China, a growing Power and Puzzle

                 China, a growing Power and Puzzle

 By: Dave & Nita Anand

The two-day meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama in California last week is being hailed as having as much significance as the one between Nixon and Mao 40 years ago. However, cyber-espionage trumped the two-day summit.

From the outside it would appear China masterminded the leaking of National Security Agency information by Edward Snowden to coincide with that meeting and since Xi was non-committal about taking steps to stop cyber-attacks emanating from inside China on U.S. defense contractors, corporations and financial institutions, including banks – experts are calling the meeting a failure, at least in that respect.

In one of his interviews in Hong Kong where he took temporary cover, Snowden said: “I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone ... from you or your accountant, to a federal judge ... even the president, if I had a personal e-mail."  Snowden is expected to defect and should China/Russia or any of the other competitors of the United States give him asylum, he would prove to be a gold mine of intelligence on how the nuts and bolts of extremely effective U.S. electronic spying are put together.

Adding salt to the wound, Xi flew to Gobi desert after the California summit to witness the lift-off of Shenzhou-10 from the Jinquan launch center that will perform the longest-ever manned space mission to advance China’s space-related capabilities. All this goes to show China’s growing power while poking the eyes of the established superpower.

Will Xi listen or ignore?

Obama presented cyber-theft instances in great detail to Xi and his advisors, especially the People’s Liberation Army Unit 63198 that is known to be behind many cyber-attacks on our government and corporate sites. He even emphasized that America was sure that the origins of these attacks lay at the PLA doors. Obama is said to have asserted: “If it’s not addressed, if it continues to be this direct theft of United States property, that this was going to be very difficult problem in the economic relationship and was going to be an inhibitor to the relationship really reaching its full potential.”

While Xi ignored Obama’s complaints about military and economic cyber-espionage, the two presidents made headway with North Korea’s nuclear weapons issue and other matters.

Agreeing with Obama, Xi promised to continue pressuring North Korea to denuclearize as he has in the recent past, which is showing results since both Koreas have agreed to hold talks to address economic and humanitarian issues. It is a self-serving decision since Xi knows that both South Korea and Japan will be forced to amass their own nuclear weapons should North Korea stick with its current nuclear mission and to also reduce the risk from the heavier deployment of American naval forces closer to China as a result of the recent Asia pivot.

Another glimmer of hope pertains to the agreement by both countries to support the United Nations idea of international law that will govern state behavior in the event of this soft-cyber-conflict that disables large installations versus the hard-physical-conflict that kills millions of human beings. It will be interesting to see how this idea will take shape as a law since both countries must then own up to and take responsibility for all the furtive cyber-attacks they initiate, all the time. Progress seems to have been made on climate control as well as China’s human rights violations matter.

As with the cyber-attacks issue that was ignored, the matter of territorial claims got little or no traction either. Since any territorial claim has sovereign connotations, it causes nationalistic fervor and in that sense Xi yielded no ground on those claims.

China’s tougher stance in the South China Sea is a maritime concern for the entire world and not just for Vietnam and the Philippines that have been recently threatened by the powerful dragon. Same holds for the Japanese Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea that Chinese claim as Diaoyu Islands in which instance, China has sent naval vessels to threaten Japan over a heap of worthless rocks. China also has a border issue with nuclear/missile capable India; it claims large tracts high in the Himalayas as its property.

Going Forward

Since China and America are much more intertwined economically than the United States and the Soviet Union ever were in the Cold War era – a Yellow War is a rather remote possibility, even though it seems to be brewing slowly.

Likening it to the Peloponnesian War that resulted from Sparta’s fears of the rising Athens, Harvard professor Joseph Nye noted: “That Mediterranean conflict wasn’t inevitable; it could have been averted by negotiations and wise policy. So, too, with America and China.” Looks like we will need many more two-day summits for dialogue between the political, diplomatic and military leaders of the two countries for the so called “wise policy” to be fruitful, particularly, the policies relative to cyber-espionage, trade and weaponry.

The United States, Europe, Russia, Japan, India and the world-at-large are more willing today to accept the emergence of this new giant and give it the respect it deserves; however, China must show responsibility and play by the international rules to build mutual trust. Answers to the following key questions will determine that fate:

·         Will China’s $8 trillion economy versus America’s roughly $16 trillion create a “Chinese dream” like “American dream” and move the Chinese plebeian from poverty into a happy and more peaceful middle class?

·         Will China steer towards democracy and grow based on the rule of international mores and laws – putting their constitution higher than their arbitrary Communist-party rule and thus weed out rampant corruption and inequality?

·         Will China become more arrogant and belligerent from the newly acquired wealth and focus it on building military muscle, including: cyber-warfare, stealth and drone technology, global positioning, anti-satellite and anti-missile technology, naval carrier and submarine capabilities, nuclear weapons miniaturization, space programs with offensive capability, and so on?

The “Chinese dream” is a distinct possibility but it depends on the answers to the other two questions. Xi has shown little enthusiasm for going in the direction of constitutionalism when he said: “The Chinese dream is an ideal - Communists should have a higher ideal, and that is communism.” In a recent People’s Daily survey, approximately 80 percent of respondents did not support one-party rule since they understand that a democratic China with an independent judicial system would go a long way in correcting the inequalities and corruption.

Today’s China is way too wealthy and much stronger economically and militarily than Soviet Union was in the Cold War days and that fact is not only making its neighbors nervous, but also the United States as well. Whether sea lanes or land borders, China has been using a bully approach to get its selfish needs pushed through, which is developing distrust and straining relations with most of its neighbors.

Except for North Korea and Russia -- with whom it has a long border that is also disputable -- China has few countries in the rest of the world it can call its friends and these are the ones where it has invested its huge wealth, like in Africa and Latin America.

To win friends abroad, China must wage a charm offensive than its arrogance and belligerence. Unfortunately, Xi is no Obama as far as we could discern from this two-day summit.

Dave & Nita Anand have written and published two books: "People Super Highway, the Mystique & Quest of Soul" and "The Verses."