Project-Syndicate
China’s leaders would be naïve and foolish to bank on their country’s peaceful and quiet rise to global preeminence. At some point, America will awaken from its geopolitical slumber; there are already signs that it has opened one eye.
China’s leaders would be naïve and foolish to bank on their country’s peaceful and quiet rise to global preeminence. At some point, America will awaken from its geopolitical slumber; there are already signs that it has opened one eye.
But China has begun to make serious mistakes. After Japan
acceded to Chinese pressure and released a captured Chinese trawler in
September 2010, China went overboard and demanded an apology from Japan,
rattling the Japanese establishment.
Similarly, after North Korean
shells killed innocent South Korean civilians in November 2010, China
remained essentially silent. In a carefully calibrated response, South
Korea sent its ambassador to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for
the imprisoned Chinese human-rights activist Liu Xiaobo in December
2010.
China has also ruffled many Indian
feathers by arbitrarily denying visas to senior officials. Chinese
Premier Wen Jiabao subsequently calmed the waters in meetings with
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, but such unnecessary provocations
left a residue of mistrust in India.
But all of these mistakes pale in comparison with what China did to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
in July. For the first time in 45 years, the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting
(AMM) failed to agree to a joint communiqué, ostensibly because ASEAN’s
current chair, Cambodia, did not want the communiqué to refer to
bilateral disputes in the South China Sea. But the whole world,
including most ASEAN countries, perceived Cambodia’s stance as the
result of enormous Chinese pressure.
