QINGDAO, China, Nov. 12
The Chinese Communist Party dreams of superpower status for China, but has not reflected deeply on what responsibilities this would entail. Theoretically speaking, the leaders of a country are responsible to pursue and maintain national security, economic prosperity and all-round development. But a superpower's responsibility goes beyond the nation; it extends to the region or even to the world, and entails global moral obligations. After the Cold War, the United States became the only superpower and took on the obligation of being the world's policeman.
However, Chinese scholar Jiang Yong believes that the theory of a superpower's responsibilities is a double-edged sword. He thinks it would harm China's reform and development if the nation were to take on responsibilities beyond its capability. He claims that within the country, the call for China to take on superpower responsibilities is growing because some sectors, driven by self- interest, are no longer satisfied with domestic "vanity projects" and have begun to pursue global vanity projects.
This is to say that a developing country, still far from being mature, tries to present itself as a strong country. In addition, the strategy of going beyond the nation is not well coordinated. Some monopoly enterprises sing a high tune but attain low performance. They glorify their achievements and seek publicity at the expense of the national benefit. In reality, their achievements are far below expectations.
According to Jiang Yong, the call for China to take on the responsibilities of a superpower is not an objective demand from international society. Instead, he considers it the major concern of the Western countries led by the United States, which hopes to regain a certain moral stature. His article states that the U.S. call for China to take up superpower responsibilities is an inhibiting magic phrase, intended to use and control China.
"Without military or political intervention, the United States is attempting to contain China's rise through finance. It is getting more obvious that the United States is making trouble for China," says Jiang. He thinks that developed countries have failed to successfully manage the global economy; therefore they keep pointing the finger at China and asking China to take responsibility for the global economic imbalance. The United States and Britain have tried every means to push for the financial opening up of emerging markets, to make it easy for multinational capitalists to create financial turbulence and obtain wealth from the host country.
Additionally, Jiang's article is filled with criticism of China's present policies. The speed of China's financial opening is shocking to many international economists and institutes. China is opening the areas that it promised to open after entering the World Trade Organization, and even areas not included in the agreement are voluntarily opening up. As a result, more and more foreign capital is entering China, including the real estate and securities markets. The financial situation is getting unstable and financial risk is increasing dramatically.
Jiang believes that the noise about a superpower's responsibilities is humiliating to China which, he says, has always been a responsible country. The substance of his article lies in that the country should continuously strengthen its "hard power" (economic strength) in order to develop its "soft power" and finally to replace the "Washington Consensus" with a "Beijing Consensus."
The "Beijing Consensus" originates from discussions of China's development over the past 20 years, and the country's experience of gradual innovation and experimentation. As soon as this idea emerged, it generated widespread and imaginative reports in China's official media. The idea magnified China's experience of development, explaining how China, a developing country, organized itself and evaluating the applicability of China's experience to other countries in the world. Later the official media began to publicize the Beijing Consensus and demean the Washington Consensus. Some people have even described the Beijing Consensus as the soft power of China's rise.
The Washington Consensus refers to an agreement between the United States and Latin American countries. It focuses on 10 policy tools that could be useful to Latin American countries in adjusting their economies and reform. The consensus included a series of theories based on a market economy. The United States and other international economic organizations make and implement the theories through various means.
The Beijing Consensus and Washington Consensus not only are different routes for economic development, but also contain seeds of conflict between different ideologies. Zheng Yongnian, a well-known commentator, once suggested that the Beijing Consensus should not be exaggerated. He also said, "There is nothing wrong and it is necessary to summarize the experience of China's development. But if China lifts its experience up to the Beijing Consensus, or even promotes it outwardly like the Washington Consensus, it will be a huge mistake."
According to Zheng Yongnian, China had similar lessons in the past. During the Mao Zedong era, China tried very hard to promote communism to the third world, which resulted in resistance and animosity from some countries, especially in Southeast Asia. Jiang has used his article to resist the idea that a superpower has unique responsibilities, and then waved the flag of the Beijing Consensus, which seems to repeat the history of failure and promote the idea of "neo-resistance."
It has not been rare for China to speak out against the United States and other Western countries in recent years. What's interesting this time is that right before the 17th Party Congress last month, the Chinese government expressed such a strong opposing view toward the idea of cooperation between superpowers, carried on the main page of its major media. This is very unusual and raises concerns as to what will be the Communist Party's approach to foreign policy after the 17th Congress.
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(Mu Chuanheng is a freelance writer and a former lawyer. He has published a number of books on trade negotiations and democratic politics. He is included in the book "World Celebrities [China Vol. 2] published in Hong Kong for his new theory of culture. This article is edited and translated from the Chinese by UPI Asia Online; the original can be found at www.ncn.org. ©Copyright Mu Chuanheng.)
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