By Pang Zhongying
Since the end of the Cold War, a number of new security challenges have come into sharper focus, such as energy and climate change. The unequal distribution of wealth, power, and opportunity also threatens global security. China has played a pivotal role in addressing these challenges. Domestically, China’s efforts over the past three decades in ameliorating mass poverty and in stabilizing a hugely diverse society have contributed greatly to global security. Internationally, China also supports dialogue between the South and the North and dialogue among the civilizations to prevent a “clash of civilizations.”
There are key interests and challenges shared by China and the West. Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is a great example of the need for cooperation. Indeed, it is increasingly clear that the input of China and other rising actors such as Russia, India, and Brazil is required to tackle global security challenges. For various reasons, America’s willingness and its capacities for dealing with global security issues are declining.5 As a result, the importance of China’s constructive role is increasing.
Effective Sino-West cooperation on global security needs not only China’s continued willingness but improved treatment of China by the West. Currently, the West’s China policies are riddled with contradictions and anachronisms. For example, the West presses China to accommodate Western-centric international norms without considering China’s aspirations, concerns, and interests. There is still a distinct difference between the reality of the “Western-dominated” or US-led international society and a truly universal international society. Many thinkers in the West feel that China should simply join the former rather than try to jointly build the latter. As one American scholar writes, the “Western-centered” or the “US-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China.”6 There has been an “expansion” of the West-dominated “international society.” The question is: When this international society has expanded to include countries like a changed China, does the society of states need to be reformed?
The Climate Change Challenge
Since the late 1970s China has been a major factor in globalization, and China’s sustained modernization has sped up global environmental changes. China has paid huge environmental costs in the name of developmental progress and now faces an unprecedented ecological crisis. Climate change will continue to have an adverse impact on China’s natural ecosystem and socio-economic system.7 This said, it is a legitimate right of the Chinese people to modernize their country. Given its size and economic growth rate, China cannot help but be one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases. International pressure over global warming has put China under unfair scrutiny.
China clearly recognizes the serious consequences of ecological degradation and it has taken measures to curb its pace. As Johanna Lewis, a senior fellow at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, explains, “increased international attention to the issue is reflected in China’s domestic policy circles... primarily through institutional restructuring aimed at better government coordination on climate-related policy activities. China released its first national climate change plan in 2007.”8 China’s plan outlines six guiding principles: (1) to address climate change within the framework of sustainable development; (2) to place equal emphasis on both mitigation and adaptation; (3) to integrate climate change policy with other policies; (4) to rely on the advancement and innovation of science and technology; (5) to follow the principles of “common but differentiated responsibilities;” (6) to actively engage in international cooperation.
The international community has taken notice of China’s climate policies. Though at times slow, China has moved to face the ecological challenge head on. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon writes: “Much is made of the fact that China is poised to surpass the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Less well known, however, are its more recent efforts to confront grave environmental problems. China is on track to invest $10 billion in renewable energy this year, second only to Germany. It has become a world leader in solar and wind power. At a recent summit of East Asian leaders, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao pledged to reduce energy consumption (per unit of gross domestic product) by 20 percent over five years -- not far removed, in spirit, from Europe’s commitment to a 20 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.”9
Protect or perish, China is at a crossroads: Should it continue to allow economic growth to dominate or slow down its greenhouse gas emissions? China wants “scientific development,” and is also seeking international cooperation to help tackle that challenge. At the 2007 APEC summit on climate change, Chinese president Hu Jintao said “only cooperation can bring about progress in dealing with climate change.” If other countries, especially those in the West, want China to develop sustainably, they must assist its effort to do so.
Steps for the Future
Regretfully, China has not fully defined its new role in international society. China is still using its old foreign policy principles and approaches. It has honored its commitments to international society but has played a relatively small role in shaping the system. Much of what China has done was driven not by China itself but by international pressure. In this sense, China’s attitude can be described more as reactive than proactive. Its role in global governance is not yet commensurate with its ambition to be a “big power.”
Inevitably, under the old principles and approaches, China and the West will clash. They have common interests but few common values. Because China is aware of its political disadvantages in a Western-dominated world, China has carefully avoided mention of political differences in its relations with others. As a consequence, the base of China’s shared norms with international society is relatively weak and cooperation between China and the West always is restricted or troubled by their political differences.
Since China’s rise in the 1990s, “democracies” in the world have been aligned against nondemocratic China. As Singapore’s prime minister Lee Kuan Yew points out, China’s nondemocratic system is one of major reasons why China comes under more international pressure than other countries such as India: “India’s navy has an aircraft-carrier force; its air force has the latest Sukhoi and MiG aircraft; its army is among the best trained and equipped in Asia. India can project power across its borders farther and better than China can, yet there is no fear that India has aggressive intentions.” He also said that Americans and Europeans “still have a phobia of the yellow peril... [and] China will have to live with these hang-ups.”10 A majority of Americans view China’s growing economic and military power as a serious potential threat.
For a better world and a larger role in it, China needs to restructure its current foreign policy. Along with its economic and social transformation and ongoing political reform toward real democracy, China must harmonize its policies and actions with the mainstream of international society. But, at the same time, for cooperation rather than confrontation with China, the West needs to revise its failed and dysfunctional policies toward China.
1) “Is China Playing by the Rules? Free Trade, Fair Trade and WTO Compliance,” a statement by Yasheng Huang at the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, September 24, 2003. See www.cecc.gov/pages/hearings/092403/huang.php. Quote from Yongjin Zhang, “China Goes Global,” the Foreign Policy Centre (2005) p. 8.
2) Agence France Presse, “US, EU team up to tell China to play by the rules,” November 9, 2007.
3) United Nations World Summit Outcome Document (September 15, 2005), http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/487/60/PDF/N0548760.pdf?OpenElement.
4) Rebecca Jackson, “There’s method in China’s peace push,” available at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/IL21Ad01.html.
5) Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, “Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism in the United States,” International Security, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Fall 2007) pp. 7-44; and John Shaw, “Barry R. Posen MIT Professor Sparks Debate By Advocating U.S. Restraint,” Washington Diplomat (January 2008).
6) G. John Ikenberry, “The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive?” Foreign Affairs (January 2, 2008).
7) China’s National Climate Change Program from 2007, see documents, page 109.
8) Joanna I. Lewis, “China’s Strategic Priorities in International Climate Change Negotiations,” The Washington Quarterly (Winter 2007-08).
9) Ban Ki-moon, “A New Green Economics: The Test for the World in Bali and Beyond,” Washington Post, December 3, 2007.
10) Lee Kuan Yew, “India’s Peaceful Rise,” available at www.forbes.com/part_forbes/2007/1224/033.html.
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