The problem with China

Ian Boyne, Contributor

"If one day China should change its colour and turn into a superpower, if it should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subjected others to its bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world ... should expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it." - Deng Xiaoping, 1974 United Nations General Assembly.

I accept the former Chinese leader's invitation. A 2009 Pew Research Center poll showed that majorities in 13 of 25 countries believed China would replace the United States as the world's leading superpower. Goldman Sachs estimates that China's economy will surpass America's by 2027, and even the US government's National Intelligence Council projects that US dominance would be "much diminished" by 2025.

China has now surpassed Japan to become the second-largest economy in the world, is the second-largest exporter, the largest creditor, with the largest foreign exchange surplus in the world. Its economy has grown over a 30-year period by an astounding 10 per cent annually.

While many are worrying about whether China will have a 'peaceful rise' or whether its growing economic and political power will pose a threat to global peace and security, I have no fear of a warmongering, imperialistic China. The world's most renowned living statesman, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, has just published his 586-page magnum opus titled On China, which downplays such fears. In that magisterial work, Kissinger shows a China obsessed with its superiority but not eager to impose its system on others. My problem is that the present Chinese leadership and its likely immediate successors are wedded to a set of values and dispositions which are inimical to democracy, human rights and Enlightenment philosophy.

Today, the Chinese vice-premier comes to Jamaica, no doubt with his bag of goodies, as the Chinese have been going everywhere, using what the scholar Joshua Kurlantzick calls its "charm offensive" (See his book, Charm Offensive: How China's Soft Power is Transforming the World). The vice-premier was in Trinidad last week at a China-Caribbean confab attended by Prime Minister Golding. There, he unveiled a hefty financial package for Caribbean states. He now comes to Jamaica today to spread the love and further cement ties.

M\uch to learn

It is important for countries like Jamaica to strengthen their ties with China and get as much as they can. International relations cannot be conducted on the basis of social system compatibility, but must be underlined by ideological pluralism. We don't do business or have friendly exchange with states just because they have our values. And there is much good we can learn from the Chinese. Not only has China pulled hundreds of millions of persons out of poverty through its phenomenal industrial and economic growth rates, but it has inspired developing countries, which Western propaganda had consigned perpetually to the periphery.

China is an inspiration to development. And its inspiration is not just recent. Many are unaware that China was for centuries the most productive economy in the world. China produced a far greater share of total global gross domestic product (GDP) in any Western society for 18 of the last 20 centuries. As Kissinger pointed out in his tome, "As late as 1820, China produced 30 per cent of world GDP - an amount exceeding the GDP of Western Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States combined." It was only the Industrial Revolution which dislodged China from its dominance.

So, for the Chinese elite, their stature in the world today is no marvel or a novelty, but a return to what is properly theirs. Some of the fears being expressed about China's rise are spurred by racism, chauvinism and xenophobia. There are some who believe that only white, Anglo-Saxon nations have a right to rule. They believe civilisation belongs exclusively to that group and the rest of us are really barbarians.

They dread China's rise because they are terrified that its spectacular economic performance and escalating politico-economic power might dispel views of white supremacy and the Manifest Destiny of America and Europe.

There are some who have a sense of entitlement to global political power and resent China's weight in the international system. However, we must carefully separate these unworthy motivations from a genuine critique of China's politics and foreign policy. I have grave concerns about China's rise in the global system and believe that its rise is potentially threatening to democracy, human rights and a liberal global order. Some slanderers will try to associate my views with the normal reactionary views, and some Chinese nationalists here, not able to unhinge their emotions from their reason, will viscerally attack me. But I maintain that a dispassionate, reasoned and intellectually robust assessment of China's political philosophy and international behaviour will show deep reasons for concern. And should, à la Deng, by people of Chinese ancestry themselves.

I have been a lifelong, ardent and relentless critic of American and Western imperialism. I have pointed to American hypocrisy in speaking eloquently about democracy and human rights while bankrolling and giving political succour to assorted dictators, tyrants and kleptocrats around the world. America has been distinguished by its hypocrisy and oppression in foreign-policy action as it has been by its rhetoric over democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.

I have put it that pointedly to say that despite the huge gap between rhetoric and reality in American grand strategy and foreign policy, America shares a cultural and philosophical heritage with Europe and is at base deeply respectful of Enlightenment values of reason, individual liberty, human rights, civil liberties ideological pluralism, fallibilism and the inalienable and inviolable right to dissent.

Nobody needs to lecture me as a descendant of slaves and a victim of colonialism and imperialism about how often Europe and America's commitment to these values has been honoured more in the breach. But by espousing these values and giving honour to them in the culture, they provide a basis for critiquing regimes and for calling them out on precisely their hypocrisy.

No such respect

China has no such respect for pluralistic, liberal democracy, civil liberties, including a free press and uninhibited freedom of religion. China privileges authority over individuality and authoritarianism over democracy. A world in which China has increasing political clout is a world in which violations of human rights and suppression of civil liberties and individual conscience will be even more threatened. I don't speak theoretically.

When America and Europe have sought to apply pressure to dictatorships in Sudan, Congo, Burma, Zimbabwe, Libya, Somalia, and Niger, and illiberal regimes like Iran and Sri Lanka, China has provided a way out for them to continue their suppression of human rights. People talk about how China has been providing an alternative to Western imperialism in Africa - and sub-Saharan Africa is indeed growing - but they neglect to note that it is at the price of the African masses themselves.

In a report put out by The African Research Network in July 2009 (Chinese Investments in Africa: A Labour Perspective), it was asserted the Chinese were "among the worst employers everywhere". It said China's relationship with Africa was that of a "classical colonial exchange". African companies were being undercut and pushed out of business. At the Collum coal mine in Zambia last year, Chinese employers shot and wounded 11 workers who demanded better pay. Labour laws were routinely flouted and workers had been sent to work underground without protective clothing.

In a chapter in his book The End of Progress: How Modern Economics Has Failed Us ('China's Rising Influence Will Not Help'), progressive economist Graeme Maxton says, "Employees of these overseas Chinese companies rarely receive contracts. The benefits they are legally entitled to are frequently not paid. They are locked into factories even during their free time. Women are typically dismissed if they become pregnant. In South Africa, a woman's baby died when she was forced to give birth while locked in a factory. In Botswana, local assistants in Chinese shops are expected to work seven days a week with 10-hour days Monday to Friday and eight hours a day on weekends. Local newspapers claim that 18th-century plantation slaves worked fewer hours."

China spends heavily to fly journalists and select citizens on junkets so they can come back and write glowing reports about marvellous, modern China. In 2009-2010, China invested US$8.9 billion in "external publicity work". China knows the value of propaganda and frequently curry-favours with trips and fellowships in exchange for glowing press coverage.

President Hu Jintao told his top diplomats in mid-2009 that they should "help to ensure that our country has a more friendly image, with greater moral appeal".

China has used its power in the UN Security Council to block attempts to punish repressive regimes in Africa and Asia, under the guise of respect for national sovereignty - a stance also aimed at insulating itself from criticism about its own repressive national policies. When Sri Lanka was butchering its own people in 2009 and the Security Council wanted to launch an investigation into that country's repression of Tamil Tigers, China blocked it.

China, in 2009, provided US$1.2 billion to Sri Lanka, which allowed Colombo to squash the Tigers, after 26 years of uprising. Just so that China could build a port. And after a power plant, an art centre and a new airport will be built, too.

In repressive Niger, China was awarded that country's first uranium contract. China's thirst for raw materials lands it in bed with the most brutal regimes. China has also used its Security Council status to frustrate earlier attempts to punish Iran. China has worked with its fellow authoritarian 'Great Power', Russia, to block investigations into human-rights violations in Darfur and Zimbabwe. China abstained from the vote to protect the Libyan people from Gaddafi.

In his summer 2011 essay in the Washington Quarterly journal, 'China and the United Nations: The Stakeholder Spectrum', Michael Fullilove says, "China has played a critical role in wearing down Western capitals on human-rights issues and pushing human rights further to the periphery of the UN debate." This is not good for global order and the time might come when we will rue the day of the end of the American Empire, its hypocrisy and inconsistencies notwithstanding.

Ian Boyne is a veteran journalist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and ianboyne1@yahoo.com.