The myth of the China threat

I would like to comment on Mr. Santo's article What about China's new warship? in The Jakarta Post on Feb. 26, 2000. On the same day, Kompas daily reported that Indonesian Navy Chief of Staff Adm. Achmad Sutjipto announced the Indonesian Navy needed 22 new warships in the next five and a half years, in addition to 144 various other ships immediately. Mr.Santo, how about another article titled What about Indonesia's 22 new warships?

Mr. Santo also wrote that the Chinese navy -- though not comparable to that of the United States and Great Britain -- poses a potential threat to Southeast Asian countries given the government's determination and the country's growing economy, complemented by Russia's willing assistance.

Despite its rapid economic growth over the past two decades, China's economy is now only about 3 percent of the world's GNP while China makes up 22 percent of the world's population. Compare that with the U.S., which is about 25 percent of the world's GNP and less than 5 percent of the world's population.

On the myth of the China threat, Dr. Wang Gungwu of the East Asian Institute (EAI) in Singapore wrote in EAI occasional paper No. 13, China and South East Asia: Myths, threats and culture, as follows: "The China threat emerged when the colonial powers were forced to pull out of South East Asia. It was thought that this would leave the region to the tender mercies of the communist successors of imperial China. This implied that China had been a threat to the region and must not be allowed to be a threat again. By using this term, the period of European conquests could be rationalized as something which prevented the region from coming under Chinese dominance.

"It followed then that when they departed, the region was likely to succumb to that fearful fate. Hence the China threat could be used to justify their remaining behind to build strategic alliances for the containment of China ... China was clearly not a threat during the 110 years between the opium war and communist victory (1949). The China threat must, therefore, have been there before the 1840s or appeared only after 1949 ... There had never been a China threat to East Asia and South East Asia before the 1840s, despite the fact that a united imperial China had the power to dominate the region ... How then do we describe the China threat now that the cold war is over .... We have seen the formation of the threat to the mentality in Asia after the period of European dominance ... how difficult it is to challenge a myth once it takes, even with a historical myth ... especially if it appeared at a time when people were predisposed to believe it."

Dr. Wang was impressed by a recent heroic attempt to counter a hoary old myth in Ong Chit Chung's Britain's war plans against the Japanese, in which Dr. Ong wrote: "Despite all these preparations against a landward attack, the myth persists that the British were surprised by the landward invasion while the guns of Singapore pointed uselessly out to the sea. The popular image is one of muddle-headed 'Colonel Blimp' blissfully unaware of the Japanese threat."

To dispel the myth of the China threat, I think that we should simply watch the films of Western-award winning director Zhang Yimou, who will take us beyond Shanghai Guang Zhou and Beijing to see the real China -- a poor rural China where 2 percent of the Chinese live.

SIA KA MOU

Jakarta