The following article originally appeared in the Lowy Interpreter on November 6, 2018.
No other development has so profoundly transformed
international relations in recent years as the rise of China. Over the past 35
years, China has pulled the largest number of people out of poverty in history
and, with 39%, has made the largest contribution to global growth since 2008.
It is now the world’s leader in manufacturing, exports, energy use, and
urbanisation. With a growing middle class and national resources, it is only
natural that China’s international influence should also have increased. Today,
China shapes almost every global issue of note, from climate change to trade,
and from regional security in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean to investment
trends in Africa and Central Europe.
Why, then, does China’s rise generate so much anxiety?
Over the past two years, I have travelled across the Indo-Pacific region, from
Colombo to Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo to Taipei, Hanoi to Honolulu, Port Blair to
Perth, Washington to Wellington, and beyond to Europe and the Middle East. In
all of these places and many others, regional political leaders, diplomats, and
military officers echo similar concerns about China’s rise. Such concerns
persist despite Beijing adopting a less confrontational approach over the past
few months towards Southeast Asia, Japan, and India among others. Essentially,
they are four reasons for continuing concern about China’s rise.
The first – infrequently stated, and rarely in a public
setting – is a product of China’s continued opacity of decision-making and
centralisation of power. This is problematic because China is no longer an
isolated and inward-looking country, but a state whose decisions have direct
implications for the rest of the world. While many had hoped that China’s
economic and social integration would be accompanied by decision-making
transparency, the consolidation of power by Xi Jinping has diminished such
expectations. Today, even relatively minor actions by China are viewed with a
great deal of scepticism. As former Indonesian Deputy Foreign Minister Dino
Patti Djalal recently observed, while Washington is a known quantity, China
remains an “enigma” in strategic terms. And even hardened realists would acknowledge
that opacity of intentions exacerbates security competition.
A second area of growing concern involves China’s
economic and trade policies, about which anxieties are much more pronounced and
public. The continuing dominance of state-backed and heavily-subsidised
enterprises, restrictive market access in certain sectors, active industrial
espionage programs, and a supply-side approach to development have resulted in
market distortions, an uneven playing field, and ballooning debt. Political and
policy leaders increasingly believe that China’s model has harmed growth and
job prospects in their own countries. The United States under Donald Trump has
chosen to contest China’s “predatory economics” by slapping tariffs and
tightening investment opportunities. In Australia, Chinese investments in
critical infrastructure have become a hot-button issue. In India, Chinese
dumping has soured business sentiments. China’s signature international
economic strategy – the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt,
One Road) – is only exporting and further exacerbating these concerns.
Third, while China is not alone in the region in having
territorial disputes, its recent actions concerning disputed territory have
been disconcerting. Beijing regularly employs civilian tools – armed fishing
boats, dredging vessels, road construction crews, and civil aviation – to
impose control or authority over disputed territory. US Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo has declared that the Indo-Pacific should be “free from coercion or
great power domination,” such sentiments find resonance elsewhere. Such
concerns are manifested in actions too: the increased tempo of US freedom of
navigation operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea, Japanese
remilitarisation efforts, and Indian attempts at blocking Chinese road-building
in disputed territory in the Himalayas. Whether at Doklam or Ieodo or
Scarborough Shoal, China’s revisionism is adding to regional tensions.
Finally, there are abiding concerns about China’s
disrespect for international norms. Freedom of navigation and overflight has
been a major issue, particularly after China’s rejection of international
arbitration in the South China Sea. But other concerns, including over
cybersecurity, non-proliferation, space, and even the Antarctic Treaty System,
are becoming more pronounced. This extends to another area of incipient
competition: connectivity infrastructure. Several countries have now
articulated concerns about China’s unsustainable financing, opacity of
contracts, hidden political strings, swapping of debt for equity, and
environmental degradation. In a thinly-veiled reference to China, India’s Prime
Minister Narendra Modi warned in Singapore that: Rules and norms should be
based on the consent of all, not on the power of the few.
From Thai diplomats to Nigerian central bankers, French
presidents to newly-elected Brazilian leaders, broad criticism of China’s
external policies has been mounting. A host of new strategies, policies, and
informal mechanisms are already evolving to address these concerns. China’s
rise already offers the subtexts for the US and Japan’s “Free and Open
Indo-Pacific” strategies; India’s Act East Policy and its boycott of the Belt
and Road Initiative; Australia’s tough legislation on political interference;
and South Korea’s “New Southern Policy”, with its emphasis on Southeast and
South Asian engagement. Bilateral and trilateral security partnerships among
all four “Quad” countries (the US, Japan, India, and Australia) have deepened,
as have all their partnerships with some Southeast Asian countries.
China’s rise cannot and should not be contained in a
traditional sense. Any effort at labelling criticism of Chinese behaviour as
reflective of a “Cold War mentality” is inaccurate, if not deliberately
misleading. The language of containment imposes an anachronistic Cold War
blueprint on a 21st century set of problems. However, what countries that share
concerns about China’s rise can be doing – on their own and in cooperation with
one another – is raise the costs of adverse behaviour. Managing China’s rise
should be understood not as a diplomatic euphemism, but as a distinct strategic
objective. It should not rule out cooperation with Beijing in areas that
reflect positive changes – dealings with China cannot be purely competitive.
But if concerted efforts can be made using a variety of economic, military, and
diplomatic tools to incentivise China’s transparency of decision-making, market
liberalisation, an equitable settlement of territorial differences, and
adherence to accepted international norms, it would not only benefit other
countries in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. This would ultimately sustain and
facilitate China’s continued rise.