Guiding Beijing the right way

Date: 04/05/05

The debate on 'China's peaceful rise' - a phrase coined at the 2003 Bo'ao Forum for Asia, Hainan Island - is increasingly taking place amid growing concern over the long-term stability of the East Asian region and renewed Sino-Japanese animosity.

Nearly 60 years after the end of the Second World War, there has been no true reconciliation between the two peoples. There is no agreement among observers as to who organised the recent demonstrations against Japan in China, but there is no doubt that the feelings expressed run deep. As former Singapore prime minister Lee KuanYew said at the Bo'ao meeting on 22 April, China's rise will be peaceful for at least 50 years because it will not have the military power to act otherwise and because this and the next generation of leaders will not have forgotten the turbulent and painful past. But, he warned, unless the next generations of young people are educated differently about the past, this peaceful situation is unlikely to endure.

Using its strategic partnership with China, the EU can try to steer Beijing, while the US should guide Japan towards a durable settlement.

What can Europeans do to help? They cannot advise China and Japan what to do without a deep understanding of the two cultures and the great difficulty both peoples have to apologise and to forgive - greater than the Europeans.

But Europe's own post-war experience could be helpful. An analysis of what Europeans might do in similar circumstances could be considered to see whether such solutions are adaptable to the region's culture. France and Germany might, in similar circumstances, sign a treaty of friendship or a joint declaration, deeply regretting the past and committing themselves to work together in friendship and to ensure permanent political peace and stability in the region, for the sake of future generations.

Or they might go further and put all their combined political will and economic strength into the construction of a regional community, and by so doing achieve reconciliation in an enlarged context. A naive dream? Maybe, but the same could have been said in Europe in 1945.

As concerns Japan, only the United States can influence it, but this would require a fundamental change of attitude in Washington, whose current policies are counter-productive. Under US pressure and encouragement and with generous assistance immediately after the Second World War, Europe put behind it balance of power politics and, for the first time, found permanent peace.

But America's Asian policy continues to be based on balance-of-power thinking, as shown by Condoleezza Rice's argument that the lifting of the arms embargo would "upset the military balance of power in the region". The recent joint US-Japan declaration that Taiwan is a mutual security concern emotionally inflamed China. The US does not need military support from anyone and Japan's intervention was not well received in the region generally.

Washington sees China as a strategic rival and competitor, to be contained, like the Soviet Union in the past. The Economist stated on 23 April that "a new drumbeat of analysts" in the US worry whether China "might soon have the ability to take pre-emptive military action to force Taiwan to rejoin it". The article asserts "that it is the rise of China, not the status or conduct of Japan that poses Asia's thorniest questions". But appearing to treat one country as your potential enemy can easily make it your enemy.

The Chinese leadership's current preoccupation is to meet huge economic, social and political challenges. War with Taiwan would jeopardise most of the progress made since Deng Xiaoping opened up the country. China did not need to pass an anti-secession law, enshrining its threat of force against Taiwan, in order to invade the island. Perhaps the leaders were only issuing an unequivocal warning to President Chen Shui-bian not to contemplate declaring independence. Last week, the leaders of the opposition Kuomintang Party were welcomed to China for the first time since the establishment of the republic.

China's declared policy is for the country to be peacefully reunited. This 'one China' policy has been endorsed by both Europe and the US. The Chinese leaders realise that economic liberalisation inevitably leads to political liberalisation (only the speed and manner may be controllable). They know that no such reunification can take place until there is more political liberalisation on the mainland and they think in decades rather than years.

Some readers will decide that the above are the views of a China apologist. But even were these views wrong, working closely with China and integrating it into the world community will always be a policy more likely to influence it in the right direction than balance-of-power and containment policies. China is not the old Soviet Union.

• Stanley Crossick is a founding chairman of the European Policy Centre. He writes here in a personal capacity.

Commentary feature in which the author, who is a founding chairman of the European Policy Centre, suggests that the European Union should use its strategic partnership with China to guide the country's 'peaceful rise'. Europe could also use its own post-war experience to help China and Japan in their difficult process of reconciliation.