I am sick of Beijing’s “friendship” with Khartoum and Yangon. Should Beijing be condemned for these cold-blooded “friendships”? Yes.
But I am also sick of those so-called international human rights activists’ political prejudice and shallowness. Who is the real target behind their call for boycott Beijing Olympic Games? Not Khartoum! Not Yangon!
They naively believe that genocide cannot be stopped in Darfur because Beijing has resisted international pressure to bring peace to Darfur. They believe that the Burmese junta would not have cracked down on the monks’ protests without a tacit signal from Beijing that it would veto any sanctions bill at the UN. They may be naïve, but their governments which back them up are not stupid.
Behind the Western criticisms of Beijing over Khartoum and Yangon, there is a new round of great power politics is unfolding. This time, it is in a different way. Like the “hard” arms race in the Cold War which ended the USSR, the “soft” bullets in such “morals race” (wrapped with human rights banners) can also drag the rising dragon down.
Angela Merkel has met the Dalai Lama in her office. Canada will follow up. Who is next, India, Japan, or even the US? If Yangon collapses, Aung San Su Kyi will drive the Dalai Lama back to his palace in Tibet via the plain of Burma. The 72-year old man doesn’t need climb over Himalaya Mountains.
Excluded from the Western-dominated “legitimate” energy sources, Beijing has to look to those “illegitimate” energy sources. With democratic-styled regime change in the places like Khartoum, Beijing’s “illegitimate” oil supply will be cut off. China’s GDP growth will slow down. In the case of China, a 10% GDP growth is not an economic miracle, but a basic requirement for political stability. Even a 1% drop in GDP growth would create several million new unemployed who would become the driving force for the regime change in China.
The Communist Party of China is only one of many giant monsters in China’s history. This country has always been governed by various authoritarian monsters during its 5,000 year history. If China's communist monster collapses, who will replace it? Who can replace it? Will it ever be replaced?
If China collapses, what then for this world?
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4 comments:
While I agree that the Olympics issue is a red herring, there is something else to consider.
You mention China's "illegitimate" sources of energy. To my understanding, China is developing a multi-pronged approach to guaranteeing its future energy needs from such diverse sources as Africa, Central Asia, Siberia, and the Pacific Rim. I would argue that China's path is currently more legitimate than the one that the US has historically pursued in the Middle East. On St. Valentine's Day, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt met with the King Abdul Aziz of the House of Saud on the USS Quincy at the Great Bitter Lake. This fateful meeting set the tone for more than a half century of intrigue and excess in US energy policy.
That being said, does it not behoove China as a rising power to set a good example to the world and use that power to guide its naughty little friends into behaving better? Should not Beijing learn from Washington's mistakes? Now is the time for Beijing to act if it intends to protect itself from a future of nefarious "special relationships."
China's oil from Sudan, Burma, Iran, Venezuela are regarded as "illegitimate" by the Western media.
Japan is competing with China for oil from Siberia. The biggest players for the oil resources in central Asia are still Exxon, BP, Shell, etc.
If China can import enough oil from the Middle East and Siberia, why does it want to buy the low-quality oil from Venezuela and but blood-tainted oil from Sudan?
If Beijing wants to "use its power to guide its naughty little friends into behaving better", China is not a rising power, the world will not see any more multipolarization, and globalization will become americanization.
The world history have never unfolded in that way. Otherwise, we would have never seen numerous wars in Europe, the birth of Superpower America, the birth and death of USSR, the current mire of the US in Iraq, etc.
By the way, arguably, Beijing is learning from America's selective isolationism in the 2nd half of 19th century. "It is economy! St....!"
What a shrewd and pragmatic approach to beat the so-called "China Threat Theory"!
Why havn't you heard much complaints from other Asian governments about Beijing's coddling the Junta?
If Beijing "use that power to guide its naughty little friends into behaving better", the only appreciation Beijing will get is the word like "China threat", "new hegemon in Asia" "the new colossus from the north".
While I am sure this point is debatable, I would make a comparison between current “Western” (media) treatments of China’s behavior in global politics to Continental European views on the US from 1880-1910 (especially via Washington’s policies in Latin America and Japan). China is unlikely to be lavished when praise when it does something good, but can be guaranteed opprobrium when it does not.
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