China's Quest for Asia

DECEMBER 30, 2004, was hardly proud moment for Asia's rising superpower. On that day, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Liu Jianchao, announced $2.7 million in disaster relief to victims of great Sumatran tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people and wiped out hundreds of towns along western coast of Indonesian island. Liu was understandably bit defensive as foreign reporters peppered him with questions about minimal aid amount. is developing country, he offered. We have population of 1.3 billion. China's per capita GDP is still very low. The $2.7 million was, he explained, equivalent to annual income of 20,000 farmers. While for next several days United States, Japan, Europe, Australia, and Canada continued to escalate their tsunami aid packages to an eventual total of over $4 billion, China was playing aid catch-up ball with rival Taiwan, which had started off week with generous pledge of $50 million. By mid-January China had pledged about $63 million, though Taiwan's relief teams were far more visible in stricken areas than China's. Chinese aid efforts were dwarfed by fleets of U.S. helicopters ferrying vast cargoes of medical, food, and construction supplies from American aircraft carriers and support ships anchored in hazy distance directly to needy masses of refugees ashore. Unsurprisingly, this was not an image that was seen in China. China's official Xinhua news agency breathlessly reported that Indonesians were emotionally overwhelmed by China's aid. On January 2, week after tidal wave, Sumatran refugee named Awada, who drove an ambulance for team of Chinese medics, was moved to proclaim, China, in my heart, is great nation! These words (complete with exclamation point) comprised headline at top of international news page on January 3, 2005 People's Daily. Despite fact that China's meager contributions excluded them from international core group of tsunami aid donors, Chinese readers were left with rosy impression that their country was a major humanitarian aid power. To rest of Southeast Asia, reported New York Times (January 4, 2005), huge American, Japanese, and European aid campaigns were a reminder that world's most populous country is still far from being dominant power in Added Washington Post (January 5, 2005), the response has also underscored limitations of China--a fast-growing economic powerhouse that nevertheless has not been able to offer anywhere near amount of aid provided by Japan, United States or Britain. All true. But anyone who concluded from Times and Post accounts that in 2005, China was merely bit player in Southeast Asia--or anywhere else in world--would be dead wrong. Beijing's political leaders know that superpowers aren't measured by their foreign aid budgets, or by their economies. They are measured by their ability to use their comprehensive national power--economic, political, and above all military--to gain obeisance of their neighbors and their regional and global rivals. Asian superpower IT SEEMS THAT United States may already have resigned itself to China's imminent emergence as military superpower--the term Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice used to describe it in June 29, 2005 interview with Wall Street Journal. For regardless of niggardliness of its Tsunami aid effort, China is now dominant power in Southeast Asia. How it became so should yield insights into its strategies for rest of globe. In his National Security Strategy paper of September 2002, President Bush announced, We must build and maintain our defenses beyond challenge, an unmistakable declaration that U.S. defenses must be so awesome that no other country would even challenge them. At same time, he pledged that he would be attentive to possible renewal of old patterns of great power competition. …

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