China in the Asian century, Is the future truly Asian?

As China continues to develop, so does its global influence. What would the future be like for South-East Asia with a ‘risen China’?

Rising together: No, Chinese imperialism is not simply replacing US imperialism, as China emphasises win-win partnerships, says Prof Zhang. — Handout

China in the Asian century

PROF Zhang Weiwei is among the most respected scholars in China today. He is a leading expert on China’s “reform and opening up” policies and its status as a “civilisational state.”

As director of the China Institute at Shanghai’s elite Fudan University, he is also professor of International Relations and had served as English interpreter for China’s Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping. In an exclusive interview earlier in the week, Prof Zhang spoke to Sunday Star about future prospects with China.

As the leading authority on China’s civilisational state, how would you define it, as distinct from a nation state?

With China, it’s a combination of the world’s longest continuous civilisation and a super-large modern state. A civilisational state is made up of hundreds of states amalgamated into one large state.

China is a modern state respecting international law like a nation state, but culturally diverse, with sovereignty and territorial integrity.

There are four features of China’s civilisational state: a super-large population of 1.4 billion people, a continent-size territory, significant culture, and a long history.

If we are returning to an East Asian tributary system, what changes can we expect in China’s policies in this region today?

The tributary system is a Western name for China’s relations in this region (in the past). China is a “civilisational” – as an adjective – state, a modern amalgamation of many (component communities).

During the Ming Dynasty, China was a world power – but as a civilizational state more than a nation state – and did not seek to colonize other countries, unlike Western powers that were nation states. Since then, China’s status and capacity as a nation state has grown significantly. Will it then become more like Western powers now?

China today is a nation state, but different from European (nation) states. It is also still a civilisational state.

The Chinese people are not just Han, although the Han majority is 92%. There are 56 ethnic groups in China, (mostly) minorities.

But China rejected the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s ruling on the South China Sea, initiated by the Philippines, which found China’s claims insupportable.

The tribunal was illegal; it had no right to make such decisions. The Permanent Court of Arbitration is not part of the United Nations.

How can countries in South-East Asia be convinced that the rise of China will not simply result in Chinese imperialism replacing US imperialism?

China emphasises win-win partnerships, such as in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It encourages discovering, building, and benefiting together.

Countries in South-East Asia join the BRI out of their own interest. It is not something imposed by China.

Some countries have described the Second Belt and Road Summit this year as being more consultative than the first. As for the future?

The future Belt and Road Summits will be even more open and consultative.

Is the current US-China trade dispute only a symptom of much larger differences, such as a historic divide in the reshaping of a new global order?

It is more than about trade. With the United States especially, it is zero-sum, but for China it is win-win.

The Chinese economy is larger than the US economy, or soon will be. (In PPP or purchasing power parity terms, China’s economy grew larger than the US economy in 2014.)

The United States is trying to decouple its economy from China’s. How can China ensure that it would not only withstand these efforts but also triumph?

The attempt to decouple the two economies will fail. About 85% of US companies that are already in China want to stay.

Looking at the trade structure, most Chinese exports to the US are irreplaceable. No other place in the world gives a better price-quality ratio in manufactured goods.

So the US cannot win in this decoupling because there are no alternatives (as desirable producing countries). China has the world’s largest chain or network, or factory clusters, for all kinds of goods.

How likely do you see a hot war – more than a trade war or a cold war – breaking out between a rising China and what is perceived to be a declining United States?

The US knows that it won’t win (a hot war). No two nuclear-armed countries will go to war. It would be very messy.

So far no two nuclear-armed countries have fought. There may be a small likelihood of direct confrontation, but not a war situation.

No commercial shipping has been interrupted by China. So the US need not worry.

Can Asean, or an Asean country like Malaysia, help to bring the United States and China closer together as partners rather than as rivals?

Possibly. Malaysia perhaps can help, as it is friendly to both China and the US.

As China continues in its rise, what steps is it taking to provide for more cooperative and consultative relations in this region?

Trade between China and Asean countries, for example, has grown, and has now exceeded China-US trade.

Generally, China’s relations with Asean countries are quite promising, with Free Trade Area relationships as well.

By Bunn Nagara, who is Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.

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Poised for growth: Shipping containers sit stacked next to gantry cranes at the Yantian International Container Terminals in Shenzhen, China. — Bloomberg

Is the future truly Asian?

 

The Region, while growing fast, faces issues such as youth joblessness, climate change and income gaps

THIS is a question that is at the heart of the tensions across the Pacific.

To Parag Khanna, author of The Future Is Asian (2019), the answer is almost self-evident.

However, if you read his book carefully, you will find that he thinks global power will be shared between Asian and Western civilisations

For the West, the rise of Asia has been frighteningly fast, because as late as 1960, most of Asia was poor, agricultural and rural, with an average income per capita of less than US$1,000 in 2010 prices.

But 50 years on, Asia has become more urban and industrialised, and is becoming a challenge to the West in terms of trade, income and innovation.

Global management consulting firm McKinsey has just published a study on “The Future is Asian” that highlights many aspects why Asia is both attractive to businessmen and yet feared as a competitor.

Conventionally, excluding the Middle East and Iran, Asia is divided into North-East Asia (China, Japan and South Korea), South-East Asia (mostly Asean), South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) and Central Asia.

But McKinsey has identified at least four Asias that are quite complementary to each other.

First, there is Advanced Asia, comprising Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore, each with per capita incomes exceeding US$30,000 (RM125,600), highly urbanised and rich, with a combined GDP that is 10% of global GDP.

This group provides technology, capital and markets for the rest of Asia, but it is ageing fast.

Second, China is the world’s largest trading economy, second largest in GDP after the United States, and a growing consumer powerhouse. By 2030, the Chinese consumer market will be equal to Western Europe and the United States combined.

China is also an increasing capital provider to the rest of the world.

Third, the 11 countries of Emerging Asia (Asean plus Bhutan and Nepal, excluding Singapore) have young populations, fast growth and cultural diversity.

Fourth, Frontier Asia and India – covering essentially South and Central Asia including Afghanistan – which have 1.8 billion in population, still rural but young.

Taken together, these four Asias today account for one-third of global GDP and 40% of the world’s middle class.

But what is remarkable is that while the region grew from trading with the rest of the world, intra-regional trade has grown faster, to 60% of total trade, with intra-regional foreign direct investment (FDI) at 66% of total inward FDI, and 74% of air traffic.

Much of Asian growth will come from rapid urbanisation, amid growing connectivity with each other. The top 20 cities in Asia will be mega conglomerates that are among the largest cities in the world with the fastest-growing income.

A major finding is that America First-style protectionism is helping to intensify the localisation and regionalisation of intra-regional connectivity in terms of trade, finance, knowledge and cultural networks.

Furthermore, the traditional savings surpluses in Asia basically went to London and New York and were recycled back in terms of foreign direct investment and portfolio flows.

But no longer.

Increasingly, Asian financial centres are emerging to compete to re-pump surplus capital from Advanced Asia and China to fund the growth in Emerging and Frontier Asia.

In short, intra-regional finance is following intra-regional trade.

In a multipolar world, no one wants to be completely dependent on any single player but prefers network connectivity to other cities and centres of activity and creativity.

As Khanna puts it: “The phrase ‘China-led Asia’ is thus no more acceptable to most Asians than the notion of a ‘US-led West’ is to Europeans.”

But are such rosy growth prospects in Asia predestined or ordained?

Based on the trajectory of demographic growth of half the world’s young population moving into middle income, the logical answer appears to be yes.

But there are at least three major bumps in that trajectory.

First, Asia, like the rest of the world, is highly vulnerable to global warming.

Large populations with faster growth mean more energy consumption, carbon emissions and natural resource degradation. Large chunks of Asia will be vulnerable to more water, food and energy stresses, as well as natural disasters (rising seas, forest fires, pandemics, typhoons, etc).

Second, even though more Asians have been lifted out of poverty, domestic inequality of income and wealth has increased in the last 20 years.

Part of this is caused by rural-urban disparities, and widening gaps in high-value knowledge and skills. Without adequate social safety nets, healthcare and social security, dissatisfaction over youth unemployment, access to housing, and deafness to problems by bureaucracies has erupted in protests everywhere.

Third, geopolitical rivalry has meant that there will be tensions between diverse Asia over territorial, cultural and religious differences that can rapidly escalate into conflict. The region is beginning to spend more on armaments and defence instead of focusing on alleviating poverty and addressing the common threat of climate change.

Two generational leaders from the West have approached these threats from very different angles.

Addressing the United Nations, 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl Greta Thunberg dramatically shamed the older generation for its lack of action on climate change.

“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you, ” she said.

The young are idealistically appealing for unity in action against a common fate.

In contrast, addressing the UN Security Council, US President Donald Trump was arguing the case for patriotism as a solution to global issues. Climate change was not mentioned at all.

Since the older generation created most of the carbon emissions in the first place, no wonder the young are asking why they are inheriting all the problems that the old deny.

This then is the difference in passion between generations.

Globalisation occurred because of increasing flows of trade, finance, data and people. That is not stoppable by patriot-protected borders.

A multipolar Asia within a multipolar world means that even America First, however strong, will have to work with everyone, despite differences in worldviews.

All patriots will have to remember that it is the richness of diversity that keeps the world in balance.

The writer ANDREW SHENG is a distinguished fellow with the Asia Global Institute at the University of Hong Kong. This article is part of the Asian Editors Circle series, a weekly commentary by editors from the Asia News Network, an alliance of 24 news media titles across the region.

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Schools to create 'Asian leaders' in Asian Century

This picture taken on July 23, 2012 shows 53 students from 14 countries holding hoops with their fingers as part of a cooperation learning exercise at a class of the International School of Asia, Karuizawa (ISAK) at Japan's mountain resort town Karuizawa in Nagano prefecture, central Japan. -- PHOTO: AFP 

KARUIZAWA, Japan (AFP) - Asia may be driving growth in the world economy but a Japanese businesswoman behind an innovative new school believes the region is over-reliant on Western-style leadership.

Lin Kobayashi believes Asia is over-reliant on Western-style leadership (AFP/File, Shingo Ito)

Ms Lin Kobayashi hopes her foundation outside Tokyo will help change that by breeding a wave of political and business leaders - but with what she sees as a more "Asian" way of thinking.

Building work on the International School of Asia, Karuizawa (ISAK) began in September. The launch of classes, all taught in English, is planned for 2014 making it Japan's first international boarding high school.

Ms Kobayashi, 38, a former investment analyst at Morgan Stanley, said the school will bring together students from a wide range of cultures and socio-economic backgrounds, with scholarships for poor students funded by donations.

Lin Kobayashi hopes her foundation will help to breed a wave of political and business leaders (AFP/File, Shingo Ito)

But she said she wasn’t aiming to simply rival elite schools such as  Britain’s Harrow or Dulwich College, which have set up Western-style campuses  in places such as China, Hong Kong and Thailand.

And she added she wanted to change what she sees as an assumption in Asia  that it was preferable to seek out education systems in which Western-style  leadership was taught.

“Asia is already at the centre of the world’s economy, but is still relying  on Western-style leadership that thinks charisma is only to be found in a loud,  top-down approach,” said Kobayashi, formerly of the Japan Bank for  International Cooperation and also the UN Children’s Fund in Manila.

“I think we need Asia-oriented leaders who value consensus and harmony and  can combine that with deep background knowledge about the complicated history  and diverse cultures of Asia.”

— Regional history —

The foundation has so far collected 1.5 billion yen ($19 million) in  donations and private funding to cover initial costs, while inviting prominent  business figures to come on board as advisors.

In July it opened its third annual 10-day summer school, with 53 students  from 14 countries. The course cost 300,000 yen.

Kobayashi said the school will place particular emphasis on regional  history, a subject that divides a continent where narratives differ widely from  country to country and are at the root of various territorial stand-offs.

Tensions have recently flared between Japan and China in a row over  disputed islands in the East China Sea, with trade between the two countries  looking set to suffer. The relationship was worth well in excess of $300  billion last year.

“We don’t teach one-sided history. It is important to learn about diversity  of historical perspectives and the multi-ethnic structure of the region,”  Kobayashi said, adding that she wanted to bring in teachers from many different  backgrounds.

Lzaw Saw Nai, a 14-year-old student from Myanmar who joined this year’s  summer school, said he was “very much interested in leadership”.

“We have political and many other problems in my country,” he said. “I feel  I should do something, but first I need to learn. So, I came here.”

Tareq Habash, 13, from Palestine, said: “My country is in need of leaders  who can understand the need of the country and not just for what they want for  themselves.”

— “Free-thinking” —

Kobayashi said she hopes potential future leaders of Japan, a place where  politics is often criticised for its lack of talent, will also benefit.

“Japanese education does not do enough to train people to lead,” she said,  adding that this was something the country desperately needed in a region  increasingly dominated by a rising China.

In the wake of defeat in World War II, Tokyo fashioned an education system  that prized uniformity.

While observers say this was one of the things that helped drive the  miracle of recovery, they also argue that uniformity is now hampering progress,  amid calls for strong, free-thinking leaders who can drive the country forward.

Yoshiaki Nomura, an expert in leadership education at Osaka University,  said the idea of the new Asian school was timely.

“I think a curriculum that will foster a new elite is needed,” said Nomura.

"We have learnt a lot about classic theories of Western leadership, but I often  feel that what we need in Asia may be different.”

Jun Nakahara, associate professor of higher education at the University of  Tokyo, agreed that leadership is not always an innate quality but rather “something you have to learn about”.

But he said on-the-job experience may be more valuable than classroom-based  learning.

“They have to provide students with opportunities for practical experience  in which they can exercise their own leadership,” he said.

He added that the school could be a ground for future networking  opportunities but that it would “take some time” before it enjoyed the kind of  influence of its established rivals in the West.

Sources: AFP/NST/Asia News Network

Australia, still an US's sheriff in the Asian Century?

Down Under and all over: Australia is still finding its place in the world, a work very much in progress. 

Reeking of Austro-centrism: The White Paper has been criticised for remaining centred on Australia’s own concerns and interests, with scant consideration for Asia. — AFP

TWO Sundays ago, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard released the White Paper “Australia in the Asian Century”. For many, it was a long-awaited document.

Australia’s history, polity and geography make for an odd mix. Anglophone settlers had to reconcile themselves with a strange terrain, unfamiliar Aboriginal people, isolation from mother country Britain, even conflict between allegiance to the British crown and incipient republicanism, and now a rising Asia.

White settlers “tamed” the land and established thriving outposts around the edges of the vast island. Asian immigration followed, driven by push-pull factors of a relatively undeveloped East Asia and a more developed Australia.

As the 20th century began, a racist White Australia Policy restricted non-white immigration while encouraging European settlement. It lasted half a century and took another quarter of a century to dismantle.

Meanwhile, the indigenous peoples suffered disproportionately lower levels of life expectancy, education, employment and higher imprisonment rates.

Then later in the 20th century, East Asian economies surged. Trade links with East Asia multiplied in number and volume.

The self-image of Australia, the largest country in Australasia, Oceania or the South Pacific, became more fraught. Its geography, history, politics and society were not characteristically Asian, yet it felt increasingly overwhelmed by a rising East Asia even as it experienced the prosperity.

When the Labour Party’s Paul Keating was prime minister in the 1990s, he “declared” Australia an Asian country. After he left office, he reversed that stand and admitted that Australia was not an Asian country.

John Howard of the conservative Liberal Party next became premier and distinctly identified Australia as a Western, US-led ally in the world. President George W. Bush affirmed that by saying Australia was not just Washington’s “deputy sheriff” but its sheriff.

Labour’s Kevin Rudd next became premier, and much was made of his fluency in Mandarin. This was to be an Asian Century of economic paramountcy, led by a rapidly rising China.

Interactions with Asia and Asians, parti­cularly in economics, continued and grew. But Australia remained firmly rooted in the US-led Western sphere with its geopolitical concerns.

This added to Canberra’s fuzzy regionalism and amorphous identity in relation to Asia. The more Asia grew in global stature and consideration, the more vexed Australia’s strategic relationship with it became.

Amid these rising stakes, a White Paper as an official declaration of intent assumes considerable significance. But the heightened expectations produced general disappointment instead: most of the White Paper’s 320 pages and nine chapters concerned Asia, but seen narrowly for Australia’s own interests.

Reception to the document within Australia was reportedly supportive, but criticism from various quarters was also evident. There was more agreement over the need for the White Paper for an insular Australia than with the contents of this particular White Paper.

The parliamentary opposition criticised it for being long on rhetoric but short on detailed directions. The business community found it redundant since it was already relating very much with Asia.

Evidently these business critics saw international relations only through the prism of their business deals. The social, cultural, strategic and other aspects of external relations typically escaped them.

The White Paper itself begins with a decent outline of an ascendant Asia, a vast continent with mounting prospects, growing middle classes and expanding markets combining to change Australia’s priorities and “strategic environment”. Where East Asia was once seen as the source of unwanted migrants, it is now regarded as the fount of fresh capital and trade orders.

Much of what follows is an Australia-centric diagnosis and prescription of what Australians should do to benefit from such an Asia.

That Australia itself is so moved by Asia’s rise testifies to the cross-border nature of such fortunes, yet the White Paper remains centred on Australia’s own concerns and interests, with scant consideration for Asia.

A commentary by the Australian-born veteran industrialist, technical consultant and academic Murray Hunter, who has spent a productive working life in Asia, is telling. Writing in Indonesia’s Jakarta Post newspaper, he wondered aloud whether the White Paper actually depicted Australia finding its way in the Asian Century or just getting lost in Asia.

He said the document “reeked of Austro-centrism”, one-way concerns to get what it wants from Asia, and “niggling China with its staunch loyalty to the US” even though “China saved Australia from a deep recession”.

Action spoke louder than words, he said, and “Australia needs the region more than the region needs Australia”. He said the country had to overcome its deep-set belief that its own cultural values were somehow universally accepted across the region.

Murray said “the White Paper is still haunted by Australia’s past”, with Asia “seen only as a means for Australian incomes” to rise. He found the document failed to provide the “vital key” of “accommodation of Asia to what Australia really has to offer” as an independent country “willing to put its lot with Asia and not with the US”.

A recent high-level bilateral forum organised by ISIS Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur examined several aspects of the White Paper. “Chatham House Rules” meant that speakers could not be quoted or identified, but several comments remained pertinent.

The White Paper was seen to omit, among other things, measures for building relations with Asean countries and Asean itself. Some questions were also raised.

It was then explained that the “US military base” in Darwin was more of a facility than a base, since it would host only a rotation of US troops rather than a permanent emplacement. Australia was said to respect China’s right to modernise its military, while feeling equally entitled to nurture its security with the US.

It was further explained that Australia’s role was originally to find ways to engage the US in the region. It was “in Australia’s DNA” to seek security from US involvement in the region.

In a brief exchange later with visiting Australian Foreign Minister Senator Bob Carr, I asked him how the White Paper positioned Australia differently from the past in its relations with Asia.

He said Australia now better understood that its economic future was dependent on Asia, adding that Malaysia’s development was an example of what a growing middle class in the region signified.

On how Australia could better partner with East Asian countries for mutual benefit, he pointed to good governance, a record of economic reform and an exchange programme with young Malaysian Muslims for better understanding.

Carr said Australia should seek its security in Asia but not from Asia, while accepting Asean centrality.

He alluded to Australia’s role in the peace agreement in the southern Philippines brokered by Malaysia.

When asked about policy fluctuations between the Liberal and Labour parties, he said that although Australia is seen as a country with a security relationship with the US, there was more that could be said of that. He added that a country was entitled to look after its own security with its own foreign relations (Australia with the US).

Then when asked how Australia’s foreign policy was changing in respect of Asia, Carr said the fact that he was here in Malaysia while Gillard was in Vietnam, and both of them were heading to Bali (for an Asean-convened meeting), said it all.

Behind The Headlines By Bunn Nagara