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Updated Tuesday, February 9, 2010 11:26 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Beijing's surprising 'surplus of confidence' in the world

Now, Beijing speaks with increasing assertiveness, and acts with growing confidence. It didn't hesitate to lecture the U.S and blame it for causing the global economic recession. It rejected U.S. demand for the revaluation of Renminbi, the Chinese currency which Washington says has been kept below its true value to make Chinese goods competitive in export. It brushed off criticism on human rights abuses. It sentenced dissident Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in jail despite Obama's pleading. It executed a Briton for drug trafficking despite Prime Minister Gordon Brown's request for clemency. The list goes on and on.

Recently, there have been ominous signs that Beijing's diplomatic assertiveness is increasingly viewed by the rest of the world as unsettling and hubristic. As a result, the United States appears ready to hit back. A rough patch in Sino-U.S. relations is looming large. Last week, Beijing warned the United States in harsh language against President Obama's announcement of selling US$6.4 billion arms to Taiwan, demanding that Obama rescind the “mistaken decision” in order to avoid damaging broader U.S.-China relations. China is also adamantly opposed to Obama's planned meeting with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet whom Beijing labeled a “splittist,” in the White House, saying the rendezvous harms China's core interest.

It should be noted that the U.S is not doing anything different from what it has been doing all along. But Beijing's reaction is different-unusually strong and vehement, and menacing. It bodes ill for relations between the world sole superpower and a rising power.

However, Liu Chao-shiuan, senior adviser to President Ma Ying-jeou, said last week that the escalating row between the duo, who called themselves “strategic partners” in happier times, may not spin out of control. But it poses threat to the national interests of both sides, because China and America are, in a sense, share a symbiotic relationship.

America, with a budgetary deficit exceeding 11 per cent of its GDP, the largest since World War II, needs China's lending. It also needs Beijing support to resolve many regional security issues, like stopping nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea. China needs America's market - the single largest source of its trade surplus and its overflowing foreign exchange reserves, which stood at a whopping US$2.4 trillion by the end of 2009.

That may be why Liu Chao-shiuan was still upbeat despite the gathering clouds over the horizon. Maybe Beijing should take another look at Deng Xiaoping's exhortation, which included a slang warning his comrades against “swaggering” when China becomes prosperous one day.

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