China, making things worse for itself

As a result of the trouble brewing in the South China Sea as a result of China’s aggression some have noting that the victory at the recent ASEAN summit was only a Pyrrhic victory for a country facing turmoil, if not soon, then eventually.

The news article notes that  “after 30 years of geopolitical competence, the Chinese seem to be on the verge of losing it just when they need it most”. The piece goes on to mention that “China has begun to make serious mistakes. After Japan acceded to Chinese pressure and released a captured Chinese trawler in September 2010, China went overboard and demanded an apology from Japan, rattling the Japanese establishment”. The piece also notes that “China has also ruffled many Indian feathers by arbitrarily denying visas to senior officials. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao subsequently calmed the waters in meetings with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but such unnecessary provocations left a residue of mistrust in India”.

Yet, fundamentally, these Chinese insults to its neighbours “pale in comparison with what China did to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in July. For the first time in 45 years, the Asean Ministerial Meeting (AMM) failed to agree to a joint communique, ostensibly because Asean’s current chair, Cambodia, did not want the communique to refer to bilateral disputes in the South China Sea. But the whole world, including most Asean countries, perceived Cambodia’s stance as the result of enormous Chinese pressure”.

Importantly the piece adds that “won the battle of the comminique, but it may have lost 20 years of painstakingly accumulated goodwill, the result of efforts such as the Asean-China free-trade agreement, signed in November 2002. More importantly, China’s previous leaders had calculated that a strong and unified Asean provided a valuable buffer against any possible US containment strategy. Now, by dividing Asean, China has provided America with its best possible geopolitical opportunity in the region. If Deng Xiaoping were alive, he would be deeply concerned”, the piece then adds that “the fact that it happened reveals the scope of China’s recent poor decision-making”.

It will be interesting to see what other decisions the CCP will make that will be equally ill judged and provocative in the coming months. The great danger is that China beveling its own inexorable and permanent rise will miscalculate and the leaders will do something dramatic that they will then be unable to control, leading to the downfall of the regime and regional instability, if only briefly.

Importantly he writes that “the ‘nine-dotted line’ that China has drawn over the South China Sea may prove to be nothing but a big geopolitical millstone around China’s neck. It was unwise to attach the map in a note verbale responding to a joint submission by Vietnam and Malaysia to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in May 2009. This was the first time that China had included the map in an official communication to the UN”. He adds that “The geopolitical opportunity implied by inclusion of the map has not been lost on America, which is why the US, somewhat unusually, has made another effort to ratify the Law of the Sea Convention. Having tabled the nine-dotted line at the UN, China walked into a no-win situation, owing to the difficulty of defending the map under international law”, but like so much China does domestically it, “may cause problems for the government by presenting critics with a useful weapon. Any hint of compromise will expose officials politically. In other words, a few rocks in the South China Sea have put China between a rock and a hard place”.

He concludes sagely that “The challenge for the world now is that China has become politically pluralistic: no leader is strong enough to make wise unilateral concessions. Nothing will happen in China until the leadership transition is completed in November. The new administration of Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang will need some time to settle in. But America is waking up. So, too, will the rest of the world in 2016. The big question then will be: Is China as geopolitically competent as number one as it was when it was number two?”.