COMMENTARY

Summer 2009

by Wei Pan

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It is not too early to imagine ways in which China’s rising economic power might reshape the global political map. Crisis or no crisis, China will by the end of this year overtake Japan to become the world’s second largest economy. Some Americans have even started to talk about “Chimerica” co-governing the world. But predicting the future is a notoriously risky business, and in any case we know that Japan with its theoretically influential economy in fact has little political impact in world affairs, while the Soviet Union with its relatively small economy was able to turn the world upside down.

It is in any case wrong to fantasise that China is likely to follow the old logic of the Western powers by spreading religious belief, projecting military power, directing value orientation, and imposing a political system. China is more likely to seek “mutual respect” rather than “dominance”, and three simple doctrines may well shape its behaviour.

First, the very ancient principle of “hua bu zhi yi” would be followed; it means the Chinese should not govern foreign peoples. Please don’t immediately challenge me with Tibet, because the people there are Chinese citizens. “Non-interference” may be an overly legal expression but it nevertheless reflects the maxim with which the Chinese “empire” in East Asia survived all other empires. It seems amazing to us in China that after the imperial failures of Great Britain and of the USSR, the U.S. is still trying to “govern” Afghanistan. Strategic importance, superior fire power and huge financial expenditures do not make military occupations or puppet regimes viable (unless, of course, the Afghans were to be given U.S. citizenship!). America’s military budget is equivalent to those of all other countries combined, and although its military have pledged to “win two wars at the same time,” they haven’t won a single war since World War II. They may win battles, but they lose their wars.

My second point is that the most important value for China in international relations is “mutual respect.” Our approach is that because no government is able to govern a “foreign” people, respecting foreign governments is the way to receive respect and maintain peace. If the French government, for instance, were to feel free to humiliate the Chinese government so as to win greater domestic support in France, the Chinese government would do the same. Keeping good relationships between people requires mutual respect, and so do inter-government relationships. If they were to stick to this principle, few countries would feel the need to possess weapons of mass destruction, not even Iran and North Korea.

A major departure from this principle of mutual respect is the self-imposed sense of moral superiority that we see as an amusing left-over from the era of colonialism. China respects human rights, but not when they are defined as a “superior” way of governance. China could never become a “stakeholder” in human rights of the kind that are used to justify bloody civil conflicts or even naked invasions.

Thirdly, China will strive in international economic relations for mutual benefits under fair terms. China still suffers from various discriminations imposed by the “international community,” such as its “non-market economy” status in the WTO and the arms and high tech embargo by both the U.S. and the EU. More debatable, perhaps, is the status of China’s state-owned financial and industrial enterprises. They are independently run and listed on the stock exchanges. With more than 99% of China’s registered firms being mini-sized family businesses, the Chinese government has created state-owned enterprises to undertake expensive domestic infrastructure projects and to compete internationally. In the world markets for natural resources, a few Western oligarchs have been the dominant forces, relying on their own governments as back-up and to manipulate foreign politics. “Free” markets without any state intervention have never existed as either the state captures capital, or capital captures the state. In Africa, China’s state-owned enterprises emphasise mutual benefits and try to win the local people’s hearts by offering sustainable cooperation in the long run. By contrast, the western oligarchs’ profit-making looks more like an outdated conquistadores’ offer of “cheap weapons for pure gold,” and of course that is the hidden core of Sudan dispute.

As China’s industrial capacity grows, these three principles may yet prevail and help make the “free world” freer than it is today. For my part, I can only wish that Europeans could see that this approach offer a chance to achieve real progress rather than presenting the West with a crisis of “global governance”.