Is Beijing a foe or friend?

At a conference last Friday sponsored by The Jakarta Post and the Asia-Pacific Economics Group, two experts argued that China is not likely to pose a threat to its ASEAN neighbors. Our Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin, another speaker at the conference, agrees and disagrees with the conclusion. This is the first of two articles.

JAKARTA (JP): Whenever the topic of China is raised, it's essential to remember one absolutely fundamental, but usually unnoticed reality -- you are dealing with two Middle Kingdom complexes, not one.

Everyone knows the Middle Kingdom complex held by the Chinese vis-a-vis the lesser world outside China. Yet there is one Middle Kingdom complex on the outside -- as well as one on the inside. There is the Middle Kingdom complex held by foreigners towards China, rather than the one held by China towards foreigners.

It is not merely that the rulers of China view their own country as the center of the universe -- in that sense, all countries have a Middle Kingdom complex. It is just that China takes the self-centeredness to significant extremes. It seeks special treatment when joining international bodies. It is very quick to take offense at what it perceives to be a national slight.

It is skilled at interpreting and redefining, or simply ignoring, international agreements. It often adopts a high-handed self-righteousness when dealing with foreign barbarians. As any watchers of Beijing television news can tell you, China is careful to cast all foreign visitors to the Middle Kingdom as if they were supplicants from tributary states.

In all these and other ways, China is persistently resisting and rejecting a crucial aspect of modernization. China is still locked into the habits of the centuries. It is not yet committed to changing those habits.

Yet the outside world is broadly convinced that China is modernizing much more than is probably the case. In large part, this is because of the Middle Kingdom complex held by foreigners vis-a-vis China. Most obviously in the United States, but also in many other nations, China is viewed through rose-colored spectacles which alter facts, distort vision, and obscure reality. The great myth of the bottomless Chinese market, allegedly capable of providing endless succor for profit-hungry capitalists, is but the best known example of this romanticism.

The China specialists in foreign ministries around the world are also prone to this dangerous romanticism. They forgive China its self-centeredness and even argue for special treatment for the Middle Kingdom. China, we are told, is scrupulous in observing all of its international agreements. Its high- handedness is understandable, its arrogance forgivable.

Nowadays numerous economists are playing catch-up with the romanticism of the China specialists. Straight-line econometric models are produced showing that China's economy will go on expanding at the rate of 10 percent into the indefinite future. The absurd prophecy is made, by a ranking Clinton administration official, that the Chinese economy will be the world's largest in 13 years' time.

China's own Middle Kingdom complex produces statistics of dubious value which the external Middle Kingdom complex of foreigners then accepts at face value. One misunderstanding produces another. This external Middle Kingdom complex both justifies Chinese political behavior even when it is obnoxious, and exaggerates China's economic progress even when it is questionable, to such an extent that it inevitably paves the way for a policy of appeasement -- as we are seeing at the moment in the administration of U.S. President Bill Clinton.

These worrying tendencies form part of the background to the future possible relationship between Southeast Asia and China. These tendencies remind that there are three key elements to possible discord involving China. First, there is the interaction between those who proclaim China's uniqueness and those who justify it.

Second, there is the underlying clash between a China which sees itself as the center of the universe, and a world which should see China as merely the largest state in a globe composed of sovereign states.

Third, there is the tension between a China which looks back to both a "century of shame" as well as a mythical glorious past -- and a Southeast Asia which looks for peace and security in the years that lie ahead.

Together these three tensions are entering a dangerous phase. For the most part, a journalist's job is to report and analyze trends. But sometimes we must warn about them, too.

Bluntly, China's Middle Kingdom complex is leading it down paths in the international arena which are unacceptable and potentially dangerous. Hang-ups about the Middle Kingdom, in the world outside China, mean that the world outside China is not rising to the implicit Chinese challenge, thereby possibly adding to the danger.

Despite Chinese propaganda claims to the contrary, no nation is trying to deny China its rightful place and leading role in a world of equal sovereign states. But a China which lobs its missiles at Taiwan, a China which repeatedly asserts its sovereignty over the whole of the South China Sea, (not just over the Paracel or Spratly archipelagos), a China which constantly ignores the feelings of the six million Hong Kong Chinese as the date for Hong Kong's reversion to Chinese sovereignty falls due, and a China which consistently seeks to wipe out not merely any dissent but any critical political comment whatsoever within China itself -- this China is sending unmistakable signals that it may be on a collision course with the non-Chinese world. In the event of any such collision Southeast Asia stands in the front line.

Window: Bluntly, China's Middle Kingdom complex is leading it down paths in the international arena which are unacceptable and potentially dangerous.