. Senior PLA delegations have visited more than 60 countries, while defense ministers, commanders-in-chief of the services, chiefs of the general staff, and other high-ranking officers and military-related officials from more than 90 countries visited China in 2005 and 2006. Malaysia and China signed a technology transfer agreement in July 2004, and Indonesia and China signed a bilateral Memorandum of Understanding on defense technology cooperation during the course of President Yudhoyono’s state visit to Beijing in July 2005. In 2005 and 2006 alone the PLA has held 16 joint military exercises with 11 countries; sent observers to military exercises held by Thailand, Pakistan, India, the United States, and Australia; and invited military observers from a number of nations to take part in China’s own military maneuvers. In the same period, the PLA dispatched over 500 military personnel to study in more than 20 countries, while 2000 military personnel from more than 140 countries came to China’s military schools.
Participating in Regional Security Cooperation Processes Since the end of the Cold War, China has also gradually shifted its attitude toward regional security cooperation from passive to proactive. Today, the PLA is an integral part of China’s participation in multilateral regional cooperation. Specifically, the PLA attaches great importance to the ASEAN Regional Forum
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(ARF) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), viewing them as the main platforms for building regional security cooperation. In 2003, China proposed an initiative to convene the ASEAN Regional Forum Security Policy Conference (ASPC), with a first draft of the ASPC Concept Paper, which was then adopted at the Eleventh ARF Foreign Ministers’ Meeting after revision. The first ASPC was convened in Beijing in November 2004, and it has now become the highest-level event involving national defense officials within the framework of the ARF. The ASPC can further beef up the process of the ARF, effectively strengthening confidence-building measures in the military sphere and opening new channels of dialogue and exchange among defense officials. While promoting cooperation on nontraditional issues such as antiterrorism, nonproliferation, and maritime security in the ARF, the PLA has also supported the central government in holding multilateral talks with relevant ASEAN countries on traditional issues like maritime disputes in the South China Sea. In the Joint Statement of the China-ASEAN Commemorative Summit, “Towards an Enhanced China-ASEAN Strategic Partnership,” adopted on October 30, 2006, the two sides expressed confidence that they would soon agree on activities and projects to implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea and work toward the conclusion of a regional code of conduct in the South China Sea. In July 2006, the China-ASEAN regional security seminar was held in Beijing and inaugurated the process of institutionalizing China-ASEAN defense and security dialogue.14 The fact that China has agreed to multilateral negotiations with a relatively strong organization rather than insisting on bilateral talks with each comparatively weak state signals China’s sincerity in pursuing just and peaceful resolution of traditional security issues.15 Under such friendly partnership, the PLA and its ASEAN counterparts have continuously reduced their mutual distrust, paving the way for further cooperation. Military cooperation under the SCO framework is another important manifestation of the PLA’s new security thinking. To deepen and expand the SCO’s role in maintaining regional stability, the PLA has made efforts mainly in three areas. First, it proposed, with other SCO members, to create an SCO defense and security forum and held a series of bilateral strategic consultations with some members. These dialogues have facilitated a consensus among members in prioritizing security and economic cooperation and strengthening antiterrorism capabilities. Second, the PLA and other armed forces of members of the SCO have established regular meetings for ministers of defense and representatives of the general staff headquarters. To enhance the capability of the Regional Anti-terrorism Structure, the PLA has initiated and participated in several joint antiterrorism military maneuvers, bilaterally and multilaterally. Third, the PLA supports the idea that the SCO, as a Central Asian regional cooperation
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organization, is not an exclusive military group and it should be opened to the outside world. The PLA has supported the SCO’s cooperation with other nations and organizations. For instance, in April 2005, the SCO, ASEAN, and the Commonwealth of Independent States signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation in counterterrorism. SCO emphasizes equality, consultation, and partnership rather than an alliance, symbolizing a new kind of interstate relationship for seeking peace and development that is different from the traditional military alliance. These multilateral military cooperative initiatives under the SCO framework have contributed significantly to the stability and development of Central Asia and China’s Western region. So far, the SCO has effectively contained the “three forces” (terrorism, separatism, and extremism) and transnational organized crimes (e.g., drug trafficking, small arms smuggling, and illegal immigration). Participations in ARF and SCO have certainly expanded the PLA’s regional profile. Because the functions of the two organizations are transparent to the international community, however, the expansion of the PLA’s role through these regional mechanisms has not triggered a fresh round of confrontation in Central and East Asia, but has actually contributed to regional peace and stability.
Fostering Sino-U.S. Military Exchanges and Cooperation Impacted by the collapse of the bipolar system and a series of events such as the U.S.-led arms embargo and other trade sanctions against China in 1989, the Yin-he cargo ship incident in 1993, the crisis across the Taiwan Strait in 1995 and 1996, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and the spy plane incident over the South China Sea in 2001, among others, Sino-U.S. military relations have continued a pattern of ups and downs for more than ten years. Despite many obstacles and disagreements, however, the two parties have managed to find substantial mutual interests, including avoidance of military accident or miscalculation, conflict prevention, crisis management, counterterrorism, weapons nonproliferation, and mutual understanding.16 On October 25, 2002, President Jiang Zemin and President George W. Bush announced in Crawford, Texas, that the two armed forces would resume military exchanges. In subsequent strategic consultations, PLA leaders reiterated that Sino-U.S. military relations should fit the overall relations between the two countries.17 In April 2006, Chinese president Hu Jintao and U.S. president George W. Bush achieved some consensus on enhancing military exchanges and cooperation. Today, the two armed forces have developed various mechanisms for regular defense consultation, visits of naval ships, high-level exchanges, and maritime security. The Chinese Navy and the U.S. Navy conducted joint maritime search and rescue
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exercises in the waters off San Diego and in the South China Sea in September and November 2006. Such activities have promoted their substantive cooperation in the nontraditional security field. These mechanisms and exchanges have substantially helped the two militaries increase mutual trust and understanding, reduce disagreements, and minimize potential misjudgments on important issues like China’s development strategy, China’s military modernization, the Taiwan issue, and U.S. global strategic realignment. With the growth of mutual confidence and common awareness of Sino-U.S. strategic interests, it may be possible for the PLA and U.S. armed forces to develop a more stable and cooperative relationship with each other in the long run.
The PLA’s Role in China’s Regional Strategy: Problems and Challenges The PLA’s new thinking has provided new opportunities for security and defense cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. The PLA, however, still faces several important challenges in implementing its new thinking.
Perception Gap and Mututal Apprehension between China and its Neighbors Though confidence-building efforts by China and its neighbors have improved the regional security environment, there remains a perception gap. For instance, when it comes to history, many of China’s neighbors are still apprehensive that China, which had a tributary system in East Asia when it was strong and prosperous, may aspire to recreate the tributary system. In contrast, most Chinese only remember that China brought trade, stability, and prosperity to its neighbors through the tributary system. Some of China’s neighbors argue that China’s military conflicts with India, Vietnam, and the former Soviet Union; its occupation of Meiji Jiao (Mischief Reef); and military exercises in the waters off Taiwan in 1995-1996 show that China may use force to solve disputes with them. In contrast, Chinese scholars argue that those conflicts were in the context of the Cold War or within China’s sovereign territory, and China has already signed border agreements with many of its neighboring states. Partly due to their uncertainty and fear of China, some of China’s neighbors have tried to develop robust security ties with extraregional powers while keeping security cooperation at a much lower level with China. For example, Mongolia has implemented a “third neighbor” policy to engage with the United States, Japan, and the EU. Other countries like India, the Philippines, and Vietnam all try to ally with the United States.
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Regional states’ distrust of China and their hedging policies, though conducive to a balance of regional power, have made confidence-building measures between China and regional states less productive and hindered closer security cooperation between them. Traditional geopolitical thinking may ultimately limit security cooperation between China and its neighbors. Under the shadow of geopolitical considerations, the PLA and its regional counterparts have been cautious in developing their relations. Today, while most of the regional armed forces have conducted high-level visits with China, their military technological exchanges, personnel exchanges and training, and operational cooperation with the PLA remain rather limited, with the exception of Russia, Pakistan, and Central Asian states within the SCO.
Strategic Suspicions between China and the United States Since the end of Cold War, the United States has viewed China as its most likely military foe. While the United States came to value security cooperation with China after the events of September 11, 2001, it still holds the idea that China can be a possible strategic threat in the long run. For example, the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review Report in 2006 says, “Of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter strategies.”18 Some American scholars have insisted,“A great challenge for the United States and the world lies not in terrorism or even in regional conflict. Instead, it lies in the longer-term collision of interests between the United States and emerging, powerful China.”19 Such a U.S. orientation toward China has kept the PLA vigilant on the possibility that the United States may try to contain China after finishing its job in the Middle East. Meanwhile, many China analysts believe that the United States tends to intentionally exaggerate China’s military capability and hostility to blockade China’s military modernization.20 They also view the United States as the greatest obstacle to achieving China’s reunification. Under such a strategic setting, the two armed forces have been deeply suspicious of each other, and their efforts in confidence building have remained limited.
A Potential Japan-China Rivalry In recent years, China’s proactive behavior in East Asia has caused much concern among some Japanese analysts. Almost all measures promoted by China to enhance regional cooperation have been interpreted by some Japanese analysts as moves to take over a leading position in the region.
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For instance, one policy report warns,“The East Asian community might turn into an order dominated by China, so Japan should consider the dangerousness of the Chinese consciousness of China’s world order left over from its ancient history.”21 Likewise, a Japanese expert argues that despite China’s emphasis on ASEAN’s leading role, it has been China that has made all the waves. Initiatives such as the FTA with ASEAN, the creation of the SCO, the six-party Talks on North Korea, and the proposal for a Northeast Asian security organization are aimed to push its own initiatives for the promotion of regional cooperation.22 In response, Japan has not only negotiated the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with ASEAN and non-ASEAN countries in the region. but also tried to convince East Asian countries (including China) to recognize the U.S.-Japan alliance as the foundation of regional order. Some Japanese analysts have also promoted the “China threat” theory in the region and actively advocated to put the Taiwan issue on the list of common objectives of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Meanwhile, some Chinese experts view Japan’s interpretations of China’s efforts for regional economic cooperation as reflections of its own political thinking and Cold War mentality. They feel that Japan’s real purpose in initiating disputes over the natural gas fields in the East China Sea in recent years (actually, China’s exploration of the East China Sea dates back to 1974), sensationalizing the death of a member of staff at the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai in 2004, linking the problem of North Korea’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens with the six-party talks, and so on, is to manipulate its domestic opinion in favor of revising the peace constitution. Because of these strategic differences, it has been very difficult for the two nations to establish benign security relations. Today, the PLA and the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) have great difficulties in jump-starting cooperation between them. Worse, the possibility of a military confrontation over disputed natural gas fields in the East China Sea and a possible Taiwan Strait crisis between the two countries cannot be completely ruled out.
Looking Ahead: Reconciling the Opposing Pulls The fact that China has begun to see itself as a rising power with no imminent threat to its own survival should be a welcome development to East Asia. According to the theory of the security dilemma, a state that feels more secure is more likely to be cooperative. In this sense, the shifted focus of China’s national security strategy is conducive for China and regional states to build a more cooperative regional security environment. Achieving such a goal, however, requires concrete actions that may differ from traditional geopolitical thinking.
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As far as the PLA is concerned, with its advancement of modernization, it should continue to reassure not just the big powers but, more importantly, also the medium and small neighboring countries. The PLA should consider the different perceptions and feelings of China’s neighbors on its development. The PLA should make its modernization and strategic doctrines more transparent. It should also continue to push forward military exchanges with other regional armed forces at all levels to provide a solid foundation for mutual confidence building. With regard to complicated territorial disputes, the PLA should support the central government to conclude agreements that can ensure peace and stability in the region. Improving Sino-U.S. military ties will be beneficial to military relations between China and its neighbors. There will always be strategic disagreements and suspicions between China and the United States. As such, it is very important for the two countries to reassure each other. China and the PLA has made it clear that driving the United States out of the region is not on its agenda, as State Councilor Tang Jia-xuan stated: “China welcomes the American presence in the Asia-Pacific region as a stabilizing factor, and China would like to work with the United States to preserve peace and security of the region.”23 Since then, high-ranking PLA generals have also expressed the same position. PLA Air Force General Zheng Shen-xia, thencommandant of the Chinese Academy of Military Science, told an international audience at a conference in Hangzhou that “China by no means seeks to replace America’s position in the Asia-Pacific region.”24 “This was an important statement at the time because it contrasted sharply with the prevalent view among many in the new administration that China’s principal strategic goal was to evict the United States from East Asia and extend its hegemony over the region.”25 The United States should also reassure China that it sincerely welcomes China’s peaceful development and does not perceive China to be a threat. The U.S. 2006 National Security Strategy explains that “if China keeps this commitment (peaceful development), the United States will welcome the emergence of a China that is peaceful and prosperous and that cooperates with us to address common challenges and mutual interests.”26 The United States has also tried to take China as “a responsible stakeholder” in the international system,27 indicating that the United States may be finally beginning to respect China’s role in Asia and the rest of the world and recognize the expanding mutual interests of both powers. These encouraging developments can serve as a foundation for building a more robust cooperative relationship between the two states. If they can do so, then the armed forces of the two countries can also forge a more robust relationship.
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Realizing a genuine reconciliation between China and Japan is another key issue for East Asia. Besides a consensus on the history issue, the two sides should understand that it is unrealistic for them to struggle for a leading role simply because the United States has important interests in the region and ASEAN is officially a leader in the process of East Asian cooperation. Thus, a struggle for mastery between Japan and China is very unlikely to materialize. The PLA and the SDF should step out the shadows of these illusions and start a confidence-building process. Mutual reassurance alone may not be enough to solve the complicated security problems facing China, Japan, the United States, and other regional states. They should bring their mutual assurances into multilateral security cooperation mechanisms at appropriate times in the future. On the one hand, China can exert its strength and influence under multilateral frameworks and, in doing so, reduce the suspicion of its neighbors and the United States that China attempts to dominate East Asia. On the other hand, it also means the United States and Japan need to attach greater importance to multilateral mechanisms and view them as the main platforms for playing their roles rather than just supplements to their military alliances or tools to contain China. From such a perspective, it is very important for China, Japan, the United States, and the relevant regional states to work hard to enhance the functions of the ARF and develop the six-party talks into a regional security mechanism. If they do, it may not be too unrealistic for these nations to establish a fair and effective cooperative security mechanism in the region. Stabilizing the military situation across the Taiwan Strait is another important factor in building trust between the PLA and other armed forces in the region. Under the guideline of the peaceful development strategy and the “one China” principle, China has proposed a series of measures to achieve peace across the Taiwan Strait, such as jointly building a stable and peaceful framework between the two sides, maintaining the status quo, and establishing a mechanism of mutual trust in the military field. These proposals have also promoted mutual trust between the PLA and other armed forces in the West Pacific region.28
Conclusion Sustaining economic development and promoting a win-win regional system is at the heart of China’s regional strategy, and the PLA’s efforts in regional security cooperation reflect China’s regional strategy. Despite facing numerous obstacles and challenges, the PLA has played an active role in supporting China’s core national strategy. The PLA, however, will need more wisdom to fully realize its role in China’s proactive regional strategy.
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Notes 1. Colonel Qi Da-peng is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies, National Defense University (NDU) of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The author wrote this paper when he was a visiting senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS). The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the author and do not represent positions of the PLA, NDU, or RSIS. He thanks Shiping Tang and Richard Bitzinger for their helpful comments. 2. Ge Dong-sheng (ed.), On National Security Strategy [Guojia anquan zhanlue lun] (p. 2), Beijing: Military Science Press, 2006. Lt.-General Ge Dong-sheng is Deputy Commandant of the Chinese Academy of Military Science. 3. Zhang Yunling and Tang Shiping, “China’s Regional Strategy,” in David Shambaugh (ed.), Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (p. 48), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. See also Liu Jing-bo (ed.), China’s National Security Strategy in the Early 21st Century (p. 100), Beijing: Current Affairs Press, 2006. Liu Jing-bo is Deputy Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies of National Defense University, PLA. 4. The Pentagon’s 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review Report says: “The possibility exists that a military competitor with a formidable resource base will emerge in the region. The East Asian littoral—from the Bay of Bengal to the Sea of Japan— represents a particularly challenging area.” The majority of Chinese scholars argue that, before the events of September 11, 2001, containment rather than engagement took priority in the George W. Bush administration’s policy toward China. See Yan Xue-tong, “How about the Security Environment of China” [Zhongguo de anquan huanjing zinmo yang], World Affairs (Beijing), No. 9 (2002), pp. 32-33; Wu Xin-bo, “The Orientation of American Asia-Pacific Security Strategy,” Fudan Journal (Social sciences edition), No. 2 (2005), pp. 1-8. 5. See, for example, Xiong Guangkai, International Strategy and Revolution in Military Affairs (p. 207, pp. 218-219), Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2003; “Constitution of the People’s Republic of China,” available at http://news. xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2004-03/15/content_1367387.htm. 6. Besides the three missions, the PLA was also assigned an internal task of providing an important source of strength for consolidating the ruling position of the Communist Party of China. See Office for Foreign Affairs, Department of Defense, PRC, “China’s National Defense in 2006,” issued by the Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China. On the Web at: http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/book/194421.htm accessed on March 20, 2007. 7. Xu Cai-hou, “The Significance of Implementing the President Hu’s Important Thoughts on PLA’s New Missions,” PLA Daily [Jiefangjun Bao], September 21, 2005; Center for Deng Xiao-ping Theory Studies, National Defense University, PLA, “Developing and Implementing New Concepts in Accordance with the New Missions,” PLA Daily [Jiefangjun Bao], November 3, 2005. 8. The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, “China’s Peaceful Development Road,” Beijing Review, Vol. 49, No. 3 (January 19, 2006), pp. 4-5.
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9. Peng Guang-qian, “Stress on Development Rather than Survival: A Shift of Security Strategic Guideline,” available at news.xinhuanet.com/mil/200701/18/content_5622595.htm. General Peng Guang-qian is from the Chinese Academy of Military Science. 10. “China’s National Defense in 2006,”. 11. Zhang Qin-shen, “China’s Peaceful Development Road and its National Defense Modernization,” Xue-xi Daily [Xuexi Shibao], November 14, 2006. Zhang Qin-shen is Deputy Chief of General Staff of the PLA. 12. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 2 (March/April 2006), pp. 42-54. This article evoked a series of responses. See Peter C. W. Flory et al., “Nuclear Exchange: Does Washington Really Have (or Want) Nuclear Primacy?,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 5 (September/October 2006),pp. 36-38. 13. The Two Corridors refers to the transport links between Hanoi and Kunming, and between Hanoi and Nanning, while the One Circle refers to the Beibu Gulf (Gulf of Tonkin) economic area. 14. For background, see Premier Wen Jiabao, “Work together to Open a New Chapter in China-ASEAN Relations,” available at www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/zxxx/ t290185.htm. 15. Michael A. Glosny, “Heading Toward a Win-Win Future? Recent Developments in China’s Policy Toward Southeast Asia,” Asian Security, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2006), pp. 24-57; Carlyle A. Thayer, “China’s International Security Cooperation with Southeast Asia,” Australian Defence Force Journal, No. 172 (2007), pp. 16-32. 16. Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress, “U.S.-China Military Contacts: Issues for Congress,” available at www.ndu.edu/library/docs/crs/ crs_rl32496_10may05.pdf; Kurt Campbell and Richard Weitz,“The Limits of U.S.China Military Cooperation: Lessons from 1995–1999,” Washington Quarterly,Vol 29, No 1 (Winter 2005/06), pp. 169-186. 17. Cao Gang-chuan, minister of the Defense Department of China, put forward this idea a few times when he met with U.S. delegations from Washington. See “Cao Gang-chuan Meeting with the U.S.-China Working Group of U.S. House of Representatives,” available at www.gov.cn/ldhd/2006-01/10/content_ 153713.htm; “Making Military Relations Fit Sino-U.S. Overall Relations,” available at news.xinhuanet.com/mil/2005-10/19/content_3649272.htm 18. See “Quadrennial Defense Review Report,” February 6, 2006. 19. Ronald L. Tammen and Jacek Kugler, “Power Transition and China-U.S. Conflicts,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 1 p. 35 (2006). 20. Yang Yi, “Could Military Exchanges Promote Sino-U.S. relations?,” available at news.xinhuanet.com/world/2006-06/03/content_4640179.htm; Yang Yi is Director of the Institute for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, PLA. 21. Japan “Council on East Asian Community” Policy Report, August 2005, available at www.ceac.jp/j/index.html. 22. Amako Satoshi, “The Idea of New International Order China is Seeking an East Asian Community,” June 7, 2006, available at www.ceac.jp/e/commentary/ 060616.pdf. Amako Satoshi is Professor of Waseda University and a member of the Council on East Asian Community.
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23. “Tang Jia-xuan Addressing the Eighth Foreign Ministers Conference of ARF,” available at www.china-embassy.org.ph/chn/c8985.html. 24. Dennis J. Blasko, “Rumsfeld’s Take on the Chinese Military: A Dissenting View,” Current History, Vol. 105 (September 2006), p. 265. 25. David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Security, Vol. 29 No. 3 p. 91 (Winter 2004/05). 26. Office of the president of the United States, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” (March 2006). 27. Robert B. Zoellick, Deputy Secretary of State, “Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility?,” available at www.state.gov/s/d/rem/53682.htm. 28. For example, Dennis J. Blasko noted that China’s policy is “preventing Taiwan’s separation rather than forcing reunification” and “the PLA sees itself more as a deterrent force than a war-fighting force”. Blasko, “Rumsfeld’s Take on the Chinese Military,” p. 269.
3
The Politics and Economics of China’s Economic Presence in Asia: A Preliminary Empirical Assessment Ruobing Liang1
Introduction Since the late 1970s, China has been experiencing rapid economic growth thanks to its market-oriented reforms and open-door policy. The last three decades have seen China achieving an astonishing average growth rate of over 9 percent in GDP. In 2006, China was the fourth-largest foreign direct investment (FDI) recipient, the largest foreign currency reserve holder, and the second-largest exporter in the world. Its economy has never before been so deeply integrated with the global economy. A larger Chinese economy inevitably casts a larger shadow over the region, both economically and politically. The interesting question is what role politics plays in China’s increasing economic presence in the region. Has China’s economic rise in the region been driven mostly by economics or by politics? If politics has indeed influenced China’s economic presence in the region, how has it interacted with economics? This chapter summarizes an empirical study of China’s economic integration with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and a comparative study of China’s economic and political relationships with neighboring economies, using the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) as its primary case. The finding that emerged is that China’s economic presence in Asia is not closely related to politics. The fundamental
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driving force behind China’s economic clout is its robust economy and its increasingly important position in the global production network rather than its political ambitions. Section 1 of the chapter reviews the conflicting interpretation of CAFTA. Section 2 is a preliminary empirical estimation of CAFTA’s economic impact on China and the ASEAN countries. Section 3 compares China’s economic and political relations with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and its Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) partners. The final section presents the conclusion of the study.
The (Political) Push behind China-ASEAN Economic Relations China first proposed CAFTA at the 4th ASEAN-China summit in November 2000, and leaders of China and the ten ASEAN states signed the framework agreement of CAFTA at the 6th ASEAN-China Summit in November 2002. The “Agreement on Trade in Goods” and the “Agreement on Dispute Settlement Mechanism” followed in November 2004. If realized, CAFTA will become the largest regional trade area (RTA) among developing countries, with a population of over 1.8 billion, a total GDP of U.S.$2 trillion and trade volume of U.S.$1.23 trillion.2 CAFTA agreements cover three main aspects. The first is trade liberalization, including tariff reduction and removal of nontariff barriers. According to the timetable, a zero-tariff trade area will come into existence before 2010 for China and the six original ASEAN members and in 2015 for the four new ASEAN members (Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and Myanmar). The first stage of bilateral tariff cuts formally kicked off on July 1, 2005. According to the “early harvest” arrangement, China had unilaterally opened its domestic market to ASEAN’s agricultural products as early as January 1, 2004. CAFTA agreements also cover two other main aspects, subregional economic cooperation (especially in the Mekong River area between China and regional countries) and facilitation of investment and technological transfer. CAFTA has prompted conflicting interpretations, especially about China’s economic presence in Southeast Asia and in East Asia in general. Due to the lack of a solid economic foundation at its launching, some analysts doubted the project’s viability. For instance, Sheng suggested that China’s proposal of CAFTA was a hasty decision, without sufficient and comprehensive consultation with experts and scholars in related research areas.3 In other words, Sheng argued that the Chinese government had not carefully evaluated economic difficulties and cost before it submitted the proposal for economic integration. Similarly, Hund noted that a number of ASEAN leaders (Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam) had reservations when China introduced the proposal, and their
CHINA’S ECONOMIC PRESENCE IN ASIA
55
apprehension mainly concerned the economic feasibility of the agreement.4 Both accounts implied that political rather than economic considerations were the prime driver behind China’s decision to explore a free trade agreement with ASEAN countries. As such, both expressed doubt about whether CAFTA has any future. Admittedly, when CAFTA was explored, there was indeed more economic competition than complementarity between China and most ASEAN states, except Singapore, especially in low-end manufactured goods. China’s products overwhelm the products from Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia in the U.S. and Japanese markets.5 As a result, China’s economic relations with ASEAN countries, in terms of bilateral trade and investment, lagged behind its relations with the United States, the European Union (EU), and northeast Asian economies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. In addition, there was a lack of intra-industrial specialization between China and ASEAN countries. Table 3.1 presents the intra-industrial trade of three-digit Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) items between China and ASEAN-6 (ASEAN-5 plus Vietnam) in 2003. Among these countries, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand had much more intraindustrial trade with China, accounting for 66, 66, and 70 of 241, 249, and 239 total trade items respectively.6 On the other hand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam had only 42, 33, and 25 intra-industrial trade items out of 242, 234, and 239 total trade items respectively, showing a more vertical specialization between China and these countries. This explains why many ASEAN leaders had reservations about CAFTA and why some pundits (e.g., Sheng, Hund) regarded it as a political agreement rather than economic cooperation. This interpretation receives a further boost from the fact that the lack of economic complementarity exists not only between China and ASEAN but also among ASEAN countries themselves. The Philippines and Indonesia, in particular, are similar in level of development and industrial structure to China and Vietnam but have much higher labor costs, especially on products like shoes, toys, leather products, and textiles.7 For this reason, intra-ASEAN integration, namely the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), did not make much progress, let alone an economic integration between China and ASEAN. The fact that CAFTA was initially a political move, however, does not necessarily mean that CAFTA has no economic future. The only way to prove the economic feasibility of CAFTA is to examine empirically whether its effects on its members have been positive. The next section assesses this question, based on an empirical study of the latest available data.
SITC One Digit 0–4 0 1 2 3 4 5–9 5 6 7 8 9 0–9
ASEAN
Item Primary products Food and live animals Beverages and Tobacco Crude materials, Inedible, Except fuels Fuels, Lubricants, etc Animal, Veg.oils, Fats, Wax Manufacturing products Chemicals, reltd. prod. nes Manufactured goods Machines, Transport equip Misc manufactured artcls Goods not classd by kind Total
Singapore
Malaysia
Thailand
Indonesia
Philippines
Vietnam
IntraIntraIntraIntraIntraIntraIntraIndustrial Industrial Industrial Industrial Industrial Industrial Industrial Total Trade Total I Trade Total Trade Total Trade Total I Trade Total Trade Total Trade 86 34 4 35
18 10 0 5
73 31 4 28
11 5 0 5
83 33 4 34
6 1 0 4
74 29 4 29
13 7 0 4
79 32 4 31
13 5 0 6
72 31 3 29
5 3 0 1
76 30 3 33
8 5 0 3
8 5 168 33 52 50 31 2 254
2 1 60 11 14 24 10 1 78
6 4 168 33 52 50 31 2 241
1 0 55 9 13 25 8 0 66
8 4 166 33 51 50 30 2 249
0 1 60 11 16 24 9 0 66
8 4 165 33 51 50 30 1 239
1 1 57 11 17 18 11 0 70
8 4 163 33 51 49 30 0 242
2 0 29 10 7 9 3 0 42
6 3 162 32 51 48 30 1 234
1 0 28 7 7 12 1 1 33
6 4 163 33 50 50 29 1 239
0 0 17 3 5 5 4 0 25
Notes: ASEAN-6 includes Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam; Intra-industrial trade happens when one country’s intra-industrial trade (IIT) index is greater than 50. IITij ⫽ (((Xij ⫹ Mij) ⫺ &Xij ⫺ Mij&)/(Xij ⫹ Mij)) ⫻ 100, where Xij is export of product i to country j, Mij is import of product i from country j. Sources: Author’s calculation based on data from Commodity Trade Statistics Database (COMTRADE), United Nations Statistics Division, http://comtrade.un.org/db/dqBasic Query.aspx
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Table 3.1 Total and Intra-Industrial Trade of Three-Digit Items between China and ASEAN-6, 2003
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The Economic Effect of CAFTA: A Preliminary Inquiry Free trade agreements (FTAs) are designed to promote bilateral trade among their members by producing trade-creating and trade-diverting effects. A trade-creating effect augments trade among members by lifting intra-bloc trading barriers, while a trade-diverting effect diverts trade from efficient outside suppliers to inefficient inside members for discriminatory treatment. Since China and the ASEAN countries are all export-oriented economies, creating and diverting effects on exports should be their priority. I thus made an empirical evaluation of CAFTA’s effect on the exporting performance of China and the ASEAN countries. If CAFTA lacks economic viability, trade-creating effects as well as trade-diverting effects will be low. If CAFTA has brought significant trade-creating and trade-diverting effects, then CAFTA may indeed have an economic future. A cautionary note is in order because a real free trade area had yet to be formed between China and the ASEAN countries. The concrete measures for facilitating trade—the “early harvest” scheme and the tariff reduction scheme— did not start until January 1, 2004, and July 1, 2005, respectively, so the positive impact on trade may not show up in the available dataset. This empirical study must be taken as a preliminary one. I use the export gravity model, a simple but robust approach.8 Generally, the dependent variable of a normal gravity model is bilateral trade between country pairs. In the gravity equation, exports are set as the dependent variable. This has two merits: one is the availability of two-way trade flows between a country pair; the other is doubling the number of observations of the given country samples. The conventional gravity equation has several fixed variables: GDP, population, and distance between bilateral trading partners. In this study, the model was extended with a number of extra independent variables. Dummy variables of border sharing, language sharing, and colony relations were also considered.9 To analyze the external shock to trading relations among East Asian economies, dummy variables of the Asian financial crisis (AFC) and China’s accession to the WTO were also taken into account. Insider and outsider groupings were set to compare the effect on exports of the RTA’s member and nonmember countries. The dummy variable of CAFTA/insiders represents trade between China and ASEAN as well as trade among ASEAN countries, while the variable of China and ASEAN denotes trade between China and ASEAN countries. Because of the “early harvest” scheme on January 1, 2004 and tariff reduction on July 1, 2005, 1 was attributed to those FTA dummy variables when year dummy equals 2004 and 2005. lnExportsijt ⫽ 0 ⫹ 1lnGDPit ⫹ 2lnGDPjt ⫹ 3lnPopit ⫹ 4lnPopjt ⫹ 5lnDistij ⫹ 61lnBorderij ⫹ 62lnLanguageij ⫹ 63lnColonyij ⫹ ␥CAFTA/Insidersijt ⫹ ␦YEARt ⫹ Financialcrisis ⫹ WTOaccession ⫹ ⑀ijt
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Where i and j denote countries, t denotes time, and the variables are defined as follows: ● ● ● ●
● ●
●
●
●
●
●
●
● ●
●
Exportsijt denotes the exports value from country i to country j at time t; GDPit is i’s real GDP; Popit is i’s population; Distij stands for the distance between i and j; spherical distance between geographic centers rather than linear distance between political oreconomic centers (generally capital city) of countries were used here; Borderij is a binary variable that is unity if i and j share a land border; Languageij is a binary variable that is unity if i and j have a common language; Colonyij is a binary variable that is unity if i and j were former colonies with the same colonizer, or i was ever colonized by j or vice versa; CAFTA/insidersijt is a binary variable that is unity if i and j belong to CAFTA; CAFTA/outsidersijt is a binary variable that is unity if i does not belong to CAFTA and j belongs to; China and ASEAN is a binary variable that is unity if exports occur between China and ASEAN countries; China to ASEAN is a binary variable that is unity if China exports goods to ASEAN countries; ASEAN to China is a binary variable that is unity if ASEAN countries export goods to China; Yearijt is a set of binary variables that are unity in the specific year t; Financial crisisit is a binary variable that is unity if i was under East Asian financial crisis in 1997 and 1998; and WTO accessionit is a binary variable that is unity after China’s entry into WTO in 2001.
The dataset covered 17 countries from 1995 to 2005. The focus was on East Asian economies and their primary trading partners. The countries included were China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia in Asia,10 and the United States, UK, France, Germany, and Australia as primary trading partners of external regions. Annual data consisting of 2992 country pairs in total and 272 for each year were used in the estimation. Year effects were controlled by adding year dummy variables. Two different estimation techniques, random effects and fixed effects, were applied to evaluate CAFTA’s export-enhancing performance on East Asian economies. The fixed-effects method can provide consistent estimates when specification does not incorporate the “relative distance effect.”11 It is also useful for
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gauging the export performance of a country entering a FTA.12 The shortcoming of this method is its inability to specify the effect of time-invariant variables, such as dummy variables of distance, language, colony, and border. Fortunately, these time-invariant variables were not the major concern of this study. I first examined whether CAFTA has had a negative impact upon the trade between CAFTA member countries and non-CAFTA countries (i.e., whether CAFTA increases intra-CAFTA trade via squeezing out exports from nonCAFTA countries). The basic results for both random-effects and fixed-effects methods of the gravity model are given in Table 3.2. The variables of GDP, population, and the dummy variables of border sharing, colony sharing and language sharing have positive influences on exports. On the contrary, the dummy variables of distance and AFC have significantly negative effects on exports, representing the impact of increasing transportation cost and an external shock. From the signs of dummy variables of CAFTA/insiders and CAFTA/outsiders, it seems that CAFTA has a significantly positive effect on the exports between China and ASEAN, without affecting outsiders’ exports to these countries. In other words, CAFTA has created new export flows between China and ASEAN without decreasing exports from outside countries. However, when the impact of China’s WTO accession is controlled, the effect of CAFTA/insiders becomes insignificant. The result of the Hausman test suggests that the fixed-effects technique should be adopted (see also below). I then examined whether CAFTA has had any impact on the trade among the members. Export directions were divided into three categories: exports between China and ASEAN, from China to ASEAN, and from ASEAN to China. The results of fixed-effects estimation are presented in Table 3.3. Columns 1 to 4 of the table estimate the influence of CAFTA on the trading performance of China and ASEAN countries when China’s WTO accession effects are not taken into account, whereas columns 5 to 8 estimate this influence when China’s WTO accession effects are taken into account. The results show that CAFTA has a significant positive effect on all export items between China and ASEAN countries. Once again, however, when the impact of China’s WTO accession is controlled, the impact of dummy variables of CAFTA/insiders and ASEAN to China becomes insignificant, although the impact of dummy variables on exports between China and ASEAN and China’s exports to ASEAN remains significantly positive. This result suggests that CAFTA’s aggregated effect on exports between China and ASEAN is mostly caused by its positive effect upon China’s exports to ASEAN countries rather than two-way trade between China and ASEAN countries. The impact of CAFTA on individual ASEAN members’ exports to China and intra-ASEAN trade was also estimated but not reported because their coefficients are not significant. In addition to the possibility that CAFTA will have no tangible positive impact on the trade between ASEAN and China or the trade between ASEAN/China
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Table 3.2 Gravity Model Results Random Effects gdpx gdpy Populationx Populationy Distance Border Colony Language Financial crisis WTO Accession CAFTA/Insiders CAFTA/Outsiders Constant Hausman test Observations Number of pair R-squared
0.370 (0.028)** 0.500 (0.028)** 0.229 (0.051)** 0.038 (0.051) ⫺0.486 (0.083)** 0.502 (0.297) 0.572 (0.195)** 0.588 (0.230)* ⫺0.171 (0.039)** 0.414 (0.047)** 0.275 (0.063)** ⫺0.054 (0.043) ⫺2.471 (1.385) 2964 272 0.35
Fixed Effects 0.411 (0.028)** 0.541 (0.028)** 0.212 (0.051)** 0.018 (0.051) ⫺0.527 (0.083)** 0.552 (0.298) 0.505 (0.196)** 0.579 (0.231)* ⫺0.180 (0.039)**
0.273 (0.049)** ⫺0.011 (0.045) ⫺3.645 (1.385)** 2964 272 0.32
0.080 (0.040)* 0.342 (0.040)** 3.751 (0.305)** 0.676 (0.311)*
0.176 (0.041)** 0.438 (0.041)** 3.517 (0.316)** 0.329 (0.330)
⫺0.103 (0.036)** 0.567 (0.045)** 0.047 (0.049) 0.009 (0.043) ⫺68.333 (8.285)** 380.56 2964 272 0.40
⫺0.125 (0.037)**
0.164 (0.050)** 0.050 (0.046) ⫺63.107 (8.797)** 277.79 2964 272 0.36
Notes: Standard errors in parentheses; *significant at 5% level; **significant at 1% level; Time-variant effects are estimated but not reported.
and other economies (in other words, that CAFTA is mostly a political vehicle without much economic benefit—see below), there are two possible reasons why this kind of effect was not reported in the empirical estimation. First, the latest trade statistics available in this dataset extend to the end of 2005. Although the framework agreement of CAFTA formally began as early as 2003, the first-stage tariff reduction on commodity goods between China and the original ASEAN members took effect on July 1, 2005, leaving only half a year from which to measure the impact of CAFTA’s tariff-cut arrangement. Second, although the “early harvest” scheme was implemented in 2004, it would not significantly affect the overall trade statistics in spite of a huge incremental trade volume, because the
(1) Gdpx Gdpy Popx Popy Financial crisis
0.175 (0.040)** 0.439 (0.041)** 3.463 (0.313)** 0.421 (0.307) ⫺0.123 (0.037)**
(2) 0.151 (0.040)** 0.416 (0.041)** 3.608 (0.302)** 0.560 (0.296) ⫺0.120 (0.037)**
(3) 0.141 (0.041)** 0.443 (0.040)** 3.751 (0.302)** 0.487 (0.297) ⫺0.120 (0.037)**
(4) 0.177 (0.040)** 0.425 (0.041)** 3.624 (0.305)** 0.684 (0.297)* ⫺0.127 (0.037)**
WTO Accession CAFTA Insiders
0.147 (0.046)**
China and ASEAN
(6) 0.077 (0.040) 0.339 (0.040)** 3.808 (0.296)** 0.734 (0.289)* ⫺0.102 (0.036)** 0.531 (0.048)**
0.767 (0.112)**
⫺63.754 (8.678)** 2967 272 0.36
⫺67.544 (8.191)** 2967 272 0.37
(7) 0.050 (0.041) 0.435 (0.040)** 3.884 (0.296)** 0.596 (0.291)* ⫺0.098 (0.036)** 0.643 (0.063)**
(8) 0.177 (0.040)** 0.378 (0.042)** 3.675 (0.304)** 0.740 (0.296)* ⫺0.129 (0.037)** 0.330 (0.067)**
0.204 (0.084)*
ASEAN to China
Observations Number of pair R-squared
0.079 (0.040)* 0.341 (0.040)** 3.774 (0.305)** 0.700 (0.300)* ⫺0.102 (0.036)** 0.568 (0.045)** 0.047 (0.046)
0.567 (0.079)**
China to ASEAN
Constant
(5)
⫺69.243 (8.180)** 2967 272 0.37
0.321 (0.118)** 0.348 (0.112)** ⫺70.967 (8.239)** 2967 272 0.36
⫺69.110 (8.441)** 2967 272 0.40
⫺70.193 (8.014)** 2967 272 0.40
61
Notes: Standard errors in parentheses; *significant at 5% level; **significant at 1% level; Time-variant effects are estimated but not reported.
⫺70.930 (8.031)** 2967 272 0.39
0.117 (0.121) ⫺71.631 (8.204)** 2967 272 0.37
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Table 3.3 Fixed-Effects Estimation of the Effect of CAFTA on Sino-ASEAN Trade
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“early harvest” covers mostly agricultural products, and agricultural products do not contribute much to the absolute trade volume. The results of the estimation, however, do not necessarily reject the economic viability of CAFTA. First, China’s WTO accession could have been an important thrust in the motivation to form CAFTA. Since China entered WTO, its exports to and imports from ASEAN have been shooting up. This suggests that trade-harmonizing and barrier-lifting arrangements could significantly increase closely connected trade relations. Thus CAFTA can still speed up and deepen this process and give both ASEAN and China more longrun incentive to enter each other’s domestic markets rather than those of outsiders. In addition, facilitating arrangements on investment, technological transfer, and subregional economic cooperation will also expand economic cooperation between China and ASEAN. Therefore, though the empirical study has yet to reveal that CAFTA has much direct trade-incremental effect on ASEAN and China, it does not warrant dismissing CAFTA’s economic future either.
Comparative Cases: Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and SCO Because the above empirical study of CAFTA is preliminary, it may not adequately reflect the role of political or economic factors in determining China’s economic presence in the region. I thus expanded my inquiry to the economic and political relations between China and its other neighbors, including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and the SCO countries. Such an inquiry provides a comparative perspective for understanding China’s economic presence in the region. China normalized diplomatic relations with Japan in 1972. Due to Japan’s history of aggression and atrocities committed in China from 1931 to 1945, however, the political relationship between the two countries has always been uneasy. More recently, the controversies over Japanese history textbooks, Japanese leaders’ visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, and the territorial dispute over the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Islands have all strained Sino-Japanese relations. In 2005, thousands of Chinese in several major cities took to the streets to oppose Japan’s entry into the Security Council of the United Nations. Since establishing diplomatic relations in 1992, China and South Korea have forged a close relationship. Even here, however, the bilateral relationship has not been all smooth sailing. In recent years, a controversy over the kingdom of Koguryo (gao gou li) and a potential dispute over the Changbai Mountains have contributed to rising mistrust between the two countries.13 Despite the differences in their bilateral relationship with China, however, both Japan and South Korea have China as their largest world trading partner,
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63
with exports doubling from 2000 to 2005 (Chart 3.1). In 2005, Japan exported U.S.$100.4 billion worth of goods to China to become China’s number one source of imports. At the same time, South Korea exported U.S.$76.8 billion worth of goods to China to become China’s second source of imports. By the end of 2005, China’s FDI inflows from Japan and South Korea had also hit record highs of U.S.$53.4 billion and U.S.$31.1 billion to become China’s second- and seventh-largest FDI contributors respectively. Politics exerted no tangible impact upon Japan’s and Korea’s economic relations with China. Taiwan perhaps represents an extreme case. In the mid-1990s, Lee Teng-hui began to restrict Taiwanese investment in China. Since 2000, Chen Shui-bian has further tightened these restrictions.14 Undoubtedly, Taiwan’s leaders do not want to be held hostage to an integrated economic relation with the mainland. Moreover, after coming into power in 2000, Chen Shui-bian and his ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) have continually infuriated and provoked Beijing with their pro-independence policies and desinicization measures. China, on the other hand, has enacted an Anti-Secession Law and deployed more missiles to the southeast coastal regions to deter Taiwan’s pro-independence moves.
30
28.36
25 21.77 20
%
17.21 15
13.46 10.71
10
8.05 6.34
5
5.3 5.1
3.62
0 ASEAN
Japan
Korea 2000
Taiwan
SCO
2005
Chart 3.1 Exports Dependency of Selected Asian Economies on China, 2000–2005 Notes: ASEAN includes Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, and Myanmar; SCO includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Sources: Author’s calculation based on data from Commodity Trade Statistics Database (COMTRADE), United Nations Statistics Division, http://comtrade.un.org/db/dqBasicQuery.aspx
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Despite this volatile and often tense political situation, however, Taiwan has forged an increasingly close economic relationship with China. In 2005, more than 28 percent of Taiwan’s exports (U.S.$87.1 billion) went to China, against 17 percent five years earlier (Chart 3.1). Taiwan is China’s fifth-largest source of imports, after Japan, South Korea, the EU, and ASEAN. In addition, a large amount of Taiwanese investment flowed into the mainland through shell companies established in the British Virgin Islands and Cayman Islands. By the end of 2005, Taiwan had invested U.S.$41.7 billion in China and had become China’s sixth-largest investor. All these statistics indicate that despite strong political incentives to limit Taiwan’s economic dependence upon China, politics has not exerted a strong negative impact upon Taiwan’s economic presence in China, although it has certainly limited mainland China’s economic presence in Taiwan. A contrasting case is the economic relationship between China and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). SCO was originally conceived as purely a political organization when it was founded in 1996, and economic cooperation was added to the agenda much later.15 So far, however, there is no evidence that close political ties have promoted economic integration of SCO countries. From 2000 to 2005 (see Chart 3.1), China’s imports from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan did not make any headway. In fact, the percentage share of SCO’s exports to China in their total exports (including bilateral trade among these five countries) has decreased from 5.3 to 5.1 percent. Close political cooperation has yet to drive the economic relations closer. The brief comparative survey of China’s economic relationship with her other neighbors suggests that politics does not contribute much to China’s economic presence in the region. On the one hand, bad political relations across the Taiwan Strait do not weaken Taiwan’s economic dependency on the mainland, and unstable Sino-Japanese and Sino-South Korean relations do not harm their economic relations much either. On the other hand, due to the lack of specialization between China and its SCO partners, their economic integration has not made headway, notwithstanding that a close political cooperation existed among these countries. This study suggests that economics rather than politics contributes more to one country’s economic presence in another.
Conclusion: Understanding China’s Economic Presence in the Region The preceding empirical and comparative studies capture a significant aspect of China’s multifaceted economic role in the region. Generally speaking, a country increases its economic presence in two ways: one through import and outward investment, the other through export and
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attracting FDI. In China’s case, it is the increasing importance of economic globalization, especially as a key link to the global production chain that has built China a significant economic power in the region. With economic globalization and regional specialization, manufacturing has become more internationalized and specialized. China’s abundant labor supply and huge potential domestic market have made it a key link in global production chains. Huge FDI inflow has made China the world’s most important factory, with goods going primarily to the North American and Western European countries. In sum, there exists a highly integrated regional production network in East Asia that is centered upon China, and this position as the key link of a regional production network has powered much of China’s rising presence in the region. To benefit from this new trend of regional specialization, China’s neighbors have to maintain close economic ties with China regardless of their political relations. In this emerging network, economies surrounding China supply the parts and components for products produced in China for future export to the EU and the United States. This new trend in production is mutually beneficial and represents a restructuring of industrial production in East Asia.16 Increasingly, intraregional trade of parts and components in East Asia has expanded faster than that for conventional final goods as well as exports to other regions.17 Table 3.4 depicts the interdependence of exports among East Asian economies and their dependence on the United States and the EU. From 2000 to 2005, China’s significance as a destination for East Asian exports increased: China now takes in an increasing share of these countries’ total exports. Meanwhile, China lost part of its share of exports destined for East Asia, yet gained an increased share destined for the United States and the EU. In contrast, most East Asian economies decreased their share of exports to the United States and the EU but increased their share of exports to East Asia. Due to the lack of production specialization and intra-industrial trade, China and the other SCO countries did not make much headway on trade among them during the same period despite close political ties. Overall, China’s economic presence is mostly economics driven rather than politics driven. China’s open-door policy, which emphasizes export-oriented development and an FDI-friendly environment, is the major driving force behind its economic growth as well as the main source of its economic influence. China’s comparative advantage in manufacturing and its potential as a huge consumer market has been a much more potent force than its foreign policy in powering China’s increasing integration with the regional economy. As a result, regional economies have benefited greatly from these new economic dynamics in Asia.
Share of Total Exports Destined For (%) Exporter
Year China Japan Hong Kong Korea Taiwan Singapore Malaysia Thailand Philippines Indonesia ASEAN
China
2000 2005 Japan 2000 2005 Hong Kong 2000 2005 Korea 2000 2005 Taiwan 2000 2005 Singapore 2000 2005 Malaysia 2000 2005 Thailand 2000 2005 Philippines 2000 2005 Indonesia 2000 2005
16.72 11.02 6.34 13.46 34.46 44.65 10.71 21.77 17.21 28.36 3.90 8.60 3.08 6.60 4.09 8.30 1.74 9.89 4.46 7.78
5.52 5.24 11.88 8.45 11.11 7.62 7.55 5.46 13.07 9.35 14.68 13.65 14.73 17.47 23.20 21.07
17.86 16.34 5.67 6.04
6.22 5.46 21.55 17.15 7.86 9.37 4.52 5.85 5.05 5.57 5.01 8.10 2.50 1.74
4.53 4.61 6.41 7.84 1.83 2.24
2.63 2.96 3.57 3.51 3.34 3.36 1.84 2.04 3.08 3.37 6.95 8.27
2.50 2.64 8.06 7.74 1.17 0.72 5.24 4.65
3.65 2.16 5.45 3.70 4.04 2.62 9.46 6.78 4.86 5.30
2.31 2.18 4.34 3.10 2.33 2.07 3.28 2.60 3.71 4.05
18.37 15.61 8.74 6.77 8.20 6.56 10.56 9.15
1.03 1.39 2.90 2.11 0.89 0.83 2.04 1.62 2.43 2.16 18.16 13.23
4.08 5.16 3.62 5.96 3.17 4.01
0.90 1.03 2.84 3.77 0.91 1.03 1.17 1.19 1.75 1.93 4.26 4.09 3.61 5.38
3.17 2.83 1.65 2.62
0.59 0.62 2.14 1.52 0.99 0.90 1.95 1.13 2.06 2.18 2.45 1.82 1.76 1.40 1.57 1.86
1.32 1.66
1.23 1.10 1.58 1.55 0.47 0.43 2.03 1.77 1.15 1.19 2.75 9.62 1.74 2.36 1.94 3.60 0.48 1.16
6.96 7.27 14.29 12.70 6.06 5.90 11.69 9.65 12.20 13.57 27.39 31.32 26.53 26.08 19.40 21.77 15.71 17.34 17.52 18.47
EA
USA
EU
48.57 41.87 40.77 47.79 49.04 58.75 45.74 49.98 64.70 69.66 53.92 60.42 55.98 54.94 49.10 53.94 49.73 62.96 59.49 62.64
20.93 21.42 30.04 22.85 23.18 15.92 21.95 14.59 23.42 14.67 17.34 10.39 20.52 19.69 21.40 15.46 29.95 18.02 13.66 11.54
15.34 17.71 16.36 13.82 15.32 13.99 13.62 13.68 15.10 11.25 13.24 11.50 13.68 11.16 15.83 12.91 17.93 16.43 13.97 11.56
Sources: Author’s calculation based on data from Commodity Trade Statistics Database (COMTRADE), United Nations Statistics Division, http://comtrade.un.org/db/dqBasicQuery.aspx
Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to University of MN Twin Cities - PalgraveConnect 2011-04-19
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Table 3.4 Export Interdependency in East Asia, 2000–2005
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Notes 1. Ruobing Liang is Associate Professor of economics at Xiamen University, China. His research interest is public economics. He thanks Mingjiang Li, Shiping Tang, and Sarah Tong for their helpful comments on a previous draft. 2. All figures are from 2005. 3. Sheng Lijun, “China-ASEAN Free Trade Area: Origins, Developments and Strategic Motivations,” ISEAS (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies) Working Paper: International Politics and Security Issues Series, No. 1 (Singapore, 2003). 4. Markus Hund, “ASEAN plus Three: Toward a New Age of Pan-East Asian Regionalism? A Skeptic’s Appraisal,” Pacific Review 16:3 (2003), pp. 383-417. 5. John Weiss and Shanwen Gao, “Exports Competition between China and ASEAN Countries in U.S. and Japanese Market during the Second Half of 1990s,” Jingjixue Jikan (China Economic Quarterly) 3:3 (2004), pp. 569-586; David R. Holst and John Weiss, “ASEAN and China: Exports Rivals or Partners in Regional Growth?” World Economy 27:8 (2004), pp. 1255-1274; John Wong and Sarah Chan, “China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement: Shaping Future Economic Relations,” Asian Survey 43:3 (2003), pp. 507-526. 6. Coincidentally, Singapore and Thailand are also two of the most aggressive proponents of CAFTA; see Markus Hund, “ASEAN plus Three.” 7. “Indonesia Textile Industry Choked,” The Straits Times (Singapore), September 2, 2002, p. 1; Jose L. Tongzon, “ASEAN-China Free Trade Area: A Bane or Boon for ASEAN Countries?” World Economy 28:2 (2005), pp. 191-210. 8. David Greenaway and Chris Milner, “Regionalism and Gravity,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 49:5 (2002), pp. 574-585. 9. Lee Jong-Wha and Park Innwon, “Free Trade Areas in East Asia: Discriminatory or Non-discriminatory?” World Economy 28:1 (2005), pp. 21-48; Matthieu Bussiere and Bernd Schnatz, “Evaluating China’s Integration in World Trade with a Gravity Model Based Benchmark,” ECB (European Central Bank) Working Paper Series No.693 (Frankfurt, 2006); Christos Papazoglou, Eric J. Pentecost, and Helena Marques, “A Gravity Model Forecast of the Potential Trade Effects of EU Enlargement: Lessons from 2004 and Path-dependency in Integration,” World Economy 29:8 (2006), pp. 1077-1089. 10. Due to a data availability problem, this dataset does not include trade statistics of Myanmar, Laos, and Brunei. 11. Robert C. Feenstra, “Border Effects and the Gravity Equation: Consistent Methods for Estimation,” Scottish Journal of Political Economy 49:5 (2002), pp. 491-506. 12. Lee Jong-Wha and Park Innwon, “Free Trade Areas in East Asia.” 13. In 2007 during the Asian Winter Games in Shenyang, several South Korean athletes exhibited a banner declaring South Korea’s sovereignty over the Changbai Mountains. 14. Tse-Kang Leng, “Dynamics of Taiwan-Mainland China Economic Relations: The Role of Private Firms,” Asian Survey 38:5 (1998), pp. 494-509.
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15. Tang Shiping, “Economic Integration in Central Asia: The Russian and Chinese Relationship,” Asian Survey 40:2 (2000), pp. 360-376. 16. David Roland-Holst and John Weiss, “People’s Republic of China and Its Neighbors: Evidence on Regional Trade and Investment Effects,” Asian-Pacific Economic Literature 19:2 (2005), pp. 18-35. 17. Prema-chandra Athukorala and Nobuaki Yamashita,“Production Fragmentation and Trade Integration: East Asia in a Global Context,” Paper for the workshop on Regional Integration with Particular Reference to Asia, CA, USA, February 25, 2005; Francis Ng and Alexander Yeats, “Major Trade Trends in East Asia: What Are Their Implications for Regional Cooperation and Growth?” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3084 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2003).
4
India and China: Confidence Building through Crises Swaran Singh1
istory has made India’s living with China a very complicated business. The two countries, however, continue to muddle through, and their relationship has managed to move somewhat beyond the old rivalry. While an increasing number of Western experts, including Indian scholars based in Western countries, tend to see the future of the India-China relationship in terms of confrontation or rivalry, many Indian experts, even Indian hardliners, describe it more like a quiet competition or an important challenge.2 No one in India today sees China as essentially a malevolent and sinister entity out to demolish India. Instead, it is their mutual confidence building that has become the hallmark of India-China ties.3 Therefore, even though their interactions remain a rather complex web, recent years have witnessed both sides strengthening some positive trends in their relationship. It is in this fast-changing new context that this chapter tries to revisit the evolution and the contours of China-India relations. It aims to do so primarily from Indian perspectives, for example by examining various shades of India’s debates about a rising China and by examining in detail two important case studies: India’s nuclear tests of 1998 and the fourth India-Pakistan War of 1999 (i.e., the Kargil crisis). After a decade of India’s experiments with opening up and making economic reforms that facilitated India-China economic engagement, these two cases provided the litmus test for their newly acquired understanding about mutual stakes and diplomatic skills to steer clear of the possible pitfalls in their continued and peaceful development. Analyses of these two case studies provide critical insights into the processes and outcome of India-China confidence building in recent years and about its future.
H
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The first section of the chapter gives a brief historical review of India-China relations. It discusses the 1962 border war and the implications of the war for India-China relations. The second part focuses on the cases of India’s nuclear tests and the India-Pakistan military confrontation in 1999 to illuminate how New Delhi and Beijing interacted during the two crises. The third part attempts to offer some explanations for why India and China adopted the policies that they did toward each other in the post – Cold War era. It explores domestic, regional, and global factors that have helped shape the recent policies of these two countries. This author concludes that in the past decade the dominant paradigm in India-China relations has been continuous confidence and mutual trust building, although the process has never been smooth. In order to sustain the momentum of confidence building, however, there are a few challenges that need to be overcome. These challenges include how the two states regard each other strategically as both begin to rise in the new century and put their respective relationships with the United States in a proper perspective. It is here that these two cases under study provided crucial turning points in bilateral ties.
Strands of Continuity and Change The China-India border war of 1962 remains the most critical determinant of India’s China perspectives. This war made China-watching a taboo during the 1960s and the 1970s.4 A small group did try to retain interest in China, but only at the cost of developing a ghetto mindset of being a closely knit network tied to stereotypes. Much of China studies during this period presented a sharp division between sinophiles and sinophobes. In the mid1960s, even the Communist Party of India split on this issue, resulting in the creation of a pro-China Communist Party of India (Marxists). China’s Cultural Revolution further exacerbated these limitations on India’s Chinawatching. During the 1960s, Indian diplomats in Beijing were singled out for humiliation.5 Prime Minister Nehru, however, continued to support China’s permanent seat at the United Nations (UN) Security Council even during the India-China war. Throughout those years, China continued to support the formation of Naxalite groups in India and provide support, training, and equipment to insurgents in India’s turmoil-ridden NorthEastern region.6 The intellectual discourse on China in such a context was formulated largely by the ex-diplomats with postings in Beijing, with a few language experts and generals becoming inordinately dominant in India’s China studies.7 Their selective preoccupations missed explorations into critical areas like China’s domestic politics and nation-building. Without appreciating their complex domestic variables of
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foreign policy, both India and China continued to blame old colonial and Cold War legacies as the explanations for their continued ignorance, division, and mutual skepticism. One aspect of colonial legacies was Eurocentrism, where the mindset continues to regard what came out of the West as really important, while giving a much lower priority to other societies. For most in India, therefore, although China is recognized as India’s big neighbor, it remains “distant in the public mind” in reality.8 A more nuanced image of China does not impinge on the Indian consciousness, and Indian views of China continue to lack that sense of involvement or strong feelings.9 Experts today agree that their mutual ignorance remains their major challenge.10 Both sides continue to build bridges, yet without any reflection of self-confidence in their original ideas and bold political innovations, and they end up giving credit to the role of external factors. One former foreign secretary and national security advisor believes that the normalization of India-China relations gained momentum primarily because of change in the global strategic environment. 11 Another Indian diplomat writing in the late 1990s believes that these two large continental economies would find it difficult to increase their mutual cooperation. In qualitative terms, he says, “in trying to solve specific problems of development, we could be of some use to each other, but not in quantity.” His prescription is that a healthy attitude would be one of limited mutual relevance rather than sentimental obsession with each other in a world from which we have so much to gain separately (emphasis added).12 Even on Tibet, scholars still believe that “repression or instability in Tibet generates domestic debate in India.”13 On the positive side, the rapprochement since the early 1970s remains the single most positive influence. The rapprochement has encouraged extensive re-examinations of all these perspectives including the 1962 war. This has allowed fresh interpretation of the India-China war and the redemption of India’s self-confidence. One such recent study14 concludes that although the Chinese inflicted a memorable defeat on India, there was no surrender. Moreover, at the end of this war, China’s ability to threaten India with dire consequences if its demands were not met diminished considerably. This study concludes that both China and India were the losers in this war, while Tibetan Buddhism emerged as the winner especially in subsequent years—breaking out of its feudal moorings and gaining a following in the world at large. The fact that India has ensured sustenance of Tibetan religion and culture all these years has brought laurels to India, making it somewhat a winner in the long run. The result is that Indian intellectuals increasingly feel confident to prescribe lessons for India from China’s early policy of universalizing health care and education and to advocate that India learn from China’s experience.15
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Two Case Studies: Pokhran-II and the Kargil War With the advantage of hindsight, these two events and the way China and India managed to deal with them have proved major watersheds, initiating far more robust India-China interactions.16 India’s nuclear tests of May 1998 presented the first wake-up call at a time when India-China rapprochement had begun to slide from the second half of the 1990s, with the November 1996 visit by then president Jiang Zemin marking its last peak. This decline in India-China ties can be traced back to the indefinite and unconditional extension of the nonproliferation treaty (NPT) during May 1995 and China’s nuclear tests that had preceded it, as well as the comprehensive nuclear test ban (CTB) negotiations since early 1996. It was in this context of Beijing’s rethinking that India’s nuclear tests were to mark the backdrop for the fourth India-Pakistan war in the Kargil sector of their Line of Control (LoC), which also proved another major trigger for change in Beijing’s South Asia policy. China’s posture of neutrality during the Kargil conflict completed a full circle as it vividly evinced a marked pro – New Delhi shift.17 This was clearly in contrast to the past, when a China-Pakistan “all weather,” “special relationship” defined China’s South Asia policy, and China’s new position has significantly changed this region’s overall security landscape.18
Case One: India’s Nuclear Tests of 1998 India detonated five nuclear devices on May 11 and 13, 1998, and staked its claim to being a Nuclear Weapon State, something that has been discouraged (read prohibited) by all the nonproliferation norms and regimes since the early 1960s. According to the existing international legal interpretations, China was the last country to become a nuclear weapon state, in October 1964. This also meant that China had remained the only one among developing countries and the only Asian country to possess nuclear weapons, which also related to its being a permanent member of the UN Security Council and part of several other big-table decision-making forums around the world. In the face of this reality, India was to defend its decision to “go nuclear” by citing the China threat as its trigger. Moreover, India’s tests were followed by six similar tests by Pakistan on May 29 and 30, 1998, which not only brought the alleged ChinaPakistan nuclear axis into global focus but also made this strongest ally of China far more independent of its traditional patron. So, among others, India’s nuclear tests had the most direct and immediate implications for China’s national security and international stature. To start with, the Chinese side did initially display calm by keeping silent for nearly 24 hours following India’s first two explosions on May 11, 1998. But soon, in view of India’s second series of three more explosions on May 13, 1998, and
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more so, following the leakage of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s letter to President Bill Clinton—which described China’s nuclear arsenals as well as their proliferation to India’s western neighbor as the main reason for India’s going nuclear—Beijing unleashed a tirade and described India as trying to emerge as a “hegemon” in South Asia.19 China was then seen playing an extremely active role in the passing of Resolution 1172 by the UN Security Council and in convening another meeting of the P-5 (i.e. veto holding powers of UN Security Council) foreign ministers in London on June 4, 1998. China issued a bilateral joint statement on South Asia with the United States when Clinton visited Beijing on June 27, 1998, and brought this up in another joint statement when Jiang Zemin visited Kazakhstan to attend the third summit of the Shanghai Five. The same was the tenor of China’s White Paper on National Defense, which was issued in Beijing in July 1998.20 But these initial months of Beijing’s relentless diplomatic campaigns to isolate India pushed New Delhi into crisis-management initiatives with major powers, although China was the last one to respond to the Indian diplomatic overtures. Nevertheless, the return to rapprochement between the two countries came earlier than most experts expected.21 To appreciate China’s response, it is important to underline the enormity of this event for Beijing, for whom it was not simply a defiance of nonproliferation. The real significance of India’s tests lay not in their detonation but in the surprise of their being so sudden and especially in the range of weapons technology that India’s nuclear tests demonstrated. Second, what perturbed Beijing was New Delhi’s immediate explanation—citing “China threat” as the key rationale behind its decision to exercise its nuclear option that had been kept in suspended animation since India conducted its first nuclear test in May 1974. The follow-up nuclear tests by Pakistan only further complicated equations. As a recent entrant into the Western nuclear nonproliferation regimes from the mid-1980s, Beijing did not have many options but to retaliate with several harsh formal statements. China also made its own contribution in breaking the ice and creating new openings with India. As China’s leaders and experts reevaluated their assessments about the post – Pokhran-II India-China equations, the first noticeable change came in the form of suddenly slowing down their global rhetoric. The initial international campaign was rapidly replaced by their growing businesslike attitude, which witnessed some new, well-thought-out expressions in China’s policies.22 China even indicated a possible change in its Pakistan policy.23 Beijing stressed how China was deeply “hurt” by India’s decision to explain its nuclear test in terms of “China threat,” and it asked India to “untie these knots” that Pokhran-II had put into India-China relations. First, Indian and Chinese leaders historically have never been shy about taking initiatives in streamlining their ties.24 Second, India’s policy initiatives vis-à-vis China were part of India’s reorientation of its policies toward China’s traditional give-and-take approach.
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Third, this was part of India’s fine-tuning of its nuclear policy to serve India’s foreign policy and not the other way around. Thus, compared to the initial firefighting approach from both sides, their interactions soon evolved as far better planned and they stressed areas of agreement rather than conflict. Regarding untying the knots, apart from India’s business travelers who were first to revive contact, the first Indian delegation to visit China was that of academics (Track II), who were hosted by the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) during October 1998. This was then reciprocated by two delegations of Chinese experts visiting India. The first 16-member delegation, composed of scholars from Yunnan and Sichuan, visited the Indian cities of Calcutta, Delhi, Bengalore, Bhopal, and Chennai during November 1998. This was followed by a five-member delegation from Beijing. Led by a former Chinese ambassador to New Delhi, Cheng Ruisheng, they visited New Delhi during January 24-29, 1999. In addition to their three-day deliberations with Indian experts, they called on India’s president K. R. Naraynan, who was very important in exchanging positive signals between the two sides. These apolitical interactions provided the necessary kick-start, and the first post – Pokhran-II Indian official delegation visited Beijing during February 24-28, 1999.25 Following this first visit by India’s official delegation to Beijing led by the Joint Secretary (East Asia), the two sides held their Joint Business Council meeting during March 15, 1999.26 Finally, the seal of normalization was put on China-India interactions when the two sides held the 11th round of their Joint Working Group on the Boundary Question in Beijing during April 1999. At the political level as well, Mr. Jaswant Singh (then as prime minister’s special emissary) was first to hold a meeting with China’s foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, at the sidelines of the annual meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in Manila during August 1998. This meeting had generated speculations on the possibility of Mr. Jaswant Singh leading a high-level “dialogue” with China, just like the one he was holding with Mr. Strobe Talbot of the United States. Such ideas were further strengthened by the prime minister’s statements in Parliament and repeated statements by the prime minister’s principal secretary, Brajesh Mishra, echoing sentiments in favor of major initiatives in India-China interactions. In fact, following Mr. Jaswant Singh’s taking over as foreign minister during December 1998, possibilities for an early India-China dialogue were understood to have increased substantially. This was partly because, according to press reports, in his letter of congratulations to Mr. Jaswant Singh, China’s foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan expressed hope that under his stewardship of India’s Ministry of External Affairs, China and India should be able to further “consolidate and develop” friendly and good neighborly relations. An equally positive response was reportedly provided by Mr. Jaswant Singh’s reply to Tang Jiaxuan. Similarly, addressing his first formal press conference after taking over as foreign minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh reiterated India’s commitment
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to “further improving” relations with China, and he urged China’s leaders to help India “untie the knots” through frequent consultations and dialogue.27 Many more such statements continued to be made, improving the atmosphere for India-China interactions and leading finally to a historic visit to Beijing by India’s foreign minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh. This marked a clear change in the tenor of the bilateral relations, with both sides reiterating that they no longer regarded each other as a threat. But by now China and India were close to the next crisis at hand—the fourth India-Pakistan war in the Kargil sector of their Line of Control (LoC). However, instead of distracting China and India from their post – Pokhran-II positive initiatives, the Kargil War provided another most timely trigger in China’s evolution of far more flexible foreign policy thinking, which was demonstrated in Beijing’s sustained posture of neutrality during the Indo-Pak conflict in Kargil.
Case Two: The Kargil War of 1999 More than a historic episode in India-Pakistan relations, the Kargil War marks the threshold of Beijing’s unraveling its India policy from the traditional amalgamation called South Asia policy. The single most important strand of this change lay in China’s sustained posture of neutrality, particularly over the Kashmir question, in the Kargil War, as illustrated in China’s response to the visit by Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif that marked the epitome of this new genre.28 Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had undertaken this visit to Beijing at the end of June 1999 as a matter of last resort—to approach a long-standing ally to help Pakistan recover its fast-eroding credibility and to divert attention by internationalizing Kashmir.29 But the manner in which he cut short his week-long “working visit” was to demonstrate the negative outcome of his summit meetings with Chinese leaders. In his meeting with Prime Minister Sharif, the Chinese premier Zhu Rongji was to tell his guest to seek political solutions by reviving the India-Pakistan Lahore Declaration of February 1999.30 From then on, India and China not only began to announce that they did not view each other as a security threat but have since come to describe their relations as “strategic cooperative partnership,” which promises to have a determining influence on the future of regional, if not global, political equations.31 Among others, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif ’s visit to China was to become the most important catalyst in making the Clinton-Sharif deal of July 4, 1999, possible and result in bringing about an earlier-than-expected end of this India-Pakistan conflict. All that the Clinton-Sharif deal finally facilitated was an honorable retreat for the Pakistani armed forces. Nevertheless, looking at the factors that made this deal possible, it was clearly China’s continued posture of neutrality that seemed to have provided the most decisive input in
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convincing the Pakistani leadership of the futility of continuing to back up its losing armed forces and seeking to internationalize Kashmir in the face of Pakistan’s growing diplomatic isolation. In addition to its immediate contribution toward bringing about the ClintonSharif deal, any objective assessment of China’s response during the Kargil conflict first needs to be placed against the broader historical backdrop of China’s traditional pro-Pak policies. Second, China’s neutrality also needs to be viewed in the context of a high degree of skepticism in India about the nature and magnitude of the China-Pakistan axis. This skepticism was especially strong in the context of New Delhi’s not-so-friendly ties with Beijing following India’s nuclear explosions during May 1998. Third, because these three countries share a rather complicated history and geography, their complicated trilateral China-India-Pak security equations must be kept in mind while trying to gauge the overall character and contribution of Beijing’s posture of neutrality in the Kargil conflict of 1999. And here, in the changed post – Pokhran-II India-China equations, the following can perhaps be cited as major factors behind Beijing’s posture of neutrality. First, from the mid-1990s, Pakistan repeatedly defied Beijing. A vivid example of this was Islamabad’s decision to conduct nuclear tests despite China’s advice to the contrary. Pakistan’s nuclear and missile tests had occasionally embarrassed China’s leaders, with the United States repeatedly asking Beijing to strengthen their export controls and to abide by their commitments to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). China was also accused of stealing nuclear and missile technologies from U.S. facilities, which made Beijing all the more cautious about their narrowing foreign policy choices. Second, Pakistan had continuously failed to curb the activities of Islamic fundamentalist groups reportedly involved in China’s Xinjiang region. China’s Uyghur Muslims were found among the “intruders” in Kargil. As China evolved its state-to-state ties with the Central Asian republics, thus blocking all other possibilities of Muslim fundamentalists in Xinjiang finding sanctuaries outside, this made Pakistan the main culprit. Militants in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir continued to recruit Chinese ethnic minorities whose activities in China provided justifications for all the anti-China human rights campaigns. Given its own fragile internal ethnic fabric, China would not like to be seen as supporting any jihad-like misadventures outside. Third, in the late 1990s, Pakistan was no longer required to play the frontline state to bleed the Soviets white. This meant that it no longer enjoyed the same special relationship with Washington, DC. Instead, Islamabad’s continued involvement in Afghanistan was to further erode its credibility with countries becoming increasingly worried about the menace of the expanding Pakcontrolled heavily armed Taliban. China, building a new strategic partnership with Russia and seeking greater acceptability among other neighboring countries
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like India, felt compelled to adopt a balanced approach and a more objective role in dealing with problems between Islamabad and New Delhi. Fourth, the fear of this unstable nuclear triangle—with China, India, and Pakistan now possessing nuclear weapons and missiles—was also very visible in all the Chinese analyses during the Kargil conflict. As a result, emphasis on regional stability was played up in most of their official and media responses. It surely was linked to Beijing’s declining leverage in restraining Pakistan. This aspect was never stressed as much in responses by any of the other big powers like the United States that have been projecting Kashmir as a potential nuclear flash point. Finally, given China’s own diplomatic standoff with the United States following congressional allegations that China stole U.S. nuclear and missile technologies, the fear of conflicts like Kargil encouraging Western interventions in China’s periphery was repeatedly highlighted by the Chinese. What appears particularly remarkable was the international response that seemed to be clearly one-sided—disapproving Pakistani violation of the LoC and endorsing India’s policy stance on the Kargil conflict. This point of view was not only unprecedented but also largely unexpected—even startling in some cases—and it also circumscribed China’s response. That China withstood adverse pressures from a long-standing ally in sustaining its posture of neutrality was also at least partially a result of India’s sustained engagement with Beijing, resulting in China’s positive response to India’s initiatives. Right in the middle of the Kargil War, Indian foreign minister Jaswant Singh visited China on June 14 and 15, 1999. The two foreign ministers met again on July 24, 1999, on the sidelines of ARF, leading to China’s foreign minister, Tang Jiaxuan, visiting India in June 2000 and China endorsing India’s “stabilizing role” in South Asia.32 The two established a Security Dialogue in March 2000, a Joint Working Group on Countering Terrorism in January 2003, a Strategic Dialogue in January 2005, and a Memorandum of Understanding signed between the two military establishments in May 2006. All these launched their ties at a very different level. Meanwhile, the China-India-Russia Strategic Triangle was also gaining momentum, and while China welcomed India as an observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, India welcomed China as an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. All these clearly indicated their cooperation moving beyond their historical and bilateral concerns to regional and global matters where China and India share much greater commonality of views and much higher comfort levels.
The Follow-up Developments in India-China Relations Let us now briefly examine the specific positive outcome that can be seen as directly related to India’s nuclear tests of 1998 and the Kargil War of 1999.
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At the very outset, the most important and visible outcome of these two aforementioned episodes were the two breakthrough visits heralding a new robust phase of mutual confidence building between New Delhi and Beijing. The first one was the visit by the then defense minister George Fernandes in April 2003. George Fernandes had earlier expressed mistrust in India-China relations by describing China as India’s enemy number one only weeks before India’s Pokhran-II nuclear tests. This visit by India’s defense minister to China was also significant in being the first such interface in the post – Cold War era when India and China had emerged as two new alternative pillars in the international system. In addition, coming in the wake of China’s SARS pandemic when most international events originally scheduled to be held in China stood canceled, the Indian defense minister’s visit was much appreciated by his Chinese hosts. On his return, Fernandes ordered medicines to be sent to SARS victims in China, which was seen as a noble way of using India’s defense budget when it came to the defense ministry’s dealings with China. The ministry’s China policy has since moved from emphasizing military strategy to making military diplomacy the buzzword of their interactions and speeches. The second watershed event soon to follow was a visit by then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in June 2003. As stated, he had been the author of a letter to the U.S. president, Bill Clinton, on May 11, 1998, indicating “China threat” as the reason for India’s nuclear tests. However, at the end of this visit, commentators were to describe this as a breakthrough visit marking the second phase of China-India post-1998 confidence building. The summit had many firsts to its credit. First, this visit displayed a stabilizing relationship that has since focused on developing a fair, equitable, international political and economic order, with support for global disarmament, including efforts to prevent the weaponization of outer space. This visit also witnessed a few indicators of China supporting India’s case for a “greater role” in the proposed expansion of the UN Security Council. Second, by deciding to open the Nathu La pass for their third border trade point in the eastern sector of their disputed border and by appointing special representatives to develop a political framework for border negotiations, the two demonstrated their determination to speed up the process of resolving the territorial disputes. The next three and a half years witnessed special representatives having ten rounds of talks and signing a breakthrough agreement in April 2005.33 Third, New Delhi showed even greater appreciation of Beijing’s sensitivity over the Tibet issue by affirming, for the first time, that the Tibetan Autonomous Region is part of “the territory” of China. Beijing, on the other hand, extended recognition of Sikkim as a province of India, something that Beijing had refused to do ever since this small Himalayan kingdom became part of Indian Republic in 1975.34
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Finally, the most startling results of this visit were marked by a strong economic orientation and the even stronger subsequent boom in their bilateral trade. As a follow-up action, a China-India Joint Study Group on Trade and Economic Cooperation was set up in March 2004, and it submitted a report in 2005 giving extensive suggestions for cooperation at bilateral and regional levels.35 This general positive momentum generated by these two visits was followed by frequent high-level exchanges and initiatives. The Chinese defense minister visited India for the first time in almost a decade, followed by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s visit in April 2005. India’s defense minister, Pranab Mukherjee, visited China in May 2006; India’s chief of Army Staff visited China in late 2004; and the commander of the Indian 4th Army Corp—the unit that was involved in the 1962 war and is now stationed in the areas along the Line of Actual Control (LoAC)—visited Tibet Military District Command in Lhasa. This period also witnessed India and China conducting naval exercises in November 2003 and then in December 2005.36 The two have held several joint military exercise since. Institutionalizing the ad hoc interface between their two military establishments, China and India signed their Memorandum of Understanding for cooperation between their defense establishments on May 22, 2006, to encourage regular joint training and exercises, and exchanges and other contacts between the armed forces and defense officials and experts of the two countries.37 While 2006 was declared China-India Year of Friendship, 2007 was designated Year of China-India Tourism. The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, visited India during November 2006 and signed a nuclear cooperation agreement among several things, and the two countries now describe their ties as a partnership of “strategic” and “global” significance and outreach.38 The rest, as they say, remains history-in-the-making.
China and India: Engaging While Rising No doubt, it is this strong sense of mutual confidence and rapprochement that defines the nature of contemporary China-India interactions, yet the sinews of competition (even confrontation) remain integral to all assessments about their present and future. There is perhaps need to caution against some of these stereotypes. First, the whole debate about the rise of China, and India’s perceptions about its implications, must be viewed through the prism of the rise of both China and India. Both have experienced a sustained and rapid economic growth since the early 1980s and 1990s respectively, and this has been accompanied by their military modernization and increasing regional influence. Second, compared to the economic achievements of Germany, Japan, and the “four small dragons” (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore) in the 1960s and 1970s, Chinese and Indian economic developments have greater
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political and security significance owing to their national sizes and social transitional degrees.39 That there is no comparable example in history must remain central to any analysis on the nature and future of India-China relations.
Indian Perceptions of China’s Rise According to a Chinese scholar on India’s perceptions about a rising China, the most visible fact remains that compared to China, India continues to lag behind in gross domestic product (GDP), foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign trade, and other benchmarks.40 However, while recognizing the fact that India is not able to match China in many macroeconomic numbers, many Indian scholars still believe that, by relying primarily on organic growth, India is making full use of its resources and has chosen a path that may well deliver a far more sustained progress in the long run. Some Indian experts believe that while the world is talking about the rise of China and India as the fastest-growing economies, it is important to have a deeper look at the internal dynamics of these two populous societies and highlight their likely pitfalls. It is this deeper and nuanced understanding of China that underlies India’s initiatives in these difficult times. No doubt, China has made significant progress in terms of macroeconomic indicators, yet its gains in per capita income and consumption remain low and highly uneven. Its reforms of the last three decades—driven initially by gains in agricultural production, particularly in the early years, 1978–1984, when the state boosted purchasing prices for agricultural commodities and the farmers responded–have begun to show decline. Even today, substantial rural poverty exists in China, notably in inland and mountain areas remote from and largely bypassed by urban industrialization, market and export growth, and foreign investment centered in coastal regions.41 Indeed, in recent years the degree of income inequality in China ranks among the highest in the world.42 In contrast to the official media, which seeks to highlight economic progress and village elections, academic experts emphasize the fact that village elections have left intact local party-centered power structures in the one-party state.43 As regards the implications of the rise of China, a former Indian foreign secretary and national security advisor believes that China does not consider India a challenger, though it is conscious that China should sustain its position at a higher level of political influence and military, strategic, and technological capacities when compared to India.44 According to another Indian expert, China’s emergence has been premised on globalization and is contingent on its continued economic growth and security in a stable external order.45 The events on and following September 11, 2001 remain another major influence on IndiaChina interactions and have been especially responsible for evaporating the
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Pakistan factor from their equations.46 India’s strategic community more specifically is the one that continuously highlights how India must learn from China’s flexibility of approach, well-defined set of principles, and yet policy preferences rooted in realpolitik. By conventional wisdom, the simultaneous rise of the two largest states to modernity and major power status in an overlapping geopolitical area and security periphery has historically been destabilizing and conflict prone. In the West, the growth of these two giant economies is expected to affect not only regional markets but also flows of global savings, investments, and even people around the world and to place heavy demands on the global commons, such as the oceans and the atmosphere.47 This makes China-India growth trajectories of interest not only to these two states but to the whole of Asia and the world. Indian policy makers, however, have adapted to trends in Chinese pragmatism, the use of noncoercive means when confronting an adversary, and peaceful diplomacy for settling disputes. Recent initiatives in India-China ties evince this growing realization. Their growing interdependence and consultation, as a result, promise to reduce the risks of miscalculation and misunderstanding and to promote mutual confidence.48
The Perennial U.S. Factor However, as India and China strengthen their resolve not to allow their historical and bilateral issues to disrupt their cooperation and to reorient their jointmanship to regional and global issues and forums, their respective proximity to the United States has come to be one major new variable in their mutual cooperation. When the United States gets close to one country it simply creates suspicions in the minds of the other side.49 This perilous U.S. factor also makes them increasingly conscious of how shifts in the global and regional power balance impinge on their respective diplomatic and security interests.50 Following the Indian nuclear tests, the Clinton administration was delighted to find Beijing enthusiastic about working with them on South Asian nuclear proliferation. One result was the Sino-U.S. Presidential Joint Statement on South Asia on June 27, 1998, during Clinton’s visit to Beijing. India, of course, saw this as an egregious manifestation of U.S. alignment with China against India.51 Lately, the United States and India are getting closer. Beijing has become concerned about their military cooperation agreement of June 2005, followed by their nuclear cooperation agreement of September 2008. At the same time, Beijing has often been compelled to respond to New Delhi’s overtures and initiatives.52 However, with the passage of time, their experience in mutual confidence building has encouraged China and India to begin evolving joint strategies to at least restrain, if not confront, the U.S. propensity to play the
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hegemon in international politics. Realizing fully that it would take decades to seriously compete with the United States, Beijing has increasingly focused its strategic energies on its Asian neighbors, especially India. China’s emphasis in recent years on explaining its rise as peaceful development is aimed to allay fears of its immediate neighbors lest they try to counterbalance its growing influence.53
The Way Ahead Examining India-China ties in the context of the last 100 years, one Indian scholar concludes that notwithstanding their continuing differences on many bilateral issues, India and China have converging views on various regional and international issues. The increasing bilateral exchange at the highest level and cooperation, for him, is a pointer to the fact that both India and China are willing to cast off the shadow of past differences and usher in a new era of cooperation.54 Others, who place this relationship in the context of the last 50 years, conclude that in view of India’s experiences with China, it is necessary to break out of their historical pattern of unilaterally expressing their best hopes or their worst fears and that the two seem to be working together to deal with their complex internal and external realities.55 It is especially in the short term that experts describe China as a challenge or even a threat to India’s interests, which can result in minor skirmishes. In the immediate future, for instance, China’s aggressive underbidding for energy, its attempts to divert Tibetan rivers and ensure access and safety of sea-lanes, and finally its position with respect to Taiwan can be described as possible flash points, yet most assessments are that India remains fully aware of China’s sensitivities and that the two have already begun to coordinate their policies. The success in their joint bids in Sudan and Syria during 2006-2007 is cited as example. Moreover, in the short-term future, where economic growth remains the focus of China’s fourth-generation leadership, China is not expected to provoke any confrontation beyond posturing and rhetoric.56 But India and China do need to boldly face certain inherited challenges, while accelerating the realization of the inherent potential of their working together.57 To some extent, India-China bilateral trade aptly highlights this emerging new interface of these two Asian giants. Their annual bilateral trade has increased from $1.9 billion in 1999 to $55 billion for 2008.58 This has led to a sudden increase in mutual travels, though these growing interactions have not resulted in growing mutual investments, especially as India continues to have security concerns that overcast this natural next step in their economic engagement. Meanwhile, more than 5000 Indian students studying medicine and other disciplines across China are one constituency that is rapidly expanding with the growing demand for
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Chinese education among younger Indians.59 Small-time, small-town traders, who procure components from China and sell their assemblies in India, have emerged as another pro-China segment of India’s perspectives on China. These new constituencies have had a visible impact in several critical areas including India’s military establishments now echoing semantics and sentiments of cooperation with China.60 No matter how slow their implementation may be, all these new trends do portend a strong positive momentum. In Indian eyes today, China is an integral part of Southern Asia’s geopolitical and strategic environment.61 This reality has been clearly reenforced by the nuclear tests of India and Pakistan in May 1998 which, juxtaposed with China, form a unique new nuclear triangle.62 Increasing numbers of Indian experts believe India-China problems have never really been bilateral and are even less so now. Any future assessment of Asian politics, for them, makes it clear that the India-China relationship remains the fulcrum of Asia, and if strings of power politics in the twenty-first century have to lie in Asia then this fulcrum has to be strengthened.63 The U.S. National Intelligence Council Report, titled Mapping the Global Futures, for instance, says that by 2020 the international community will have to confront the military, political, and economic dimensions of the rise of China and India. The report likens the emergence of China and India in the twenty-first century to the rise of Germany in the nineteenth century and America in the twentieth century, with impacts potentially as dramatic.64 All this clearly highlights that Indian perceptions about China are critical to the larger regional (even global) discourse on the rise of China and to the rise of China itself.
Conclusion From being a matter of concern to only a select group of politicians and historians during the first few years of India’s independence and a taboo subject following the India-China war of 1962, China has in recent years aroused an explosion of interest in India. Starting from the early 1980s, the success of their rapprochement and confidence building has been fueled by the rise of China, and China has increasingly become the subject of interest to everexpanding numbers of well-known scholars, foreign policy and security analysts, historians, economists, sociologists, diplomats, travelers, and fiction writers in India. The most apparent key to this transformation in Indian perspectives on China lies in rapid trade-led economic development and the resultant boom in their mutual trade as also their rising stakes, stature and expectations. Second, sustained proactive diplomacy with timely political and personal initiatives from both sides, juxtaposed with India’s growing pragmatism, deeper analysis, and expressed concerns for China’s sensitivities, deserve
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credit for this transformation in India’s perspectives on China, most of which defies conventional wisdom. It is in this new context that the aforementioned two episodes—India’s nuclear tests and the Kargil War—seem to have provided a litmus test and a timely trigger to fine-tune this transformation in their mutual perceptions and from there into their mutual policies and in India-China relations. External dynamics seem to have been only incidental, although they did contribute to the atmospherics. Nevertheless, while celebrating their fragile bonhomie, it is also essential to appreciate that Indian debate on a rising China remains a mosaic of different hues, all crisscrossing in their evolution. Therefore, this growing bonhomie that seems to broadly portend the nature of India’s contemporary experience of living with China remains still fragile and vulnerable to external pulls and pressures. The first requirement of an effective Indian policy toward China thus remains building a national consensus on how we define our complex interests vis-à-vis China in a world that has changed.65 But then, in a multiethnic, multilingual, multi-multi state—run by rather unwieldy, large coalition governments at the center and opposition parties in power in provinces—building national consensus on any part of foreign policy remains a tall order.
Notes 1. Swaran Singh is Professor for Diplomacy and Disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is President, Association of Asia Scholars (New Delhi) and General Secretary, Indian Congress of Asian & Pacific Studies (Varanasi, India). He can be reached at
[email protected]. 2. See for instance Francine R. Frankel and Harry Harding (eds), The India-China Relationship: What the United States Needs to Know, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, especially the following chapters: Ashley Tellis, “China and India in Asia,” pp. 143-177; Sumit Ganguly, “India and China: Border Issues, Domestic Integration and International Security,” pp. 103-133. For Indian hardliners see Bharat Karnad, Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security (pp. 540-544), New Delhi: Macmillan, 2002; Sunrahmanyam K., “Partnership in a Balance of Power System,” Strategic Analysis (New Delhi), Vol. 29 No. 4 p. 559 (October-December 2005); Brahma Chellaney, “India, China Mend Fences,” Washington Times, April 7, 2005. 3. CBMs generally include initiatives among real or perceived adversary states, aimed at avoiding violent conflicts, brinkmanship, and even accidents by building channels of mutual understanding. This is done through codifying and institutionalizing mutual transparency, especially in matters of defense. 4. Neville Maxwell, India’s China War (pp. 442-443), Dehradun, Uttranchal, India: Natraj Publishers, 1997.
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5. Damodaran A.K., “India’s China Policy: A Retrospective Survey,” in Surjit Mansingh (ed.), Indian and Chinese Foreign Policies in Comparative Perspective (p. 45), New Delhi: Radiant Publishers, 1998. Although official policy remained far more pro-China, such personal experiences of Indian diplomats negatively influenced their judgments in subsequent years. 6. Ibid., (p. 46). 7. Parshotam Mehra, Negotiating with the Chinese 1846–1987: Problems and Perspectives (pp. 120-121), New Delhi: Reliance Publishing House, 1989; Steven A. Hoffmann, India and the China Crisis (pp. 264-268), Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990; Nancy Jetly, India-China Relations, 1947–1977: A Study of Parliament’s Role in the Making of Foreign Policy (p. 301), Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979; Waheguru Pal Singh and Yuan Jing-dong, China and India: Cooperation or Conflict? (p. 174), New Delhi: India Research Press, 2003. Even in China’s foreign affairs, important issues like Taiwan, Macao, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong (with a large minority of Indians) remained neglected while Tibet received unduly large interest and initiatives. 8. Amba Bai, Indian Views of China before the Communist Revolution (p. 35), Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for International Studies, 1955. 9. Madhavi Thampi, Indians in China, 1800–1949 (p. 19), New Delhi: Manohar, 2005. 10. Qiu Yonghui, “Seeing India and China through Fresh Eyes,” The Hindu (New Delhi), July 2, 2006, p. 11. 11. Dixit A.K., Perspectives on Indo-China Relations (p. 51), New Delhi: Cyber Tech Publications, 2006. 12. Damodaran A.K., “India’s China Policy: A Retrospective Survey,” op. cit., p. 50. 13. Raju G. C. Thamas, India’s Security Environment: Towards the Year 2000 (p. 4), Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 1996; Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu and Yuan Jing-dong, China and India: Cooperation or Conflict? op. cit.. 14. Sudarshan Bhutani, A Clash of Political Cultures: Sino-Indian Relations, 1957–1962 (p. 214) New Delhi: Roli Books, 2004. 15. Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity (p. 189), London: Allen Lane, 2005. 16. Swaran Singh, “Pakistan Factor in Sino-Indian Ties: From Pokhran to Kargil,” in Avindyo J. Majumdar (ed.), Nuclear Indian into the New Millennium (p. 92), New Delhi: Lancer’s Books, 2000. 17. Ibid. 18. Swaran Singh (ed.), China-Pakistan Strategic Cooperation: Indian Perspectives (pp. 23-24), New Delhi: Manohar, 2007. 19. Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: May 14, 1998). 20. China’s National Defence (Information Office of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing, July 1998). 21. Swaran Singh, India-China Post-Nuclear Rapprochement, CSNS Policy Paper 4 (pp. 2-3), New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2002.
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22. See China’s initial statements during May-June 1998 like Statement by Ministry of Foreign Affairs, People’s Republic of China, May 14, 1998 and Speech by Ambassador Zhou Gang at Indian Association for International Affairs in New Delhi on October 20, 1998. Both of these are printed in News From China, June 10, 1998, and News From China, October 28, 1998. 23. “Differences with India ‘Temporary’: China,”The Hindu (New Delhi), February 26, 1999, p. 11. 24. See Swaran Singh, “Building Security and Confidence with China,” in Tan Chung (ed.), Across the Himalayan Gap: An Indian Quest for Understanding China (pp. 519-534), New Delhi: Gyan Publishers, 1999. 25. Swaran Singh,“Vajpayee’s China Policy,” The Pioneer (New Delhi), February 14, 1999, p. 10. 26. “India, China to Identify New Areas of Cooperation,” The Hindu (New Delhi), March 8, 1999, p. 8. 27. “India Ready for Talks with China: Jaswant,” The Hindu (New Delhi), December 25, 1998, p. 1. 28. Shao Zongwei, “Call for Talks to End Fight,” China Daily (Hong Kong), June 30, 1999, p. 1; Jin Zeqing, “War Never Ends Disputes,” China Daily (Hong Kong), June 5, 1999, p. 4; “China Hopes for Effective Solution in Kashmir,” China Daily (Hong Kong), June 12, 1999, p. 1; Shao Zongwei, “Zhu Urges Quick Return to Stability in Kashmir,” China Daily (Hong Kong), June 29, 1999, p. 1; “Li: Solve Kashmir Crisis Peacefully,” China Daily (Hong Kong), June 12, 1999, p. 1; Zahid Hussain,“Islamabad Dealt Double Blow by Beijing Criticism and Condemnation in U.S. Congress,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), July 3, 1999, p. 3. 29. Tim Metcalfe, “Looking to an ‘Old Friend’ to Solve Crisis,” South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), July 3, 1999. 30. Shao Zongwei, “Zhu Urges Quick Return to Stability in Kashmir,” op. cit.; “Li: Solve Kashmir Crisis Peacefully,” op. cit. 31. See “India, China Vow to Strengthen Ties,” The Economic Times (New Delhi), January 2, 2006, p. 2. 32. “India Ready for Talks with China: Jaswant,” op. cit.; “India, China not a Threat to Each Other,” China Daily (Hong Kong), June 19, 1999, p. 1; Sun Shangwu, “Threat Fears Must Cease for Sino-India Ties,” China Daily (Hong Kong), June 15, 1999, p. 1; Shao Zongwei, “Zhu Urges Quick Return to Stability in Kashmir,” op. cit. 33. The talks have since slowed down, especially after their failure to conclude their well-advertised second Framework Agreement that was expected to be initialed on November 7, 2006, on the eve of a visit by the Chinese president. 34. Yuan Jing-dong, “Sino-Indian Relations: Perspectives, Prospects and Challenges Ahead,” The Power and Interest News Report (PINR), March 30, 2005, at http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac⫽view_report&report_id⫽283& language_id⫽1. 35. Report of the India-China Joint Study Group on Comprehensive Trade and Economic Cooperation, http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac⫽view_report&report_id⫽283& language_id⫽1.
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36. “Chinese and Indian Navies Take to the Waters Together,” The Peoples Daily, November 15, 2003, at http://english.people.com.cn/200311/14/eng20031114_ 128224.shtml; Jabin Jacob, “Sino–India Naval Exercies: Chinese Perceptions,” Military-Navy Articles at http://www.ipcs.org/Military_articles2.jsp?action⫽ showView&kValue⫽1242&keyArticle⫽1019&status⫽article&mod⫽a 37. Pallavi Aiyar, “India-China MoU on Military Ties,” The Hindu (New Delhi), May 30, 2006, p. 1; Saibal Dasgupta, “Until Recently ‘Eneny No. 1’, China is Now Strategic Partner,” The Times of India (New Delhi), May 30, 2006, p. 1; Pallavi Aiyar,“Speaking a Common Language,” The Hindu (New Delhi), May 31, 2006, p. 13. 38. Li Xing, “Partnership ‘Is of Global Significance’,” China Daily (Beijing), November 22, 2006, p. 1. 39. Zhang Guihong, “China-India: Peaceful Rise and Peace Coexistence in Asia,” in Mahavir Singh (ed.), Panchsheel: Retrospects and Prospects (p. 38), New Delhi: Shipra, 2005. 40. Ibid., (p. 39). 41. Manoranjan Mohanty and Mark Selden, “Reconceptualising Local Democracy,” in Manoranjan Mohanty et al. (eds), Grass-Roots Democracy in India and China: The Right to Participate (p. 467), New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2007. 42. Sriram Natrajan, “Interprovincial Disparities in Rural ‘People’s Livelihood’ in China: An Empirical Assessment (1980–2004),” China Report (New Delhi), Vol. 42 No. 3 p. 234 (July-September 2006). 43. Manoranjan Mohanty and Mark Selden, “Reconceptualising Local Democracy,” op. cit., pp. 467, 470. 44. Dixit J.N., India’s Foreign Policy, 1947–2003 (pp. 416-417), New Delhi: Picus Books, 2003. 45. Sujit Dutta, “India-China Relations in the Era of Globalization,” in Jayanta Kumar Ray and Prabir De (eds), India and China in an Era of Globalisation: Essays on Economic Cooperation (p. 74), New Delhi: Bookwell, 2005. 46. Yu Xintian, “September 11 Incidents and Change in Security Concept,” International Studies (Shanghai), Vol. 9 No. 1 (2007), pp. 1-13; Yang Jiemian, “September 11 Incident’s Impacts on World Pattern and U.S. Foreign and Security Policies,” International Studies (Shanghai), Vol. 9 No. 1 (2007), pp. 1-15. 47. Alan Winters L. and Shahid Yusuf, “Introduction: Dancing with Giants,” in L. Alan Winters and Shahid Yusuf (eds), Dancing with Giants: China, India and the Global Economy (p. 1), Washington, DC: World Bank Publications, 2007. 48. Sujit Dutta, “India-China Relations in the Era of Globalization,” op. cit., p. 75. 49. Avery Goldstein, “The Diplomatic Face of China’s Grand Strategy: A Rising Power’s Emerging Choice,” The China Quarterly (London), Issue 168 pp. 835-864 (December 2001). 50. Sujit Dutta, “India-China Relations in the Era of Globalization,” op. cit., p. 74. 51. John W. Garver, “The Restoration of Sino-Indian Comity Following India’s Nuclear Tests,” The China Quarterly (London), No. 168 p. 873 (December 2001). 52. Bidanda M. Chengappa, India-China Relations: Post Conflict Phase to Post Cold War Period (p. 288), New Delhi: APH Publishing Corporation, 2004.
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53. Harsh V. Pant,“Indian Foreign Policy and China,” Strategic Analysis (New Delhi), Vol. 30 No. 4 p. 761 (October-December 2006). 54. Deepak B.R., India & China, 1904–2004: A Century of Peace and Conflict (p. 474), New Delhi: Manak, 2005. 55. Deshpande G.P. and Alka Acharya, “Introduction,” in G. P. Deshpande and Alka Acharya (eds), Crossing a Bridge of Dreams: 50 Years of India-China (p. 5), New Delhi: Tulika, 2000. 56. Satish Nambiar Lt Gen, “A Role for India in the Emerging World Order,” USI Journal (New Delhi), Vol. CXXXVI No. 565 p. 342 (July-September 2006). 57. Ranganathan C.V., “The China Threat: A View from India,” in Herbert Yee and Ian Storey (eds), The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality (p. 288), New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. 58. Lin Han, “New Progress Achieved in China-India Trade, Economic Co-op,” China View, January 31, 2007, available at http://news.xinhuanet.com/ english/2007-01/31/content_5678005.htm; “Remark by HE Mr. Zhang Yan, Chinese Ambassador at the New Year Reception for Overseas Chinese”, http://www.chinaembassy.org.in/eng/sgxw/t533046.htm. 59. Ravikanth Reddy R., “Chinese Answer to Indian Students’ Medical Dreams,” The Hindu (New Delhi), July 24, 2006, p. 8. 60. See for example, Pallavi Aiyar, “India-China MoU on Military Ties,” op. cit.; Pallavi Aiyar, “Speaking a Common Language,” op. cit.; Suryanarayana P.S., “Peace along India-China Border, says J.J. Singh,” The Hindu (New Delhi), March 19, 2006, p. 11; Suryanarayana P.S., “India for Adding Greater Substance to Ties with China,” The Hindu (New Delhi), January 2, 2006, p. 12. 61. Zhang Guihong, “China-India: Peaceful Rise and Peace Coexistence in Asia,” op. cit., p. 51. 62. Arpit Rajain, Nuclear Deterrence in Southern Asia: China, India and Pakistan (p. 29), New Delhi: Sage, 2005; Satyabrat Sinha, “The Nuclear Triangle in South Asia,” China Report (New Delhi), Vol. 42 No. 3 p. 305-314 (July-September 2006). 63. Deshpande G.P., “Possible Futures,” Seminar (New Delhi: special issue on “The India-China Thaw”), No. 562 p. 53 (June 2006). 64. For details see http://www.cia.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrends2020.html. 65. Ranganathan C.V. and Vinod C. Khanna, India and China: The Way Ahead After “Mao’s India War” (p. 162), New Delhi: Har Ananad, 2000.
5
Indonesia-China Relations: The Politics of Reengagement Rizal Sukma1
ndonesia’s relations with China, which were resumed in August 1990 after more than two decades of “frozen” relationship, have begun to improve since 1998. By examining three cases—China’s response to the 1997 economic crisis, the May 1998 riots in Indonesia, and the 2004 Tsunami disaster—this chapter argues that recent improvements in bilateral relations have been primarily the function of dramatic changes in Indonesia’s domestic politics. Moreover, China’s changing policy toward Southeast Asia in general and toward the ethnic Chinese issue in particular have also contributed to the creation of an atmosphere of trust and comfort in Jakarta’s reengagement with China. However, the future course of Indonesia-China relations will continue to be subject to the persistence of Indonesia’s domestic ambiguity toward China, emanating from the question of an Indonesian ethnic Chinese minority within Indonesia’s domestic politics and Indonesia’s perceptions of China’s long-term intention and policy in Southeast Asia.
I
Introduction Indonesia was the first Southeast Asian country that established official diplomatic relations with China, in July 1950. The first 15 years of that relationship, however, were replete with problems and suspicion, which culminated in Indonesia’s decision to freeze the diplomatic ties in October 1967 on the conviction that Beijing’s interference in Indonesia’s domestic affairs could no longer be tolerated. It took 23 years for Indonesia to finally resume its diplomatic relations with China in August 1990. After the decision to reengage, however, China did not
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force Indonesia to immediately forge closer relations and cooperation with Beijing. The years immediately after the resumption of diplomatic ties continued to be marred by uneasy management of the bilateral relationship. It was only after 1998 that Indonesia-China relations began to show significant signs of improvement and closer cooperation. Such positive developments in bilateral relations have coincided with dramatic changes in Indonesia’s domestic politics since May 1998 and China’s changing policy toward Southeast Asia, especially toward the ethnic Chinese issue. Equally important, China’s “good neighbor” policy toward Southeast Asia—as demonstrated in the aftermath of the economic crisis in 1997 and during the 2004 Tsunami—has consolidated the bilateral relationship further. This chapter seeks to understand the dynamics of interactions between the two countries since 1998, which paved the way for significant improvements in bilateral relations, by examining three cases: China’s responses to the 1997 economic crisis, the May 1998 riots in Indonesia, and the 2004 Tsunami disaster. I argue that recent improvements in bilateral relations have been primarily the function of dramatic changes in Indonesia’s domestic politics. Moreover, China’s changing policy toward Southeast Asia in general and toward the ethnic Chinese issue in particular have also contributed to the creation of an atmosphere of trust and comfort in Jakarta’s reengagement with China. Despite these improvements, however, the future course of Indonesia-China relations will continue to be subject to the persistence of Indonesia’s domestic ambiguity toward China, emanating from the question of Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority and Indonesia’s perceptions of China’s intention and policy in Southeast Asia. The chapter is divided into four sections. The first section provides a brief overview of the tenuous nature of Indonesia-China relations within Indonesia’s domestic political context. The second section examines the turning point in the management of bilateral relations since 1998, when the relationship steadily began to take a turn for the better, by using three case studies: the 1997 economic crisis, 1998 May riots, and the 2004 Tsunami. The third section explains how the dynamic of interaction contributed to the improvement of relations between the two countries. The fourth section examines the prospects for Indonesia-China relations within the context of persistent domestic ambiguity in Indonesia toward China.
Indonesia-China Relations in Perspective: The Politics of a Troubled Relationship Managing its relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been one of the most difficult challenges in Indonesia’s foreign policy. The relationship between the two countries since the establishment of diplomatic relations in
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July 1950 has been characterized by a history of difficult beginning, close friendship, turbulence, and mutual hostility and suspicion. More strikingly, those relations were primarily subject to pressures stemming from Indonesia’s domestic political arena. From the outset, relations had been marred by Beijing’s policy of actively seeking political and financial support of the ethnic Chinese domiciled in Indonesia and of providing political and financial support to the Indonesian Communist Party (Partai Komunis Indonesia/PKI).2 As the position of both ethnic Chinese and the PKI in Indonesian domestic politics had been problematic, China’s meddling was a source of repeated tensions and upheavals in Jakarta-Beijing relations. Attempts by Indonesia and China in the early 1960s to forge a radical political alignment, expressed mainly in the form of a united front against the West, failed to withstand the pressure emanating from Indonesia’s domestic politics. That political alignment was brought to an end when an abortive coup in October 1965, in which the PKI was charged as the main perpetrator, led to a regime change in Jakarta. In the aftermath of the attempted coup, Indonesia-China relations deteriorated sharply as an inevitable consequence of anticommunist momentum that arose in Indonesia. The Indonesian Armed Forces quickly crushed the PKI and eventually removed President Sukarno from power. The new Indonesian government led by Major-General Suharto accused China of complicity in the coup. Bitter diplomatic exchanges erupted and, on October 23, 1967, diplomatic relations between the two countries were declared “frozen” by Indonesia. On October 28, Beijing formally announced the suspension of its own ties with Indonesia.3 For Indonesia, China’s revolutionary foreign policy of actively supporting Communist insurgencies in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries only served to confirm China’s determination to export communism and instill instability in noncommunist states of the region. The New Order government, especially the Indonesian military, portrayed China’s subversion, to be carried out through the remnants of the PKI and the ethnic Chinese minority in Indonesia, as the main threat to Indonesia’s national security. For the New Order government, legitimated as the savior of the Indonesian state from a Communist takeover, persistent reminding the public of the presumed linkages between China, the ethnic Chinese, and the Communists was essential for preserving the regime’s legitimacy. An early restoration of diplomatic ties with Communist China would undermine that claim of legitimacy. Indeed, it was this logic of “triangle threat”—the PRC, PKI, and ethnic Chinese—that prevented Jakarta from restoring diplomatic ties with Beijing for almost 23 years.4 Positive changes in the regional and international environment from the mid-1970s onward, especially in the nature of Beijing’s relations with noncommunist states, failed to alter Indonesia’s perceptions and attitude. Even after China abandoned its Maoist revolutionary foreign policy and replaced it with a
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peaceful foreign policy of promoting four modernizations, Indonesian leaders were not impressed. Diplomatic relations remained “frozen” until August 1990. While the opportunity to tap the benefits of China’s growing economy had been taken up from July 1985 with the resumption of direct trade relations, Indonesia’s policy toward China remained subject to domestic political calculations. The dynamics within Indonesia’s domestic politics, which required an anticommunist ideology as part of the basis of regime legitimacy, continued to dominate Indonesia’s policy toward China. Diplomatic relations between Indonesia and China were finally restored in August 1990.5 This, however, did not mean a complete break from the old pattern of relations. Nor did it reflect a significant change in Indonesia’s perceptions of China. For Indonesia, the newly restored relations with China did not mean a complete opening of a new chapter in its relations with that country. In the immediate years after the restoration of diplomatic relations, Indonesia-China relations did not undergo significant improvement. It took a while for both sides to adjust themselves to the reality that the new relationship would continue to be overshadowed by the unhappy history of their past. During this period, four main characteristics of the relationship can be identified. First, the resumption of diplomatic relations did not immediately remove the thorny issues between the two countries. Suspicion and sensitivity continued to characterize Indonesia’s attitude toward China. For example, when China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement of “concern” over an antiChinese riot in Medan in April 1994,6 Indonesia’s government accused China of interfering in Indonesia’s internal affairs and warned that “China had better mind its own internal affairs.”7 For its part, Indonesia was also slow in learning about the importance of the Taiwan issue in Beijing’s domestic and foreign policy. A diplomatic row occurred in February 1994 when Taiwanese leader Lee Teng-hui visited Indonesia on the pretext of a so-called vacation visit and met with President Suharto. Second, Indonesia tended to take a cautious and wait-and-see approach in developing its newly restored relations with China. As other ASEAN countries began to deepen their relations with Beijing in the early 1990s, Indonesia pretty much sat on the sideline. Such a cautious attitude has manifested in Indonesia’s indirect approach in developing strategic engagement with China. Instead of developing its political-security relations with China directly, Indonesia preferred to deal with China within a multilateral framework, through either ASEAN or the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). It has been noted that ASEAN “has been regarded in Jakarta as likely to be a more effective instrument for managing relations with a China regarded with apprehension and some foreboding.”8 Similarly, the ARF has been seen by many Indonesian policy makers as an instrument to secure China’s respect for international norms of interstate relations.
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Third, any immediate improvement in bilateral relations was delayed by the persistent ambiguity in Indonesia’s perceptions of China.9 While Indonesia began to recognize the importance of China, the problem of Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority continued to affect Indonesia’s perceptions of China. Indonesia still worried about the possible link between the PRC and the ethnic Chinese minority. The perceptions of the general public and political elite also continued to be colored by various stereotypes associated with the ethnic Chinese minority. Worse, there was also a new dimension in Indonesia’s view of China: Indonesia also worried about China’s regional role and policies in Southeast Asia, especially regarding China’s behavior in the South China Sea and China’s growing military capability.10 Fourth, despite the slow progress in the political-security front, IndonesiaChina relations experienced a steady growth in economic cooperation. From 1991 to 1998, Indonesia’s non – oil and gas export to China increased from around $580 million to over $1.32 billion, while Indonesia’s import from China grew from around $800 million in 1991 to around $1.27 billion in 1997.11 In 1997, Indonesian total exports to China reached U.S.$2.7 billion, a significant jump from only U.S.$834 million in 1990.12 Despite such improvements, however, it was noted that “trade and investment flows between China and Indonesia are expected to be relatively low in the near future.”13 Since 1998, however, Indonesia-China relations have begun to enter a new period of active reengagement and cooperation. A newly democratizing Indonesia seemed to have pursued a very different attitude and policy course toward China. The imperative for improving relations with China had suddenly become a matter of urgency in any foreign policy discourse of the successive governments in Jakarta. President Abdurrahman Wahid, who became the first democratically elected president in October 1999, made China the destination of his first state visit abroad. During the first year of Wahid’s presidency, Indonesia-China relations improved significantly. President Megawati Sukarnoputri, who replaced President Wahid in July 2001, continued to undertake the policy of improving ties with China. During the Megawati presidency, Indonesia also became more sensitive to Beijing’s concerns over Taiwan. In December 2002, for example, Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda refused the request by Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan to visit Indonesia. The policy of seeking active reengagement with China continues to occupy the foreign policy agenda of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who became Indonesia’s sixth president in October 2004. By 2004, China had become the fifth-largest trading partner for Indonesia. In the same year, Indonesia’s export to China increased by 232 percent from 2003, amounting to U.S.$12.6 billion. The total volume of trade surged to U.S.$16.8 billion in 2005.14 Cooperation between the two countries has also rapidly expanded to include other areas beyond trade such as energy, security, and defense. The basis
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for bilateral cooperation received a stronger impetus when, on April 25, 2005, President Yudhoyono and Chinese president Hu Jintao signed an agreement to establish a ”strategic partnership” between the two countries. During President Yudhoyono’s visit to China in July 2005, the two countries concluded several major agreements covering not only traditional areas of cooperation in trade and investment but also in defense technology cooperation. With these agreements, Indonesia-China relations seem to have come full circle.
The Turning Points: External and Internal Sources of Improved Bilateral Relations The relationship between the two countries began to improve significantly after 1998. What were the turning points that have led to the significant improvements in Indonesia-China bilateral relations since 1998? For one, dramatic changes in Indonesia’s politics since May 1998 seemed to have served as a turning point that allowed both countries to pursue significant improvements in bilateral relations. For its part, China’s “good neighbor” policy and “charming diplomacy” toward Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, have also begun to bear fruits. A closer look at the dynamic interactions between Jakarta and Beijing in managing the attendant problems of May 1998 riots, and Indonesia’s perceptions of China’s positive role in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis and 2004 Tsunami disaster, clearly shows that the bilateral relations have matured greatly.
The Management of May 1998 Riots May 1998 was a major turning point in Indonesia’s domestic politics. Months of antigovernment demonstrations in the aftermath of economic crisis that struck Indonesia in mid-1997 finally resulted in one of the most devastating mass riots in Indonesia’s history. While the riots can partly be seen as a result of popular uprising against Suharto’s New Order government, the ethnic Chinese community became the main target of brutal attacks by the rioters. It was estimated that several hundred Chinese were killed or wounded, several dozen Chinese women were reportedly raped, and hundreds of mainly Chinese-owned shops and houses were burned. Hundreds of thousands fled the country, and it was estimated that many billions of dollars of Chinese capital also left the country.15 The attacks on Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority drew worldwide condemnation and protests, including from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Within mainland China, students staged a demonstration in front of Indonesia’s embassy in Beijing and called on China’s government to put pressure on Indonesia. The rise
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of nationalism in China, especially among the students and the youth, contributed to the expression of sympathy among the overseas Chinese to the plight of the ethnic Chinese minority in Indonesia.16 The initial reactions by the Chinese government to the riots had been muted. This time, Beijing seemed to understand the sensitive nature of the problem in its relations with Indonesia and took great care not to risk a serious diplomatic blunder. Given strong public pressure, however, the Chinese government had no choice but to express its concern over anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia, urging Indonesia’s government to investigate the cases of rapes and calling for punishment of the perpetrators.17 After more than two months of silence, China’s foreign minister Tang Jiaxuan finally raised the issue on July 28 with Indonesia’s foreign minister Ali Alatas when they met during an ASEAN meeting in Manila.18 The highest expression of concern was also conveyed by President Jiang Zemin, who raised the issue with Suharto’s successor, President B. J. Habibie, in November 1998. Unlike during the anti-Chinese incidents in April 1994, however, China’s expression of concern did not provoke angry reactions from Jakarta. In his reactions to the protests, Indonesia’s foreign minister Ali Alatas simply maintained that such protests would not settle the problem of the Indonesian ethnic Chinese minority in the country. He also maintained that Indonesia would not specifically reply to concerns expressed by Beijing.19 Two reasons can be given to explain Indonesia’s calm reaction to China’s expression of concerns. First, despite its public pronouncements, the overall strategy employed by China’s government was meant to play down not only the impact of the anti-Chinese May 1998 riot on bilateral relations but also the significance of the overseas Chinese issue in Indonesia-China relations. For example, prior to the May riots, China’s leaders repeatedly stated that anti-Chinese incidents in Indonesia were Jakarta’s internal affair. China’s understanding of the sensitive nature of the problem in Indonesia’s domestic context was clearly demonstrated when President Jiang Zemin pledged that China would “never try to use people of Chinese origin living in Indonesia to seek political or economic gain there.”20 After the riots, China continued to emphasise the incident as Indonesia’s internal affair.21 When China’s government was forced to make any reference to the plight of Indonesian Chinese who suffered during the May riots, it avoided using the term Huaqiao (overseas Chinese) and instead used Yinni Huaren (Indonesians of Chinese descent). As the Chinese ambassador to Indonesia made clear, the problem “is a part of Indonesia’s domestic politics. Its resolution must come from the Indonesian government itself. The Chinese government must not act as if it could be the chef in somebody else’s kitchen.”22
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Second, despite its concerns, the Chinese government also made it clear that it had no intention to allow the issue to affect the overall bilateral relations. Beijing in fact sought to emphasise its willingness to help Indonesia in coping with the impacts of the financial crisis on its economy. In August 1998, for example, China agreed to sell 50,000 tons of rice to Indonesia and provided a U.S.$3 million grant of medicines. China also provided a U.S.$200 million economic loan package to Indonesia and participated in the International Monetary Fund’s rescue plans for Indonesia.23 Economic cooperation was also high in the agenda of bilateral talks during visits by Chinese government officials to Indonesia. In other words, Beijing emphasized the importance of stable relations with Indonesia by not getting involved too deeply in what Beijing considered Indonesia’s internal affairs. At a time of dire economic difficulties, such support was clearly welcome in Jakarta. China’s efforts to deemphasize the ethnic Chinese issue in bilateral relations certainly contributed to the absence of strong reaction from Indonesia. China’s attitude also coincided with Indonesia’s increasing recognition of the negative impacts of anti-Chinese riots on Indonesia’s international image and the prospect for economic recovery in Indonesia. To alleviate the concerns of the international community, especially of overseas Chinese, President Habibie reportedly suggested that officials from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong were welcome to participate in investigating the alleged rapes.24 Indonesia’s calm reaction to China’s expression of concern could also be attributed to the fact that Indonesia was extremely preoccupied with internal political turmoil. In a time of domestic crisis, “[Indonesia] had little stomach for international controversy which might have aggravated its dire economic circumstances.”25 Whatever the real reason behind Indonesia’s failure to respond in the way it had in April 1994, it is important to note that this time both Jakarta and Beijing managed to prevent the issue from complicating bilateral relations between the two countries.
China’s Charming Diplomacy: 1997 Financial Crisis and Tsunami The improvement in Indonesia-China relations has also been a function of China’s diplomatic overture to Southeast Asia since the early 1990s, which has contributed to the changing perceptions of China in Indonesia. As mentioned earlier, China loomed large in the perception of national security threats to Indonesia. The resumption of diplomatic ties with China had not led Indonesia to abandon its “vigilant approach” toward Beijing. One reason for this was the fact that Indonesia’s decision to reengage China in August 1990 was not carried out in perfect circumstances. The move did not receive unanimous support at home. For Indonesia, “vigilance” remained the code word in
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dealing with China. President Suharto, during the preparation of the official restoration of diplomatic ties, still maintained that Indonesia “must remain alert to the possibility of a PKI revival after the normalisation of ties with China”26 and “should continue to be vigilant.”27 Similar warnings also came from military and Muslim leaders. Such views clearly suggest that Indonesia’s political elite, especially the military, remained suspicious of China. Suspicion of China’s intention was also perpetuated by China’s assertive policy toward territorial disputes in the South China Sea. In that context, Indonesia had expressed its concerns over the rise of China’s military capability and how China would use it in the future.28 For Indonesia,“[China’s increasingly assertive behavior in the South China Sea] . . . was also interpreted as an indication of how an economically strong and militarily powerful China might act in the future.”29 The clearest manifestation of Indonesia’s perception of China’s regional intent was expressed by vice-governor of Lemhannas, Juwono Sudarsono,30 in August 1996 when he stated: “my pessimistic projection is that barring the possibility that China can gain access to resources other than the South China Sea area, then ASEAN countries will have to face the possibility of imminent military confrontation with China.”31 The largest joint military exercise conducted by Indonesia’s armed forces in the Natuna Islands shortly after Sudarsono’s remarks was partly driven by this “China factor.”32 Indonesia was concerned that China’s claim in the South China Sea might also infringe upon its sovereignty over the Natuna Islands. Indonesia’s wariness of China, however, began to subside when China began to project itself as a responsible major power seeking a friendly relationship with its neighbors to the south. Indeed, by the mid-1990s China began to discover the utility of participating in ASEAN-led multilateral processes in the region, notably within the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).33 China’s willingness and growing commitment to support ASEAN’s central role in “managing” the post – Cold War strategic environment in the wider Asia-Pacific was clearly welcomed by Indonesia. In this context, it has been noted that “Indonesia has been encouraged by the extent to which the ARF is itself predicated on the security model and experience of ASEAN and to a degree by China’s willing and sustained participation in inter-sessional dialogues on confidence-building.”34 The Asian financial crisis since mid-1997 provided an opportunity for China to put its new diplomacy of friendship into concrete action. In addition to refraining from devaluing its currency, China quickly offered aid packages and low-interest loans to several Southeast Asian states. For example, China contributed U.S.$400 million in standby loans as part of an IMF rescue package for Indonesia.35 Beijing also provided export credit facilities amounting to U.S.$200 million.36 As mentioned earlier, China agreed to sell 50,000 tons of rice to Indonesia and provided a U.S.$3 million grant of medicines. As a result,
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the Indonesian government itself was grateful for this help.37 China’s policy and assistance to the countries hit by the Asian financial crisis, as David Shambaugh has noted, “punctured the prevailing image of China in the region as either aloof or hegemonic and began to replace it with an image of China as a responsible power.”38 China’s image as a responsible and benevolent major power received a further boost during the Tsunami disaster that struck Indonesia and Indian Ocean countries in December 2004. China responded rapidly to provide relief for victims of the tsunami and announced initial emergency aid of U.S.$3 million. On January 5, 2005, Prime Minister Wen Jibao arrived in Jakarta to attend the Special ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting on the Aftermath of Earthquake and Tsunami, and pledged over U.S.$60 million in aid for the affected countries, especially for Indonesia. He also promised that China would be committed to reconstruction and long-term development of tsunami-hit areas in Indonesia. During the meeting, Premier Wen reportedly remarked that China would provide “unselfish assistance within our capacity and have no added conditions.”39 For China, the participation in the relief efforts reflected “the friendliness of the Chinese government and people towards the governments and people of the disaster-hit countries.”40 During his meeting with President Yudhoyono in Jakarta, Premier Wen Jibao also promised Jakarta that in addition to sending epidemic prevention experts and medical teams, China was also ready to help build roads, bridges, and power stations.41 In April 2005, China’s minister of commerce Bo Xilai announced that China would provide another U.S.$2 million worth of cash and goods for Indonesia, bringing the total Chinese tsunami aid to Indonesia to around U.S.$25 million.42 During the emergency relief operations, China also sent medical teams, built temporary medical facilities, and helped in the evacuation of bodies of the victims. China also promised to collect around U.S.$30 million from China’s private companies, nongovernmental organizations, and civil institutions.43 Such a display of solidarity and support by China was clearly met with a degree of gratitude by Indonesia. Minister of Trade Mari Pangestu, for example, stated that “the commitment from China has been very generous, and China is helping in many ways, not just in funding, but in more specific areas.”44 Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Yuri Thamrin acknowledged that Indonesia thanked China for its help and said that China was an example of “a friend in need is a friend in deed.”45 Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare Alwi Shihab also maintained that the relationship between Indonesia and China would be further strengthened in the face of the tsunami, and cooperation between the two countries will be even closer in the future.46 Indeed, providing aid has been an important part of China’s “charming diplomacy” in Southeast Asia.47 When a devastating earthquake hit Java in
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2006, China was also quick in providing U.S.$2 million in cash aid, together with the dispatch of a team of 44 medical and earthquake experts to Java.48
The Dynamics of Indonesia-China Interaction: Growing Comfort Amid Uncertainties One clear trend in Indonesia-China relations has been Jakarta’s growing comfort and confidence in dealing with Beijing. I have argued elsewhere that the state of Indonesia-China relations has been influenced primarily by factors emanating from Indonesia’s domestic politics.49 In this context, the problem of perceptions constitutes one of the most difficult barriers to mature and closer bilateral relations. As mentioned earlier, Jakarta’s attitude toward Beijing has been influenced not only by Indonesia’s perceptions of mainland China but also by public and elite perceptions of Indonesian ethnic Chinese within Indonesia’s domestic context. However, as interactions between the two countries have increasingly intensified, and Indonesia’s politics has become more democratic, there have been some positive developments in this regard. First, the intensification of interactions between the two countries since 1998 has begun to create a more positive image of each other. With regard to Indonesia’s perceptions of the PRC, most Indonesians no longer see China as a threat to its national security. China is now seen more as both an economic opportunity and a challenge to Indonesia. Under President Yudhoyono, for example, Indonesia clearly sees China as an important partner that could help the country’s economic recovery. He realizes that the ability to improve the economy would determine the fate of his government, especially in the run-up to the 2009 general elections. For that purpose, President Yudhoyono is also faced with the same problems as his predecessors in that an accelerated improvement of the economy would require international confidence, the inflow of foreign investment, and burgeoning international trade. China’s growing economy fits well with Indonesia’s current economic requirements. As President Yudhoyono has himself stated,“our target in [developing relations with] China is to look for an opportunity to fulfil our national interests. We have to get something from the rise of China, especially in economic terms.”50 Since the opening up of Indonesia’s politics, the barriers to interaction between Indonesia and China have been lifted. Both government officials and private citizens are now free to travel to China, and Chinese officials and citizens who want to travel to Indonesia are no longer subject to various immigration restrictions. As exchanges of visits among government officials, businesspeople, and even private citizens have become more frequent, a more positive image of China has begun to emerge. Most Indonesians no longer see China as an
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ideologically threatening state. They are now in fact impressed by the pace of economic development in China. China has often become a reference for success, and many activists of nongovernmental organizations see China as a good example for combating corruption. A recent poll by the Sidney-based Lowy Institute also suggests that 56 percent of Indonesian respondents thought that China could be trusted.51 For its part, due to the changes in China’s own domestic politics and priorities since early 1980s, China’s perceptions of Indonesia have also undergone significant changes. As the obsession with the threat of communism has faded away from Indonesia’s political agenda, and as China itself has long departed from an ideology-driven revolutionary foreign policy, a major barrier in bilateral relations is now removed. Beijing clearly appreciates the fact that new governments in Indonesia no longer need to cultivate the China threat thesis, practiced for more than two decades by Suharto’s regime,52 as the basis of regime legitimacy. In the eyes of China, Indonesia’s image as an anti-Chinese nation has also begun to fade away, even though some residual negative perceptions remain due to the anti-Chinese May riots in 1998. Today, China sees Indonesian as a critical country in Southeast Asia, and a close relationship with Indonesia, which would greatly benefit China’s economic, political, and strategic interests in the region, is an integral part of China’s engagement policy with Asia.53 Second, the evolution of mutually positive perceptions between Indonesia and China is also reinforced by the growing convergence of interests between the two nations, both in the context of bilateral relations and in the convergence of views regarding many regional and global issues. Bilaterally, Indonesia continues to adhere to the “One China” policy, while the PRC has repeatedly assured Jakarta of its support for Indonesia’s territorial integrity. Indonesia clearly appreciated China’s diplomatic support in the United Nations during the East Timor affair.54 For China, the improvement of relations with Indonesia constitutes an important element for its policy of securing the trust of, and building positive relations with, Southeast Asian nations.55 In this regard, Indonesia’s positive view of China has been important in facilitating China’s participation in ASEAN-driven regional processes such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and the ASEAN ⫹ 3 (APT). Third, despite some improvements, the question of the Indonesian ethnic Chinese minority remains problematic. While things have improved since 1998, it is also too early to say that the ethnic Chinese factor is no longer relevant in Indonesia-China relations. It is not immediately clear whether Indonesia’s calm response to China’s expression of concerns to the May 1998 riots reflects a fundamental change in Indonesia’s perceptions of its ethnic Chinese minority. Until today, there has been no significant legal or political resolution to the May 1998 riots. The result of official investigation on the anti-Chinese riots has not been conclusive, and the case seems to have been put aside. Moreover, there is a
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tendency among the political elite and the general public to downgrade the event.56 Many even supported the view that the brutal attacks against the Chinese in May 1998 “were understandable” due to the social and economic gap between the Chinese and the native. Even though the overall level of antiChinese violence declined drastically after the May riot, “anti-Chinese sentiments [in Indonesia] have remained strong.”57 The perceptions of the general public and political elite also continue to be colored by various stereotypes associated with the ethnic Chinese minority. The Chinese, for example, are still seen as a minority group who exercise the principle of “ends justify means” in conducting their business and “their presence [in Indonesia] have not entirely brought about positive consequences. Some of them bring about negative impacts on the nation, both on the state of the economy and on the nation’s morality.”58 Resentments and suspicion against the Chinese, especially against big businessmen of Chinese descent, remain strong. Their loyalty to Indonesia continues to be questioned, especially when those who fled the country after the May riot began to return to Indonesia.59 National police chief General Roesmanhadi, for example, stated that “fleeing the country is not ethical in terms of nationalism. When the country is in turmoil, they flee abroad, and return only when the situation has returned to normal.”60 Overall, it is not yet clear to what extent the negative perceptions of Indonesian Chinese have undergone significant changes. Perceptions and prejudices take time to change. Long after May 1998, for example, there have been reports regarding local resentments toward Chinese workers from Mainland China working in Indonesia.61 A Kompas poll in mid-2004 reveals that only 39 percent of Indonesians believe that Indonesian Chinese businessmen conduct their business in an honest and fair way. Moreover, 56 percent of respondents also believe that the Indonesian Chinese were responsible for fostering a culture of bribery in Indonesia.62 The constant media reports about unresolved cases of corruption involving some businessmen of Chinese descent also perpetuate the negative image of this ethnic community among the general public in Indonesia. Despite the continuing prejudices and stereotyping, however, an explicit anti-Chinese attitude in Indonesia has been less apparent today than seven years ago. The democratization process in Indonesia clearly helps resolve the problem. The government has introduced a number of significant political moves in order to address the problem of discrimination against the Indonesian Chinese. The special mark in the identity card of Indonesian Chinese has been removed. A new law on citizenship that outlaws discrimination against any citizen based on his or her ethnicity, race, and religion was also passed by the Parliament. Even a controversial article in the Constitution, which stipulated that only a native Indonesian can be president (thus implying
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that an Indonesian of Chinese descent cannot), has been amended. More importantly, the unwritten restrictions on cultural and political rights that were imposed on the Indonesian Chinese during the New Order era are now long gone. The earlier restriction on the celebration of the Lunar Year is now removed, and the Lunar Year has been declared a national holiday in Indonesia. More and more Indonesian Chinese have now entered politics and become activists of nongovernmental organizations. The resolution of the Indonesian Chinese problem would clearly remove one of the barriers in Indonesia-China relations in the future. The prospect for such resolution would be further enhanced if Indonesia succeeds in consolidating its democratization process. Within a democracy, the rights of minority groups would be better protected and respected. As Indonesia democratizes, perpetuating the Chinese threat as the basis of regime legitimacy would no longer be necessary or tenable. As demonstrated in the 2004 elections, the legitimacy of the government has now come primarily from the ability to deliver its campaign promises. As the position of the Indonesian Chinese within the country continues to improve, it is expected that this factor would become less intrusive in the future of Indonesia-China relations. For Beijing, the resolution of the ethnic Chinese problem in Indonesia clearly reduces one potential problem that could become a domestic political issue for China. As demonstrated in the wake of anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia in May 1998, pressures from within China and overseas Chinese put the regime in Beijing in a difficult position. On the one hand, China’s indifference to the plight of the Chinese in Indonesia—despite the fact that these Chinese were Indonesian citizens—could be seen as a lack of patriotism and solidarity. On the other hand, the Chinese government was also aware that any reaction could easily be interpreted as an act of interference in Indonesia’s domestic affairs. As the drive toward populism is increasingly evident in China’s politics, Chinese leaders would find such a dilemma more difficult to handle in the future. In other words, the resolution of the ethnic Chinese problem in Indonesia would clearly be positive for the overall Indonesia-China bilateral relations. At the bilateral level, Indonesia has increasingly become more comfortable and confident with China. However, in the regional context, a degree of wariness toward China as a major power is still evident among Indonesian leaders and policy makers. Indonesia, for example, remains uncertain about China’s long-term intention in Southeast Asia. There is no guarantee that in the future a powerful China, both in economic and military terms, would continue to be a status quo power. Indonesia, like any other ASEAN member states, would not want to see China seek to dominate the region and define its relations with ASEAN states in terms of its competition with other major powers. Indonesia’s view and position on the East Asia Summit (EAS) can be seen in this context. Indonesia was not comfortable with Malaysia’s initial proposal that
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the EAS should be limited to only the APT countries. In Indonesia’s view, there was a need to expand the membership to include Australia, India, and New Zealand so that the EAS could really function in inclusive East Asian regional community building. The unstated logic, however, was that the more actors involved in the EAC, the more difficult it would become for any party to dominate the process. Indonesia’s support for the inclusion of India and Australia was then interpreted by many analysts as an expression of its uncertainty regarding the place and intention of China not only in the process of regional community building but also in the region. However, it is important to note that China has so far pursued positive foreign policy measures in assuring Southeast Asian states that it has no intention to dominate the region. Indonesia, therefore, expects that China will continue to strengthen its commitment and engagement in a web of multilateral security cooperation and dialogues in the region.
Concluding Remarks Over the last decade, Indonesia-China bilateral relations have seen tremendous improvements. While economic relations remain the key focus, cooperation between the two countries has also expanded rapidly into other areas. While trade between Indonesia and China continues to increase, political and cultural interactions have also intensified, with positive impacts on mutual perceptions between the two countries. Indonesia has been very appreciative of China’s “charming diplomacy” toward Southeast Asia. It has now seen China more as an opportunity rather than a threat, especially in economic terms. China’s policy toward Indonesia during the 1997 financial crisis and May 1998 riots, and also in providing emergency aid during the Tsunami disaster, has contributed to the growing perceptions in Indonesia that China can be trusted as a partner. For its part, China has also seen Indonesia as an important partner in Southeast Asia whose support is clearly important in facilitating China’s integration into the Southeast Asian regional process. Despite recent improvements in bilateral relations, however, Indonesia-China relations are not without problems. It is important to note that the future course of Indonesia-China relations will continue to be subject to the persistence of Indonesia’s domestic ambiguity toward China, emanating from the question of the Indonesian ethnic Chinese minority and Indonesia’s perceptions of China’s intention and policy in Southeast Asia. For example, if there is a resurgence of anti-Chinese feeling in Indonesia, and if the problem of the ethnic Chinese minority once again becomes a political issue in Indonesia, then Indonesia-China bilateral relations might also be affected. Likewise, since Indonesia is still uncertain with regard to China’s long-term intention and policy toward Southeast Asia,
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any sign indicating China’s intention to be a dominant power in the region would certainly revive Indonesia’s sensitivity. The prospect for a better relationship is clearly there. The growing favorable view of each other serves as an important basis upon which the future relations between Indonesia and China can be built. If the two countries can seize the current favorable environment to further consolidate their bilateral relationship, a more robust bilateral relationship is certainly within their reach.
Notes 1. Rizal Sukma is Executive Director, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta, Indonesia. He is the author of Indonesia and China: The Politics of Troubled Relationship, London: Routledge, 1999. He thanks Leonard Sebastian, Tan See Seng, and Shiping Tang for their comments on an earlier draft. A slightly different version of chapter will be published in Asian Survey. 2. For a comprehensive discussion on China’s earlier policies toward Indonesian ethnic Chinese, see Stephen Fitzgerald, China and the Overseas Chinese: A Study of Peking’s Changing Policy 1949–1970, Cambridge: The Cambridge University Press, 1972; Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas, Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991. On China’s policy toward the PKI, see Justus M. van der Kroef, “Indonesia, Communist China, and the PKI,” Pacific Community, No. 6 (Winter 1970); David Mozingo, Chinese Policies Towards Indonesia, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976; Sukma, Indonesia and China. 3. For an excellent discussion on the breakdown of Sino-Indonesian diplomatic relations, see Justus M. van der Kroef, “Sino-Indonesian Rupture,” China Quarterly, No. 33 pp. 17-46 (January-March 1968). 4. For a more detailed analysis of this “triangle threat” in Indonesia’s perceptions of China, see Sukma, Indonesia and China (pp. 47-53). 5. The decision to restore diplomatic relations with the PRC was in fact taken in February 1989 when President Suharto met Chinese foreign minister Qian Qichen in Tokyo while they were there to attend the funeral of Japan’s Emperor Hirohito. 6. The Jakarta Post, April 22, 1994. 7. Agence France-Press, dispatch from Jakarta, April 26, 1994. 8. Michael Leifer, “Indonesia’s Encounters with China and the Dilemmas of Engagement,” in Alastair Iain Johnston and Robert S. Ross (eds), Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (pp. 98-99), London: Routledge, 1999. 9. For a detailed discussion on Indonesia’s perceptions of Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority, see Rizal Sukma, “Indonesia’s Perceptions of China: The Domestic Bases of Persistent Ambiguity,” in Herbert Yee and Ian Storey (eds), The China Threat: Perceptions, Myths and Reality, London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. 10. Hadi Soesastro,“Hakikat ‘Kemitraan Strategis’ Indonesia Dan China” [The Nature of ‘Strategic Partnership’ between Indonesia and China], Kompas, August 1, 2005. 11. Raymond Atje and Arya B. Gaduh, “Indonesia-China Economic Relations: An Indonesian Perspective,” CSIS Working Paper Series No. 052, CSIS, September 1999, p. 9.
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12. Imron Husin, “The Emergence of China: Some Economic Challenges to Indonesia,” paper presented at ATO Research Conference, Tokyo, February 3-4, 2004, p. 5. 13. Atje and Gaduh, “Indonesia-China Economic Relations,” p. 10. The 1997 financial crisis had certainly hindered the efforts to promote trade between the two countries. 14. “China, Indonesia Agree to Intensify Economic Cooperation,” Xinhua, October 10, 2006, at http://english.sina.com/china/1/2006/1006/91073.html. 15. ICG, Indonesia’s Crisis: Chronic but Not Acute (p. 19) Jakarta and Brussels: International Crisis Group Report No. 2, May 31, 2000. 16. For an interesting discussion on how the rise of nationalism, as expressed in the reactions of Internet users in China to anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta, threatened the nationalist credentials of the Beijing government, see Christopher Hughes, “Beijing Rides a Nationalist Cyber-Tiger,” The Asian Wall Street Journal, (September 21, 2000). 17. Straits Times, August 4, 1998. 18. Daojiong Zha, “China and the May 1998 Riots of Indonesia: Exploring the Issues,” The Pacific Review, Vol. 13 No. 4 p. 563 (2002). 19. “Protests Over Anti-Chinese Violence Will Not Settle Problem: Alatas,” AFP, August 25, 1998; Quoted in ibid., p. 564. 20. Zha, “China and the May 1998 Riots of Indonesia,” pp. 562-563. 21. “RRCina Berharap Situasi RI Pulih” [China Hopes Indonesia Would Stabilize], Suara Karya, May 18, 1998. 22. Zha, “China and the May 1998 Riots of Indonesia,” p. 564. 23. Ibid., pp. 562, 564. 24. Ibid., p. 567. 25. Leifer, “Indonesia’s Encounters with China and the Dilemmas of Engagement,” p. 92. 26. The Jakarta Post, February 27, 1989. 27. Antara, February 27, 1989. 28. See, for example, statements by Indonesia’s military commander-in-chief General Feisal Tanjung, in Antara, November 20, 1995, and Straits Times, November 22, 1995. 29. Storey, “Indonesia’s China Policy,” p. 164. 30. Juwono Sudarsono is now Indonesia’s Minister of Defence. 31. The Jakarta Post, August 7, 1996. 32. See Rizal Sukma, “Indonesia Toughens China Stance,” FEER, September 5, 1996; Rizal Sukma,“Indonesia’s Bebas-Aktif Foreign Policy and the ‘Security Agreement’ with Australia,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 51 No. 2 (1997). 33. David Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia: Reshaping the Regional Order,” International Security, Vol. 29 No. 3 p. 69 (Winter 2004/2005). 34. Leifer, “Indonesia’s Encounters with China and the Dilemmas of Engagement,” p. 100. 35. Storey, “Indonesia’s China Policy,” p. 150. 36. Ignatius Wibowo, “China Wins Hearts in Southeast Asia,” The Jakarta Post, February 5, 2007.
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37. The Jakarta Post, April 14, 1998. 38. Shambaugh, “China Engages Asia,” p. 68. 39. Srikanth Kondapalli, “Tsunami and China: Relief with Chinese Characteristics,” at www.asianaffairs.com/feb2005/china.htm. 40. People’s Daily Online, January 5, 2005. 41. China Daily, online, at www.china.org.cn/english/features/tsunami_relief/ 116981.htm, January 6, 2005. 42. Xinhua News Agency, April 22, 2005. 43. The Jakarta Post, February 1, 2007. 44. China Daily, January 8, 2005. 45. Ibid. 46. Xinhua News Agency, January 12, 2005. 47. Joshua Kurlantzick, “China’s Charm: Implications of Chinese Soft Power,” Policy Brief No. 47, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2006, p. 3. 48. Robert Sutter and Chin-hao Huang, “China-Southeast Asia Relations: Military Diplomacy and China’s Soft Power,” Comparative Connections, CSIS Pacific Forum, August 2006, p. 3. 49. For a comprehensive study on the domestic sources of Indonesia’s policy toward China, see Sukma, Indonesia and China. 50. Media Indonesia, October 27, 2005. 51. Murray Goot, Australians and Indonesians: The Lowy Institute Poll 2006 (p. 6), Sidney: Lowy Institute for International Policy, October 2006. 52. On this point, see Sukma, Indonesia and China. 53. Shiping Tang, “Grand Strategy: Searching for China’s Ideal Security Environment,” zhanlue yu guangli [Strategy and Management], No. 6 pp. 42-49 (December 2000); Id., “Once Again on China’s Grand Strategy,” zhanlue yu guangli [Strategy and Management], No. 4 pp. 29-37 (2001). 54. See Patrick Nathan, “Indonesia’s Relations with China: Analyzing Strategic Orientation, Jakarta’s Motivation, and Beijing’s Strategic Value,” Pointer, Vol. 27 No. 2, at http://www.mindef.gov.sg. 55. Wibowo I.,“Indonesia Itu Penting” [Indonesia is Important], Kompas, January 24, 2004. 56. An editorial in a tabloid, for example, wrote, “only three Chinese women were raped during three days of rioting” while “in Jakarta, more than 10 women are raped every day.” See Adil, November 12–18, 1998. 57. ICG, Indonesia’s Crisis. 58. See Zaim Uchrowi, “Gus Dur Menoleh Tionghoa,” Adil, November 12-18, 1998, p. 3. 59. For a report that reflects this feeling, see “Awas, Taipan ‘Perampok’ Balik Lagi” [Beware, the Taipan ‘Robbers’ Are Back], Sabili, Vol. 7 No. 12 pp. 64-78 (December 1, 1999). 60. Pos Kota, May 20, 1999. 61. Tempo Interaktif, June 15, 2006. 62. “Sulitnya Menghapus Citra Buruk” [The Difficulty of Eradicating Bad Image], Kompas, May 22, 2004. Kompas is the largest daily in Indonesia.
6
Japan: Reengaging with China Meaningfully Haruko Satoh1
Introduction Japanese prime minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro is likely to be remembered by the present generation of Chinese as the most unrepentant postwar Japanese leader, one who disrespects history. The diplomatic spat that ensued each time—with increasing intensity—over Koizumi’s annual visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in the course of his five-year tenure (2001–2006) was one of the more spectacular fallouts in the post – Cold War era. At Yasukuni, the souls of some 2.5 million Japanese soldiers are enshrined, including 14 Class-A war criminals convicted at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal. As the world nervously and disapprovingly watched Koizumi’s refusal to buckle to Chinese (and Korean) protests, the Japan-China relationship ground to a halt with Beijing refusing to even meet Koizumi. Koizumi had taken the wrong issue—in other words, Yasukuni—on which to make a stand against Beijing, as Japan became politically isolated in the region and had even the Americans worried about their partner in the “coalition of the willing.” As a plausible storyline at the time, Koizumi’s open defiance of China’s meddling in what he (and many Japanese) considered a domestic matter was a combined expression of revived nationalism and growing assertiveness in Japanese foreign policy. Feeling enfeebled by the prolonged economic stagnation and mired in social and political troubles, Japan was reacting with trepidation to China’s growing power and influence. Japan had also become tired of apologizing to a thankless Chinese regime that propagates anti-Japan sentiment at home to deflect domestic popular discontent against the regime, and waves historical justice to claim moral superiority and at the same time to keep the flow of economic
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aid from Japan. Japanese pride had taken enough insults. A more assertive Japan was set to lock horns with the rising China—or so it seemed. Looking back at the Yasukuni debacle, one thing has since changed. No prime minister after Koizumi (and Japan has had three in rapid succession) has ventured to visit the shrine; not even the nationalist Abe Shinzo, who as Koizumi’s cabinet secretary stated his belief in prime ministerial visits and criticized China. In fact, so welcoming was Beijing to Abe on his visit in October 2006 that he could hardly stand his ground. A year later, after succeeding Abe, Fukuda Yasuo dismissed press inquiry about his intention: “You know my past actions [he never visited]. Why do you ask?”2 The present prime minister Aso Taro’s view was made clear in the race to succeed Koizumi in 2006: No visit to Yasukuni unless a neutral, nonreligious war memorial is built. This chapter proposes to tell the story of the impact of China’s rise on Japan, which this Yasukuni debacle threw into relief. Koizumi’s open clash with Chinese leaders over history revealed two related challenges to Japan’s reengagement with China and Asia as a whole: the lack of orientation due to absentmindedness about Asia since the last war, and poor understanding about its present power and purpose as the region’s politico-economic structure dynamically reconfigures. Exposed—and perhaps unravelling—in the process is the puzzling nature of Japan’s postwar identity and interpretation of history that were shaped by the experience of defeat, the U.S.-led postwar settlement, and its alliance relationship in the Cold War.
It’s Been 60 Years China’s renaissance as a regional power is a significant change in the history of modern Sino-Japanese relations. Today, the bilateral relationship is pivotal in determining the nature of the region’s future. As neighbors, as trading partners, and as regional powers with (differing) strategic, political, and economic significance for the United States, the matrix of the relationship is complex. As they have often been pitted against each other as historical rivals competing for regional leadership, smaller states in the region are anxious to avoid entanglement. Indeed, it is easy to conceive the two as historical rivals. The past pattern has been that Japan, the wunderkind of Asia, rose at the expense of China; more recently, the tide appeared to be changing to lift China while Japan sank. The historical challenge is that there has never been a time when the two were both powerful, and the idea seems still elusive because memories of conflict and war entrench the political relationship. As the Cold War descended on Asia, revolutionary China and a vanquished Japan were set on divergent courses of development, and former enemies were set wider apart by the intrusive influence of the cold, ideological war. Crucially, from today’s perspective, the ideological
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confrontation had settled in before peace and reconciliation could properly take place between the two. Therefore, China kept up the revolutionary rhetoric against postwar Japan as America’s capitalist sidekick. In the meantime, they did not share political or economic systems, a condition that tends to facilitate openness and the sharing of values between different societies. By the time relations normalized in 1972, they were living in two worlds organized according to irreconcilably different ideas: democratic Japan was ensconced in the free and prosperous West, while revolutionary China was in the throes of political chaos with dire economic consequences. Moreover, the post-1972 relationship was “based on pathos, of endlessly toasting to “friendship,” swallowing down what was really troubling their minds”3 between the leaders, between the capitals, and not between the peoples. The clash over history in recent years, where public opinion has come to count more, should be understood in this light of historical transformation. We must also take note of how the two states stand today. First, they are states of mismatched status that express power very differently. China is a nuclear power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council (a status transferred from the Republic of China in 1971). Japan is an economic power but a constitutional pacifist with less ability or inclination to play power politics. Second, both China and Japan have been under prolonged single-party rule: the Communist Party in China and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan. As such, old habits cultivated as ideological enemies, where Japan’s allied relationship with the United States factors greatly, appear hard to shake off. It therefore should come as no surprise that even, after the ideological meltdown, the two are finding the business of reconciliation not only unfinished but also difficult to conceive. Time has finally begun to flow after 60 years of separation over time and space, but they are reacting to each other as if the Cold War years had frozen the relationship at the point of ceasefire in 1945. Thus, the Second World War remains as the core of disagreements. Furthermore, under a static political system in both countries, misperceptions and mistrust about each other have also ossified, and history has been politicized and distorted. There is some rethinking to do about how peace was established, if at all, between the two nations. From such a historical perspective, the Yasukuni debacle was essentially about fleshing out in the open the differences of how the two states developed in the last 60 years. The shrine, where 2.5 million soldiers fallen in Japan’s modern wars—not just the last war—are enshrined, and which has become synonymous with the word obstacle between Japan and China in particular, may in fact be the key to reconciliation. But reconciliation is about politics and not just history, and it reveals the question of legitimacy and identity of the ruling parties in both nations.
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Overcoming History As the Imperial Japanese army made advances in China, Mao Zedong observed in 1938 that “this is a war that will change China, and it is also one in which Japan could be reborn.” He envisaged that Sino-Japanese peace would have a significant role to play in world peace.4 As he correctly foresaw, Japan was reborn as a capitalist democracy under U.S. tutelage, while China pursued its own revolutionary vision. However, Mao had no inkling then that the Cold War in Asia would also separate them as neighbors over space and time, and shut down any meaningful interaction between the two, with considerable cost to the way the current re-encounter is being shaped. On the other hand, reconciliation must be pursued purposefully, as the French and the Germans have done as a symbol of peace in Europe. Since the 1990s, Japan and China have rapidly become economically interdependent and indispensable to each other. Yet both countries hold very different takes on the last war, and that has stood in the way of historical reconciliation and lasting peace. The Japanese under the LDP has long preferred to remember the “last war” as the war with the United States that began with Pearl Harbor in 1941 and ended with the two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. For the Chinese under the Communist Party, on the other hand, the last war means the “longer 15-year war” with Japan that started in 1931 with the Manchurian Incident. Relations since 1972 had not bridged this gap, because coming to terms with history had repercussions that might bring into question the legitimacy and identity of the ruling parties. Breaking the inertia that the two parties have lapsed into over history is part of the ordeal to reconcile with each other. In this respect, Koizumi shook the very foundation of Japan’s mode of engagement with China since 1972. In the past, the principle of seikei bunri—the separation of political relations from economic issues—guided Japan’s approach toward China, but such strict separation was no longer possible or even useful. The political impact of Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits was far-reaching and unsettling to the LDP. First, his steadfast refusal to bend to criticism was counterintuitive to the pragmatism that characterized the LDP’s style of rule since 1955. The gravity of the diplomatic crisis challenged the party’s past stance of avoiding confrontation with China over issues of history, including Yasukuni. Second, the diplomatic impasse also aroused the usually docile Japanese public to question the wisdom of the Yasukuni visits. After the 2005 riots the diplomatic risk seemed too high even for them, and the private sector found the damage to economic and business relations with China costly. To the business community, “economically hot and politically cold” was not a sustainable state of affairs. In turn, Yasukuni—and the parochial, nationalist interpretation of history it has come to symbolize—became subjected to domestic public scrutiny, which was something
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quite new. It also directed attention to the portion of Japanese postwar history in which public opinion had always been diverse, if not divided. In short, Koizumi took the history card out of China’s hand while making Yasukuni a domestic issue. More crucially in Japan’s conception of relations with China today, China had no influence on Japan’s postwar development comparable to that of the United States. As Abe Shinzo spoke of “casting off the post-war regime” by revising the postwar constitution and questioned the victor’s justice at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal, the unusually domineering U.S. influence continues to trouble Japan’s sense of identity and international outlook. The outspoken and unabashed nationalist governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro, captures the essence of the problem as it surfaces today: “Whether it is about China or any other international issues, we should first think by ourselves and not expect the United States to always be on our side.”5 For Japan, which is just as beholden to its preferred narrative of the last war as China is to its own, forging closer ties with China brings out questions about the nature of Japan’s postwar relationship with the United States.
The Postwar Settlement in Perspective As a war-defeated nation, the course and character of Japan’s recovery and national reinvention were set by the policies implemented by the United States, which occupied Japan for seven years from 1945 to 1952. Japan was arguably the first case for the United States to undertake the task of postconflict reconstruction and democratization of a non-Western nation, when democracy was still exclusive to the Western societies. The Americans took Japan from one extreme to another as it drafted the new constitution: from an imperial, militarist state to a democracy with the people as sovereign. The new constitution generously endowed with the liberal spirit of American democracy was its symbol, and the war-fatigued Japanese received it as a gift of liberty. On the other hand, the new constitution was also uniquely pacifist, in that its Article 9 forbade the use of force as state instrument. Not only did this restrain the scope of Japan’s independent action by having to rely on the United States for security, but the protectorate arrangement was akin to being a vassal state because the United States was also a superpower. Yoshida Shigeru, who shaped Japan’s postwar years as prime minister, chose first to concentrate on efforts to recover the war-devastated economy while arming lightly—setting the track of what became known as the Yoshida doctrine. Yoshida had no intention of keeping things that way, and the postwar conservative leaders envisaged a day in the future when the constitution was revised and full sovereignty restored. This meant, and is still understood to
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mean, reacquiring the state’s monopoly on force by rearming. This state in Max Weber’s familiar definition of the modern state was in the image of the Meiji state, a unified nation under a sovereign emperor that came into being in 1868 and was dismantled in 1945. Nationalism in Japan is about recovering this lost or suppressed state freedom and identity. The LDP was founded in 1955 with such an objective close at heart. Yet, in the immediate postwar decades, Japan was in no position of strength—morally or otherwise—to negotiate such statehood that the leaders desired. Furthermore, the war-fatigued public’s strong aversion toward the “state” as warmonger was not to be dismissed lightly. When economic success became a goal in itself, the protectorate arrangement with the United States stuck and the idea to revise the constitution was also forgotten.6 The LDP’s primary concern as the governing party then became to keep the state’s pacifist orientation as stipulated in the constitution and making sure that the Americans maintain willingness to protect Japan at the same time. That is, while the domestically unpopular path to re-arm was not pursued, the management of political, economic and security relations with the United States became paramount in Japanese politics. Such pragmatism seemed almost artful in its cunning, but this also had unintended consequences. First, domestic politics became “domesticated.” The relative strategic stability in Asia during the Cold War after America’s rapprochement with China in 1972, combined with the resounding success of the Yoshida doctrine, allowed the LDP to sit atop an efficient economic machine run by the “iron triangle” of intertwined interests between the politicians, businesses, and the bureaucracy. So long as the protected and regulated domestic market kept the Japanese economy in a perpetual developmental mode by concentrating on export, this “Japan, Inc.” guaranteed social stability and political docility. The postwar settlement combined with the ideological divide also had a profound impact on Japan’s regional identity as it lapsed into strategic inertia. Was it part of the West, or was it Asian? After the war, Japan lost the habit of thinking geopolitically and constructing the world from a regional base. Postwar Japan, as a Western ally, associated ever more closely with the Western powers, setting its eyes on re-earning status among them that was lost after defeat. For this Japan, foreign and security policy priority was managing the alliance. Even so, because the European colonial powers withdrew from Asia, and Japan was protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella, there was little geopolitical dimension in the Japan-Europe leg of the Western alliance. Only with the Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles in the 1980s did Europe and Japan come to share a common security concern. Moreover, since Japan had no intention to return to Asia politically and to become entangled in Cold War rivalry, its footing in the region, which it looked down upon as still backward, was also weak.7 As relations with China—both the People’s Republic and
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Taiwan—became partially hostage to America’s Cold War strategy toward Communist China, Asia as a regional, geopolitical landscape receded in the background of Japan’s thinking about international policy. Nonetheless, even as a junior partner to the United States, independent foreign policy was a matter of pride and principle. The existential angst—a mixture of the idea to restore the state, the dilemma of being a constitutional pacifist, and the frustration of being reliant on the United States—was buried deep and suppressed during the Cold War. It fomented over time to crystallize as today’s right-wing nationalists’ primary concern about Japan’s inability to act independently.
Return of Power Politics? With the solid China challenge in a global setting, the Sino-Japanese relationship is finally now on equal terms. However, a powerful and assertive China as a neighbor is an utterly new experience in Japan’s modern history. It brings a new yardstick by which Japan measures its rank and status, because Japan had long considered its success as sui generis in the modern world dominated by the West. How it stands vis-à-vis the Western powers has been an important source of pride and sense of achievement. Therefore, that the two giants in the AsiaPacific region, America and China, are moving (relatively) closer has always been an unsettling experience. It was so when U.S. president Richard Nixon made a surprise visit to Beijing in 1972—impressed in the memory of Japanese policy makers as the “Nixon shock”—and with the post – Cold War U.S. policy of increasing interactions with China. Naturally, there is a fear of being sandwiched between two larger powers that are still very much sovereigntyconscious states, but this fear is exacerbated by Japan’s own inability to measure and understand its own power and purpose objectively. The cause of Japan’s self-doubt about its stature can be traced back to the two shocks after the Cold War: the Gulf War and the collapse of the bubble economy. When the Gulf War erupted in 1991, Japan was asked to participate in a war for the first time in its postwar history. Not only did this experience expose its postwar pacifist stance to the harsh reality of international politics, in which force still plays a crucial role in maintaining international order and administering justice, but it eroded Japan’s confidence in relying on economic power alone. It was a rude awakening for a nation that took for granted the extraordinary circumstance of Cold War strategic stability, which allowed the country to single-mindedly pursue economic success. Japanese leaders took home the lesson that checkbook diplomacy does not buy respectable status in the international community, as its $13 billion contribution to the war effort was still derided as “too little, too late.” A decade later, Japan under Koizumi
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took unprecedented steps to dispatch troops and ships to be part of the “coalition of the willing” in post-9/11 America’s war on terror. He was surely mindful of “not repeating the mistake of the Gulf.” On the other hand, while the economy plunged into recession and checkbook diplomacy came under reappraisal, Japan’s attention turned to using the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) that were hitherto restricted to defense of Japanese territory. New notions of power, such as economic power or “soft power,” in areas of international politics where the military power had diminished significance, lost their appeal in the policy circles. Post – Cold War international thought was looking into a world beyond nation-states, particularly as the process of European integration offered a model replacing the Westphalian system. Concepts such as “soft power” or International Society offered a more nuanced approach to the conventional statecentric view of realist theories. Yet, feeling less secure in an unstable Asian security environment and unsure about holding on to its position as a pacifist, economic power that cannot/does not use force to settle international disputes, Japan became bogged down by the idea of changing its own postwar state, of making Japan into a “normal country.” U.S. strategy to redefine and strengthen the alliance with Japan for the post – Cold War Asia found an agreeable party in the Japanese policy community, which identified the need to ease Article 9’s restriction on the SDF to operate overseas, particularly for UN peacekeeping missions.8 Moreover, some in the foreign policy establishment, particularly in the foreign ministry, began to toil with the idea of Japan gaining a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, as the second-largest net contributor to the UN. Ozawa Ichiro, former LDP shadow kingmaker and the present leader of Minshuto (Japan Democratic Party), spearheaded this new vision for a more responsible Japan that contributes to international security; his bestseller, A Blueprint for Japan, coined and popularized the phrase “normal country.”9 But the problem was that as U.S. and normal-country advocates steered Japan’s security posture toward realism, attention inevitably focused on Article 9. The reality (the existence of the SDF) was already breaching the spirit of the article, and the last bastion was the ban on the right to collective defense (which gives substance to the no-war clause). But the official interpretation of the article to allow the SDF to exist as well as operate became increasingly strained with the pressure to allow the SDF (limited) collective action. Against such political development, the rightist/revisionist elements within the ruling LDP began to voice revision more strongly. The conservative view since the immediate postwar years, which sees Japan as a semistate and not fully sovereign because of Article 9, was brought back to life and reignited the LDP’s interest in pursuing its founding objective to revise the constitution.
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Furthermore, the increasing talks about constitutional revision alarmed Japan’s neighbors, as it was obvious that the no-war clause was in question. A pacifist state orientation, as expressed in the constitution, was reassuring not because Japan was perceived to have repented and changed, but because Japan was allied to the United States. At least, the Chinese understanding was that Americans would keep Japan from returning to militarism. Smaller Asian nations, particularly in Southeast Asia, took a more pragmatic stance because they were reliant on both Japan and the United States, and tended to avoid the historical issue from becoming a political hotspot. Nevertheless, a hawkish Japan speaking loudly about revising the constitution was regarded with caution. The rise of realist thinking in Japan as a corrective dose to modify the excessive influence of domestic popular pacifism is understandable, considering that post – Cold War Asia’s regional system is still in the modern phase.10 Postwar Japan shared during the Cold War the Western ideals of liberty, democracy, and peace for the sake of political coherence of the alliance and came to appreciate the fruits of the democratic capitalist system in a peaceful environment. Its foreign policy thinking acquired the habit of seeking common interests and acting in concert particularly with the Western powers. However, after the Cold War the Western alliance fragmented into two security structures, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the U.S.-Japan security treaty, and acquired the character of regional arms for America’s global strategy. Yet NATO is a regional security architecture in a (more or less) war-free zone and deepening integration; the U.S.-Japan alliance is not. Asia does not have a NATO-equivalent, nor is it about to. America now firmly recognizes Japan as an indispensable partner for the stable growth of Asia, and a “critical factor in the global equation.”11 Yet, as Tamamoto Masaru noted during the tsunami relief in 2004, “Japan does not have a workable formula to maintain the security relationship with the United States and foster cordial relations with China.”12 How Japan conceives itself— its power, potential, and purpose—holds the key to relations with China. But this quest is only beginning.
Beyond Power Politics? There are higher levels of association of states based on common interests, at the United Nations or in various international accords and treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the Bretton Woods institutions, where Japan has been and still is one of the global players. Talks in Japan about increasing international contribution actually envisage improving Japan’s role in these multilateral institutions,
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because Japan’s strength and status during the Cold War evolved and were defined within this higher tier of what is now generally understood to be international society, rather than in the international system of sovereign states. Postwar Japan withdrew from playing the game of balance of power, because it chose not to acquire power projection capability. Yet the distinction between these coexisting and overlapping two worlds is not clear to Japanese decision makers, because Japan long floated in a nongeopolitical, functional space of international society, while security was guaranteed by America’s nuclear umbrella. After the war Japan lost the habit of thinking geopolitically, of constructing the world from the regional base. As a state, Japan has been advancing and protecting national interest by the willful submission of sovereign rights to international norms and rule, which is something that sovereignty-conscious states like the United States or China often defy. Under America’s nuclear umbrella the Japanese state acquired the characteristics of what British diplomat Robert Cooper described in The Breaking of Nations as a “post-modern” state, more closely resembling the states in the European Union: “It has self-imposed limits on defence spending and capabilities. It is no longer interested in acquiring territory nor in using force. It would probably be willing to accept intrusive verification. It is an enthusiastic multilateralist.”13 Yet he and others have also warned that Japan is surrounded by “ ‘modern’ states, in which force is central, and that a rising China could push Japan to become modern again.”14 The implementation of many international accords and agreements is increasingly a matter of regional negotiation, as in the case of the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change. Japan needs, as ever, to engage with regional states as a regional power. But if it is to take the initiative to create a regional environment that best serves Japan’s national interest and in which Japan’s power serves the interest of others, Japan on balance needs to enhance its moral authority—or trust—in the region rather than its military function. This is not just about supporting development and democratization of other states, which Japan does already. The latest Nye-Armitage report, The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Getting Asia Right through 2020, emphasizes enhancing Japan’s economic, rather than military, role. Japan is expected to continue with its economic reform and liberalization but also prevent the history problem from becoming a political issue, in order act with the United States to guide China to make “choices that lead it down a path of peaceful integration and benign competition.”15 This is not just about supporting development and democratization of other states, which Japan does already. Reengaging with China has brought the region’s lack of trust in Japan to the fore, as China is raising the fist of historical justice in order to make the case for its leadership quality vis-à-vis Japan to the smaller states in the region. Japan has been underestimating the
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importance of history, and the region has begun to cast doubt on the extent to which Japan can act as the region’s purveyor of values and virtues of the liberal democratic world, as Joseph Nye wrote: “Unlike Germany . . . Japan has never come to terms with its record in the 1930s and 1940s. The residual suspicion that lingers in countries like China and Korea sets limits on Japan’s appeal that are reinforced every time the Japanese prime minister visits the Yasukuni Shrine.”16 It is not enough to be cash rich, as Japanese leaders correctly assess, but the extra political mileage comes not by contriving to change Article 9, but rather by acting in accordance to the values–democracy, liberty, capitalism—that made Japan powerful, in order to be trusted by its neighbors.
The Battle of Rhetoric: China Thinks Anew Premier Wen Jiaobao traveled to Tokyo in April 2007 on an ice-melting tour, scoring success with his media-conscious charm to leave a warmer impression of China in the minds of the Japanese public. Under a new banner of a “strategic and mutually beneficial” relationship that Abe offered to Beijing, the leaders have agreed to cooperate on energy as well as environmental issues, which are of vital importance to the two countries. They have also agreed to start joint research on the history of the bilateral relationship, including that of the Second World War. Positive as the steps are, traditional state-to-state relations, such as threat perceptions or territorial disputes, remain tense. Negotiations on the development of the East China Sea are a showcase of competing national interest. Credit is due to the Chinese leadership’s conceptual shift to become more conciliatory toward Japan after Koizumi, as reflected in Wen’s diplomacy in Tokyo. His 40-minute speech to the Japanese Diet, the first time in 22 years for a Chinese leader, acknowledged explicitly the Japanese leaders’ apologies and remorse for past aggressions, thanked Japan for years of development assistance, and stressed that the present and future relationship was more important than the past. The speech was received enthusiastically by the whole house and helped to alleviate Japanese anxiety about what they considered China’s excessive hostility toward Japan. The speech was broadcast live to China as a clear announcement to the Chinese public of their leadership’s intention to pursue a Japan policy different from the past. The overtones from Beijing seem to reflect a small triumph of the “new thinking” policy line of a more pragmatic, cooperative relationship with Japan, advocated by some Chinese scholars in 2002. Evidently, Beijing has toned down its criticism toward Japan’s history problem, as Wen mentioned neither comfort women nor Yasukuni. Another point to note is public response in
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China toward Wen’s conciliatory speech in Tokyo, which was very different from the antipatriotic outcry when the “new thinking” appeared in 2002. As Li Mingjiang observes, “Beijing has a lot of room to manoeuvre and cultivate domestic public opinion.”17 A comparable turnaround in Tokyo’s stance toward China has been difficult to see, but abstract talks about national identity and hawkish posings have receded since Abe resigned abruptly in September 2007. Both Fukuda and Aso have been bogged down by LDP’s unpopularity and mounting social and economic problems that Abe failed to address while he was pursuing the “beautiful country” vision and the idea of constitutional revision. Koizumi also shattered any illusion that separating political issues from economic issues—seikei bunri—in order to be polite to each other still makes sense. Seikei bunri guided Japanese policy toward the PRC, as postoccupation Japan first normalized relations with Taiwan in 1952. The idea was to keep a window of opportunity to restore prewar economic ties with mainland China open. Politically, it proved to be a prudent choice for a weak Japan. It enabled both Japan and China to circumscribe the impact of the occasional political tension—and consequently fluctuating Japanese domestic opinion toward China—from other aspects of the relationship, particularly development assistance that began in 1979. Today, seikei bunri is more rhetoric than principle, obscuring the reality of Sino-Japanese relations. Facts speak volumes about the economy’s growing influence on political relations. Not only has trade between Japan and the PRC increased a thousandfold since official trade resumed in the 1960s, to over $100 billion annually. Volume of trade with China exceeded that with the United States for the first time in 2004, reaching $189.4 billion, making China Japan’s largest source of import, and the second-largest export market. Without increasing trade with China, the Japanese economy could not have lifted itself out of the recession. Furthermore, economic interaction has become a daily affair, an integral part of the two societies and close to the peoples. There are over 460,000 Chinese students and workers in Japan, and a Chinese media company was listed in the Tokyo stock exchange for the first time in the spring of 2006. The stock market is expecting more Chinese companies to be raising capital in Japan. Japanese television news is filled daily with relations between the two countries. The voices of the business community are increasingly hard to ignore politically. Their presence in and dealings with China are part of China’s overall economic restructuring and subsequent social transformation, which also make them vulnerable to swings in the political relationship. Furthermore, the government’s aid policy has been changing with the relative decline of Japan’s economic power and some rethinking about using economic resources more effectively, against the background of prolonged
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economic recession during the 1990s.18 Conceived originally in exchange for being let off the hook about war reparation after Mao Zedong waived China’s right in 1972, aid has been the backbone to Japan’s conciliatory policy toward China. But with swelling evidence of misuse and abuse in recent years and the growing suspicion that Japan was helping China’s military growth, combined with the lack of appreciation from China, not to mention constant hammering on the history problem,19 the Japanese public became critical toward this traditionally generous position. China’s nuclear test in 1995 was pivotal in turning aid policy into a political prong, as grants were suspended for the first time since 1979.20 Aid to China has since become subject to review annually rather than every five years. The private sector – led economy is hot, indeed, and the trend toward closer integration is irreversible. As a social and economic reality, the spread of global capitalism has brought China and Japan closer, to resemble the saying often used to underline historical closeness, “neighbor countries separated only by a strip of water [pronounced ichii taisui in Japanese].” China is no longer a revolutionary power; it needs a stable international environment and sound domestic governance to weather the dramatic impact of economic modernization on society. Most significantly, Japan and China now influence each other’s domestic policies, as they share markets and harmonize policies through international rules and regulations of trade and business practices. As an economic power, it is an important mode of relations that enables Japan to engage and change China for the better.
Weathering Social Change A recent U.S. report on China observed: “the most important changes wrought by China’s economic restructuring are in the relationship between the individual and the state, and that this may be the major factor of political transformation.”21 Not surprisingly, but less obviously, the same phenomenon is transforming Japan as well. The impact of social transformation is greater in China because its economy is making a quantum leap from a socialist, state-controlled economy to an all-out embrace of economic opportunism. But with the bursting of the economic bubble, Japan, too, has been subjected to the tides of global capitalism and forces of market liberalization, and the postwar system of political stability and social welfare is unraveling. It is well to recall that, until the Cold War ended and for a period thereafter, a major political agenda between the United States and Japan was market deregulation and liberalization: Structural Impediments Initiatives and Super-301 were American applications of pressure to deregulate the Japanese domestic market.
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In fact, social change is challenging the structure of governance in both China and Japan, and putting pressure on the one-party rule. What has brought the history problem to the fore of diplomatic relations is the growing weakness of the ruling parties and their attempts to reassert legitimacy. In Japan, the end of the economic boom in the early 1990s fractured the “iron triangle” and the LDP’s traditional power base has thus begun to weaken, pork-barrel politics becoming a thing of the past. It has since been struggling to reform its own creation, the system that focused on postwar national reconstruction, economic growth, and social stability that is now unable to address a society that has become more plural, individualistic, and demanding of rights. The understanding of democracy as sameness, of instilling a middle-class feeling in 90 percent of the populace, was possible because of bureaucratic largesse (including the now-collapsing national pension scheme) and company-guaranteed social security of life-time employment. Disenchanted with national politics that can neither deliver largesse nor shake off vested interests protected by regulations, people are now demanding smaller government. Koizumi was determined to deliver this, and said that if the LDP could not change he would destroy it. For the Chinese Communist Party, a shift to market economy has meant ditching the idea of social equality for (upward) social mobility. The pressure on governance is great with the emergence of a demanding middle class. Rising Chinese nationalism is, therefore, a symptom of the nation’s quest for a new identity. During the 1990s, China’s anti-Japan propaganda may have kept popular dissent from turning against the regime, as the Japanese had often suspected. But such a tactic only bides time and fundamentally does not solve anything. Nevertheless, Chinese nationalism’s repercussions for Japanese politics have been hard to ignore. The diplomatic havoc over Yasukuni shook the vortex of national politics, Nagata-cho, the location of the Japanese Diet where power brokers scheme. In the race to succeed Koizumi, who announced his departure to be in September 2006, concerns over foreign relations competed for attention with issues of domestic social and economic life. Even though America’s Japan-bashing in the 1980s over trade and the incessant application of foreign pressure to liberalize the Japanese market have been the cause of diplomatic rifts, the LDP did not come unstuck. Nevertheless, nationalists and right-wingers had always resented the fact that the United States had the final say, given its responsibility for Japan’s security, but most politicians were resigned to accepting. In this way, Japan had long conceded to the United States the position to act as an ersatz “opposition party.” That is why U.S. caution toward Yasukuni unnerved the LDP leaders, for in this picture, how Japan manages relations with China is very much the business of the alliance, and the Japanese leaders have reasons to fret.
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Identity Versus Interest In the showdown between Beijing and Tokyo over history during Koizumi’s leadership, both capitals seemed bent on doing everything the wrong way, and many worried about an escalating Chinese nationalism. But in a sense it had to do with the preservation of party identity against the groundswell of social change that is occurring in both nations. Robert Cooper wrote that foreign policy is not always about interest, but could also be about expressing identity.22 The way that Japanese leaders were reacting to China’s Japan-bashing was really not to preserve Japan’s interests in the long term, but to express ideas about Japan. Yasukuni is a prime example, but the dispute on history is also about the Liberal-Democratic interpretation of the Second World War and its raison d’être as the repository of Japanese identity. They have become “official” and authentic because of the party’s long rule. Although rising Chinese nationalism was seen as intended to deliberately provoke Japanese nationalism—an obvious recipe for disaster—the two nationalisms do not pair up. China’s anti-Japan sentiment is based on the memory of Imperial Japan, the atrocities of which are indisputable. Japan’s anti-China sentiment is not rooted in the past, although harsh and prejudiced opinions about China exist. For Japan, relations with China are a deeply domestic issue because China has been integral to the formation of Japan’s modern identity. Back in the 1970s, Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei, who was determined to normalize ties with China and succeed, couched the China-Japan problem as “a domestic problem . . . a cancer that was bad for Japan.”23 Problems over relations with China had been an enigmatic challenge for Japan since Meiji, divisive and unsettling. It is a mirror of the vicissitudes of Japan’s modern history, as the Chinese also say of history with Japan. Postwar normalization with China, thus, was a matter of priority, a question of when rather than an option. It was pursued against the background of a power struggle within the LDP, which was still striving to consolidate a stable governing structure of the postwar state. But after 1972, to be on cordial relations was what most mattered in the climate of Cold War détente. In such a situation of minimal engagement, history was less a diplomatic issue. However, this also kept a lid on resolving contesting views of history within Japan that were diverse as well as ideological. Just as there were those who believed in forging close ties with China, there had also been in Japan a coterie unhappy with the victor’s justice of allied powers. That the Socialist Party, sympathetic toward China and critical toward the United States, was a sizable presence spelled weakness in the ideological struggle from the American perspective—but a Japanese equivalent of a German Ostpolitik was inconceivable.
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As such, the obstacle to Sino-Japanese reconciliation is also rooted in the contesting views between the political left and right on the question of war guilt, of how postwar Japan was born, and whose version of history and the state dominated politically. The Yasukuni debacle had the effect of smoking the issues out from historical obscurity. On the other hand, Beijing’s brandishing of the sword of historical justice, criticizing Japanese distortion of historical facts, and being ever vigilant toward any moves of Japanese remilitarization as political leverage to gain economic concessions from Japan had become excessive in the 1990s. Jiang Zemin’s era was marked by particular hostility, making any effort toward reconciliation as humiliating and undignified an experience as possible for the Japanese. Under his leadership, China began to reach outward strategically, except with Japan. Jiang also fueled public anti-Japan sentiment to encourage patriotic zeal at home, especially among youths, as the communist regime’s hold on domestic governance seemed to weaken. The demanding tone in criticizing the history problem on his visit to Tokyo in 1998 hit a poor note with the Japanese. Around this time, the apology fatigue in the Japanese, especially among younger generations, hit the peak. The Yasukuni controversy, however, set alight hawkish politicians and pundits who were already painting the picture of China as a threat: its military expenditure is rising too fast, it is not a democracy and therefore cannot share values with Japan, and so on. These hawks wanted Beijing to know that Japan was no longer a pushover for aid. This sort of hawkishness was certainly new for Japan. The hardening of attitude toward China was also a reflection of the domestic squabble resulting from Koizumi’s political reform within the LDP. Most notably, the influence of the pro-China clique in the foreign policy community has declined, because Koizumi ousted from the party the elder statesmen who had held sway over Japan’s China policy. For the public, which had increasingly come to wonder, “Why provide more carrots to a seemingly ungrateful country that can now launch its own space rocket?” this kind of bravado from their leaders came as a breath of fresh air. It administered a tiny bit of justice to a country that continued to behave rudely. But beyond this point, the hawks and the public parted ways. Talking sense into the Chinese leaders and driving them up the wall with no clear sense of where the bilateral relationship might land were completely different things.
Yasukuni as Bitburg In the larger picture of Japan’s identity crisis, those who criticized Koizumi for taking the wrong issue, Yasukuni, to make a stand against China may want to ask whether Yasukuni was the wrong issue at all, as there is something uncanny
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about what Koizumi had done. He put the shrine, the indisputable symbol and legacy of pre-1945 ultranationalism, in the limelight by exposing it to Beijing’s unbridled criticism. Consequently, postwar conservative political handling of the history question became unsettled. In the chorus defending or denouncing Yasukuni, many fragmented pieces of Japan’s own memories of war have started to come together. Those who denounced Koizumi’s lack of diplomatic skill, such as former prime minister Nakasone, tended to gloss over the actual public ambivalence toward Yasukuni. In numerous court cases the judiciary had repeatedly insinuated that the prime minister’s visit to the shrine breached the principle of separation of politics and religion. There are Christians as well as Buddhists who do not believe in Yasukuni. Koizumi’s predecessors, who were arguably more cautious about the visit, had kept the lid on the Yasukuni controversy domestically through their calculated low-key approach. But in the run-up to the September 2006 transfer of power, reference to the shrine became almost obligatory in expressing views on how to manage relations with China. Here the effects of Koizumi’s populist style of leadership, which pitted public opinion against the opposition to his reforms, were also present—but not exactly in favor of Koizumi, or indeed Yasukuni. Public support for the shrine had never been unanimous, but since the riots in China in spring 2005 the wisdom of continuing the visits, if not the shrine itself, became questionable in the public’s mind. Prospective leaders did not want to be seen as weak by calling off the visit, but none of the candidates followed in Koizumi’s footsteps to make the visit an electoral promise. The drive to make the case against the Yasukuni visit more explicit, however, has come unexpectedly from the press. Tsuneo Watanabe, the head of the largest conservative daily, Yomiuri Shimbun, and one of the most influential opinion-formers in Japan, backed Koizumi’s decision to send troops to Iraq but openly criticized the visits for “creating enemies out of Japan’s neighbours,” in the leftist journal Ronza no less (February 2006). In a more surprising turnaround, Yomiuri and its ideological archrival Asahi Shimbun, which publishes the Ronza, formed an alliance to oppose future prime ministerial visits to Yasukuni. Of the other national dailies, Mainichi, Nikkei, and Sankei, only Sankei, with the smallest circulation, supports the visits. The shrine, in turn, became the center of the Japanese equivalent of Germany’s Bitburg controversy, which erupted in 1985 when the U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, was due to visit the military cemetery as part of the celebrations of the fortieth anniversary of VE Day. Reagan’s intended gesture of reconciliation became politically controversial since Bitburg honored, among other soldiers, 49 SS troops. The cemetery “in short, became a sacrament of resentment, not reconciliation.”24 Similarly, at Yasukuni 14 major war criminals found guilty at the Tokyo tribunal are enshrined. Yasukuni was said to
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have unilaterally made the decision to enshrine them in 1978, and this decision has since been both controversial and contested.25 When Koizumi made his last visit on August 15, 2006, Yasukuni received a record 250,000 visitors, many of them young students who were curious to know about the establishment that was causing so much political noise. Some interviewed on television found the sight of elderly men in the Imperial Army uniform marching into the shrine odd and unnerving. Others could not understand why the shrine should be so troublesome. In short, combined with the extraordinary level of international as well as national attention focusing on Yasukuni, the location of Japan’s latent nationalism had been exposed to an unprecedented degree. All this public attention put the LDP leadership hopefuls in a bind. The visit to Yasukuni was meant to satisfy the association of bereaved war families and veterans associations, whose religious or spiritual need for the shrine cannot be disputed but who also deliver some 260,000 member votes and funding to the party. Yet a scoop by Nihon Keizai Shinbun, a Japanese financial daily, revealed that Emperor Hirohito was apparently deeply upset by Yasukuni’s decision to enshrine the 14 war criminals and decided to stop his visits. No member of the Japanese imperial family has visited the shrine since 1975. More revelations, such as the Ministry of Health’s involvement in sending name lists of soldiers to Yasukuni to be enshrined, have since followed. These news reports rocked the association’s hitherto unified support for prime ministerial visits.26 It was against such a backdrop that the LDP leadership contest was being played out.
Ending the Last War Conceptualizing the bilateral relationship after Koizumi is still the biggest challenge for both sides. Seeing the Yasukuni debacle as a rupture in smoothrunning diplomatic ties forged in 1972 misses the point that there is little to go back to beyond being on speaking terms, the original intention of the détente. What is at issue is the closure of the last war. Metaphorically, the war that Mao spoke about is not over. Japan’s postwar narrative of this war has predominantly been about the war lost to the United States. But today, the idea of incorporating the longer war in China—starting from the Manchurian incident in 1931—has become less controversial. It is on this episode of the protracted war that the Chinese today want closure, and the Japanese are only just starting to see this war in a different light. There is also increasing talk in Japan that the shrine should separate the spirits of the 14 war criminals from the rest, in the Shinto shrine’s practice known as bunshi.27 To bring up this bunshi idea reflects the tendency of political leaders to find stopgap measures, but it is still a move in the right direction. The problem lies in the conflict between the postwar constitution that guarantees
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Yasukuni’s religious freedom (like any other religious establishment) and its willful retention of prewar dogma as the symbol of state Shintoism. But the weight of China’s importance to the Japanese economy has given rise to a broadly shared sense of pragmatism to make Yasukuni less controversial. There is hope, for the history issue can no longer be dismissed as a “misunderstanding” between statesmen. The easing of the ideological tension has brought more freedom for the Japanese public to express views against Imperial Japan—views long held by the political left but suppressed for being too proChina. The Japanese stories of war suffering are still being excavated from unpublished manuscripts and tales of survivors. Only recently, an NHK documentary on the battle of Iwo Jima revealed that there were actually civilian survivors. Most Japanese had long believed that they all perished “heroically.” The Yomiuri ran a series of articles in 2005 that questioned and exposed the prewar leadership’s responsibility with the kind of intellectual honesty and historical objectivity that had long characterized arguments made by the ideological left but that were not part of the rhetoric of the nationalist right or political conservatives. Interpretations of history emphasizing the suffering of the Japanese at the hands of their own leaders are gaining weight. When these two stories begin to meet, in a more comprehensive and objective narrative of the long war, the operative words change and reborn in Mao’s 1938 observation acquire new meanings—they become, for one, related to each other. Of course, after 1945, China changed dramatically and Japan was reborn, too. But how much did China inform Japan’s rebirth as a “constitutional pacifist”? As the reemergence of China lays out a new and tangible international environment for Japan, this question is becoming relevant. As if both had spent the last 60 years in a separate time and space (in a way, they did), the two are weaving a new narrative where the war in Asia is the dominant story, beginning at the point where they merely reached a cease-fire as enemies. One thing seems certain about the rise of China. That is, clashing with China over historical misgivings more intensely and widely in the last decade, and putting outstanding problems that were hitherto shelved on the political agenda, has added an important (and hitherto missing) regional dimension to Japan’s international thinking. What the Japanese foreign policy community had so far failed to see was that Japan’s reckoning with the past matters today because regional relations have reached the stage of building mutual trust.
Beyond Modern History Former Japanese diplomat and security expert Okamoto Yukio described China as “the elephant in the room—too big to ignore” for Japan and the United States. But will there be a day when Japan and China speak of America as the
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big elephant? A century down the road, who knows? As a country integrally allied to the United States, but closer to China historically, culturally, and geographically, seeking an independent position between these polar opposites has been postwar Japan’s perennial existential dilemma. To make life easy, Japan should think about enduring peace with China—just as it had achieved with the United States after the Second World War. This amounts to overcoming the tragic episode in the two countries’ modern history. Otherwise, even though Japan does not resort to military aggression, it will make Asia plunge into misery again.
Notes 1. Haruko Satoh is a Ph. D. student at Cambridge University and a research fellow at the Japanese Institute of International Affairs. 2. He brushed aside questions from reporters about whether he intended to visit the shrine on August 15, the day of Japanese surrender in 1945 and the controversial date on which Koizumi made his last visit in 2006. (August 5, 2008, Yomiuri Shinbun). Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro did so back in 1984 and attracted criticism from China for the first time, but Miki Takeo was actually the first prime minister to visit the shrine on August 15 in 1978. 3. Kokubun Ryosei,“Kokko seijoka 30 nen: 1972 nen taisei wo koeta nicchu kankei wo motomete” [30th Anniversary of Normalization: Searching for Sino-Japanese Relations beyond the 1972 System], Gaiko Forum, pp. 16-23, No. 171 (October, 2002). 4. Honda Shoichi and Naganuma Setsuo, Tenno no guntai [the Emperor’s army] (p. 405), Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun, 1991. 5. The Seiron Extra, (January 2006). 6. Kishi Nobusuke was one who tried to revise the constitution in the late 1950s. After he was forced to resign after forcefully extending the security treaty with the United States, constitutional revision was taken off the political agenda. His successor, Ikeda Hayato, launched the “income-doubling” policy and chose to focus on economic growth. 7. Ogata Sadako, Singo nitchu beichu kankei [post-war Japan-China, U.S.-China relations] (p. 178) Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1992. 8. As a practical issue the Self-Defense Forces are presently not permitted to engage in collective defense actions, even in UN peacekeeping missions. This limits the nature of operations that the SDF can carry out, as it not only requires forces from other nations to protect the SDF in the field, but the SDF cannot fire in defense of others—including civilians. 9. Ozawa Ichiro, Nihon kaizo keikaku [A Blueprint for Japan], Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993. 10. Michael Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism, New York: Palgrave, 2001; Robert Cooper, Breaking of Nations, London: Atlantic Books, 2003.
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11. Richard L. Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, The U.S.-Japan Alliance: Getting Asia Right through 2020, CSIS Report, February 2007 (Center for Strategic and International Studies), p. 15. 12. Tamamoto Masaru, “After the Tsunami, How Can Japan Lead?,” Far Eastern Economic Review, p. 10 (January 21, 2005). 13. Cooper, The Breaking of Nations, p. 41. 14. Michael Green has also noted that Asia has entered an era of modern, nation-state politics, where the relative decline of Japan’s economic power and the rise of China as a conventional power raise the question of Japan’s “weight and security in the international system.” Green, Japan’s Reluctant Realism, p. 34; Katzenstein Suh and Carlson (eds), Rethinking Security in East Asia, Stanford, CA: 2004. 15. Armitage and Nye, The U.S.-Japan Alliance, p. 6. 16. Joseph Nye, PacNet, No. 51, November 29, 2005 (CSIS/Pacific Forum). 17. Li Mingjiang, “Premier Wen’s Japan Visit: China’s “New Thinking” at Work?” RSIS Commentaries (April 18, 2007, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies). 18. Japan’s aid policy toward China began to tighten from the late 1980s to early 1990s in response to various criticisms—from the high level of tied aid to the questionable projects that did not serve Japan’s national interest. 19. From around 2000, the right-wing daily Sankei Shimbun reported on various cases of misuse of Japanese ODA in China. Not only did these reports question the role of Japan’s aid in supporting China’s military growth (“Japan’s aid to China: supporting military power,” Sankei Shimbun, October 8, 1999), but they shed light on the problem of the Chinese government’s deliberate censoring of the fact that many public works were financed by Japanese aid. A plaque placed in the new terminal in Beijing airport in 2000 publicly acknowledged Japanese aid for the first time (Sankei Shimbun, April 12, 2000). 20. Grants to China were not resumed until 1997, after China announced a moratorium on nuclear tests and signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. In less than a decade, the amount of aid to China has more than halved from around $2000 million in 1998. 21. Carla Hills and Dennis Blair (cochairs), U.S.-China Relations: An Affirmative Agenda, a Responsible Course, Independent Task Force Report No. 59 (Council on Foreign Relations, 10 April 10, 2007), p. 16. 22. Cooper, The Breaking of Nations. 23. Tanaka Akihiko, Nitchu kankei 1945–1990 [Sino-Japanese Relations: 1945–1990] (pp. 74-77) Tokyo, 1991.“Of course, Nixon did not change the views or behaviour of everyone as rapidly as he ‘changed the world’ [with his surprise visit to Beijing]. For Japan, 1972 was the year of power change. And, Sino-Japanese normalisation was the first problem of domestic politics that the new cabinet had to tackle.” 24. Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (p. 12), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1977. 25. The scoop by Nihon Keizai Shinbun (Nikkei, July 19, 2006), revealed that Emperor Hirohito was deeply upset by this decision, and cited this as the reason
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for his own decision to stop the visit. No member from the Japanese imperial family has visited the shrine since 1975. This revelation was followed by more evidence that revealed that the Ministry of Health was involved in this decision. But the evidence of the emperor’s dismay, in particular, has unsettled the association of bereaved familys’ hitherto unified stance toward the shrine. 26. Nihon Keizai Shinbun (Nikkei, July 19, 2006). 27. Bunshi is to give each god a separate “seat,” so that in one shrine it is possible to have multiple gods each occupying individual seats. Yasukuni argues that its dogma is unique in maintaining one seat for all the spirits, and bunshi cannot be done. Since Yasukuni is a religious establishment, and its religious independence is protected by the constitution, political interference of the kind expressed by politicians would be a violation of the constitution.
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Coping with Complexity: Trends in Thailand’s and Malaysia’s Relations with China Joseph Chinyong Liow and Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman1
Introduction In 2004, Malaysia celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of its normalization of ties with the Peoples’ Republic of China with much fanfare. Thailand followed suit in 2005. Indeed, Malaysian and Thai relations with China have come a long way since Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok were driven by shifting geostrategic conditions in the mid-1970s to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing despite the fact that their respective policy makers continued to view China with grave apprehension. While contemporary scholarly attention in the field of international relations of East Asia mostly focuses on shifts in Chinese grand strategy and foreign policy, an equally pertinent dimension to the equation is how regional states understand and have responded to these shifts. To that end, this chapter focuses on the response from two regional states that were traditional Western allies sharing deep apprehensions toward China for domestic and strategic reasons during the Cold War, but nevertheless were compelled at various points to recalibrate China policy in tandem with changes in their respective internal and external contexts. Furthermore, a comparative study of this nature throws up interesting observations on similarities and differences in terms of the drivers behind how regional states view and respond to the gradual rise of China.
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The chapter begins by looking at relations during the Cold War, focusing particularly on the content of Thai and Malaysian threat perceptions vis-à-vis China and their respective responses. The section also attempts to unpack the nature and specific constituents of this threat perception. From there, the chapter moves on to discuss the post – Cold War “turn,” the strategic ambiguity that was born out of this shift, the emergence of China as a major power of consequence in the international politics of East Asia, and how the policies of the two states under scrutiny here adjusted to these new geostrategic realities. The chapter then concludes with a comparative assessment of broader trends and contexts that have informed Malaysian and Thai relations with China. Several arguments are presented here. First, while China was a major security concern for both Malaysia and Thailand during the Cold War, for various factors, both domestic and external in nature, to be elaborated upon it was in the former instance that threat perception was far more acute. Second, Malaysian concerns toward Chinese intentions persisted into the immediate post – Cold War period, whereas Thai relations with China found a more even keel and were not confronted with equally pressing challenges. Notwithstanding the ambiguity of the immediate post – Cold War world and prevailing concerns for Chinese intentions, policy makers in both Southeast Asian countries had also to be cognizant of the need to facilitate China’s inevitable rise through integration into the prevailing regional order, if only to mitigate potential Chinese diplomatic and political hostility.
Relations During the Cold War While conventional wisdom portrays the Cold War essentially as a bipolar security dilemma, for many of the states in Southeast Asia, not least Thailand and Malaysia, it was effectively a tripolar security script where the Peoples’ Republic of China played a clear and imposing part. Two particular considerations are worth dwelling upon: (1) China’s direct and indirect involvement in domestic politics through the ethnic Chinese and communist connection, and (2) its perceived expansionist ambitions, which undoubtedly caused considerable concern for policy makers in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. During the Cold War, a major source of anxiety for a number of Southeast Asian states related to the sizable ethnic Chinese minorities within their territorial boundaries. These concerns were exacerbated by the fact that this period was essentially an era of anticolonialism and nation-building. Given the tenuous nature of the postcolonial nation-state, it was not surprising that the question of the loyalty of ethnic Chinese communities surfaced on a regular basis, particularly in light of the fact that China entertained a policy of dual nationality. For Thailand and Malaysia, this problem of the “fifth column” effect proved significantly more acute.
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With its sizable ethnic Chinese minority barely assimilated into the imagined Thai nation, Bangkok was particularly cautious when it approached this issue as it assessed the potential impact on Thai-Chinese relations. This apprehension was expressed in the following assessment produced by the Thai National Security Council: In the first place, despite Peking’s public announcements that it would never interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, in practice, the contrary was true: that it chose to continue to work for subversion and advancement of its own goals. Secondly, the current state of Thailand’s internal stability was already problematic without facing further possible complications arising from legalized trade and other contacts with China. Thirdly, formal contact with Peking would only lead to open collaboration with local insurgents and aggravate the sensitivity of the hardcore overseas Chinese whose allegiance to Thailand remained dubious.2
To be sure, China’s tolerance of dual nationality for the overseas Chinese was not the only source of concern. Given Thailand’s heavy reliance on their ethnic Chinese community to drive the economy, the potential subversion of the Thai economy through this channel evidently also weighed heavily on the minds of Thai policy makers.3 Relations were further hardened by Thailand’s staunch opposition to communism. Thailand’s position on communism during the Cold War was defined by its promulgation of an Anti-Communist Activities Act in 1952.4 Predictably, Thailand’s move to adopt a clear anticommunist foreign policy and cast its lot with the U.S.-led Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) quickly antagonized China. Even so, Beijing restrained itself in its condemnation of Thailand’s policy on communism as a result of its own gravitation away from the Maoist model of violent revolution in the mid-1950s toward a policy of peaceful interstate coexistence, with the imperative being the need for a multifront containment of Washington’s increasing influence in Southeast Asia. As a result of this, Thai-Chinese relations were relatively stable, if somewhat muted, for a brief period during the 1950s, and were built on exchange of unofficial visits and the conduct of a controlled amount of bilateral trade. On its part, China sought to demonstrate its sincerity by curtailing its support for the Communist Party of Thailand (CPT), which was at the time embarking on a multifront insurgency against Bangkok.5 A major shift occurred in Thai-Chinese relations, however, when Field Marshall Sarit assumed power after overthrowing Phibun Songgkram in a coup in 1957. Describing the impact of the coup in relation to China, David Chak surmised: “Allegedly, it was China’s establishment of diplomatic relations with the rival Cambodia and its increasing support for the communist Pathet Lao that had triggered Sarit’s reversion and led him to reject China’s appeal for
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improving mutual relations. Again, all trade with and personal travels to mainland China were banned. The domestic anticommunist position was asserted and hardened.”6 Moreover, Thailand’s pro – United States disposition was strengthened under Sarit. Thailand subsequently threw its diplomatic weight behind American involvement in Vietnam and provided soldiers and military bases for the American war effort. Beijing responded to Bangkok’s alignment with the United States by increasing overt support for the CPT, which by then had declared its intention to overthrow the Thai government.7 Relations with China deteriorated even further in the 1960s after Chinese foreign minister Chen Yi declared his support for the CPT in 1965. China facilitated the CPT’s creation of two united front organizations, the Thai Independence Movement (TIM) and the Thai Patriotic Front (TPF), both headquartered in Beijing.8 Together with North Vietnam, China supported active communist insurgencies in the poverty-stricken northeast Thailand. However, a further shift in the power equation in the Asia-Pacific, precipitated by the Sino-Soviet split and subsequently by U.S.-China rapprochement, compelled Thai policy makers to reconsider their position vis-à-vis Beijing. In November 1971, Thailand officially declared its support for China’s membership at the United Nations. Several years later, on July 1, 1975, Bangkok normalized ties with Beijing. While, on the surface, communist insurgencies in Southeast Asia were depicted as struggles between domestic actors, given the superpower overlay it was clear that they also had serious systemic undertones.9 For one, China was believed to have rendered ideological and material support for local communist movements. In Thailand’s case, these concerns persisted despite the normalization of ties with China. Giving substance to these suspicions was the fact that the Communist Party of China dispatched a congratulatory message to its counterpart in Thailand on the occasion of the latter’s thirty-fifth anniversary in 1977, and reiterated that “the fraternal feelings between the two parties and peoples of China and Thailand forged in the protracted revolutionary struggle will certainly be further consolidated and developed.”10 The systemic undertones of their struggle against communism came to a head with the fall of Saigon in 1975, when Thailand was itself two years into its first civilian government since the immediate post – World War II era. With the fall of Laos to communism and the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, Vietnam emerged from the Indochina war as the strongest and most aggressive state in mainland Southeast Asia. By the mid-1970s, it was obvious that Vietnam had hegemonic ambitions in Indochina. An unfavorable treaty was imposed upon Laos, while Cambodia was invaded and a puppet regime established. Hanoi did not look favorably upon the Thai government, which was anchored in the U.S. orbit. Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in December 1978 foreshadowed a change in the strategic equation in mainland Southeast Asia. First, it was viewed in Bangkok circles as a penetration into a buffer state and hence a
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direct threat to Thai security. Moreover, the geographical proximity of Vietnam and Laos to northern Thailand carried with it the threat of cross-border insurgencies.11 While military resistance was considered, Thailand was at the time unsure if its military forces could match those of a battle-hardened Vietnamese army. Given these strategic challenges and constraints on its national defenses, China’s decision to assert its regional presence and “punish” Vietnam’s incursion into Cambodia was quietly welcomed in Thailand. Moreover, the assertion of Vietnamese geostrategic ambitions right at Bangkok’s doorstep greatly enhanced not only Sino-Thai political and diplomatic cooperation but military cooperation as well. Bangkok received significant amounts of military aid from China, and it also served as a conduit for Chinese aid to Khmer Rouge rebels who continued fighting Vietnamese forces into the 1980s.12 Indeed, such was the significance of Sino-Thai military cooperation during and after the Third Indochina War that it led a longtime China watcher to term it a “quasi-alliance.”13 Not unlike the case with Thailand, for most of the Cold War the primary concern for Malaysian leaders was China’s reluctance to categorically renounce all forms of support for the CPM (Communist Party of Malaya), a communist movement that leveraged on the ethnic Chinese minority of Malaysia (then Malaya) to undermine the aristocratic pro-Britain Malay elite engaged in independence negotiations with London. Because the vast majority of the CPM was ethnic Chinese, the factor of ethnic allegiance loomed as large as ideological predilections in Malaysian perceptions of and outlooks toward China. As a consequence, China’s stewardship of Malaysia’s substantial ethnic Chinese population based on ethnic affiliation served as a major thorn in the side of bilateral relations. These concerns were not mitigated by the normalization of ties in May 1974.14 In the same way that Thai misgivings toward China’s impact on domestic politics were overshadowed by broader geostrategic tectonics that were transforming the regional security landscape, a number of developments in the region pushed a recalibration of Malaysia’s policy toward China. With the withdrawal of British forces east of Suez at the end of the 1960s and Washington’s enunciation of the Guam doctrine signaling American withdrawal as well, the continued viability of erstwhile reliance on Western deterrence commitments was now being questioned in Malaysia and elsewhere in the region. Kuala Lumpur’s immediate response was twofold. First, Malaysian leaders championed the neutralization of Southeast Asia premised on the guarantees committed to by major powers to preserve the neutrality of the region. This initiative began as the “Ismail Peace Plan” and was based on Malaysian home minister Tun Dr. Ismail’s January 1968 suggestion in Parliament that “the time is ripe for the countries in the region to declare collectively the neutralization of South-East Asia.”15 Tun Ismail’s proposal for the neutralization
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of Southeast Asia contained three core tenets: (1) the neutralization of the region had to be guaranteed by the great powers (the United States, the Soviet Union, and China); (2) it would be based on nonaggression pacts among regional states; and (3) it would also stand on a policy of peaceful coexistence among the countries of the region.16 The Ismail Peace Plan would subsequently morph into ASEAN’s ZOPFAN (Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality) principle. Second, in order to attenuate the uncertainty arising from these tectonic shifts, Malaysia embarked on a reassessment of its China policy. This reassessment began with Kuala Lumpur’s support for China’s membership at the UN in October 1970 (in tandem with Bangkok) and peaked with Prime Minister Tun Razak’s landmark visit to Beijing in May 1974 to establish diplomatic ties. It needs to be stressed again, however, that just as it was with Thailand, Malaysia’s normalization of ties with China was more a consequence of the new geostrategic realities that confronted Kuala Lumpur than a major shift in its threat perception. Indeed, during the Cold War years, the issue of China’s intentions was a primary concern for Malaysian security planners. Beijing’s reluctance to categorically disavow ties with the communist movement in Malaysia was a fundamental barrier for bilateral relations and was viewed as a clear threat by Malaysia. To that end, Ghazali Shafie, the permanent secretary of Malaysia’s fledgling Foreign Ministry and for many years the country’s foreign policy architect, provided some insight into the preoccupation among Malaysian policy makers regarding the shape of the China threat: Should China, for example, in a conflict scenario with Japan find that the declared policy of Malaysia was neutral, she might surmise, because of big Japanese investments, Malaysia was in fact siding with Japan. In the circumstances, China may be tempted through her international Liaison Department, a wing of the CPC, to revive subversive activities in Malaysia using the MCP.17
The fact that CPM membership was largely ethnic Chinese in nature further complicated the situation, for it extended Malaysia’s suspicions to the issue of China’s stewardship of the overseas Chinese in Malaysia, which until Deng Xiaopeng’s 1978 ASEAN tour was in fact given (paradoxically, it should be added) policy expression in Beijing’s ambiguity on dual citizenship.18 Indeed, these suspicions were confirmed in 1984, when the Malaysian government realized that Malaysian Chinese were permitted to visit China clandestinely with special visas issued by the Chinese government in Hong Kong, and that they were treated like returning overseas Chinese and looked after by the Commission for Overseas Chinese Affairs in China.19 To that end, it is worth noting that if indeed one impetus for establishment of ties with China was to “demonstrate to the country’s [Malaysia’s] resident Chinese community and to its insurgent Communist Party
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that its legitimacy was recognised and endorsed by its counterpart in Beijing,” it did little to assuage the concerns felt by Malaysian policy makers themselves about their local Chinese constituency’s potential to be a Chinese fifth column, and about Beijing’s own intentions in this regard.20 To understand the ethnic dimension of Malaysia’s relations with China, the historical context of decolonization needs to be appreciated. More so than in Thailand, in Malaysia the question of the place of ethnic minorities, in which the Chinese featured most prominently by virtue of their numbers, was a testy one. Malaysia’s traditional Malay elite, who eventually inherited the colonial state in August 1957, had since the failed Malayan Union experiment of 1946 negotiated decolonization with Britain on the premise that the postcolonial state was to be one built on ethnic Malay primacy.21 The consequence of this was the creation of an affirmativeaction postcolonial state where ethnic minorities accepted their deferential position vis-à-vis the Malay leadership. On the part of the former, however, an acute sense of insecurity developed, particularly given the fact that a large proportion of economic wealth continued to reside in the hands of the Chinese minority, which in turn fostered a tense relationship between both communities that had to be gingerly managed by the dominant Malay political party, the United Malays National Organization (UMNO), and the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA) under the auspices of the Alliance coalition government. Beijing’s insistence on retaining links with the CPM, and the backdrop of ethnic politics upon which this was superimposed, was but one facet of Malaysian threat perceptions toward China. Again, perhaps arguably more so than Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur also harbored grave suspicions as to the hegemonic intentions of China toward Southeast Asia. The fact that China openly supported Indonesian president Sukarno’s ill-fated policy of Confrontation toward Malaysia between 1963 and 1966 heightened Kuala Lumpur’s misgivings.22 In fact, Malaysian policy makers were of the opinion that their country posed a significant stumbling block to China’s pretensions to regional hegemony: There are some who still refuse to accept the evidence which proves overwhelmingly that Communist China poses the gravest threat to world peace and world order. Chinese aggression in Korea, the rape of Tibet, the invasion of India, all these provide eloquent testimony of a power bent on expansionism in Asia and on asserting by force, if necessary, a predominant position in Asian politics . . . . For China’s grand design to succeed Malaysia also must be crushed. Malaysia’s strategic significance is a major factor in Peking’s calculations. It would, therefore, be correct to say that Malaysia, although a small country, is regarded by Peking as a major barrier to Communist China’s ambitions.23
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Despite the turn of events evidently signaled first by the normalization of ties between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing in 1974 and subsequently, China’s intervention in the Third Indo-China War that was welcomed by Thailand, Malaysian policy makers remained apprehensive about Chinese ambitions. Indeed, the fact that Kuala Lumpur did not share Bangkok’s sanguinity at Beijing’s recrimination and military action against Vietnam was made clear from its response to Chinese actions. In a bilateral meeting at Kuantan in May 1980 between Indonesian president Suharto and Malaysian prime minister Hussein Onn, the Indonesian and Malaysian governments issued a statement declaring that for Southeast Asia to be a region of peace, Vietnam must be freed from Soviet and Chinese influence. The Kuantan Principle, as the statement came to be known, was a result of IndoMalaysian diplomacy extended to Hanoi earlier in the year and was motivated by four factors.24 First, Vietnam’s struggle against the United States and subsequently China was perceived in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur as an essentially nationalist struggle. This coincided with Indonesia’s long-standing conviction that such struggles should be supported. Even for Malaysia, shifts in its own foreign policy orientation after 1970 meant that more sympathy was accorded to nationalist struggles of such nature as well. Second, given their shared apprehension toward the creeping influence of China in regional affairs, for which improved relations with Bangkok served as a vehicle, both Malaysia and Indonesia saw the value of Vietnam as a potential regional partner, if not strategic ally. Third, it seemed that the leadership in Indonesia and Malaysia saw the Kuantan Principle as an opportunity to lay a solid foundation for what ASEAN had sought to achieve since 1976—the eventual acceptance of Vietnam and the Indochinese states into the organization. Finally, the Kuantan Principle also provided an opportunity for both to reassert the concept of ZOPFAN by making the call for the Soviet Union and China to exit Indochina.25 Consequently, at the outset of the Mahathir administration, Ghazali Shafie intoned his government’s position on China in the following manner: I would like to state very categorically . . . that the Chinese global position is circumscribed and should not be construed to include a role by China as the sole restraining hand for the security of Southeast Asia. I say this with the firm conviction that China has dangerous ambitions of her own in the region which she has refused to renounce.26
The Post – Cold War Turn After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist bloc following the disbanding of the CPM in 1989, official vituperation of communism and China on the part of the Malaysian government gradually subsided. That said,
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the initial foreign policy stance of Malaysia toward China remained one of caution. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, the strategic ambiguity marked by talk of a U.S. withdrawal from the region and the uncertainties of China’s intentions that followed its inevitable rise to prominence as a major economic, political, and strategic player in regional affairs meant that China was viewed in Kuala Lumpur both as an opportunity and a concern. In fact, China played a central role in a number of security issues affecting Malaysia. Regional military adventurism in the not too distant past, including clashes with the Vietnamese navy in the South China Sea in 1987, coupled with its declared preparedness to use force against Taiwan if any of the island’s leaders declared independence, fueled suspicions about its intentions in the region and sensitized regional states to China’s potential role as a source of regional instability, even if Beijing did not directly target abrasive statements at Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur. In addition, its increasing defense expenditures over the ensuing decade were viewed with trepidation by Malaysia.27 Thailand’s relations with China in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, however, were discernibly more cordial as bilateral ties were raised to new levels of cooperation. Thailand’s policy proximity to China at the tail-end of the Cold War was primarily due to the need to counter the influence of Vietnam, which was seen as an immediate source of regional instability by both countries.28 As alluded to earlier, in the mind of policy makers in Bangkok this shared, immediate concern for Vietnamese regional ambitions far superseded any anxieties over China’s intentions of exporting communism, to the extent that relations with Beijing transformed into what amounted to a de facto alliance that was in turn given expression in the Sino-Thai “Strategic Partnership,” which included a regular exchange of military personnel and exercises. Since the early 1980s, Thailand has purchased armaments and military-related equipment under this partnership at “friendship prices”—much of which has effectively amounted to military gift aid.29
The South China Sea Disputes For Malaysia, while aspects of the Chinese threat have subsided, the possible emergence of an aggressive and powerful China remained arguably Malaysia’s chief strategic concern in the early 1990s. Because it is one of the claimants involved, it was not surprising that the South China Sea dispute emerged as a major diplomatic and security issue for Malaysia.30 China has claimed sovereignty over the South China Sea and its resident islands on historical grounds. Territories in the South China Sea are said to have been discovered during the Han Dynasty in the second century, and administrative control was assumed at the beginnings of the Tang Dynasty in the eighth century.31 Since 1979,
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Malaysia has claimed 12 reefs and atolls in the southeastern portion of the South China Sea. In early 1995, the appropriately named Mischief Reef emerged as a major flash point in the South China Sea when China began constructing and occupying buildings on the reef.32 Filipino fishermen reportedly discovered the Chinese occupation, were detained by Chinese personnel at Mischief Reef, and subsequently notified Philippine authorities upon their release. Philippine naval and air force reconnaissance confirmed that the Chinese had taken control of the reef located 215 km west of undisputed Philippine territory. The Philippine government perceived the Chinese action as a direct challenge to their own sovereignty claim over Mischief Reef. The incident drew attention to the prospect that tensions over the Spratlys could derail broader progress in relations. Malaysia, in particular, was alarmed at these developments and perceived them as indicative of Chinese intentions. This view was captured in the words of Noordin Sopiee, then a major advisor to the Mahathir administration on foreign policy matters, when he articulated that China’s actions on Mischief Reef “had a very substantial impact on how we (ASEAN) look at China.”33 By the late 1990s, however, Malaysia’s position on the Spratlys had shifted perceptibly. When Chinese premier Li Peng chose a visit to Malaysia in 1997 to present a Chinese proposal to ASEAN on the joint development of the Spratlys, it was well received by the Malaysians and set the stage for improvements in bilateral relations.34 The fruits of this gesture were seen a year later, when Malaysia raised eyebrows at the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in 1998 by echoing Beijing’s line on the South China Sea, which the latter had only recently rearticulated several months earlier after crossing diplomatic swords yet again with the Philippines over the Spratlys. Much to the chagrin of Manila, the Malaysian foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, rejected the Philippines’ request to discuss the issue at the ARF, which Malaysia was hosting, dismissing it as a bilateral issue that should be resolved as such.35 This was an uncanny repetition of the Chinese mantra that Beijing had maintained since the formation of the ARF in 1994 amidst moves to place the South China Sea disputes on its agenda. Unlike Malaysia, Thailand does not have any territorial dispute with China, which perhaps explains (at least in part) its willingness to push for a more central role for Beijing in the region despite the shadow of the latter’s policy on the South China Sea. That said, Thai-Chinese relations were not without their own irritants, and a number of events arose in the early 1990s that dampened relations with Beijing. In particular, the Thai government’s decision to allow the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, to enter Thailand to join a campaign for the release of Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Su Kyi in 1993, and its decision to permit an unofficial visit by then Taiwanese president Lee Teng-Hui, drew protests from Beijing for what it deemed a violation of a basic
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principle of Sino-Thai relations.36 However, these incidents must be seen as minor glitches that did not affect the Sino-Thai relations in any significant manner relative to concerns arising from territorial and sovereignty claims, which weighed heavily on Malaysian minds in the early 1990s.
Economic Cooperation While strategic ambiguity and uncertainty arising from China’s territorial ambitions posed not-insignificant obstacles to advances in political relations in the early post – Cold War years, on the economic front ties with China experienced exponential growth as both Malaysia and Thailand rode the waves of China’s gradual realization of its vast economic potential in the 1990s. Malaysia saw the rise of China and the attendant economic potential as an important consideration toward its recalibration of foreign policy in the post – Cold War era. Economic cooperation between the two countries grew significantly during this period. For instance, Malaysia’s trade with China from 1990 to 1998 alone surged by 369 percent.37 Prime Minister Mahathir’s visit to China in August 1999 was met with Chinese commitments of more investments into Malaysia and further strengthened trade relations between the two countries.38 An important dimension to economic cooperation between Beijing and Kuala Lumpur has been the formation of the East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC), an initiative that also manifested major improvements in political ties. The EAEC proposal, introduced by Mahathir in 1990 on the occasion of Premier Li Peng’s visit to Malaysia, stemmed from Malaysia’s belief that the organization could act as a counter to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which Mahathir feared would be dominated by the United States. Notably, Mahathir’s enunciation of his EAEC proposal came at a time when China was harboring its own reservations about APEC.39 Furthermore, Mahathir’s choice of Li Peng’s visit as a platform for announcing the EAEC was curious given his earlier assertions that Japan should assume leadership of the organization. In response to the initiative, Chinese president Yang Shangkun declared in 1992 that it (EAEC) was “of positive significance for the promotion of regional economic development.”40 Chinese and Malaysian convergence on the EAEC stemmed from a number of other factors. First, a central motivation behind Mahathir’s proposal and China’s support was both parties’ desire to plot out a regional economic agenda that was independent of American influence. Second, both Kuala Lumpur and Beijing were of the opinion that APEC, which was East Asia’s alternative economic integration model, was moving at a pace faster than they were comfortable with.41 China is currently Malaysia’s fourth-largest trading partner, and according to some sources bilateral trade between Malaysia and China is expected to hit
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the U.S.$50 billion target within the next five to ten years. Trade between Malaysia and China has been growing by 15 percent to U.S.$30 billion by the end of 2005 from U.S.$26 billion in 2004.42 Tourism has also expanded significantly between China and Malaysia, and the number of Chinese tourists visiting Malaysia has increased steadily.43 Just as Mahathir did before him, current prime minister Abdullah Badawi has corralled Beijing’s backing for Malaysia’s latest attempts at institutionalizing Asian regionalism—the East Asian Summit (EAS). In pushing for the EAS, Malaysia supported China’s position that it should be confined to the states currently participating in the ASEAN ⫹ 3 dialogue process, that is, the ten states of ASEAN together with China, Japan, and South Korea. Tellingly, Kuala Lumpur’s move to align with Beijing on the constellation of the EAS spoke of the significance of Beijing’s voice on matters of regional diplomacy and was a marked departure from the earlier inception of the EAEG, where Malaysia had championed Japanese leadership of regional trade institutions. Since 1990, Sino-Thai relations have similarly centered on the promotion of stronger economic cooperation to precipitate closer overall relations. For instance, in 1993, China and Thailand signed 12 commercial agreements worth U.S.$1 billion.44 China’s commitment not to devalue the yuan during the Asian financial crisis, and Beijing’s U.S.$1 billion contribution to the IMF bailout fund, of which Thailand was a beneficiary, symbolized its willingness to bear the responsibilities of a great power by maintaining regional order, as well as its readiness to assist its Southeast Asian neighbors in a manner that did not demand compromises on sovereignty. Indeed, these gestures were not lost on Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. Perhaps the most important development in economic ties between China and Thailand has been the “Plan of Action for the 21st Century,” a broad framework that sets out the parameters for deeper cooperation in political, economic, security, social, scientific, and cultural areas. Signed in 1999, the Sino-Thai pact aims to enhance economic cooperation by boosting trade through the export of Thai agricultural products to China in exchange for Chinese-made computer parts, steel, and electrical machinery. China also agreed to invest in the development of public infrastructure in Thailand, such as highways and dams.45 Under the Thaksin Shinawatra administration, economic linkages with China advanced further. One of Thaksin’s most important initiatives in this regard was the 2003 Sino-Thai Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the first between China and an ASEAN country. The Thaksin government lauded the FTA, which was weighted on mutual concessions in agricultural produce, as a key driver of two-way trade, which grew from $6.57 billion in 2001 to $20.28 billion in 2005.46 Economic relations between the two countries were further enhanced by an expected growth in the tourism industry, which saw more than one million Chinese tourists visiting Thailand in 2006.47 Thailand was ASEAN’s chief negotiator with China when the
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two entities discussed the CAFTA (China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement).48 In the past four years, China has become Thailand’s fourth-largest trading partner.49
The Strategic Imperative An impetus to Malaysia’s attempts to strengthen ties with China has been the convergence of perspectives on the nature and trajectory of the current international order. The unipolar world that emerged after the Cold War pushed Malaysia and China closer in their reservations about the U.S. penchant for linking foreign relations to human rights, democracy, and environmental issues. To counter the influence of the United States in the region, Malaysia advocated strongly for China to be included as an ASEAN dialogue partner in 1994. At the same time, Malaysia also encouraged the integration of China into the ARF, which would have the double effect of easing China into the evolving multilateral framework of security dialogue and cooperation while at the same time countering the dominance of the United States in the region. Chinese leaders, in turn, voiced support for Mahathir’s attacks on international financial circles that the latter blamed for the Asian financial crisis. During Premier Li Peng’s visit to Malaysia in September 1997, Li and Mahathir further articulated a joint vision for other centers of power to emerge in Europe and Asia to balance U.S. predominance. Though the vision was admittedly vague, and there were no subsequent attempts to articulate the content and parameters of this new power configuration, the point to stress is again the convergence of strategic perspectives between China and Malaysia. In the case of converging Chinese and Thai strategic perspectives, the signing of the Sino-Thai Plan of Action for the 21st Century reflcted the importance of China in Thai strategic thinking. A clause stating that both parties recognized the importance of establishing a new multi-polar security order signified Thai sensitivity to a key principle of China’s own emerging worldview and codified Bangkok’s recognition of China as a major continental power in Asia.50 Thailand’s 1997 defencse white papr put it even more bluntly by postulating that Thailand’s strategic importance to the U.S. was declining and China was merging to fill the power vacuum.51 Since the Plan of Action was signed, China’s influence in the Sino-Thai relationship has increased concomitantly with Thailand’s growing support of Beijing’s emergence as a major actor in the East Asian security script. It is important to note, however, that while Thailand has clearly drawn closer to China in the post – Cold War era, Beijing has not entirely dispelled Thai concerns regarding its ambitions. Specifically, Thailand has been wary of events in Sino-Myanmar relations in light of regular strains in Bangkok’s cross-border ties with the Myanmar junta. To that effect, Thailand has adjusted its strategies accordingly.52 One way to counter Chinese
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continental influence was through ties with India (through ASEAN) and its advocacy for Myanmar’s membership of ASEAN in 1999; both policies were calibrated to move it out of the Chinese orbit.53 Perhaps even more indicative of Bangkok’s attempts to limit Chinese influence are Thailand’s preference for the U.S. alliance even as diplomatic relations with Washington had cooled compared to the period of the Cold War. This stands somewhat in contrast to Malaysia’s reading of the geostrategic equation. Unlike their Bangkok counterparts, who continue to enjoy an alliance with the U.S. as a continuation of the SEATO agreement and who have recently been conferred “Most Valuable Non-NATO Ally” status for their stout support of Washington’s Global War on Terror. Policy makers in Kuala Lumpur have been careful not to be dependent on the U.S. and have been reluctant to support a managerial role for Washington in international affairs as a counter to Chinese influence.
From China Threat to Charm Offensive Improvement in China’s ties with Southeast Asia, not least of all with Malaysia and Thailand, has been helped along by a number of factors. Most important has been a transformation of China’s approach to the region that has shifted from coercion to persuasion in its pursuance of interests. This new approach, dubbed China’s “charm offensive” by some scholars and analysts, finds expression in recent years in a new style of conciliatory diplomacy anchored on participation in (generally) constructive multilateral organizations and dialogue processes, readiness to support initiatives and suggestions arising from smaller regional states (such as their support of Mahathir’s EAEC initiative discussed earlier), an active, and relatively open trade and economic policy based on mutual interests and encapsulated in a deliberate policy of fostering “win-win” relations with the region, and greater restraint in its demonstration of hard power (à la the Taiwan Straits in 1996).54 China’s charm offensive has clearly reaped dividends insofar as Southeast Asia is concerned, and its effects have been demonstrated in subtle statements and policy gestures that regional governments, not least of all in Thailand and Malaysia, have made in response. For instance, in a clear sign of the importance of relations with China, Thailand has expelled Falungong members, blocked the entry of the Dalai Lama to the country, and denied visas to various Taiwanese delegations.55 Similarly, the Malaysian government’s decision to ban the distribution of a newspaper supporting the Falungong spiritual movement because it contains criticism of China and its charging of nine Falungong members with various offenses serve as examples of Malaysian goodwill toward China.56 Furthermore, in response to Beijing’s recrimination of Singapore’s then deputy prime minister Lee Hsien Loong’s visit to Taiwan in 2004, Malaysian deputy
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prime minister Najib Tun Abdul Razak unilaterally declared that Malaysian ministers were forbidden from making official visits to Taiwan.57 In the security sphere, the Abdullah administration in Malaysia openly criticized attempts by the United States and Japan during their U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee meeting in February 2005 to portray China as a growing military power with threat potential.58 Abdullah has been equally categorical, perhaps more so than even Mahathir, in his dismissal of the China threat theory. Consider, for instance, his remarks made at the opening of the Asia-Pacific Roundtable in Kuala Lumpur in June 2005, where it was reported: “Badawi declared that China has no hegemonic ambitions and had ‘never been openly declared [by the region] as a military threat or potential threat’. Badawi also labelled security and defence alliances in the Asia Pacific region as both ‘unnecessary’ and ‘destabilising’. To him, the present and future China is and will be ‘a force for peace and stability’. ”59 Much in the same vein, the China threat narrative no longer seems to have much currency in the thinking of Thai policy makers. Just before his departure to China on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of bilateral relations, then prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra revealed in an interview that Thailand-China relations have developed in a “positive and constructive way” since the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries. While Thaksin conceded that developments in bilateral relations could also mean that Thailand might have to compete with China in some areas, particularly in terms of trade, he explained that Chinese products can force other countries to be more efficient and productive in manufacture,“so it is an opportunity rather than a threat.” Thaksin further expressed his hope that the two countries could take their friendly relations to a higher plane by drawing a joint plan of action:“We want to move it forward in the area of international politics, security, economic cooperation and culture, and the issue is high on my agenda to discuss with my counterpart Mr Wen Jiabao during my visit.”60 Despite the fact that improvements in bilateral relations between Thailand and China have been interspersed with occasional friction such as Chinese military support for the Myanmar army, which regularly drifts across the Burma-Thai border in pursuit of insurgents, and a burgeoning two-way trade that in truth is heavily weighted in China’s favor, Thailand’s relations with China are likely to grow further. Beijing has continued with visits by several senior Chinese officials, mostly in the military and security fields. In the wake of the September 2006 coup in Thailand that removed Thaksin, the Chinese government pledged support for the Council for National Security (CNS) and interim military government. These pledges of support were even more significant considering that Washington had criticized the military coup and the U.S. State Department declined the newly appointed Thai foreign minister’s request for a meeting.
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Perhaps most telling of the shifts in relations with China are the gradual improvements that have taken place in military ties between China and Thailand in recent years. Under the Thaksin government, Thailand has become an important buyer of Chinese military equipment. Over the past five years, Thailand has purchased antitank missiles, ammunition, armored personnel carriers, and offshore patrol vessels from China, some of it paid for with Chinese credit. Since 2001, Thailand and China have conducted annual defense talks at the ministerial level, and exchange visits between the countries’ armed forces have been stepped up.61 In September 2005, China conducted a threemonth training program with the Royal Thai Army to clear landmines along the Thailand-Cambodia border, and in December 2005, Thai and Chinese naval ships conducted their first joint exercise in the Gulf of Thailand.62 Likewise, Malaysia-China bilateral relations are likely to be enhanced further on the back of closer economic relations and the alignment of political objectives. As alluded to earlier, the inevitable progress of the Chinese economy and the growth in trade generated with Malaysia will offer up new avenues and vehicles of cooperation between the two countries. Equally important is the fact that the often-cited obstacle to the development of full and comprehensive relations—the sensitivity of the Malay majority in domestic politics opposed to overtly pro-Chinese policies—is becoming irrelevant in the wake of massive changes in the constellation of Malaysian domestic politics, not least of which is the March 2008 electoral success of a newly minted multiethnic opposition coalition. In such a circumstance, China may be seen as a more acceptable ally. While military cooperation between Malaysia and China remains relatively low-key, more high-level visits and discussions are taking place between the two sides in the realm of military cooperation. At this stage, Malaysia buys a modest amount of armaments from China, but this is likely to change in the near future. On the occasion of the visit of the vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of China, Prime Minister Abdullah also expressed his hope for further development of friendly cooperation between armies of Malaysia and China.63 Following the visit, Malaysia’s Chief of Armed Forces Mohd Anwar returned the gesture by visiting China, where he held talks with Chief of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army Liang Guanglie to discuss ways to enhance cooperation between the two armies.64 To be sure, it remains to be seen how far military relations with China can realistically progress. It is important to note here that on the part of both Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, strengthening Sino-Thai and Sino-Malaysian defense exchanges and cooperation has not taken place at the expense of weakened defense ties with traditional partners, particularly the United States. Thailand and the United States conduct over 40 bilateral exercises each year, including Asia’s largest military exercise, Cobra Gold. In addition,
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despite increases in Chinese weapons sales to Thailand, the United States continues to enjoy a dominant market share in the country’s military procurement. The historical legacy of Thai-U.S. military cooperation aside, for Thailand there clearly is also an instrumentalist logic to the maintenance of this cooperation—Thailand places considerable value on its relationship with the United States in the hope for more transfer of military technology. The vast majority of Thai weapons systems originate in the United States, and Thailand’s military is eager to adopt U.S. surveillance and communications equipment in the future.65 Numerous diplomatic and political altercations over the course of the Mahathir administration failed to dampen the close defense and intelligence cooperation that existed between Malaysia and the United States. Up to 20 U.S. Navy vessels visit Malaysian ports every year, for repair and maintenance as well as routine visits. The U.S. aircraft carrier John C. Stennis made a port call in Port Klang in September 2004. Further, U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force personnel train and exercise regularly with the Malaysian military, and Malaysia provides a jungle warfare training venue for U.S. troops.
Perceptions and Policies Compared A cursory glance at how Thai and Malaysian relations with China evolved over time throws up a range of differences and similarities that have implications for our understanding of why shifts in each bilateral relationship have taken place, and what these shifts portend for broader trends in these two sets of relations. In terms of significant and noticeable differences, three in particular stand out. First, it is clear from the above discussion that Malaysian threat perceptions of China were far more acute than their Thai counterparts during the Cold War. These threat perceptions found expression in the respective positions over the Third Indochina War and their response to China’s invasion of Vietnam. While Malaysia registered its reservations toward Chinese involvement in regional issues with its enunciation (together with Indonesia) of the Kuantan Declaration, Thailand was far more accommodating of China’s involvement in the Indochinese imbroglio. Underlying the dissimilar dispositions were fundamental differences in strategic perceptions. For Malaysia, China remained very much the threat that Southeast Asia should be focused on, and tolerating its intervention in affairs in the region would be tantamount to according Beijing a role in managing regional security. Given that it was barely a decade earlier that Malaysia had pushed for the neutralization of Southeast Asia so as to deny any active role in regional security affairs for external powers, China’s entry into the Indochina theater was anathema for Kuala Lumpur. For Thailand, however, the immediate security threat clearly arose
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from a Vietnam that, at least from Bangkok’s perspective, harbored pretensions to alter the regional geostrategic equilibrium after the consolidation of power with the fall of Saigon in April 1975, and whose invasion of Kampuchea brought Hanoi right to its doorstep. Second, this difference in threat perceptions carried over into the immediate post – Cold War years, when the question of Chinese intentions surfaced again, this time over the contested South China Sea claims. Since Thailand is not one of the claimants to the South China Sea, it is perhaps understandable that there was again a discernible disjuncture in geostrategic threat perceptions toward China between Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. As a counterclaimant to at least some of the South China Sea islands, Malaysia could ill afford to be sanguine about Chinese intentions. Curiously, though, the way this threat perception was articulated had changed by 1998, when, much to the consternation of its fellow ASEAN claimants to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Kuala Lumpur tellingly parroted Beijing’s position that these territorial claims should be discussed only at a bilateral level. Not surprisingly, this shift in rhetoric raised eyebrows in ASEAN policy circles and sparked speculation (which was never proven) of possible Sino-Malaysian collusion. Third, while China’s relations with both Thailand and Malaysia have historically been complicated by the ethnic Chinese factor, it is quite clear that for a long time it was comparatively a more pressing issue for Kuala Lumpur. To understand how heavily this domestic context weighed upon the conduct of relations, one needs to consider the question of intergration/assimilation of the respective ethnic Chinese minorities. The point to note here is the relative success that Thailand enjoyed in integrating its ethnic Chinese minority (as part of its overall integration policy) as compared to Malaysia, where ethnic tensions between the politically dominant Malay majority and the economically strong Chinese minority served as a pivot for threat perceptions of a China long suspected of keeping an unwelcome eye toward the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia. Certainly in the case of Malaysia, an already tenuous balance between the privilege of indigenous rights for bumiputra (sons of the soil) and the universality of civil rights of “Malaysian” citizenship was further strained with the implementation of a state-orchestrated affirmative action policy in 1970. The policy cemented the primacy of the local Malay population over Malaysia’s ethnic minorities, primarily the Chinese, through the provision of political and economic access. More than anything else, this translated to heightened sensitivity over issues of place, identity, and loyalty on the part of ethnic Chinese and amplified the state’s concerns over the relationship that this minority enjoyed with the Chinese mainland. To be sure, matters were further complicated by the persistence of communist rebellions in both Thailand and Malaysia that were essentially organized along ethnic lines.
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These three differences explain why Malaysian reservations toward Chinese activism and involvement in regional affairs was much more acute than Thailand’s during the period of the Cold War, and perhaps even in the early years of the post – Cold War. Yet notwithstanding their salience, there has also been a palpable convergence of Thai and Malaysian perspectives on China in more recent times that is worth noting. In this regard, given the nature of Malaysian reservations elucidated earlier, the shifts in Malaysia’s relations with China are particularly telling and worth closer investigation. One major similarity has been the denial of the “China threat” on the part of policy makers and political leaders in both Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Indeed, as this article has illustrated, Thai and Malaysian leaders are arguably among the most ardent defenders of China’s “peaceful rise,” and have been equally strident in warning of the dangers of self-fulfilling prophesy on the part of China’s detractors and the futility of “China Threat” rhetoric. These positions take on greater salience given how both Thai and Malaysian leaders have never hesitated to articulate their reservations and threat perceptions toward China during the Cold War, and in the latter case even in the immediate post – Cold War era over the issue of Beijing’s South China Sea territorial claims. Clearly, Thai and Malaysian leaders have shifted the language of their China policy from “threat” or security and strategic “concern” to that of economic “opportunity” and “responsible partner,” thereby drawing attention to the economic impetus behind the recalibration of policy in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Moreover, the logic of economic interdependence has been stressed at bilateral levels in the significantly closer economic ties that Thailand and Malaysia share with China today, as well as the proliferation of regional multilateral institutions anchored on trade, such as ASEAN-China Dialogue and the East Asia Summit. At the very minimum these institutions have opened pathways and bridges to understanding and exchange between China and its regional neighbors, and in doing so have facilitated the emergence of China as a regional, if not international, actor of consequence. Further, there is a distinct similarity between Thai, Malaysian, and Chinese positions on the nature of the post – Cold War world order, which have dovetailed with each other. China’s call for the establishment of a multipolar post – Cold War international order has received emphatic endorsement from both Thailand and Malaysia, their longstanding security ties with major Western powers notwithstanding. The convergence of strategic perspectives has since found expression in the form of a new Asian multipolar system that is emerging, premised not only on the region’s acceptance of the rise of China but also on the increasing prominence of India in the strategic calculus. Major regional institutions such as the ASEAN ⫹ 3 as well as East Asian Summit have further facilitated the confluence of strategic perspectives by offering other modes of interaction for the leaders of Thailand, Malaysia, and China.
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Conclusion This chapter aimed to provide a comparative survey of Thailand-China and Malaysia-China relations in terms of their congruence and variations. In particular, it was interested in documenting shifts in the relationship and explaining these shifts in terms of similarities and differences in Thai and Malaysian perspectives of China and its emergence as a player of significant consequence to regional security. It is clear from this survey that there has been a major turn in Thai and Malaysian perspectives on China since the end of the Cold War. Whereas China was viewed as a major threat during the Cold War, there has since been a discernible and increasing shift in the foreign and security discourse in both Thailand and Malaysia. No longer is China perceived or articulated as a “threat.” More significantly, policies towards China from both Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur have substantially shifted with further expressions in the changing rhetoric. Economic ties have improved tremendously, exemplified most profoundly by China’s “responsible” conduct during the Asian economic crisis, to the extent that they now anchor the strategy of engagement of both states towards China. Political ties have also vastly improved. Both Thailand and Malaysia have emphatically supported China’s espousal of a multipolar regional and international order what hopes to check unbridled U.S. power and influence across the globe. Moreover, China’s active, if somewhat belated, participation in regional multilateral processes has further endeared Beijing to regional states, and its careful avoidance of any involvement in the internal politics, particularly as they relate to ethnic Chinese minorities in the two countries, has been appreciated in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur political circles. In this respect, Thai and Malaysian perspectives toward China, and the policies that have flowed from them, have gradually converged compared to Thailand-China and Malaysia-China relations during the Cold War and the years immediately after it, to the extent that both are among the foremost advocates of a more assertive Chinese role in regional affairs. Furthermore, all indications are that this level of comfort will continue in the ensuing years and will likely translate to even wider and deeper levels of cooperation that Beijing will enjoy with both Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.
Notes 1. Joseph Liow and Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman are Associate Professor and Research Associate respectively at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. 2. Sarasin Viraphol, Directions in Thai Foreign Policy, ISEAS Occasional Paper No. 40, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1976, p. 7.
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3. Chulacheeb Chinwanno, Thailand-China Relations: From Strategic to Economic Partnership, IUJ Research Institute Working Paper, Asia Pacific Series No. 6, 2006, p. 2. 4. As a matter of fact, an Anti-Communist Act had already been legislated in Thailand in 1933. This act, however, had to be repealed in 1946 as Thailand sought to corral Soviet support for its push for membership in the United Nations. 5. See Daniel D. Lovelace, China and “People’s War” in Thailand, 1949–1969 (pp. 28-29), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. 6. Chak Wing David Tsui, China and the Communist Armed Struggle in Thailand (p. 9), New Delhi: Radiant Publishers, 1995. 7. Melvin Gurtov, China and Southeast Asia; The Politics of Survival (pp. 24-44), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. 8. Chak, China and the Communist Armed Struggle in Thailand, p. 38. 9. For a discussion on superpower “overlay,” see Barry Buzan, “The Southeast Asian Security Complex,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 10 No. 1 pp. 1-16 (June 1988). 10. See Message of CCP to CPT on the latter’s 35th anniversary, November 30, 1977, cited in R. K. Jain (ed.), China and Thailand, 1949–1983 (pp. 213-214), London: Sangam Books, 1987. 11. Makata Ma, Consequences of the Vietnam War on Thai Foreign Policy, M.A. Dissertation (p. 40), Long Beach: California State University, 1980. 12. Stephen Leong, “China’s Military Policies,” in Joyce K. Kallgren, Noordin Sopiee, and Soedjati Djiwandono (eds), ASEAN and China: An Evolving Relationship (pp. 115-117), Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California-Berkeley, 1988. 13. Michael Yahuda, “China and the Region,” Southeast Asian Affairs 1985 (p. 66), Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1985. 14. SWB FE/5969/A3/2, November 15, 1978, “Malaysia’s foreign policy and Teng Hsiao-ping’s visit.” 15. Taken from Chandran Jeshurun, Malaysian Defence Policy: A Study in Parliamentary Attitudes, 1963–1973 (p. 120), Kuala Lumpur: Penerbit University Malaya, 1980. 16. Heiner Hanggi, ASEAN and the ZOPFAN Concept (p. 13), Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1991. 17. Ghazalie Shafie, speech entitled “Formation and Future Development of ASEAN,” delivered at the French Institute for International Relations Seminar, Paris, October 20, 1992. See Foreign Affairs Malaysia, Vol. 25 No. 4 pp. 21-27 (December 1992). 18. Until the promulgation of the Nationality Law of 1980, which stipulated, among other things, that “any Chinese national who has settled abroad and who has been naturalized there or has acquired foreign nationality of his own free will automatically loses Chinese nationality,” China had treated overseas Chinese as potential returnees. This warranted suspicion on the part of their host governments about the loyalties of the overseas Chinese. See Leo Suryadinata, China and the ASEAN States: The Ethnic Chinese Dimension (pp. 83-88), Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1985.
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19. See Stephen Leong, “Malaysia and the People’s Republic of China in the 1980s: Political Vigilance and Economic Pragmatism,” Asian Survey, Vol. 27 No. 10 pp. 1112-1113 (October 1987). 20. Michael Leifer, ASEAN and the Security of Southeast Asia (p. 55), London and New York: Routledge, 1989. 21. One of the key contentions of Britain’s Malayan Union proposal was the granting of equal citizenship rights to the non-Malay ethnic groups in recognition of their role in the development of British Malaya, and more importantly, in supporting the British war effort in Asia. This proposal was roundly rejected by the traditional Malay leadership, which galvanized in opposition and forced the withdrawal of the Malayan Union scheme and its replacement with the Federation of Malaya Agreement in 1948, which guaranteed the constitutional protection of Malay rights and privileges. It was in response to the Federation agreement that the CPM took their struggle, which lasted officially from 1948 to 1960, underground. 22. See Abdullah Dahana, China dan Malaysia dalam Arena Perang Dingin 1949–1974 [China and Malaysia during the Cold War, 1949–1974] (pp. 144-149), Bangi: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2002. 23. Ghazali Shafie, speech titled “China’s Grand Design,” delivered at Ipoh Rotary Club, Perak, Malaysia, October 28, 1965, cited in R. K. Jain (ed.), China and Malaysia, 1949–1983 (pp. 85-86), New Delhi: Radiant Publishers, 1987. 24. Malaysian foreign minister Tengku Ahmad Rithaudeen and Indonesian envoy General Benni Murdani were dispatched at different times earlier that year to open discussions with Hanoi. 25. “The Kuantan Principle,” Far Eastern Economic Review, April 4-10, 1980. 26. Ghazali Shafie, keynote address at the Conference on “ASEAN – Today and Tomorrow” at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Boston, MA, U.S.A., November 11, 1981. 27. Abdul Razak Baginda and Anthony Bergin (eds), Asia-Pacific’s Security Dilemma (p. 9), London: ASEAN Academic Press, 1998. 28. Chien Peng Chung, “Southeast Asia’s Hedging Relationship with Major Powers of the Asia-Pacific,” in Andrew Tan, Michael L. R. Smith, and Khoo Kay Kim (eds), Seeking Alternative Perspectives of Southeast Asia (p. 296), Ipoh: Perak Academy, 2004. 29. Anthony Smith, “Thailand’s Security and the Sino-Thai Relations,” China Brief, Vo1. 5 No. 3 (February 1, 2005). Accessed http://www.jamestown.org/programs/ chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D⫽27465&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid %5D⫽195&no_cache⫽1 on February 3, 2005. 30. The Spratlys are a group of 230 islets, sandbanks, and reefs. Derek Da Cunha, Southeast Asian Perspectives on Security (p. 101), Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2000. 31. Alan Collins, The Security Dilemma of Southeast Asia (p. 144), London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. 32. In fact, a prior altercation had occurred in 1992 between China and Vietnam over South China Sea claims. 33. Cited in “ASEAN Taking a More Active Role in Spratlys Dispute,” Straits Times, April 8, 1995.
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34. Joseph Liow, “Malaysia-China Relations in the 1990s,” Asian Survey, Vol. 11 No. 4 p. 687 (July/August 2000). 35. “Hamid: Spratlys Issue Not for ARF Discussions,” New Straits Times, July 23, 1999. 36. “Sino-Thai Relations Will Never Be Hurt, Says Qian,” Straits Times, March 1, 1993; “Beijing Takes Thais to Task Over Taipei Leader’s Visit,” Straits Times, February 17, 1994. 37. Business Times Malaysia, August 23, 1999. 38. Cited in Joseph Liow, “Strategic and Security Patterns in Malaysian’s Relations with China,” in Ho Khai Leong and Samuel C. Y. Ku (eds), China and Southeast Asia: Global Challenges and Regional Challenges (p. 288), Singapore: ISEAS, 2005. 39. APEC was then discussing the admission of Hong Kong and Taiwan together with China as part of a “Three China” policy. See Yoichi Funabashi, Asia-Pacific Fusion: Japan’s Role in APEC (pp. 73-76), Washington DC: Institute for International Economic, 1995. 40. “Chinese President Yang Says EAEC Will Benefit Region,” Japan Economic Newswire, January 11, 1992. 41. The pace of liberalization being pushed by the United States through APEC would make heavy demands on the economies of Malaysia and China, both of which had adopted state-driven corporatist models in plotting national development. 42. “Malaysia-China Trade on Track to Hit Target,” Business Times, May 25, 2005. 43. Yow Cheun Hoe, “China-Malaysia Relations: Expanding Common Interests,” EAI (East Asia Institute) Background Brief, September 9, 2004, p. 6. 44. “China, Thailand Sign Commercial Deals Worth $1.6b,” Straits Times, August 28, 1993. 45. “Extensive Pact to Enhance Sino-Thai Relations,” Straits Times, February 4, 1999. 46. Ian Storey,“A Hiatus in the Sino-Thai Special Relationship,” China Brief, Vol. 6 No. 19 (September 20, 2006). Accessed from http://www.jamestown.org/programs/ chinabrief/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D⫽3981&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid %5D⫽196&no_cache⫽1 on 1st November 2006. 47. “Chinese Visitors Likely to Top 1m This Year Despite Scams,” Bangkok Post, November 18, 2006. 48. “Thailand’s Policy on Cooperation with China Remains Unchanged, Thai Official Says,” Xinhua News Agency, October 10, 2006. 49. “Thai-Chinese Trade Continues to Grow,” The Nation, December 6, 2002; “Sino-Thai Trade: Sales Team to Hit the Road,” The Nation, July 24, 2003. 50. William Tow, Assessing U.S. Bilateral Security Alliances in the Asia-Pacific’s “Southern Rim”: Why the San Francisco System Endures (pp. 15-16), Stanford, CA: Asia-Pacific Research Centre, 1999. 51. Ibid., p. 16. 52. Shannon Tow, “Southeast Asia in the Sino-U.S. Strategic Balance,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 26 No. 3 p. 450 (December 2004). 53. Kusuma Snitwongse, “Thai Foreign Policy: Principal or Profit?,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 23 No. 2 p. 204 (August 2001). 54. See Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power Is Transforming the World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
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55. Anthony Smith, “Thailand’s Security and the Sino-Thai Relationship”. 56. “Malaysia Bans pro-Falungong Newspaper,” Agence France Presse, July 5, 2005. 57. Denny Roy, “Southeast Asia and China: Balancing or Bandwagoning?” Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 27 No. 2 p. 318 (August 2005). 58. “Badawi Raps U.S.-Japan View of China as a Threat,” China Daily, June 2, 2005. 59. Lam Peng Er and Lim Tin Seng, Malaysia’s “Look East” Policy: Tilting from Japan to China? EAI Background Brief No. 302. Singapore: East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore, 2006, p. 5. 60. “Interview: Thailand Aims to Further Enhance Thailand-China Strategic Partnership,” People’s Daily, June 28, 2005. 61. “Chinese Defense Minister Meets Thai Guests,” Xinhua News Agency, April 25, 2001. 62. Ian Storey, “A Hiatus in the Sino-Thai Relationship,” China Brief, Vol. 6 No. 19 (September 20, 2006). 63. “Malaysian PM Meets with Chinese Defense Minister,” Xinhua News Agency, April 12, 2006. 64. “China, Malaysia to Step Up Defense Cooperation,” Xinhua News Agency, May 26, 2006. 65. Sheldon Simon, “Theatre Security Cooperation in the U.S.-Pacific Command: An Assessment and Projection,” NBR Analysis, Vol. 14 No. 2 p. 30 (August 2003).
8
Pakistan-China Relations: The Shadow of Kargil and 9/11 Fazal-ur-Rahman1
ince the early 1960s, Pakistan and China have been enjoying a very friendly and cordial relationship, which is based on mutual trust and respect for each other’s vital interests. The former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji once said: “Pakistan-China friendship is an all weather friendship and there can be no closer or more reliable relations than the relations between China and Pakistan.”2 While the evolution of Pakistan-China bilateral relations has continued in a comprehensive and engaging manner, one finds some discernible adjustments in China’s South Asia policy after Deng Xioping introduced reforms in 1978–1979. For a successful implementation of economic reforms, China needed a peaceful and stable environment on its periphery. Since then, China’s South Asia policy has focused on two factors to secure its strategic interests in this region: good working relations with India and continuing expansion of strategic relations with Pakistan. This chapter focuses on Pakistan-China interactions during the two major crisis situations between India and Pakistan, namely the conflict in Kargil in 1999 and a military standoff in 2001–2002. Through a detailed description of how Pakistan and China handled the two crises, we can understand better some of the nuanced changes and continuities in Pakistan-China relations in the past decade. China’s overall response to the crises, a neutral but not detached position, was conditioned by several factors, such as its policy objectives in the larger South Asian region, relations with India, involvement of other extraregional powers, and so forth. I will highlight the fact that China has been following a consistent policy in South Asia since the early 1980s, which aims at securing good-neighborly relations, peace, and political and strategic stability in the region. China chose its best option to play a meaningful role in the two crises without deviating from this policy.
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Pakistan has learned quite a few things regarding China’s South Asia policy from the two crises. Although China’s overall role during the Kargil conflict and post-9/11 India-Pakistan military standoff was positive and constructive, it is generally believed that it fell short of Pakistan’s expectations, given the tradition of Chinese support to Pakistan in times of crisis. Later, informed circles in Pakistan, while acknowledging China’s compulsions, understood well that both events were inherently contradictory to and undermined China’s South Asia policy objectives, which is why China did not side with Pakistan, its longtime strategic ally. Islamabad came to realize that China wanted to neither get physically involved nor render any support to one country against the other, because of the risks to its strategic interest in the region that such involvement or support might entail. Pakistan has understood these constraints on China’s policy and would take these into consideration in its own policy options in the future. Many analysts in Pakistan, however, also believe that China would not like to see India becoming a regional hegemon that might threaten its smaller neighbors. They are confident that China would continue a policy aimed at sustaining a strategic balance in the region.
The Evolution of the Pakistan-China Relations In order to put the Pakistan-China relationship in a proper perspective and better understand the factors shaping China’s role during the two crises, it would be useful to review briefly the evolution of the Pakistan-China relations. Pakistan was the first Islamic and third noncommunist state to accord recognition to the People’s Republic of China. Substantive engagement between the two countries started in the early 1960s when Pakistan supported China’s seating in the UN. During the Sino-Indian conflict in 1962, the United States rushed military assistance to India, which Pakistan considered detrimental to its security interests, and decided to gradually move out of the Western orbit (SEATO and CENTO). At this point, a convergence in security interests emerged between Pakistan and China. The two countries amicably negotiated and signed a border demarcation agreement in March 1963, thus removing the only contentious issue between the two states. In the following years, Pakistan continued to help China in ending its isolation imposed by both superpowers—by signing an air-transport agreement and trade agreement and facilitating China’s contact with a number of countries, especially in the Islamic world. China reciprocated to Pakistan’s gestures during the 1965 India-Pakistan war by securing, through stern warnings to India, a ceasefire on Pakistan’s request. Later, China compensated Pakistan’s war losses by providing military equipment including tanks and aircraft. In the early 1970s, Pakistan played an
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important role in facilitating U.S.-China contact that resulted in Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China, followed by the landmark visit of U.S. president Nixon. Pakistan-China relations and U.S.-China détente prompted India to sign the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation with the former Soviet Union, which altered the regional strategic dynamics and further consolidated Pakistan-China relations. Other major events also had an impact on the China-Pakistan relations. After the India-Pakistan war in 1971, China provided military and economic assistance to Pakistan. When Bangladesh applied for membership in the UN, China, on Pakistan’s request, exercised its first-ever veto at the UN Security Council to stall the move, enabling Pakistan to secure release of its POWs and the return of troops to the prewar positions. The Indian nuclear explosion in 1974 altered the strategic balance in South Asia and gave a new impetus to expanding PakistanChina defense cooperation. Between 1971 and 1978, China assisted Pakistan in building two defense-related mega projects—the Heavy Rebuild Factory for T-59 tanks and the F-6 Aircraft Rebuild Factory—which formed the backbone of Pakistan’s indigenous defense industry. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 created two hostile fronts for Pakistan—India and Afghanistan. While India maintained a strange silence over Soviet occupation of nonaligned Afghanistan, China firmly stood by Pakistan and condemned the invasion of Afghanistan as a “hegemonic action” posing a threat to the regional and global peace. Pakistan became a frontline state in the U.S. proxy war against the former Soviet Union. China not only supported Pakistan politically but covertly provided supplies worth U.S.$200 million annually to the Afghan resistance through Pakistan.3 Toward the mid-1980s, bipolarity in the international structure seemed to have come to an end. When China started improving its relations with India at the end of the 1980s, Beijing assured Pakistan that it would not sacrifice its friendship with Pakistan. Although there was a visible shift in the Chinese support to Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, the Pakistani policy makers believed that China’s improved relations with India would act as a restraining factor on Indian belligerency toward Pakistan. Pakistan always remained persistent in its support to China on all issues such as sovereignty over Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Tibet, and issues related to human rights and democracy. Once the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 and Pakistan’s role as a frontline state ended, Pakistan came under U.S. sanctions based on nuclear proliferation throughout the 1990s. China remained Pakistan’s primary and reliable source of military supplies. During this period, China’s support for Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programs remained a constant irritant in Sino-U.S. and Sino-Indian relations. China, despite tremendous U.S. pressure, remained steadfast in its commitment to strengthening Pakistan’s defense capability.
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Kargil Conflict and China’s Cautious Neutrality While China maintained sustained cooperative relations with Pakistan, one may also find a noticeable shift in China’s policy in India-Pakistan crisis situations in the post – Cold War period. In a stark contrast to its support for Pakistan against India in the past, China, during the 1999 Kargil conflict and post-9/11 military standoff between Pakistan and India, adopted a neutral position and urged both India and Pakistan to exercise utmost restraint and defuse the tension of the situations. In the meantime, Beijing took an active role in mediating between Pakistan and India.
Background of the Kargil Conflict The May 1999 Kargil conflict was the latest between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. The two countries had fought two wars over this dispute in 1948 and 1965. Each fall, the Pakistani and Indian armies traditionally withdrew their respective troops from the most advanced high-altitude positions along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir due to logistical problems in the harsh weather conditions. With the beginning of the spring season, both sides sent their troops back to occupy those positions. What happened in the Kargil sector was that in the winter of 1998,4 Kashmiri mujahideen (freedom fighters) with the alleged support of Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry units moved into the positions vacated by the Indian troops. Through this tactical move, Kashmiri mujahideen gained a strategic advantage by occupying 23 peaks in Kargil, Drass, and Batalik sectors overlooking the strategic Kargil-Leh Highway. Leh is the staging point for Indian military to the Siachen Glacier. This move by the mujahideen choked the Indian army’s movement from Srinagar to Leh. Therefore, dislodging the mujahideen from their positions became a strategic imperative for India. In purely military terms, it was a brilliant move by the mujahideen but surely unsustainable under the circumstances. In response to this development, on May 26, India unleashed its airpower and extensively used long-range heavy artillery, which significantly escalated tensions between India and Pakistan. India deployed over 30,000 troops, and around 100 aircraft took part in 550 sorties in a stretch 8 km deep and 150 km long along the LoC. The conflict in Kargil lasted for 74 days. Despite all its military might and extensive use of firepower, India remained unable to dislodge around 800 men occupying the strategic heights. The unwinding situation led to a rapid force mobilization by both countries, and they seemed to be moving toward an all-out war in a nuclear environment. Political and military leaderships of both sides even threatened each other with the use of nuclear weapons as a last resort. This volatile situation drew the
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attention of all major global powers, who demanded a cessation of the hostilities and restoration of the sanctity of the LoC, which meant that the elements occupying Indian-claimed positions should be withdrawn. Pakistan maintained that it had little control over these Kashmiri groups, blamed India for escalating the tensions, and advised India to give a time frame for the resolution of the Kashmir issue in order to deescalate the situation. India and Pakistan kept the doors open for diplomatic contacts till late June 1999. Pakistan worked on both track-I and track-II levels to get a negotiated settlement but failed to change the Indian stance of “withdrawal first” before discussions on any other issue. Finally, the United States and China, by way of exercising their influence in a friendly and persuasive manner over India and Pakistan, were able to defuse the volatile situation. The United States brokered an agreement on July 4, 1999, under which the occupation forces withdrew from Kargil with an assurance that India would be persuaded personally by then U.S. president Clinton for a resumption of the “Lahore Process,”5 leading to a negotiated settlement of the Kashmir dispute. Before analyzing China’s response and role in Kargil, it is important here to determine why the Kargil conflict happened. There are several explanations, depending upon who is to answer the question. According to Dr. Maleeha Lodhi, a well-known Pakistani analyst, “the daring operation seemed to have been driven by the belief that the nuclear capability provided a protective shield that would deter a significant Indian counter-response, as that would raise the threshold of confrontation by escalating to an all-out conventional war.” On the logic of the Kargil operation, she further argues that “an unstated assumption of the operation was that India would acquiesce to this capture just like Pakistan was compelled to swallow Delhi’s seizure of the Siachen glacier in 1984, in violation of the 1972 Simla Agreement.”6 The official position of Pakistan has never been convincingly clear on this issue. The then prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and the army chief, General Musharraf, had differing explanations. Pakistan’s then foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, during a debate on Kargil in the Senate, explained the motives of Kargil, saying that “firstly the Mujahideen had wanted interdiction of the Highway A-1, which links Kargil with Siachen via Leh. The other objective was to highlight the Kashmir issue, and the Kargil operation drew the world attention towards the freedom struggle to the extent it had not got before.” Mr. Aziz said, “It would be considered a positive outcome of the Kargil operation if Kashmir issue continued to get attention of world community in the coming 18-20 months.”7 Most of the Indian analysts agree with the view that Pakistan’s motive to launch Kargil was to internationalize the Kashmir issue, and that Pakistan was successful in doing so. However, the culmination of the Kargil conflict reveals that it brought more advantages for India than for Pakistan.
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Factors Behind China’s Response to Kargil On Kargil, China opted for adhering to a neutral stance. However, this neutrality by no means was passive neutrality, but an active one, which contributed positively to the diffusion of the India-Pakistan tension. China used its traditional—quiet and low-profile—diplomacy to preserve peace in its neighborhood, which forms a core objective of its South Asia policy. Beijing adopted this policy due to several major factors, including its overall foreign policy objectives in South Asia, relations with India, and relations with the United States.
China’s South Asia Policy and Relations with India In Chinese perceptions, the core of South Asian security lies in continuous reconciliation between India and Pakistan. The challenge to China’s South Asia policy has been to manage its relations with both Pakistan, a time-tested ally, and India, a former foe and a strategic competitor in the future. Having friendly, cooperative relations with all states of South Asia and ensuring peace and stability has been a primary objective of China’s South Asia policy. Within this policy framework, to further strengthen relations with Pakistan has always been a vital interest for the Chinese leadership. China has no major contentious issue with any of the South Asian countries, except with India on the demarcation of boundary. Both China and India, however, have agreed to resolve the issue bilaterally through negotiations and without resorting to the use of force. China’s response to the two crises has to be understood in the context of Sino-Indian ties. Since 1988, China’s relations with India have been improving and showing a constant upward trend, which continued uninterrupted till May 1998, when India carried out its nuclear tests on the pretext that it perceived China as a major threat. As a result, Sino-Indian relations plunged into deep mistrust. However, as rising powers of Asia and as neighbors, both had to learn to live together and create a stable environment for their economic development. Within four months of the Indian nuclear tests, China decided to revert to the prenuclearization peace process, while expecting India to take bold initiatives to defrost the relations. By the end of 1998, India also signaled its desire to improve relations, and even to forge a strategic partnership if the relations would substantively improve. This process proved to be bumpy at least. Toward late 1998 and early 1999, Sino-Indian relations were generating mixed signals of reconciliation and confrontation, which did not bring about substantive progress on normalization of bilateral ties. For instance, in October 1998, then Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s meeting with the Dalai Lama provoked an angry Chinese reaction. India rejected the Chinese criticism as uncalled for
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and unjustified. In December 1998, China joined Pakistan in expressing concerns over one of India’s largest military exercises along the border with Pakistan. Also, China again reacted angrily when Ram Jeth Malani, an Indian minister and a senior leader of the ruling party BJP, said in an interview, “I support Taiwan and there is a strong case for recognition of Taiwan: after all it is an independent democratic country now.”8 This had never been the Indian official position, despite the fact that India has trade and defense relations with Taiwan. Similarly, when India tested the Agni-II intermediate-range ballistic missile on April 12, 1999, China denounced the test as a violation of relevant international regimes and stated that the test could spark a new arms race in South Asia. Analysts in New Delhi said, “The successful test, which drew strong protests from rival Pakistan, would sound alarm bells in Beijing.”9 Their assessment proved to be quite right. According to the Indian media reports, quoting highly placed intelligence sources, the Chinese government, in response to the test, ordered the PLA to redeploy medium- and long-range missiles against India. Although these instances reflected unpleasantness in Sino-Indian relations, they did not affect the fundamental goals of China’s South Asia policy. Both sides recognized the necessity to improve relations. One also finds that after nuclearization of South Asia, China’s traditional South Asia policy continued with added emphasis on the need for normalization of relations between India and Pakistan. The then Chinese president Jiang Zemin reportedly said in June 1998: “To ease the tension in South Asia it is most imperative that India and Pakistan keep cool-headed, exercise restraint, resume dialogue immediately and refrain from any remarks or actions that might further intensify tensions. Both should give up their nuclear weapons programmes and unconditionally sign the NPT and CTBT.”10 Li Peng, then chairman of the Standing Committee of China’s National Peoples Congress (NPC), visited Pakistan in April 1999, just a month before the Kargil conflict, and stated that China sincerely hoped that “the South Asian countries will live in harmony and enjoy long-term stability and economic development” and that Pakistan and India would accelerate their efforts to settle all issues between them, including the Kashmir question.11 Li Peng declared that “along with the South Asian countries, China is ready to write a new chapter of friendly relations and cooperation.”12 The statement contained a message of reconciliation from China to India from the Pakistani soil, which was quite significant for China-Pakistan-India relations. On the basis of the above analysis, it is clear that Beijing has been trying to pursue a balanced position between Pakistan and India. It tried to maintain the traditional friendly relations with Islamabad and at the same time desired to overcome some of the problems with India. The Kargil conflict was a serious challenge to China’s South Asia policy and China could not
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have supported Pakistan on this issue. Otherwise, the fragile Sino-Indian relations would be in jeopardy.
Sino-U.S. Converging Interests in South Asia The Chinese approach to the Kargil crisis was also related to Beijing’s converging interests with Washington in South Asia. After the Cold War, the United States’ chief objective in South Asia was peace and stability. Washington, like Beijing, was also intent to improve relations with India. The convergence of interests between China and the United States enabled China to pursue a neutral position and active participation without taking any risk of harming Sino-U.S. relations. In fact, China and the United States cooperated quite well in resolving the Kargil crisis. First, U.S. policy in South Asia in the post – Cold War era needs to be briefly described. With the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the United States imposed sanctions on Pakistan for reasons of nuclear proliferation in 1990. Also, for the United States, the collapse of the Soviet Union removed the major stumbling block in improving relations with India. The evolving U.S. policy in South Asia throughout the 1990s had a clear preference for India over Pakistan for several obvious reasons, such as Pakistan’s nuclear and missile program, its support for the Taliban regime and Kashmiri mujahideen, and its economic problems and rampant corruption by the political elites and others. These issues seriously affected Pakistan-U.S. bilateral relations. On the other side, India’s sheer size and power potential, its potential as a counterweight against a rising China, a stable democracy, and economic progress were the factors drawing U.S. attention. Toward the late 1990s the U.S. tilt toward India and marginalization of Pakistan had become very evident, as the United States institutionalized relations with India. India became the largest recipient of U.S. development assistance; for Pakistan it was negligible in comparison. The nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998 once again drew the attention of the international community over the dangers of unresolved contentious issues between India and Pakistan, which both came under U.S. sanctions. However, the U.S. posture toward India was more engaging than toward Pakistan. The need to start a dialogue between India and Pakistan and to curtail the risks of an all-out armed conflict between the two antagonists was evident in U.S. policy toward South Asia. In the aftermath of the nuclearization of South Asia, the Chinese policy objectives broadly converged with those of the United States, especially on the issue of nonproliferation and maintenance of peace and stability in the region. This unique understanding between the two major powers at a strategic level later proved to be extremely helpful in creating stability in the region and enabling China to become a factor of stability in the South Asian context.
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During his June 1998 China visit, President Bill Clinton and President Jiang Zemin issued a joint statement on South Asia. Though the text of the statement focused more on the nuclear tests and what India and Pakistan were required to do, it also reflected a consensus on the objectives of the two in South Asia. Some relevant excerpts from the statement are as follows: 1. We are committed to assist where possible India and Pakistan to resolve peacefully the difficult and long-standing differences between them, including the issue of Kashmir. 2. We welcome the resumption of dialogue between the two countries and encourage them to continue such dialogue, and we stand ready to assist in the implementation of confidence building measures between them, and encourage the consideration of additional measures of this type. 3. China and the U.S. have long sought friendly relations with both India and Pakistan. We reaffirm this goal and our hope that we can jointly and individually contribute to the achievement of a peaceful, prosperous and secure South Asia. 4. As P-5 members, and as states with important relations with the countries of the region, we recognise our responsibility to contribute actively to the maintenance of peace, stability and security in the region, and to do all we can to address the root causes of tension.13
India was very critical to this statement, saying that it confined India’s stature to the South Asian milieu only and rejected India’s “China threat” logic for going nuclear. India denounced the joint statement by saying that it reflected “hegemonistic mentality of a bygone era.”14 An Indian Foreign Ministry statement said that the attempt by China and the United States to seek to maintain peace and stability in the region was “completely unacceptable and out of place in the present day world.”15 India clearly stated that there was no place for any kind of third-party involvement whatsoever in talks with Pakistan. Contrary to the Indian stance, Pakistan, which was ready to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), provided India did so at the same time, reacted in a more favorable, positive, and welcoming manner to the Joint Statement, as it accepted the centrality of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan and proposed its settlement as a precondition for durable peace and stability in the region. A former foreign secretary of Pakistan, while commenting on the joint statement, said, China joined Clinton in criticising the sub-continental nuclear tests need not to cause any anxiety to us. Pakistan has no intrinsic dispute with non-proliferation or with the purposes of the CTBT. China understands Pakistan’s compulsions that drove it to nuclear deterrence. Pakistan has no disagreement with China when it seeks to discourage an arms race in South Asia. China would increasingly
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speak with the inflections of a major global power but this will not annul the sub-systems of mutual support that it has with countries like Pakistan. On our part, we must also learn to tailor our expectations to global realities.16
In any case, the consensus reached during Clinton’s visit made the U.S.-China cooperation possible during Kargil, despite their differences on several other issues, for instance human rights, NATO’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the U.S. antimissile defense plan, and U.S. allegations of Chinese spying activities in the United States. With all these differences in Sino-U.S. relations, China seemed very keen to preserve the consensus reached with the United States on South Asia, which would allow it to play a role in maintaining stability in the neighborhood.
International Response and Diplomacy Apparently, all the major powers were of the opinion that Pakistan was on the wrong side of the Kargil issue and therefore should arrange the withdrawal of mujahideen without any conditionality as the situation was deteriorating rapidly. Also, at the same time, they wanted India to exercise restraint and not to scale up tensions. The United States remained at the forefront in terms of using diplomatic pressure on both India and Pakistan. On Pakistan, the the United States demanded withdrawal of occupants from the Indian-claimed positions, and on India, the demand was not to escalate the conflict and not to cross the LoC. On June 14, Clinton sent a letter to then Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif in which he “offered to meet him somewhere in Europe, if the Prime Minister, using his influence, could get the Mujahideen to withdraw from the Indian side of the LoC on Kargil.”17 India’s special envoy, Brajesh Mishra, met U.S. national security advisor Samuel R. Berger on June 17 and handed over a letter from Prime Minister Vajpayee to Bill Clinton. The letter conveyed the message that “India would feel compelled to attack deep into Pakistani territory if a unilateral withdrawal could not be secured by other means.”18 Mishra also briefed the G-8 leaders with a letter from Vajpayee that categorically stated that Indian patience was running thin. Clinton reportedly promised Mishra some action in days. The pressure kept mounting on Pakistan; on June 20, the G-8 passed a strongly worded resolution demanding an end to intrusion and resumption of bilateral dialogue for reducing tension. As was expected from Clinton’s assurance to Mishra, the U.S. Central Command chief, General Anthony Zinni, arrived in Pakistan on June 24. General Zinni writes in his book Battle Ready, “I met with the Pakistani leaders in Islamabad on June 24 and 25, and put forth
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a simple rationale for withdrawing: if you don’t pull back, you’re going to bring war and nuclear annihilation down on your country. Nobody actually quarrelled with this rational.”19 According to several other accounts on Zinni’s visit, he reportedly warned Pakistan that India would launch full-scale hostilities if intrusion in the Kargil sector were not vacated. The United States also raised the specter of a nuclear war in that Pakistan was making nuclear warheads battle ready; this was later denied by both India and Pakistan.20 However, despite its clear leaning toward India, Washington warned India that if its forces crossed into Pakistan it would lose a great deal of international support.
China’s Engagement with Pakistan Pakistan’s foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, made a one-day visit to Beijing on June 11, before the scheduled visit of the Indian foreign minister, Jaswant Singh, from June 14 to 16. During his visit, Aziz met with NPC chairman Li Peng and Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan. On his return from Beijing, Sartaj Aziz said that Pakistan and China agreed on the need to deescalate the current dangerous situation on the LoC. He said that Beijing indicated that preservation of peace and security was of great importance. Aziz disclosed that neither did he ask for nor did China offer any financial or material support in case the conflict continued or escalated. But, he said, China reaffirmed its commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan. Li Peng said, during the meeting with Aziz, that “both Pakistan and India are important countries in South Asia, and China sincerely hopes they would prevent the Kashmir situation from deteriorating in order to maintain peace and stability in the region.”21 The next day, on June 12, Aziz was to meet Jaswant Singh to persuade him to deescalate hostilities, but he got a very cold shoulder from Singh, because the Indians had assessed that without categorical Chinese support, Pakistan could not withstand international pressure for long. Before Jaswant Singh landed in Beijing, China’s position on Kargil was very clear. It provided China with an opportunity to take advantage of its neutral position on Kargil to ask India also to exercise restraint and not allow escalation of the conflict. Singh’s visit paved the way for normalization of Sino-Indian relations as the two countries agreed to institute a security dialogue mechanism and a joint working group on boundary issues. Also, to normalize relations with India had increasingly become a strategic necessity for China to neutralize the negative impact of evolving Indo-U.S. relations. Therefore, China simply could not miss any opportunity for improving relations with India, and any sign of tilting toward Pakistan could have put the emerging opportunities in jeopardy. When Nawaz Sharif went to China on a prescheduled six-day visit on June 27, he was expecting to receive the same advice from his Chinese friends that his
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foreign minister had already conveyed to him. It is generally believed that while on board before landing in Beijing, Nawaz Sharif had made the decision to withdraw from Kargil, and in all probability he must have consulted the Chinese leadership on his decision. According to some analysts, Nawaz Sharif’s discussions with the Chinese leaders were the turning point in Pakistan’s decision to use its influence on the mujahideen to suspend their operations in Kargil. Reportedly, during his meetings with Premier Zhu Rongji and Li Peng, they said that Pakistan must play its role in defusing hostilities; otherwise any escalation in the hostilities could initiate a large-scale conflict that would not be in the interest of Pakistan. China’s role as a mediator in Indo-Pak conflict may not have been acceptable to India. Therefore, Nawaz Sharif cut short his visit, went to Washington, and met Bill Clinton on July 4, 1999. After a three-hour-long summit a joint statement was issued in which Pakistan agreed to persuade the mujahideen to withdraw, and Clinton assured Nawaz that he would take personal interest in the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. The tensions between India and Pakistan were defused. Many times this question has been raised: Did China lose the credibility and trust of Pakistan by adopting a neutral stance during Kargil? The answer is emphatically no. A majority of the Pakistani analysts believe that the responsibility of realistically assessing China’s policy and response rests with the policy makers in Pakistan. On Kargil, “our understanding of relationship was erroneous and our expectations unrealistic.”22 The Pakistani side apparently failed to appraise China’s stakes in peace in South Asia.
Post-9/11 Developments Following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, two new issues emerged in Pakistan-China relations. The first was bilateral cooperation in antiterrorism and collaboration with the United States as both chose to join the international coalition against terrorism. The second challenge was heightening tensions between India and Pakistan, which led to a massive troop mobilization and military standoff from December 2001 to October 2002.
Realignments in South Asia At the time 9/11 happened, China was making efforts to normalize relations with the United States. The EP-3 spy plane incident, in which a U.S. spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter plane in April 2001, killing the Chinese pilot, and the Bush administration’s decision to allow sophisticated military sales to Taiwan, despite Chinese protests, were some of the issues impacting negatively on Sino-U.S. relations. Despite irritants in their bilateral relations, China
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immediately responded by condemning the terrorist attacks on the United States and declared its support for the international efforts to eliminate all forms of terrorism. The events of 9/11 provided China with an opportunity to quickly improve its relations with the United States. The U.S.-led war against terrorism brought external military forces into South Asia, thereby altering strategic dynamics in the region. Pakistan, China, and India all joined the U.S.-led international coalition, but of course for different reasons. The United States needed Pakistan’s active support and its military bases along the Pakistan-Afghan border for attacking Afghanistan. Thus Pakistan once again became a frontline state, this time in the U.S.-led war against terrorism. Pakistan’s decision to side with the United States and to provide the base facilities had initially raised concerns in some Chinese circles. However, with the exchange of high-level visits, Pakistan’s position was made clear—under no circumstances would Pakistan allow its cooperation with the United States to undermine China’s strategic interests in the region. Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States provided both countries with a unique opportunity to improve their bilateral relations. The United States reengaged Pakistan by removing multitier sanctions, restoring military ties, and announcing economic packages to rescue its ailing economy. However, at the same time, the United States developed further its strategic partnership with India. By taking advantage of the prevailing situation, India wanted the United States to include the Kashmiri freedom struggle in the ambit of the war against terrorism, a perspective strongly opposed by Pakistan. China also wanted its issue of terrorism and separatism to be considered as part of the international campaign against terrorism, to which the United States initially showed some reluctance. Although China and Pakistan have been members of the international coalition against terrorism, the foreign military presence in Afghanistan and Central Asia has been a matter of concern for both. There were several unanswered questions regarding the U.S. intent. Many analysts in China believed that Washington had a political agenda to implement in the garb of an antiterrorism campaign—containing China. When, in March 2002, Pakistan was given the Major Non-NATO Ally (MNNA) status by the United States, the then prime minister, Mir Zaffar Ullah Khan Jamali, immediately said that it would have no effect on Pakistan’s time-tested friendship and relationship with China. In any case the MNNA status was just a symbolic gesture by the United States to balance the growing military cooperation with India. However, it alarmed many Chinese analysts regarding the future course of military cooperation between Pakistan and the United States. Pakistan and China after 9/11 institutionalized antiterrorism cooperation and have been able to create mechanisms for sharing intelligence and jointly combating terrorism. Pakistan ensured and took all necessary measures to eliminate any terrorism-related threat against China emanating from Pakistani soil.
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Developments Leading to Military Standoff 2001–2002 With the failure of the Taliban regime to hand over Osama bin Laden, the U.S. attack on Afghanistan had become inevitable. The United States started military strikes against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Afghanistan on October 8, 2001. Just a week before the United States attacked Afghanistan, in the Indian-held Kashmir some militants allegedly attacked the Jammu and Kashmir State Assembly building. The Indian Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement on the same day, demanding that Pakistan “curb the activities of Jaish-i-Mohammad, and other terrorist groups.” And the very next day, on October 2, India claimed that “credible links between the group that attacked the Kashmir assembly building and al-Qaeda have been established” and asked for extremist groups operating in Kashmir to be identified and banned by the U.S.-led coalition as part of the global campaign against terror.23 Since Pakistan’s support to the move against al-Qaeda and the Taliban was so crucial, the United States could not fulfill Indian demands. However, at India’s behest, the United States pressured Pakistan to take measures to stop the alleged cross-LoC infiltration and also seized assets of some of the Kashmiri Jehadi outfit. India remained unsatisfied with the measures taken by the United States. So India, in a premeditated move, began mobilizing troops along the LoC and simultaneously increased anti-mujahideen military operations, making the situation along the LoC once again tense. In yet another unfortunate development on December 13, 2001, the Indian parliament building in Delhi was attacked, allegedly by a suicide bomber. Pakistan again was accused of sponsoring the act, although Pakistan strongly condemned the attack and offered joint investigations. India responded in a very unusual manner by calling back the Indian high commissioner from Pakistan, reducing the diplomatic strength by half, and closing its airspace to Pakistani airlines. The incident further heightened tensions between the two antagonists to an unprecedented level. India, on December 18, launched a massive troop mobilization known as “Operation Parakram.” In a few weeks’ time, South Asia witnessed the deployment of over a million combat-ready troops on both sides of the border. According to most of the intelligence assessments, war between the two with a possible exchange of nuclear weapons was a real possibility. The U.S. intelligence reportedly predicted, as early as December 31, that the war would start within days. In an interview published by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, General Musharraf claimed on April 6, 2002, “as a last resort atom bomb is also possible.” Similarly, the highest-ranking civil servant in India’s Defence Ministry stated on June 2, 2002, that his country’s nuclear weapons were in place for prompt use. This volatile stalemate situation with the possibility of outbreak of war lasted for about ten months.24
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Once again, intense diplomatic intervention was used by the United States and other major world players including China to defuse a major crisis in South Asia. The then U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage made several visits to India and Pakistan aiming at deescalating the crisis. President Bush kept on reminding the leaders of both India and Pakistan to exercise maximum restraint. China was extremely cautious and proactive to cooperate and coordinate efforts to defuse tensions.
Chinese Diplomacy during the Military Standoff China played an important role through its proactive diplomacy during the India-Pakistan military standoff. China’s then prime minister, Zhu Rongji, while expressing his views during General Musharraf ’s visit to Beijing in the first week of January 2002—and just before his visit to India, which was scheduled for January 11-15—said on the Pakistan-India military standoff that “it is in the interest of both countries and the expectation of the international community for both Pakistan and India to maintain the utmost restraint and safeguard the peace and stability of South Asia.”25 China continued to maintain a neutral position—somewhat similar to the one it had adopted during the Kargil conflict. This time around, China’s neutrality was more welcomed by India, and a majority of the Indian analysts duly acknowledged China’s neutral stance. After the Kargil conflict, China’s neutral position helped keep improving Sino-Indian relations on a fast track. Thus, Chinese neutrality at the declaratory level on the India-Pakistan military standoff provided additional flexibility to the Chinese diplomatic efforts at averting a war in South Asia. China’s neutral role helped not only to expand its engagement with India on South Asian security but also improved bilateral relations. During the military standoff, China extensively used telephone diplomacy to engage the leadership of the United States, India, and Pakistan simultaneously. This time around, there was a complete understanding between Pakistan and China on the unfolding situation. Pakistan demanded that India deescalate tensions and resume dialogue to settle contentious issues. The Chinese leadership appreciated General Musharraf’s policies on antiterrorism and peaceful resolution of the contentious issues with India. China’s diplomatic role during the India-Pakistan military standoff was positive and important. From Pakistan’s perspective, China’s neutrality was somewhat different from its neutrality during Kargil. This time, in comparison to the Kargil situation, it was apparently a more proactive neutrality. A possible explanation could be that in the case of Kargil, Pakistan was considered to be on the wrong side of the LoC by a majority of the international community.
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However, during the Indo-Pakistani military standoff, India was clearly seen by China and all others as escalating the tensions. Chinese diplomacy was more intense in this case as Pakistan was seen being pressured by both India and the United States on different counts. In June 2002, the Chinese ambassador at the UN, Yingfang Wang, said in an interview, “China is using all its resources, influence and contacts in its own way to stop a war between India and Pakistan and hopes that diplomatic efforts will succeed.”26 This time in Pakistan, China’s proactive diplomacy was seen in line with the traditional Chinese support to Pakistan in times of a crisis situation. China was seen as helping Pakistan to avert a war with India, notwithstanding its relations with India and its declared neutrality. In fact, the Kargil conflict had made Pakistani leadership and people aware of China’s regional and global constraints and limitations. Thus, the level of expectations for China’s support was also lowered. China’s leaders remained engaged with the U.S. leadership throughout on following the developments in South Asia. The two major powers tried to adopt a consensual stance on the situation and kept advising India and Pakistan not to allow the situation to get out of hand. The success of Chinese diplomacy can be gauged by the fact that it was able to continue exercising friendly persuasion over India throughout this period. This policy posturing was made possible only through establishing its neutral credentials during extreme tensions between the two antagonists. Indian acknowledgement of China’s neutral position enabled China to remain engaged in the efforts aimed at defusing tensions. For China, a process that began during Kargil for establishing itself as a neutral player in South Asian politics was matured. However, some policy-making inner circles in Pakistan expressed more confidence in China’s political and diplomatic support in case India had attacked Pakistan because of the simple fact that this time Pakistan was seeking deescalation, contrary to the Indian war-mongering position. In both crisis situations, China through its skillful diplomacy achieved multiple objectives. These instances were used by China for mending its differences and improving relations with India and the United States, respectively, while preserving the peace and stability in the neighboring region. Pakistan also understood well the rationale behind the Chinese policy and its pragmatic interaction with the key players during the two crisis situations for preserving peace and stability in the region. China’s role in both crises has helped Pakistan to secure its core national interest, that is, avoidance of war with India.
Conclusions Pakistan has been enjoying cordial bilateral relations with China since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1951. The sense of mutual trust and confidence that was developed between the two in the early 1960s continues to
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give sustenance to this relationship. It is an ever-evolving relationship, which has not been affected by the changes in domestic, regional, and international situations in terms of context; however, in terms of contents one may find some pragmatic policy shifts that are essential for pursuing their respective national interests. Since China undertook reform in 1978–1979, its quest for stability in the neighboring regions has constantly been growing. China will continue to follow this policy objective through various means in the foreseeable future, as with the growing power of China, the stakes in stability in the neighboring regions would also increase. Therefore, for China, adopting a neutral stance in intraregional conflicts is a logical outcome of its neighborhood policies. Why did China choose neutrality during Kargil and subsequently in the military standoff, and refrain from siding with its traditional ally, Pakistan? The answer lies in the simple fact that conflict between India and Pakistan was inherently contradictory to China’s South Asia policy and its long-term strategic interests. Chinese neutrality cannot be termed detached from the situation but rather proactive, aiming at resolving the crisis. Moreover, any encouragement to Pakistan by China during Kargil could have led to a war of disastrous consequences. Given the asymmetry in military power between the two, and the unfavorable international opinion for Pakistan, the war would have been much costlier for Pakistan than India. In such eventuality China’s influence in South Asia would have been considerably weakened. Also, in view of evolving Indo-U.S. relations, China’s support for Pakistan could have widened the scope of the conflict, an outcome absolutely undesirable for China. China’s prospects for normalizing relations with India would have diminished for a long time, and the notion of China as a permanent enemy would have strengthened in the Indian psyche. For all these reasons, as a growing and responsible Asian power China had to demonstrate its ability to play a constructive role in defusing tensions between its two neighbors. China’s responsible and mature diplomacy on the aforementioned developments in South Asia clearly reflects that China has emerged as a factor of stability in the region. China has been able to effectively synchronize its declaratory and operational policy on South Asia during the two crisis situations. Both India and Pakistan have well understood Chinese intent and the constraints on its policy options during a crisis. Recognition of these factors would help in creating a stable environment in the region. It has also reaffirmed Pakistan’s conviction that China’s improved relations with India would act as a restraining factor for Indian belligerency against Pakistan and that China is a factor of stability in South Asia. Pakistan places great importance on its relations with China, and both see this traditional relationship flourishing in the future.
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At another level, the consensus achieved between China and the United States over South Asia in 1998 had worked well, as in a coordinated effort; China persuaded Pakistan to get Indian-claimed positions vacated, and the United States persuaded India not to cross the LoC. China would be increasingly seen as cooperating with other major players, to ensure stability in various parts of the world. Also, China would not like to go against the international opinion on certain issues, even if its close allies are involved in them.
Notes 1. Dr Fazal-ur-Rahman is Director of the China Study Centre of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad. He thanks Mingjiang Li, Swaran Singh, Shiping Tang, and Guihong Zhang for their helpful comments on an earlier draft. 2. The Nation, August 27, 1998. 3. Fazal-ur-Rahman, “Pakistan’s Relations with China,” Strategic Studies, Vols. 29 and XX, Nos. 4 and1 p. 72 (Winter and Spring, 1998). 4. The News, October 24, 1999. 5. After nuclearization of South Asia, under international pressure India had agreed to hold talks with Pakistan. Because of the right-wing BJP leadership’s belligerent statements, Pakistan lost faith in Indian commitment and Kargil happened just three months after the signing of the Lahore Declaration in February 1999. 6. Dr Maleeha Lodhi, “Anatomy of a Debacle,” Newsline, July 1999. 7. See www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/pakistan/1999/990816-pak-kargil. htm. 8. The News, January 2, 1999. 9. Pakistan Times, April 13, 1999. 10. The Frontier Post, July 1, 1998. 11. Text of Li Peng’s policy statement, The News, April 11, 1999. 12. Ibid. 13. Excerpts from the text of Sino-U.S. joint statement on South Asia, issued by Bill Clinton and Jiang Zemin, The News, June 28, 1998. 14. The Nation, June 28, 1998. 15. Ibid. 16. Tanvir Ahmed Khan, “Promise of Sino-U.S. Summit,” The News, July 9, 1998. 17. Ziauddin M., “The Story Behind the Story,” Dawn, July 12, 1999. 18. Frontline, July 16, 1999. 19. Siddique-ul-Farooque M., White Paper Kargil: Adventure or Trap, Lahore: Sagar Publishers, September 2006. 20. Shireen M. Mazari, “The Kargil Conflict 1999,” Islamabad: Institute of Strategic Studies, September 2003. 21. “China Calls for Political Solution to Kashmir Issue,”Pakistan Times, June 12, 1999. 22. Abid Hussain Chatta, “Rebuilding Pak-China Ties,” The Nation, August 9, 1999.
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23. Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin-peak Crisis,” Report 57, 2006, Henry L. Stimson Centre, Washington DC, p. 14-15. 24. Ibid. 25. Dawn, January 4, 2002. 26. Azim M Mian, “China Playing Aggressive Role to Avert War,” The News, June 1, 2002.
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9
Waltzing with Goliath: Philippines-China Engagement in Uncharted Waters Aileen San Pablo – Baviera1
Introduction To some observers, relations between the Philippines and China appear to have gone through a 180-degree transformation in the last 12 years. Many who remember China’s show of muscle in the disputed islands in the South China Sea and the vehemence of Philippine opposition to such Chinese assertions of sovereignty in the mid- to late 1990s would be surprised at how the Philippines and China now seem to sing only paeans to their good relations and favorable prospects. The asymmetrical relationship of these two countries—one huge and the other medium-sized, one authoritarian and the other formally a liberal democracy, one an economic powerhouse and the other a slow developer, one with respectable military capability and the other still unable to successfully address internal armed threats—may be more important than their asymmetry and dissimilarity might otherwise suggest. China’s importance to the Philippines needs little explanation and is for the most part no different from how other regional states value China as an engine of economic growth and an important player in preserving regional and global stability. What may be of interest is the proposition that the Philippines may likewise be deemed strategically important to China for at least four reasons: it is one of the claimants to the disputed islands and waters of the South China Sea; it is a member of ASEAN able to influence other members at least on certain issues; it is a military ally of the United States and thus maintains close security ties with Washington; and it flanks Taiwan geographically.
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This chapter explores Philippines-China relations by presenting a brief overview of bilateral relations. It traces and explains the recent transformation of relations by looking at how the global and regional strategic environment, bilateral interactions between the two states, and domestic political imperatives in each of the countries have helped shape and reshape the way Beijing and Manila perceive and relate to each other. It then examines two case studies that illustrate the dynamics of relations in greater detail; these are the territorial and maritime jurisdiction disputes in the Spratly Islands and the problem of intrusions and illegal fishing by Chinese fishermen in Philippine waters. The chapter explains how these disputes have developed and why they have not prevented normal and even cooperative relations from taking place. At the same time, the reasons why certain problems remain difficult to manage are addressed. The two cases also demonstrate how foreign relations may be shaped by actors and events intervening at different levels, with foreign policy decisions not always resulting from rational choice and at times bringing about unintended effects.
Overview of Relations Before Philippines-China relations were normalized in June 1975, the Philippines stayed away from China for fear of communist contagion, in light of a strong home-grown Maoist insurgency and the presence of a small but vulnerable ethnic Chinese minority. Manila’s subsequent decision to normalize ties was calculated to undermine Chinese support for this insurgency, tap new sources of oil supply, and, as part of an expansion of relations with socialist states, balance perceived American weight in Philippine foreign policy. While relations in the first 20 years were punctuated by occasional frictions, on the whole they had been cordial on the political front, if rather unremarkable in terms of mutual economic impact. From low levels of trade in the first 20 years of relations, trade significantly improved after 1995, then grew fourfold from 2000 to 2005, with the Philippines enjoying a trade surplus of U.S.$8.1 billion. By 2004, China had become the fifth-largest trading partner of the Philippines.2 Protectionist impulses resulted in Philippine reluctance to sign on to the “early harvest” program that China offered as part of its free trade agreement with ASEAN, but the agreement was concluded in 2005 and the two countries set an ambitious target of U.S.$30 billion in two-way trade for 2010, a target that was in fact already met by 2007.3 Philippine direct investments in China grew from U.S.$16.3 million in 1992 to a still insignificant U.S.$186 million in 2002.4 China also had minimal investment in the Philippines until recently. Its single biggest investment
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commitment to the Philippines thus far is for the North Luzon Railway development, for which China pledged U.S.$900 million in preferential loans in 2004. A much bigger project for China’s ZTE Corporation to help improve a national broadband network for the Philippines became mired in a high-level corruption controversy and has since been suspended. Prior to the North Rail project, China’s investments accounted for only 2 percent of total foreign direct investment (FDI) to the Philippines, compared to 26 percent from Taiwan and 37 percent from Japan.5 China has of late expressed strong interest in agricultural cooperation, mining, infrastructure, and energy development in the Philippines. It is also now the fastest-growing source of tourist inflows into the Philippines. Improving political and security relations was evident in the high-level exchanges taking place. In 2000, the Philippines and China signed a Joint Statement on the Framework for Bilateral Cooperation in the twenty-first century. A Memorandum on Defense Cooperation was signed in November 2004, resulting in the convening of a defense and security dialogue in 2005. China also offered U.S.$1.2 million in military assistance to the Philippines, invited the Philippines to participate in joint maritime exercises, and agreed to train Philippine military officers. Presidents Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Hu Jintao described the relationship of the two countries in 2005 as being on the threshold of a “golden age of partnership.” This was indeed a sharp departure from the mid-1990s, when Chinese occupation of Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef in the Kalayaan Islands (Spratlys), frequent incursions by its vessels into the Philippines’ maritime zones, and missile tests across the Taiwan Straits led to increasing concern over an emerging China threat. Today, although the status of Mischief Reef remains unresolved, bilateral as well as multilateral efforts have been exerted by both sides to minimize potential triggers of conflict, improve mutual trust, and address the disputes through normal diplomatic channels.
Conflict and Competition over Maritime Resources One factor that has indeed weighed heavily upon relations is the escalating competition and conflict over maritime resources. China claims a maritime territory of 3 million km2 in addition to its land territory of 9.6 million km2.6 The Philippines on the other hand is an archipelagic country, whose 7100 islands and 36,000 km stretch of coastline are connected by waters that are not only important transportation and communication links but also vital sources of food, livelihood, and potentially energy. Both countries arguably suffer from huge populations, overexploitation of resources, environmental crises, and energy dependency, making control of the surrounding maritime spaces a
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matter of national interest. That they happen to share the same maritime space—the South China Sea—has led to disputes over territory, water, and access to resources that have become core issues in their relations. Aside from threats to freedom and safety of navigation, the contest for hydrocarbon resources is considered a primary flash point in the South China Sea. The area is believed to be sitting atop oil deposits estimated at a low of 28 billion to a high of 225 billion barrels,7 and natural gas deposits estimated at 266 trillion cubic feet. The littoral states, including Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Vietnam, south China, and the Philippines have either proven petroleum reserves or significant oil geology structures. In light of China’s growing dependency on oil imports (close to 50 percent of oil requirements in 2004) and persistent instability in the Middle East, which accounts for over half of China’s imported supply, international concern over an escalation of oil and gas competition among the great powers has increased recently. China is already the world’s second-largest oil importer, and in 2004 accounted for one-third of the increase in global demand for oil.8 Natural gas consumption, while only a small percentage of China’s consumption, is expected to grow 7.8 percent annually until 2025.9 Its offshore oil production has been growing at 15.3 percent per year on average from 1996 to 2004, with 2004 production levels accounting for 16.2 percent of China’s total domestic supply. China Petroleum and Chemical Corp. (SINOPEC) and China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) have been authorized to conduct offshore exploration and production in the South China Sea and in the East China Sea since 2000. In order to better coordinate the new thrust in offshore energy development, the Chinese government in May 2003 issued its “Outlines of National Marine Economy Development Plan.”10 It is against this backdrop that the contest for energy and for jurisdiction over maritime zones in the South China Sea is seen as a core issue in Beijing-Manila relations. Fishing disputes in the South China Sea have also become a major irritant in relations, and they are closely linked to the questions of sovereignty and security. The South China Sea is estimated to produce 10 percent of the world’s annual fisheries catch—over five million tons a year.11 Fish catch from the Sea constitutes a significant percentage of the annual production (20-22 percent) for both China and the Philippines. The Philippines used to rank among the world’s major fishery producers; it still has one of the highest per capita consumptions of fish in the world. Small-scale fishers from Palawan and southern provinces as well as some commercial fishers based in other Philippine regions frequent the Spratlys area. Chinese occupation of Mischief Reef was in fact discovered when in January 1995, a group of Filipino fishermen reported to Philippine military authorities that they had been detained by Chinese troops on the reef, which had previously been thought unoccupied. There have also been instances where Filipino fishermen were captured by Vietnamese soldiers
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while collecting sea cucumbers near Vietnamese-occupied islets,12 and where the crews of Filipino fishing companies were arrested and jailed by Malaysian authorities for operating in overlapping waters. At present, however, there are efforts on the part of the Philippines and China to deescalate the tensions over the Spratlys and to transform competition over fisheries and energy resources into cooperation.
From Hostility to Joint Energy Exploration in the South China Sea Up until the 1980s, Vietnam and China were perceived to be the major antagonists in the South China Sea disputes, as they had military confrontations in 1974 in the Paracels and in 1988 in the Spratlys. There were few incidents in the Spratlys involving Manila and Beijing—mainly arrests of Chinese fishermen who had strayed into Philippine-claimed waters. In 1988, Deng Xiaoping issued a call to South China Sea claimants to “shelve the sovereignty issue, engage in joint exploration and exploitation in maritime resources, and work towards a peaceful resolution of the issue.”13 But many of China’s subsequent actions tended to aggravate tensions with other claimants: its 1992 passage of a Law on Territorial Sea and Contiguous Zone reiterating extensive claims over the entire South China Sea, awarding of oil exploration contracts in disputed areas to foreign oil companies, staging of major military maneuvers by the South Sea Fleet, building of a new airstrip in the Paracels, and its occupation of Mischief Reef, among others. In May 1994, the Philippines allowed the American company Alcorn to conduct a “desktop exploration”—research without actual drilling—of the oil and gas potentials of the Reed Bank just off its Palawan province. It was later that year when China occupied Mischief Reef (also known as Panganiban Reef to the Philippines and Meiji Jiao to China), 135 nautical miles off Palawan, and this became a turning point for Philippine policy toward its maritime claims and toward China. When confronted by Philippine authorities for an explanation of their presence on Mischief Reef, the Chinese Foreign Ministry initially denied knowledge of their structures and then after several weeks claimed that they were built by the local fishing authorities of its Hainan Province as fishermen’s shelters. China’s response raises interesting questions about the way domestic interests and international-level factors may intersect over territorial issues. The delay in the Foreign Ministry’s explanation may be interpreted as an indication of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was up to, or of certain quarters in China—possibly locally based actors—taking actions with serious foreign policy implications independently of the central government. There was also speculation that Jiang Zemin’s administration, perceived to have weak
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support among the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the time and under fire from party conservatives for failing to resist pressures from the United States, allowed this relatively low-intensity assertion of sovereignty in order to assuage his critics. From this point onward, tensions escalated between the Philippines and China. The Philippine Navy blew up territorial markers that China’s forces had set up in various other unoccupied islets, while the government called for Chinese withdrawal from Mischief Reef. The Philippine Air Force and Navy stepped up patrols, leading to more frequent and highly publicized arrests of Chinese fishermen in the area. The Philippine government even allowed a group of international journalists to organize a tour to Mischief Reef aboard a Philippine Navy ship, an action deemed provocative by the Chinese. Meanwhile, China’s “creeping occupation” of the Spratlys was cited as the major justification behind the Philippine Senate’s approval of an ambitious 15-year armed forces modernization program just weeks after the Mischief Reef incident (although the program was scuttled following the 1997 Asian crisis). Fear of China also paved the way for the 1999 approval by the Philippine Senate of a new Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States that allowed U.S. troops back into the Philippines for training and other activities, for the first time since the U.S. military facilities in the Philippines were shut down in 1991. Then chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee Blas Ople, who later became secretary of foreign affairs, stated in his argument in favor of the VFA that “the one factor that restrains China’s military hawks is the realization that the Philippines is bound to the United States by a Mutual Defense Treaty.”14 Ople’s view, shared widely at the time within the Philippine defense establishment, presaged a pragmatic reassessment of the downscaled security relations with Washington. Manila’s subsequent decision to revive military cooperation with the United States highlights how China’s assertive behavior on Mischief Reef had resulted in an outcome least favorable to China’s own interests—paving the way for an early U.S. military comeback to the Philippines. Many Filipinos continued to oppose this, but it was difficult even for the most rabid anti-U.S. elements among them to ignore the apparently growing “China threat.” Nonetheless, despite the wide chasm of suspicion and open animosity between the Philippines and China generated by this sequence of events, the two governments did not allow the disputes to totally disrupt the normal course of relations, as evidenced by growth in trade and continuing dialogues. Only months after Philippine discovery of Chinese occupation of Mischief Reef, Manila and Beijing successfully concluded an agreement that laid out “principles for a code of conduct” in the South China Sea. The principles, obviously intended as a starting framework rather than a binding resolution to
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the problem, included the following: settlement of disputes in a peaceful and friendly manner through consultations on the basis of equality and mutual respect; refraining from using force or threat of force to resolve disputes; reliance on recognized principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS); keeping an open attitude on possible multilateral cooperation in fields such as protection of the marine environment, safety of navigation, prevention of piracy, marine scientific research, and other functional areas; limiting dispute settlement to the countries directly concerned; and upholding freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Certain subtexts could be read into the code of conduct agreement: there was mutual recognition that the disputes are anchored on realist interests, but at the same time an attempt to uphold norms and values as the bases for addressing the conflicting interests. To one familiar with the dynamics of the bilateral principles-of-conduct discussions, China’s message to the Philippines may perhaps be read as such: “Be assured that we will not use force; we will treat you with equality and respect. We hope to resolve this dispute peacefully and bilaterally—albeit gradually—using international law. In the meantime, we need to keep the harmony in the region. Let’s not get other (unnamed) parties involved. We pledge to uphold freedom of navigation, so these other parties really have nothing to worry about.” China, conscious of the growing international rumblings about “the China threat” and in the early stages of security engagement in the ASEAN Regional Forum, may have been trying to downplay the tensions, contain the conflict, and prevent external (read: U.S.) interference in the issue, which it emphasized as being bilateral. On the other hand, the Philippines’ message to China may be interpreted as the following: “We expect China to respect international norms of peaceful dispute settlement and to be sensitive to Philippine security concerns. If you do, we may take a pragmatic and cooperative attitude. We can start bilateral cooperation gradually and with less sensitive issues such as marine environment, scientific research, etc., but eventually we should find a multilateral approach and bring in other parties that are directly concerned, particularly the other claimants in ASEAN.” The Philippines indicated that it was not interested in having a long, drawn-out conflict with China but that China would have to modify its behavior to gain its trust. It also differed with China and insisted that the problem required a multilateral solution, a position that it consistently upheld until 2004. The code of conduct principles, unfortunately, did not go too far in constraining China’s assertions of sovereignty. China did however demonstrate efforts to refine its approach to the dispute. In early 1996, when Beijing unilaterally declared straight baselines around the Paracels, it did not include the Spratlys and even justified the move as part of its efforts to comply with the
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UNCLOS (although Indonesia and the United States criticized it for faulty interpretation of the law). In late 1998, China expanded its Mischief Reef presence from the so-called fishing shelters into what Philippine defense authorities described as an “emerging military facility” equipped with helipads, gun platforms, and radar. Before doing so, however, China notified the Philippines and other ASEAN governments through their embassies in Beijing that “repairs and renovations” would be taking place. In other words, Beijing did not step back from its position that it had “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea, but it sought to give the appearance that it was complying with international law and being more sensitive to the neighbors’ norm expectations. China is in fact not the only party guilty of unilateral assertions of sovereignty or provocative acts. In 1999, frustrated with growing Chinese presence on Mischief Reef and surrounding waters, and following a failed round of talks with China where a proposal for joint use of Mischief Reef was shot down, the Philippine Navy in two separate incidents intercepted Chinese fishing boats in nearby Scarborough Shoal and, according to their official report, “accidentally sank” two vessels.15 Philippine frustration with the bilateral track with China persuaded it to prioritize multilateral options of dealing with the disputes, including pushing for a regional code of conduct in the South China Sea that would be more binding than the 1995 bilateral principles. China, by this time, had chalked up experience in discussing the disputes multilaterally with ASEAN. A series of annual ASEAN-China Senior Officials Political Consultations had been held since April 1995 where much of the focus was on the territorial and maritime disputes. By 1996 China had attained the status of a full ASEAN dialogue partner. In 1997, a first ASEAN-China summit was held, resulting in a joint statement that said, with respect to the South China Sea disputes, that the two sides undertook “to continue to exercise restraint and handle differences in a cool and constructive manner.” At the 1998 summit, ASEAN expressed its desire to have a regional Code of Conduct (RCOC), hoping that this could prevent the further escalation of the disputes. At first, China resisted ASEAN’s proposal for a code, citing its previous joint statements with ASEAN as sufficiently expressing commitment to peaceful resolution of the disputes. But with ASEAN’s persistence, China finally gave way. An ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) was finally agreed upon in November 2002. It was the first formal multilateral agreement on the South China Sea and raised some hopes of further compromises in the making. Some analysts saw this as confirmation that China showed an increasing receptivity to international norms in its foreign policy behavior, while others simply noted a shift in China’s tactical approach to ASEAN. The DOC fell short of the original expectations of a more binding pact, but it was nevertheless seen as a building block
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to peace in the South China Sea. However, many remain skeptical as to the prospects of putting the agreements into practice. The signing of the DOC paved the way for the Philippines and China to agree in 2004 to a Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) as a possible first step to joint development in disputed areas. The accord was signed between the Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC) and the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), and it provided for the parties to engage in joint research of petroleum resource potential of a certain area of the South China Sea. Many were surprised at the backtracking by the Philippines from its multilateral strategy. Moreover, by agreeing with China to leave out Vietnam, the Philippines undermined its previous efforts in building ASEAN unity and solidarity on the issue. Vietnam was furious at what it saw as a sellout to China. It hesitated to join when the accord was opened to it after the Philippines-China agreement was made public, yet—faced with the undesirable alternative of being left out—PETROVIETNAM came on board in March 2005 and JMSU became a Tripartite Marine Seismic Undertaking (TMSU). In a joint statement, the three oil companies declared that the signing of the tripartite agreement “would not undermine the basic positions held by their respective governments on the South China Sea” (referring to the claims of sovereignty), but would help turn the disputed area into an area of “peace, stability, cooperation and development in accordance with the UNCLOS and the 2002 DOC.” During the signing ceremony in Manila, Philippine president Arroyo also called the agreement “a breakthrough for [the Philippines’] energy independence program.” Chinese ambassador Wu Hongbo called the agreement “a good example for the countries concerned to resolve the South China Sea issue in a peaceful way”; while Vietnamese ambassador Dinh Tich said, “We have to look for the best thing for the region, for our interest. We have to do it collectively.”16 In the Philippines, critics of the agreement expressed concern that any positive oil and gas findings will immediately heighten security tensions among the claimants, given the yet unsettled sovereignty question. On the other hand, supporters of the project argue that the present stable security environment and the inclination of countries to pursue regional cooperation present a window of opportunity that must be seized now—that is, it is better to deal with China now than with an even more powerful irredentist China later; and far better for the parties to explore and exploit the oil together than forgo all chances of doing so by insisting on settling the sovereignty issues first. Aside from this logic, there are also indications that providence played a key role in bringing Manila and Beijing closer together in support of joint energy development. The key decision makers on the Philippine side were President Arroyo, Speaker of the House of Representatives Jose de Venecia (who ranks fourth in the Philippine political hierarchy), and president of the Philippine
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National Oil Company Eduardo Maˇnalac. Arroyo is an economist by training, with a long-standing interest in China; de Venecia had been associated with Philippine Landoil Resources Group and other oil interests since the 1970s; while Maˇnalac is an oil geologist who spent many years working with Phillips Petroleum in China, and was even awarded by the Beijing government for leading major oil finds in China’s Bohai Gulf. The confluence of their pragmatic interests and positive outlook toward China may have been a crucial ingredient in the Philippine policy shift, but as will be explained later, the larger strategic environment was also a determining factor for greater mutual accommodation.
Management of Fishing Disputes: State Engagement on Behalf of Local Constituents? The fishing disputes in or near the Spratlys also make for an interesting case study in diplomatic engagement between Manila and Beijing, in particular because there are local stakeholders putting pressure on both sides—fishermen especially from Hainan and Guangdong provinces on the part of China, and environmentalist groups from Palawan province on the part of the Philippines. Hainan province is China’s designated local authority to regulate maritime economic activities in the South China Sea, with supposed jurisdiction over 76,000 km2 of fishing ground.17 As of 1997, there were 13,600 mechanized fishing vessels registered in Hainan province with a total catch capacity of 186,700 tons, after the province began encouraging state-owned, collective-owned, and privately owned operators to help in upgrading the province’s fishing vessels.18 The Philippines is feeling the consequences of this policy in terms of frequent Chinese intrusions and poaching both in the Spratly Islands and in its internal waters. The Philippine Navy became much more vigilant against Chinese fishermen following the Mischief Reef incident, evidenced by their increasing arrests on charges of illegal entry, poaching, capture of endangered species, and/or the use of illegal and environmentally destructive fishing methods. The number of arrests and charges filed, however, paled in comparison to the actual numbers of Chinese fishing vessels sighted. More apprehensions of Chinese fishers were effected within the undisputed boundaries of the Philippines, where enforcement of Philippine laws cannot be questioned, than in the disputed Spratlys. Some Philippine authorities suspected that Chinese fishermen were deliberately encouraged to enter Philippine waters as part of China’s assertions of sovereignty, especially as many of the fishermen who were apprehended were not one-time offenders. The warden of the Palawan Provincial Jail, where foreign fishermen would be detained pending trial, asserted that there were a number of repeat offenders among the detained Chinese fishers, and that many of them
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“did not look like fishermen.”19 This suspicion is somewhat reinforced by a Hainan Ribao report that the captain of Hainan-registered private vessel Qiong 03019, one of the two vessels sunk by the Philippine Navy in 1999, promised that he would use the compensation money paid by the Philippine government to “purchase new fishing equipment and continue fishing in our motherland’s Nanhai,”20 On the other hand, one captain of a Chinese fishing boat who had had such an experience described his predicament:21 We are fishermen. We are not concerned with those kinds of [sovereignty] problems. We have been fishing here for generations. Where there are no people around, we fish. When we see military men, we stay away.
The increase in the numbers of Chinese fishing vessels venturing out has forced the two governments to examine the fisheries question in bilateral consultations. The Chinese government has reportedly asked the Philippine side to allow “normal fishing operations” to take place unimpeded in the Spratlys, pending the conclusion of a fisheries agreement that would allow their fishermen access to an area in the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The Philippine government continues to resist having such an agreement. With respect to Chinese nationals in detention, the Chinese side would claim that their government faced pressure from the families and communities of the arrested fishers whose livelihoods back home were affected. As a concession, Philippine authorities would routinely release the elderly and minors who were captured with the rest. On their part, Chinese officials would extend assurances that their government will make an effort to educate their fishermen on environmental laws and proper fishing practices. To many Filipinos, resource-rich Palawan province, which faces the Spratlys, is considered a last frontier and a natural haven, after decades of abuse and unplanned development had already denuded forests and overexploited water systems in other parts of the country. More than the government in Manila, it is the local environmentalists of the province—forming private-public sector coalitions—who strongly oppose a Chinese fishing presence. While illegal fishing is done not only by Chinese but other foreign as well as Filipino fishers, the environmentalists of Palawan are especially angered by Chinese poachers who go after prized marine turtles (a protected species under international conventions) as well as live corals and aquarium fishes. Moreover, the use of cyanide and dynamite (highly dangerous to coral reef habitats) is a common practice among them. Chinese fishermen have even been apprehended at Tubbataha Reef, a UNESCO world heritage site for marine biodiversity in the Philippines’ Sulu Sea, far away from the Spratlys. Because China is also a signatory to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), and increasingly becoming an important player in initiatives for
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global environmental cooperation, it behooves China not to tolerate practices of its citizens that do great damage to the marine environment. The active community of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Palawan has found allies among fisheries officials in the province as well as among marine scientists, environmental lawyers, and academe. Together, through the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development, they have been at the forefront of efforts to uphold Philippine laws on illegal fishing against Chinese fishermen, taking great pains to ensure their prosecution. They have also strongly criticized officials of the Philippine foreign ministry, the Chinese embassy in Manila, and even Palawan-based Chinese-Filipinos (Feilubin huaren) for perceived political interventions on behalf of the detained fishermen. Negotiations between the two states have at times been made difficult by the apparently irreconcilable interests of the respective local actors in Hainan and Palawan—the former pushing for freedom to undertake resource exploitation in what they claim as traditional fishing grounds, and the latter clamoring for conservation and marine environmental protection. Again, however, there may be subtexts in the negotiation: even by appearing to speak for its fishermen, the Chinese government may still be engaged primarily in asserting state sovereignty, and even as it invokes environmental protection and sustainable development norms, the Philippine government may in fact be pursuing the utilitarian state goal of fending off Chinese encroachment. But it is the active involvement of local stakeholders, who operate outside the control of the state, that helps explains why, to date, there has been no meeting of the minds on the fisheries disputes, whereas on the more sensitive oil and sovereignty issues, some headway appears to have been made through state-led efforts. Even in the matter of the fisheries, however, bilateral diplomacy has succeeded in gradually delinking the resource exploitation/conservation dispute from the highly politicized territorial and sovereignty disputes. The Chinese side has accepted Philippine jurisdiction over its fishermen who are apprehended inside the territorial waters of the main Philippine archipelago. It continues to make representations that its fishermen be allowed access to the Philippine EEZ, even if such EEZ lies within China’s claimed areas. The Philippine government, on the other hand, has delegated management of apprehended Chinese fishermen to the appropriate courts, fisheries, and environmental authorities of the country rather than treating them as threats to national security.
What Lies Behind Engagement and Cooperation Other domestic actors and domestic political imperatives have also played a big role in defining the cooperative trend in Philippines-China bilateral relations. From the Philippine perspective, one crucial factor persuading national decision
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makers to prefer peace with China was the resurgence of persistent threats to internal security in the form of Muslim separatism, armed left-wing insurgency, and right-wing military rebellion. These meant the Philippine military would be too preoccupied with internal armed challenges to effectively confront any external threat. Moreover, it would have to rely on its U.S. ally to secure external defense. On China’s part, the attention of its leaders was likewise focused on the need to maintain a peaceful and stable external environment in order for it to successfully manage the internal social contradictions arising from globalization and market reforms and to preserve social harmony, which were increasingly seen as vital to the continuing legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party. But the fluidity of Philippines-China relations in the post – Cold War period can only be fully understood in the context of the changing global and regional security environment. Two most relevant features of this strategic environment are (1) U.S. dominance in a unipolar order accompanied by the rise of China to great power status, and (2) the rapid spread of regionalism and multilateralism in East Asia, with ASEAN playing a central role.
U.S. Dominance and the Rise of China In the Philippines, the end of the Cold War was initially seen as a diminution of the relevance of its decades-old military alliance with the United States. This partly led to the decision by the Philippine Senate, under strong pressure from a resurgent nationalist movement, to close down what had been major American naval and air bases in the country. It was argued then that the Philippines did not face any significant external threat. The country’s leaders probably did not expect that base closures would result in the abrupt and neartotal end of both military and economic assistance from a piqued United States. But Manila suffered this in silence, and the expulsion was celebrated by some as the first decisive steps toward the true exercise of an independent foreign policy (following over 300 years of Spanish colonialism and 100 years of military and economic dependency on the United States), paving the way for the Philippines to develop closer ties with its immediate neighbors in East Asia rather than looking across the Pacific at its traditional ally for support. For China, the end of the Cold War also raised hopes that a new peaceful and multipolar world order would emerge. However, vestiges of the Cold War remained in East Asia due to the tense situation across the Taiwan Straits and on the Korean peninsula. These, together with the uncertain security implications of China’s own rapid rise as a power, provided Washington justification for continued military presence in South Korea and Japan, the strengthening of its alliances with Japan and Australia, and its conclusion of new security agreements with Singapore and Indonesia.
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After the September 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists on the United States, the so-called global war on terror gave additional grounds for U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia, which the Bush administration touted as a “second front” in the war on terror due to the presence of some radical Islamists. Because the Philippines, too, faced threats in some Muslim-dominated southern islands from separatist political movements and quasi-ideological criminal organizations, Washington and Manila saw fit to restore their close security ties. The Philippine Armed Forces welcomed the opportunity to mend ties with the United States and to become once more a beneficiary of American military largesse. Still smarting from China’s mischief on Mischief Reef, many in Philippine policy circles also felt that better security ties with the United States would improve deterrence, if not leverage, in dealing with China. Before long, China began to suspect that the consolidation of U.S. security cooperation not just with the Philippines but with other countries surrounding China—while ostensibly for purposes of controlling terrorist activity— was ultimately part of a new U.S. strategy of encirclement directed against itself. China’s attitudes toward U.S. regional alliances, heretofore tolerant, became more resentful, and China began to more explicitly challenge the role of such alliances. Despite post-9/11 antiterror cooperation between Beijing and Washington, many U.S. observers continued to view China as a potential challenger and destabilizer. Manila does not necessarily share all of Washington’s concerns, but it does fear that China, possibly succumbing to nationalist pressures, will manifest military assertiveness with respect to its territorial and maritime claims. However, setting aside the effect of the disputes, the indications are that most Filipinos have not really bought into the “China threat” theory. Despite their geographic proximity, there is little in their history of relations per se to justify Philippine threat perceptions of China. Their willingness to not only engage but cooperate with China, even on issues directly related to this bone of contention, show the strategic preference for good relations. The emergence of U.S. hegemony and the growth of Chinese power confront the Philippines with a number of choices. Given the state of play in the international system, the question that arises is not whether China will become the region’s next power, but what kind of regional power China is likely to evolve into—a dissatisfied and revisionist one, or one content with the status quo where it may have to play second fiddle to the United States. From the Philippine state’s perspective, the preferred scenario is still the latter. Therefore, while returning to a close security relationship with the United States, the Philippines needs to avoid worsening its own security dilemma with China. It has to learn to manage relations with both Beijing and Washington and draw maximum advantage from the current context. For the moment, it is
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pursuing comprehensive engagement with China even while acknowledging the existence of disagreements. Neither bandwagoning with Beijing nor balancing against it, Manila does hedge against the possibility of an aggressive China by sustaining military ties with Washington. On China’s part, it has to reassure the Philippines of its nonaggressive intentions to avoid becoming a target of the Philippines-U.S. alliance. This is particularly important to China in any future scenario of U.S.-China conflict in the Taiwan Straits, given the proximity of the Philippines to Taiwan. In more general terms, both the Philippines and China are aware of the possibility that conflict between them might invite U.S. intervention (which China does not want) and exacerbate Philippine security dependence on the United States (which the Philippines does not want).
ASEAN-Centered Regionalism and Multilateralism Philippine foreign policy in the 1990s has increasingly become integrated with and defined by the positions taken collectively by ASEAN on a wide range of issues. At the same time, the Philippines sees ASEAN as an arena for the promotion of its primary economic and security interests, including with respect to management of its relations with China. Mutual perceptions between China and ASEAN have changed significantly since the 1990s. ASEAN’s engagement of China through the ASEAN Regional Forum may have been predicated on the neorealist calculus that binding China’s interests with its own would prevent any future hostility from China. However, it was the trend of growing economic interdependence, and—following the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis—ASEAN’s realization of China’s role as the region’s engine of growth, that have become the true driving force of relations. ASEAN-China economic ties now also serve as the pillar for new regional cooperation institutions such as the ASEAN ⫹ 3, and a prospective, yet undefined “East Asian Community” project. From the neorealist calculus, China’s cooperation with ASEAN could imaginably serve a number of Beijing’s strategic purposes. First, ASEAN’s avowed principles of peace, freedom, and neutrality, as well as preference for cooperative security and reliance on multilateral diplomacy, could help secure for China a balance of power and a more stable and harmonious environment in its periphery. Second, because of common adherence to the principles of sovereignty and noninterference in internal affairs, ASEAN is seen as a potential ideological ally in view of China’s resistance to perceived Western domination. Third, closer ties with ASEAN would help undercut attempts by other powers to portray China as a threat to the security of its neighbors and therefore frustrate the “containment” strategy directed against it by the United States. Fourth,
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China is intent on preventing ASEAN recognition and support for Taiwan’s moves toward independence. Finally and perhaps most important of all, with the worsening competition for influence between China and other major powers, ASEAN represents China’s best hope of being accorded the recognition and respect as a legitimate power in Asia that it so desires. The United States, Japan, and emerging India are likely to resist China’s attempts to increase its influence, while many in ASEAN seem prepared to acquiesce to it. To quote former Philippine national security advisor Jose T. Almonte:22 I believe ASEAN can live with the idea of China as the East Asian superpower. All it asks is that China keep in mind that demographic magnitude, economic weight, and military power by themselves do not command respect. Respect can be earned only if a superpower’s attributes include moral authority. If Southeast Asia has no other alternative to learning to live with its giant neighbor, so must China learn to coexist with its smaller neighbors as virtual equals.
Some scholars, on the other hand, take a much more sanguine view of China’s changing foreign policy toward Southeast Asia. Among all the great powers, it is argued, China takes ASEAN multilateralism seriously, consistently stating support for ASEAN’s central role in the new emerging regionalism. China’s so-called new security concept reflects common norms and values with ASEAN’s security perspectives. Quite a few constructivist analysts have also persuasively portrayed China’s new multilateralist behavior in the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, and ASEAN Regional Forum, if not in its self-initiated Shanghai Cooperation Organization, as evidence of “social learning” that is taking place among China’s foreign policy decision makers alongside generational change in the leadership. China is seen by them as more likely to behave as a cooperative and responsible power in the future, given its continuing domestic development concerns and favorable experiences in multilateral engagement, rather than as a unilateralist and reclusive one. The role that the Philippines can play in the ASEAN framework to either support or frustrate China’s regional goals is of some consequence to China. Within ASEAN, the Philippines has at least the potential to tilt the balance against Chinese interests in a number of issues, if it so desired and under conducive conditions. These are on human rights and democracy (the Philippines—particularly civil society-being the strongest advocate for both among the ASEAN-10), on the U.S.Taiwan issue (because of its military alliance with the United States), and as demonstrated earlier, on the South China Sea issue. China can prevent this by strengthening its own cooperation with the Philippines, as well as with ASEAN. At the same time, ASEAN’s positive attitude toward China strengthens Philippine confidence in its own decision to engage China.
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Against this larger context, the Philippines and China have a shared interest in maintaining normal relations and avoiding an escalation of conflict in the maritime arena. Conflict will exacerbate perceptions of the China threat, possibly affecting the atmosphere of ASEAN-China relations, which at present is greatly advantageous to both China and the Philippines.
Conclusions Philippines-China relations continues to be characterized by low-level disputes over conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea, and their repercussions in terms of competition over energy and fisheries resources. Manila appears to pursue three tracks for managing its disputes with China: bilateral engagement focused on confidence-building measures and finding ways to cooperate; multilateral dialogues through ASEAN addressed toward sustaining low-level pressure on China and binding it to preferred norms of behavior; and keeping the military alliance with the United States ready just in case the first two are unsuccessful. In the meantime, growing economic interactions and active political and people-to-people exchanges are helping to improve the overall climate of bilateral relations. China’s primary concern seems to be to prevent the Philippines from resorting to the third option of aligning with the United States, possibly against China. Chinese analysts will likely remember that at the time of the Mischief Reef occupation, the Philippine-American alliance was actually in limbo, and it was the military occupation that served as the catalyst to bring it back to life through the Visiting Forces Agreement and through the Philippine defense reform program. This puts the burden on China to demonstrate that there should be at least some efficacy in the bilateral and ASEAN regional approaches, for the Philippines to stay interested and for it to keep the prospect of U.S. intervention remote. However, the Chinese can expect that—because the Philippines sees the U.S. alliance as important to its overall defense capability building efforts, as well as to its internal counterterrorism and counterinsurgency requirements—the alliance will continue to be a background factor with at least potential influence on Sino-Philippine relations. In the course of the last decade or so of relations, China and the Philippines have both demonstrated some lack of consistency in their foreign policy approaches toward each other and the region. To many observers, Beijing seems to say one thing and do another, giving assurances of peaceful and cooperative intent while continuing unilateral acts of asserting sovereignty; but also saying that its sovereignty is indisputable, and yet sitting down to negotiate agreements that may constrain this sovereignty. The Philippines, on the other hand, tried to draw international attention to Chinese bullying on many occasions, then decides to turn around, accept military assistance from China, and
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invite China to study prospects for oil in its own EEZ. It appears willing to share oil, but not fish, which is a lot less strategic as a resource. It works hard to develop ASEAN solidarity on the South China Sea issue, then undermines such solidarity by keeping Vietnam and everyone else in the dark about the JMSU—a major agreement with China. These are puzzles that need to be explained, but not all inconsistencies are necessarily bad, as some inconsistencies may indicate flexibility or perhaps—in the constructivist view—social learning. And flexibility portends compromise. Indeed, in the course of its engagements with the Philippines and ASEAN on the South China Sea issue, China has had to step back from and adjust its original positions, such as by agreeing to the Declaration on Conduct and, subsequently, to Vietnam’s participation in the seismic survey project originally intended as a bilateral project with the Philippines. One can only hope that such flexibility and compromise will be rewarded by mutually beneficial outcomes for those concerned. For the Philippines, pursuing diplomatic engagement with China on the fisheries and maritime territorial issues can be likened to waltzing with Goliath, awkwardly stepping forward, backward, and to the side, while trying not to get crushed. For both China and the Philippines, asymmetric countries separated (or united, as some may prefer to see it) by a mass of water, living with each other has truly been an occasion for much learning to take place.
Notes 1. Aileen San Pablo – Baviera is Professor and Dean of the Asian Center at the University of the Philippines. The author is grateful to Tang Shiping, Ho Khai Leong, and Joseph Liow for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 2. Secretary of Foreign Affairs Alberto G. Romulo to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, March 2, 2005, Contemporary Asia-Pacific Studies, No. 4, 2005. 3. Philippine Department of Trade and Industry. Philippine statistics record growth from U.S.$869 million in 1995 to U.S.$6.71 billion in 2005. Official figures from China report much higher figures: from U.S.$3.14 billion in 2000, $13 billion in 2004, to $17.6 billion in 2005. 4. Liao Shaolian, “Sino-Philippine Economic Relations: Features and Prospects for the Future,” paper presented at the International Conference on 30 Years of Philippines-China Relations: Charting New Directions in a Changing Global Environment, Manila, October 21-22, 2005. 5. Jorge Judan, “Business China: Into the Future,” paper presented at the International Conference on 30 Years of Philippines-China Relations: Charting New Directions in a Changing Global Environment, Manila, October 21-22, 2005. 6. Capt. Wu Cunguang of the PLA Navy, Competition in the Pacific Ocean: Problems in Maritime Strategy for Modern China [Taiping Yang Shang de
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7. 8. 9. 10.
11. 12.
13. 14.
15. 16.
17.
18. 19. 20. 21. 22.
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Jiaoliang: Dangdai Zhongguo de Haiyang Zhanlue Wenti] October 1998 [Jinri Zhongguo Chubanshe]. Translated and archived at http://www.usembassy-china .org.cn/sandt/navybk.htm. Energy Information Administration Country Analysis Briefs at http://www.eia .doe.gov/cabs/South_China Sea/pdf.pdf. Last updated March 8, 2008. David Zweig and Bi Jianhai, “China’s Global Hunt for Energy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84 No. 5 (September/October 2005), p. 25. Justine Barden and Phyllis Marten,“Natural Gas,” International Energy Outlook: Energy Information Administration (July 2005) p. 43. State Oceanic Administration People’s Republic of China, Quanguo haiyang jingjin fazhan guihua gangyao [Outlines of National Marine Economy Development Plan], May 9, 2003 at http://www.soa.gov.cn/hyjj/index.html, accessed August 30, 2005. UN Environmental Program, Asian Nations Put Quarrels Aside to Save South China Sea, 2000 at www.hartcons.com/http://www.hartcons.com/. Author’s personal interview with the victims from Mangsee Island, conducted in Puerto Princesa, Palawan, 1996. Two fishermen were detained by Vietnamese troops for close to a month, but the incident was never officially reported in the Philippine media. Kyodo News International, April 17, 1988. Senate President Pro Tempore Blas F. Ople to the Senate, May 3, 1999, “The VFA: Paradigm Shifts in the Security and Freedom of Nations,” Sanggunian, Vol. 1 No. 9 (May 1999). “China Still Wants to Get Paid for Fishing Boat that Sank in the Spratlys,” Today, June 5, 1999, p. 12. “Philippines, China,Vietnam to Conduct Joint Marine Seismic Research in South China Sea,” People’s Daily, March 15, 2005, at http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/ 200503/15/eng20050315_176845.html. Accessed July 29, 2006. Zha Daojiong,“Localizing the South China Sea Disputes: The Case of China and Hainan,” The Pacific Review, Vol. 14 No. 4 pp. 575-598 (December 2000), Citing Zhongguo Haiyang Nianjian Vol. 90 p. 289 (1987). Ibid. Author’s interviews with warden of Palawan Provincial Jail, 1999, at a time when over 70fishermen from Hainan province were detained. Zha Daojiong, “Localizing the South China Sea Disputes: The Case of China and Hainan,” The Pacific Review, Vol. 14 No. 4 pp. 575-598 (December 2000). Ibid. Jose T. Almonte, “Asia-Pacific Peace Must be Founded on Prosperity of Virtual Equals,” Asia Times, May 15, 1997.
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10
Russia and China: The Politics of Solving Problems Alexander Lukin1
Introduction Currently Russian-Chinese relations are believed to be at their highest point of development. They are arguably better now than they were even during the 1950s, in the time of communist friendship. Today’s relationship is one based on a genuinely equal nature while back in the 1950s the pattern was of a relationship between elder and younger brothers. The current approaches of Moscow and Beijing to most important international issues are very close. The current rapprochement between Russia and China, after years of unreasonably stormy relations, is spurred by the anxieties about the current international situation that both countries share. It is to a great extent stimulated by major trends in the post – Cold War world, which are perceived by both sides as negative and associated with U.S. policy. These include U.S. attempts to diminish the role of the United Nations (UN), especially the Security Council, the policy of NATO enlargement and its assumption of some functions of the Security Council, intervention in conflicts within sovereign states under humanitarian pretexts, Washington’s abrogation of the 1972 ABM treaty with Moscow, and U.S. reluctance to join a number of important international treaties. Generally, one can speak of two different visions of the post – Cold War order, with Moscow and Beijing representing one of them. The United States, which has become stronger since the end of the Cold War, envisions itself as the winner and aspires to be the world’s sole leader. It feels constrained by contemporary international law, which developed during the years of the Cold War and was based on the principle of equality of sovereign nations.
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A weakened Russia and an emerging China, together with several other powers such as India and Iran, who are not strong enough to withstand Washington’s pressure alone, represent the second vision. Despite their differences, they tend to coordinate their actions to defend the notion of national sovereignty, which they see as beneficial to their interests since it limits U.S. and Western dominance in general. The Russian-Chinese 2001 Treaty of Good-neighbor Relations, Friendship, and Cooperation, with its pledges to maintain the role of the UN, supports the “basic agreements on which international stability is based” (meaning, first and foremost, the ABM treaty). The Treaty also conspicuously rejects attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of sovereign states, which Moscow and Beijing perceive as a broad program for preserving the current system of international law. The concept of “multipolarity” has the same meaning and represents a vision that international influence in the post – Cold War world should not be dominated by any one power but be shared by several major powers. In this way Russia and China with their limited resources can join the group of influential “polar” states and maintain significant international influence. The generally good state of Russian-Chinese relations based on geopolitics, however, does not mean that there have been no problems. This high level of trust manifests itself not in the absence of any differences but in the ability of the two countries to solve these differences in the spirit of cooperation and on the basis of compromise and mutual benefit. This chapter analyzes three problems in the Russian-Chinese relationship of recent years, including the problem of Chinese immigration into Russia’s Far East, border demarcation between the two countries, and the issue of Russian oil export to China. The chapter explains why they have emerged and how they have been solved or are being solved by Russia and China. It argues that strategic considerations, inclinations and resolve of individual leaders, domestic politics, and willingness to cooperate and compromise on both sides, particularly on the part of China, have helped ease the process of problem solving.
The Chinese Immigration Problem The process of improving relations between the former Soviet Union and China, which began in the early 1980s, led to dozens of agreements on bilateral exchanges. One of them, signed in 1988, allowed Chinese citizens with diplomatic service, and “service-use ordinary” passports to visit Russia on a non-visa basis.2 Since it was rather easy to get a “service-use ordinary” passport in China, this agreement led to an influx of Chinese migrants into the former Soviet Union, especially its Far Eastern region, which had for a long time been closed to foreigners. In 1992 another agreement, which allowed the Russians and
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Chinese to cross the border without a visa if traveling in an organized group of tourists, was reached, this time between the governments of the PRC and the Russian Federation. Many members of the Chinese groups failed to return on time with other members of the groups and overstayed in Russia. This led to the presence of a relatively large number of Chinese on Russian territory. This new situation was one of the most important consequences of the flourishing cross-border economic cooperation. Most Chinese who were coming to Russia did not want to settle there; they were businessmen, individual traders, and construction and agricultural workers who wanted to make money in Russia and were shuttling between the two countries. The presence of these Chinese on Russian territory, however, resulted in rising fears among the local population of a Chinese “demographic expansion.” Local newspapers and even academic journals began publishing articles arguing that China, under the guise of economic cooperation, was pursuing a deliberate policy of resettling the surplus population of its northeastern provinces in the Russian Far East (RFE) and Siberia. This policy was alleged to be aimed at solving the problems of unemployment and overpopulation in China at the expense of Russian laborers. It was also claimed that this policy, at the same time, was preparing the pretext for future claims on those Russian territories that, according to the Chinese, had previously belonged to China. To achieve this aim, the Chinese supposedly used false tourist trips, fake invitations from Russian universities, and fake marriages only to settle in Russia or to get residence permits from the Russian authorities. It was claimed that the Chinese authorities, at both the provincial and ministerial levels, adopted programs of establishing Chinatowns and Chinese villages on Russian territory. Further, Chinese joint ventures were claimed to be controlled by the Chinese secret service and the Mafia, which was also thought to serve Chinese national interests; and the Chinese were accused of setting up dummy Russian companies to buy up Russian businesses, real estate, and land. Russian Far Eastern demographers feared that the RFE region was becoming insecure due to the decrease in population, which resulted from people fleeing to central Russia to avoid economic and climatic difficulties after the elaborate system of hardship payments of the Soviet times had collapsed. They pointed out that, in 1993, the total population of the RFE was less than 8 million and was steadily decreasing, while the combined population of the three neighboring northeastern provinces of China exceeded 100 million and was growing fast. Since the Chinese authorities were thought to encourage migration to Russia to solve their economic and social problems, this situation was perceived as a threat. Far Eastern newspapers often gave contradictory and obviously exaggerated figures about the Chinese population in the RFE, which ran from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands and even a million. These figures were usually not based on any reliable source.
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Real figures provided by the immigration service and border authorities were much lower. A realistic estimate based on the data of immigration authorities and local police in 1992–1993 suggests that, during the peak of border openness, the number of Chinese in the RFE did not exceed 50,00060,000; and after 1994 it significantly decreased. Later figures, for example, provided by Vilia Gel’bras, who headed a comprehensive study of the Chinese diaspora in Russia, showed similar figures: tens of thousands—far from millions or hundreds of thousands. Gel’bras’s study also showed that most Chinese stayed in the RFE only temporarily because they did not consider its climate and business opportunities favorable; they either returned to China after taking care of their businesses in the RFE, or proceeded to the European part of Russia,3 or moved further into Europe.4 These numbers are nowhere near the predicted 10 to 12 percent of the population of the RFE in 1910, nor the 4 percent estimated in the late 1920s. While the border was open, the number of Chinese residents in the RFE naturally increased, but there is no reliable evidence that there was ever an official Chinese plan of Sinification of the Russian border areas. Even the best documented articles on “Chinese expansion” in regional as well as in some central publications usually refer to “some information” that was dubious. These articles claim that the data were collected from Russian special services with no specific quotations, certain Chinese secret documents (the existence of which could not be verified), interviews with self-proclaimed members of the Chinese Mafia, and articles in the Chinese press and academic journals stating that the use of Chinese contract workers and the creation of Chinese rural settlements in the RFE could benefit the economies of both countries, which is surely true from a purely economic point of view. The real Chinese documents that have also been occasionally quoted in fact prove that the reverse was true: they showed attempts, though often unsuccessful, of both local and central Chinese authorities to bring unorganized trade and emigration under control and to ensure Chinese citizens’ respect for Russian law while in Russia. Russian Foreign Ministry officials also generally believed that illegal immigration was not China’s problem but stemmed rather from a lack of control from the Russian side. Nevertheless, a belief that China had adopted a state program of “Moving to the North” became broadly accepted in many of the border regions of Russia, among both the elites and the broader population. According to one survey, 64 percent of the population of the southern part of the RFE expressed fear of Chinese expansion. Ekaterina Motrich, a Khabarovsk researcher, interviewed local citizens on their views on China and noted that many of them thought that “the Chinese government had returned to the idea of gradually tearing away the Russian Far East by populating it with Chinese and exerting control over local trade, industry, and agriculture.”5 This mood began to be
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used by some regional leaders seeking to improve their popularity, which had been damaged by the deteriorating economic situation. In July 1993, for instance, the members of the “Siberian Agreement,” which included the leaders of the Siberian regions, raised the issue of illegal Chinese immigration at a meeting with Deputy Premier Sergei Shakhrai in Khakassia. They claimed that the current status of the border allowed Chinese citizens to seize land in Russia on a massive scale and that about a million Chinese had already settled on Russia’s soil. In May 1994, the Khabarovsk region governor, Viktor Ishaev, argued that “today a covert Chinese expansion in the RFE is being perpetuated, and it hurts and humiliates Russians.”6 His colleague from the neighboring Maritime region, Yevgenii Nazdratenko, claimed that among the Chinese who arrived at his region, there were “many criminals, sick people, and drug addicts.”7 To win popular support, which was needed at this time of serious economic decline, the Maritime administration implemented a strategy to ignite anti-Chinese feelings. It sponsored several publications that described the Russian Far East as a besieged fortress surrounded by enemies, China being one of the most dangerous. The pressure of public opinion—and especially of regional administrations— prompted the Russian authorities to act. The lower chamber of the Russian parliament, the State Duma, on two occasions held hearings on the Chinese immigration question. Although opinion on the scale of the problem within the central government in Moscow was split, with most officials believing it was not too serious, the Russian central authority yielded to the pressure from the RFE. Beijing understood Russia’s concerns and agreed to tighten border control. In late 1993, according to a new agreement, the Chinese “serviceuse ordinary” passport holders lost their right to visit Russia without a visa. At the same time, China agreed to limit the issuing of service passports, which continued to enjoy the privilege of non-visa visit to Russia, for a period of up to 30 days. In 1994, several regional authorities adopted measures against illegal Chinese immigrants: tourist companies under the threat of losing their licenses were made responsible for bringing all tourists back; tourists without proper paperwork were sent back; foreigners could be assigned only to approved hotels; and trade could occur only at approved places. In October 1997, Governor Nazdratenko ordered the managers of the Maritime markets to sign agreements only with Chinese trading companies, thus excluding individual traders from legal activities in the territory. In February 2000, Moscow and China agreed to new, even stricter border-crossing procedures. In the Maritime region, operation Inostranets (Foreigner), aimed at arresting and sending back illegal immigrants, mainly Chinese, was launched several times. In 2006, according to a new agreement, the period of permitted non-visa stay of tourist group members in the territories of Russia and China was reduced from 30 to 15 days.
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These measures significantly reduced the inflow of illegal immigrants from China and decreased their numbers in Russia. The approach of the Chinese authorities was cooperative. Not only they did not protest against them, but they supported most of the measures and cooperated closely with the Russian border, immigration, and customs officials. They cracked down on Chinese companies specializing in producing fake documents. Moreover, the Chinese authorities have constantly reminded their citizens to obey all Russian laws and abide by all measures proposed by Moscow for an orderly regime on the border. These calls fully complied with the general Chinese policies toward “compatriots abroad.” The only area in which the Chinese were reluctant to cooperate was deportation of illegal immigrants. According to the Russian immigration service, the Chinese did not disagree with Russian proposals but they were very slow in responding. The talks on forming a joint working group on immigration went on for more than three years before an agreement was finally reached in 2006. And the Russian proposal to sign an agreement on the readmission of illegal migrants still fails to find understanding from the Chinese. China’s reluctance to receive illegal immigrants in big numbers can be explained by its fear of aggravating the already high unemployment rate in its northeastern provinces. As a result of the measures taken by both sides, the situation has significantly improved. Today most Chinese come to Russia legally as tourists, businessmen, or contract laborers. The number of illegal immigrants is not high, and the process of negotiation between the Russian and Chinese border and immigration authorities is going on smoothly. In the case of immigration, both Russian and Chinese governments decided to compromise and to find mutually acceptable solutions in order not to damage their generally good relations.
The Border Demarcation Problem Border consultations between Moscow and Beijing began as early as 1964 after Chinese leaders claimed that there was an unresolved border issue between the two countries left behind by the Tsarist government of Russia. Official Chinese negotiators have never spoken of the “millions of square kilometers” once mentioned by Mao Zedong, but only talked about 38,000 km2 that they called “disputed.” Moscow did not recognize them as “disputed” but agreed to demarcate the border and to accept the principle under international law, according to which the border on the Amur (Heilongjiang) and Ussuri rivers should be the center of the main fairway. The consultations continued in 1969–1978 but were not very fruitful because of growing bilateral hostilities, which largely resulted from border clashes in the late 1960s. They were frozen by Beijing after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978. The talks resumed in 1987 after the Chinese agreed not to demand from the Soviet side recognition of the
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“unequal” character of the nineteenth-century border treaties and the existence of “disputed” territories, while the Soviet Union confirmed its in-principle acceptance of the main fairway as the demarcation line. In 1991, Moscow and Beijing signed an agreement on the border line in the eastern part from Mongolia to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). It determined 98 percent of the Soviet-Chinese border line, which is about 4200 km. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the demarcation of this already agreed border line encountered difficulties because of the opposition from some groups in Russia, especially in the RFE. The discussion on the border demarcation question was clearly instigated by local leaders who wanted to promote their political agendas. According to the 1991 treaty, in the process of border demarcation Russia and China were to exchange several pieces of land and Russia was to give up slightly more. More than two years after that, the governors of the Khabarovsk and Maritime regions launched a fierce campaign against the treaty. By October 1995, the conflict reached the highest level in Moscow. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin wrote an official note to President Yeltsin and described the situation in the Maritime region and the Jewish autonomous oblast’, where the local authorities had called for new talks with China. Chernomyrdin explained that, despite having been informed of the president’s position that the treaty needed to be implemented, the Maritime administration continued to block the demarcation process. In February 1996, Yeltsin signed an executive order “On Measures to Conclude the Demarcation Works at the Eastern Part of the Border,” which demanded a speedy conclusion of the demarcation works in accordance with the 1991 treaty and ordered the administrations of the border regions to cooperate in preparing a framework agreement with China on the joint economic use of the territories that would change sovereignty after the demarcation. While Nazdratenko himself was cautious enough not to criticize the president directly, it was done by the region’s legislature (Duma). The Duma passed a resolution calling the president’s order “inconsistent with Russia’s state interests and undermining the territorial, economic, and political rights of the Maritime region as a member of the Russian Federation.”8 In a separate resolution, the Duma claimed that the February 1992 ratification of the border demarcation treaty by the Russian Supreme Soviet was unconstitutional, because it needed the vote of the larger Congress of People’s Deputies and because a referendum on changing the national border had not been called. The first claim was easily rejected by the federal authorities, since they had always explained that demarcation did not mean drawing a new border but a more precise definition of the existing border line. The second argument was technically correct. It seems that, in the great governmental mess just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Supreme Soviet forgot to pass its ratification decision on to the broader Congress of People’s Deputies.
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On December 31, 1996, Yeltsin reprimanded Nazdratenko by sending him an “official warning.” The warning ran: “In connection with your statements on the problems of Russia’s relations with China, I ask you in the future to strictly adhere to the all-state constitutional norms and always coordinate any statements concerning Russia’s international ties with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.”9 Such a warning was a unique case for the new Russia, whose president tended not to pay much attention to what governors were doing in their regions, and meant that Nazdratenko had really got on Yeltsin’s nerves. However, the Maritime governor never ceased his activities; he reiterated his position in numerous interviews and articles. He claimed that the transfer of land to China would deliver a serious blow to Russian interests and would break “the balance of economic and political forces in the Asia-Pacific Region,” because these two very small pieces of land “make it possible for China to build a major port here.”10 Therefore, according to Nazdratenko, “the transfer to the PRC of the strategically important section of the border in the Khasan area means the consequent death of the Maritime ports and the prospect of Russia’s losing its position in the Far East not far-off.”11 With the support of the administration, the local press began a campaign aimed mainly at the central government in Moscow, which continued to insist on the implementation of the border treaty. The Maritime and Khabarovsk press, obviously encouraged by the regional authorities, began describing catastrophic consequences of the transfer of the Russian land to China, picturing the crafty Chinese as supposedly wanting to take advantage of the lack of patriotism of the Moscow leadership. Nazdratenko’s warnings that the transfer would give China an access to the sea and an opportunity to build a port and a railroad from the port through Kazakhstan to Europe, which would supposedly almost destroy the entire economy of the Far East, were supported by many local industrialists and newspapers. Some argued that the Chinese began the border talks only because they had this insidious plan in mind. Others predicted that the demands for the 15 km2 were only a prelude to reviving much greater claims that the Chinese government had never put aside. Khabarovsk authors especially feared that, after obtaining the territories in accordance with the treaty, Chinese diplomacy, which was “traditionally full of craftiness,” would immediately demand the large islands of Bol’shoi Ussuriiskii and Tarabarova, and the city of Khabarovsk itself, since “during conversations with representatives of various Chinese firms and companies that now operate in Khabarovsk, an opinion was often expressed that Khabarovsk was the former Chinese city of Boli.”12 This allegedly could result in a future crisis between the two countries and even a war. A fear was expressed that any Russian concession to China would lead to territorial claims from other Russian neighbors. Some articles expressed an opinion that to transfer to another country the sacred
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battlefields of the conflicts with Japan in the end of the 1930s and with China in 1969, including the graves and monuments to Soviet soldiers, was a national disgrace. Expressing the dominant mood of the region’s elite, a Vladivostok newspaper concluded: “A transfer of land to another state is a national humiliation to all Russians and is digging an economic grave for all residents of the Far East with our own hands.”13 The position of the regional authorities in the RFE played a certain role in the final settlement of the Russian-Chinese border demarcation issue. Russian negotiators had to raise some issues put forward by the Far Eastern leaders at the talks with the Chinese. The position of the Chinese side, however, was very cooperative. The Chinese approach to Russian regional concerns was to work closely with the central government in Moscow while at the same time taking into consideration the feelings of the Russian public. This position led to the emergence of a unique united front: Beijing sided with the federal government in Moscow against the Russian critics—public opinion in the RFE and the nationalist opposition. This allowed Moscow and Beijing to make an extraordinary step: According to a special agreement, the demarcation process was launched on the previously agreed parts of the border before the agreement on the entire border line was reached. Moreover, the border regime was agreed upon before the entire border was demarcated. These moves stabilized the situation along the border and calmed down some critics in Russia and stimulated cross-border contacts. Another measure that positively influenced border demarcation was a protocol on sailing regulations along the Amur and Ussuri rivers signed in 1994, which abolished unilateral regulations imposed by the Khabarovsk regional authorities. According to the protocol, Chinese vessels, including military ones, were granted the right to sail freely around the islands upon which China has claims. In 1997 Beijing agreed to allow joint economic use of those islands and territories that were being transferred to China. This allowed the Russians to continue to use the territories they had been using for years for economic purposes and made the process of sovereignty transfer much smoother. The realization of this joint use agreement began in 2000. Another measure that created a better atmosphere for the demarcation process was the agreement on trust-building measures along the border. The talks on these measures began in 1989, and two consequent agreements were reached in 1996 and 1997 between a joint Russian-Kazakh-Kirgiz-Tadzhik delegation and a delegation from China. According to the agreements, Russia and China imposed limits on the number of troops deployed in the 100 km border zone. In 1999, a Joint Control Group began verifying the fulfillment of these agreements. Thus, Beijing did everything it could to smooth the way for the demarcation process. During the process the Chinese side agreed to a further compromise, from which Russia retained some of the most sensitive sections of the disputed
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land, including those in the Khankaiskii and Khasanskii districts of the Maritime region. The graves that some attributed to the Soviet soldiers killed in clashes with Japan in 1938 remained in Russia, and China even dropped the theoretical possibility of gaining unilateral control of the Tumen River. By 1998, the demarcation of the eastern part of the border had been finished, with only the issue of those few islands whose status was deferred in the 1991 treaty remaining in question. The western part of the border, 54 km from Mongolia to Kazakhstan, did not present a problem. An agreement on this was signed in 1994 and it was soon demarcated. Evidence of the new level of Russian-Chinese relations was formalized with the Treaty of Good-neighbor Relations, Friendship, and Cooperation signed in Moscow in July 2001.14 For Russia, Article 6 had great significance. The article fixed China’s agreement to recognize the existing border and the necessity of preserving the status quo where unresolved areas remain. Although Chinese negotiators were reluctant to include this article in the treaty, they finally yielded to Russia’s insistence. This reduced any speculation that China may find some pretext to claim Russian territory or to conduct planned settlement of the Russian Far East. In October 2004, a bilateral summit produced a dramatic result. The question of sovereignty over the last disputed areas was resolved. According to the additional agreement on the eastern part of the border, the remaining disputed islands were divided roughly in half. As President Putin remarked, “We have made an important political step, finishing the border problem between our states. We have resolved a problem of 40 years.”15 Despite the fact that the exact terms of the agreement were kept secret for a long time, it caused a stormy reaction in public opinion in both countries. Both experts and some of the population in the RFE, as well as many Chinese,16 accused their governments of abandoning national territory, undermining sovereignty, and even committing treason. However, this was only the reaction of a part of the public on both sides. There were also those who supported their governments, arguing that solving a historic dispute in order to boost bilateral cooperation was a reasonable compromise. In any case, both governments remained unmoved by public criticism and the agreement was eventually ratified. According to the terms of the additional agreement, the Chinese side once again met Russian concerns. For instance, the Chinese agreed that a Russian Orthodox chapel on the Bol’shoi Ussuriyskii Island remained on the Russian side and even agreed to move the border line further away from the chapel as was requested by the Russian chapelgoers and the border guards. They agreed to allow free access to the chapel both by land and by water. Beijing also agreed to allow free sailing of vessels around the island to the Ussuri river. The 2004 agreement showed the willingness of both Beijing and Moscow to finally solve the border issue in order to boost bilateral cooperation and create
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a better international environment for internal development. Thanks to this general course both sides were ready to undertake constructive talks with reasonable compromise and could understand the concerns of their counterpart, especially the reaction of public opinion in Russia and China.
Russian Oil Exports The privatization of Slavneft, a state-run oil company, caused the first misunderstanding in Russian-Chinese energy cooperation. It also seriously damaged Sino-Russian economic relations. The main problem for the Chinese was not that the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) was unable to purchase the state-owned block of shares (74.95 percent) of Slavneft that it wanted, but that as a “strategic partner” it was treated in such a humiliating way. According to press reports, the Chinese side inquired about the coming tender during Putin’s visit to Beijing in December 2002, and was obviously encouraged. This must have been taken as official approval of Chinese participation, or the otherwise cautious Chinese would never have bothered. However, when it came to the tender, the organizers did their best to keep the Chinese company out, despite the fact that the Chinese might have paid between $1 billion and $1.5 billion more than the eventual winners. The question of building an oil pipeline from Siberia eastward caused the most serious dissatisfaction in China. However, even on this issue the Chinese approach was constructive and understanding. The history of the question is as follows. For some years Russia and China discussed the possibility of building an oil pipeline from Siberia to the Chinese city of Daqing. The project was important to both Russia and China. Russia wished to increase and diversify its oil exports, most of which went to Europe. China wanted more oil for the Daqing refinery, since its own oil reserves were dropping. An agreement on feasibility studies was reached in July 2001 during the visit of Jiang Zemin to Russia, and two months later the two premiers signed a corresponding agreement. It was expected that the pipeline—2400 km in length with an anticipated cost of $1.7 billion—would connect Angarsk in Russia’s Irkutsk region with Daqing in northeast China, and would supply at least 20 million tons of Russian oil every year starting from 2005 and 30 million tons of oil a year from 2010. In 2002, however, Russia started discussing an oil pipeline between Russia and Japan, which was expected to be 3885 km long and cost $5 billion to $6 billion. An agreement on a feasibility study was reached during a visit of Prime Minister Koizumi. Some have voiced the opinion that the Japanese project was more attractive than the Chinese one, because it would offer access to the United States and the Asia-Pacific region. However, it was much
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more expensive than the Chinese proposal. The Angarsk-Nakhodka, later the Taishet-Perevoznaia, option was suggested by the Russian state-owned pipeline monopoly Transneft, and involves building not just oil pipelines with a planned capacity of 50 million tons a year, but also oil terminals for tankers of up to 300,000 tons. The plan was to transport Russian oil to Japan through the Russian Far Eastern port of Nakhodka. In addition, according to preliminary estimates from the Russian Ministry of Energy, the Angarsk-Nakhodka pipeline could be very profitable if South Korea and Taiwan buy Russian oil as well as Japan. Besides, Japan expressed readiness to finance the project and fund social development of the RFE. Russian hesitation was caused by a fear of being too dependent on China if the pipeline went to Daqing. Since the Nakhodka pipeline was to end on Russian territory, it was considered to be more in Russia’s interest, especially in a situation of high oil prices, since Russia would be able to choose customers and decide its own price. But these considerations formed only part of the motives. What was probably more important was Russian internal politics and the rivalry between Russia’s oil giants. The China route was first commissioned to Yukos, once the largest Russian oil company. But Yukos was eventually crushed by Putin for political reasons and the company’s founder, Mikhail Khodorkovskiy, now finds himself in prison. This of course weakened the support for the China route and gave an advantage to Transneft and other advocates of the Japanese direction. Japan’s interest was shaped by military and political problems in the Persian Gulf zone, from which Japan receives most of its oil. Discussions, or more precisely, struggles between various interest groups for the contract to build the oil pipeline in the east went on until December 2004, when the Taishet-Perevoznaia line—an updated version of the Angarsk—Nakhodka route—was approved with an offshoot to China from Skovorodino in Amurskaia oblast’. The rumors of abandoning the Angarsk-Daqing project, which was approved at the very top level in both countries, and which according to former Chinese ambassador to Russia Zhang Deguang, could have increased the annual trade turnover between the two countries by $6 billion, caused deep incomprehension in China. First, China was greatly interested in the project. Second, the representatives of a well-organized Chinese political system could not understand why a project that was, in their view, approved by the Russian president could meet difficulties in its realization. In private conversations they argued that there was nothing wrong with the fact that Russia should guide itself according to its economic interests when dealing with trade and economic problems. They, however, could not understand the inconsistency of the Russian approach. The Chinese obviously concluded that Russia was not yet ready to enter into serious economic cooperation while its state was too weak to defend its
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interests against the powerful private oil corporations. Of course, no government official declared this openly, but Chinese academic experts were very critical. Russia especially came under criticism because several weeks after the Chinese failure to buy Slavneft, BP managed to obtain a considerable part of the Russian oil market, and because those who were against China entering the Russian oil market once again raised the myth of the “China threat.” They again accused China of allegedly populating Russia with millions of illegal immigrants and of buying Russian raw materials at low prices. The Chinese reaction was pragmatic. Beijing continued energy cooperation with Russia by pressing for the building of an offshoot to Daqing and even agreed to finance it after the Russian government finally decided to build the main pipeline to the Far Eastern coast and not to China. After long discussions an agreement to build the offshoot from Skovorodino in Russia to the Chinese border was finally reached during the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to Russia in October 2008. This diplomatic position of not publicly expressing disagreements allowed China to continue negotiations with Russia on buying stocks in other Russian companies. As a result, in 2006, the Chinese and Russian state oil companies CNPC and Rosneft agreed to create a joint venture that would be involved in developing Russia’s oil resources in Siberia and selling Russian oil and gasoline in China. China also accepted a Russian proposal to increase delivery of oil by railway until the offshoot is built. At the same time, China increased its oil imports from elsewhere, especially from Africa (e.g., Angola and Sudan) and Kazakhstan, switching its main attention away from Russia.
Solving Russian-Chinese Problems: Reasons and Explanations All the abovementioned cases of disagreements between Russia and China were partly caused by Russia’s internal situation. In the cases of border demarcation and the so-called Chinese “demographic expansion,” the reason was the contradictions between the central government in Moscow and regional administrations in the Russian Far East. The border demarcation disagreements were caused by the Russian central government’s miscalculation of public reaction in the Far East to territorial losses caused by the implementation of the 1991 Soviet-Chinese border treaty. In the case of illegal immigration, Moscow failed to foresee the consequences of the opening of the border with China, as well as the reaction of the population of its border regions to the growing numbers of Chinese in the formerly closed territories. Difficulties over oil trade were caused by the contradictions among influential Russian oil-producing companies and groups of government officials connected with them.
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In some cases, problems were caused not by the Russian internal situation but by other reasons. For example, a situation that could have undermined the process of the consolidation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a project strongly supported by both Moscow and Beijing, was caused by wider international factors. After the events of September 11, 2001, the strong reaction of the United States and its European allies and the success of the military operation in Afghanistan created an impression in some SCO member-states (especially Uzbekistan) that in the future the fight against international terrorism would be led exclusively by Washington and that the West could guarantee their security better than the SCO. However, the United States’ demand for an independent investigation into the Uzbek government forces’ actions against the antigovernment rebels in Andijon in May 2005 and the international coalition’s failure to improve the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan17 caused dissatisfaction with the West. As a result the image of Russia and China improved and they again began to be seen by the Central Asian states as major partners, with whom security cooperation does not undermine their internal political system. At the same time, in all these cases the fundamental interests of Russia and China helped to solve any emerging problems in their bilateral relations. Both Moscow and Beijing are greatly interested in developing bilateral cooperation, including a strategic partnership, for several reasons. First, both Moscow and Beijing remember the disastrous political and economic consequences of bilateral conflicts, especially in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Second, apart from the political reasons for better relations, there is also a need for economic cooperation between their two economies, which complement each other. The positions of the two countries on major international issues either partially or completely converge. These issues include such fundamental ones as increasing the role of the UN, maintaining the existing norms of international law, and concerns with North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. China sees Russia as an important partner for the following reasons: First, Russia supports China’s position on most important international issues and Beijing’s Taiwan policy, an issue of vital importance for China. Second, Russia represents one of the largest links in the chain of neighboring countries with which China strives to maintain good partnership relations. This policy is part of the fundamental Chinese strategy of creating an international environment favorable to China’s economic development. Third, while Russia is not one of China’s largest trade partners, it still plays an important role in providing China with advanced military technology and the mineral resources needed for China’s economic growth. Fourth, China’s border regions, especially the three northeastern provinces and Inner Mongolia, need Russia as an investor and trade partner to stimulate their economic growth. Russia develops and strengthens its strategic
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partnership with China on the basis of its own understanding of its national interests. From Russia’s point of view, China is its largest economic partner in Asia and one of the largest in the world. While the share of raw materials in Russia’s exports to China has risen in recent years to more than 90 percent with machinery falling to less than 10 percent, China is still important for Russia as a market. Cooperation with China makes it possible for Russia to diversify its sales of energy and mineral resources, thus strengthening Moscow’s position in Europe. Besides, despite the fall of machinery exports, China still remains one of Russia’s few trading partners with whom Moscow can also cooperate in high technologies, nuclear power, space, and investment. China still is an important market for Russia’s arms exports. While in recent years China’s share has shrunk, in the 1990s many Russian arms producers survived only thanks to exports to China. Also, cooperation with China is instrumental for the development of Russia’s Siberia and Far East, a strategic goal of President Putin’s internal policy. In general, close relations between Russia and China significantly strengthen both country’s international stance, especially their positions vis-à-vis the West. Thus, both countries value good bilateral relations as they are in their respective national interests. This strategic interest makes it possible for the two countries to solve the problems and misunderstandingsthat periodically arise in bilateral relations, including those described in this chapter. Efforts to placate the reaction of the media and mass public to bilateral problems, especially over the question of migration, are seen as very important by the authorities in both Moscow and Beijing. There is a common understanding that the attitudes of the mass public in both countries toward their neighbor lag far behind the level of trust between the officials. Thus, according to opinion polls conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Foundation, in recent years the Russians have become more suspicious of China. While in 2001, 67 percent of respondents saw China as a friendly country and only 18 percent as unfriendly, in March 2006 the balance changed to 48 to 30 percent, and then to 49 to 25 percent in February 2007.18 There are some indications that the official efforts in both countries to improve public opinion about the neighbor worked, as shown in the results of another poll, this time conducted in China. It showed the positive impact of the Year of Russia in China in 2006 on the image of Russians among the Chinese mass public. According to a Chinese poll, conducted by the Social Survey Institute of China in March 2006, only 20.6 percent of respondents in China were “very friendly” toward Russia, while in November 2006 the number rose to 40.5 percent.19 This was obviously the result of more than 200 events held as part of the Year of Russia, which were widely covered by Chinese media. The Year of China in Russia in 2007 is supposed to bring similar results to the image of China among the Russian mass public.
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Conclusions China’s general reaction to difficulties in its relations with Russia was very positive. China’s strategic goal in its relations with neighboring countries since the early 1980s has been solving differences in order to create a favorable environment for cross-border cooperation and development of its border areas. In the Russian case this meant solving territorial disputes, decreasing militarization of the border areas, and constructively approaching new issues that emerged as a result of flourishing cooperation: immigration, trade imbalance, and other problems. To achieve this aim the government in Beijing was ready to compromise even if this ran to the contrary of some public feelings. Russia lacks a consistent policy toward China. Even when a strategic decision was made at the very top level it could be changed because of the pressure of powerful groups who represented political, regional, or business interests. This decision-making style caused concerns and misunderstanding in China. The Chinese government and business community would prefer to deal with a more authoritarian and less messy Russia. This is why the policy of President Putin was much more popular in China than that of President Yeltsin. The Chinese authorities have been much more comfortable when dealing with the central government in Moscow rather than with local authorities or nongovernment groups. They expected the central government of Russia to control the situation in the country or at least to be able to settle its problems with the local authorities and the Russian public and to push through intergovernmental agreements. It was sometimes difficult to explain to the Chinese side that the central government in Moscow may not control some forces or groups in the country; sometimes this argument was taken as a clever maneuver or a pretext to influence the Chinese position. Regardless of the above, Beijing was very understanding to the concerns of the Russian side. As seen in the cases of its approaches to the Chinese immigration and border demarcation problems, the Chinese were always ready to offer a reasonable compromise even if it meant a retreat from the terms of an already signed bilateral agreement. The areas in which China was least willing to compromise were its economic interests and repatriation of illegal immigrants, which is also connected to economic development. Aggressively pursuing their economic interests, the Chinese authorities became seriously dissatisfied when their foreign partner failed to meet their expectations or reciprocate their compromise. However, even in these areas, the Chinese reaction was not direct criticism or expression of open dissatisfaction. From the Chinese point of view, such a reaction would be useless and may even worsen the situation. To the contrary, the Chinese tried to continue dealing with their Russian partners and save whatever interests they could. At the same time, they looked forward and found alternative ways of getting what they wanted and
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different partners for cooperation. These patterns of Chinese behavior made it possible for Russia to live and cooperate with China. It might have helped significantly if Russia’s own policy had been consistent and the Russian internal situation stable.
Notes 1. Alexander Lukin is Director of the Center for East Asian and Shanghai Cooperation Organization Studies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University), Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia. 2. The same applied to former Soviet citizens, with the only difference that there were no “service-use ordinary” passports in the former Soviet Union. 3. The Chinese population in Moscow was estimated at 20,000-25,000. 4. Iurii Savenkov,“Khodoki iz Podnebesnoi. Kitaitsi v Rossii: blago ili ugroza,” [Celestial Visitors. Chinese in Russia: A Blessing or a Threat], Izvestia, February 2, 1997, p. 4; Iurii Savenkov, Vilia Gel_’bras, and Dmitrii Trenin, “Kitaitsy v Rossii: Vtoroe Prishestvie” [Chinese in Russia: The Second Coming]), Izvestia, September 30, 1999, p. 8. 5. Yekaterina Motrich, “Kitaiskie migranty v Khabarovske,” [Chinese Migrants in Khabarovsk], Perspektivy Dal_’nevostochnogo regiona: Kitaiskii faktor, p. 50. 6. Mikhail Nosov, Rossiiskii Dal_’nii Vostok i Kitai [Russian Far East and China]. Paper presented at a seminar “Problems of Security and National Identity in the Post-Soviet Space” (p. 10) Moscow: Moskovskii Tsentr Karnegi, 1995. 7. Ibid. 8. Tkachenko B.I., Rossiia—Kitai: vostochnaia granitsa v dokumentakh i materialakh [Russia—China: Eastern Border in Documents and Materials] (pp. 302303), Vladivostok: Ussuri, 1999. 9. Ibid. 10. Yevgenii Nazdratenko, “Radi nashikh potomkov” [For the Sake of Our Descendants], in Nekotorye problemy demorkatsii rossiisko-Kitaiskoi granitsy [Some Problems of the Demarcation of the Russian-Chinese Border] (p. 4), Moscow: Nezavisimaia gazeta, 1997. 11. Denis Demkin and Evgenii Vnuchkov, “Nazdratenko schitaet demarkatsiiu sdachey territorii Rossii” [Nazdratenko Believes Demarcation to be a Surrender of Russia’s Territory], Kommersant-daily, March 21, 1997, p. 1. 12. Georgii Levkin, “Kitaitsam khochetsia plavat_’ pod oknamy khabarovchan” [The Chinese Want to Sail under the Windows of the People of Khabarovsk], Dal_’nevostochnyy uchenyy, No. 12, June 12, 1995, p. 9. 13. “Vse porty Dal_’nego Vostoka mogut ostat_’sia bez raboty” [All Ports of the Far East May Become Jobless], Krasnoe znamia, March 16, 1995, p. 1. 14. Dogovor o dobrososedstve, druzhbe i sotrudnichestve mezhdu Rossiyskoy Federatsiey i Kitayskoy Narodnoy Respublikoy [Treaty of Good-neighbor Relations, Friendship, and Cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China], http://www.kremlin.ru/text/docs/2001/07/30565.shtml.
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15. Zayavleniya dlya pressy posle podpisaniya rossiysko-kitayskikh dokumentov [Statements for the Press after Signing Russian-Chinese Documents], October 14, 2004, http://president.kremlin.ru/appears/2004/10/14/2120_ type63380_77989.shtml. 16. The Chinese Internet users were particularly vocal in this regard. 17. Afghanistan is the main source of drugs that are smuggled to the territories of the SCO member-states. 18. Fond “Obshchestvennoye mnenie”. Rossiya i Kitai [Russia and China], August 2, 2007. http://bd.fom.ru/report/map/d070624. 19. Dong Min and Wang Jie, “Zhongguo Eluosi nian” dui Zhongguo shehuide yingxiang [The Impact of the Year of Russia in China on the Chinese Society], http://www.chinasurvey.com.cn/public/2006/official/11-20-001.htm.
11
South Korea’s Evolving Relations with a Rising China: Symbiosis or Mere Cohabitation? Jae Ho Chung1
he rise of China has become an issue of interest the world over. Fusses about the collapse of China have clearly given way to debates on what the future holds for international politics involving China as a responsible “stakeholder.” Regions across the world are busy figuring out how to respond to the ascendancy of China as the single biggest variable in global affairs.2 Irrespective of China’s intentions and designs—whether or not it is and will become a revisionist threat—neighboring states are bound to have different perceptions and modes of dealing with a rising China.3 The impact of China’s rise is felt most strongly in East Asia where the dominant logic guiding regional economic and security affairs is being increasingly bifurcated.4 The region’s hitherto unified attention, if not allegiance, to the United States becomes increasingly divided as East Asia’s reliance on the China market has deepened over the years. Nowhere have the bifurcation and accompanying strategic dilemma been more manifest than in South Korea, which sustains a military alliance with the United States but relies more heavily on China for trade and investment.5 The question comes down to this: Is South Korea’s mode of response to the rise of China already fixed? Earlier studies seem to suggest that South Korea’s modus operandi in dealing with the rising China resembles that of a full engager on the verge of hedging. Cha, for instance, characterizes South Korea’s mode as active and successful engagement while seeking, at the same time, to
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maintain its alliance with the United States.6 Chung views South Korea’s mode of response as active engagement even to the point of seeking a balance between the United States and China.7 Kim also depicts South Korea as opting for all-around engagement with China while sustaining the alliance with the United States.8 This study suggests that South Korea’s mode of response to the rising China is certainly geared toward active engagement but is not firmly fixed and continues to evolve. It appears that the shadow of China’s rise was cast so fast that South Korea was not quite aware of or fully prepared for what was coming. In fact, Seoul had never thought that the very success of its full engagement with Beijing would come back to haunt it as a strategic dilemma. Similarly, neither the United States nor Japan then fully understood the crucial ramifications of the Sino – South Korean rapprochement and their postnormalization improvements.9 This study posits that it is plausible South Korea may enter into a phase of “reawakening” in terms of perceiving and constructing its relations with China. The remainder of this chapter consists of four sections. The first provides the background as to why China has been viewed so positively and favorably in South Korea until very recently. The second section discusses the recent “changes of atmosphere” that came to adversely affect Seoul’s perceptions of and relations with Beijing. The third focuses upon the Koguryo controversy as a key case that induced the change of atmosphere. The final section offers concluding observations on the circumstances under which South Korea may feel uncomfortable living with the rising China.
Pillars of South Korea’s Positive Views of China Many observers became curious about the pace at which South Korea implemented rapprochement with China even before the demise of the Cold War. It is even more puzzling if one gets to know how willing, if not zealous, Seoul was to improve its relations with Beijing since the early 1970s. According to a survey in 1973—at the height of the Cold War—38 percent of the South Korean National Assembly members were in support of diplomatic normalization with Communist China.10 Throughout the 1980s, explicit voicing of potential threats that China could pose was rare in South Korea. In the 1990s, defense white papers (gukbang baekso) published by South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense generally devoted four to five pages to outlining China’s military modernization and intermilitary exchanges. Unlike Japan, which officially listed China as a potential threat, no trace of security concern was evident.11 The pace at which interdependence between Seoul and Beijing grew further highlights the positive perceptions and close ties between South Korea
SOUTH KOREA’S EVOLVING RELATIONS WITH A RISING CHINA
Table 11.1
213
South Korea’s Trade with China in Select Years (in U.S.$ millions)
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2006
188
1,161
3,821
16,540
31,250
100,563
118,016
Source: Data compiled by the Korea International Traders Association (KITA) at http://stat.kita.net (last accessed on April 17, 2007).
and China. The two-way trade increased 628 times in 26 years, making China South Korea’s top trading partner and the China trade the biggest source of South Korea’s trade surpluses (see Table 11.1).12 Investment is another pillar of this interdependent relationship. In 2004, South Korea’s cumulative (actually utilized) investment in China (U.S.$17.9 billion) for the first time surpassed its investment in the United States (U.S.$17.1 billion). The total number of visitors between the two countries also surged from 9000 in 1988 to over 4.8 million in 2006, surpassing that between South Korea and the United States.13 In the eyes of South Koreans, China was hardly viewed as a direct or dominant threat. Of 19 nationwide opinion surveys with pertinent questions conducted from 1988 through 2005, all except five indicate that South Korean perceptions of China were more favorable than those of the United States.14 Furthermore, Japan is generally deemed much more threatening to the security interests of South Korea than is China.15 The “rise” of China is already acutely felt in almost every issue-area in South Korea, ranging from agriculture and fishery to automobile and shipbuilding industries. Some debates were even waged on whether China could possibly constitute a “strategic supplement” to South Korea’s alliance with the United States.16 Out of the concern for China, South Korea has refrained from inviting the Dalai Lama, making Seoul the only democratic government in East Asia not having done so. Seoul also took issue with the “strategic flexibility” of American forces stationed in South Korea out of considerations for adverse implications it might have for relations with China.17 What is the strange magnet that has drawn South Korea toward China? On the surface, it may seem as if certain historically induced positive sentiments and shared perceptions are working.18 Yet if these sentiments are not necessarily stable or constantly reproduced—that is, interposed abruptly by certain incidents like a history controversy—we may also conceive of South Koreans’ favorable views of China as “wishful expectations” that South Koreans have for China, partly driven by their disenchantment with the United States. In the sections below, we will see some clues to such rethinking about China in South Korea.
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Changing Atmosphere: China Viewed as Sources of “Peril” There are some indications that South Korea’s positive views of China are by no means fixed or firm. In recent years, some negative views of China have begun to gain a growing audience in South Korea. The vanguard of such views was first found in business communities that have become increasingly concerned about the prospect of South Korea losing out to China in overseas markets. While the share of South Korean products in the American market declined from 3.7 percent in 1990 to 2.3 percent in 2000, that of China rose from 3.1 to 8.2 percent in the same years. The number of China’s world-number-one products was over 1400 while that of South Korea was only 482 in 2000.19 Grave concerns were expressed again and again regarding China’s rising competitiveness vis-à-vis South Korea in a wide range of industries, including such advanced sectors as semiconductor and shipbuilding industries.20 Then, there came the worried voices about South Korea’s rapidly expanding trade dependency on China. As Table 11.2 demonstrates, South Korea’s trade dependency on China skyrocketed from 1.9 percent in 1985 to nearly 19 percent in 2006. Some even predict that by 2010 the figure might go up to 30 percent. Given that China’s trade dependency on South Korea for 2005 was only 7.2 percent, the widening gap in terms of relative dependence became a source of concern on the part of Seoul despite the huge surpluses Seoul was reaping from the trade with Beijing.21 Normative considerations often weigh in as well. Human rights concerns have recently loomed large in generating negative perceptions of China in South Korea. On several occasions since 2000, China extradited “refugees” (“escapees” or tuobeizhe as the Chinese officially call them) to North Korea without any assurance of their safety upon returning. As South Koreans’ human rights awareness has been considerably enhanced in recent years, their view of China as “uncivil” has also amplified accordingly.22
Table 11.2 South Korea’s Trade Dependency on China Year
China Trade in South Korea’s Total Trade (%)
1985 1990 1995 2000 2003 2006
1.9 2.8 6.4 9.4 15.3 18.6
Sources: http://www.kotis.or.kr/tjgb (last accessed on February 17, 2005); and http://stat.kita.net (last accessed on April 17, 2007).
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Some pundits in South Korea have also begun to harbor serious doubts concerning whether China really possessed the will and determination to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and related technologies. While China’s position on the problem has certainly changed compared to the first crisis of 1993–1994 during which it had largely sat on the fence, many South Korean experts believe that Beijing is not genuinely interested in pressuring Pyongyang to abolish its nuclear weapons – related facilities and technologies. They even put the thesis of “responsible great-power diplomacy” (fu zeren de daguo waijiao) into question as far as the North Korean problem is concerned.23 Then there came the megastorm of history controversy between South Korea and China concerning the Dynasty of Koguryo (Gaogouli in Chinese: 37 BC to AD 668). Although China’s project-based research on the Northeast borderland (dongbei bianjiang) was initiated in 1999 with the establishment of a research point (keyan gongzuozhan), the South Korean media began to report heavily on the issue after the so-called Northeast (history) Project (dongbei gongcheng) as the systematic effort to incorporate Koguryo as part of Chinese local history was launched by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in February 2002. The issue became a hot potato in South Korea in June 2003 when China’s Guangming Daily (Guangming ribao) characterized Koguryo as China’s non-Han local administration.24 China sent Vice Foreign Minister Wang Yi to South Korea and, subsequently, Seoul and Beijing agreed that the issue was academic in nature and should not affect bilateral relations. However, in the summer of 2004, when the Chinese Foreign Ministry deleted the Koguryo section on its official website, the whole issue erupted as a political-diplomatic problem.25 Some even projected that the “history war” would become a critical turning point in Sino – South Korean relations.26 In the immediate aftermath of the controversy, the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) took an opinion poll, which found that 58.2 percent of the respondents did not “like” China.27 As far as South Korean views of China were concerned, as Table 11.3 indicates, the Koguryo controversy generated highly negative impact. While, prior to the summer of 2004, the perceptions of China had been very positive even to the point of surpassing those of the United States, South Koreans’ view of China clearly plummeted thereafter. If the financial crisis changed China’s positive view of South Korea and the “garlic battle” in 2000 transformed the “special relationship” into a normal partnership,28 the Koguryo controversy brought about a “reawakening” to South Koreans in their view of China. What lies behind this largely unexpected clash of historiography between South Korea and China? Given that Beijing must have been aware that refuting Koguryo is part of Korean history is clearly a denial of Korean nationhood, how could Beijing possibly fail to anticipate acute reactions from Seoul? Given that this will continue to be a thorny problem for both South Korea and China, it is both necessary and worthwhile to put the whole question in perspective.29
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Table 11.3 The Impact of the Koguryo Controversy
a
2003 2004b 2005c 2006d
Chose China (%)
Chose the U.S. (%)
48 61 29 24
33 26 55 47
Sources: a Joong-ang Ilbo, February 12, 2003. The question: “where should South Korea’s foreign policy focus be placed?”. b Dong-A Ilbo, May 4, 2004. The question: “which country should South Korea regard most important?”. c Dong-A Ilbo, November 7, 2005. The question: “on which country should South Korea’s foreign policy focus be placed?”. d Munhwa Ilbo, September 16, 2006. The question:“which country should South Korea regard most important?”.
The “Northeast Project” and the Clash of Historiography Neighboring states share borders and histories. When a party seeks to unilaterally change core interpretations of shared history, serious problems are bound to occur. Particularly when such changes entail implications for territorial and ethnic sovereignty, tensions arise and disputes become largely unavoidable. The Koguryo controversy contains all of these conflictual elements and, therefore, it will be difficult for both China and South Korea to find a face-saving way out, particularly in a world of cyber-nationalism. The discussions below explicate why it is and will be difficult.
Core Issues of Contention During the era of Mao’s rule, Koguryo was generally and mostly regarded as part of Korean history (chaoxianshi) by Chinese officials and scholars.30 Since the mid-1980s, some Chinese scholars, most notably Tan Qixiang, began to present the so-called one history, dual use (yishi liangyong) thesis. Based on the view that the current jurisdictional boundary of the People’s Republic should be used as the principal standard in delineating historical spheres of influence, Chinese academics sought to include all dynasties, nations, and histories that took place within these territorial spheres as those shared by China.31 These scholars’ rationale on defining Koguryo as part of Chinese history was, therefore, largely twofold: (1) the history of Koguryo prior to the moving of its capital to Pyongyang—covering 460 years of its 706-year term—should be regarded as Chinese local history as well; and (2) given that up to three-quarters of Koguryo’s population consisted of non-Korean
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people (i.e., Han, Mongols, and Manchus), its history cannot be deemed solely as Korea’s.32 Contentious as it was, the controversy did not then spill into a diplomatic realm. While Chinese academia had been generally more interested in research on the northwestern and southwestern borders until the mid-1990s, its attention began to shift gradually toward the northeastern borders.33 More interesting, if not puzzling, is the fact that increasingly more scholars have opted for a radical—that is, nonconventional—position that Koguryo should be regarded solely as Chinese local history, thereby denying that it is also part of Korean history. Sun Jinji is one such example, who modified his previous position on “one history, dual use” to adopt the “Chinese local history” thesis. Zhang Bibo of the Heilongjiang Academy of Social Sciences also joined Sun by criticizing Tan Qixiang’s view of “one history, dual use” as overly static. Zhang argues that Koguryo’s history even after its moving of capital to Pyongyang should be regarded as Chinese history since Pyongyang geographically falls under the sphere of control by the Qizi Chaoxian prior to Koguryo.34 Problematic was the fact that, since 2002, some Chinese scholars began to form scholarly associations and academic projects designed specifically to put forward the more nonconventional thesis that Koguryo belongs wholly to Chinese history—the local history of China (difang zhengquanshi)—thereby totally denying its place in Korean history. These efforts officially entitled “Northeast Project” were institutionally centered on the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and encompassed scholars from Beijing and the three northeast provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang.35 These scholars argue in principle that (1) Koguryo belonged to an inseparable “one system” (yiti) of China’s Middle Kingdom; (2) Koguryo’s relations—of tributary nature—with the Chinese dynasties were internal central-local relations; and (3) since Koguryo originated in the currently Chinese northeast, it belongs solely to Chinese history.36 Given that such eminent scholars as Guo Moro and Tan Qixiang argued that Koguryo had been a separate state/dynasty, these scholars’ view is indeed of revisionist nature.37 Not all Chinese scholars subscribe to the views espoused by those involved in the Northeast Project. Jiang Mengshan, Liu Zhimin, and Xu Deyuan continue to stick with the “one history, dual use” thesis, while such scholars as Jiang Feifei and Wang Xiaoyu still argue that Koguryo belongs solely to the history of Korea.38 Song Chengyou of Peking University’s History Department, in an interview with a South Korean newspaper, explicitly refuted the Northeast Project by arguing that the position of his department has always been that Koguryo belongs to Korean history and Sino-Koguryo relations were state-tostate relations rather than central-local relations.39 Noteworthy is, however, the fact that the overall influence of these scholars appears to be on the wane while that of the Northeast Project has been on the rise.40
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The Defensive Versus Offensive Debate There are currently two schools of thought in South Korea in interpreting the intentions and objectives of China’s Northeast Project. The “defensive school” suggests that the key backgrounds have been primarily reactive and domestic in nature. More specifically, three motives are widely mentioned. First, China has been deeply concerned about the possibility that a unified Korea might reclaim its territorial right to Southern Manchuria (gando or jiandao in Chinese).41 Second, Beijing has been keen to maintain stability in the ethnic Korean communities in the Northeast lest it be agitated by Korean nationalistic sentiments.42 Third, the Chinese government has also been paying attention to the turmoil that a collapse of North Korea may generate.43 Some evidence does attest to the claims made by the defensive school. Many South Korean tourists who traveled to China’s Northeast and the Baekdu Mountain openly expressed their irredentist sentiments, to the displeasure of their Chinese hosts. The Chinese government was also disturbed by the South Korean government’s granting to Korean-Chinese of certain privileges on a par with the Korean citizens.44 The defensive school also points out that Chinese publications do not uniformly refer to Koguryo as Chinese history and, therefore, that the Northeast Project may not necessarily be pursued by the single-minded effort of the government.45 The “offensive school” argues otherwise, however. It contends that the Northeast Project is simply one concrete manifestation of China’s grand design to project and reassert power and influence toward the countries located within its traditional sphere of influence.46 According to this view, China’s goal is to reconstruct a Sino-centric structure of international relations in East Asia and, for that purpose, the way minority nationalities are currently conceived as forming the so-called united multiethnic nation (tongyi de duominzu guojia) is imposed on the remote past, which is in turn “used to justify the present policies and designs” (yigu wejin yong).47 From the offensive school’s perspective, sufficient grounds are available to suspect that the Northeast Project is China’s meticulous scheme to incorporate Korea’s ancient history into its own. Given that CASS is a government-funded academic and research institution headed by high-level officials and that the Northeast Project had such eminent officials as Li Tieying (state councilor and Politburo member) and Xiang Huaicheng (finance minister) as its advisors, South Koreans had every reason to believe that the scheme was officially endorsed by the Chinese government. In the first academic publication from the project, references were made to the fact that “the central leadership and governments at various levels provided strong support for the (Northeast) project.” Furthermore, maintaining correct “political consciousness” (zhengzhi yishi) was also emphasized.48
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The offensive school’s suspicion also rests on a series of similar schemes that preceded the Northeast Project, including the so-called Southwest Project (xinan gongcheng) of the late 1980s to merge Tibetan history into Chinese local history, the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Dynasties Project” (duandai gongcheng) during 1996–2000, and the “Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization Project” (tanyuan gongcheng) underway since 2002, designed to extend further back the beginning of Chinese history. The presence of these precedents cannot be a coincidence, thus making it difficult to conceive of the Northeast Project as an isolated incident. Additionally, the fact that Ma Dazheng, a Xinjiang expert, was put in charge of the Northeast Project made many suspect that there was much more to it than simply academic research.49
Crisis Management: An Assessment Optimism is a luxury in predicting the outcome of the clash of historiography between South Korea and China. Despite the constantly repeated rhetoric that it represents only an academic debate, the whole problem has already been highly politicized.50 Contrary to Beijing’s pronounced position, the controversy was transformed into a political issue in 2004 when China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs deleted Koguryo from a summary of Korean history on its official web site in 2004. When the South Korean government filed complaints, it then deleted all historical summaries prior to the founding of the Republic of Korea in 1948.51 While voices were heard in Seoul that called for stronger measures against China—including the withdrawal of its ambassador to Beijing—South Korea remained sober. Seoul upgraded the chairperson of the task force to a vice-ministerial level and put the Northeast Asia Division II (i.e., China Division) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade back in charge of the controversy, relieving the weaker Cultural Cooperation Division of the pertinent duties. Beijing also sought to put a total embargo on Chinese media regarding the Koguryo controversy so as to contain the unnecessary spread of the nationalistic outcry.52 Once the political tension intensified prior to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference chairman Jia Qinglin’s visit to Seoul, China dispatched Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei to settle the dispute in late August. Wu’s visit produced a five-point verbal accord that sought to contain the controversy within the academic context, thereby preventing it from affecting the bilateral relationship. While both Seoul and Beijing should be commended for their coordinated efforts to contain the fallout from the history controversy, ample possibilities remain for another such event. Although the verbal accord stipulates that the central and local governments are to take appropriate measures, Beijing often
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passes the buck to regional authorities in accounting for the continued distortions at the local level. Despite extensive decentralization during the post-Mao era, only if the central government makes a policy a national priority will the local authorities have no choice but to comply.53 Apparently, in the case of the Northeast Project, Beijing has not shown such will, thus amplifying the offensive school’s suspicion. Even if the Northeast Project, as often argued, began as a purely scholarly project, the possibility of the Chinese state exploiting this new window of opportunity cannot be totally precluded. While there are still Chinese scholars, both historians and international relations experts, who argue that Korea was a “tributary state” (shuguo) but never a “local government” (shubu) under China’s control, it is not clear at all how long they can continue to be vocal.54 Particularly given that China does not allow nongovernmental organizations that may contest government policies, South Korea’s concern can only get deeper.55 What further amplifies the pessimism is the widely shared perception in South Korea that, despite the completion of the Northeast Project in January 2007, China’s efforts to incorporate Korea’s ancient history will not stop but expand further. In fact, many seem to suggest that China’s strategic focus will now go beyond Koguryo to include other ancient dynasties of Balhae and Old Chosun (Gochosun). Institutionally, too, the Jilin Academy of Social Sciences reportedly took the task over from CASS and founded a new journal entitled Dongbei shizhi (Journal of Northeast History) in 2004.56 As an old saying goes, “bad things don’t come alone.” The clash of historiography was accompanied by two unfortunate events. One concerns the competitive applications by China and the two Koreas for UNESCO’s world heritage registration of a wide range of places (like the Baekdu Mountain/Changbai Shan), cultural artifacts (such as Koguryo heritages in Pyongyang), and traditions (like the Dan’O/Duanwu Festival).57 Another unfortunate, if not alarming, event denotes the dispute between South Korea and China over the Socotra Rock (E’o Do in Korean and Suyanjiao in Chinese), south of Jeju Islands and northeast of Shanghai. The media’s focused attention to these two events has significantly contributed to the rise of nationalistic sentiments in both countries, providing yet another potential stumbling block to Sino – South Korean relations.58 The history issue is currently in hibernation—rather than settled—waiting to resurface whenever a key catalyst gets to operate. Each time the conflict erupts, however, its resolution may require stronger measures on both sides, leading to an adverse impact on Sino – South Korean relations. When the allegations of the Northeast Project creep into the primary and secondary school textbooks, the bilateral relationship is most likely to cross the point of no return. It seems that both sides should be keenly aware of this “red line.”59
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The Future of South Korea – China Relations: Symbiosis or Cohabitation? South Korea’s relations with China have thus far been regarded as the most successful case of rapprochement and engagement. Aside from the Koguryo controversy, the bilateral relationship has over the years had many good things going, including the well-coordinated efforts through the Six Party Talks. Yet the pace of China’s rising over South Korea might have been too fast and overly extensive, depriving Seoul of sufficient time to think through its strategic implications and develop some breathing space of its own. As the discussions provided earlier suggest, South Korea’s mode of response to the rise of China is neither fixed nor firm but continues to evolve depending upon both domestic and external factors. Progressives’ gaining an upper hand in South Korea’s domestic politics in the last decade coincided with the rise of China, both economically and perceptually, supplying crucial positive synergies for Sino – South Korean relations. The same cannot be said of the future, however. The directionality of South Korea’s mainstream political orientation would very much determine the basis of its relations with the United States, which is in turn bound to affect South Korea’s relations with China. To a considerable extent, like it or not, the rise of China has made Seoul’s perceptions of its relations with the United States and China, if not its relations with Beijing and Washington themselves, increasingly resemble a zerosum game.60 Assuming that the capabilities of the United States and China may eventually converge in the future, which of the two will be deemed more benign is likely to constitute the most crucial variable.61 Whether South Koreans’ favorable perceptions of and positive expectations for China’s role will eventually outlive the rise of China remains to be seen. In the years to come, therefore, a “popularity competition”—or a soft-power race—will become a buzzword. Certainly, China is already in the game using America as a negative example.62 The possibility of the Northeast Project working as a tipping point in the case of South Korea’s respective views of China and the United States cannot be totally precluded. South Korea’s mode of “living with China” can be either a symbiosis or mere cohabitation. The former refers to a mutually beneficial relationship with high levels of trust and cooperative synergies, while the latter denotes a cordial but routine relationship between neighbors. Thus far, Sino – South Korean relations have resembled symbiosis as the official designation “strategic cooperative partnership” signifies. As a smaller middle-level power, South Korea obviously prefers to remain symbiotic with China both economically and diplomatically. Given the role of asymmetry in international politics, however, it is more up to China whether the relationship can remain symbiotic.
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In conclusion, the future of South Korea – China relations is as difficult to predict as that of Northeast Asia, which is becoming increasingly complex. As China’s shadow gets larger and South Korea’s search for “national dignity” (gukgyok) continues, the room for frictions may also grow. As China gradually becomes fixated on the desire to enhance its glory, South Korea’s “breathing space” vis-à-vis China may be significantly constricted, turning the symbiotic relationship into that of mere cohabitation. How the weight of memories and perceptions will work out in contemporary Korea-China relations constitutes an important test for China’s “peaceful rise” and “harmonious world.”
Notes 1. Jae Ho Chung is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Institute for China Studies at Seoul National University, Korea. Professor Chung is the author of Central Control and Local Discretion in China, Oxford University Press, 2000, and Between Ally and Partner: Korea-China Relations and the United States, Columbia University Press, 2007, and editor of Charting China’s Future: Political, Social and International Dimensions, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. The author acknowledges the useful comments from Shiping Tang and conference participants. A slightly different version of chapter will be published in Asian Survey. 2. For Latin America’s responses to the rise of China and intraregional variations, see Jorge I. Dominguez, “China’s Relations with Latin America: Shared Gains, Asymmetric Hopes,” Inter-American Dialogue Working Paper, June 2006 at http://www.thedialogue.org/publications/2006/summer/china.pdf (last accessed on August 26, 2006). 3. See, for instance, Alastair I. Johnston, “Is China a Status Quo Power?” International Security, Vol. 27 No. 4 pp. 5-56 (Spring 2003); Yong Deng, “Reputation and the Security Dilemma: China Reacts to the China Threat Theory,” in Alastair I. Johnston and Robert S. Ross (eds), New Directions in the Study of China’s Foreign Policy (pp. 188-214), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. 4. John Ikenberry G., “American Hegemony and East Asian Order,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 58 No. 3 pp. 353-367 (September 2004). 5. Jae Ho Chung, Between Ally and Partner: Korea-China Relations and the United States (Chapters 7-8), New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. 6. Victor A. Cha, “Engaging China: The Views from Korea,” in Alastair I. Johnston and Robert S. Ross (eds), Engaging China: The Management of an Emerging Power (pp. 40-42), London: Routledge, 1999. 7. Jae Ho Chung, “South Korea between Eagle and Dragon: Perceptual Ambivalence and Strategic Dilemma,” Asian Survey, Vol. 41 No. 5 pp. 777-796 (September/October 2001). 8. Taeho Kim, “South Korea and a Rising China: Perceptions, Policies and Prospects,” in Herbert Yee and Ian Storey (eds), China Threat: Perceptions,
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9.
10. 11.
12. 13.
14. 15.
16.
17. 18.
19. 20.
21.
22.
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Myths and Reality (pp. 175-176), London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002. Also see Jae Ho Chung, “China’s Ascendancy and the Korean Peninsula: From Interest Reevaluation to Strategic Realignment?” in David Shambaugh (ed.), Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics (pp. 159-161), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. For an example of such views, see Office of Research (U.S. Department of State), “For South Koreans, China’s Draw Is Mainly Economic,” Opinion Analysis, M-127-03 (September 30, 2003). Chosun Ilbo [Chosun Daily], March 4, 1973. Also see Chung, Between Ally and Partner, Chapter 4. Jae Ho Chung, “Dragon in the Eyes of South Korea: Analyzing Evolving Perceptions of China,” in Jonathan Pollack (ed.), Korea: The East Asian Pivot (pp. 258-260), Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2006. In 2006, China’s trade deficit with South Korea is estimated to be $45.3 billion. Niu Aimin, “Beijing you ge Hanguocun” [A Korean Town in Beijing], Banyuetan neibuban [Semi-Monthly Talks], No. 3 pp. 46-49 (2003); Chosun Ilbo, April 11, 2007; http://www.knto.or.kr (last accessed on April 18, 2007). For details, see Chung, Between Ally and Partner, pp. 96-98. 1995 Sejong Survey (p. 78), Seoul: The Sejong Institute, 1995; 1997 Sejong Survey (p. 11), Seoul: Dongseo Research, 1997; Dong-A Ilbo [Dong-A Daily], October 25, 1999, and December 5, 2000. A survey conducted in 2002 with 32 National Assembly members below the age of 50 also found that 66 percent (21 members) considered Japan the most serious threat to South Korea. See Chosun Ilbo, February 24, 2002. See Chosun Ilbo, April 29 and 30, 2004; Dong-A Ilbo, May 4, 2004. Some argue that such South Korean perceptions strengthened China’s “arrogance” [oman] toward Seoul. See Chosun Ilbo, August 24, 2004. For this, see Chung, Between Ally and Partner, p. 119. See, for instance, Xu Derong and Xiang Dongmei, “Zhonghan jianli mianxiang 21 shiji hezuo huoban guanxi de beijing fenxi” [Analyzing the Background of China and South Korea Establishing a Cooperative Partnership for the 21st Century], Dangdai Hanguo [Contemporary Korea], No. 22 p. 34 (1999); Zheng Chenghong, “Hanju keyi dadong Zhongguo” [Korean Dramas are Moving China], Shijie zhishi [World Affairs], No. 4 pp. 17-19 (2005). Dong-A Ilbo, July 14, 2001. See Chosun Ilbo, November 19, 27, and 28, 2001; Dong-A Ilbo, June 16, 2002, and May 9, 2007. Also see Korean Chamber of Commerce and Korea International Trade Association (eds), Jungguk gyongje eui busang gwa hanguk eui jongchaek dae’eung [The Rise of China and Korea’s Policy Responses] (Seoul, October 2004). The Chinese ratio was calculated on the basis of Zhongguo tongji nianjian 2006 [Statistical Yearbook of China 2006] (p. 733), Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe, 2006. See Dong-A Ilbo, October 13 and 18, 1999; Chosun Ilbo, January 27, 2000; Wolgan Chosun [Chosun Monthly], June 2000, pp. 458-472; New York Times, May 31, 2000; Mark O’Neil, “Jilin Uses Strike Hard to Force out Starving Koreans,” South China Morning Post, July 25, 2001; Dong-A Ilbo,
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24. 25.
26. 27. 28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
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June 18, 2002; Chosun Ilbo, June 24, 2002; Joong-ang Ilbo [Joong-ang Daily], January 17, 2007. See, for instance, Hong Joonho, “Bukhaek idaero jungguk e matgyodo doena?” [Can We Still Leave the North Korean Nuclear Problem to China?], Chosun Ilbo, February 16, 2005; Nam Mankwon, “Bukhaek gwanlyon jungguk yokhalron e daehan euigusim” [Doubts about the Role Played by China in the Resolution of the North Korean Nuclear Problem], Dongbuk-a jongse bunsok (Northeast Asia Strategic Analysis by the Korean Institute for Defense Analysis), April 15, 2005; Jae Ho Chung,“For a Cooperative Future,” China Daily, January 12, 2007. Guangming ribao, June 24, 2003. For an overview of the episode and what Koguryo means to South Koreans, see Peter H. Gries, “The Koguryo Controversy, National Identity and Sino-Korean Relations Today,” East Asia, Vol. 22 No. 4 pp. 3-17 (Winter 2005). See Scott Snyder, “A Turning Point for China-Korea Relations?” Comparative Connections, Vol. 6, No. 3, p. 115 (October 2004). See http://find.joins.com/joinsdb_content_f.asp?id⫽DY01200409140125 (last accessed on January 12, 2007). Jae Ho Chung, “From a Special Relationship to a Normal Partnership: Interpreting Sino-South Korean ‘Garlic Battle,’ ” Pacific Affairs, Vol. 76 No. 4 pp. 549-568 (Winter 2003–2004). According to a survey conducted in September 2006, 63 percent of the respondents replied that the Korean government should opt for stronger measures in coping with the Koguryo controversy. More interestingly, 53 percent of the respondents replied that China’s distortion of history was either equal to or even more serious than Japan’s. See Wolgan Chosun, pp. 182-183 (October 2006). In a meeting with a delegation from North Korea’s Academy of Sciences on June 28, 1963, Premier Zhou Enlai criticized some Chinese historians’ effort to characterize Koreans as descendants of Chinese Qi zi for distorting history and defined the Tang Dynasty’s war with Koguryo as an invasion [qinlue]. See Dong-A Ilbo, April 14, 2007. On the “one history and dual use” thesis that adopted China’s sphere of influence during 1750–1840 as the standard, see Tan Qixiang, “Lishishang de zhongguo he zhongguo lidai jiangyu” [China in History and China’s Border Lands in History], Zhongguo bianjiang shidi yanjiu [China’s Borderland History and Geography Studies], No. 1 (1991). The best example of this position can be found in Jiang Mengshan,“Gaogoulishi de guishu wenti” [The Issue of Where the History of Koguryo Belongs to], Dongjiang xuekan [Journal of Eastern Borders], Vol. 16 No. 4 pp. 38-41 (October 1999). During 1978–1987, of 116 academic conferences and field trips conducted by Chinese scholars related to border regions, only eight were on the Northeastern border, of which merely three were about Korea’s ancient history. See Yoo Yong-tae, “Junghwa minjokron gwa dongbuk jijonghak” [Theory of Chinese Nation and the Geopolitics of the Northeast], Dongyang sahak yongu [Studies of Asian History], Vol. 93 p. 190 (2006).
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34. For Zhang’s position and critique of Tan, see “Guanyu lishishang minzu guishu yu jiangyu wenti de zaisikao—jianping yishi liangyong shiguan” [Rethinking the Questions of Nation and Border Land in History—A Review of the “One History, Dual Use,” Thesis], Zhongguo bianjiang shidi yanjiu, No. 2 pp. 1-9 (June 2000). 35. For a detailed discussion of the institutional and individual participants in the Northeast Project, see Lee Heeok, “Jungguk eui dongbuk gongjong chujin hyonhwang gwa chamyo kigwan siltae” [The Current Situation of the Northeast Project and the List of Institutional Participants], in Lee Gae-seok et al., Jungguk eui dongbuk gongjong gwa junghwa jueui [China’s Northeast Project and Sino-centricism] (pp. 111-121), Seoul: Koguryo Research Foundation, 2005. 36. See, for instance, Zhao Fuxiang and Huang Jiayuan, “Gaogouli zai dongbeishi de diwei” [The Place of Koguryo History in the History of Northeast], Tonghua shifan daxue xuebao [Journal of Tonghua Normal University], Vol. 23 No. 6 pp. 10-12 (November 2002); Ma Dazheng, “Dongbei bianjiang lishi de huigu yu sikao” [Reflections and Thoughts on the History of the Northeast Borderlands], Beihua daxue xuebao [Journal of Beihua University], Vol. 6 No. 1 pp. 37-41 (February 2005); Li Shuying, “Gaogouli minzu qiyuan yanjiu shuyao” [Summary of the Origin of the Koguryo Nation], Tonghua shifan daxue xuebao, Vol. 27 No. 3 pp. 60-62, 70 (May 2006). 37. Guo Moro et al., Zhongguo shigao dituji [China’s History in Maps] Vol. 1 p. 68, Beijing: Zhongguo ditu chubanshe, 1979; Tan Qixiang et al., Zhongguo lishi dituji [China’s History in Maps] Vol. 4 p. 20, Beijing: Zhongguo ditu chubanshe, 1982. 38. Yonson Ahn, “The Korea-China Textbook War—What’s It All About?”George Mason University’s History News Network, March 2006 (http://hnn.us/articles/ 21617.html) (last accessed on January 6, 2007), pp. 3-5. 39. Chosun Ilbo, September 16, 2006. 40. While scholars specializing in the history of external relations (duiwai guanxishi) tend to subscribe to the conventional thesis that Koguryo belongs to Korean history or is shared by both Korea and China, the Chinese history thesis is fast becoming the dominant view among those majoring in the history of Northeast border regions (dongbei bianjiangshi). Interviews with researchers at the Northeast Asia History Foundation in Seoul on February 6, 2007. 41. Austin Ramzy, “Rewriting History,” Time, August 16, 2004; Mark Byington, “Appropriating the Past: How an Ancient Korean State Became Newly ‘Chinese,’” at http://ieas.berkeley.edu/events/2003.09.19.html. (last accessed on January 29, 2007); Id. “A Matter of Territorial Security: China’s Historiographical Treatment of Goguryeo in the Twentieth Century,” in Nationalism and History Textbooks in Asia and Europe, Seoul: The Academy of Korean Studies, 2005. 42. For China’s concern with stability in the ethnic minority and border regions, see Sun Yunlai and Sha Yunzhong, Jilinsheng bianjiang minzu diqu wending he fazhan de zhuyao wenti yu duice [Crucial Problems and Remedies in Sustaining the Stability and Development in the Border Regions of Jilin Province],
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43.
44. 45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
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Beijing: Zhongyang minzu daxue chubanshe, 1994; Zhang Zhirong, Zhongguo bianjiang yu minzu wenti [Problems of Borders and Ethnicities in China], Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005. Kim Hui-kyo, “Jungguk eui dongbuk gongjong gwa hanguk minjokjueui jinro” [China’s Northeast Project and the Path for Korean’s Nationalism], Yoksa bipyong [Historical Criticism], Spring 2004; Yoon Hwy-tak, “China’s Northeast Project: Defensive or Offensive Strategy?” East Asian Review, Vol. 16 No. 4 pp. 100-101 (Winter 2004). For the North Korean contingency, see Lee Jin-woo, “China Distorts History to Prepare for North’s Collapse,” Korea Times, October 11, 2006. See http://www.mofat.go.kr/ek/ek_a002/ek_caba/ek_a02/ek_b05/1175119_ 11452.html (last accessed on January 30, 2007). The official dictionary, Cihai [Collection of Words: 1999 edition], for instance, still defines Koguryo as “Korea’s ancient state” [gaogouli ye cheng gouli huo gaoli shi Chaoxian gudai guojia]. See p. 5788. For a similar line of arguments, see Roger Des Forges and Luo Xu, “China as a Non-Hegemonic Superpower? The Uses of History among the China Can Say No Writers and Their Critics,” Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 33 No. 4 pp. 483-507 (December 2001); Pankaj N. Mohan, “China’s Nationalist Historiography of the ‘Northeast Project’ and the Australian Responses to Its Challenges,” Journal of Inner and East Asian Studies, Vol. 3 No. 1 pp. 27-46 (2006). See, for instance, Shin Hyung-sik and Choi Kyu-song (eds), Kokuryo neun jungguksa inga? Jungguk dongbuk gongjong eui munjejom [Does Koguryo Belong to Chinese History? The Problems of China’s Northeast Project], Seoul: Baeksan sodang, 2004; Song Ki-ho, “China’s Attempt at ‘Stealing’ Parts of Ancient Korean History,” The Review of Korean Studies, Vol. 7 No. 4 pp. 93-122 (2004). See the project manager Ma Dazheng’s contribution in Ma Dazheng (ed.), Zhongguo dongbei bianjiang yanjiu [Study of China’s Northeastern Border Areas] (pp. 14, 15), Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2003. See http://www.china5000.cn/wenming/statics/duandai; Wu Silha, Dongbuk gongjong eui sonhaeng jakup gwa jungguk eui gukga jonlyak [Precedents of the Northeast Project and China’s Strategies] (pp. 113-153), Seoul: Ulyuck, 2004; http://www.kaogu.cn/cn_kaogu (last accessed on February 5, 2007); Chosun Ilbo, September 14, 2006. There appears to be no conceivable way for academic research to resolve this problem. Particularly when China is not willing to organize international conferences on the theme of Koguryo and Chinese scholars refrain from attending conferences hosted by Korean research institutes, academic solutions are not likely to provide a breakthrough. See the Chinese summaries of these events in Zhang Weiwei, “Hanguo dui gaogoulishi wenti pinglun zongshu” [Overview of Korea’s Commentaries on the History of Koguryo], Guoji ziliao xinxi [News on International Materials], No. 9 pp. 27-30 (2004). Dong-A Ilbo, August 9, 2004; Chosun Ilbo, August 25, 2004; interviews in Beijing and Seoul in 2004 and 2006.
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53. Jae Ho Chung, “Reappraising Central-Local Relations in Deng’s China,” in Chien-min Chao and Bruce J. Dickson (eds), Remaking the Chinese State: Strategies, Society and Security (pp. 46-75), London: Routledge, 2001. 54. See, for instance, Chen Fengjun and Wang Chuanzhao, Yatai daguo yu chaoxian bandao [Asia-Pacific Powers and the Korean Peninsula] (p. 279), Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe 2002; Yang Jun and Wang Qiubin, Zhongguo yu chaoxian bandao guanxi shilun [Historical Analysis of Sino-Korean Relations] (pp. 183-184), Beijing: Shehuikexue wenxian chubanshe 2006. 55. The important role that Japanese NGOs have performed in fighting against the Japanese government policies of history distortion needs no elaboration. For the concern with the absence of NGOs in China, see Jae Ho Chung,“Dongbuk gongjong eui hyonjaejok euimi wa hanguk woegyo” [The Contemporary Implications of the Northeast Project and Korea’s Diplomacy], Wolgan Joong-ang [Monthly Joongang], September 2004, p. 379. 56. Chosun Ilbo, September 6, 2006; Joong-ang Ilbo, January 27, 2007; Dong-A Ilbo, January 30, 2007. Also based on the interviews at the Northeast Asian History Foundation, February 6, 2007. 57. Nan Liming, “Hanguo dui zhongguo de wenhua kangyi” [Korea’s Cultural Protest against China], Yazhou zhoukan [Asia Weekly], July 25, 2004, pp. 16-21. For Chinese concern in this regard, see Shi Jinbo, “Zai duiwai jiaoliu zhong baohu woguo wenhua yichan de chanquan” [On Protecting the Property Rights of Our Cultural Heritage in Promoting International Exchanges], Lingdao canyue [References for the Leadership], No. 19, pp. 5-6 (July 5, 2004). 58. See “E-o Do nomboneun jungguk heuksim mwonga” [China’s Territorial Ambition over the Socotra Rock], Jugan Hanguk [Hangook Weekly], October 3, 2006, pp. 58-59; Jiang Xun, “Han zhanling suyanjiao bengju zhonghan shenjing” [South Korea’s Occupation of the Socotra Rock Getting on China’s Nerve], Yazhou zhoukan [Asia Weekly], December 3, 2006, pp. 24-27. 59. For a reasonable viewpoint presented by a Chinese observer, see “Haowuyiyi de zhonghan lishi zhengzhi” [The Sino-South Korean History Controversy Has No Utility At All], posted at the Web site of Economic Daily at http://www.ce.cn (September 15, 2006) (last accessed on April 4, 2007). 60. Jae Ho Chung, “America’s Views of China-South Korea Relations: Public Opinions and Elite Perceptions,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis, Vol. 17 No. 1 pp. 213-233 (Spring 2005). 61. For the difficulties associated with the United States establishing a “benign unipolarity” in East Asia, see Charles A. Kupchan,“After Pax Americana: Benign Power, Regional Integration, and the Sources of a Stable Multipolarity,” International Security, Vol. 23 No. 2 pp. 63-69 (Fall 1998). 62. Wang Yiwei, Shijie weirao Meiguo zhuan [Is the World Revolving around the United States?](pp. 305-307), Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005; Bates Gill and Yanzhong Huang, “Sources and Limits of Chinese ‘Soft Power,’ ” Survival, Vol. 48 No. 2 pp. 17-36 (Summer 2006).
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Grand Strategic Fit and Power Shift: Explaining Turning Points in China-Vietnam Relations Alexander L. Vuving1
elations between China and Vietnam followed a checkered path since both countries reemerged as modern states after World War II. Within half a century, official definitions of the Sino-Vietnamese relationship traveled from “comrades plus brothers” (1949–1977) to “dangerous enemies” (1979–1988) to “good neighbors, good friends, good partners, good comrades” (from 2002). While the deterioration occurred abruptly (1977–1979), the improvement took a decade (1988–1999). Cooperation seems much harder to achieve than conflict, and yet the two countries have settled their conflicts even in zero-sum issues such as territory and major power influence. Toward the end of the twentieth century and at the dawn of the twenty-first, Vietnam and China reached two turning points regarding these issues, which reflect a new plateau on which the SinoVietnamese relationship is situated. In December 1999, China and Vietnam signed a land border treaty that is the first since the Franco-Qing pacts of 1887 and 1895 to legally delimit territorial boundaries between them. A year later, another agreement on the delimitation of maritime border in the Gulf of Tonkin was concluded.2 In 2005, Vietnam arrived at an unprecedented situation in which it maintained equidistance between and, at the same time, amicable relationships with China and the United States—two major powers rivaling for influence in the region. The central question of this chapter is: What caused these two turning points? Particularly, I will explain why China and Vietnam adopted the actions that led to these landmarks of cooperation.
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The chapter also challenges existing explanations of the two cooperation events. Interestingly, each of these explanations resides at one of the three usual levels of analysis—the international, the domestic, and the individual. As for the settlements of border disputes between China and Vietnam, scholarly and popular explanations underline unit-level factors and argue that China and Vietnam signed the border pacts because they both needed peace and stability as they were preoccupied with economic development and regime security. Besides, some emphasize the role of individual leaders, particularly General Secretary Le Kha Phieu of the Vietnam Communist Party (VCP), in adopting the terms of the treaties. As regards Vietnam’s equidistance between China and the United States, a widespread view among observers assumes that actors are induced by systemic forces to balance power and interprets this equidistance as the result of Vietnam’s efforts to balance one great power against the other in order to avoid overdependence on any of them. In this chapter, I will present a more robust explanation. It is more robust in that it accounts additionally for puzzles that the existing explanations cannot and that it uses the same mechanisms to explain both cases. Regarding the border agreements case, I argue that a common need for peace and stability was not sufficient to drive China and Vietnam to settle their border disputes on the terms they did. Moreover, regime insecurity was not the primary motive that led China to signing the treaties, and other Vietnamese leaders in the position of Le Kha Phieu would have also endorsed the border pacts on the same terms as Phieu did. As concerns the equidistance case, I argue that this state of affairs is maintained less by Vietnam’s balancing act than by what can be called a “grand strategic fit” among Vietnam, America, and China. In fact, Vietnam’s leaders are divided in terms of grand strategy, and neither of Vietnam’s two competing grand strategies complies with the logic of power balancing. The factor most responsible for reaching the two turning points under study is “grand strategic fit,” which is made possible by complex power shifts that involve the protagonists. The mechanisms work as follows. Shifts in the global power configuration are perceived differently and given different meanings by the actors, whose grand strategies are, on the one side, adjusted to the power shifts, but on the other, based on the actors’ own historical experiences. When the bilateral fits between the actors’ grand strategies close a full circle, major events of cooperation are poised to occur. This explanation does not imply that domestic politics, leaders’ personalities, and systemic balances of power do not play an important role in shaping the events. Indeed, these factors are involved in the making of the events but they are involved in ways different than suggested by the regime insecurity, the leader’s personality, and the balance of power arguments.
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The Concept of Grand Strategy and Vietnam’s Two Grand Strategies Grand strategy refers to the underlying logic of the full package of domestic and foreign policies of a state. As the paradigm that informs and guides foreign policy, grand strategy consists of premises and pathways. Grand strategic premises include assumptions about the structure and dynamics of the world and a state’s goals in it. Grand strategic pathways are the methods and avenues to achieve those goals under the conditions described by the premises. The making of a state’s grand strategy involves societal debates among advocates of different grand strategy proposals but also contests and compromises among competing elite groups. Different grand strategy proposals can share the same goals while disagreeing on their worldviews and hence their pathways to achieve the goals. More radically, they can diverge in both their views of the world and their state’s goals, thus pursuing fundamentally different pathways. States naturally try to pursue a unified grand strategy, but there are many cases in which a state is divided in terms of grand strategy as the political contest among its contradicting grand strategies remains unsettled. One example is Russia under President Boris Yeltsin, whose inconsistent domestic and foreign policies reflected the tug of war between the Atlanticists (e.g., Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar) and the Eurasianists (e.g., Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov). Post – Cold War Vietnam is another example (see below). In such cases, it is useful to distinguish between elite grand strategy and state grand strategy. The latter is the result, necessarily incoherent, of ongoing struggles and compromises between competing elite grand strategies. Post – Cold War Vietnam’s state grand strategy reflects a contest, sometimes stalemate, between two elite grand strategies, which I term the integrationists and the anti-imperialists. Anti-imperialism does not mean anti-hegemonic, but is a Leninist concept in which imperialism is the “highest stage of capitalism.” Vietnam’s anti-imperialism has its roots in the country’s struggles against French colonialism and U.S. involvement during most of the twentieth century. By the late 1980s, anti-imperialism began to fade away as Vietnam underwent its toughest socioeconomic crisis since World War II. During this decade, an alternative grand strategy that called for integration into the world economy grew out of a bitter experience with Vietnam’s economic crisis and international isolation, compared with the spectacular rise of the Newly Industrialized Countries in capitalist Asia. Parting company with the anti-imperialists, whose national ambition was to be the “spearhead of world national liberation movement” and the “advanced post of socialism in Southeast Asia,” the integrationists developed the national ambition of becoming a “rich people and strong country” (dan giau nuoc manh) and identified Vietnam’s “lagging behind” (tut hau) other countries in its surrounding region as the largest threat to national survival. To achieve that
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goal and counter this threat, they advocated deep engagement (hoi nhap toan dien, or “comprehensive integration”) in the Western-dominated international division of labor. A turning point that marked integrationist victory was the launch of largescale reforms in December 1986 and the passage of Politburo Resolution 13 in May 1988, which codified Vietnam’s realignment with the capitalist world and the Asia-Pacific region. However, the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 created shock waves in Vietnam. Some top leaders, including VCP general secretary Nguyen Van Linh, identified regime change as the most dangerous threat to Vietnam and the West—led by the United States, who they believed was the key author of the Eastern European collapse—as their strategic enemy. During late 1989, anti-imperialism was revived (the West and the United States were described as “imperialists”); and the political contest between the anti-imperialists and the integrationists remains unsettled to the present day.
The Settlement of Border Disputes In December 1999, China and Vietnam concluded a treaty on the demarcation of their land border, ending a decades-long dispute that in 1979 erupted in a border war. What made this agreement possible? In his article explaining China’s compromises in territorial disputes, M. Taylor Fravel suggests that it is Beijing’s regime insecurity that was the cause of China’s actions. In his account, as China received only 50 percent of the disputed land, its agreement on the land border pact with Vietnam fits into its overall pattern of compromise in territorial disputes. Fravel argues that, faced with internal threats to regime security, Beijing’s leaders were more willing to offer concessions in exchange for cooperation. In the case of Vietnam, he asserts that what China sought was to strengthen Vietnam’s socialist regime and to facilitate the economic development of the border areas.3 As concerns Vietnam’s actions, many see the factors most responsible for Vietnam’s adoption of the border pact in its regime insecurity and especially in the personality of VCP general secretary Le Kha Phieu, who is thought to have a pro-China mindset. A more general explanation maintains that China and Vietnam signed the border treaty because both countries badly needed peace and stability as they were preoccupied with economic development and regime security. These accounts make more puzzles than they resolve. If regime insecurity was the prime motive behind China’s and Vietnam’s actions, why did Hanoi and Beijing not settle their border disputes in the early 1990s, when the pressures of regime insecurity were heavier for both (China after the Tiananmen Square incident and Vietnam after the disintegration of the USSR)? A closer
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look at China’s actions regarding the border issues with Vietnam reveals that China was more assertive in the early to mid-1990s, when internal security concerns following the Tiananmen Square massacre were arguably more serious than in the later part of the decade. China suddenly changed its stance in 1997 following a row with Vietnam during which the latter successfully deterred the former by drawing fellow ASEAN countries to its side and strengthening ties with the United States. The peace and stability argument is too general to explain why the two countries came to sign the border pacts at the turn of the century and not much earlier. The auxiliary argument that negotiation needs time cannot resolve the puzzle of why China suddenly changed its stance in 1997. Contrary to Fravel’s interpretation, I argue, China was more assertive than Vietnam in making its claims and it did exploit this asymmetry of desires not to strengthen the Hanoi regime but to minimize its own concessions. Contrary to the leader’s personality argument, I argue that even Nguyen Van Linh and Do Muoi, who were Le Kha Phieu’s predecessors as VCP general secretaries and who were thought to be much less pro-China than Phieu, would offer as much in concessions as Phieu did. More than the peace and stability argument, I argue that China’s change of stance in 1997 marked a watershed and opened the way to the border pacts, and that this change was aimed at keeping Vietnam near the Chinese orbit as Vietnam had attempted to veer toward the United States. Although both China and Vietnam needed peace and stability, these needs alone were not sufficient to reach a final settlement of the border disputes. The two countries could agree on shelving the disputes and maintaining the status quo, as they already had done in a 1993 border agreement. I suggest that China’s and Vietnam’s actions were conditioned by each country’s respective grand strategy. In turn, the grand strategies that the two adopted were calibrated in response to power shifts in the international strategic landscape. The agreement on a final settlement of the border disputes reflected such a calibrated grand strategic fit between the two. Fravel readily adopted Beijing’s and Hanoi’s official account that each of the two parties received 50 percent of the disputed land. According to Vietnam’s deputy foreign minister Le Cong Phung, the area of disputed land was 227 km2, of which 113 km2 was assigned to Vietnam and 114 km2 to China by the 1999 treaty.4 The one-kilometer difference is symbolic—it is an indication of Vietnam’s deference to China. Although the division of the disputed land is equal, the ways China and Vietnam made their original claims are not. There are three general ways to make a claim on the Sino-Vietnamese border. The first is to base claims on the French-Qing treaties of 1887 and 1895 that delimited and demarcated the border between China and Northern Vietnam. This would be a medium claim for both Vietnam and China. The second is to base claims on Sino-Vietnamese frontiers prior to the Franco-Qing treaties. This would be a
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maximum claim for Vietnam, for in the Franco-Qing treaties the French made territorial concessions in exchange for trade privileges in China. The French concessions left, for example, thousands of ethnic Vietnamese inside Chinese territories; these are known today as the Jing in Guangxi province. The third way is to base claims on the line of actual control, which reflects successive Chinese gains of territory during the Vietnam War, when the Chinese were allowed to build and administer facilities on Vietnamese soil several hundred meters near the border, as well as during the border war of 1979 and after, when several strategic hills inside Vietnamese territory were taken by Chinese troops (these include the areas called Laoshan and Fakashan by the Chinese). This would be a maximum claim for China. While Hanoi came to the negotiation with a medium claim (the Franco-Qing treaties), Beijing came with the maximum (the actual line of control). The Vietnamese also demonstrated their willingness to compromise by proposing that the contour map made by the Chinese be jointly used throughout the negotiation, which meant that the Vietnamese were willing to adopt Chinese interpretation of the land configuration.5 Had China sought to strengthen Hanoi’s socialist regime, as Fravel has argued, it would have accepted a settlement that was closer to the medium claim than the maximum claim. However, the final settlement that China agreed upon was an equal division between the medium and the maximum claims with a symbolic tilt toward China’s maximum claim. This deal was considered unfair by many Vietnamese and did deepen the leadership’s division as well as stir up protest in the population. Opponents of Le Kha Phieu both in and outside of the VCP used the charge that he made excessive compromises in the two border pacts with China, among other charges, to mobilize people against him, a collection of campaigns that led to Phieu’s removal from his post as general secretary of the VCP. The charges that Phieu is most responsible for Vietnam’s concessions in the border accords are, however, excessive. It is true that Phieu pursued a policy of closer ties with China, but he also acted under conditions created by his predecessors. The deadline for the conclusion of the two border treaties, that they should be signed prior to the twenty-first century, was proposed by Chinese president Jiang Zemin and accepted by Vietnamese general secretary Do Muoi at Muoi’s visit to China in July 1997. A policy of closer ties with China was established by Nguyen Van Linh in 1990. In the aftermath of the Eastern European regime changes, Linh launched a new-old Vietnamese grand strategy whose objective was to fight “imperialist”—that is, U.S. and Western—attempts to eliminate communism. The foreign policy keystone of this grand strategy was an alliance on ideological basis with China, which would serve both as a security guarantee for the Hanoi regime and as a united front against the West internationally. Under these grand strategic imperatives Linh and Do Muoi, then prime minister, attended the Chengdu summit with Chinese leaders in September 1990. This was
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the first meeting between the leaders of the two countries since the war in 1979. At this summit the Chinese and Vietnamese leaders engineered a turning point that paved the way for the formal normalization of Sino-Vietnamese relations in November 1991. The concessions that Linh and Muoi made at Chengdu were not less than the compromises Phieu made in the border pacts. The Vietnamese accepted the Chinese terms of negotiation. Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach, who took a harder stance vis-à-vis China, was excluded from the meeting, while Vietnam’s elder statesman Pham Van Dong went to Chengdu without seeing his Chinese counterpart, Deng Xiaoping. The Vietnamese agenda of forming an antiU.S. alliance was not discussed. Instead, the negotiation was focused on settling the Cambodia crisis, which was at the heart of the Chinese agenda. The memorandum of understanding issued at the end of the summit contained eight points, of which six were identical with the Chinese stance and none reflected the Vietnamese view. The most important point was an agreement on the makeup of a Supreme National Council that was to govern Cambodia as the replacement for the Vietnam-backed State of Kampuchea government. Nguyen Van Linh readily accepted the Chinese formula, which granted the Vietnam-backed government six seats and the Chinese-backed coalition seven seats including the chairman post for Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Back in Hanoi, this agreement was considered an excessive compromise, as it had been earlier rebuffed by Vietnamese Foreign Ministry officials. In Phnom Penh, it was seen as a betrayal, as in June 1990 Prime Minister Hun Sen and Prince Sihanouk had agreed on a 6 ⫹ 6 formula.6 Why was China more assertive than Vietnam in their border disputes? To answer this question, I argue that China not only needed a cooperative Vietnam less than Vietnam needed a cooperative China but, more fundamentally, territory was given more weight than socialist solidarity in China’s policy toward Vietnam and that this prioritization reflected China’s grand strategy. With the rise of Deng Xiaoping in 1979, China adopted a new grand strategy that was to be known as the Four Modernizations. The ultimate objective of this grand strategy is to make China a strong country and to restore its place in the sun—to be at least equal in status to the world’s greatest powers. This aspiration is called the “rejuvenation of China.” To achieve this objective, Deng’s strategy was to reach out to the West, taking advantage of Western technology, capital, and know-how. In compliance with this strategy, Deng renounced class struggle in international relations and gave cooperation with the West priority over socialist solidarity. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen incident and the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Beijing did toy with the idea of an Asian socialist community but ultimately discarded it. When China and Vietnam renormalized their relations in 1991, Beijing rebuffed Hanoi’s offer of a security alliance, saying that the two could be “comrades but not allies.”7 Thus, China tried to keep Vietnam at arm’s length even when the latter sought a strategic
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alliance with it. Unlike Vietnam’s anti-imperialists and like Vietnam’s integrationists, China’s grand strategy is based on a self-perception of which nation and territory, more than regime and ideology, are the defining elements. Thus, territory is a sensitive issue that can be compromised only to satisfy more serious strategic imperatives. As a result, until Vietnam tilted to China’s rivals, China had little incentive to compromise in border disputes. Why did China nevertheless agree to a final settlement of the disputes and accept a 50-50 deal? During the early phase of the post – Cold War era, from the late 1980s until the mid-1990s, China’s leaders believed that the sole remaining superpower—the United States—was in decline and the world was heading toward a multipolar order. Against this backdrop, China’s strategy was to cultivate its relations with the great powers and, at the same time, establish its position as a world pole. Toward Vietnam, China’s policy was to drive the Sino-Vietnamese relationship back to something similar to its pre-French form, when China played the role of the superior and Vietnam its tributary. This policy met with a receptive environment as Vietnam still lagged behind China in cooperation with the West, especially the United States, and it wanted to remain one step behind China in this regard. Thus, even when Beijing was faced with a legitimacy crisis at home and diplomatic isolation abroad as a consequence of the Tiananmen Square massacre, it still could deal with Vietnam from a position of strength. Along the land border, as China was controlling or able to take control of what it wanted to have in a final settlement, time just worked to its favor. Unless Hanoi accepted Beijing’s maximum claims, China had no incentives to come to a final settlement of the border disputes. But new developments in the mid-to-late 1990s gradually changed this situation. In 1995, Vietnam joined ASEAN and its diplomatic relations with the United States were restored. Two years later, in a crisis over the maritime border with China, Vietnam proved it was willing and able to utilize the clout of America and ASEAN to deter China.8 This crisis alarmed the Chinese; if they were too assertive toward Vietnam, the latter would deviate from its China-centered orbit. Only three months after the crisis, China invited General Secretary Do Muoi to Beijing, and at Muoi’s meeting with President Jiang Zemin, the two leaders agreed to settle disputes on land border and the Tonkin Gulf before the turn of the century. The 50-50 deal thus reflected this new situation.
Vietnam’s Balancing Act Between China and Its Rivals As Vietnam is located at China’s southern gateway, its maintenance of friendly relationships with both China and its rivals is a hard-to-achieve balancing act. The only time in history when Vietnam achieved such a performance was a
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short period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s when Hanoi maintained close ties with both Beijing and Moscow, one of Beijing’s opponents. Yet even this was not a full balancing act, since both Hanoi and Beijing were at the same time united in a common front against Washington, another enemy of Beijing. In 2005 Vietnam reached equidistance between China and the United States, two major powers rivaling for preponderance in East Asia. The year 2005 was the first time in history that Vietnam called both China and the United States its friends. This balanced position was unprecedented in Vietnam’s history. In earlier periods, Vietnam bandwagoned either with China to oppose a common adversary (the United States) or with China’s enemy (the Soviet Union) to resist China. How is this equidistance possible? A widespread view among observers of Vietnam’s foreign policy maintains that Vietnam has always wanted to avoid overdependence on a single great power, and this equidistance is the result of a skillful balancing act by Hanoi. As will be seen, however, this equidistance rests on more complex and more fragile grounds. In reality, the fact that many in Vietnam’s ruling elites are keen to guard their country’s independence has always been compromised by the other fact that their country needs foreign assistance to achieve its goals. A dilemma of independent-minded Vietnamese leaders has been how to maintain independence and at the same time ensure great-power assistance. More often than not, they failed to avoid overdependence or they failed to keep power. This occurred to North Vietnamese president Ho Chi Minh in the 1950s, South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem in the 1960s, and VCP general secretary Le Duan in the 1980s. I argue that Vietnam tends to jump on the bandwagon of the powerful, and its equidistance between China and the United States would not be possible without Vietnam’s strategic readjustment following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In a broader context, this balanced position is made possible by a unique fit between three grand strategies—those of America, Vietnam, and China. In turn, these grand strategies are the three states’ diverse responses to U.S.centered unipolarity.9 From the late 1970s until the late 1980s, a comprehensive alliance with the Soviet Union was the keystone of Vietnamese foreign policy. Integrationist strategy emerged in the mid-to-late 1980s when part of the Vietnamese leadership, influenced by Gorbachev’s New Thinking in the USSR and inspired by Deng Xiaoping’s Four Modernizations in the PRC, recognized a massive shift in the distribution of economic power at the world and regional levels, which was manifested in the technological and income gap between the West and the Soviet bloc, a systemwide economic crisis of the Soviet bloc, and the rise of capitalist Asia. The overall objective of this grand strategy is to make Vietnam a rich people and a strong country. The backbone strategy to achieve this objective includes international and regional integration and cooperation with the West.
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This new foreign policy was codified in the secret May 1987 Politburo Resolution 13, which paved the way for a rapid reorientation of Vietnam’s foreign trade away from the socialist bloc and Eastern Europe to the Asia-Pacific and the capitalist world. This change in Vietnam’s posture was only superficially an attempt to get rid of Vietnam’s overdependence on the USSR. At a deeper level, it was an attempt to move from bandwagoning with the USSR to bandwagoning with the West. This change was needed in order to balance the generic threat of “lagging behind” other countries in the surrounding region.10 Yet soon came the 1989 regime changes in Eastern Europe, which triggered the revival of anti-imperialist grand strategy, whose objective was to defend socialism from the threat of regime change emanating from the United States and the West. Viewing the world in terms of “two camps”—one socialist and the other capitalist-imperialist—anti-imperialists believed that the United States was the mastermind of the collapse of communist regimes. Losing confidence in the Soviet Union, which they thought was changing its communist character, anti-imperialists turned to the PRC, whose resolve was proved in the Tiananmen Square crackdown and whose size and power made it the natural successor of the USSR as the leader of the socialist camp. Following this logic, anti-imperialists sought a security alliance with China as the foreign policy linchpin of their grand strategy.11 Like the foreign policy orientation of integration, that of anti-imperialism is bandwagoning with power in order to balance against threat.12 The threat is not universally a consequence of a rising power or aggressiveness, as the IR literature tends to assume, but is parochially predetermined by historical experience. For the integrationists, it is economic backwardness. For the anti-imperialists, it is regime change. In the post – Cold War era, Vietnam’s foreign policy results from a cohabitation of anti-imperialist and integrationist grand strategies. This cohabitation explains why Vietnam’s foreign and domestic policies after the Cold War have a dual character. This dualism is the product of a unique situation. Vietnam was in economic collapse during the 1980s. As the economic support from the Soviet bloc plummeted and China was neither able nor willing to provide aid for Vietnam, Vietnam had no alternative but to turn to the West and capitalist Asia for financial assistance, capital transfer, market access, and technology transfer. This is why Hanoi had to retain integrationist elements in its post – Cold War grand strategy despite the anti-imperialist victory after 1989. Moreover, China refused to engage in a regular security alliance with Vietnam while restoring the ideological bond with it. Thus, for Hanoi, a security alliance on an ideological basis with China remains a hope though not a reality. This Chinese posture provides enough support for Vietnam’s antiimperialists to dominate Vietnamese politics but not enough for them to monopolize it. The result was a two-headed grand strategy with an antiimperialist tilt. This anti-imperialist tilt was reflected in the personnel
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makeup of the highest decision-making body in Hanoi. Anti-imperialists put up the Party chief throughout the period and, until the Tenth Congress of the VCP in 2006, held a majority in the Politburo. The anti-imperialist dominance served as a brake for Vietnam’s integration in the Western-dominated world economy. Vietnam filed an application for membership in the World Trade Organization in 1995 but until 2003 it made no substantive efforts to push the process. Anti-imperialists argue that because globalization in its current stage is still capitalist, Western-dominated, and identical with Americanization, Vietnam should rather slow down its international integration until globalization has become socialist. Until mid-2003, this view was given priority over the integrationist counterargument that globalization is an objective necessity and Vietnam should not try to manage it but adapt to and take advantage of it. The anti-imperialist tilt in Vietnam’s pre-2003 grand strategy also blocked the development of strategic relations with the United States, which would balance Vietnam’s strategic relations with China. Vietnam’s unpublished July 1992 defense and national security strategy, which was to be known as Central Committee Resolution 3 and which would only be replaced by Central Committee Resolution 8 of July 2003, identified the United States as Vietnam’s strategic enemy while listing China among Vietnam’s closest friends.13 Under this anti-imperialist tilt, Vietnam met with considerable internal resistance when joining ASEAN, postponed the Bilateral Trade Agreement with the United States, and missed the chance for access to the WTO at an earlier date.14 The adoption in July 2003 of the Strategy of Fatherland Defense in the New Situation, which is also known as Central Committee Resolution 8, marked a watershed in Vietnam’s post – Cold War politics. This new national security guideline removed the ideological clause of the July 1992 strategy and elevated pragmatism into a principle for determination of friends and foes in Vietnam’s foreign policy. This cleared the way for both closer ties with the United States and the rise of the integrationists. During the remainder of the year, Vietnam sent four major ministers, including the defense minister, and a deputy prime minister to the United States. In November 2003, Vietnam hosted the first visit by U.S. naval ships since the end of the Vietnam War; and since 2003, U.S. naval ships have visited Vietnam annually. This pattern of an upsurge of high-level exchange between the two countries has continued with Premier Phan Van Khai’s visit to Washington in June 2005, President Bush’s trip to Hanoi in December 2006, and President Nguyen Minh Triet’s visit to Washington in 2007. After the Tenth Congress of the VCP in April 2006, the integrationists outweighed the anti-imperialists for the first time in the Politburo, Vietnam’s highest decision-making body. Also from 2006, with an integrationist president and an integrationist prime minister, Vietnam’s ruling troika, which also includes the party general secretary, became integrationistdominated for the first time since the beginning of reform in 1986.
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U.S. ambassador to Hanoi during 2001–2004, Raymond Burghardt, recalled that in late 2003 Vietnamese leaders rapidly changed their mind and began talks with the United States on strategic issues that they had previously considered off-limits.15 Arguments based on balance-of-power theory explain this change by assuming Vietnam’s concern about the shift in the regional balance of power in favor of China as a result of China’s rise in influence in Southeast Asia and the United States’ mire in the Middle East following the war in Iraq. This was indeed the view of some officials in Hanoi who were thinking in power-balancing terms. However, from the perspective of the anti-imperialists, who had the upper hand at the top decision-making echelons in Hanoi, what haunted them after the U.S. invasion of Iraq was the fear that Vietnam would be among the next targets of U.S. invasion rather than the fear that the United States would be distracted in the Middle East and China would fill the power vacuum in Southeast Asia.16 Observers more familiar with Western thinking than Vietnamese thinking would find this ridiculous, but this feeling is indeed consistent with the mindset of Vietnam’s anti-imperialists, who are preoccupied with the threat of regime change coming from the West and consider China’s power as a security guarantee for the communist regime. The strategic impact of the U.S. invasion of Iraq on Vietnam is that it helped Vietnamese leaders to correct their estimate of the global balance of power. During the 1990s, both camps in the Vietnamese leadership believed that the world was heading toward multipolarity. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was the last in a series of events including the Kosovo War in 1999 and the Afghanistan War in 2001 that demonstrated the preponderance of U.S. power. In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, writers in the VCP theoretical journal recognized for the first time the reality of a unipolar world.17 The 2003 readjustment of Vietnam’s security strategy served both camps in the Vietnamese ruling elites. For the anti-imperialists, it removed the specter of regime change à la Iraq. For the integrationists, it removed the barrier to strategic cooperation with the United States and its allies. Either way, this sea change is a manifestation of Vietnam’s bandwagoning with the most powerful. The balancing act Vietnam is conducting between China and the United States is choreographed not by a single scheme but by the superposition of two competing grand strategies. From 1991 to 2003, because of the anti-imperialist dominance, the balance was tilted toward China and a position of equidistance for Vietnam between China and the United States was not possible. While the balances of Vietnam’s policies toward China and the United States reflect the balances of power between the two Vietnamese grand strategies, the latter reflect the local perspectives on the balances of power between the two great powers and the actual interests of the two great powers in Vietnam. The rise and fall of Vietnam’s two grand strategic camps were conditioned by the interplay of Chinese and U.S. policies toward Vietnam. Had the United
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States during 2003–2006 kept its relationship with Vietnam short of a strategic dimension, the integrationist achievements would have remained poor to modest, and the rise of the integrationists might have been muted. The lesson of the rise of the anti-imperialists during 1990–1991 is instructive in this regard. During 1990, both camps in the Vietnamese leadership actively sought normalization of relations and economic assistance—the anti-imperialists from China and the integrationists from the United States. Anti-imperialists like General Secretary Nguyen Van Linh and Defense Minister Le Duc Anh repeatedly sought contact with Chinese leaders, while the integrationist Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach stayed weeks in New York in the hopes of being invited to talk with U.S. leaders.18 Particularly, September and October 1990 proved pivotal in determining the course of Vietnam in the next decade. At the Chengdu summit on September 3-4, Chinese leaders raised the prospect of economic cooperation, aid, and normalization of relations and made these dependent on the settlement of the Cambodia conflict.19 As Vietnam’s leaders at the meeting readily accepted the Chinese peace package, the way was cleared for the restoration of ties between the former enemies. On September 5, the White House extended the economic embargo on Vietnam, known as the Trading with the Enemy Act. On September 29, Foreign Minister Thach, who was excluded from the Chengdu summit, held talks with Secretary of State James Baker in New York, who invited Thach on an official visit to Washington on October 17. However, Thach returned from Washington with empty hands. Only in April 1991 did the United States lay out a four-step “road map” to normalization with Vietnam. Like the Chinese offer, the U.S. road map was made dependent on a comprehensive solution of the Cambodia conflict. Although the road map made no mention of ideological issues such as human rights, democratization, and political reform, it made the POW/MIA issues a major hurdle to normalization. This indicated that America decided to stay one or several steps behind China in its normalization with Vietnam, and unlike China, it attached less a strategic value than a humanitarian dimension to the relationship. Had America accepted the integrationist proposals at the Thach-Baker meetings, had it normalized relations with Vietnam and lifted the economic embargo in early 1991, the integrationists would have outweighed the anti-imperialists at the Seventh Congress of the VCP, which was to be held in July 1991, and Vietnam’s history would have taken a radically different course than what did happen. From a grand strategic perspective, however, the two counterfactual scenarios mentioned above would hardly have been possible. In the early post – Cold War period, American grand strategy was to preserve U.S. unipolarity through a concert of great powers. This was the objective and the strategy in President Bush’s concept of a “new world order.” Trying to maintain its preponderance, America needed the consent and cooperation of other major powers. Seeing
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the Soviet Union in decline and China not as a threat, the United States attached no strategic value to Vietnam and was in no hurry to counter China’s increasing influence there. An implication for U.S. policy toward Vietnam would be not to lag too far behind China but not to make the latter a rival. This explains why America stayed behind China in normalizing its own ties with Vietnam during the early to mid-1990s. By the late 1990s, American grand strategy changed to preserving U.S. unipolarity through a system of “hub and spokes.” This change was a response to the ineffectiveness of multilateralism and the return of major power threats. In Asia, China’s rapidly growing power made it the potential competitor of the United States. An implication of this for U.S. foreign policy was that America should engage Vietnam in strategic issues and establish strategic ties with the country. Secretary of Defense William Cohen did attempt to move Vietnam in this direction during his visit to Hanoi in March 2000. Addressing Vietnam’s National Defense Academy on March 15, 2000, he stated, “One of the very important and beneficial aspects of ASEAN is that you have collective interests, and those collective interests can in fact, if you act in concert, give considerable leverage in dealing with China in the future on a peaceful and cooperative basis.”20 But the reference to ASEAN as a proxy gave the impression of declining rather than growing U.S. power. As Vietnam at that time still believed in the advent of a multipolar world, it would rather pursue a policy of close ties with China than one of balancing as Cohen tried to encourage it. Only the cumulative effects of U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 did help Vietnam get rid of its multipolar vision and readjust its foreign policy to a U.S.-dominated unipolar world. Vietnam’s current equidistance between China and the United States is also conditioned by Chinese strategy. Had China not pursued a strategy of engagement and instead applied an assertive policy toward Vietnam, the latter would lean further to the United States.21
Conclusions Conventional wisdom fails to provide a coherent account of the turning points in Sino-Vietnamese relations. In fact, there are several widely believed arguments that provide the conventional wisdom about the conclusion of two border pacts between China and Vietnam in 1999 and 2000 and Vietnam’s equidistance between China and the United States since 2005. These are the balance-of-power argument, the regime insecurity argument, the economic development argument, and the leader’s personality argument. At first glance, the balance-of-power argument seems to provide a plausible explanation for why Vietnam warmed up in its relations with the United States after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and managed to keep equidistance
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between China and the United States since 2005. However, this argument remains silent about why Vietnam had not reached equidistance before 2003. The U.S. overture toward Vietnam in security and strategic issues had already existed since the late 1990s, but until the latter half of 2003 Vietnam refused to take advantage of this. Indeed, from 1998 to 2003, Vietnam veered closer to China at the expense of its relations with America, as demonstrated by the postponement of the U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement during 1999–2001. Likewise, the regime insecurity argument, the economic development argument, and the leader’s personality argument also seem at first glance to provide plausible explanations for the settlement of territorial disputes between China and Vietnam. But the regime insecurity cannot account for why the two countries did not resolve their territorial disputes earlier in the decade when, in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square incident and the disintegration of the USSR, both communist regimes in China and Vietnam were much more unsecured than later, when both were harvesting the fruits of a decade of unparalleled economic growth. The economic development can account for why China and Vietnam badly need peace but cannot explain the timing and the terms of the border treaties. Finally, the leader’s factor is more consequential in the case of Nguyen Van Linh, who rehabilitated the old Vietnamese grand strategy of anti-imperialism in August 1989, than in the case of Le Kha Phieu, who approved Vietnam’s concessions leading to the two border accords of 1999 and 2000. This chapter has examined the developments leading up to two turning points in Sino-Vietnamese relations. Using process-tracing and counterfactual methods, I argue that the factor most responsible for these turning points is what can be called “grand strategic fit.” This fit among the actors’ grand strategies is in turn the result of a complex power shift that involves the protagonists and the actors’ perceptions of these shifts. Here, the actors are states, but one cannot assume that states are monolithic actors. A single state can be torn between two or more grand strategies, reflecting different perceptions of international power shifts. This dividedness may be amplified, not necessarily by great power tension, but by a complex interplay of great power attention that renders the competing elite grand strategies within a society complementary. How to manage Sino-Vietnamese relations and how to engineer turning points? Sino-Vietnamese relations operate within the confines of the grand strategies of China, Vietnam, and the United States. As the roles of Nguyen Van Linh and Le Kha Phieu show, there may be ample room for fine-tuning of the relationship, but turning points would not be possible without some transformation of grand strategy. In fact, Sino-Vietnamese relations are not driven by genuine concerns about the relationship between the two countries, but by the overall objectives and strategies of each country. This should not be surprising,
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for Sino-Vietnamese relations are too important to be left to remain at odds with the central strategy of each state. However, the simple, straightforward logic that similarity of grand strategies between two countries will lead to cooperation while difference will lead to conflict does not hold. Grand strategic fit does not mean mutual similarity of grand strategies. Vietnam’s antiimperialism is fundamentally different from China’s grand strategy, which is similar to Vietnam’s integrationism. But it is the anti-imperialists who are the ardent supporters of closer ties with China, whereas the integrationists prefer closer ties with the West, a policy similar to that pursued by China itself after 1978. Vietnam’s equidistance between China and the United States rests thus on highly complex and fragile grounds.
Notes 1. Alexander Vuving is Associate Professor, Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu, Hawaii, the United States. The author wishes to thank Tan See Seng, Tan Seng Chye, and Tang Shiping for their invaluable comments and criticisms. The views expressed in this chapter are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Asia-Pacific Center, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the U.S. Government. 2. These treaties represent a partial settlement of the entire border disputes between Vietnam and China, as the two countries still disagree over ownership of the Paracel and the Spratly Islands. For reasons of space, this chapter will focus on the land border treaty of 1999. 3. M. Taylor Fravel,“Regime Instability and International Cooperation: Explaining China’s Compromises in Territorial Disputes,” International Security, Vol. 30 No. 2 pp. 76-77 (Fall 2005). 4. Interview with Deputy Foreign Minister Le Cong Phung, VASC Orient, January 28, 2002. 5. “Mot so tu lieu ve dam phan bien gioi lanh tho Viet-Trung,” Thong tin Cong tac Tu tuong, November 1998, pp. 42-43. 6. Tran Quang Co, Hoi uc va Suy nghi, unpublished manuscript, Chapters 13 and 14. 7. Carlyle A. Thayer, “Sino-Vietnamese Relations: The Interplay of Ideology and National Interest,” Asian Survey, Vol. 34 No. 6 pp. 518-519, 521-523 (June 1994). 8. For details of this crisis, see Ang Cheng Guan, “Vietnam-China Relations Since the End of the Cold War,” Asian Survey, Vol. 38 No. 12 pp. 1131-1133 (December 1998). 9. U.S. unipolarity as an objective distribution of world power is to be distinguished from preserving U.S. unipolarity as an American grand strategy, which is America’s response to U.S. unipolarity. 10. Alexander L. Vuving, “The Two-Headed Grand Strategy: Vietnamese Foreign Policy Since Doi Moi,” paper presented at the conference “Vietnam Update: Strategic and Foreign Relations,” Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, November 28, 2004.
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11. Co, Hoi uc va Suy nghi, Chapters 9, 10, 14. 12. I use the term bandwagoning in accordance with the conventional usage, meaning joining the stronger coalition or the side that appears likely to win. This conventional sense was pointed out by Randall Schweller in his critique of Stephen Walt’s definition of bandwagoning as “giving in to threats.” However, Schweller made an unnecessary restriction by distinguishing between the two meanings, rather than subsuming Walt’s concept under the conventional sense. See Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” International Security, Vol. 19 No. 1 (Summer 1994), pp. 72-107. 13. Alexander L. Vuving, “Strategy and Evolution of Vietnam’s China Policy: A Changing Mixture of Pathways,” Asian Survey, Vol. 46 No. 6 pp. 815-818 (November 2006). 14. See Vo Van Kiet, “Dong gop y kien vao Bao cao tong ket ly luan va thuc tien 20 nam doi moi,” unpublished manuscript, 2005; Vo Van Kiet, “Vao WTO: Viet Nam bo lo mot nuoc co,” VietNamNet, January 4, 2006, http://www.vietnamnet.vn/chinhtri/ doingoai/2006/01/528944/. Kiet was Vietnam’s prime minister from 1991 to 1997. 15. Raymond Burghadt, “Old Enemies Become Friends: U.S. and Vietnam,” Brookings Northeast Asia Commentary, November 2006. 16. Author’s interviews with Vietnamese officials, Hanoi, April-September 2003. 17. See Quang Loi, “Bao luc cuong quyen” (Power politics violence), Tap chi Cong san, Vol. 49 No. 10 pp. 57-61 (April 2003); Tran Ba Khoa, “Chien tranh I-rac va hau qua doi voi quan he quoc te” (The Iraq war and its implications for international relations), Tap chi Cong san, Vol. 49 No. 20 pp. 55-58 (July 2003); Hoang Hoa, “Thach thuc cua vi tri sieu cuong My” (The challenge of U.S. superpower status), Tap chi Cong san, Vol. 49 No. 36 pp. 60-63 (December 2003). 18. Co, Hoi uc va Suy nghi; author’s interview with Thach’s advisor Vu Quang Viet, New York, July 2004. 19. Thayer, “Sino-Vietnamese Relations,” pp. 517-518; Co, Hoi uc va Suy nghi, Chapters 13, 14. 20. Quoted in Michael Richardson, “Asian Neighbors Urged to Join in Resolving Dispute with Beijing: U.S. Seeks Hanoi’s Aid for Accord in China Sea,” International Herald Tribune, March 15, 2000. 21. For China’s engagement strategy toward its neighboring countries, see Li Mingjiang’s chapter in this volume.
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Conclusion: Living with China, but Loving It? Amitav Acharya1
Introduction The broad purpose of the Living with China project is to ascertain how China’s neighbors have responded to its rise and what explains their response. But a particular and distinctive aim of this project is to examine these responses with the prism of crisis management. Such a focus is justified not only because, as the Introduction to the volume notes, it is a relatively understudied aspect of the burgeoning literature on China’s relations with its neighbors, but also because it helps us understand three things that the more general assessments of the relationship tend to obscure.2 First, no theory of international relations, including the most optimistic ones, claims that relations between or among nations could be free of crisis. For example, the concept of security communities, which posits the “unthinkability” of war among a group of states, only goes as far as to suggest that conflicts of interest among nations can be resolved peacefully, rather than be entirely avoided. Hence, the study of crisis and conflict of interest is a core element of any understanding of international order. Second, how nations respond to a crisis offers a crucial test of the difference between official rhetoric and the actual feelings about Chinese power (e.g., China as “threat” versus China as “opportunity”). Hence, India did not hesitate to call China a threat to India’s security in order to justify India’s nuclear tests in 1998. The crisis in China – South Korea relations over the historiography of the ancient Koguryo kingdom revealed the extent of misgivings that Koreans feel about China, which are obscured in the overly pious statements by their political leaders. Third, the modalities, habits, and practices of crisis and conflict management that develop among states often provide the most important building blocks for creating international order. The reshaping of Asian regional order by the rise of China constitutes no exception.
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In this concluding chapter, I take up the question of how China and its neighbors have responded to various crises that have tested their relationship over the past two decades.3 After presenting a brief overview of these crises, I discuss the lessons of these crises and their management by involved parties for China’s relationships with the region. I conclude with observations on what the crisis behavior of China and its neighbors says about their overall relationships. Are there any salient and common features to be found in the responses of China’s neighbors as they learn to live with the rise of Chinese power? The Asian states may be learning to live with a fast-rising China out of necessity or expediency, but are they really loving the experience? Before I proceed further, it is important to emphasize an obvious but important point: there has been no case of war or near-war situation involving China and a sovereign Asian neighbor (this excludes Taiwan and the United States, the latter relevant because of the crisis over the EP-3 surveillance plane incident in 2001)4 since the Sino-Vietnamese war and since Deng Xiaoping launched the reforms that set China inexorably on the path to great power status. The India-Pakistan Kargil conflict in 1998–1999 and the mobilization of forces by both sides in 2002 was the closest the region came to a war, but it did not involve China, although China was important to the management of the two crises. The closest the region has come to military conflict involving China was the Taiwan Straits crisis of 1986, where the other party was the United States rather than any of China’s Asian neighbors. The Mischief Reef incident of 1995 was perhaps another close call, but as Aileen Baviera in this volume points out, an outright confrontation over the dispute was highly unlikely, not the least because of subsequent Chinese restraint.
China and Regional States through Crises As the essays in this collection show, the types of crises involving China cover a wide range, which in itself attests to the breadth and complexity of China’s regional interactions. Some are crises that have occurred in a country’s bilateral relations with China, such as India invoking the China threat in conducting its nuclear tests, or the Mischief Reef incident between the Philippines and China, or the controversy over the Koguryo kingdom in South Korea – China relations. Others are crises that do not involve China as a direct party but are between two other nations, at least one of which has a substantial security relationship with China. The case of Pakistan fits this category. While Pakistan has not had a crisis with China, China was an important factor in Pakistan’s calculation (or miscalculation, as the chapter shows) of the stakes and dangers involved in its dealing with India over nuclear tests, Kargil, and the terrorist attacks on the Indian Parliament. Still others are regional contingencies that have little to do with
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China, and yet the Chinese response has been important to crisis management. The Asian financial crisis and the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 constitute examples of such crises.5 It is also important to note at the outset that Chinese policy has rarely been a direct cause of these crises. The only real exception may be the Koguryo case, in which the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s removal of Korea from its Web page along with the fact that the report implying Koguryo kingdom was a Chinese vassal was sponsored by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences—a government-funded outfit—sparked the controversy. It can be argued with some justification that the rise of China, rather than Chinese strategic behavior per se, was behind some of these crises, such as the Asian financial crisis (which was caused not by deliberate Chinese action, but by the economic pressures created by competition from China), and Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits (which can be partially explained by Koizumi’s misgivings about China’s rise at a time of Japan’s own economic stagnation). In other cases, the rise of China was only an incidental factor. The Philippines-China dispute over the Spratlys had little to do with the rise of China, and the Indian justification of its nuclear tests was mostly a self-serving rationalization, even though it had some roots in Indian anger over alleged Chinese assistance to Pakistan’s nuclear program. Excluding Taiwan and the United States, which are not studied in this book (although one may derive some insights about them from these case studies), the crises that have occurred in China’s relationship with its neighbors and which are analyzed in this volume fall into five categories: ●
●
●
● ●
Crises over territorial disputes (the Spratlys dispute between China and the Philippines) Crises over history and identity (China and Japan, China and South Korea) Violence against ethnic Chinese populations (Indonesia, although one could also add Malaysia) Crises over nuclear proliferation (India and Pakistan, North Korea) Transnational and nontraditional security issues (the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004; one might add the Sino-Russian dispute over migrants and energy security).
Although this list is not exhaustive, the items do tell us much about the perception of China in the region, as well as China’s regional influence and role, both as part of the problem and part of the solution to major issues of Asian security order. What follows is a brief analysis of each of the above categories with a view to ascertain the approach of China and the parties to the crisis.
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Territorial Disputes Perhaps the single most important trend in Chinese foreign policy in the reform era is its willingness to settle its land boundary disputes with its neighbors. It is the most concrete indication of how China links its domestic agenda with foreign policy. Few other areas provide a more convincing illustration of China’s policy of seeking a stable regional environment within which to pursue its economic development. What is striking here is that with the major exception of India, with which prolonged negotiations have yet to produce a decisive result although both sides are managing their boundary dispute with the help of confidencebuilding measures, China has sought border peace with its neighbors, large and small. Apparently, in dealing with Russia, China’s biggest neighbor, on border demarcation, China “did everything it could to smooth the way,” as Lukin’s chapter notes. China went the distance, even to the extent of being sensitive to Russian public opinion, offering important concessions, allowing Russia to keep some of the sensitive portions of the disputed land (such as the site of graves of Soviet soldiers believed to have been killed in the 1938 conflict with Japan), and even backing away from its unilateral claim to the Tumen River. The Sino-Russian border negotiations also formed the basis of the development of one of the most important examples of regional cooperation on the post – Cold War Eurasian landmass: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Beginning as a multilateral agreement on confidence-building measures (although it started as a bilateral project with the former Soviet Union and became multilateralized after the collapse of the Soviet Union), the SCO has become an important pillar of China’s regional strategy. China has also opted for land border peace with another former rival, Vietnam, with which it negotiated bilateral agreements in 1999 and 2000 on their land borders. What explains China’s emphasis on reaching land border agreements with its neighbors? Taylor Fravel believes that it was regime insecurity that largely explains China’s willingness to compromise (or, more specifically, offer concessions) when settling border disputes: concessions to neighbors on border issues is rational for a Chinese regime that is facing serious internal threats, since border peace generates border pacification and external stability.6 Challenging Taylor Fravel’s monocausal explanation focusing on regime security, Alexander Vuving’s “grand strategic fit” argument offers a more geopolitical view. Vuving argues that China’s willingness to come to terms on a border agreement with Vietnam was “aimed at keeping Vietnam near the Chinese orbit as Vietnam had attempted to veer toward the United States.” The two explanations need not be mutually exclusive. Moreover, the importance of a third factor cannot be ignored: settling land boundary disputes
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enabled China to devote more resources to the maritime domain, which was becoming increasingly important for a number of reasons. The Spratly Islands dispute in the South China Sea, involving China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei, has been a major source of tension between China and its neighbors in the post – Cold War era. But initial apprehension that it might become the major flash point in Southeast Asia has not materialized. The dispute has, however, provided the most serious crisis point in China’s relations with the Philippines, especially in the form of the Mischief Reef incident in 1995. In examining Chinese handling of this crisis, Aileen Baviera argues that while China acted with restraint in defusing the crisis, this restraint had its limits: China’s restraint owed to a certain extent to a desire not to become a “target” of the U.S.-Philippines alliance. Despite the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea—which is not legally binding—the South China Sea remains a potential source of tension between China and ASEAN, even though other, more pressing issues such as Taiwan and the need for harmony with ASEAN might have led Beijing to put the conflict onto the back burner. (For ASEAN, the impact of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and intra-ASEAN differences might have led to a less confrontational stance.) It is certainly significant that China has been less accommodating in handling its maritime disputes than in settling its land boundary issues (with the notable exception of India). Aside from the Philippines, China’s reluctance to compromise over its maritime claims has also been noticeable in its relations with Vietnam (in the South China Sea) and Japan (Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands). This fact has several possible explanations. For China’s increasingly trade-dependent economy, the potential for undersea resources to satisfy its growing hunger for energy and other natural resources must be an important consideration. And then there is the perceived possibility that the United States, the dominant maritime power, might seek to impose a containment policy on China viewed as a “peer competitor.” As such, maritime waterways that may be controlled from the islands under dispute are of far greater strategic significance to China (and to the other regional actors as well as the United States). Another reason is China’s earlier reluctance to embrace the Law of the Sea as the basis for settling maritime disputes, because it will undermine the salience of its claims that are mostly made on a historical basis. All these factors make China less willing to compromise regarding maritime disputes. Finally, China has in the past insisted that confidence-building measures (CBMs) that work in the geopolitical landmass do not necessarily apply to the maritime domain. Hence, China was willing to apply the lessons of the CSCE/OSCE approach to CBMs, which basically covered the continental European theater in the Eurasian landmass, but saw little relevance of the same multilateral model for what it considered to be the predominantly maritime
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region of the Asia-Pacific. Hence, it has opposed adopting CSCE/OSCE-style CBMs for the ASEAN Regional Forum and other Asian regional multilateral institutions.
History and Identity Crises The two cases of history and identity crises that have received attention in this volume are one between China and Japan and one between China and South Korea. The first of these is certainly severe and far reaching, while the latter is somewhat unexpected. The history factor in the crisis in Sino-Japanese relations must be kept in perspective, as the essay by Haruko Satoh argues. To a very large extent, history only became a recurrent issue in Sino-Japanese relations after Japanese leaders—especially then prime minister Koizumi—repeatedly visited the Yasukuni Shrine, thereby inviting Chinese criticisms. Koizumi’s move also reminded Japan’s neighbors of its wartime role and spurred regional misgivings about Japan. Koizumi’s visit to the Yasukuni shrine was driven partially by his personal convictions and partially by Japanese domestic politics. One can also argue that his move (and the movement he and Shinzo Abe represented) reflects Japan’s desire to become a “normal state” while China is rising. In a way, the real history issue shaping Japan’s response to the rise of China might have been Japan’s history with America, rather than China. It was Japan’s desire to be a “normal state”—to step out of the shadows of a subordinate status that it had embraced in defeat in the hands of the United States—that has predisposed Japan to fear China’s rise and respond with a nationalistic stand symbolized by Yasukuni visits. This response was also due to another point of history: the fact that Japan did not have to deal with China as an equal for quite some historical time has come to an end. In sharp contrast to the crisis in Sino-Japanese relations, the crisis between South Korea and China was provoked by China, not the Chinese state but statesanctioned history projects that presented the Koguryo kingdom—which Koreans consider the ancestors of their nation—as part of China’s history. Hence, the crisis was viewed by some in Korea as evidence of China pursuing a Sinocentric geopolitics. This perspective reinforces the arguments of those who see the rise of China as returning East Asia to the classical Chinese world order, although disputes remains as to whether this order was ever a benign one and whether it will be accepted as such by China’s neighbors. Strikingly, Chung argues that it was South Korea, rather than China, that was instrumental in diffusing the Koguryo crisis. We need more evidence to support his view and I am sure there could be disagreements over it.
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If correct, however, then China’s behavior in this case contradicts its behavior in other cases where Beijing’s restraint was more important in lowering tensions and producing agreement (see below). Chung further suggests that Beijing might have deliberately kept the Koguryo issue alive or at least did not do enough to put an end to it for good. Does this suggest limits to Beijing’s selfrestraint and willingness to offer concessions to neighbors to mitigate their fears of China’s rise? It surely tells us that Beijing is not always willing (or able) to diffuse tensions with its neighbors, especially when history is at stake. The basis for this supposition is stronger when one also looks at the Spratlys conflict (where Chinese claims are based on history, rather than the Law of the Sea) and the dispute with India over the Tibetan border (where China’s claim to Tibet as a whole is also based in history). Thus, one can argue that China may have good reasons to keep some particular history issues alive. Is China the world’s first history superpower then? Will history and identity trump expediency and tactics as determinants of its crisis behavior? Since history and identity are closely linked with domestic politics and nationalism, both crucial to the legitimacy of the Communist Party’s rule, this is not a far-fetched view. Further research is needed before one can offer definitive answers to the question, but it is an important one for students of Asia to ponder.
Crisis Over Ethnic Chinese Populations Anti-Chinese riots are hardly a novel issue in China’s relations with its neighbors to the south. In Southeast Asia, the “overseas Chinese” have been the victims of choice, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia. The most recent and one of the most brutal outbreaks of this kind of riot occurred in Indonesia, in the wake of the mass uprising that toppled the Suharto regime. Rizal Sukma’s analysis shows that China’s official reaction to this crisis was more muted (even though it allowed demonstrations by Chinese students in front of the Indonesian embassy in Beijing) than that of the international community, a striking fact in itself. Sukma explains China’s stance in terms of political calculations: “Beijing seemed to understand the sensitive nature of the problem in its relations with Indonesia and took great care not to risk a serious diplomatic blunder.” When the Chinese government finally expressed concern after two long months of both public and private silence and called on the Indonesian authorities to investigate the atrocities committed against the ethnic Chinese, it took great care not to rock the diplomatic boat by avoiding being harsh and demanding. China stressed that it regards the matter as Indonesia’s domestic affair, as expressed by China’s ambassador to Indonesia: “The Chinese government must not act as if it could be the chef in somebody else’s kitchen.” Moreover, China continued its assistance to Jakarta to mitigate the impact of
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the economic crisis that had caused the Indonesian revolution and riots in the first place. Sukma points to a similar “maturity” on the part of the Indonesian government. Jakarta did not take offense to the official Chinese expression of concern over the riots, nor did it offer any specific response to Beijing about them. Jakarta’s restraint was a reaction to China’s own view of the riots as Indonesia’s internal affair and Beijing’s decision not to use the ethnic Chinese card, as well as Beijing’s continuation of aid to Indonesia. What is the lesson here? One is that restraint begets restraint in crisis management involving China (although this is also a generally valid proposition about crisis management in particular). But a more important lesson may be that China can take a certain degree of domestic risk in order to preserve regional stability. Things might have been different if the pressure on the Chinese government from student protests in front of the Indonesian embassy had gone wilder. Certainly, given the extreme brutality of the anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia, Beijing was taking significant political risk by appearing to do nothing, even if one accepts that the Chinese government has the ability to control and manipulate “popular” demonstrations against foreigners for political ends, as demonstrations against Japan and the United States seem to suggest.7 But were there other motives behind this apparently “muted” response by Beijing to the anti-Chinese riots? We need more evidence, but one thing appears important. How could China make a big fuss over an incident that occurred within Indonesia’s territory and was sparked by events that were entirely linked to Indonesia’s domestic politics when Beijing itself so vigorously champions sovereignty and noninterference in the internal affairs of states in their narrowest possible sense?
Crises Over Nuclear Proliferation Few events have posed a more severe challenge to security in post – Cold War Asia than the nuclearization of the India-Pakistan rivalry and the Korean Peninsula. These two cases constitute a distinctive category of crises in China’s relations with its neighbors for three reasons. First, in neither case is China a direct party to the conflict or crisis. Second, in both cases China is a significant provider of aid to one of the parties. Third, and closely related to the above, these crises have created opportunities for China to behave as a “third party” mediator, a crucial yardstick of international influence and, indeed, great power status. In the case of the India-Pakistan crisis, China might have played a vital role in diffusing the crisis, contrary to popular perception that China might have been a direct or indirect culprit in provoking the crisis. What emerges from the chapters by Singh (on India) and Fazal (on Pakistan) is perhaps one of the
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most significant shifts in Chinese regional diplomacy and strategy: its refusal to take sides in the Kashmir conflict that was the basis of the Kargil crisis, while pursuing a policy of what Fazal terms “active neutrality” that complemented the efforts of the United States. What makes this neutrality even more striking is that it came after the 1998 nuclear testing by India, when New Delhi had provoked Beijing by justifying its tests as a response to the “threat” posed by China. Beijing not only tolerated this insinuation but went on to refuse Pakistan its desperately needed partisan support as it faced down one of the largest mobilizations of troops in Asia in recent history. China’s responses to India’s Pokhran nuclear tests and the Indo-Pakistani conflict over Kargil have been dramatically different: belligerent in the first case and restrained and positive (from the Indian point of view), in the second. Why? In the Pokhran case, China was directly implicated by India as a threat, even though China had not challenged India’s right to acquire nuclear weapons. In the Kargil case, China was not directly blamed. This leads to an interesting proposition: China will exercise restraint in a crisis if it is not directly blamed for it or if China’s own prestige and influence is not at stake. China’s limited international influence might have been another reason for Beijing’s muting of hostility to India’s nuclear tests. Moreover, the Indian nuclear tests, no matter how provocative, were not a real threat to China, at least in the short term. As such, there was no need for China to hold on to its harsh criticism of India’s nuclear ambitions for too long. What explains China’s stance on Kargil? Fear of Indian retaliation could not have been the cause because India lacks the means to pose any real military threat to China. Fear of moving India closer to the United States sounds more credible, but this too is a bit of stretching, since India’s ties with the United States could not go beyond a certain point due to domestic politics in India itself, as Beijing would have realized. Economic relations between India and China have grown considerably but not to the point where they would call for such radical restraint. Perhaps it was another evidence of China’s new diplomacy of restraint, motivated by the desire to create a peaceful regional environment that minimizes distractions to its fundamental task of building up its economy. But if this is the case, what explains China’s relatively less compromising stance on the border demarcation with India, which continues to be a source of friction and tension? Alternatively, China’s behavior might have been motivated by a combination of China’s desire for a peaceful environment and a desire to act as a responsible and constructive regional power broker: the hallmark of true great-power status. Here too, we need more research as to Chinese motivations from internal Chinese decision-making sources. Here, it may be instructive to compare China’s response to the South Asian nuclear crisis with its response to the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula
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(which was unfortunately left out by Chung in this volume), if merely to highlight the varied roles that Beijing can play in regional crisis management. Beijing’s actions had a moderating impact but were much more direct in the Korean Peninsula crisisthan in the India-Pakistan crisis, in which its involvement was largely indirect and carried out in the form of its own unilateral gestures and action (i.e., “active neutrality”). In Korea, China found itself drawn somewhat reluctantly into a multilateral game by the United States, whereas the channels of communication and interaction in South Asia were strictly bilateral and triangular. China certainly did not deploy much of its leverage with either India or Pakistan (which would be limited anyway) because neither country is dependent on Chinese aid to the extent Pyongyang is, a fact that must be borne in mind no matter how defiant of Chinese pressure Pyongyang might appear to be (and how strenuous Chinese pleadings about its lack of influence with Pyongyang might seem). While the extent to which China’s pressure played a part in the eventual backing down by Pyongyang from its nuclear ambition remains unclear, several things are clear. First, China also drew the line on regime change in Pyongyang (which was not an issue in South Asia), because such policy is unacceptable for Beijing, mostly due to its noninterference policy in other countries’ domestic affairs and its consequent contempt for the Bush doctrine. Second, China might have calculated that doing nothing meant compromising its opportunity to demonstrate responsibility as a regional power. As such, when Washington was ready to switch strategy toward Pyongyang away from regime change to engagement (albeit through the multilateral six-party talks), Beijing and Washington could then happily work together. Differences aside, there are important similarities between the two cases. In both cases, Beijing was expected (chiefly by the United States) to rein in long-standing allies: Pakistan from backing cross-border terrorism against India and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons that would threaten South Korea, Japan, and the United States itself. In both cases, China’s interest and the interest of the United States converged, even though they fell short of the metaphor of a Sino-U.S. condominium. The relative importance of these factors needs further study, as it would tell us much about China’s role as a regional mediator and peacemaker as an inevitable component of its new diplomacy and self-professed peaceful rise.
Transnational Crises Over Nontraditional Security Issues If we put regional perceptions of China’s crisis behavior on a spectrum from most positive to least, the set of issues that might be regarded as transnational crises must rank at the very top of the positive end. Few issues have helped
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more to raise China’s regional image and give a more vivid sense of China as part of the solution to Asia’s challenges than the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, which have been studied in this volume, as well as the SARS epidemic, which has been left out. Although China was partly the cause of the Asian financial meltdown of 1997, it had most to gain politically from its refusal to devalue its currency, which might have considerably worsened the impact of the crisis. China certainly exercised economic restraint during the crisis, although the cost of China’s restraint for its economy has not been adequately documented. China’s response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami is a different matter. The crisis had nothing to do with China (unlike the SARS crisis; SARS originated in China and Chinese secrecy was a major cause of the rapid spread of the virus). The financial burden of providing relief was insignificant considering China’s growing economy. Although Beijing was not the most important provider of relief—that distinction goes to Japan (spurred in part by its rivalry with China), and the United States, Australia, Singapore, and India all contributed crucial or important effort—China’s aid for the Tsunami-devastated countries did help China to further consolidate its growing reputation and “soft power” in the region. Most evidently, China further mitigated the public’s and the elite’s negative perceptions of China in Indonesia, the worst victim of the disaster. An interesting unintended consequence of states’ reaction to these crises has been the increasing role of multilateral forums to organize regional collective responses. The 1997 financial crisis spurred the ASEAN ⫹ 3 (APT) group, which became the first regional institution to undertake regional financial cooperation. Later, the APT formed the basis of the East Asian Summit and the East Asian Community idea, in which China has played a central role. The Tsunami led to the organization of multilateral response such as a regional early warning system. Moreover, organizing collective responses to natural disasters has formed an important part of the agenda of the EAS. This in itself is important to China’s strategy of living with its neighbors. Ironically, however, China’s active support—perhaps too active for some countries—in these “East Asian” forums has stoked suspicions and misgivings among some if its neighbors, resulting in the invitation to Australia, New Zealand, and India to participate in the EAS. This is still another of those unintended (and thus unpredictable) consequences.
The Patterns of Living with China The essays in the volume, and the preceding discussion in this concluding chapter, permit several conclusions pertaining to China’s relationships with its neighbors. While the overview chapter by Li Mingjiang has offered a wealth of
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insights into what shapes China’s approach to the region from Beijing’s vantage point, the observations here capture some of the most important reasons from China’s neighbors for their growing comfort level with China, although the limits of this comfort are also identified and recognized. How are China’s neighbors coping with its rising power? There is little evidence of a common regional strategy of living with China or dealing with crises involving China. But this is only to be expected, in a region as vast and diverse as Asia. Even subregional commonalities are difficult to discern. While ASEAN speaks of engagement of China as its preferred common approach, looking at relations at the bilateral level and focusing on crises allows us to discern important variations even among the ASEAN members, with Malaysia and the Philippines occupying two ends of the spectrum among the countries studied. In general, though, the attitude of Southeast Asian states toward China has undergone profound changes, with one of the most dramatic improvements having taken place in Indonesia’s attitude toward China. Indeed, it is difficult to discern the kind of division within ASEAN that once marked its attitude toward Vietnam following the communist takeover there, when Malaysia and Indonesia preferred engagement while Thailand and Singapore advocated confrontation. No such stark divisions mark ASEAN’s current policy toward China. Much of the reason for this has to do with the perceived economic opportunities afforded by China’s rise, even though the same rise has posed significant economic challenges to China’s less-developed ASEAN neighbors, as Liang Ruobing’s chapter testifies. Regional states have pragmatically accepted China’s rise as a fact of life that cannot be stopped and thus hope that the benefits of economic and political engagement will outweigh its risks and dangers. This perception drives the policies of almost all of China’s neighbors, large or small, irrespective of subregions, whether South Korea, India, or Indonesia. But other factors have moved them toward a more favorable view of China’s rise. Three are especially important. First, the availability of multilateral forums for dealing with China has helped. While critics of multilateralism dismiss regional institutions as talk shops, what they fail to realize is that these regional institutions have contributed to an enhanced sense of confidence among the region’s weaker states in dealing with a giant and rising neighbor. This is, after all, a principal function of regional multilateralism, an important benefit of which, as its proponents have argued, is to give small and weak states a voice and a clout that they cannot muster through their own devices. The chapter on the PLA by Colonel Qi, an active PLA officer, offers valuable insights that clearly demonstrate the importance of multilateralism in inducing China’s changing regional security strategy. As he points out, the PLA’s thinking on regional security has been influenced by norms of common and cooperative
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security, espoused by groups like the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), to which the PLA “attaches great importance” “Today, the PLA is an integral part of China’s participation in multilateral regional cooperation.” This has led to policy shifts, especially the acceptance by the PLA of the need for confidence-building measures. In sum, multilateral institutions have provided a conducive environment for Asia’s “Living with China”—a situation in which weaker and smaller powers learn to live with the inevitable rise of a neighboring power, when that power has benefits to offer, provided it is willing to play by the rules developed by the weaker states (often through regional institutions). At the same time, multilateral institutions have also offered China the opportunity to exercize its role as a regional leader and move cautiously beyond Deng Xiaoping’s “China should not lead” policy, as is evident in Beijing’s proactive posture on military cooperation through the development of the ARF’s strategic policy dialogue initiative. This willingness of China’s neighbors to constructively engage China constitutes a powerful “pulling factor” for China to return the favor by engaging its neighbors in a constructive way, as Li Mingjiang forcefully argues.8 A second contributing factor may be the growing dissatisfaction with U.S. policies, especially its unilateralism and conduct of its war on terror under Bush. This anti-Americanism is to be found especially among the Muslimmajority nations of Southeast Asia such as Malaysia and Indonesia, where anti-Americanism has been on the rise since the United States launched its war on terror. Of course, anti-Americanism at the grassroots level does not translate into official policies, and the United States continues to enjoy good relations with most of China’s neighbors even though popular perceptions of America in these countries have turned negative. Moreover, antiAmericanism even at the popular level could be a temporary phenomenon that will play itself out once the Bush administration leaves office. Yet there can be little doubt that the lurking anti-Americanism has provided some space for China’s charm offensive to flourish, although we are not sure whether Beijing has purposefully conceived its “charm offensive” to this end and adeptly exploited America’s distraction and the growing anti-Americanism in some parts of the region to give further expression to a policy that had its real origins in its “developing a peaceful neighborhood” policy to sustain ins economic growth. But the third and most important factor behind the favorable attitude of China’s neighbors toward its rise is the approach and policies adopted by China itself. Few Asian nations buy into all the official rhetoric from Beijing about its “new security policy” or the doctrine of its “peaceful rise.” What they have looked at, however, is the practice of Chinese regional diplomacy: the
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policies that China has actually pursued. And it is here that crises and crisis management practices assume particular importance. At the core of China’s practices in crisis management is self-restraint, often unilateral restraint in dealing with neighbors by avoiding provocations and accepting sacrifices. Whether in responding to India’s labeling of it as a threat to justify its nuclear tests, the anti-Chinese riots in Indonesia, or periodic skirmishes with the naval forces of the Philippines, China has avoided provocations. The story of the improving Sino-Russian relationship as examined by Alexander Lukin, including the settlement of their border dispute, crises over Chinese migration to Russia, and energy issues shows that China can be considerably flexible in offsetting Russia’s muddled decision-making processes. An exception may be Vietnam, where the settlement of the bilateral border dispute was less due to Chinese restraint than to exploiting a window of opportunity for strategic gain. As Vuving’s analysis notes: “China was more assertive than Vietnam in making its claims and it did exploit this asymmetry of desires not to strengthen the Hanoi regime but to minimize its own concessions.” Moreover, China’s willingness to come to terms on a border agreement with Vietnam was “aimed at keeping Vietnam near the Chinese orbit as Vietnam had attempted to veer toward the United States.” Nonetheless, the restraint we have seen in many cases of regional crisis is mostly China driven. In almost all cases, Chinese policy played a critical role in diffusing tensions and deescalating the crisis. The outcome has thus been shaped by China to a considerable extent. There is an overwhelming picture of China offering concessions, leading many to view China’s diplomacy as “mature” and a force for stability for the region. Moreover, China has emerged as a provider of regional collective goods, especially at times of a regional crisis. Prominent examples include its crisistime policy of not devaluing its currency to prevent a further deterioration of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, its contribution of aid to the Tsunami-affected countries, and its willingness to cooperate with its neighbors in combating SARS after the initially disastrous policy of maintaining secrecy. These crisis management practices would perhaps matter less had they not come at the backdrop of other policies where China is seen as the provider, or likely provider, of regional public goods. The free trade deal with ASEAN is one such example, reinforcing China’s role as a regional integrator by being the hub of East Asia’s new transnational production networks. China’s success in reaching land boundary agreements with all but one of its neighbors, its willingness to set aside the issue of sovereignty and agree to the terms of a code of conduct on the South China Sea, and its acceptance of demands to include non – East Asian countries in the East Asian Summit have created the impression that China is not only willing to be engaged by its neighbors according to their rules, but it has moved toward the posture of engaging its neighbors.
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Toward an Explanation of the Pattern The case studies in the volume also suggest the differing impact of the various factors at play in shaping China’s relationship with its neighbours. International relations theory may have a hard time explaining the various patterns of regional states’ living with China. The theme that emerges from this book certainly suggests that Asia is not yet “ripe for rivalry.” But neither is it heading inexorably toward Sino-centrism. What we see is a general regionwide desire to live with China and its rise by being watchful, benefiting from it whenever possible, responding favorably to China’s positive overtures, and developing proactive approaches to engage it both bilaterally and through regional institutions. Realist formulations, such as balancing, bandwagoning, or hedging, are not helpful in describing this complex and multifaceted range and combination of responses because they are too imprecise as measuring devices. But what emerges unmistakably from this volume is little evidence of bandwagoning of the kind that might presage the construction of a Sino-centric Asian security order.9 Living with China does not mean accepting Chinese suzerainty, even the most ritualistic or informal variety. Historical parallels and cultural constructs, the staple of one variety of constructivism, are of limited use in conceptualizing and explaining the contemporary urge in Asia for living with China. The pattern of Chinese self-restraint seen from its crisis management behavior fits better into some of the liberal-constructivist formulations about institutional self-binding, although its most famous expression, by John Ikenberry, needs to be seriously qualified. In Ikenberry’s account, self-binding does not occur during hegemonic ascendancy (which applies to China), but only “after victory” (which does not). Moreover, the hegemon is supposed to initiate the binding process and dictate its terms (hence “self-binding”). In the case of China, before it saw merit in actively engaging its neighbors, it was the neighbours that saw merit in binding China while eschewing bandwagoning. ASEAN deserves much credit for it, and it is from the ASEAN experience that we may find the formula that might create the most favorable conditions for living with China. Indonesia under Suharto reversed its predecessor’s attitude of indifference (or contempt?) for developing subregional cooperation, preferring instead a policy of confrontation. Suharto’s central role in regional cooperation lay in the belief that if Indonesia could show restraint toward its neighbors, the latter would reciprocate by recognizing Jakarta’s role as the primus inter pares of Southeast Asian diplomacy. In short, reform-minded Indonesia allowed itself to be placed within a “golden cage,” breaking out of which would have been possible only at significant economic and political cost. This bargain lay at the heart of ASEAN’s progress, in marked contrast to India’s role in South Asia
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or Egypt’s in the Middle East. Is the Chinese dragon now moving itself gradually into a “golden cage”? We need more time and evidence to confirm this possibility. But this volume offers a wealth of evidence that this is not an entirely unlikely scenario. Of course, China is much more powerful, both in absolute and relative terms, than Suharto’s Indonesia. But if China’s superior material resources can be turned into regional public goods, it will temper the negative implications of the huge disparities between China and its neighbors.
U.S.-China Relations in Regional States’ Calculus No discussion of interaction between China and regional states will be possible without taking the all-too-important U.S.-China relationship into account. Not surprisingly, while the editors allowed great freedom for the contributors to forge their stories and explanations, all the contributors discuss the role of the United States and U.S.-China relationship in their countries’ living with China. This is apparent not only for countries that have been U.S. allies or opponents, but also for countries that have been less embroiled with the United States (e.g., Malaysia). A surprising theme emerges. Contrary to the often simplistic lens of calculating relative gains and losses in Washington and Beijing, regional states are fairly content with the ever-changing status quo. In other words, most regional states are not really too concerned with the U.S.-centric debate on its relative “losing/winning” calculation versus China, as long as the United States does not lose much and China does not gain that much. From regional states’ perspectives, perhaps the United States (and to a lesser extent, China) have been too concerned with gauging the relative gain or loss. Most regional states are happy as long as the United States and China get along decently. For regional states, the worst outcome is not whether one side loses some whereas the other side gains some, but rather that the two states have an irreparable rupture in their relationships, due to fear (of each other), greed, or both. At the same time, however, it is apparent that regional states have been adroit in pitting the two great powers against each other to profit themselves, by exacerbating the two giants’ fear and anxiety toward each other (within a tolerable degree, of course). This is especially obvious in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, and, to a lesser extent, Thailand and Malaysia. Of course, this is hardly surprising. Since ancient times, smaller states have honed their skills in living off the “benign” competition between greater powers.10 As such, much of Washington’s anxiety about the rise of China in Asia might have unintentionally served the purposes of some regional states, in addition to the partisan interests in maintaining a robust military industrial complex back in America.11 At the same time, much of Beijing’s anxiety that
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America is encircling China also inevitably increases the bargaining leverage of regional states over China. Regional states, however, have also been very careful to avoid fanning the competition between the two giants too much, in case the competition really gets out of hand. They have been careful in showing goodwill to both the United States and China, without appearing to bandwagon with one against the other. Moreover, they have been adamant that they are not interested in forming a tight alliance with one against the other. The status quo in which the two giants compete for regional states’ cooperation to hedge against each other suits regional states the best. In the end, while I may not concur with Robert Sutter’s much less optimistic assessment about China’s rise in Asia, I tend to agree with his policy prescriptions for Washington (and Beijing). Most regional states would like to see some competition between Washington and Beijing, but they do not welcome hot competition that can get out of hand.12 As such, both Washington and Beijing should refrain from engaging in tit-for-tat competition with each other. Such competition is counterproductive to their interests, as China has learned from its brief flirtation with a policy of denouncing the U.S.-centric alliance system in Asia.
Final Thoughts The gains of Chinese diplomacy resulting from its crisis management practices are not without challenges. While they have gone a long way in dissipating the perception of China as a threat to the region, they have not entirely overcome misgivings about its long-term intentions. The case of the Philippines over the Spratlys, and Korea over Koguryo, are but two reminders of this. China’s defense ties in the region are growing, but they suggest not bandwagoning with China but confidence building, indicating lingering suspicions of China’s strategic intentions that need to be overcome. Colonel Qi’s chapter points to several potential hurdles that must be overcome if China is to develop a deep and lasting accommodation with its neighbors, and he suggests room for improvement: “The PLA should make its modernization and strategic doctrines more transparent.” Another potential obstacle may be noted. China’s new diplomacy, especially its tendency to make concessions to other parties, is occurring at a time when its prosperity is growing, but will China continue to do so when it experiences an economic downturn? The Chinese concessions are not part of any grand design, but simply pragmatic. The government has found it easier to sell them to the Chinese public because it promises even higher levels of prosperity. But can it do so when the chips are down?
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Moreover, can China pursue seemingly contradictory strategies in its regional diplomacy, such as its South Asia policy that is described by Rahman as “good working relations with India and continuing expansion of strategic relations with Pakistan”? Can China maintain good relations with all South Asian countries while its core issues with India—the boundary dispute— remain unresolved? Can South Korea pursue full-scale engagement with China while maintaining its alliance with the United States, especially when its history quarrel with China remains in “hibernation” rather than resolved once and for all? The same can be said about many other conflicts involving China and its neighbors: the Spratlys, the ethnic Chinese issues with Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Yasukuni and history issues with Japan. Are China’s neighbors, encouraged by China’s own policy of “setting aside” the sovereignty question while pursuing joint development of resources in disputed areas, simply pursuing the ASEAN Way of “sweeping under the carpet” conflicts that may one day come back to haunt them? Will the dragon rip apart its golden cage once it has reached a certain level of economic development and military power, as many realists suspect or even confidently predict? Many though not all of the restraints adopted by China are crisis specific rather than formalized through legal institutions, which Asia’s regional groups have generally avoided (although this may be changing now). Breaking out of them will be costly, but not costly enough to be entirely implausible. Finally, some of China’s neighbors may be pursuing contradictory strategies. Can Pakistan develop strategic relations with the United States while maintaining close ties with China? Can India live up to its rhetoric that its relations with the United States will not come at the expense of China? Can South Korea be both an ally of the United States and a partner of China? Can Japan really reconcile with China while remaining a crucial ally of the United States in Asia? What challenges do these contradictory strategies pose for China’s regional presence? In sum, there is little question that China’s neighbors are learning, and already have learned, to live with a rising and restrained China. What is less clear is whether they are loving the experience as well. Both sides are certainly deriving major benefits from their closer relationship. But too many worries and suspicions remain to make this relationship a case of true and lasting love.
Notes 1. Amitav Acharya is Professor of International Relations at American University in Washington DC. He was Director of the Center for Global Governance Studies, University of Bristol, United Kingdom. He thanks Tang Shiping and Li Mingjiang for their comments on an earlier draft.
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2. It is worth noting here that many crises examined in this volume may or may not have anything to do with China’s rise per se. In some cases, the rise of China has been the source of some of these issues. But in other cases, tensions and crisislike situations have arisen over long-term problems that predate the “rise of China” but might have been aggravated by it. 3. Thus, I do not extensively deal with the chapters that do not examine crises (e.g., chapters by Li, Qi, and Lukin), although I do mention them when discussing crises and crisis management. 4. The Taiwan case is sui generis. It can be argued—with some justification—that Chinese crisis behavior in a Taiwan crisis is not reflective of its crisis behavior involving its Asian neighbors, because China considers Taiwan an internal issue. While other regional states (e.g., Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and possibly Singapore) may be drawn into a Taiwan crisis by supporting the United States—which is most likely to be involved, thereby provoking Chinese retaliation—will China regard their support for the United States as an act of war? I would hold that Chinese behavior will depend on the circumstances of the crisis and the level of their support for the United States. But leaving aside crises involving Taiwan and the United States, there is still much in China’s relationship with its Asian neighbors that will shape regional order in Asia and is worth systematic investigation, hence the rationale for this volume. 5. The Asian financial crisis in 1997 did, however, have its origins in the vulnerability of Southeast Asian economies to the Chinese economic juggernaut, with a previous devaluation of the Chinese currency in 1994 serving as an indirect trigger. 6. M. Taylor Fravel, “Regime Insecurity and International Cooperation: Explaining China’s Compromises in Territorial Disputes,” International Security, Vol. 30 No. 2 pp. 46-83 (Fall 2005). 7. On the limits of the government’s ability to control public anger, see Peter H. Gries, “Tears of Rage: Chinese Nationalist Reactions to the Belgrade Embassy Bombing,” The China Journal, No. 46 pp. 25-43 (July, 2001). 8. It is worth pointing out that the norms of Asian regionalism, such as noninterference, fit well into China’s regime-survival strategy. China’s domestic authoritarianism poses no obstacles to good relations within a neighborhood where many nations tolerate or even prefer authoritarianism to liberal democracy. At the same time, the equality of states, part of China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence, reassures China’s lesser neighbors. 9. I use the term “bandwagoning” in the conventional usage, meaning joining the stronger coalition or the side that appears likely to win. This conventional sense was pointed out by Randall Schweller in his critique of Stephen Walt’s definition of bandwagoning as “giving in to threats.” However, Schweller made an unnecessary restriction by distinguishing between the two meanings, rather than subsuming Walt’s concept. See Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliance, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987; Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” International Security, Vol. 19 No. 1 pp. 72-107 (Summer 1994).
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10. Indeed, not so long ago, when China and Taiwan threw their money around and away to compete for diplomatic recognition, some of the small Pacific Island states and South American and African states have had some really easy time in working out their annual budget. 11. Cries on the relative loss of American influence have been too numerous. See, for example, Jason T. Shaplen and James Laney, “Washington’s Eastern Sunset; The Decline of U.S. Power in Northeast Asia,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86 No. 6 pp. 82-97 (November/December, 2007); Victor Cha,“Winning Asia,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86 No. 6 pp. 98-113 (November/December, 2007); Joseph Nye Jr., “The Rise of China’s Soft Power,” Wall Street Journal Asia (December 29, 2005). 12. Robert Sutter, China’s Rise: Implications for U.S. Leadership in Asia. Policy Studies 21, Washington: East-West Center Washington, 2006, available at http://www. eastwestcenter.org/fileadmin/stored/pdfs//PS021.pdf.
About the Contributors
Amitav Acharya is Professor of International Relations School of International Service, American University, Washington, D.C., U.S. Aileen San Pablo – Baviera is Professor and Dean of the Asian Studies Center at the University of the Philippines. Jae Ho Chung is Professor of political science at Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. Mingjiang Li is Assistant Professor at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Ruobing Liang is Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China. Joseph Liow is Associate Professor and Head of Research, Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies (IDSS), at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Alexander Lukin is Professor and Director of East Asia and SCO Studies, the Moscow State Institute for Foreign Affairs, Moscow, Russia. Mohamed Nawab Mohamed Osman is Research Associate at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Dapeng Qi is Colonel and Senior Fellow, Institute for Strategic Studies, National Defense University of the People’s Liberation Army, Beijing, China. Fazal-ur-Rahman is Director of East Asia at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad, Pakistan. Haruko Satoh is a Ph.D. student at Cambridge University and research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, Tokyo, Japan. Swaran Singh is Associate Professor at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Rizal Sukma is Senior Fellow and Director of Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Indonesia. Shiping Tang is a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Alexander Vuving is Associate Professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu, Hawaii, the United States.
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Index
9/11 (September 11), 1, 10, 38, 46, 80, 114, 153–4, 156, 164–5, 186, 206 AFTA (ASEAN Free Trade Area), 55 al-Qaeda, 166, 186 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), 30, 139 ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum), 7, 26, 30, 42–4, 49, 74, 77, 92, 97, 100, 138, 141, 179, 187–8, 252, 259 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), 7, 9, 26–30, 41, 43–4, 47, 49, 53–5, 57–60, 62, 64, 92, 95, 97–8, 100, 102, 134, 136, 138, 140–2, 146–7, 173–4, 179–81, 185, 187–90, 233, 236, 239, 242, 251–2, 258, 260–1 ASEAN plus Three (APT), 26, 30, 100, 103, 140, 147, 187, 257 ASEAN Way, 7, 30, 264 Asian financial crisis (AFC), 1, 10, 26, 57–8, 97–8, 140–1, 187, 249, 251, 257, 260 Beibu Gulf/Tonkin Gulf, 42, 236 CAFTA (China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement), 21, 26, 53–5, 57–62, 141 “charm offensive”, 17, 27, 142, 259 “China threat”, 22, 24–5, 28, 47, 72–3, 78, 100, 134, 142–3, 147, 161, 175, 178–9, 186, 189, 205, 248 CNPC (China National Petroleum Corporation), 176, 203, 205
confidence-building measures (CBMs), 17, 41–3, 46, 189, 250–2, 259 CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty), 115, 159, 161 DOC (Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea), 26, 43, 180–1, 251 EAEC (East Asia Economic Caucus), 139, 142 East Asian Summit (EAS), 102–3, 140, 147, 257, 260 ethnic Chinese, 5–6, 10–11, 89–91, 93–6, 99–103, 130–1, 133–4, 146, 148, 174, 249, 253–4, 264 FTA (free trade agreement), 9, 21, 26, 47, 55, 57, 59, 140 “good-neighbor policy”, 90, 94, 194, 202 Kargil crisis, 10, 160, 255 Koguryo, 10, 13, 62, 212, 215–20, 247–9, 252, 263 Mischief Reefs, 10, 45, 138, 175, 177–8, 180, 182, 186, 189, 248, 251 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 115, 142, 165, 193 NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), 72, 115, 159, 161 nuclear proliferation, 81, 155, 160, 249, 254
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overseas Chinese, 95–6, 102, 131, 134, 253 PLA (People’s Liberation Army), 9, 25, 37–49, 144, 159, 178, 258–9, 263 SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), 7, 16, 21, 23, 25, 30, 43–4, 46–7, 54, 62–5, 77, 206, 250, 259 SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization), 131, 142, 154 Security Council (United Nations), 62, 70, 109, 114, 155, 193 six-party talks, 47, 49, 256 South China Sea, 25–6, 28, 38, 41, 43–5, 93, 97, 137–8, 146–7, 173, 176–82, 188–90, 251, 260
Spratly Islands, 12, 30, 146, 174, 182, 251 Strategic Partnership, 25, 43, 76, 94, 137, 158, 165, 206 TAC (Treaty of Amity and Cooperation), of ASEAN, 26 Taiwan, 9, 23–4, 27, 29–30, 38, 41, 45, 47, 54–5, 58, 62–4, 66, 79, 82, 92–4, 96, 113, 118, 137, 142, 155, 159, 164, 173, 175, 187–8, 204, 206, 248–9, 251 Taiwan Strait, 27, 44, 49, 64, 142, 175, 185, 187, 248 tributary system (imperial China), 45 UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), 179–81 Yasukuni Shrine, 11, 62, 107, 117, 252
