In its rush to the global summit, China is destabilising the international system by supporting regimes it would love to disappear when it reaches the summit. By using Pakistan to tie down India and North Korea to keep Japan and South Korea engaged, China is encouraging regimes that won’t turn law-abiding if and when China achieves global dominance (whatever that means in this age of long-range nuclear missiles). Iran, Myanmar, and Sudan are other instances of myopic Chinese foreign policy.
These countries will prove to be a headache for China in four ways. First, just as Pakistan currently provides the United States with one of its most important challenges, these countries will divert China’s attention from more important global issues such as climate change. Second, these regimes will join China’s opponents once China starts exerting pressure upon them to behave. Third, almost 65 per cent of China’s territory is populated by ethnic minorities. In many cases, these ethnic minorities have not been completely overwhelmed by Han settlers and tension continues to simmer. In this context, an unpredictable Myanmar that borders upon Tibet could potentially encourage the independence of the Tibetan ethnic minority. And while Pakistan-based or Iran-sponsored Islamic extremists have not yet launched a major attack on Xinjiang, this does not guarantee an incident-free future. Fourth, political repression and economic distress makes such states potential sources of humanitarian refugees. China may end up hosting millions of refugees in case the domestic situation in North Korea or Myanmar deteriorates.
More broadly, China’s support of rogue regimes affects the world in at least three ways. First, it encourages the emergence of such regimes in other countries by reducing the expected impact of international sanctions, which in turn discourages domestic opposition to such regimes. Muted domestic opposition further limits the options available to the international community, which in turn gives a negative feedback to domestic opposition, ultimately, forcing the country into a low-level equilibrium trap. Second, the neighbours of rogue regimes are compelled to follow a policy of appeasement to limit Chinese influence across their borders, which in turn bolsters these regimes and further reduces the expected impact of international sanctions. This makes domestic dissent costlier. A case in point is India’s quiet but unwavering support to the Myanmarese junta to counter Chinese influence. Third, sooner or later countries at the receiving end of the Chinese policy of encirclement will respond in kind in China’s neighbourhood completing the vicious circle.
The myopia of the Chinese foreign policy is compounded by an empathy deficit. Here again China has missed the lessons the United States’ experience has to offer. Its foreign policy mandarins seem to be effectively operating on the belief that while the Chinese love to be rich, the North Koreans love to wallow in poverty; the Chinese love to get Fields Medals and Nobel Prizes (in sciences), whereas the Pakistanis love to wallow in medievalism. China risks engendering a popular backlash in these countries akin to the backlash stimulated by the United States’ foreign policy during the Cold War, which was based on the assumption that the West Asians and Pakistanis do not like or need democracy.
It is not yet too late for China to mend its problems. China can still take heed of the United States’ current problems and reverse its myopic policy of subsidising perverse regimes in resource-rich and strategically important countries that disregard their own people. By doing so, it will not only promote global stability by coming to the aid of millions suffering under these regimes but will also make its life as a potential global power easier. But unfortunately, China seems to be condemned to repeat the mistakes of the United States. This is because reversing its policy abroad would affect China’s domestic political scene, where the Communist Party is steadfast in maintaining the idea that political liberalisation can wait.
Vikas Kumar is an independent researcher based in Bangalore.
There should be discussion of, and a distinction made between, what is reasonable international influence and what is undue interference of sovereignty of a country.
At the extreme, a good example is the invasion of Iraq by the coalition of the willing.
One view that China’s foreign policy is still be based on the five principles of non-interference altough some argue that these principles are outdated. But there are definable limits in terms of both sovereignty and external intervention, otherwise things could easily get out of hand and everything and anything may be justified in terms of either sovereignty-centric or intervention-centric positons.
From the article one can conclude that the author has very little real knowledge and understanding of Chinese foreign policy and Chinese way of doing diplomacy. Not to mention that he has certain unexplained twisted view toward Pakistan, North Korea and Burma.
First of all, the mistakes of the U.S. are not so much that it used ‘extremist Islamic regimes as proxies against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan’ as such. But the U.S. made a series of strategic errors concerning whether or not staying on in the region it invaded. It had not had a thought-out long-term plan for the situation it created, but rather it had kept itself busy changing its minds.
The author did not explain how ‘these countries will divert China’s attention from more important global issues such as climate change.’ It sounds like they will strike as some real challenge to China, but in what way? That ‘vicious cycle’ the author talks about? If that’s the case, I can certainly take a different angle to look at the problem. As China gains more power, it will be more capable to influence the international opinion on many controversial issues. It will take the drivers’ seats to amend certain aspects of international law and order and convention. It will redefine what ‘rogue regime’ is and what ‘legitimate intervention’ is. Most importantly, it will take care of those third-world countries long been suffering from unfair international system. China will offer them its market and know-how to help grow their economy, to those living in the neighbourhood China will even provide them security guarantee that U.S. once provided. The author believes that ‘these regimes will join China’s opponents once China starts exerting pressure upon them to behave.’ But why does China ever need to do that? More importantly, why does China have to exert pressure upon those so-called ‘rogue countries’ in the way the West does? And China’s opponents can offer what to those regimes in order to win them over? For the author’s third and fourth point, as long as China can take good care of its internal development, its economy will naturally grow to incorporate its neighbouring countries, (even to India , making it another Mexico) and consequently bring more wealth to them.
Overall, China has many options, and it can and will do things its own way, and it will certainly not repeat the mistakes of U.S.
Dear Lincoln
Thank you very much for your comment.
The problem that you highlight arises because the contemporary model of states has a built-in contradiction. The contemporary model posits sharply defined domains and differs from the traditional model, which posited inter-penetrating circles of influence. Within the contemporary model, the world is a collection of mutually exclusive, non-cooperative entities that are for all practical purposes mutually exhaustive. While the contemporary model is theoretically neat it leads to the following puzzle.
A state is sovereign if other states cannot interfere in its internal affairs for any reason. But there are no purely internal affairs of a state. So, any international influence is potentially interference in the affairs of another state. But any interference is absolutely repugnant to sovereignty. This means perfect sovereignty can be maintained only in an autarkic world! In any non-autarkic world with differently sized economies/polities, international influence, and by implication interference/intervention, is inevitable.
Interestingly, emerging Asian powers have one-sided faith in the contemporary model. Any statement in support of Liu Xiaobo or Binayak Sen is an act of interference. But Indian and Chinese maneuvering in Nepal is their natural international influence. In fact, tourists, missionaries, and NGO workers from your country are interventionists while my army in your country is a natural/inevitable/harmless projection of my country’s genuine influence.
In short, we indeed need a discussion to find a middle path. Otherwise, ‘everything and anything may be justified in terms of either sovereignty-centric or intervention-centric positions’.
Sincerely,
Vikas
Dear Jack,
Thank you for your comments. In particular, I liked your point about a rising China redefining, say, the very notion of a rogue state. We cannot rule out such a development and also have to accept that labels can influence behavior. But I have two problems with the argument.
First, I fail to understand how reclassifying North Korea as, say, a ‘responsible state’ will change the fact that the dictatorship firmly established in that country is a threat to the whole of East Asia, if not the world. It is not a rogue state because it is referred to as ‘rogue’. It is referred to as rogue because of certain structural features, which are label-invariant.
Second, I also fail to understand how China will manage to nucleate a substantive institutional-normative change on a scale that will turn the existing international consensus on its head. In the foreseeable future, China will continue to lack diplomatic and technological capacities to engender such a change. On the other hand, current incumbents will continue to retain substantial capacity to defend the system they have built over the last six decades. It bears noting that agreeing to increase the share of rising powers in IMF’s decision-making body is different from agreeing to the dissolution of the IMF-based system.
I agree with your concluding remark that ‘China has many options’ and sincerely hope that China ‘will certainly not repeat the mistakes of U.S.’. However, the events of 2010 suggest that the Chinese government is not carefully examining all the options and seems to be well on its way to repeat the mistakes of the United States. Unfortunately, China might end up making US-like mistakes even before acquiring US-like muscles. The people of China have to decide if they want their government to continue with its current policies. Fortunately, it is still not too late to decide.
Sincerely,
Vikas