Transcript Sino-Indon

DRAGON AND
GARUDA
China and Southeast Asia
in the Global Strategic Context
Final Lecture for the Clingendael
Class of Indonesian Diplomats
June 18, 2004
Willem van Kemenade
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.willemvk.org
China: From Pre-modern “Middle Kingdom” and
“Tribute System” to “Modern Superpower” and
“Sphere of Influence”
• During dynastic times, China was the self-proclaimed pre-eminent
“Middle Kingdom”, demanding tribute from all its close and distant
neighbors, including Southeast Asian island states such as
Srivajaya, Brunei and Sulu.
• The imperial system ended in 1840 as China itself became the
victim of Western, Russian and Japanese incursions.
• During the Mao-era, China wanted to extend “Communist Utopia” to
its neighbors and supported Communist revolutions in Indochina
and Indonesia.
• In recent years, China has become a near-normal country again,
behaving reflexively as a great power again, emphasizing peaceful
economic cooperation and slowly reinstating its “benign” dominance
over East and Southeast Asia, as if it were the natural state of
affairs.
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Will large countries like Japan
and Indonesia accept the role of
being peripheral states in a
Chinese “Sphere of Influence ?”
• As an economic superpower, but strategic satellite of the US, Japan
has an alternative: remaining a “honorary member” of the West, but
it is increasingly integrating with China economically and may rejoin
a China-dominated East-Asia in the mid-long term.
• Indonesia is now preoccupied with domestic unrest, terrorism, Aceh
etc., has weak, inward-looking leadership and unlike in the 1980s
and 1990s is no longer pursuing a pro-active foreign policy.
• President Wahid keenly responded to China’s rise and soon after
taking office in October 1999, he made his first foreign visit to China
and proposed a new “Asia Coalition” that would involve Indonesia,
China and India as a way to counterbalance American domination
of world politics and the global economy.
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Japan: Counterweight to
China in (South-) East Asia ?
• Prime Minister Koizumi has committed SDF ships to
help the US in collecting intelligence “on terrorism” in
Asian waters.
• SE Asia and China have expressed concern over the
expanded military role of Japan after 9/11. But at the
same time, SE Asia quietly welcomes this development
as a counterweight to China.
• Jane’s Defense Weekly: “The countries in the region
see an expanding Japanese role, as balancing an overdominant Chinese influence in the region.
• The Chinese government has warned Japan to
exercise utmost prudence in expanding its military role.
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The Rise of China and the Return of
the US to Southeast Asia:
• One of the unintended consequences of “9-11” was the return of the
US to SE Asia, a region it had neglected since its defeat in Vietnam
in 1975. Now it has brought the region back onto its strategic radar
and declared it the “Second Front in the War on Terror”.
• The US is using the War on Terror as an excuse for active military
engagements to prepare for any contingencies in the Taiwan Strait,
Korean Peninsula and the South-China Sea, making SE Asia again
highly vulnerable to great power politics.
• The return of the US to SE Asia is also causing security anxieties in
China because of the perception that American intentions in the war
on terror aim not only at destroying terrorism, but also to
strategically encircling China.
• A recently published study of the Nixon Center states bluntly that the
reinvigorated American presence in SE Asia not only aims to wage a
war on terror, but to “hedge” against a rising China.
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The Global Strategic Environment of the
China-Southeast Asia Relationship
• After its defeat in Vietnam in 1975, the US reduced its
role and presence in SE Asia to supporting China in
ending the Soviet-supported Vietnamese occupation of
Cambodia.
• Soviet support for Vietnam declined after Gorbachev
came to power.
• Then, SE Asia had the political space to cultivate its own
regional identity.
• China then developed its relationship with an
autonomous region and its member states which were
no longer split along Cold War lines.
• In this new environment, SE Asia could develop its
regional East Asian relationship with China as a
neighboring country without any global bipolarity.
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China will wield more Clout in the World
Arena when backed by East Asia
• China has in recent years attached growing importance to relations
with neighboring countries, with a view that East Asia is the base for
its growth. Guided by such thinking, the surging Asian dragon has
established partnerships with its neighbors in all aspects.
• At the last Communist Party Congress in November 2002, the party
declared that “treating neighbors with goodwill and coexisting with
neighbors as partners” become the strategic priority of the country.
• Chinese IR scholars say that after the Cold War, US-China relations
have long been the core of China’s foreign policy. In recent years,
however, Chinese leaders have realized that to maintain a sound
relationship with Washington, China needs the backing of East Asia.
• “Facts have proved that East Asian countries share the same stance
with China on many issues, and China will wield more clout in the
world arena when backed by East Asia”. (prof. Niu Jun of BeiDa)
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China and Southeast Asia: No Balancing;
No Submission; No bandwagoning !
• In dollar exchange terms, China’s GDP has grown from two thirds of
the aggregate total of SE Asian economies in 1980 to almost one
and a half times in 2000. (World Bank).
• China achieved parity with SE Asian defense budget in 1989 and
jumped ahead with large increases after Tiananmen. After the Asian
Financial Crisis in 1997, SE Asia cut back and China surged ahead.
(SIPRI).
• In population, China showed a decline from 275 % of the SE Asian
population in 1980 to 244 % in 2000. (UNFPA)
• According to neo-realist IR theory, SE Asia should have moved to
contain China and to balance China’s dominance by allying with
third countries, but it didn’t.
• Neither did ASEAN submit to Chinese domination and jump on the
bandwagon. Instead there has been a development towards close,
more diverse and more stable ties: “normalcy”.
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Brantly Womack, China and Southeast Asia: Assymmetry, Leadership
and Normalcy, Pacific Affairs, Volume 76, no. 4, Winter 2003-2004
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Indonesian Democratization
and Security
• Democratization creates ambiguities with respect to national
purpose and intent and constraints on governments, which can
seriously destabilize societies and political-military relations with
other states.
• China’s low degree of democratization has been something of a
stabilizing factor. Indonesia has lost this kind of “authoritarian
stability”, which has weakened the state at least in the short term.
• Democratization made a bad start in Indonesia because grassroots
pressures led to the government’s tolerance of brutal suppression
in East-Timor which put the country on a collision course with
Australia, Portugal and the international community at large.
• Democratization in Indonesia has eroded the power of Jakarta. In
Aceh this strengthened separatism. In the Moluccas it precipitated
open Christian-Muslim conflict.
• Declining governability gave increasing latitude to radical Islamic
groups, until the Bali bombing led to a crackdown.
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China’s Democratization-Deficit and
Regional Security
• Pride in national succes, facilitated by social and
economic liberalization has generated sometimes
strident nationalism in China, complicating relations with
Japan.
• In Taiwan democratization has led to independenceoriented localism, poisoning relations and possibly
leading to war.
• China at the moment conducts a liberal, pragmatic,
moderate foreign policy without liberalization of its
domestic politics. Domestic democratization may very
well lead to popular pressure for a more nationalistic,
chauvinistic foreign policy.
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Sino-Indonesian
Rivalry
• In traditional Real Politik terms, there is a natural geopolitical
rivalry between Indonesia and China.
• Indonesia’s strategic interest is a balance with China; China’s is
dominance in Southeast Asia (albeit a relatively benign dominance
comparable to the U.S. dominance of West-Europe during the
Cold War).
• In addition there are specific points of rivalry: ethnic and religious
differences, the history of China’s support for Indonesia’s
Communist party, China’s complicity in Indonesia’s abortive coup
of 1965, the role of Chinese bankers and businessmen in
Indonesia’s economic crisis, and territorial disputes such as over
the Natuna Islands. Thus, despite the current period of amity,
underlying tensions remain.
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China as a Global Player
• As China has resumed acting as a great power and a global player,
its interest in Southeast Asia may decline compared to that in
Europe.
• China is now one of the “Gang of Four”: France, Germany, Russia
and China emerging from opposition against the Iraq war and other
US policies.
• In this context its ties with Russia and Europe will surpass those with
Southeast Asia, because of China’s goal of global “multipolarity”or
even “multinodality”
• The current war on terrorism is unsettling for China. “The U.S. has
made Southeast Asia a second front without knowing where to land”.
China is afraid the U.S. will try to build satellite allies in Southeast
Asia.
• If Bush gets reelected and the trans-Atlantic relationship continues
its decline, China and the European Union may become partners in
a coalition to “pre-empt” the US from getting further out of control.
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Is China’s Liberal Foreign Policy Tactical ?
• China’s liberal foreign policy includes endorsing multilateral
institutions, supporting freer trade, concerning themselves with
trans-national issues, and sponsoring cooperative security
arrangements. There is concern in some countries that this is too
good to be real.
• However, it may last simply because it works, and it corresponds to
the realities of a world in transition from multi-polarity to multinodality, to poles of attraction rather than opposition.
• China isn’t proposing to form an explicit counterbalance against the
US. But its liberal foreign policy presents a more subtle challenge.
US political influence will be eroded relative to China’s. Wherever
president Hu Jintao goes, he leaves a good impression and Bush
just looks bad. New organizations will be formed in Asia that exclude
the United States;
• Shanghai may become more attractive as a site for foreign business
and as a center of culture than Tokyo, or even London.
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Crisis or War in the Taiwan Straits
• If the US intervenes in a China-Taiwan military conflict, it
may divide the region in two opposing camps.
• The US has already ambiguous legal instruments to
force Japan to support its war effort and US officials are
regularly admonishing Australia to follow suit.
• Asian governments and publics mostly blame Taiwan
president Chen Shui-bian and his predecessor Lee
Teng-hui for current tensions.
• There would be little sympathy for Taiwan on the part of
SE Asia, but there is bound to be grave concern over the
economic fallout, because Taiwan, like China is a major
source of trade and investment in SE Asia.
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China aims at unifying East Asia,
• Prudently and slowly, reduce and terminate the
military domination of the United States in East
and Southeast Asia.
• Create a real “Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere”, something Japan aimed to achieve by
military means in the 1930s.
• What Japan utterly failed to do and the US is
unable to, China is working meticulously toward
- by peaceful means.
• The US could be the big spoiler in this epochal
process.
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