P Kharel

Seven years to go. If IMF reports are anything to go by, China’s next stop in the status of world economy is loud and clear: No. 1 spot by 2030. It’s a prospect hardly any expert had been able to convincingly anticipate at the turn of the millennium. Only the other week, the British Telegraph newspaper bitterly worried about “Beijing’s belligerence” and rued over having “handed China the world on a platter”.

A weeping child’s cry over a more powerful nation’s rise as against Britain’s policy of intimidation and exploitation of the then decimating Chinese regime of the 19th century and after. An opinion piece in the Business Standard, too, regretted how China was “handed East Asia on a platter”. That should sum up the West’s prevailing view on a rising China’s desire for global influence against the background of role played by the United States-propelled West for a century after World War I. The mindset of the traditionally powerful bloc that dictated what global values should be and how its prescriptions for agenda-setting represent humanity’s conscience.

Cast and clout
Times change; so do climes and opportunities. Power equations shift; so do clout expanse and influence peddling. Ten months into office, the US President Joe Biden considers China the biggest threat to American security. In effect — even if unwittingly, Biden’s verdict sends a message of acknowledgement of the most populous nation’s military prowess and economic clout underscored by its growing international presence.

The US enjoyed a ratio of 1:11 against China in terms defence expenditure outlay 20 years ago. The gap has drastically narrowed down today. The defence expenditures of these two superpowers have shifted in both volume and value at a ratio of 1:3 with the US holding on to its top position.

In their quest for finding an ideal substitute to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature project Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) at the British-hosted G7 meet in June, Biden floated the idea of a counterpart to BRI. Although merely an idea without any detail, it echoed how the West has begun to feel the heat of competition BRI offers. This is reinforced by talk of a new undertaking aimed at not allowing the communist country’s stunning strides to diminish the West’s long running influence in the years ahead.

With barely 400 years’ history of colonised America and virtual extermination of the indigenous people, the US competes, today, with a communist country whose recorded history goes back more than 5000 years. Conceptualised by China in 2013 and formally launched in 2016, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is seen in the West as a direct competitor to the US-steered World Bank. China is the largest shareholder at 30.34 per cent. India and Russia represent the next two largest shareholders in the 103-member AIIB.

The pace in cutting edge technological development, innovations and inventions in the past two decades has been breathtaking. China produced more than adequate doses of vaccines enabling it to control the spread of COVID-19 at home and also making significant contributions to international supply chain. This reiterated its capacity and, at the same time, sounding the bell of its arrival as a superpower.

Moreover, the footprints of Sino-Russian rapport are actively visible carrying a message of how two of the three superpowers are working together. As for the US, a second superpower was always taken as a rival to be worried about as far as its own international clout was concerned. Now that China, too, has emerged as a new superpower expanding the exclusive club to three, the US and its closest allies experience a competitive jolt the like of which they had not faced in the last seven and a half decades after the close of World War II.

The implications of an active Sino-Russian tie-up were tossed up in Syria and Venezuela, among other states, where movements for the regimes in Damascus and Caracas fizzled notwithstanding the support of the US and its allies. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro have the new power equations to thank a lot for in fortifying their positions.
In reference to the Sino-Indian border skirmishes and related disputes, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned against “extra-regional power” in the Indo-Pacific region. This is construed as a stern statement to the US and an advice of caution to India. Moscow and New Delhi had decades of very close ties, particularly in the 1970s and the 1980s. Moscow’s message was reiterated during its Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s visit to the Indian capital this year, when he criticised the US-India-Japan-Australia partnership of Quad. Of late, China has also subtly begun to recall its struggle with foreign forces in earlier centuries, too. The enforced opium trade and hegemonic practice of brandishing a military might for extracting undue concessions are some of the examples.

From past to present
Two major opium wars in the 19th century concluded with some of the major Western powers extorting unequal treaties with imperial China. Countermanding the emperor’s edict that banned import of staggering amounts of opium, the treaties incorporated the shameful clauses that gave the foreign victors the rights to freely trade opium in any part of China. Britain, France and Russia were the most aggressive, though the US was not far behind in capitalising immensely from the opium trade. Britain was given extraterritoriality rights along with Hong Kong and its surrounding islands. In addition, huge war reparations were forced upon the victim.

Unable to withstand the tremendous pressure that threatened death and destruction, Beijing announced the legalisation of the opium trade and internal transit duties on foreign imports scrapped. Additionally, it was made to also pay reparations and grant foreign traders as well as missionaries the right to unrestricted travel in any part of the once proud and great nation.
Such being the reckless policies of exploitation of local resources, Beijing, today, sees the dominant powers geared to probing new ways and means for ensuring their traditional roles as agenda-setters for the vast world and monopolising the right to define what is best for humanity and obliquely assert that global values are what the West defines and confirms. That cannot — and should not happen — whichever the power combination and orientation.

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)