Tag: China

America’s Trouble with China

18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Photo: Voice of America/Wikimedia Commons

WASHINGTON, DC – Xi Jinping, China’s newly anointed president, made his first visit to the United States in May 1980. He was a 27-year-old junior officer accompanying Geng Biao, then a vice premier and China’s leading military official. Geng had been my host the previous January, when I was the first US defense secretary to visit China, acting as an interlocutor for President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

Americans had little reason to notice Xi back then, but his superiors clearly saw his potential. In the ensuing 32 years, Xi’s stature rose, along with China’s economic and military strength. His cohort’s ascent to the summit of power marks the retirement of the last generation of leaders designated by Deng Xiaoping (though they retain influence).

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Did News Story on Riches of China’s Premier Weaken Reformists?

Still popular: Wen Jiabao. Photo: sage@newsmth.org/Wikimedia Commons

The hot pot of Chinese politics has been boiling madly in advance of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party and the leadership transition that took place in Beijing on November 14, 2012. Many see the composition of the new Politburo Standing Committee as a defeat for outgoing President Hu Jintao, who failed to see his reformist allies promoted. Moreover, Hu has stepped down as the chairman of the Central Military Commission sooner than expected. Were Chinese conservatives stronger than expected or did something weaken the reformists?

Just two weeks before the Congress started the New York Times published a story alleging that members of Wen Jiabao’s family have amassed a combined fortune of $2.7 billion by using the Premier’s influence and close links between politics and business in China.

With Chinese politics already at boiling point, the New York Times article exploded on Sina Weibo, the social media site that is purported to be a reasonable reflection of public opinion. Comments expressing both surprise and disappointment flooded the Internet, but also many of unconditional support for Wen, reported Rachel Lu on Tea Leaf Nation.

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Can Europe Prevent Asia’s Rise?

Photo: European People’s Party/Wikimedia Commons

Attending conferences in Europe and the United States over the past three years, I have been struck by the increasing Western preoccupation with Asia’s rise, the growing influence of the rising powers of Asia, and the challenge they pose to Western values and norms governing international institutions. There is resistance to the idea that the rise of these powers will lead to changes in the decision-making practices of institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.

Although it is recognized that China, for example, should have a greater stake in international decision-making, the approach has been to ask whether China will abide by the rules set by the US and Europe after World War II. Europeans are particularly concerned about the decline of their influence and the norms and values that are espoused by them in global diplomacy as Asian powers seek a larger role in global affairs and assert their values.

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Making Waves: Debates Behind China’s First Aircraft Carrier

Image by roberthuffstutter/Flickr.

China commissioned its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, on September 25, 2012. It was a milestone that owes much to the vision of Admiral Liu Huaqing, who commanded the Chinese navy – formally the People’s Liberation Army Navy – from 1982 to 1988 and served as a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission until 1997. In those positions, he helped shape China’s maritime outlook and shift its navy from a coastal defense force to one capable of projecting power into the western Pacific. Liu argued that for the navy to fully transform it had to have an aircraft carrier. Ultimately he prevailed over resistance from the army and within his own service, though he did not live to see the Liaoning underway at sea.

While the aircraft carrier is not a revolutionary combat platform today, it remains symbolic of a navy that has reached the world’s first rank. Since China accelerated its naval modernization in the 1990s, its shipyards have produced scores of new vessels that range from nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines to amphibious assault ships. And over that time, Chinese naval engineers have had many opportunities to study aircraft carrier design—including decommissioned foreign aircraft carriers that Chinese entities acquired as well as the information gleaned from various exchanges. In one such exchange in 1995, Spain’s Empresa Nacional Bazan, which built the light aircraft carrier Chakri Naruebet for Thailand, offered China plans for a similar ship. Chinese officials also inspected and received bids for other retired aircraft carriers, such as France’s Clemenceau in 1996 and Argentina’s Vienticinco De Mayo in 1997.

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The Roots of Chinese/Japanese Rivalry

A zodiac carrying Japanese Coast Guard officers
A zodiac carrying Japanese Coast Guard officers. Photo: Al Jazeera English/flickr.

BOSTON – The anti-Japan protests that continue to roil China are just another indication of the rise of a potent Chinese nationalism. After a century slowly fomenting among Chinese intellectuals, national sentiment has captured and redefined the consciousness of the Chinese people during the last two decades of China’s economic boom. This mass national consciousness launched the Chinese colossus into global competition to achieve an international status commensurate with the country’s vast capacities and the Chinese people’s conception of their country’s rightful place in the world.

Rapidly, visibly, and inevitably, China has risen. Indeed, our era will likely be remembered as the time when a new global order, with China at the helm, was born.

Competitive national consciousness – the consciousness that one’s individual dignity is inseparably tied to the prestige of one’s “people” – worked its way into the minds of China’s best and brightest between 1895 and 1905. In 1895, China was defeated by Japan, a tiny aggressor whom the Chinese dismissively called wa (the dwarf). China was already accustomed to rapacious Western powers squabbling over its riches, but had remained self-confident in the knowledge of these powers’ irrelevance. However, the assault from Japan, a speck of dust in its own backyard, shattered this self-assurance and was experienced as a shocking and intolerable humiliation.

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