China’s peaceful emergence as the number two power in the world is a modern geopolitical miracle. In 1980 its share of global GDP in purchasing power parity terms, was 2 per cent—far less than the 22 per cent the US accounted for. By 2014, China’s share had overtaken the United States. Normally such great-power transitions are accompanied by competition and conflict. Instead, China emerged peacefully. Why?
Many factors were responsible. Deng Xiaoping’s wise geopolitical advice to ‘hide and bide’ China’s strength was a key factor. He also called on the Chinese ‘to swallow bitter humiliation’. This they did. But it is impossible to swallow bitter humiliation forever. It was inevitable that China would eventually lose its patience and lash out against perceived maritime provocations by Japan and ASEAN. We can only hope that these recent outbursts have had a cathartic and calming effect on the national psyche.
Yet China’s actions with ASEAN show that the anger has not abated. It is commonly believed that Chinese pressure led Cambodia to veto the ASEAN joint communique on the South China Sea in 2012. Similarly, China likely persuaded Cambodia, Laos and Thailand to walk away from the agreed ASEAN statement, later indiscreetly leaked by Malaysia.
China is one of the more rational geopolitical actors today. Unlike the United States and Russia, China’s geopolitical actions are not commonly driven by emotional paroxysms. Yet China’s atypical emotional defence of the infamous ‘nine-dash line’ in the South China Sea goes against its larger global interests.
China is now the world’s number one trading power and has been since 2014. It is also the world’s biggest exporter of manufactured goods. Chinese toothbrushes and detergents arrive safely on African and Latin American shores because the world’s oceans are open to freedom of navigation and safe for commercial shipping. The US Navy is inadvertently doing the Chinese economy a big favour by keeping international sea lanes open. This has facilitated the near quadrupling of China’s global trade from US$600 billion in 2004 to US$2.2 trillion in 2015.
Yet in the same decade, when its reliance on freedom of navigation in the world’s oceans increased, China prioritised regional interests ahead of its global interests. The nine-dash line, which had remained dormant for decades, suddenly surfaced in the Chinese public consciousness and the Chinese media began to defend it passionately.
It is against Chinese interests to convert any international waterway into an internal lake. This is why Wei Zongyou of Fudan University has wisely advised that: ‘[t]o avoid a possible maritime trap that will not only be detrimental to China’s true national interests, but also negatively affect many other countries, China, as a major claimant, should think longer term and take steps to de-escalate the tension’.
The Chinese government has not decided to break up ASEAN. Indeed, it wants to strengthen ASEAN. Yet its actions have weakened ASEAN, a dangerous thing to do to an organisation that is inherently fragile—perhaps as fragile as a Ming vase.
More dangerously, China began to undermine ASEAN’s unity. In theory, China can afford to alienate the ten relatively weak ASEAN member states. In practice, China is shooting itself in the foot, since ASEAN’s exceptional success as a regional organisation has also facilitated China’s peaceful rise.
In the 1980s the strategic alignment of interests between ASEAN, China and the United States to reverse Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia enabled China to open up to the world. In the 1990s, after the West isolated China following the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, ASEAN kept engaging with China. In the 2000s, ASEAN reacted enthusiastically to China’s proposal for enhanced economic cooperation, which also coincided with China’s entry into the WTO.
China has also been exceptionally generous towards ASEAN. It stunned the world by being the first major economic power to propose a free trade agreement with ASEAN, motivating other powers to follow suit. China has been equally generous in its aid programs and was the first economic power to commit to enhancing ASEAN’s infrastructure. As a result, there were, until recently, massive reservoirs of goodwill towards China in ASEAN. It’s a tragedy that these reservoirs are now drying up.
ASEAN had responded positively to China’s generosity. It facilitated China’s rise in other salient ways. By converting the Balkans of Asia into one of the most peaceful regions in the world, ASEAN helped to change the chemistry of the larger East Asia region. China should look carefully at how Russia has been troubled by challenges in Ukraine and Syria. If Southeast Asia had emerged, like the Middle East, as a more troubled region, China would inevitably have been distracted.
Instead, ASEAN created a geopolitical oasis which helped maintain peace in East and South Asia. The annual ASEAN meetings provided the only safe and stable geopolitical platform for regional and great powers to talk to each other regularly. Whenever relations between China and Japan broke down, their leaders turned to the ASEAN meetings to restore matters.
ASEAN has therefore been a critical catalyst for the decades of peace that we have seen in the region. This is why the time has come for China to radically recalculate its interests in regards to ASEAN. Is the defence of the nine-dash line the ‘core interest’ of China in Southeast Asia? Or is it the continued success of ASEAN as a regional organisation promoting the culture of peace and prosperity in the broader region?
The answer almost seems obvious. This is what makes China’s recent actions towards ASEAN truly puzzling. China is jeopardising its own interests in undermining ASEAN unity.
More importantly, as China’s leaders frequently emphasise, China has not arrived as a modern developed power. Its per capita income is still only 25 per cent of the United States’. China still needs a few more peaceful decades to complete the job.
Ultimately, Deng Xiaoping was right when he called on the Chinese people to be patient. He was right in saying that the problem of territorial disputes should be passed to future generations. The problem of the South China Sea should be put on the backburner. China’s larger interests in peaceful regional chemistry should push it towards preserving and strengthening the critical catalyst that has facilitated China’s rise so far.
Kishore Mahbubani is Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore.
This article appeared in the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly, ‘Managing China’.
I would suggest that in fact China is thinking long term here. The impact of the islands is more strategic than just occupation and claim over territory. Its about its long term security and countering the encircling by US and Japan. To me it has always been a military outpost and not about oil. It would be for monitoring of communications, monitoring of naval movements and early warning of attacks. This is not different from a giant US monitoring station in Northern Australia. China is prepared to sacrifice some short term degradation of relations with South East Asia for their long term survival. Much as the media like to portray this as land grabbing, I believe China is only looking after its national interest, much as US used the Monroe Doctrine to protect its backyard
Western commentators sometimes seem to forget the one China policy: Taiwan and Mainland are both parts of the one China – as is their territorial waters. Perhaps the reaction to attempted Russian intervention with Cuba provides an analogy.
“It is commonly believed that Chinese pressure led Cambodia to veto the ASEAN joint communique on the South China Sea in 2012.”
There is a common assumption that whenever a country took action that are beneficial to China, that country must have done so under pressure from China.
One great example is South Africa. Several years ago South Africa hosted the United Nation conference on racism. The Dalai Lama was banned by South Africa from attending. Immediately the Western media cry foul. ‘How dare South Africa ban such a holy man from attending this conference. It must have done so under pressure from China!’ was the common refrain. But if anybody has any clue, South Africa’s action is very logical. The Dalai Lama has always been hostile to the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa (he is a close friend of the US Senator Jesse Helms, a huge Apartheid supporter) while China, along with Gaddafi’s Libya and Fidel Castro’s Cuba were long time patron of the ANC. With this in mind isn’t it only natural that South Africa banned the Dalai Lama from attending?
Thank you for a very sound assessment of a delicate issue
My comments are as follows: Part 1.
1 “China is making some serious strategic mistakes in its dealings with ASEAN.”
Not true. China is the biggest trading partner of Asean and has signed a FTA with all 10 members, despite being left out of the TPP by Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Vietnam.
2 “Instead, China emerged peacefully. Why?”
Because China is a peaceful country and she adopted meritocracy when Deng Xiaoping declared that “It is not the colour of the cat that counts (anymore) but whether it can catch mice.” And “To be rich is glorious.”
In 2010 China’s GDP was 46 trillion RMB and the plan was to double it to 92 trillion RMB by 2020, using the Rule of 72. Since the growth was high in the first 5 years, now all China needs is a GDP growth of at least 6.5per cent to achieve the objective.
3 “It was inevitable that China would eventually lose its patience and lash out against perceived maritime provocations by Japan and ASEAN.”
Not true. Japan annexed the Diaoyu Islands in 1894 and refused to return them to China after promising in the 1945 ‘Surrender Instrument’ to adhere to the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and Cairo Conference. Japan also has territorial disputes with South Korea and Russia.
China does not have a maritime dispute with Asean per se, but only with four members who annexed features in the Spartly Islands, which belong to China, namely, Brunei one, Philippines 8, Malaysia 6 and Vietnam 29 features.
However, Asean and China have issued a joint communiqué in Vientiane on 26 July, without mentioning the divisive arbitration case at the Hague and agreed to resolve the disputes “through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned”.
4 “Yet China’s actions with ASEAN show that the anger has not abated.”
This is a contradiction as the write also says that “China is one of the more rational geopolitical actors today. Unlike the United States and Russia, China’s geopolitical actions are not commonly driven by emotional paroxysms.”
5 “It is commonly believed that Chinese pressure led Cambodia to veto the ASEAN joint communique on the South China Sea in 2012.”
Where is the evidence? The so-called ‘commonly believed’ claim is an insult to the integrity and sovereignty of Cambodia.
6 ”Yet China’s atypical emotional defence of the infamous ‘nine-dash line’ in the South China Sea goes against its larger global interests.”
Not true. According to Dr Sam Bateman, a former Australian Naval Commodore with research interests in regimes for good order at sea and now an advisor in Singapore, “the U-shaped line is a “loose geographical shorthand to say we claim islands and features, it is not actually questioning other countries who have established exclusive economic zones inside the nine dash line, or indeed have maritime boundaries with their neighbour.”
The nine-dash line is therefore only an informal ‘boundary’ without coordinates, that separates China’s island territories in the South China Sea from the coasts of littoral states like Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.
Paradoxically, none of the colonial powers such as Britain, France, US, Japan and Spain made any claim over the Spratly and Paracel islands after WW2 because they knew that these islands belong to China.
Only 4 of their former colonies made their claims when ECAFE announced that oil was found in the South China Sea in the late 1960s. If that is not suspicious, then what is?
Part 2:
1 “China is now the world’s number one trading power and has been since 2014.”
This was due, in part, to China’s peaceful rise policy and the adoption of Meritocracy.
2” The US Navy is inadvertently doing the Chinese economy a big favour by keeping international sea lanes open. This has facilitated the near quadrupling of China’s global trade from US$600 billion in 2004 to US$2.2 trillion in 2015.”
It benefited the US too by keeping its store-shelves full of consumer goods, keeping inflation low, which allowed the FED to adopt a ZIRP policy, which in turn lowered the US debt repayment obligations.
3 “It is against Chinese interests to convert any international waterway into an internal lake.”
Lets not exaggerate. As a member of Unclos, China has no desire to turn the South China Sea into ‘an internal lake’, when she has launched the Road & Belt Initiatives (RBI).
4 ”The Chinese government has not decided to break up ASEAN. Indeed, it wants to strengthen ASEAN. Yet its actions have weakened ASEAN..”
Not true. Asean and China issued a joint communiqué in Vientiane on 26 July, without mentioning the divisive arbitration case at the Hague and agreed to resolve the disputes “through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned”.
5 “More dangerously, China began to undermine ASEAN’s unity. “
Not true. Asean unity was undermined when four members decided to join the US-led TPP.
6 “China has also been exceptionally generous towards ASEAN”.
This contradicts the writer’s claim that allegedly “China began to undermine Asean’s unity”.
7 “As a result, there were, until recently, massive reservoirs of goodwill towards China in ASEAN. It’s a tragedy that these reservoirs are now drying up.”
Not true. China has a strong trade and cultural relationship with all Asean nations and is slated to build a high speed rail from China through Thailand to Malaysia and Singapore. Asean nations are also members of the AIIB and will participate in the RBI which is inclusive.
8 “ASEAN has therefore been a critical catalyst for the decades of peace that we have seen in the region.”
There is peace in the region because China is a peaceful country and, as the writer also noted, because “The US Navy is inadvertently doing the Chinese economy a big favour by keeping international sea lanes open.”
9 “This is why the time has come for China to radically recalculate its interests in regards to ASEAN. Is the defence of the nine-dash line the ‘core interest’ of China in Southeast Asia?
I think it’s also time to give the perceived, mythical ‘threats” in the South China Sea a rest because it is in China’s interest to keep the sea lanes open to ensure the RBI’s unmitigated success. To do otherwise is counter-intuitive.
10 “Its per capita income is still only 25 per cent of the United States’. China still needs a few more peaceful decades to complete the job.”
Be patient. When China’s GDP reaches 92 trillion RMB in 2020 there could be an October surprise when the RMB suddenly appreciates against the US dollar, if it is backed by Gold and Silver, which China has in great abundance. If the exchange rate is 3 to 1, (not impossible because in 1973 the exchange rate was 2.3 to 1) then China’s GDP will be US$30.7 trillion in 2020 vs an estimated US$18.4 trillion in the United States, even growing at the rate of 2per cent. ‘Yuanization’ is under full steam. Stay tuned.