Deng's death casts shadow over Asia

By Richard S. Ehrlich

BANGKOK: The world at large will be closely watching developments in the post-Deng era, but China's shadow cast longest across an Asian region with inextricable political, economic and cultural links to the world's most populous nation.

The expected jockeying for political power in Beijing and even the manner in which the Communist Party lays to rest paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, will be closely followed from Taipei to the east, to Hanoi in the south-east and Delhi in the south.

Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, will be wary that a power struggle could see Jiang trying to curry favor with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and hardliners in the Communist Party by resorting to aggression as opposed to negotiation in the stalemated reunification process.

Taiwan's own army was put on the alert Wednesday after news broke of Deng's death. Last year, in March, China's military staged a series of war games across the Taiwan Strait.

Other potential hotspots are on the Mainland itself, in western and north-west China, where calls for autonomous rule have till now been kept under the lid by a regime that tolerates no form of dissident behavior.

Tibet's self-exiled Dalai Lama, for example, has often predicted a possible Soviet-style breakup of China after Deng's death. Any rupture in Beijing's control may force a loosening of China's grip on Lhasa, and pave the way for fuller autonomy for Tibetans.

"Tibet is an occupied country," the Dalai Lama said last year. "I cannot destroy this fact. But this does not mean that I am seeking independence. I am ready to work and live with the Chinese. So, I am seeking genuine self-rule."

The Dalai Lama's elder brother, Gyalo Thondup, began negotiating with Deng in 1979, resulting mostly in a stalemate.

Across the border in South and South-east Asia, the possibility that foreign relation and economic policies pursued during Deng's period at the helm, may be affected, will be of particular concern.

The army-backed junta in Myanmar has depended heavily upon Deng and other Chinese leaders for military aid, to ward off demands for democracy by Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has the international community on her side.

Myanmar spent hundreds of millions of dollars during the 1990s, buying Chinese helicopter gunships, armored vehicles, field guns, assault rifles and patrol boats, and will be hoping such powerful support from Beijing continues.

Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) political party will be hoping otherwise, particularly since Deng has also served as a ruthless model for Myanmar's military on how to crush domestic dissidents and international criticism -- yet still attract international investment.

Further east, in Vietnam, one of the world's last stable Communist regimes, a close eye will not only be kept on political developments in China, but as well as how Beijing disposes of Deng's corpse.

Vietnam's independence leader, Ho Chi Minh, is in a crystal sarcophagus in Hanoi. China duplicated that form of reverence and placed its former strongman, Mao Zedong, in a sarcophagus in Beijing. Both nations copied the technique from the way Moscow entombed Stalin's body.

The elderly communist leadership in Hanoi will thus now be scrutinizing Deng's funeral ceremony, and the resulting power shifts, for clues to how communist hierarchies should best deal with such transitions.

During the more than 1,000 years of relations between the Chinese and Vietnamese, the two nations have fought wars, became military allies, and invaded each other's territory. With both countries now hot on the economic reform trail, they have opened their borders to increased trade.

But they still eye each other with suspicion because both countries seek wider influence in South-east Asia and face an unresolved dispute over key islands in the South China Sea. A host of South-east Asian nations face similar territorial disputes.

In the South Asian context, there is the long-standing border dispute involving India. Some officials in New Delhi feared Deng was maneuvering China's navy to gain access to the Indian Ocean, via Myanmar's ports. As a result, India will be focusing on moves by China's military now that Deng is gone.

A chunk of previously held Indian territory, known as Aksai Chin, is also a coveted prize. Aksai Chin provides China with the only main highway directly linking troubled Tibet with independence-minded Xinjiang Province in north-west China, where Moslem Uighurs recently staged bloody protests against continued Chinese rule.

Thailand, meanwhile, has capitalist concerns about the post- Deng era.

Thailand's economy has suffered a melt-down in recent months, with a plunging stock market, slumping real estate sector, flattening export figures, and a government nervously denying that the Thai currency may have to be devalued.

Many Thai corporations have large investments in China, and will be hoping that Deng's death will not result in any woes for Thai businessmen.

Many Thais are actually Thai-Chinese, and have recently begun visiting southern and coastal China to see the places their ancestors fled.

A surge in "Chinese pride" has recently swept middle and upper class Thai society, which has traditionally kept mum about such ethnic diversity because Thailand is obsessed with projecting an image of social conformity.

Joint-projects between China and other South-east Asian nations, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines, will also be tracked to see if the post-Deng investment climate causes delays, cutbacks, or other forms of hostility to foreign linked deals.

Those nations also have large, commercially successful, Chinese communities who are alternately suspected of being pro- communist, pro-China, or, ironically, too pro-capitalist.

-- IPS