{"id":52717,"date":"2019-12-24T06:00:29","date_gmt":"2019-12-23T19:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=52717"},"modified":"2019-12-23T18:57:18","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T07:57:18","slug":"pragmatism-politics-and-the-rise-of-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pragmatism-politics-and-the-rise-of-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Pragmatism, politics and the rise of China"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

It was a lively evening recently at Hurricane\u2019s, the new Australian ribs joint in Beijing, with pin-up snowboarder Scotty James charming a large crowd of excited young Chinese as the snow swirled around outside\u2014a seemingly good omen for the approaching 2022 Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n

Former South Australian Liberal senator Sean Edwards was also there, promoting his Kirrihill Wines at the Australian Chamber of Commerce event.<\/p>\n

The Chinese ambassador to Australia, Chen Jingye, meanwhile stressed<\/a> at a rare press conference last week the value of the \u2018pragmatic cooperation and exchange between the two countries and the benefits for both sides\u2019. The $124 billion commodities export trade to China will play a big part in delivering a budget surplus ahead of schedule. Tourism continues to rise, while student numbers, already probably at maximum sustainability, hold at a high level.<\/p>\n

This \u2018pragmatic\u2019 course is one long sought by Australian political leaders and diplomats dating back to Gough Whitlam and Stephen Fitzgerald. And it\u2019s clear, including from such evenings in Beijing, that it continues to have strong value for Australia.<\/p>\n

Yet today there\u2019s an increasingly dark flipside\u2014albeit one that some of those same leaders feel we shouldn\u2019t dwell on. They believe that if we can\u2019t change China in any way, best to look to its bright side, notably its benefits for us, and focus on amplifying them.<\/p>\n

The crucial presumption that lies behind this supposed pragmatism is that China\u2019s rise in all spheres\u2014to dominate the region, and probably also the world\u2014is inexorable, and that our interests determine that we respond to this inevitability in the way that works best for Beijing, which will reward us commensurately.<\/p>\n

This inexorability is perceived by the Chinese Communist Party as a form of fated correction to the \u2018century of foreign humiliation\u2019 that has for its 70 years\u2019 rule comprised the core of Chinese official history, a victimisation that the party presents as unique and uniquely cruel despite the experiences of neighbours such as Korea and Vietnam.<\/p>\n

But just as that history\u2014judged to have started with the Opium Wars with Britain in the 1840s\u2014might profitably be revisited in a more nuanced manner, so might China\u2019s future prospects be viewed in a more cautious way.<\/p>\n

Much is made of the imminence of China\u2019s overtaking the US as the world\u2019s biggest economy. Yet China\u2019s economy is slowing inevitably as it matures and the population falls, and as it resists liberalising reform, while the US\u2014in part because, as in Australia, its migrants constantly transfuse fresh life\u2014is back on an upward track.<\/p>\n

And the personal battle to \u2018get rich before growing old\u2019 remains palpable in the People\u2019s Republic of China. On the International Monetary Fund\u2019s list for 2018<\/a>, the US\u2019s GDP per capita was 8th highest and the PRC\u2019s was 67th (Australia was 10th).<\/p>\n

ANZ Bank chief economist Richard Yetsenga, probably Australia\u2019s best regional financial analyst, believes \u2018it will be very difficult for China to become the world\u2019s largest economy by 2030. Even reaching that milestone by 2050 seems ambitious.\u2019<\/p>\n

Another reason for caution in assuming China\u2019s rise is inexorable is that the over-ambitious project that has for 70 years driven the CCP remains mired in trouble\u2014transforming a diverse, pluralist empire-turned-republic into a unitary, ethnocentric nation-state.<\/p>\n

Consider the borderlands.<\/p>\n

Xinjiang, China\u2019s largest region, has become a vast encampment where Beijing is battling to replace local and religious identities with those of the Han majority and of the party itself. Tibet appears placid, but as soon as the venerated 14th Dalai Lama dies and the party\u2014avowedly atheist\u2014appoints a successor, that will change. Hong Kong has made abundantly clear its distaste for the PRC project. And Taiwan is preparing to vote on 11 January, likely indicating the same suspicion that Deng Xiaoping\u2019s \u2018one country, two systems\u2019 formula has already morphed into one country, one system.<\/p>\n

Strategically, China\u2019s capacity continues to grow as it increases its spending on security at home\u2014where CCP general-secretary Xi Jinping\u2019s insistence on \u2018cyber sovereignty\u2019 is reaping rewards in ubiquitous surveillance and control\u2014and abroad, emboldened by its South China Sea success.<\/p>\n

Yet as leading Sinologist David Shambaugh has pointed out, although China now has a global footprint, it still lacks both long-range military power-projection capacity and friends and platforms, such as the 38 allies and 400-odd bases the Americans can enlist.<\/p>\n

Beijing pushes ahead with its brilliantly conceived Belt and Road Initiative, but the relationships thus derived remain essentially mechanistic, and will wilt if its ambitious promises are unfulfilled.<\/p>\n

Canberra, looking around our region, sees other countries similarly placed, engaging with China as opportunity permits, while retaining some rhetorical and policy differences, and maintaining optimum links that can be preserved with the US given Trump\u2019s distaste for allies, especially those with \u2018unfavourable\u2019 trade balances.<\/p>\n

China relates at the institutional level with Australia, as with other countries, via a series of tests. We agreed China is a \u2018market economy\u2019 to qualify for negotiating a free trade agreement, although that took 10 years. We have more recently failed to permit Huawei to take a central role in our 5G platform, and have declined to sign Beijing\u2019s Belt and Road agreement\u2014thus remaining stuck in diplomatic purgatory, with these tests constituting a constant rebuke.<\/p>\n

China itself, demonstrating a degree of agility, has meanwhile gained ground in building greater leverage within Australia by redirecting much of its efforts from Canberra towards state and local governments, universities and corporations. Canberra has rightly acted to limit interference, although influence-building, which is pervasive and well funded, remains of course completely legal.<\/p>\n

At the national level, China is waiting out an Australian change of direction, with top-level visits on hold and politicians such as Andrew Hastie and James Paterson banished until they \u2018genuinely repent and redress their mistakes\u2019\u2014in CCP-speak, produce self-criticisms.<\/p>\n

The use of the word \u2018repent\u2019 points helpfully to the extent to which the CCP under Xi has become more palpably a religious rather than a purely political institution. China continues to change rapidly, with its own former pragmatists\u2014including those in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs\u2014losing the limelight to true believers, to party activists.<\/p>\n

This, combined with Xi\u2019s insistence that \u2018north, south, east, west, and the centre, the party leads all\u2019\u2014resulting in China engagement equating necessarily to party engagement\u2014makes it impracticable for countries like Australia to develop all-embracing plans for their China relationships. China is simply changing too fast, as its demands of partners keep shifting and growing.<\/p>\n

As the party-state promulgates its own values globally, especially through multilateral bodies led by the UN, so it becomes inevitable that countries and other entities that relate to it will elide their interests with their values, seeking to pursue both rather than leaving the latter at the diplomatic doorstep. Recent Pew Research Center global polling<\/a> indicates that citizens worldwide are already shifting their views of China as it changes, and are seeking to have their own values represented in the way their countries relate with it.<\/p>\n

What this means for our politicians and diplomats will continue to be determined case by case. They must work out, for instance, whether to ameliorate the fate of accused Australian \u2018spy\u2019 Yang Hengjun by confining conversations with Beijing to the private route or to pressure the PRC by speaking openly. But one presumes the trend will persist towards politicians and diplomats voicing such concerns publicly, as the PRC persists in its course towards more single-minded, more personal and more centralised governance\u2014and appears more impervious to discreet negotiation.<\/p>\n

We are already learning to live with inevitable tensions at this institutional level, while continuing to seek to engage personally, culturally and commercially\u2014as exemplified at that successful Scotty James evening in Beijing.<\/p>\n

The main pieces still missing, at the Australian end, include building a better understanding of China\u2019s history and its current course, and greater support for the many strands among our own large ethnic Chinese citizenry to participate more fully in our institutions. But we are not suffering because of the lack of a \u2018you beaut\u2019 catch-all plan for the relationship. Such a supremely optimistic leap is likely only to end up frustrating everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a lively evening recently at Hurricane\u2019s, the new Australian ribs joint in Beijing, with pin-up snowboarder Scotty James charming a large crowd of excited young Chinese as the snow swirled around outside\u2014a seemingly …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1053,"featured_media":52724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,2212,52],"class_list":["post-52717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-australia-china-relations","tag-china"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPragmatism, politics and the rise of China | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pragmatism-politics-and-the-rise-of-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pragmatism, politics and the rise of China | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It was a lively evening recently at Hurricane\u2019s, the new Australian ribs joint in Beijing, with pin-up snowboarder Scotty James charming a large crowd of excited young Chinese as the snow swirled around outside\u2014a seemingly ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pragmatism-politics-and-the-rise-of-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-12-23T19:00:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2019-12-23T07:57:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/GettyImages-477382744.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rowan Callick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Rowan Callick\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pragmatism-politics-and-the-rise-of-china\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/GettyImages-477382744.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/GettyImages-477382744.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":683,\"caption\":\"CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - JUNE 17: A woman holding a copy of the Free Trade Agreement stands next to National flags of China and Australia during a signing ceremony on June 17, 2015 in Canberra, Australia. 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