The fact that China is emerging as an ever-bigger and more powerful global player is something that Labour, as McNeill and Small have rightly said, must talk about. The key question as they see it is how to deal with a power that is resistant to liberal norms both at home and abroad but which nonetheless has become an important partner across a wide range of global issues. But arguing that China is possibly the single greatest challenge to Britain’s ability to be a progressive force in the world, McNeill and Small clearly see its rise in terms of rivalry. Is China in fact a competitor rather than a rival? What other points of view are there for Labour’s debate to draw on?
McNeill and Small’s concern is that the west’s strategy of ‘socialising China’ into the ‘progressive norms’ of the international order is failing. Here they follow Mark Leonard’s contention that China’s rise is shifting the balance of world power in an ‘illiberal direction’: by pursuing a ‘defensive multilateralism’ – serving its own interests at the expense of broader liberal goals – China is ‘hollowing out’ the progressive essence of world institutions. Nevertheless, they seek to argue, we should remain confident in the collective strength of the west: by working in concert with others to strengthen liberal internationalism, it is still possible to influence China’s choices.
China’s rise and America’s relative decline certainly demand a stronger European Union, with Britain more involved in it. But arguing for greater EU coordination in attracting investment from, and trading with, China, is one thing; it is quite another to call for the pooling of power into a counterweight against its rise. McNeill and Small go so far as to suggest that Labour revisit its traditional idealism about the legitimising role of the United Nations Security Council. In this they essentially respond to Robert Kagan’s 2008 call for a ‘league of democracies’ to get round gridlock at the UN Security Council. That these policy advisers are prepared to place the UN’s structure of consensus-building between major powers in jeopardy in the drive to circumvent China, is profoundly worrying. Removing this foundation stone of the post-second world war order would cause all prospects of partnership to collapse with disastrous consequences for the global economy.
Leonard’s approach on the other hand is more cautious, warning instead against traditional Atlanticism could see Britain dragged into a battle to preserve United States military primacy in the Pacific. Here it would be worthwhile to take stock of the options facing Sino-US relations as set out by the Australian defence analyst, Hugh White.
White considers that Sino-US relations have reached a strategic turning point: the China challenge, is not just some future prospect, it has become a reality, and the US now faces an increasingly stark choice. Either it continues in its efforts to preserve US primacy in the Pacific, preventing any substantial redistribution of power in China’s favour, at the cost of escalating rivalry, or it begins to make the necessary concessions to strengthen cooperation at the cost of a lesser role for the US in Asia but with the benefit of avoiding rivalry with a formidable adversary. Should liberal governments instead continue to keep their options open in anticipation of internal regime change in China, as McNeill and Small, amongst others, argue? The danger of such ‘hedging’, White points out, is that Sino-US relations may drift into conflict by default. The more that Sino-US disputes in the South and East China Seas are seen in terms of a struggle for status, the harder it will be for either side to back down and return the relationship to the path of cooperation.
A future of protracted rivalry between the two nuclear-armed superpowers is, for White, not inevitable. Accommodation is possible. China clearly does not pose the kind of challenge to the west that the Soviet Union did: it does not use the ideology of communism to extend its political influence beyond its borders. Why then make responding to China’s ‘illiberalism’ one of the organising concepts of foreign policy? Those who argue for the need to thwart China should acknowledge that doing so will most probably lead to the escalation of competition, and that the more intense the competition, the more the likelihood of ending up in conflict.
The alternative is for western states to agree to share power with China and negotiate a new international order. This would mean accepting China’s political system as legitimate. And why not? The Chinese government has done more to make poverty history than any other. Between 1981 and 2008 China was responsible for 100 per cent of the reduction of people living in absolute poverty in the world. This may not cancel out the human rights abuses, but it should carry weight when choosing between maintaining a particular kind of liberal international order at the risk of war and seeking to preserve peace.
China’s human rights abuses may stretch our tolerance at times, and we may wish to voice our concerns, but we should consider the consequences of adopting ideologically-driven foreign policy effort to delegitimise China’s role in the world very carefully. At the very least, an attitude of profound distrust is hardly the basis on which to build a good working relationship. A transactional order has to be based on consent: it cannot be achieved by strong-arming, economic, diplomatic or otherwise. A constant drip-drip of suspicion is likely to prove debilitating at a time when we need to be engaging constructively and creatively with China, not only as an essential global partner but also, as Liam Byrne has argued, as a vital key to Britain’s economic revival. Labour in government cannot afford to miss the opportunities.
Giving China credit for its social and economic achievements is hardly beyond the bounds of Labour’s moral lexicon. Whatever we think are the best ways to implement human rights, these should be for our own practices and standards not to be set out as rules for others. Like China, it is advisable for us to focus more on our own interests in the newly emerging competitive but nevertheless UN-negotiated multipolar order.
———————————
Jenny Clegg is senior lecturer in Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Central Lancashire
———————————
Photo: olemiswebs