China seen reasserting its Third World leader role

China seen reasserting its Third World leader role

Benjamin Kang Lim, Reuters/Beijing

Chinese President Hu Jintao will attend the 50th anniversary
commemorations of the Asia-Africa Conference in Indonesia,
reasserting China's credentials as a leader of the Third World,
diplomatic sources and analysts said.

Following the 1949 Communist takeover, China emerged from its
diplomatic isolation in 1955 at the Asia-Africa Conference in
Indonesia's West Java town of Bandung that marked a move by the
Third World to assert itself.

Hu will attend the April 21-24 Asian-African Summit and the
golden jubilee of the Bandung conference en route to the
Philippines for an April 26-28 state visit, said two Asian
diplomatic sources.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has yet to announce Hu's trip,
which is also expected to take him to the tiny oil-rich sultanate
of Brunei.

China has played down its role as the vanguard of the Third
World, but analysts said Hu's presence would cement such a
position for the world's most populous nation and an emerging
economic power that has been careful in recent decades to be seen
to be diplomatically neutral.

"The growth of its domestic economy and increased integration
with the world will compel China to exert itself and take a
larger role in regional security and economic issues," Drew
Thompson, a China watcher at the Washington-based Center for
Strategic and International Studies, wrote.

The 1955 Bandung conference's main principles of peaceful co-
existence that have long been trumpeted by China's communist
rulers as the foundation of their foreign policy.

The principles are: mutual respect for sovereignty and
territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in
each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and
peaceful co-existence.

"It reflects China's desire to be the carrier of the spirit of
Bandung that focuses on decolonization in all aspects especially
now in economic, technology and culture," said Hong Kong-based
commentator Josef Purnama Widyatmadja.

China has long been sensitive about its defeats and various
invasions at the hands of foreign powers during the 19th century.

The 1955 Bandung meeting was the first world summit that
gathered former colonized Asian and African nations without
interference from any Western force, the late American author
Robert Wright wrote in "The Colour of Curtain" published in 1956.

It was against alignment with either the United States or the
Soviet Union.

China has come a long way since Bandung 50 years ago, joining
the United Nations in 1971 after then Premier Zhou Enlai won the
backing of the Third World with three visits to Asian and African
countries between 1956 and 1964.

More recently, China has emerged into a fledgling economic
powerhouse from a centrally planned backwater.

When scouring the globe for a steady supply of energy and raw
materials, China should be encouraged to promote transparency,
good governance and responsible behavior with its partner
nations, Thompson wrote for the Washington-based Jamestown
Foundation.

But China's rise has alarmed the United States.

"The United States ... (is) becoming concerned that Chinese
diplomatic advances, particularly in Asia and the Americas, could
marginalize the U.S. presence in these regions where it has
traditionally taken the lead," Thompson wrote.

China's presence in the United States' backyard, Latin
America, is growing as it emerges as a voracious buyer of
agricultural and mining products from the region, and a big
investor in various countries there.