Daily Times

Despite continuous pressure, China has resisted the Western demands for comprehensive political and economic reforms keeping in mind the debacle of Mikhail Gorbachev in ‘perestroika and glasnost’ in the late 1980s leading to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Au contraire, China has kept a tight lid on political reforms and pursued a measured policy of consolidating its State-owned enterprises and revamping industrial sector with the innovative ‘Made in China 2025 Plan’ that aims at promoting national technology in critical sectors of aerospace, biomedicine and robotics.

President Xi Jinping took China to new political and economic heights. He believes in the greatness of the Chinese civilization and his country’s enormous capacity. He achieved China’s rightful place in the world affairs launching the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the New Development Bank along with the BRICS countries and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to connect his country with over 60 countries of Asia, Eurasia, Europe and Africa. The BRI was perceived as a countermeasure by China to circumvent the adverse effects of President Barak Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy which notably aimed at isolating China in South East Asia and Pacific. Similarly, the AIIB was considered as countervail to the financial institutions dominated by the USA and the Western world.

The USA not only declined to join the banks itself, but also launched a quiet diplomatic campaign to dissuade its allies from doing so either. The USA leaders suspected that China wanted to construct China-oriented international systems free from the US dominance and the liberal values espoused by the USA and other industrialized democracies. However, Beijing argued that there was a multitrillion dollar gap in the current financing for railways, roads, power plants and other infrastructure in the world’s fastest growing region. The AIIB would be complementary to the Asian Development Bank by filling this yawning gap. In 2016, the Asian Development Bank, in one of its reports, admitted the growth of this gap saying that the infrastructural development in Asia would require huge funds of over $1trillion a year until 2020. Later, most of the USA allies in Asia and Pacific quietly joined the AIIB.

All this added to the irritation of the US leaders and compelled them to further squeeze China. They reviewed their bilateral relations with Vietnam and lifted sanctions on this country for import of the US Defence weapons. The US has been preparing India as a counterweight to China in Asia for the past two decades since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the resultant growth in the bilateral relations between the two countries. Donald Trump’s tight embrace emboldened Prime Minister Narendra Modi to annex Jammu and Kashmir following the Israeli policy towards the occupied Arab lands arrogantly disregarding the disputed status of the valley and Ladakh. India’s audacious move to join the US and Vietnam in the naval patrol in the South China Sea was a big provocation for China because this is the main maritime outlet for its outbound trade of $4000 billion. China has a claim of ownership on the islands of South and East China Seas and has invested huge funds in developing them.

The strategic and economic competition between the USA and China has the potential to unravel the current international order and pose an existential threat to the international peace and security

President Donald Trump threatened to review the USA policy on Taiwan, take drastic measures to restrict the imports from China. He stepped up efforts to strengthen the quadrilateral naval alliance with Australia, India and Japan. These countries have deep economic ties with China with burgeoning bilateral trades and would be least interested in the US confrontational policy. Thus, the quad does not seem to deter China from pursuing its policy objectives in the South China Sea. China is strengthening its relations with the Asian countries bilaterally and within the multiple projects of BRI. The CPEC is the jewel of the BRI in Asia. The USA and India have embarked on a path of war against CPEC if we recollect the statements of the US leaders particularly of the former Secretary of Defence General Jim Mattis.

Donald Trump has intensified the old US harangues accusing China of crackdown on journalists, religious leaders, academics, social activists and human rights lawyers blaming that more than 300 lawyers, legal assistants and activists have been languishing in pathetic conditions in the Chinese prisons. He has added to the catalogue of charges against China that it is pursuing a policy of protectionism to the disadvantage of the foreign investors who do not have a level playing field and face many hurdles, and some of them have recently been forced to close their business due to the protectionist measures. He also accuses China of currency manipulation to keep Yuan steady and dumping of trade goods in USA. He has been incrementally increasing tariff on the selected Chinese goods despite the fact that China is ready to consider measures to reduce the huge trade deficit with the USA.

The strategic and economic competition between the USA and China has the potential to unravel the current international order and pose an existential threat to the international peace and security. Joseph Nye, a prominent official of the Clinton administration was apt in saying that “if we treat China as an enemy; we are guaranteeing an enemy in the future. If we treat China as a friend, we cannot guarantee friendship, but we can at least keep open the possibility of more benign outcomes”. The USA is today trudging on the path of proving and treating China as an enemy. Their current policy of restraining China strategically or economically is not working well.

This Sino-USA rivalry will further intensify if Donald Trump gets a second term in the White House. His unpredictability and the ‘America First’ policy have kept the close USA allies on tenterhooks. Being so full of himself, he only believes in the strong-arm deal making. China is too strong to submit to his bullying harangues. China does not want to have confrontation with USA nor does it want to be dictated on policy options.

Concluded

The writer was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books