20100909 The US-China contest for power

The US-China contest for power

By Sushil Seth
Thursday, Sep 09, 2010, Page 8

The recent China visit of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is an important development. This is his second recent trip, the first one coming around the time of the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, believed to be Pyongyang’s doing.

During that visit, Kim obviously gave his own version of the incident, apparently absolving his country of any wrongdoing. China maintained neutrality on the issue, counseling both sides to maintain calm, which disappointed South Korea and the US, as they believed, on the basis of an investigation into the issue, that North Korea was responsible.

When the US and South Korea subsequently conducted joint military exercises to emphasize their preparedness and resolve, Beijing was not impressed. It sought to bar the US from conducting joint naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, because it constituted a threat to China’s security. (The South China Sea is already being billed as China’s territorial lake.)

Apart from warning the US, China was also implicitly cautioning Seoul against inviting foreign vessels into the Yellow Sea.

Another message is that the Korean Peninsula is China’s security zone and the US involvement could trigger a Chinese response, as in the Korean War of the early 1950s.

Indeed, the Xinhua news agency report of Kim’s visit not so subtly pointed out the link, with the North Korean leader having said: “Through this visit, the [North Korean] side had yet another in-depth experience of the preciousness … of the friendship created by older generations of revolutionaries of both countries.”

The spirit of the Korean War was thus invoked when China halted the US military advance toward the Yalu River.

Against this backdrop of such fraternal ties going back many years, the Chinese press ran a flurry of editorials defending a stable relationship with North Korea.

What it means is that China is veering toward more assured support for North Korea and the Kim dynasty.

The reinforcing of the 1950s fraternal ties, forged during the Korean War, is not a good portent.

The Korean War intensified the Cold War.

This time, it will be China, and not the former Soviet Union, that will hold the opposing flag.

The US is aware of the new danger China is posing to its naval dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. To counter China’s challenge, it is cultivating and expanding political and military ties with countries in the region, like Indonesia and Vietnam.

China is not pleased with an impending agreement between Washington and Hanoi to share nuclear fuel and technology for Vietnam’s plans to build 14 nuclear power stations over the next 20 years.

The two countries reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding in April about cooperation on nuclear power, including access to “reliable sources of nuclear fuel.”

China has accused the US of “double standards” for simultaneously pushing its non-­proliferation campaign and disturbing “the preset international order.”

The US is obviously activating regional resistance to thwart China’s moves to declare the Asia-Pacific region as its own bailiwick, as it has done with the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea and the Korean Peninsula.

Although the countries in the region are careful not to antagonize China, they are unlikely to be enthused about a sudden chorus from China of its regional primacy.

And why is China ignoring its neighbors’ sensitivities and concerns? Wang Hanling (王翰林), a maritime expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has an explanation.

According to him, Beijing used to be concerned that the Southeast Asian states might gang up against China to promote their own competing claims.

But not any more, because: “We found our neighbors had ­territorial-water disputes to wrangle over and national interests to defend, which makes it very difficult for them to build a unified front against China,” he said.

Moreover, he added: “Even if they succeed in joining together, they are still not strong enough to defeat China.”

In other words, they are easy to ignore.

It is in this overall context of China’s virtual declaration of its own Monroe Doctrine that the renewal of the Chinese-North Korean friendship (harking back to the 1950s) appears to be part of a pattern to assert China’s security parameters.

China seems determined to drive out the US navy from regional waters.

Robert D. Kaplan argues in a recent issue of Foreign Affairs: “China’s strategy to deny the US Navy entry into certain waters is designed not only to keep US forces away generally, but also, specifically, to foster its dominance over Taiwan.”

China’s Taiwanese strategy is two-fold. First, it is seeking the economic integration of Taiwan with China to a point where its existence as a separate sovereign entity will be difficult to sustain.

The present Taiwanese government, wittingly or unwittingly, is helping the process.

Second, and simultaneously, the military pressure on Taiwan is steadily built up by amassing an increasing number of missiles.

At the same time, China’s own military buildup is designed to deter the US from weighing in significantly.

Kaplan highlights the seriousness of China’s military buildup by pointing out, among other things, that it is “constructing a major naval base on the southern tip of Hainan Island, smack in the heart of the South China Sea, with underground facilities that could accommodate up to 20 nuclear and diesel-electric submarines.”

China is also developing anti-ship missiles to target US aircraft carriers and other surface vessels.

Some China scholars have felt over the years that China’s transition to great power status need not lead to conflict, as happened during the two world wars.

The main argument has been that China is a beneficiary of the existing global system, which has facilitated its rapid economic growth.

G. John Ikenberry, a proponent of this argument, put it this way in an article in Foreign Affairs: “Technology and the global economic revolution have created a logic of economic relations that is different from the past — making the political and institutional logic of the current order all the more powerful.”

However, things are changing too fast, even in the two years since Ikenberry wrote his article. China’s military buildup continues apace, and it has started to assert sovereign claims over important waterways.

While Western economies, including that of the US, are struggling to recover, China seems to grow increasingly confident about its new place in the world.

In this state of affairs, John Mearsheimer is closer to the truth than Sinologists like Ikenberry.

According to Mearsheimer, “If China continues its impressive economic growth over the next few decades, the US and China are likely to engage in an intense security competition with considerable potential for war.”

We are already witnessing a trial run of this in the Asia-Pacific region.

Sushil Seth is a writer based in Australia.