BEIJING
— The Silk Road, an obscure
Kazakh-inspired security forum and a $50 billion Asian infrastructure bank are
just some of the disparate elements in an evolving Chinese strategy to try to
counter Washington’s “pivot” to the region.
While
Chinese leaders have not given the government’s growing list of initiatives a
label or said they had an overall purpose, Chinese experts and diplomats said
Beijing appeared set on shaping Asia’s security and financial architecture more
to its liking.
“China
is trying to work out its own counterbalance strategy,” said Sun Zhe, director
of the Centre for U.S.-China Relations at Beijing’s Tsinghua University and who
has advised China’s government on its foreign policy.
Added
one Beijing-based Western diplomat who follows China’s international relations:
“This is all clearly aimed at the United States.”
President
Barack Obama’s pivot – as the White House initially dubbed it – represented a
strategy to refocus on Asia’s dynamic economies as the United States
disentangled itself from costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
China
sees the pivot as an attempt to contain its growing influence, especially given
the United States is strengthening its ties with Asian security allies such as
Japan and the Philippines, which have bitter territorial disputes with Beijing
in the region’s waters. Washington denies this.
One key
part of China’s diplomatic outreach has been to breathe life into the
little-known Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in
Asia, or CICA, which has languished since Kazakhstan proposed it in 1992 to
promote peace and security.
CICA
comprises two dozen mostly Asian nations, as well as Russia and some Middle
Eastern countries. The United States, Japan and the Philippines are not
members.
China
took over chairmanship of CICA at a summit in Shanghai in May for three years.
There, President Xi Jinping spoke about a new “Asian security concept”, saying
China would explore the formulation of a code of conduct for regional security
and an Asian security partnership program.
While
Xi gave few details and made no direct mention of disputes such as in the South
China Sea, he warned Asian nations about strengthening military alliances to
counter China, an oblique reference to the U.S. pivot.
“Asian
problems must be resolved by Asian people, and Asian security must be protected
by Asian people,” Xi said.
A Rival Bank?
Another
Chinese initiative is the $50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,
which Xi first proposed in October during a visit to Southeast Asia.
Finance
Minister Lou Jiwei said this week Beijing would likely have a 50 percent stake
in the bank, which diplomats see as a possible rival to the World Bank and the
Asian Development Bank, though China says its role is a complementary one, not
competitive.
Washington
and Tokyo have the biggest voting rights in both the decades-old institutions.
China
sees the infrastructure bank as a way to spread the message of its benign
intentions in Asia, where developing countries such as the Philippines and
Vietnam accuse Beijing of being the aggressor over territorial claims.
“China
upholds a basic guiding principle in regional diplomacy – being friends and
partners with our neighbors,” Lou said.
On top
of that, China has dangled financial and trade incentives to Central Asia,
backing efforts to resurrect the old Silk Road that once carried treasures between
China and the Mediterranean.
China
is also pushing ahead with various trade pacts in the region, but is not part
of negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a 12-nation bloc whose
two biggest economies are the United States and Japan.
Not
everyone is convinced China’s initiatives will amount to much.
“Some
of those things are more about the optics of these issues rather than the
realities of a Chinese-led order,” said Matthew Goodman, senior adviser for
Asian Economics at the Center for Security and International Studies in
Washington.
Washington Watching
China’s
foreign policy since the country began economic reforms three decades ago has
traditionally followed the maxim of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping of
“hiding ones’ strength and biding ones’ time”, or keeping a low profile.
Foreign
Minister Wang Yi earlier this year flagged China’s more assertive regional
foreign policy at his annual press conference and in a newspaper article.
“We
must accept the role of a responsible major country in international affairs,”
Wang wrote.
Asked
this week whether China was carrying out its own pivot, Foreign Ministry
spokesman Hong Lei said China was pursuing a policy of good neighborliness.
A
senior Obama administration official said Washington was paying close attention
to Xi’s approach to Asia.
“We
noted his statement at the CICA conference about Asia for Asians, the growing
criticism of U.S. alliances and the Asian infrastructure bank,” said the
official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“It’s
raising serious questions about whether the U.S. vision and the Chinese vision
are fully compatible.”
A
second senior U.S. official said Washington had not been assured that the
infrastructure bank would adopt the high governance and other standards of
institutions such as the World Bank and the ADB. He said the administration did
not see how such an entity would “add value” for the region and that Washington
would be making this point to Asian allies.
While
they were not members, the United States and Japan were welcome to join the
bank, Lou said.
Top
Chinese and U.S. officials will get the chance to discuss the bank and many
other issues during annual talks in Beijing on July 9-10, a meeting known as the
Strategic and Economic Dialogue.
Forgotten Anniversaries
At the
start of the CICA summit, China turned on the pomp, with live television
showing Red Flag limousines delivering leaders one by one to a Shanghai
conference center where they walked down a red carpet to shake hands with Xi.
Most
recently, Xi feted suspicious neighbors India and Burma last Saturday to
celebrate the 1954 signing of almost forgotten principles of peaceful
coexistence.
He
cited Indian Nobel Literature laureate Rabindranath Tagore in a speech to
India’s vice president on the 60th anniversary of the Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence, an early Cold War pledge of peace between China, India
and the country then known as Burma.
Xi has
gone out of his way to court India, a country which hosts exiled Tibetan
spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and with which China has a festering border
dispute.
Still,
China’s messages of peace can come across as ham-fisted to those it’s trying to
court.
“China
has long engaged in a kind of smile diplomacy in the region but the challenge
for China is that many of its neighbors can see the glint of steel beneath the
robe,” said Goodman from the CSIS think tank.
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