China's me-first foreign policy
The nation's behavior as a modern superpower is reminiscent of its imperial past.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-westad-china-not-taking-over-20130120,0,3509988.story
After
a series of statements from Beijing, some of them very aggressive, the
Japanese have elected an administration that takes a hard line on
China. (STR / AFP / Getty Images / January18, 2013)
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China's more assertive foreign policy over the last two years has played a key role in getting two arch-conservatives — Japan's Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Park Geun-hye — elected to lead their respective countries. Some Chinese observers believe that Abe and Park will be forced by China's inexorable rise to come to terms with their giant neighbor. Don't count on it. To
much of its region, China's behavior as it is coming of age as a modern
superpower is eerily reminiscent of its past policy as a regional
hegemon.
For
a very long time, imperial China dominated its wider region. The
Chinese imperial court considered itself the indispensable center of a
regional order in which China had the right and the duty to set
international norms and standards, and to intervene if these were
broken. It was an ideological system in which Chinese principles had to
be the starting point for all things.
Although the Chinese elites' thinking was driven by
ideas and cultural norms, their position came down to size, power and
military strategy. And from the 16th to the mid-18th centuries, it
worked. But from the 1780s on, China's regional role was in decline, it
lost wars and unnecessary military engagements followed.
China's
current leadership transition is taking place at a point when the
country again has to reevaluate its regional and world engagements. The
last couple of years have been disastrous in China's foreign policy. Its
regional engagements have backfired, one after the other. Some of this
comes from what historian Paul Kennedy calls imperial overstretch: to
move faster and further than what material resources and political
prowess allows for. It is quite possible to believe both that China is
a rising power and that it has overstepped the mark on what it's able
to achieve through pressure within its own region.
Look
at its relations with Japan. After a series of statements from Beijing,
some of them very aggressive, the Japanese have elected an
administration that takes a hard line on China. Last fall's barrage of
harsh words from China — on the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute and other
matters — played right into the electoral strategy of Abe and the
Liberal Democratic Party.
History,
of course, plays a main role in the Sino-Japanese relationship. But it
is hard to see how China's regional strategy — any regional strategy —
has much to gain from alienating the one East Asian power that would be
able to impede China's position in the region.
The
situation with regard to South Korea is similar, though not identical.
Until very recently, there was a reservoir of goodwill toward China in
South Korea. China was respected as the fountain for a common culture.
Korea, after all, retained its traditional links with China until the
early 20th century. In spite of Beijing's long-standing support for the
dictatorship in North Korea, most young South Koreans whom I met in the 2000s highly valued their country's ties with China.
No longer. Recent
South Korean opinion polls show that people's views of China have
nose-dived since Beijing's failure to condemn the North's sinking of a
South Korean naval vessel and its shelling of a South Korean island in
2010, andPyongyang's recent missile tests. Park's election campaign made good use of the fear of an unruly neighborhood. She seeks to strengthen Seoul's alliance
with the U.S., and has said that North Korea will only join the "family
of nations if it realizes that assistance from China cannot last
forever."
Personal
history, of course, plays a role in these two cases too. Park is the
daughter of former South Korean dictator Park Chung-hee, who in the
1960s and '70s saw Chinese communism as the main challenge in the area.
And Abe is the grandson of a former Japanese prime minister whom the
Chinese 50 years ago considered a major war criminal. Such family ties
will not make reconciliation easier.
Why, then, has the Chinese leadership helped create a
situation in which its mosteager opponents have triumphed? One reason is historical Chinese attitudes on international affairs. The Chinese Communist Party has
always believed that China ought to stand at the center of regional
affairs. Recently, the expression of this regional hierarchy has become
more shrill.
Perhaps
this is a reflection of China's new economic muscle. It could also be
that some leaders in Beijing have been so impressed by sweeping Western
predictions of China's future predominance that they
have started to believe it themselves. The sometimes stunning lack of
knowledge of and experience in foreign affairs among the new generation
of Chinese leaders have not helped.
Outside
its immediate region, China's foreign policy problems are also set to
multiply. One is handling of the U.S.. Another is dealing with rising
powers elsewhere. I have just spent a month in India, where the
leadership has very little faith in China's will or ability to approach
other rising powers in a mutually cooperative fashion.
"The current Chinese leadership," one top policymaker told me, "… tend
to look for what is best for China, in a rather crass and shortsighted
manner."
Will
Beijing find a way to improve its handling
of foreign affairs? One inspiration could be the generation of Chinese
foreign policy experts who came out of the late 19th and early 20th
century. Given a raw deal to begin with because of Western and Japanese
aggression, they still managed to advance China's interests
considerably. They were able to do so, in the main, because they could
report back to Beijing expressing their own views, without always having
to reflect official dogma.
China
needs to learn from its past that a good foreign policy must be more
than only seeking what is best for one's country to the detriment of
others. It is rather to seek to create a region, and eventually a world,
where as many as possible believe that China's rise can also be to
their own advantage.
Odd Arne Westad teaches international history at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is the author of, most recently, "Restless Empire: China and the World Since 1750."
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