Is Beijing a foe or friend?

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.