May 22, 2005
THE FOREIGN media, particularly those sections of the foreign media that are not stationed in China, have been issuing dire warnings of late. China is being held responsible for the free-fall in the dollar, the soaring rise in oil prices, and the troubles now besetting the world’s biggest economy, the United States. Furthermore, the rise of the Chinese military, pundits say, is posing a threat not only to the geopolitical balance of East Asia, but also to the global hegemony of Washington.
The US economy ran a massive $666 billion trade deficit in 2004, with the deficit with China standing at $162 billion, caused – according to the US – by an unfair competitive advantage derived from the artificially undervalued renminbi. The cause of the remaining $504 billion shortfall is not quite so clear.
Chinese officials from all sections of the government have been on the defensive. At the upper echelons of government, senior apparatchiks have been repeating the mantra about “China’s peaceful rise”. They have repeated the theory that China, in all its long history, has never invaded anywhere else. This view is of course based on a particularly inclusive version of what constitutes Chinese Blut und Boden. In any case, China has always been big enough to contain the blood-lusts of its worst citizens, and to contain them within national borders. As the great author Lu Xun once wrote, even when China is being kicked, you can always count on it join in and kick itself.
Meanwhile, lower level officials have been addressing the specifics. How can China be held responsible for the high oil price when its import volume is far lower than that of the United States, they have said. Meanwhile, most of them believe that the US is directly responsible for China’s inability to secure stable long-term oil deals in Russia and in the Caspian Sea. They talk about a US geopolitical strategy aimed at preventing China from securing the fuel it requires to develop.
The oil problem has been getting a lot of attention lately, with the International Energy Agency blaming China for price fluctuations, and the US administration worried about the fact that China has been cozying up to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and a number of unsavoury regimes in Africa, not the least of which is Sudan.
The strategists are gearing up for a massive geopolitical battle, a return to the “Great Game” of the nineteenth century (presuming, of course, that it has ever actually ended). The two main players – China and the US – are already competing over Taiwan, Mongolia, the central Asian states, Africa, the Middle East and even South America. A crucial part of China’s interests has been the courting of nations such as Brazil.
China has been trying to take the moral high-ground, accusing its critics of peddling the “China Threat Theory” and reverting to old Cold War stereotypes. The restriction on textile imports? Nothing more than the “China Threat Theory” – the convenient myth that all the ills in western economies are caused by China.
They have a point.
