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Editorial: The China
threat is no invention
As the world anxiously waits to see which direction the Chinese Communist Party
will take amid rising tensions pitting China against its neighbors and the US,
some commentators appear to be bending over backward to try to explain away
Beijing¡¦s behavior, which, for those of us in Asia, has all the appearance of
belligerence.
From claims that the West is ¡§inventing the China threat¡¨ to the argument that
Chinese leaders have displayed ¡§more self-control when it comes to sovereignty
issues than their counterparts in Japan, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan,¡¨ some
pundits are proposing that China¡¦s recent patterns of behavior have been solely
in reaction to an increasingly hostile environment.
As usual, it is the US, with its neoconservatives, military industrial complex
and fear-mongering media, that shares the largest part of the blame for China¡¦s
anxiety.
Or so we are told. Having ¡§defeated¡¨ the Soviet Union, Washington had to
¡§invent¡¨ a new enemy (global terrorism apparently was not enough) and embarked
on a program to surround and contain it by ¡§pivoting¡¨ to Asia, ¡§re-opening¡¨ air
force bases and coming up with esoteric concepts like Air-Sea Battle.
That is all fine and well, and there is no doubt that with elections
approaching, the US polity has entered a period where the ¡§red scare¡¨ probably
has more traction than it usually would (one need only look at the trailer for
the recent Death by China documentary to get a taste of how extreme the rhetoric
can get).
However, to claim that Chinese behavior played no role in the growing sense of
crisis, or that its recent assertiveness was purely in reaction to insecurity,
rather than the cause, stretches the imagination.
For one, China¡¦s military buildup began years before the current situation in
the East and South China seas arose. That expansion, both in budgetary terms and
in the type of equipment the People¡¦s Liberation Army is deploying, therefore
cannot have been the result of supposed troublemaking by Japan, Vietnam and the
Philippines.
Chinese state-owned media, as well as military pundits, have also adopted an
undeniably nationalistic and belligerent tone, while protests over the Diaoyutai
Islands (³¨³½¥x) have called for Tokyo to be ¡§washed in blood¡¨ and for the South
China Sea to be turned into a ¡§sea of fire.¡¨
Although it is fair to say that editorials and demonstrations do not necessarily
reflect Beijing¡¦s policy, China is nevertheless the only country in the region
that has resorted to such rhetoric and Chinese leaders appear to have done
little, if anything, to temper it.
It is also hard to see how building an air force base at Shuimen in Fujian
Province, complete with multirole combat aircraft that can reach the Diaoyutais
within 12 minutes, is more restrained than, say, Taipei¡¦s call for an East China
Sea peace initiative.
The whole notion that the US is re-engaging the region with an imperial agenda
and to prevent China¡¦s rise is also ludicrous. Knowing it was seriously
outgunned by China, the Philippines turned to the US for assistance. As did
Vietnam, whose painful history of entanglement with the US and long tradition of
independence hardly makes it amenable to a greater US role in the region. That
Hanoi would call upon its old adversary for help speaks volumes about the sense
of anxiety that has developed within the region as China becomes more assertive.
Compounding all this is the fact that the world¡¦s No. 2 economy, which is
rapidly building one of the most modern armed forces on the planet, is run by an
authoritarian regime that has not hesitated to use force against its own people.
Such behavior, added to the possibility that it could be replicated in China¡¦s
foreign policy, understandably puts other countries on edge.
The ¡§China threat¡¨ is no invention. It is a reality that must be addressed
realistically and, if the situation calls for it, with firmness. Ignoring it
will not make it go away.
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