Commentary on global affairs and where they may be headed

Posts tagged ‘China’

What the world needs from Biden’s America: humility

With a few notable exceptions, such as Russia and Israel, President Joe Biden – partly by dint of simply not being Donald Trump – will be widely welcomed on the international stage. 

America’s traditional allies in Europe and Asia who have had to take four years of abuse and having their interests undermined by the Trump administration will be particularly relieved to see tomorrow’s inauguration of Joseph R Biden as the 46th President of the United States.

Even China’s leaders, while not expecting Biden to be a push over, will probably welcome a return to greater predictability and pragmatism in Washington. 

But what the world needs to see from the US following four years of “America First” is also some humility.

Instead what we got when Biden announced his new foreign policy team on Twitter was this

While Biden acknowledges the world faces challenges which can’t be tackled without international cooperation, his emphasis is on “restoring American leadership”.

There’s no doubt Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, will be a breath of fresh air after the bombast and ideologically-driven confrontation of Mike Pompeo’s tenure.

But while Blinken, who was Deputy Secretary of State under President Obama, is erudite, steeped in world affairs, speaks fluent French and believes in international cooperation and the multilateral system, he is also steeped in the traditional assumption of American foreign policy practitioners that the US must – and should – always lead. He is a believer in American exceptionalism and that leaves little room for humility. 

In a 2015 speech, apparently forgetting the US’s long record of destructive military interventions, he said the world always turns to the US for leadership “because we strive to the best of our ability to align our actions with our principles, and because American leadership has a unique ability to mobilise others and to make a difference”

Last year, he told the Hudson Institute that US leadership in international institutions is essential, saying, “There is a premium still, and in some ways, even more than before, on American engagement, on American leadership”. He also argued that the world’s democracies need “leadership from the United States, playing the role that it played before, as the leader of the free world.”

This intellectual baggage makes it unlikely we are going to see a more humble US under President Biden, yet we need to.

For one thing, with its dysfunctional politics, the US foisted four years of Trump on the world and it is not churlish to expect for that alone the new administration should at least try to sound chastened.

More significantly, the world has changed from that unipolar moment after the collapse of the Soviet Union and America’s overwhelming victory in the Gulf War. China is now a serious rival and the European Union an economic powerhouse.

It is past time American leaders, Democrat or Republican, paid more than lip service to this geopolitical reality.

Biden and his new foreign policy team are right to say the world faces challenges – the COVID pandemic, the climate crisis and the rampant destruction of nature among them – that no one nation can face alone. But what the world needs is for the US to rejoin international efforts to face those challenges, not to attempt to reassert American leadership.

After all, it was that leadership since 1945 that has shaped the world we live in – with all those challenges.

The pandemic has wreaked enormous human and economic damage, but it has also presented a glimpse of what can be achieved when people work together for a common goal. The first lockdowns saw carbon emissions and pollution fall, allowing people to see that rapid improvements in air and water quality are possible. There has also been a realisation from governments, business and civil society that we as we recover from the pandemic, we have an opportunity to “build back better”, be that by making economic stimulus packages both socially just and green or by strengthening health systems.

In short, we should not just go back to business as usual and part of that means taking a more equitable and collaborative approach to international relations where countries work in partnership and no one country, however powerful, assumes it should lead.

It may be hard to be humble, but it what’s the world needs now (apologies to fans of trite American songs).

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China: the big bad dragon?

Sinophobia seems to be all the rage.

In the past year, Beijing has replaced Moscow as the main source of menace in the eyes of western politicians, news editors and media commentators.

Whether it is TikTok, Huawei, Hong Kong, the South China Sea or Taiwan, you can’t miss the narrative of the China threat.

The shift started before the COVID pandemic that almost certainly originated in China broke out, but it has accelerated rapidly since. 

US President Trump tweets regular attacks on China and used his video address to the UN General Assembly last month to portray the country as the source of all the world’s problems from COVID to Climate Change.

His Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, in a highly provocative keynote speech in July entitled ‘Communist China and the Free World’s Future’ revived the rhetoric of the Cold War to argue that 50 years of American engagement with Beijing had failed, and he came closer than any American leader in many years to calling for regime change in China.

And they are not alone. Conservative British politicians have got in the act too with the Chair of the UK parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Tom Tugenhadt leading the charge.

What lies behind this?

Has the Chinese regime changed and become a growing threat or is there something else at play here?

President Trump heaping the blame China for the pandemic is clearly a poorly disguised attempt to divert American voters’ attention from the failings of his administration that has seen the virus take over 200,000 American lives.

But even before the advent of SARS-CoV2, Trump used talking up the China threat as a political tool as he tried to deliver on his campaign promise to restore American industry by pressuring US companies to bring production back home by launching a trade war with Beijing and using executive orders.

The attempt to choke the leading 5G technology company, Huawei, and the blatant attempt to force a takeover of TikTok by an American company seem to be driven less by security concerns and be more about the commercial hobbling of successful Chinese competitors.

The irony seems to be lost that this is being done by the state that Edward Snowden revealed to be using big tech to spy on huge numbers of people around the world as well as in the US.

And it is not just Trump.

Republicans and Democrats alike say China poses a growing threat and the Pentagon has shown it is keen to do its bit too by ramping up spy flights off China’s coasts – some allegedly using their transponders to disguise themselves to radar as civilian airliners, which, given airliners have been mistakenly shot down in the past, is irresponsible and dangerous. On top of this, the US Navy has reinforced its numbers and activity in the disputed waters of the South China Sea to challenge China’s claims and Washington is increasing arms sales to Taiwan.

Though China is still nowhere near as powerful as the US, it is undoubtedly true that as the country has grown richer over the past few decades, it has also become stronger militarily and has used its economic heft to increase its influence in the world – as every other country, including of course the US, has done throughout history.

So no surprise there. 

It should also come as no surprise that the Chinese state is repressive and will brook no internal political challenge – whether from democracy activists or separatist movements in Tibet or Xinjiang. Human rights organisations have been trying to get western politicians to listen for years, yet only recently do they seem to have a got their attention.

The nature of the regime in Beijing has not fundamentally changed, despite the procedural changes that would allow President Xi Jinping to stay in office beyond two terms.  

What has changed is the state’s capacity for control and repression using modern information technology.

Xi’s China is also now being accused of exporting attempts to restrict freedom to other countries.

But, again, the use of what the Chinese Communist Party calls united front work to influence attitudes towards the Chinese state has always been part of its foreign policy toolkit and never went away.

There is almost a tone of nostalgia in the West these days for the era of Deng Xiaoping whose foreign policy counsel was to “observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership”.

But, of course, this was also the same Deng Xiaoping who ordered the violent suppression of the Tiananmen protests in 1989 where the army killed hundreds and ordered the ‘punitive’ invasion of Vietnam in 1979.

But one thing that has really changed in recent years and does not get talked about so much in the West, but has clearly not gone down well, is that China is no longer willing to just serve as a source of cheap consumer goods for western countries. 

China wants to move up the value chain, as economists say, and Chinese companies have become serious competitors in areas western countries long regarded as theirs, such as telecommunications and artificial intelligence.

So it looks like the US, with some of its allies in tow, has decided to try to use national security as an excuse to undermine the competition, rather than try to compete commercially.

How better to do that than portray Chinese companies as the uniquely nefarious arm of the Chinese state and label that state as communist and expansionist and throw in some Cold War language for good measure.

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The Perils of President Trump

The New Year greetings I sent to my friends and relatives this year included the hope that 2017 would be a better year for humanity than 2016.

That was from my heart rather than my head.

If I’d written “be afraid, very afraid” instead, it would have put a damper on New Year celebrations.

But as Donald Trump assumes presidency of United States – still the world’s most powerful country economically and militarily – it is difficult to avoid a sense of trepidation.

Trump’s inaugural address with its “From this day forward it’s going to be only America first, America first!” centrepiece was as crude and bombastic as his campaign speeches and gave no reassurance that the office of the presidency would moderate him.

So, all told, it’s difficult to envisage this year being better for the world than last year’s annus horribilis.

While the US and much of the western media have been obsessing about what Trump’s presidency will mean for relations with Russia, the much more alarming prospect of what it means for relations with China has taken a backseat.

During the transition, Trump and his Secretary of State-designate, Rex Tillerson, were deliberately baiting the world’s second most powerful country.

If the two men follow through on what they have been saying about slapping tariffs on Chinese goods, the one-China policy and blocking Chinese access to islands in the South China Sea, we may not only see a trade war between Washington and Beijing – damaging the global economy and making us all worse off – it could all end in a shooting war over Taiwan or the South China Sea.

Trump may well improve relations with Russia and end American attempts to prevent Moscow’s push back against western impingement on what the Russians see as their traditional sphere of influence.

But even there there’s an issue where it could all go south with the Kremlin – nuclear weapons. Trump has sent mixed signals: talking on the one hand about modernising the US arsenal and, on the other, the possibility of a deal with Russia to reduce the numbers of weapons.

Neither of these initiatives would likely be welcome in Moscow given its greater reliance on nuclear – as opposed to conventional – military forces for its security.

Then there’s the justified fear that President Trump – I have to pinch myself when I write that – is intemperate, impulsive and aggressive, and that rational discourse and policy-making will be eclipsed by the urges of this thin-skinned man.

We also have to remember that he’s surrounded himself with people who hold views that are, similarly, not always based in fact.

The most important area of policy this is likely to affect is climate change.

With climate change sceptics, and people with links to the fossil fuel industry, prominent in Trump’s incoming administration, the US contribution to fighting global warming is pretty certain to be undermined.

With NASA confirming in the past few days that 2016 was the hottest year yet on record – following 2015 which itself broke the record – action by all countries to honour the commitments they made under the Paris Climate Agreement just over a year ago are imperative.

The hope has to be that even if Trump’s “America First” sees him backsliding on climate change, other countries won’t follow suit.

China for one has indicated it will continue on the path it has set itself to reduce the intensity of its carbon emissions and many other countries should follow suit.

But can the world’s climate afford four – or possibly eight – years of Trump in the White House?

For the good of humanity and the planet, we can only hope so.

 

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Climate Change: Merci

French may no longer be the language of international diplomacy, but French diplomats have not lost their touch.

The Paris climate deal reached at the weekend is a testament to their skill and endurance.

Many environmental activists and experts, among them the British climate economist Lord Stern, have been effusive in their praise for the French delegation led by Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

According to Lord Stern “they have taken great care to make everyone listened to, that they were consulted. There was a great sense of openness, of professional diplomacy, and skill.”

What Fabius, his colleague, Environment Minister Ségolène Royale, and their team have pulled off is the first ever agreement that all countries – rich or poor, developed or developing – will take action to tackle climate change by reducing their carbon emissions and reversing the deforestation and environmental degradation that is depriving the planet of its ability to take carbon out of the atmosphere naturally.

Of course, France did not do it alone.

At a time when the international system – and the United Nations in particular – has been written off by many as incapable of achieving the consensus needed for decisive action over conflicts like Syria and Ukraine, the success in Paris is a welcome reminder that the international community is capable of coming together for the common good.

The deal has allowed a rare moment of optimism over the climate change, which has been reinforced by research just published suggesting carbon emissions could have stalled this year despite the global economy growing.

The climate accord also builds on the momentum of September’s agreement by all UN members to sign up to the Sustainable Development Goals which aim to eradicate poverty by 2030 by meeting people’s economic, health, education and social needs while protecting the environment.

It’s a far cry from six years ago in Copenhagen when the last attempt to get all countries on board in the fight against climate change fell apart amongst rancour and recrimination between the world’s major powers – particularly China and the United States.

So it’s no coincidence that another of the contributors to success in Paris was the growing climate cooperation between Washington and Beijing which became public last year during President Obama’s visit to China and was reaffirmed a few weeks ago during President Xi’s visit to the US where the two leaders announced a shared vision for the Paris talks as well as how their countries would cut carbon emissions.

In the US, President Obama has broken with his predecessor’s skepticism – some might say cynicism – over climate change action and made it a signature issue of his second term. But given the Republican Party’s control of Congress, Obama has had to use executive powers, not legislation, to take action.

One of the key features of the Paris deal is how the French and UN negotiators were willing to work around the American President’s political obstacles and produce an agreement that would not have to be ratified by the US Senate.

That’s why the Paris accord avoids a legal commitment by countries to actually cut emissions. Instead countries have submitted voluntary plans of how they will reduce emissions and fight climate change called – in UN-speak – Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs.

The voluntary nature of these central commitments has been criticized as a major weakness of the deal, so in order to try to ensure countries keep their promises, the agreement legally requires all states to monitor their emissions performance and to come together every five years to review their progress.

The idea being that global peer pressure will encourage countries to do their bit.

Another obvious weakness of the deal is that, as things stand, when you total up all the INDCs it does not add up to preventing a temperature rise above 2 degrees Celsius, which most climate scientists agree is the tipping point where global warming will produce catastrophic climate change.

There is an aspiration in the preamble to the agreement to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees and the hope is the five-year review process and peer pressure will lead to countries committing to ever-deeper emissions cuts as they go along.

UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon – another leader who has made climate change a signature issue – described Paris as “a truly historic moment”.

It could be – if countries follow through.

What we can say for sure is that Paris has given humanity a fighting chance in the battle against climate change and for that a lot of the credit should go to France.

 

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Climate Change or Terrorism: Which is the True Existential Threat?

Climate change is “the most severe problem that we are facing today—more serious even than the threat of terrorism”.

So said the then UK Chief Scientific Adviser, David King back in 2004.

It’s a view that’s been echoed by, among others, President Obama in this year’s State of the Union address.

Eleven years on, King’s comment came to mind as the UK parliament debated and approved air strikes on Islamic State in Syria at the same time as delegates from more than 190 countries were meeting at the UN climate summit in Paris to try to agree a deal to prevent catastrophic climate change.

The Syria vote took up many more column inches than the goings on in Paris despite the presence of world leaders, including Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at the opening of the summit.

Polls in Britain about the most important issues facing the World, indicate terrorism is seen as a much greater threat than global warming. It also seems public concern about climate change has declined since the last disappointing key UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009.

Why should this be when the scientific consensus is that unless the world takes measures now global temperatures will rise by more than 2 degrees and cause catastrophic changes in the climate that will pose a grave threat to all of humanity?

Some climate scientists think it’s partly their fault. They believe they gave people the impression climate change would be more dramatic and also that it may be too late to do much about it. But climate change is likely to be gradual and psychology suggests if people think they can’t do much about something, they will most likely carry on as usual.

But political leaders and the media also bear some responsibility.

When there is a terrorist attack, there is frequent talk about terrorism as an existential threat.

Prime Minister, David Cameron, himself has said he believes IS is an “existential threat” to the UK.

According to the dictionary “existential” means “relating to existence”. So an “existential threat” to the UK is something that threatens the very survival of the country.

Does the Prime Minister really believe IS poses a threat to Britain’s national survival in the same way Nazi Germany did in 1940?

Surely not?

But he is not alone in using this language – other politicians and media commentators have also liberally used the cliché – and it is bound to have an impact on public perceptions.

Anecdotally, I know well-informed people who agree with this assessment of the scale of the IS threat and dismiss climate change as exaggerated – when it is precisely the other way round.

The frog in boiling water is the analogy that’s used to explain the lack of urgency about taking action to combat global warming. Then there’s the fact that because climate science is developing all the time, there is always an element of uncertainty about it, even if the broad trends are clear.

However, there’s already evidence that climate change will disrupt our way of life and threaten the existence of states.

The Pentagon and other defence ministries now recognise climate change as a threat to national security and see it as a driver of conflict.

One of the causes of the unrest that led to Syria’s devastating civil war that may well end in the permanent disintegration of the country was prolonged drought and it’s very likely climate change was a cause of that drought. It’s this research Prince Charles was referring to in a recent interview with Sky News when he grabbed headlines by suggesting a link between terrorism and climate change.

The conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region, which the UN estimates has killed around 300,000 and displaced almost 3 million, has also been linked to drought caused by long-term changes in climate.

Another problem when it comes to public perceptions of the two is that while terrorist attacks are sudden and shocking – that is the whole point of them in the eyes of the people carrying them out – climate change is incremental.

We humans also seem to find it far easier to empathise with the relatively small numbers of victims of sudden random violence than we do the large numbers whose lives are threatened by an creeping menace like climate change.

I don’t intend to diminish the impact terrorism has on its victims and their loved ones.

If you are unfortunate enough to be in the vicinity of a terrorist attack then it is an existential threat to you.

But, unless you live in a handful of countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia or Afghanistan,terrorism is not a threat to the future of your country. It’s also not a threat to human existence. Climate change, on the other hand, probably is.

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Sailing by: Trouble in The South China Sea

Most eyes may still be on Syria as the epicentre of global tension, but the temperature just rose in South China Sea too where several countries, including China, lay claim to the same waters.

The much-previewed US challenge to China’s claims has finally taken place with an American navy warship sailing within 12 nautical miles of one of the artificial islands Beijing has built in the disputed waters of the Spratly, or Nansha, archipelago.

Chinese naval vessels shadowed the US ship and warned it off, but no clash took place – this time.  China’s navy commander has warned his counterpart of the danger of an accidental war if the Americans do it again.

The American move comes just a few weeks after President Obama gave President Xi the red carpet treatment in Washington. So what’s going on?

The US was demonstrating that it doesn’t recognise China’s extensive claims in the South China Sea.

It also insists it doesn’t take sides over Beijing’s disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, which also claim parts of the Sea.

To try to substantiate this, the US patrol also passed through areas claimed by Hanoi and Manila, but as Washington has been distinctly quiet over the island-building activities of other countries, which pre-dated China’s, it is clear the Americans are only really bothered by the Chinese.

The Pentagon characterised the patrol by the USS Lassen as “routine”, but given the months of discussion and open hinting by Washington that it would carry out such a patrol, it clearly wasn’t.

There are other inconsistencies in the US position too, although both Beijing and Washington are being disingenuous.

The Pentagon describes the patrol as a Freedom of Navigation exercise to demonstrate that its ships can sail wherever international law and customary practice allow.

But despite its extensive claims in the South China Sea, there is no evidence China is threatening that freedom. In fact, given the dependence of its economy on trade and energy imports passing through the Sea, it is not in Beijing’s interest to do so.

By sailing close to one of China’s artificial islands, the Americans were seeking to utilise one of the clauses of the international treaty governing use of the seas – UNCLOS, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

The only problem is the US itself has never ratified UNCLOS.

If Washington is concerned about establishing the right of freedom of navigation for its ships, a more effective and consistent way to do it would be to push the Senate to ratify the treaty.

This patrol was less about international law than raw power. Everybody, including of course China, knows the US did it to show that it can and to show the Chinese it is still boss on the water to try to deter Beijing from consolidating its extensive claims in the region.

As for China, it is a party to UNCLOS, but its position is also flawed.

Beijing denounced the sail-by as “illegal”, but under the Convention it wasn’t.

China has also shown a lack of regard for UNCLOS by refusing to take part in arbitration with the Philippines under the Convention – a refusal that has not had the desired effect of preventing the Permanent Court of Arbitration from allowing the case to go ahead.

Chinese officials say Beijing has built the artificial islands – seven in the past year – to provide airfields and docking facilities to support disaster relief operations in the typhoon-prone region.

That is valid as far as it goes, but by asserting the 12-mile limit around these installations, China is also clearly using them to advance its territorial claims.

If it wants to uphold the international law it says is essential for maintaining peace, China should agree to talks to settle these claims by compromise as it has done on several of its land borders. Instead, it says it wants to agree a code of conduct to manage relations in the South China Sea with its South East Asian neighbours, but talks on that have yet to yield any fruit.

This has led to rising tensions, particularly between China and the Philippines and Vietnam, both of which have turned to Washington for support, giving the US another reason for its challenge to Chinese claims – to show its friends it can be relied on when push comes to shove.

Although, Chinese and American officers have been talking about ways of reducing the risk of accidental clashes on the sea and in the air, more is needed if the two sides want to avoid getting into a shooting war.

A better course would be for China to sit down with its rival claimants and settle their maritime borders – and for the US to leave them to it.

As things stand this is unlikely to happen.

Beijing shows no appetite for multilateral talks and despite Washington’s lip service to the changing global order, the US attempt to stop its allies joining Chinese-led initiatives, like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, shows it has still not been able to truly accept that the rise of China means it has to treat Beijing as more of a military and diplomatic equal.

As much as anything else this is what lies behind the US Navy sail-by, which instead of encouraging compromise over the South China Sea, is only stoking further tension.

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Britain’s China Debate: Does It Have To Be So Binary?

It was hard to miss that President Xi Jinping of China was in Britain this week being given the full red carpet treatment including dinner at Buckingham Palace and addressing parliament at Westminster.

Of course the visit was accompanied by a lot of discussion and analysis of the relationship between the two countries. It’s a debate that is welcome and necessary, but does it have to be so binary?

Rather than coming to us in glorious 3D, it’s been in limited 2D: in one corner it’s business and in the other human rights.

Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne – who recently toured China himself – clearly have a business agenda. They gave Xi the pomp of a sate visit, which will help his image back home, because they want cash-rich Beijing to invest in modernising Britain’s infrastructure.

The need to raise money means they are even prepared to brave American disapproval and put security concerns to one side (even if the technology is actually French) and sign a deal for a Chinese state firm to invest in new nuclear power stations.

They also want to boost trade and get China to use the City as the main centre for the growing international trade in its Renminbi currency.

The government’s critics, including one of Cameron’s former advisers, had a field day with accusations that it had gone soft on human rights and was kowtowing to China.

Human rights groups understandably were critical on this front. It’s their raison d’etre after all.

But in the extensive press and online commentary a more nuanced approach has been relatively hard to find, although as you might expect, the leading think tank, Chatham House, produced some of the more sophisticated analysis.

No doubt, President Xi could be forgiven quiet satisfaction that the country that started what the Chinese call the century of humiliation of foreign invasion by forcing its way into China in the 1839-42 Opium War, is now coming to them cap in hand.

Xi also dealt comfortably with human rights issues when they were raised, for instance in his meeting with Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn. In a press conference, the Chinese leader gave what is now Beijing’s boilerplate response that human rights in his country are in need of improvement but this will be done in line with “Chinese conditions”.

China’s human rights record is undoubtedly poor, but then no country’s, including Britain’s, is pristine.

Reading much of the commentary calling on London to be more forceful on human rights brought to mind the biblical quote “he that is without sin … let him first cast a stone …”

Western criticism of China’s record is also often selective, failing to encompass the full panoply of rights, which include economic and social rights, as well as the individual political and civil rights emphasised in the West. This leads to China’s success in lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty being discounted.

An alternative approach would be to frame pressure on China – or any country for that matter – to improve its record by trying to hold its leaders to their commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which they themselves are signed up to.

But the relationship between Britain and China should be about more than either business or human rights.

There are a host of issues Britain and China need to engage on.

The two countries are permanent members of the UN Security Council and the World is in dire need of more international cooperation to try to end conflicts and prevent others breaking out.

Britain was right to defy American pressure and be the first western country to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The West has long been telling China its new-found wealth and power mean it has to do more for the international community and shunning the AIIB would have sent the message that Beijing is only really welcome as a follower rather than a leader.

Climate change is another pressing concern where the two countries play a crucial international role. Despite the recent backsliding by London, Britain is a centre of research, technology and advocacy for cutting carbon emissions and China has invested billions in clean energy and is now committed to reducing the greenhouse gases it produces.

Where the critics of Cameron and Osborne have a point is in the naiveté of their approach.

On his recent trip to China, Osborne chose to visit the western region of Xinjiang – a controversial choice given the China’s ongoing crackdown on protest and violence by the local Uighur population. The Chancellor ended up being praised by the official press for his pragmatism and criticised by Uighur groups.

So why is London willing to risk offending its main ally in Washington and appear craven in its attempt to win favour in Beijing? After all, both the US and Germany have strong economic links and broad diplomatic engagement with China, including on human rights.

The answer lies in the failure to establish a stable and consistent relationship with Beijing.

Since the return of Hong Kong to China, Britain has had a fitful approach and the present government seems to believe London has lost out to Berlin and others in capturing a share of the Chinese market.

In their very haste to catch up and the urgency they attach to attracting investment, Cameron and Osborne are prepared to ignore criticism – and I suspect the advice of their diplomats – and downplay human rights and wider foreign policy considerations to put their emphasis on the purely pecuniary dimension of relations with the Chinese.

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China’s big parade: evidence of expansionist threat or a normal great power?

For the first time ever, China has held a military parade, complete with its most modern missiles and watched over by 30 visiting Heads of State, to mark the defeat of Japan in 1945.

The decision to mount this display in the first place, and the way it was staged, tell us quite a bit about what Beijing intends to do with the new kit it showed off.

Many headlines in the West – whose leaders largely stayed away – framed the parade as an aggressive show of force. And there are loud voices among US military officials, commentators and politicians accusing Beijing of modernising its armed forces for nefarious purposes – namely territorial expansion.

Some of China’s neighbours, especially Japan and the Philippines which both dispute ownership of islands and atolls with China also level this charge.

They point to China’s rapidly increasing spending on its military and its more assertive approach to territorial disputes in the past five years as evidence.

In the past few months, they have focused criticism on Beijing’s island building programme in the South China Sea where small islands and atolls have been expanded and some equipped with airstrips capable of handling military aircraft.

But is this evidence of expansionism?

President Xi Jinping used his speech at the parade to try to reassure onlookers, announcing a 300,000 cut in the number of troops and insisting his is a peace-loving country.

While it’s true China’s defence spending has been rising at unprecedented rates, Beijing’s budget is still dwarfed by Washington’s, both in dollar terms and as a proportion of GDP.

Also, Beijing is not the first country to indulge in “island building” in the South China Sea, other claimants were at it before the Chinese, even if the scale of what Beijing has been doing is much larger.

At a recent conference dinner, I was at the same table as a well-known hawkish American commentator. The conversation turned to the South China Sea and the assumption behind most of the talk was China is an old-fashioned expansionist power which the US and its allies have to put in its place.

When I ventured the opinion that perhaps Beijing did not fit that mould, I was literally scoffed at.

But if you compare American and Chinese history there is a big difference – in both motivation and approach.

One of the messages President Xi is sending with the September 3rd parade is that China will stand up for itself and never again allow itself to be invaded and intimidated.

It’s easy for non-Chinese to forget how the country was invaded, first by the British who seized Hong Kong in the Opium war of 1839-42 and culminating in the full-scale Japanese assault of 1937 with its accompanying atrocities and the death of up to 20 million Chinese. What is called “the century of humiliation” in China.

The territorial claims Beijing makes today are also based on its interpretation of history, rather than a future scheme to conquer its neighbours.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands it disputes with Japan in the East China Sea are nearer Taiwan than Japan and were taken by force by Tokyo during war with China in the 1890s. China argues they should have been returned after 1945 under the Potsdam Declaration.

Instead the US kept them, using the islands as firing ranges until 1972 when it returned them to Japan which by that time had become a close American ally.

The Chinese also argue their claims in the South China Sea are historical, although these are a lot vaguer than those in the East China Sea.

Compare that with the United States.

It grew from the original thirteen colonies on the East Coast to include Hawaii, 2,400 miles from the West Coast.

The justification for this expansion – much of which was achieved by military conquest – wasn’t history. It was the nineteenth century idea of Manifest Destiny – that despite the presence of indigenous peoples, Americans had a God-given right to take the land they wanted.

It was a powerful, unequivocally expansionist ideology.

Washington has never really looked back and today its military bases have spread to at least 74 countries and its navy patrols the world’s seaways unhindered.

It routinely sends spy planes and ships right up to the territorial waters of other countries, including of course China. When others do the same to the US – and Chinese ships were sighted off Alaska at the same time it was parading military hardware through Tiananmen Square – the Americans don’t exactly welcome it.

The modernisation of China’s armed forces and its assertion of its maritime claims can be seen as normal business for a large country with an economy dependent on oil imports which have to pass through the South China Sea.

To its east, there’s no doubt Beijing is also trying to develop the military capability to prevent US forces from intervening to stop it retaking Taiwan – if it ever judges its attempt at gradual, peaceful reunification has failed. Although, Beijing sees this as completing its historic mission to win back all the territory lost in the recent past.

This doesn’t mean a rising China isn’t capable of aggression.

It does mean its territorial ambitions are probably much more limited than some seem to fear and Washington’s ever were.

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Japan: sorry seems to be the hardest word …. to accept

Imagine German Chancellor Merkel visiting a war memorial honouring senior Nazis. You can’t, can you?

Yet Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has done the equivalent, visiting the Yasukuni Shrine where high profile war criminals are commemorated.

His last visit in December 2013 met with loud protests from Japan’s neighbours China and South Korea who arguably suffered the brunt of Tokyo’s empire building in the first half of the last century. Even close ally the US tut-tutted about it.

Hoping to avoid another row, Abe has not visited since, but apparently tone deaf to the way this is perceived abroad, he has sent offerings, including on the anniversary last year of the end of World War 2 when the Japanese Emperor announced the surrender to the Allies on August 15th 1945.

This matters in the here and now because it adds to tensions in East Asia that are already rising as China’s growing power sees it trying to reassert its influence, upsetting the US-led post-war order in the region.

In the run up to this year’s 70th anniversary of the end of the War, there was much speculation about what Abe would say in his speech to mark the milestone.

Would a man known for his nationalism and whose own grandfather served in the wartime military government stand by the statements of several of his predecessors and apologise for Japan’s aggression and the suffering it wrought on its neighbours during its brutal invasions and occupation?

In the event he largely did.

He expressed “deep remorse and heartfelt apology”. He used key words like “aggression” and “invasion” that his critics were listening for. In the Q & A with journalists after the speech he also said he stood by the Murayama Statement, considered the benchmark for Japanese apologies.

However, if Abe was wishing to avoid criticism for being less than fulsome in his sentiments, there was more than one hostage to fortune.

The language he used to describe ‘’comfort women” – the euphemism used to describe the women, many of them Korean, who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military – was a bit oblique, talking of women “whose honour and dignity were severely injured”.

He also rather unnecessarily sought to explain – some would say justify – Japanese expansionism by saying the Great Depression of the 1930s and protectionism by western countries and empires isolated Japan and led to Tokyo resorting to war.

While there is some truth in this, you can rightly quibble with this interpretation given Japanese expansionism began well before the 1930s when they seized Taiwan from China in 1895 and occupied Korea in 1910.

But ultimately these equivocations are by the by.

Japanese leaders have repeatedly apologised for their country’s aggression and wartime actions and yet they have failed to convince many, especially in China and South Korea (it’s difficult to know what North Koreans think) that they are really sincere.

Germany is often held up as the example for Japan to follow.

Germans – despite the recent flare up of name calling over the Greek debt crisis – have successfully reconciled with their neighbours and largely been forgiven for the aggression and atrocities committed by the Nazis.

What explains the difference?

There is that lingering sense in Japan that western economic protectionism pushed the country into a corner in the 1930s, even if the resort to war by Tokyo was misguided.

The remorseless bombing of Japanese civilians during the War, including the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, may also help to explain why there is a stronger sense of victimhood in Japan than in Germany, where the Allies also directly targeted civilians.

Then there’s a heavy dose of politics and diplomacy.

In Europe, the Cold War led to reconciliation between European countries because Germany was central to the project of building a strong, united Western Europe as a counter to the USSR.

In Asia meanwhile, attempts at reconciliation took a back seat as the US built up Japan as a base against the spread of Communism after Mao’s victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949 and the Korean War in the early 1950s.

Japan didn’t establish diplomatic relations with China until 1972 and even then people to people contacts remained limited and the two governments avoided much discussion of the past in the interests of improving economic ties.

In more recent years, leaders in China and South Korea have used nationalist sentiment against Japan to bolster political support at home and Japanese leaders, especially Abe, have harnessed apprehension of growing Chinese power for similar purposes.

All this doesn’t mean the Prime Minister should not have apologised again in his 70th anniversary statement.

But it does mean that more needs to be done on all sides to overcome the bitterness of the past.

It also means if Abe – and others on the right in Japan – want their remorse and apologies to be accepted, they need to make sure their actions reinforce the message and don’t contradict it.

In other words, Japanese leaders need to stop visiting or sending offerings to Yasukuni or trying to imply that the aggression and atrocities of the past were somehow explainable at the time.

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On global leadership – or the lack thereof

The world’s major powers are failing when it comes to providing global leadership.

That was the refrain running through this week’s annual Chatham House London Conference where the US, China, Russia and the UK came in for varying degrees of criticism from panellists and participants.

To the apparent surprise and irritation of some Americans present, there were constant references to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and how damaging it had been, not just to the Iraqi victims, but also to the global order and the legitimacy of the US as a global leader.

I was not sure why this should have come as a surprise at a conference dedicated to discussing the crisis in global order and challenges to a rules-based international system, but there you are.

Many Americans may want to draw a line under it and move on, but despite the twelve years that have passed since the invasion, the consequences are still unfolding. Other countries committing acts of aggression use it to justify their own actions and in the region itself the political and military challenge of ISIS amply demonstrates how it remains at the root of contemporary events.

There was also criticism of the Obama Administration for overcompensating for Iraq and failing to provide leadership when it is needed– leading some to complain Washington can’t win and to cite the “damned if you, damned if you don’t” syndrome.

Russia also came in for castigation with Moscow characterised as having gone rogue in the international system. American and European participants made constant passing references to “Russian aggression” and there was no doubt whose side they are on in the Ukraine conflict.

The criticism of Britain was of a gentler sort with many wondering whether London is disengaging from the world as it debates its future in – or out of – the European Union and cuts its defence budget to such an extent the US government, in the words of the British Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, has started openly lobbying London to boost its military spending.

Then there is China. The Chinese panellists were pushed on several occasions by Japanese and other participants to justify Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea where tensions have risen in recent weeks following the US decision to challenge China’s territorial claims by sailing and flying close to the artificial islands China has been constructing in disputed waters.

What stood out was the way the Chinese responded.

Ambassador Wu Jianmin robustly defended his country’s conduct in the South China Sea by pointing out freedom of navigation is essential for China as well as other countries given how much if its trade passes through it. He said the installations being created would also serve a humanitarian purpose for disaster relief operations and pointed out that other countries had started building artificial islands before China without attracting any criticism, so, he asked, why is Beijing being singled out.

But Ambassador Wu was also on a mission to explain what his government calls its “win-win” approach to international relations. He pointed to the newly established and China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, AIIB, which the US unsuccessfully tried to persuade its allies not to join, as an example of this approach. He emphasised how Chinese investment abroad benefits both China and countries where it is investing. And indeed a World Bank official, Dr Vera Songwe, endorsed this argument by pointing to Africa where Chinese infrastructure investment has helped the continent grow and become more integrated into the global economy.

Responding to complaints that China’s extraordinary economic growth and its re-emergence as a great power had taken advantage of the rules-based international system put in place by the US in the wake of the Second World War – the term “free-rider” was used – Professor Wu Xinbo argued that China is now providing international public goods, such as the AIIB.

He was sitting next to Professor Joe Nye who was arguing the US will remain the predominant power in the world for the foreseeable future and will not be overtaken by China, and at one point it seemed the two were almost competing to show which country does the most for the international community.

A far cry from Deng Xiaoping’s foreign policy maxim of “keep a low profile and try to accomplish something”.

We have also come a long way from a decade ago when the then US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, called on China – in somewhat patronising language – to be a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system.

The consensus among conference participants seemed to be that despite current turbulence in the South China Sea, Beijing does not want to undermine the established global order, but it does want to be accorded its due weight in that order.

This means the US and the Europeans will have to accede to such things as greater Chinese clout in international bodies such as the IMF. If they don’t, the former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd pointed out, China’s creation of the AIIB shows Beijing will go round the system if it thinks it is being blocked.

So paradoxically, if the rules-based system with the UN and the growing canon of international conventions and law at its heart is to be maintained and strengthened, the leadership required of the US at this point is to truly accept it is no longer the paramount leader.

The key to a stable world is for the West to make good on its rhetoric and make room at the top table for China – and other emerging powers such as India and Brazil – or we could well be in for a bleak beggar-thy-neighbour future.

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