INTERNATIONAL FRAME &
STRUGGLE for Tamil Eelam: china

From "China fear" to "China fever"

Pallavi Aiyar
Hindu, 27 February 2006

"Sri Lanka is also being treated to a Chinese charm offensive. Mr. Wen proposed to upgrade Sino-Sri Lankan relations to an "all-round cooperative partnership" when he visited Colombo last year. In the aftermath of the devastating tsunami in December 2004, China committed $19 million to the reconstruction of six fishing harbours. During his visit. the Premier pledged an additional $8.7 million to the tsunami-afflicted country in the spirit of "being a good neighbour and a good partner."  China has further offered a preferential buyers' credit scheme for development projects. Currently several such projects are under way in Sri Lanka with Chinese financing and assistance, including the Hambantota Bunkering System, the Puttalam Coal Power Project, and the rail link between Katunayake and Ratmalana...That China was able to gain observer status at the SAARC summit in Dhaka in November 2005 as a result of pressure from Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, despite Indian reluctance, shows how far its influence is spreading in the region. "

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China's deft diplomacy is drawing other nations to it: as a model for development, a source and destination for investment, and a trading partner.

IN A survey of global opinion conducted in 2005 by the Pew Research Centre, an American think tank, China was found to have a better public image than the United States in almost every one of the 16 countries studied, from Britain, France, and Poland to Turkey, Russia, and Indonesia.

For long seen as a potential military and political threat by large parts of the world, China's new use of a sophisticated and active diplomacy is capitalising on the country's economic dynamism and beginning to win friends and influence people from ASEAN to Africa.

China has been able to "manage" the fears about its rise by presenting it as a "win-win opportunity" for all, rhetoric backed by healthy trade surpluses for the majority of its trading partners. By taking the leadership in a variety of regional forums, initiating bilateral security dialogues and military exchanges with hitherto wary neighbours, and dispensing aid and technical assistance in parts of the world where traditional powers like the United States are cautious to tread, the country's political leadership has been attempting, with some success, to convert "China fear" into "China fever."

It is in Asia that China has faced some of its toughest diplomatic challenges, needing to overcome the distrust and animosity of its neighbours, which have historically seen the middle kingdom as a would-be hegemon. China borders 14 countries with all of which it has at some point had boundary disputes. It has been in military conflict with every significant regional power including Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and India.

Despite these formidable obstacles, China is rapidly mending fences, having settled all but two of its land border disputes, and is pragmatically putting trade and investment at the centre of its foreign policy.

East Asia

Across East Asia, countries from South Korea southward to Indonesia have come to rely on China as a critical market for exports and a source of imports that delight importers and consumers alike with their low prices.

In the period between January and November 2005, Sino-ASEAN trade was worth $117.24 billion, up by 23.5 per cent year-on-year. ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations), which enjoys a trade surplus with China, is today its fifth largest trading partner and market for exports and its third largest source of imports.

Given that ASEAN began as a regional grouping backed by the U.S. to counter communism in the region, its new-found friendship with China is even more striking. Sino-ASEAN relations are at their strongest ever.

China's President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have been clocking thousands of air miles, visiting state leaders to explain their policies, pointing out the benefits the country's growing economy brings to the region as a whole. In April 2005 alone they visited Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and India.

Last year, China took the lead in organising the East Asia Summit in Malaysia and was able to dominate the emerging East Asian community by dividing it into two blocs: the core or primary states with China as the leader inside the ASEAN+3 grouping (China, South Korea, Japan), and the secondary states of India, Australia, and New Zealand. The Chinese have also emerged as the largest tourist group in the region bringing with them an image of a richer, more confident, and more influential country than just a few years ago. Across ASEAN young people are beginning to learn Mandarin, seeing it as the language of the future.

And its popularity is not just limited to ASEAN countries. The Seoul National University announced as far back as 2003 that Mandarin had replaced English as the most popular major among liberal arts students. Some 40,000 Korean students are now studying in China.

This is not surprising given that China has emerged as the biggest importer of South Korean products, that country's largest investment destination, and most popular tourist destination. Sino-South Korean trade exceeded $100 billion in 2005.

Seoul also realises that in Beijing lies its best hope for successful mediation on intra-Korean stability. After a decade of passivity on the Korean nuclear issue, Beijing began to play host to the six-party talks in 2003, winning praise for its efforts and simultaneously raising its international profile as a "responsible" and influential player. South Korea finds itself closer to Beijing than Washington in its attitude to resolving the North Korean standoff. And South Korea is not alone in increasingly seeing China, not the U.S., as a sympathetic ally with concern for regional issues. Post 9/11, the Bush administration's one-dimensional focus on the "war on terror" has seen it losing popularity across the region, with the notable exception of Japan.

South Asia

Even in South Asia, the traditional preserve of India, China's star is ascending. With bilateral trade between India and China booming at over $18 billion in 2005, the long frosty winter that marked relations across the Himalayas is rapidly thawing into spring. 2006 is in fact being celebrated as the India-China friendship year. Following Mr. Wen's visit to India in April 2005, the two sides upgraded their relationship to a "strategic and cooperative partnership." In the past months they conducted joint naval exercises, signed cooperative agreements in energy, and exchanged several high level visits. That China is now being seen as a model rather than as a threat was underlined when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh vowed to transform Mumbai into Shanghai.

According to the China National Tourism Administration, in 2004 China had 3.9 lakh visitors from India, up 44 per cent from 2003, the largest increase from any country.

In addition to its traditional allies in South Asia, Pakistan and Myanmar, China is now assiduously cultivating Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka as well. It is already the largest supplier of weaponry to Bangladesh and recently overtook India as Bangladesh's number one source of imports. Beijing and Dhaka have upgraded their ties, giving China naval access to the Chittagong port. The two countries celebrated a "friendship year" in 2005.

Sri Lanka is also being treated to a Chinese charm offensive. Mr. Wen proposed to upgrade Sino-Sri Lankan relations to an "all-round cooperative partnership" when he visited Colombo last year. In the aftermath of the devastating tsunami in December 2004, China committed $19 million to the reconstruction of six fishing harbours. During his visit. the Premier pledged an additional $8.7 million to the tsunami-afflicted country in the spirit of "being a good neighbour and a good partner."

China has further offered a preferential buyers' credit scheme for development projects. Currently several such projects are under way in Sri Lanka with Chinese financing and assistance, including the Hambantota Bunkering System, the Puttalam Coal Power Project, and the rail link between Katunayake and Ratmalana.

That China was able to gain observer status at the SAARC summit in Dhaka in November 2005 as a result of pressure from Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, despite Indian reluctance, shows how far its influence is spreading in the region.

Central Asia

It's not only to its east and south that Beijing is winning friends. China's attempt to extend its sway over Central Asia is evident in its active role in the Shanghai Cooperative Organisation, a security forum comprising China, Russia, and four former Soviet Republics along its borders.

Chasing valuable energy resources, China's leadership has steadily courted the Central Asian republics over the last few years, setting up trade missions, investing in local enterprises, and donating money for aid projects. China recently held anti-terrorism exercises with Kazakhstan and they have agreed to build a 1,000-km pipeline from Kazakhstan's central Karaganda region to China's northwestern Xinjiang region.

China has also offered to help Uzbekistan develop its small oilfields in the Ferghana Valley and Chinese investment is going into other energy resources such as hydroelectric projects in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, with scores of additional plans up for discussion.

The Japanese exception

The one exception to the general trend in Asia is Japan, where bilateral ties have been distinctly frosty, following attacks on Japanese diplomatic missions and businesses in a number of Chinese cities last April. The protests followed the publication of Japanese textbooks that China claimed glossed over its wartime atrocities. In fact Japanese feelings towards China are at a 25-year low, according to a Japanese Government poll released in December.

Nonetheless, China is Japan's largest trading partner. Sino-Japan trade reached $189.3 billion last year, 2.7 per cent up over 2004, hitting a new high for seven years in a row. Contracted Japanese direct investment exceeded $8.5 billion from January to September 2005. It is this strong economic bond that has tempered the bilateral tension and kept it from spiralling out of control.

With 1.3 billion people and 3.7 million square miles of territory, China is today the fourth largest economy in the world. Leveraging its economic clout, the middle kingdom's deft diplomacy is drawing other nations to it: as a model for development, source and destination for investment, and trading partner. That the fear and distrust with which many used to regard China is being replaced with admiration is evident from the changed attitudes in India alone, where it is increasingly touted as an opportunity rather than as a threat.

Even those who dismiss the win-win rhetoric of Chinese diplomacy, with its emphasis on peaceful-coexistence as propaganda, would be hard put to deny its effectiveness.