【2009.10.04 马耳他独立报】When China turned 60!

rhapsody

http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=95002

by Leo Brincat

When people turn 60 many things can happen. Their ageing process can quicken, their biological age might turn out to be younger than their chronological age, senility might set in, life might go on as before on a ‘business-as-usual’ basis, or else they can even reinvigorate themselves.

Countries and nation states do not necessarily follow any of these paths.

This time 60 years ago, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was established.

Malta can pride itself that, because of the foresight shown by a then Labour administration, it was at the forefront of the international community in recognising the PRC. All this despite the way we were

rubbished for doing so, and the innuendos in certain sections of the local press that the Chinese were merely interested in using Malta to traffic drugs and narcotics in the Mediterranean.

When the “other side” saw the light and tried to reverse their negative thinking, they brought up the risible argument that it was not the PN that had changed but the Chinese that had changed their ways!

Being an optimist, I like looking ahead and am in no way interested in recriminations.

Today we are well served by an efficient and effective ambassador in Beijing and one of the best qualified Chinese ambassadors in Malta, who has just moved here from Iceland and who has a strong Washington-based education to draw on, including having former US National Security adviser Z. Brzezinski as one of his past tutors.

All this notwithstanding, I think there is still too little to show for our decades of diplomatic relations, both at a political level and even more so on the economic front.

Diplomats and businessmen alike drew my attention to the fact that the latest visit by an eminent Vice President to Malta was not given the full treatment one would have expected and that the Maltese government did not maximise the potential of such an opportunity.

When I last visited China in July on what must have been my fifth visit there – all on party or parliamentary business – I found, as the American media did last week, that today China is arguably in the best economic shape of any country in the world. Chinese consumers have upped their purchases, and the government is furiously building infrastructure and using stimulus money to retrain companies.

In the past six months Chinese companies have embarked on a global acquisition spree, although I do not detect any serious traces or whiffs of Chinese investment in Malta.

With its economy flourishing, Beijing, is now striding onto the global stage.

Western analysts recently concluded that in some regions like Southeast Asia, China may have already surpassed the influence of the United States, the traditional foreign power.

In many parts of the world, too, China now promotes a model of economic development that some consider to pose a real challenge to the free market: the democratic so called Washington Consensus.

To gauge what a long way China has come in recent years, one must recall that only a decade ago it was content to play but a slight role in international affairs, wielding little influence at the UN and paying limited attention to regions like Africa and Latin America, far from its borders.

Today, think-tanks like the Centre for European Reform are even posing the question as to whether Europe and China can shape a new world order together. An interesting study by Charles Grant and Katinka Barysch testifies to this.

As far as Malta is concerned I feel that we have not yet reached the strategic level in our bilateralism, while the same can be said for the extent of our economic engagement.

In Europe’s case it seems to have started realising that its relationship with China has been mainly commercial while the aforementioned think-tank makes the claim that both sides would benefit from their partnership becoming more political and strategic, and so would the rest of the world.

Whether they engage more proactively or not, it remains a given fact that both the EU and China are currently helping to shape a new international order. For many European observers of international affairs, it is now obvious that power is shifting from the west to the east, and that the world is becoming increasingly multipolar.

Economics, and notably the rapid growth of the BRIC economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – are driving this change.

It is predicted that by 2030, the Chinese economy will be the largest in the world, while the relative weights of the US and the EU will continue to fall.

Although much uncertainty surrounds these figures, the trend seems clear. There is one certainty – that the rise of the new economic powers is affecting the fabric of international diplomacy.

I personally believe that the major challenges of the 21st century – such as climate change, energy security and even migration and terrorism – require the cooperation of all the leading powers rather than just some of them.

We need to see a multilateral model of multipolarity. Unless the EU catches up fast, I cannot exclude that the single most important geostrategic relationship of the 21st century is likely to be that of China and the US, because of their economic power and potential strategic rivalry.

With a new President in the White House, responsible global stakeholder attitudes are more likely to be worldwide. There was little credibility to former President Bush’s calls for China to respect international organisations and rules when his main credo was unilateralism!

Europe’s main problem in this regard is of its own making.

Is the EU able to manage such a strategic relationship? And if so, can it and its member states learn to work together and think strategically?

There have been many books written about China recently, but the most stimulating read was definitely provided by former Marxist Martin Jacques who is now a visiting senior fellow at the LSE IDEAS. Entitled When China rules the world, he makes the claim that the 21st century will be different, with the rise of increasingly powerful non-Western countries, that the West will no longer be dominant and that there will be many ways of being modern. He strongly believes that in this new era of contested modernity, the central player will be China itself.

The book reaches many controversial conclusions, but nothing beats it in terms of originality and far sightedness, particularly when he claims that apart from seeing its rise signal the end of the global dominance of the Western nation state it will also lead to the rise of a world which it will shape in a host of different ways.

If you do not have time to read through this mammoth work, the concluding remarks on the eight differences that define China are gems in themselves.

The conclusion is that there are already strong indications that China’s rise will be hastened by the global crisis.