The implications of China's growth (2)

By Juwono Sudarsono

This is the second of two articles examining the rapid economic growth and political development of China and its repercussions on regional security.

JAKARTA (JP): There is logic to the Chinese government's claim that as China's economy expands, so must its ability to secure the increased material wealth that accrues from its international commitments. Reflecting its need to balance outlays for development as well as for weapons modernization, the government has opted to be selective in purchasing sophisticated weapons such as fighter-interceptors, anti-aircraft missiles and diesel- powered submarines.

Plans to project limited power to anticipate low-intensity conflicts by creating rapid reaction forces may alarm China's neighbors and are in fact progressing slowly. Even the well- publicized purchase of fighter aircraft from Russia obscures the fact that without the required in-flight capability to refuel, China's limited number of fighters cannot reach targets in the contentious Spratly Islands.

As economic development progresses, China has gradually increased its defense budget from US$ 2.5 billion in 1988 to roughly $7.5 billion for 1994-1995. Even allowing for off-budget support that may not be officially counted, the defense budget for the next five years should average $7 to $10 billion annually. Restrictions on defense outlays have forced military planners to opt for licensing agreements with foreign firms, sometimes paid for in kind with consumer goods and commodities.

The perceived threat of China's growing military capability has to be viewed in the context of American military retrenchment as a consequence of the end of the Cold War. Whereas in the period of the East Asia Miracle, the Western Pacific region was virtually defended through the strategic and conventional capabilities of the United States underpinned by economic assistance provided by Japan, the contemporary scene has put the modernization of Chinese forces into a more dramatic light.

More importantly, the tendency of current American reluctance to maintain military capability at pre-1992 levels and the end of Soviet military presence in Vietnam have highlighted the rise of Chinese and Japanese military influence in the region. China's neighbors are aware that over the past 10 years, China has not been reluctant to be involved in skirmishes with Vietnam over the Paracel and Spratly islands.

China also announced its legislation reserving the right to use force to defend its maritime interests in the region, drawing an imaginary boundary line covering about 75% of the South China Sea. In January and May 1995, the Philippines launched diplomatic protests over Chinese installation of naval facilities in an area of the Spratlys within 121 kilometers of territorial waters claimed by Manila. Further skirmishes must not lead to open conflict.

The quest to engage China into a web of political, economic and military obligations that would balance its desire to play a co-determining role in the emerging Asia-pacific order with the larger interests of regional states is one that must take into account several important historical as well as contemporary events.

China must be persuaded that it can only play a decisive and constructive role in the enhancement of security and prosperity in Asia and the Pacific if its leaders can show that they are capable of responding adequately to the many level of complex issues that China's interaction brings to the outside world and to its citizens.

The country's vast links at various levels of its relationships (recognition and respect from its immediate neighbors, its investment funds put to good use in generating export drives, its economic reach to such diverse entities as ASEAN, Vietnam, North Korea, Japan, the United States) call for requisite skills to encourage responsibility and maturity. China must be persuaded to have the courage of its age-old tradition of self-confidence to be a teacher in the traditional Confucian sense.

As China becomes more engaged in wider and deeper international obligations, its leaders must be made to feel that the country is part of both regional as well as global communities with corresponding duties and commitments to uphold.

The nations of Asia and the Pacific must strike a healthy balance between being perennially hostile to all of China's published concerns and endlessly apologetic to all of China's claims as the authentic center of the universe. Neither outright hostility nor outright appeasement is healthy for its neighbors.

What China's leaders need most of all is respect gained through quiet and behind the scenes diplomatic persuasion rather than public debate or mutual recriminations through the vigorous style of western media reporting and public diplomacy.

The acceptance of mutual trust based on seasoned relationships aiming for the medium and long terms will be even more important as China engages itself into a web of cooperative engagement and mutual obligations.

Many regional states have experienced wrenching economic changes throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It is an intrinsic mark of market-driven change that for an extended period the cultural and authority templates of nation, state and economy must be tested to withstand the push and pulls of accelerated change.

Disruptive change by definition means constant realignment and regrouping of alliances among factions, personalities and bureaucracies that will continuously be in flux. For groups and personalities who fear social upheaval, the stakes in struggling to survive are always high.

China is experiencing all of these economic and political shifts on a much bigger scale than most countries in the region can ever imagine. But providing the right sympathetic signals to Chinese leaders is just as important as being firm when contentious issues involving China's border disputes might lead to military confrontation.

The best thing that the economies of the Asia-Pacific can do is to provide future Chinese leaders with the conviction that its neighbors appreciate and sympathize with many aspects of China's manifold and continual problems in managing its economy, in coping with reforming its political system and in controlling its military capability.

China's unique political and cultural prestige has been enhanced by its success in moving its economy into one of the highest performers in the region and one that will have tremendous implications throughout the entire Asia-Pacific region well into the next century.

The key problem is whether political reform -- its scope and pace -- can accommodate the unavoidable lurches that economic disparities and social unrest must bring to Chinese society.

The economies of the Asia-Pacific region have important roles to play in providing an international economic environment that appreciates China's difficulties in managing its internal political and economic transition. Optimists predict that the integrated pull of Asia-Pacific economic dynamism must in time provide salvation for most of China's teeming millions. The pessimists worry about the disintegration of China and its repercussions on neighboring countries.

It is in the self-interest of all other countries and economies in the region that accelerated growth in China and its rising importance as a regional and global economic power be accepted as an inevitable part of the shift in the balance of power in the region.

For more than four decades, the Asia-Pacific region has long relied on the conventional wisdom brought about by the dominance of American military and Japanese economic power. Over the past 10 years China has proved that perhaps in the next 40 years, the basic parameters of change might will have to take into serious consideration its voice in actively involved in building the coming Asia-Pacific order.

In the meantime, China must still cope with key issues that affects its international standing. The manner with which Hong Kong will be formally incorporated and preserved as an integral part of China will indicate whether pragmatism or pretense will prevail. Likewise, China's relations with Taiwan will signal to the rest of the region how it calibrates its power elements to the regional and international situation.

Finally, China's relations with her southern neighbors over the Spratlys and the Paracels will be of signal importance in appreciating how its leaders handle economic prominence with political and military astuteness. Rapid defense spending by countries in the region, made possible by accelerated economic growth, may have started to threaten the peace and stability on which continued growth depends.

The combined roles of Japan and the United States, carefully calibrated as each stage develops, would be to ensure that China's transition be implemented as smoothly as possible.

In the final analysis, it is China's new nationalism that will be a major factor which will decide the future course of Asia- Pacific politics, economics and security.

The United States, Japan and eventually Russia will have to take China's emerging nationalism more seriously. All of these three major powers and the rest of the East Asia region must come to terms with this new reality.

It is in their interest, and China's, that the country's current economic nationalism be characterized by both self assurance as well as self-restraint.

Juwono Sudarsono is Vice Governor of Lemhamnas, the National Resilience Institute, Jakarta.