Call It Chinese Arithmetic

BY Deep K Datta-Ray , Jan 25, 2011, 12.00am IST


The most important relationship in the world took a step towards parity last week when China's President Hu Jintao visited Washington. A balanced relationship between the lone superpower and Asia's rising hegemon promises global stability. Much will depend on Beijing ironing out the fault lines within its own foreign policy making apparatus whose opacity is confounding. Neither Washington nor New Delhi is ever certain of the dynamic between China's pragmatic president, the military and nationalist sentiment.

Significant interests generate significant stresses. In seeking to defuse them, Hu noted that the China-US relationship is not a zero-sum game. Speaking economically, for that is the bedrock of the relationship, Hu noted that more than 70% of US companies in China stayed profitable during the global economic crisis and that Chinese products saved US consumers $600 billion over the last 10 years. There is more than a grain of truth in this. Americans are not forced to buy Chinese, just as they are not obligated to set up shop in China. They do so because it is in their interest.

Similarly, it was national self-interest that prompted President Barack Obama to give Hu the state honours he expected but was denied in 2006. The strategy bore rewards. Hu was uncommonly accommodating on North Korea and even acknowledged, to everyone's surprise, that 'a lot still needs to be done' in terms of human rights in China. But most significant was his promise to delink China's state acquisitions from its 'indigenous innovation' policy which requires foreign firms selling high value, technologically cutting-edge products, to ensure that the patents at the product's core are developed in and owned by China.

In short, foreign sellers are forced to reveal the technological secrets that give them the edge and draw customers, including the Chinese state. The significance of Hu's promise lies in the size of the state sector budget. At $88 billion, it dwarfs the contracts amounting to $45 billion (supporting 235,000 jobs) that Obama announced were signed last week. Much need not be made of this for in actuality, many of these deals were agreed to as long as three years ago. If anything makes the visit memorable, it's China's offer to change the innovations policy and give the US access to a huge market.

However, it may be difficult for Hu to deliver because he must negotiate the complexities of an authoritarian political system with poor institutional mechanisms. Authoritarianism cannot tolerate dissent. In the Middle East, dissent is driven underground and re-emerges in the mosque, producing radical imams and suicide bombers. In the Middle Kingdom, dissent re-emerges as straightforward nationalism expressed through a plethora of sources, including the internet. Pandering to it means subverting forward-looking and practical policies. One repository of nationalism is the People's Liberation Army (PLA) which, like any nation's military, is more nationalistic than the society that spawned it.

What complicates matters in China is that society is already highly nationalistic and that the military wields undue influence. Mao, himself a military leader, entwined the military in Chinese politics. Though his axiom was 'the Party commands the gun and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party', in practice relations were at best ambiguous.

Today, the Chinese Communist Party gets ultimate sanction from the military whose apex body is the Central Military Commission (CMC) and whose influence in policy making is considerable, though perhaps less than when Deng Xiaoping ruled as CMC chief. Deng was able to extract military compliance, but only by promising to modernise it. Now, all but two CMC members are generals. Secretive even by Chinese standards, recent events testify to its power and nationalist ideology. Angered by US arms sales to Taiwan, the CMC vetoed a visit by US defence secretary Robert Gates. When he finally did make it, China used the occasion to unveil its stealth fighter. Gates was sufficiently perturbed to ask Hu if this was a message. Hu said no and Gates left it at that.

Much of this is old hat for us because the three elements - opacity, the military and nationalism - have worked to both India's and China's cost. In 2005, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao agreed to a working plan to resolve the boundary question while safeguarding the interests of each country's settled populations. It implied a territorial swap to finally remove a constant irritant that not only embitters bilateral relations but could destabilise all of Asia. However, talks have stalled and there has been no progress. Instead, the Chinese have raised the ante on Arunachal Pradesh and further antagonised Indian opinion with their stapled visa tactics. The explanation can only be the convolutions of China's political system and the CMC's vested interest in being perceived as an aggressive defender of the nation.

Despite the Chinese arithmetic involved in achieving parity, China-US moves serve as a model for India and China. Beijing and Washington are moving towards their own equilibrium and South Asia must similarly be left to find its own balance. Commendably, the China-US joint statement is silent on our part of the world. Ultimately, if Hu can make China accommodate US requests, it will not only make for a more prosperous and safer world, but might indicate the possibility of his convincing his peers to also settle the boundary issue.

SOURCE: The Times of India