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A year that was China’s
by Claude Arpi
Pioneer; Fri Jan 1, 2010
“Vis-à-vis
India also,
Beijing has become more assertive by supporting India’s neighbours. It was
recently announced that China will train the Nepalese Army and had pledged Rs
220 million as military assistance for procuring ‘non lethal’ hardware and
logistics. It is not good news for New Delhi.”
2009 will be remembered as the year during which
China asserted, often
arrogantly, its newly-found economic and military strength. It has not only
sailed through the global financial crisis, but has also become the most
powerful player in Asia and the second on the planet. However, surprises await
in the coming year
China is rich,
China is powerful and China is
assertive. In November, 2009’s most prominent visitor to the Middle Kingdom, US
President Barack Obama discovered it. In an Op-Ed in The New York Times, Mr Wei
Jingsheng, the Chinese dissident now living in the US, summed up the visit: “No
doubt there is some truth in the notion that their revived arrogance is inspired
by China’s role as America’s largest creditor. Surely this is one reason China’s
leadership feels free to insult President Barack Obama, as it did during his
visit to China, when they blocked broad news coverage of his public speech, and
when they sent lower-level officials to negotiate with him at the Copenhagen
climate talks until the last minute when Prime Minister Wen Jiabao finally
granted him an audience.”
China is rich and with over two trillion dollars in
foreign reserves, the lone superpower of the planet appeared a poor debtor
unable to dictate its vision of the world to the Mandarins in
Beijing. Wei wrote: “Their
humiliation of President Obama …served to mark China’s power on the world
stage.”
The 60th anniversary of the Communist regime will be remembered as the year
during which China
asserted, often arrogantly, its newly-found economic and military strength.
Today China dictates its terms to the world.
The execution of Akmal Shaikh, a British national, despite frantic last-minute
pleas for clemency by the Gordon Brown Government is another sign that Beijing
has decided to flex its muscles.
Though after a ‘full and frank exchange of views’, British Foreign Minister Ivan
Lewis told Chinese Ambassador Fu Ying that China had not taken Shaikh’s mental
health into consideration, it was to no avail.
A few days earlier, Mr Francois Fillon, the French Prime Minister had kowtow in
Beijing after President Nicolas Sarkozy had ‘dared’ to meet the Dalai Lama in
Poland last year. Mr Fillon, like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr
Obama carefully avoided the mention of human rights and other vexing issues. In
Beijing, he declared “all misunderstandings between
Paris
and Beijing are a thing of the past.” From now on, the relations are to be based
on ‘mutual respect’, which means ‘let us only talk about economic exchanges’.
France was ‘rewarded’ with 12 deals in the fields of aviation, energy, culture
and water resource utilisation.
Internally, the leaders in
Beijing
have also shown that they mean business. In December, a Chinese court sentenced
Liu Xiaobo, a 53-year-old academic and dissident to 11 years in prison for
‘inciting subversion of state power’. The trial was concluded in two hours and
the verdict immediately announced. Though not delayed, justice was clearly
denied. Lui’s crime: He had authored ‘The Charter 08’, a petition calling for
freedom of assembly, expression, and religion in China. It had pleaded for
amending the Constitution and called for a multi-party system in China. It was
too much for the apparatchiks who saw it as a direct challenge to their grip
over the nation, especially after more than 10,000 intellectuals affixed their
signature on the Charter.
The leadership is not only proud of the fact that
China has sailed
through the world financial crisis, but also that the PLA has become the most
powerful player in
Asia and the second on the planet.
According to a report released last week by the
Chinese Academy
of Social Sciences, China’s military strength ranks second in the world in terms
of expenditure, number of troops and weaponry. Evaluation indexes include five
direct constituent elements — territory and natural resources, population,
economy, military, science and technology — and four influencing factors —
social development, sustainability, security and domestic politics and
international contributions.
Many experts were surprised to see that
China’s
military power ranks second (with a total score of 33.3, behind the US, which
scores 90.08, just ahead of Russia, with 31.08). The size of China’s armed
forces is, however, the largest in the world (2.25 million troops) supported by
240 nuclear weapons, 7,580 tanks, 1,700 fighter planes, 144 naval ships and
eight nuclear submarines.
Despite the fact that China believes in
‘asymmetric warfare’, its official budget ($ 60.9 billion last year) is far
below the reality as many ‘military’ expenditures are shown as ‘civilian’. To
give an example: In 2009, China has built 53,000 km of highway in Tibet
Autonomous Region, connecting 67 per cent of its counties with asphalt roads.
The Chinese website eng.tibet. cn quoted a Chinese official who stated: “2009 is
the most significant year of highway constructions with 19 key projects being
completed, and stimulating economic growth by 1.2 per cent.” We know where these
roads will lead in case of conflict with
India.
Examples could be multiplied. Just to mention a
recent one:
China launched two spy satellites in seven days in December.
The remote-sensing satellite Yaogan VIII took off from northern
Shanxi
Province on December 13. Though officially the satellite will be
used for “young people to experience aerospace science and technology”, it is
known to be a spy satellite, as is Yaogan VII launched a few days earlier from
Gansu
Province.
Vis-à-vis
India also,
Beijing has become more assertive by supporting India’s neighbours. It was
recently announced that China will train the Nepalese Army and had pledged Rs
220 million as military assistance for procuring ‘non lethal’ hardware and
logistics. It is not good news for New Delhi.
Needless to recall the Tawang incident when the Chinese leadership pressurised
India to block the visit of the Dalai Lama to the
North-Eastern
State. Fortunately, New Delhi understood that India’s interests, particularly
for the border talks, could be jeopardised if the usual policy of appeasement
was followed; it remained firm. It is true that contrary to Washington, New
Delhi is financially not indebted to China.
But everything is not rosy in the Middle Kingdom,
corruption and pollution have reached new heights in 2009. This has resulted in
more than 1,00,000 small and major demonstrations across the country during the
past year only. The provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang have been more
restive than ever and nobody in the Politburo seems to know how to handle the
situation. It explains why the negotiations with the
Dalai Lama have been interrupted since November 2008.
Perhaps more worrisome for the leadership in Beijing is the division amongst top
leaders which became apparent when Vice-President Xi Jinping visited Germany and
did not mention President Hu’s name during a meeting with Ms Angela Merkel.
For China,
2010 may not be as smooth as 2009 and many surprises can be expected.
http://www.dailypioneer.com/
226342/A- year-that- was-China’s.html
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