【2010.10.1 华尔街日报】China's Aggressive New Diplomacy

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 23710432896610.html

Beijing drives its neighbors into the arms of the U.S.

Ever since Deng Xiaoping dumped the Marxist half of Marxism-Leninism some 30 years ago, the Chinese regime has depended on the twin pillars of economic growth and nationalism for its legitimacy. Usually the world sees more of the former than the latter. Perhaps not anymore.

In the last two weeks, China has engaged in an unusually bitter spat with Japan over the uninhabited Senkaku Islands, claimed by Japan since the 1890s and disputed by the Chinese since the 1970s. Beijing reacted to Japan's detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain in increasingly emotive terms, including the arrest of Japanese expats and midnight harangues of Japan's ambassador in Beijing. Even though Japan released the captain over the weekend, Beijing is keeping up the pressure by demanding an apology.

The Senkaku clash is of a piece with other fishy incidents. Last year, Chinese fishing boats harassed a U.S. Navy ship in waters that are international by everyone's definition except that of Beijing, which claims the South China Sea as its "historical waters." More recently, fleets of Chinese fishing ships illegally entered Indonesian waters in May and June, leading to a stand-off with Indonesian patrol craft that ended when one of the Chinese vessels aimed a large-caliber gun at the Indonesians.

After the South Korean corvette Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean torpedo, China promised Seoul it wouldn't shield the guilty party. But once the investigation was complete, Beijing closed ranks behind Pyongyang, shielding it from U.N. condemnation and tightening military ties. After two decades of developing strong economic and diplomatic links to Beijing, South Koreans must face the reality that China's interest in keeping the peninsula divided trumps all.

China's new assertiveness is more than a matter of provocation and petulance. It's also a new state of mind. Under both Mao and Deng, China posed as the champion of the Third World and railed against allegedly hegemonic powers like the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Deng was usually careful to put intractable disputes with its neighbors on hold in favor of economic development.

Yet in July, when Hillary Clinton took the side of Vietnam in mildly pushing back against China's claims to the South China Sea, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi could barely contain his anger. Calling the Secretary of State's remarks "an attack on China," he lectured that "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact."

China's behavior may be for domestic consumption, or perhaps it is related to the jockeying for power at the next leadership succession in 2012. But it will do lasting damage to China's standing in the region, where governments will not easily bend to a form of diplomacy that smacks of an imperial tribute system.

China's preference has long been to keep all disputes with its neighbors on a bilateral basis. But with China's new assertiveness, it's hardly surprising that "small countries" should fear this strategy as another form of "divide and conquer." As Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew wrote recently, "China has to carefully consider whether insisting on dealing with the Asean countries separately will make them gravitate closer to the U.S."

That's precisely what seems to be happening. The hastily arranged summit between President Barack Obama and the leaders from Southeast Asian nations last Friday in New York was a relatively low-key event. But the summit's joint statement, reaffirming the importance of "freedom of navigation" and "maritime security," no doubt got Beijing's attention.

There is still time to nudge China's leaders back to the Dengist road, perhaps long enough for political pluralism to take hold. One key is to keep the door open to Chinese goods so that China cannot conclude that its economic rise is being stifled. But at the same time, the onus is on the U.S. to show that it has the will and means to protect its allies against aggression.

As social pressures build within China, some in the leadership may be falling back on one of their core claims to legitimacy—that only the Communist Party can restore China's dignity after a "century of humiliation" at the hands of foreign powers. A rising power that depends on old grievances to maintain authoritarian rule is inherently unstable. The U.S. needs to show firm but fair treatment to help the statesmen in Beijing shepherd China through this dangerous period.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page 12

Jigong

“Beijing drives its neighbors into the arms of the U.S.“

老美好高兴呀！

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