ARTICLE: “A quintet, anyone? China is making it clear that it wants a bigger role in the Middle East,” The Economist, 13 January 2007, p. 37.
ARTICLE: “Chinese Leader to Visit Sudan For Talks on Darfur Conflict,” by Howard W. French, New York Times, 25 January 2007, p. A4.
OP-ED: “China’s Missile Message,” by Elizabeth Economy, Washington Post, 25 January 2007, p. A25.
WEEK IN REVIEW: “Look Up! It’s No Meteor, It’s an Arms Race,” by William J. Broad, New York Times, 21 January 2007, p. WK3.
OP-ED: “Debris in Space: The real ‘fallout’ from the Chinese missile,” by Bruce Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal, 25 January 2007, p. A18.
Makes perfect sense: China’s economic profile around the world skyrockets, but its military role lags way behind (primarily out of fear of scaring the U.S. into rivalry), so it backfills with diplomacy. It throws what it has in abundance at the problems it encounters: money and people. It encounters problems primarily as a result of its great weakness: a huge and burgeoning need for commodities and energy from outside sources.
China’s secret weapon? According to The Economist: “Unlike other outside powers involved in the Middle East, China is on good terms with everyone.”
So in one week both Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator (Larijani) and Israel’s PM Olmert come to call on Hu and Wen in Beijing, instantly catapulting them beyond our powerless SECSTATE Condi Rise on the pecking chain of global diplomacy.
It gets better.
Last month, the Chinese foreign ministry played host to what it called its first non-governmental seminar bringing together former senior Israeli and Palestinian officials to discuss ways of achieving peace. They reached a consensus that must have pleased their hosts. China, they said in a statement, should increase its influence in the Middle East and join the “Quartet” (America, the European Union, the UN and Russia) that is pursuing peace efforts. This, China’s press quoted a Palestinian participant as saying,” would help counter the bias of “some countries” involved.
China becomes the Barack Obama of global diplomacy. We want both for the same reasons, despite their obvious lack of accomplishments to date: they’re not George Bush and his team.
Sad.
I have long predicted that we’d get our diplomatic butts kicked when China’s 5th generation of leaders showed up, but that prediction is OBE by the Bush-Cheney isolationism-through-incompetence strategy. China’s prestige rises by default.
Get used to it.
We don’t handle Sudan because we’re too busy getting trapped in our “global war” in the Persian Gulf. So China will take a stab at it.
Again, get used to that dynamic.
Bush and Cheney have pursued a pattern of “exceptionalism” in our foreign policy, Economy points out, and the longer we do that the more we can expect China to do the same.
But just like in the ASAT test example, whenever China steps out, they tend to highlight the overlapping strategic interests we share (and, as with satellites, shared strategic burdens that we bear more than others).
Our goal in this stepping out process for China, which is inevitable and good if we shape it correctly, is to limit the damage and “debris” that inevitably follows their initial, clumsy attempts. Of course, China’s answer would be, “but our debris is far smaller than yours--on average!”
And looking at Afghanistan and Iraq, they’d be making a point not easily countered.
So yeah, get used to it.