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Updated Sunday, September 5, 2010 5:51 pm TWN, By William Choong , The Straits Times

China needs to do more to counter skepticism over its rise

SINGAPORE--The British defense analyst was the typical British don — stiff upper lip, unflappable and the picture of calm. At a recent seminar on Asia-Pacific security, however, he lost his cool.

An academic from Beijing University had stated that People's Liberation Army officers were portraying military build-ups in Southeast Asian countries as threatening to China's interests. (Under Chatham House rules, both cannot be named.)

Visibly irritated, the British academic replied: “Time and time again this year, my colleagues and I have heard from our Chinese interlocutors that China is portraying Southeast Asian military build-ups as destabilizing ... This is a fantastic inversion of reality.”

The British professor was merely expressing a common occurrence in international relations. As political scientist Richard Ned Lebow states in Between Peace And War, a country's policymakers imprisoned by their own self-image can convince themselves that others see them as they see themselves.

This is occurring in China's interactions with its Asian neighbors today. China sees itself as benign. It has conducted a charm offensive in Asia, touting its “peaceful rise” and the aspiration that its navy and other Asian navies share a “harmonious ocean.” It has doled out billions of aid to ASEAN countries and takes seriously its participation in various Asian and ASEAN-related fora.

Speaking to The Straits Times in her first interview with the foreign press last year, China's Ambassador to ASEAN Xue Hanqin argued that ASEAN countries were comfortable with China's military and economic emergence. Concerns about China “did not exist”, she added.

The problem, however, is that other countries do not always see China as Beijing sees itself. Recently, for example, countries in the region were concerned when China declared its “indisputable sovereignty” over the disputed South China Sea. To top things off, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi reportedly said in Hanoi that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact.”

China's diatribes were not only aimed at small countries. Reacting to naval exercises held recently by the United States and South Korea in the Yellow Sea,

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September 5, 2010 johnlone@

Bravo! Commentator say it all...China need to back off. Peaceful rise is nonsense. China's core interests are another non-senses. China can not be trusted and every nation especially in ASEAN are natural to upgrade their navy to counter this barbarian threat.

September 6, 2010 dagstd@

Chinese military power is growing and it is only natural that China will use to exert influence in defense of her strategic national interests, just as any nation does, and as the U.S. (and Japan) have done in the past. The problem as I see (speaking as an American) is that China's leaders often use bombastic and highly threatening language when the U.S. or other nations act or speak in ways the Chinese do not like. Their choice of language may help bolster China's self-image, but it is decidedly unhelpful and only fosters suspicion of China's true motives and hidden intentions. China insists that its rise is "peaceful," but then, why such an expansion of its military? The other issue is much more problematic and nearly impossible to resolve and that is China's Communist government. Totalitarian governments are much more inclined to be expansionist and imperialistic in its foreign policy, unless there is a counterweight to such actions. If China became a truly democratic state once again, I think she and the U.S. and her other neighbors could solve their differences quite easily and the suspicions about Chinese intentions would diminish dramatically. This much we can all agree on: neither China nor the U.S. or her allies want open conflict. No one could truly win a war like that and everyone would be losers. China has made impressive strides economically and conflict with the West could destroy it all. I only hope that China, in spite of its totalitarian system of government, will behave responsibly and non-aggressively toward her neighbors and the U.S.. To do otherwise, would be to risk a miscalculation that could have dire consequences.


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