China's `soft power' has a hard line
　

By Richard Halloran
Tuesday, Jan 15, 2008, Page 8

Much that is said about China's foreign policy and security posture these days revolves around military matters: warships and fighter planes bought from Russia, missiles aimed at Taiwan and the latest maneuvers of the People's Liberation Army.

There's another side to China's emerging might, however. It is what some pundits call "soft power," "smiling diplomacy" or the "charm offensive."

Most of that effort is the application of China's expanding economy to trade, aid and investment for political ends.

In a wider context, China's soft power seems integral to what may be a campaign to revive the Middle Kingdom, the China of yesteryear that dominated Asia. Chinese armies won't march across international borders, but Beijing does seek to acquire such political, economic and diplomatic clout that major decisions in every Asian capital will require Chinese approval.

An academic who specializes in China, Joshua Kurlantzick, has written: "China may want to shift influence away from the United States to create its own sphere of influence, a kind of Chinese Monroe Doctrine for Southeast Asia [where] countries would subordinate their interests to China's, and would think twice about supporting the United States" (US president James Monroe proclaimed in 1823 that outside powers would not be permitted to intervene in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere).

In a fresh assessment, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) in Washington asserts that China has been mostly, but not completely, successful in Southeast Asia: "Beijing has largely allayed Southeast Asian concerns that China poses a military or economic threat."

In contrast, the US is perceived as having "waning or limited attention" toward Southeast Asia.

China's ability to influence Southeast Asians, the CRS report contends, "largely stems from its role as a major source of foreign aid, trade, and investment."

In addition, overseas Chinese communities in almost every Southeast Asian nation "have long played important parts in the economies, societies, and cultures of Southeast Asian states."

One set of figures is illuminating. Chinese imports from Southeast Asia from 1997 to 2006 soared 674 percent to US$89.5 billion. In the same period, US imports rose 57 percent to US$111 billion. When last year's figures are in, China will likely have bought more from Southeast Asia than the US.

The Chinese have concentrated economic assistance in Myanmar and Laos on their southern border, and in Cambodia.

They are also the poorest countries in the region. An authoritarian junta shunned by the US rules Myanmar.

China has provided the largest amount of aid to Myanmar and has helped to build roads, railroads, airfields and ports. The Chinese have also provided up to US$2 billion in weapons to the junta, which has undoubtedly helped the oppressive regime to stay in power.

Beijing has lent Vietnam large sums for railways, hydropower projects and shipbuilding yards. Compared with its influence in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, however, the CRS report says that "China's influence in Vietnam is relatively limited."

Although China supported North Vietnam against South Vietnam and the US in the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese have historically feared China. China occupied large parts of Vietnam for about a thousand years until 939AD and invaded Vietnam briefly in 1979. Anti-Chinese demonstrations erupted in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City last month to protest Chinese military exercises aimed at islands near Vietnam.

China's influence in the island nations of Indonesia and the Philippines has been in competition with the US.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the US has sought to cultivate good relations with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Even so, the CRS says, Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono in 2005 "signed a declaration proclaiming a strategic partnership that was accompanied by a promise of preferential loans worth US$300 million."

Similarly, China has sought influence in the Philippines, even though the country was once a US colony and now has a security treaty with the US.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed 20 economic agreements in January last year that included a contract for a Chinese company to build and renovate railroads.

While the US has been behind the curve, the CRS report says that "even some of the main beneficiaries of China's largesse in Southeast Asia remain wary of the PRC [People's Republic of China] or seek to dampen its growing influence."

Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.