THE SIGHT OF China’s first aircraft carrier docking in Dalian port after a smooth set of sea trials stirred many a patriotic heart in the world’s second largest economy. Among China’s neighbours and the West, however, it prompted concern about the country’s widening naval reach.
The Varyag's maiden voyage coincided with more bad news from the world's true superpower, the United States, where ratings agencies had downgraded its debt and its economic woes were compounded by seemingly endless overseas wars.
China is on the rise, while America seems to be going nowhere. You can almost tire of repeating the economic data about double-digit growth, mass urbanisation and renewal on a scale never seen before on the planet. Here are just a few of the most startling statistics: China is opening an international hotel every four days, making it the world’s fastest-growing hotel market, according to Jones LaSalle.
Between 2010 and 2013, 90 new internationally branded hotels will have opened every year. China’s National Energy Administration (NEA) has said that during the first seven months of this year, the country’s total electric power consumption rose 12.2 per cent from a year earlier to 2.69 trillion kilowatt hours.
But is China ready to take over as the world’s top superpower? Is it interested in the job?
The answer is that China is at best a reluctant superpower.
Alex Lin Yongqing, a leading business thinker and IT authority, and founder of ChinaValue.Net, says the country’s interest in becoming a superpower is driven by national interest, rather than economic. “China is not a superpower yet. The country’s GDP is impressive, the government is rich and powerful, but average GDP puts China very low in the world,” says Lin.
“And the quality of GDP is not high either, since most of the industry is making textiles and clothes. Labour is cheap. And we can’t compete with developed countries in the cultural arena. China’s model is sustainable. But a superpower has to aim to create a high quality of life and fair society, and China has still some improvements to be made on that. But it can provide temporary advantage to the world, such as the stimulus plan during the economic crisis.”
When it interceded with a multi-billion dollar economic stimulus plan to help bail out the global economy by forcing more domestic consumption, China played down its contribution.
The country is reluctant to become a superpower because it does not want the responsibility that brings.
China is a mercantilist nation, and it would rather develop trade links with countries than spend billions of dollars policing the world. It has watched in horror as the United States has nearly bankrupted itself doing so.
While Western economies spent all their money and then borrowed much more so that they could keep on spending, the Chinese saved what they were making. When pushed to spend, it did so wisely, to a large extent.Yet it has its own potential problems looming.
While senior voices in China have chastised the US for its spendthrift ways, the government officially has kept quiet, aware perhaps that a property bubble in China could burst, with appalling consequences.
Its diplomacy is largely linked to securing raw materials, although Chinese influence can be detected in many neighbouring countries, and there is doubt that while it may not want to boost its territory in Asia, it does want to have more influence in Asia, culturally.
It has no interest in taking over more of Russia, Mongolia, India, but it is keen to constantly increase trade links. Its decision to spend on marine power shows that where it does have territorial ambitions, they are in the sea.
One of the most hotly contested territorial disputes in the world is that over the Spratly and Paracel island chains in the South China Sea, a row that seems to involve nearly everyone in the region, including China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines.
Chinese forces seized the western Paracels from Vietnam in 1974 and sank three Vietnamese navy ships in 1988, events that have cast a shadow over relations ever since. The regional players are all keen to have access to the rich fishing grounds in the area, as well as the oil and gas reserves believed to be lurking beneath the waves, but since 2002 they have agreed to resolve the contrasting disputes amicably among themselves. However, an aircraft carrier like the Varyagcan add weight to any argument.
For a Communist nation, China has little interest in exporting socialism, aware that the former USSR collapsed because of its focus on international socialism.
China also has to deal with the widening wealth gap between the new rich of the coastal regions and the poor of the hinterland and dustbowls of central regions.
“China could benefit from the role of superpower in terms of economic and political development,” says Professor Zhang Yuquan, vice-director of the American Research Centre at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.
“The role is becoming more suitable for China as it takes part more in global politics, and China is also more involved overseas with financial investment, in Africa and other regions.
“China still has a long way to go. The country is still developing and this is a period in which it is rising up. If you look back at history, every period of rising up lasts about 100 years to peak. But China will see more and more globalisation and play an important role as a superpower.
“China has no territorial ambitions. It is focused on domestic issues. Its diplomatic policy has always insisted on being a good neighbour.”
These domestic issues are, however, largely focusing on securing Tibet and Xinjiang to the west of the country, and bringing the self-ruled island of Taiwan back into the fold.
Zhang says the downturn in the United States is temporary. “Since 9/11, the US has spent a lot of energy and resources on counter-terrorism – trillions of dollars,” he says. “If they cut that off and spent the money on economic development, it would bring about a lot of changes. Compared with China, in terms of innovation and technology, the US is a superpower to which China cannot compare itself.”
Although it may be a reluctant emerging superpower, China will have the mantle pressed on it. Pressure comes from outside, in the form of African and other Asian nations backing China as their champion at international events such as global environment summits and at the United Nations.
It also comes from within. There is a strong belief that China is an important country. In the Chinese language, the country is Zhongguo, which translates as “the central kingdom”, and the world is divided into those who are inside China and those who are not.
This self-confidence was shaken by the century of humiliation at the hands of foreign powers during the 19th and early 20th centuries, and there is a certain satisfaction that China’s rise is coinciding with such a swift decline in the West.
Where you do hear talk of China as a superpower here is among disaffected right-wing conservatives.
An influential book in recent years has been ZhongGuo bu Gaoxing (China is Not Happy) by Wang Xiaodong. A conservative, nationalist tract, it argues that China needs to assert itself more in the face of American hegemony. “China needs a group of heroes to help us lead the nation . . . China should offer real leadership and management. If Chinese people have a high target and work hard, then China will more quickly correct its shortcomings and will advance,” it reads.
There are plenty of diametrically opposed views on the question of China’s future, ranging from those who believe it is time for the country to rise up and assert itself, to those who think that China is still a corrupt, backward place that is simply incapable of any form of innovation.
More broadly, the Chinese government believes in equilibrium, in ensuring that the global order remains in balance, and for that it needs a strong Europe and indeed a strong United States.
The relegation of the current superpower, the United States, would not help the interests of China. After all, China is America’s biggest holder of government debt. You don’t want to watch the bank collapse if it has got your money in it, do you?
