WORLD AFFAIRS

A strategic entente

China's growing importance in the post-Cold War era becomes evident from a bout of diplomatic activity in Beijing, which sees high-level visits from the U.S., Russia and Iraq.

P.S. SURYANARAYANA
in Singapore

DIPLOMATIC coincidences, planned or otherwise, often prove the point. China's sense of strategic autonomy was reinforced during the latest flurry of diplomatic activity, which saw the signing of a Sino-Russian Joint Communique in Shanghai on August 22 and the consequential propagation of a new security concept in international relations. The communique itself defined the backdrop for the talks that followed between the Chinese leadership and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage in Beijing.

AFP
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his Chinese counterpart Zhu Rongji after the signing of the Sino-Russian Joint Communique in Shanghai on August 22.

Soon after Russia's Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov left for home after signing the Shanghai Communique along with Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji and holding talks thereafter with President Jiang Zemin in Beijing, Armitage reached the Chinese capital, on August 25, to prepare the ground for a prospective summit between Jiang and U.S. President George W. Bush at the latter's ranch in Texas in October. As if underlining the complexity of these diplomatic exchanges, China delicately played host to Iraqi Foreign Minister Naji Sabri Ahmad while Armitage was still holding talks in Beijing. Looming in the background was the din and bustle across the larger international stage over the U.S.' neo-Manichaean moralist view of Saddam Hussein's Iraq being the epicentre of evil.

These goings-on underlined the growing importance of China as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and as a player with a mind of its own in the ongoing United States-led global "War against Terror". Although Beijing might be pleased with such international attention, the fact remains that the U.S., with its enormous military and diplomatic reach, is still ahead of others in trying to set a global agenda and create a "post-modern international order".

It is this sub-text that explains much of the significance of the latest Sino-Russian Joint Communique. In a sense, this can be seen as a value-added appendix to the Good Neighbourly Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation that Presidents Jiang Zemin and Vladimir Putin had signed on July 16, 2001. However, the added value manifests itself in the updated security concept in the context of the "War against Terror", which has come to mean different things to different powers.

The stated Sino-Russian effort is to build "a just and rational international order" on the basis of "mutual trust, equality and cooperation" among states with an anti-terror fervour. Upon such a foundation of generalised security norms, not to be dismissed as a mere wish-list of two countries outside the U.S.' war council, lies the superstructure of the new Sino-Russian strategic entente. Such a new common cause reflects, at a bilateral level, the very essence of the spirit of the multilateral Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which was founded not long ago by China and Russia in conjunction with some Central Asian republics on the basis of, among other goals, an anti-terror objective. In any case, China and Russia form the core of the SCO, and their latest bilateral understanding acquires meaning in this sense as well.

Of greater importance now is the manner in which China and Russia have voiced their outrage over the unilateralist style and substance of the U.S. "War on Terror". Neither Beijing nor Moscow is really keen to distance itself from the U.S. campaign. Yet the distance between these two "Eastern powers and the U.S.-led West is obvious. Not surprisingly, Russia has explicitly reaffirmed support for Chinese efforts to "fight the East Turkistan terrorist and separatist forces in the Xinjiang province". Reciprocating the sentiments, China has backed Russia's "crackdown on the Chechen terrorist and separatist forces", as reflected in the Joint Communique. It can be seen in this context that a common denominator of the troublesome nature, as regards the East Turkistan rebels and the Chechen separatists is their insistence that their "Islamic identity is inconsistent with the socio-political milieu" of China or Russia, as the case might be. Aware of this self-inflicted minority complex, as seen from Beijing or Moscow, Zhu and Kasyanov noted that terrorism should not be linked to specific ethnic groups or religions.

The strategic nucleus of the new Sino-Russian accord is the principle of a "multi-polarisation process in global politics", or the idea that the U.S. should not be allowed to monopolise the larger international space in the name of promoting a globalised or universally acceptable agenda, be it anti-terrorism or any other goal.

The most notable of the multi-polarisation principles is the Sino-Russian appeal to the international community to safeguard the outer space from the weaponisation moves of any country, particularly the U.S. which has learnt more than others to rise above the gravitational pull of terrestrial politics. Global society has been called upon to take legal steps to ensure a weapons-free outer space. It takes but little commonsense to see how a weaponised outer space could only help strengthen the grim prognosis of a nuclear armageddon on the planet itself. An authoritative Chinese view, behind the diplomatic scenes though, is that the U.S. must first find out why it perceives so many enemies, especially the so-called rogue states and anti-America terrorist elements, before thinking of building a system of missile defence shields and others of their kind.

Another critical suggestion in the Sino-Russian Communique is that the U.N. and its Security Council take the initiative and "play a core role in international anti-terrorist operations". While the U.S. itself is engaged in forming a worldwide web of anti-terror alliances in different regions and while China and Russia are no less keen on securing their flanks through regional arrangements as might be possible, the latter two seem convinced that any "post-modern Great Wall of defence against universal terror" can be raised only by the U.N. Security Council, where at least five major powers have an equal say. It is this aspect that dominated the diplomatic mood in Beijing even as it played host to the Foreign Minister of Iraq, which country the U.S. has detected on its "anti-terror radar screen" as a potential target. Moreover, China, like other key countries, wants to see the evidence, if any, that could directly link Saddam Hussein's Iraq with globalised terrorists.

During Armitage's confabulations in Beijing, he appeared to have recognised the need to humour China ahead of the planned Jiang-Bush summit. The available indication is that of a plain-speak summit. This should explain the cheerful manner in which Armitage announced Washington's decision to treat a small but violence-prone East Turkistan outfit in Xinjiang as a foreign terrorist organisation for purposes of American laws. Given the U.S. refusal to be distracted by the Taiwan question at this juncture, Armitage pleased China by refusing to support Taipei's moves towards independence and by soft-pedalling other contentious issues in Sino-U.S. ties.

While Armitage's desire to prepare for a win-win Sino-American summit is understandable, he surprised some observers by disclosing that the U.S. took China into confidence on issues relating to India and Pakistan. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton had first asked China to exert its influence over Pakistan and try to rein in its nuclear weaponisation drive. The U.S. now wants to enlarge the scope of such consultations with China. Will such interest extend to Kashmir, beyond the issues of missiles and nuclear weapons?

A change in strategy P.S. SURYANARAYANA CHINA is sometimes seen in the West and in the developing world as a country that cares to look far into the future in spite of its truly challenging existential realities. However, the 24-article Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Export Control of Missiles and Missile-related Items and Technologies, promulgated on August 25, appeared, at first glance, to bear the seal of a quick-fix approach to erase Beijing's suspected complicity in the worldwide proliferation of missile systems that could deliver weapons of mass destruction. The Regulations were seen in some Western quarters as a sop to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who arrived in Beijing on the same day to set the stage for a prospective summit between President George W. Bush and his Chinese counterpart Jiang Zemin at Crawford (Texas) in October. The timing of the promulgation of the Regulations gave Armitage a chance to portray China's action as a "positive development" and the document itself as something modelled on the multilateral Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). He even foresaw the possibility of Sino-American talks at the level of experts to determine whether the existing U.S. sanctions on some Chinese entities could be scrapped. In all, a firm line of China's long-term thinking has been reduced to a political show for the immediate present. While there is no doubt about the realpolitik behind Beijing's decision to unveil its fiat at this time, two critical aspects of the Regulations indicate its line of thrust towards the future. First, the tone and tenor of the dos and donts in the guidline for potential exporters make it abundantly clear that Beijing is seeking, primarily, to curb or control the transfer of sensitive Chinese equipment as also components and their knowhow to other countries. There simply is no provision at this stage for a comprehensive ban by China on the export of ballistic missiles or their parts and related technologies to any country. However, a significant aspect of the Regulations, which define a licensing system for exports in this sphere, is a two-layered safeguard mechanism which, implicitly, is designed to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction on the wider international stage. Article 5 stipulates that the export of missile-related items and technologies for military purposes shall be vetted under the relevant regulations for the administration of arms export. Moreover, intervention by China's State Council and Military Commission will be necessary, at another tier, for any approval of exports that might entail a "significant impact on state(s) security" itself as also "social and public interests". These provisions seem designed to keep the avenue open towards a future ban on missile exports, perhaps in line with the progress that might be made by the major powers that sponsored the MTCR. The second but no less significant indicator of China's future-oriented thinking is the overall philosophy that underlines the Regulations themselves. Authoritative Chinese sources have told this correspondent that Beijing thinks that non-proliferation has gradually become a rational global objective after the Cold War ended. China, proudly conscious of its status as a P-5 power (a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council), is alone in this club to have enunciated the no-first-use principle with regard to nuclear weapons. Now China seems to have decided that it cannot appear to be a maverick in a sensitive sphere. The other P-5 members have been in the "forefront of missile technology controls".