China's Soft Power

January 13, 2008
By Richard Halloran
Real Clear Politics (USA)

"China's influence in Vietnam is relatively limited" - Congressional Research Service Report

Much that is discussed about China's foreign policy and security posture these days revolves around military matters-warships and fighter planes bought from Russia, 1300 missiles aimed at Taiwan, and the latest maneuvers of the People's Liberation Army.

There's another side to China's emerging might, however, what some pundits call "soft power" or "smiling diplomacy" or the "charm offensive." Most of that effort is the application of China's expanding economy to trade, aid, and investment to achieve political ends.

In a wider context, China's soft power seems integral to what may be a campaign to revive the Middle Kingdom, the China of yesteryear that dominated Asia. Chinese armies won't march across international borders but rather Beijing seeks to acquire such political, economic, and diplomatic clout that major decisions in every Asian capital will require Chinese approval.

A scholar who specializes in China, Joshua Kurlantzick, has written: "China may want to shift influence away from the United States to create its own sphere of influence, a kind of Chinese Monroe Doctrine for Southeast Asia [where] countries would subordinate their interests to China's, and would think twice about supporting the United States."

(President James Monroe proclaimed in 1823 that outside powers would not be permitted to intervene in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.)

In a fresh assessment, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) in Washington, asserts that China has been mostly, but not completely, successful in Southeast Asia: "Beijing has largely allayed Southeast Asian concerns that China poses a military or economic threat." In contrast, the US is perceived as having "waning or limited attention" to Southeast Asia.

China's ability to influence Southeast Asians, the CRS report contends, "largely stems from its role as a major source of foreign aid, trade, and investment." In addition, overseas Chinese communities in almost every Southeast Asian nation "have long played important parts in the economies, societies, and cultures of Southeast Asian states."

One set of figures is illuminating. China's imports of Southeast Asian goods from 1997 to 2006 soared 674 percent, to $89.5 billion. In the same period, US imports rose 57 percent, to $111 billion. When the 2007 figures are in, China will more likely have bought more from Southeast Asia than the US.

The Chinese have concentrated their economic assistance on Burma and Laos on their southern border, and on Cambodia, reached through Laos. They are also the poorest countries in the region. An authoritarian junta shunned by the US rules Burma, or Myanmar.

China has provided the largest amount of aid to Burma and helped to build roads, railroads, airfields, and ports. The Chinese have also provided up to $2-billion worth of weapons to the junta, which has undoubtedly helped the oppressive regime there to stay in power.

Beijing has lent Vietnam large sums for railways, hydro-power projects, and shipbuilding yards. Compared with its influence in Burma, Laos, and Cambodia, however, the CRS report says, "China's influence in Vietnam is relatively limited."

Although China supported North Vietnam against South Vietnam and the US in the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese have historically feared China. China occupied large parts of Vietnam for about a thousand years to 939 and invaded Vietnam briefly in 1979. Anti-Chinese demonstrations erupted in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) last month to protest Chinese military exercises aimed at islands near Vietnam.

China's influence in the island nations of Indonesia and the Philippines has been in competition with that of the US. After the terrorist assaults of Islamic extremists on Sept. 11, 2001, the US has sought to cultivate good relations with Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation.

Even so, the CRS reports, President Hu Jintao of China and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia in 2005 "signed a declaration proclaiming a 'strategic partnership' that was accompanied by a promise of preferential loans work $300 million."

Similarly, China has sought influence in the Philippines even though the islands were once an American colony and now have a security treaty with the US. Premier Wen Jiabao of China and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines signed 20 economic agreements in January 2007 that included a contract for a Chinese company to build and renovate railroads.

While the US has been behind the curve, the CRS report cautions that "even some of the main beneficiaries of China's largesse in Southeast Asia remain wary of the PRC [People's Republic of China, the formal name of China] or seek to dampen its growing influence."

Richard Halloran, a free lance writer in Honolulu, was a military correspondent for The New York Times for ten years. He can be reached at oranhall@hawaii.rr.com