A focus for Chinese diplomacy
The Olympic Games in Beijing in August are shining a spotlight on China’s growth as an economic and political power. Anxious to demonstrate that its rise is benign, China’s leaders have been modifying a range of foreign and domestic policies in the build-up to the event. These changes are likely to persist beyond the games, but so too will international concerns about the direction of the country’s development.
When Chinese officials were bidding in 2001 to host the Olympics, they promised the games would foster broad change, including improvements in human rights and a ‘more open’ China. Many of the bid’s supporters believed that China’s eagerness to impress the world in 2008 would encourage it to engage more constructively with the West and discourage it from confrontation with its neighbours, especially Taiwan. There were concerns that if Beijing’s bid failed, as in 1993, public disappointment would nurture anti-foreign sentiment.
Evolution of Chinese policy
The Olympics have indeed helped to change Chinese government behaviour both at home and abroad – though not to the extent some had hoped with respect to human rights. But far more decisive has been a trend already established by 2001 that has accelerated considerably since then, namely China’s rapid integration with the global economy. China’s hunger for resources, particularly oil, to fuel its growth has rapidly propelled it into relationships with regimes considered unsavoury by the West. It is now just as rapidly learning how to deal with the consequences in terms of strained relations with Western countries and criticism from Western publics. The Communist Party sees economic growth and a stable relationship with the West as crucial to China’s stability and the party’s own survival. It does not want to jeopardise its ties with countries like Sudan and Iran, but it does want to win over Western critics of them. America’s focus since late 2001 on combating terrorism has been an important factor too.
When the games were awarded to Beijing in July 2001, relations between China and the United States were at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War. Washington and Beijing were furious with each other following a collision between a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet off the Chinese coast earlier that year. China was threatening Taiwan with military action if it kept putting off reunification talks. It was also giving solid backing (in public at least) to North Korea and rejecting any notion of putting pressure on its ally.
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 encouraged Washington to put aside differences with Beijing in order to focus on the threat of terrorism. Fearful of growing bilateral rivalry, Beijing seized the opportunity to strengthen ties. But China’s diplomatic behaviour has evolved more rapidly than many expected at the time, from a passive spectator of international crises to a more active participant in efforts to solve them (and in ways acceptable to the West).
In 2003 Beijing began hosting the Six-Party Talks on North Korea’s nuclear programme. In 2007, following the violent suppression of pro-democracy unrest in Myanmar, it persuaded Myanmar’s military rulers to allow UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari to visit the country and meet the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Although China was slow to respond to growing international concern over the situation in Darfur, amid calls from Western activists for a boycott of the Olympics in early 2007 because of China’s support for Khartoum (it is the biggest buyer of its oil and sells Sudan weapons), Beijing took a more prominent role in efforts to resolve the crisis. In May 2007 it appointed a special representative, Liu Guijin, to focus on Darfur. Western diplomats say China’s role was crucial in helping to persuade Sudan to accept the deployment of a UN military force.
China has even abandoned a previously unshakeable tenet of its foreign policy, namely that imposing sanctions on other countries is counterproductive. It agreed to US-led efforts to impose them on North Korea in response to its missile and nuclear tests in 2006 – a huge shift for a country that had long refused even to criticise North Korea publicly. It has resisted sanctions on Sudan but has not blocked UN resolutions imposing them on Iran. Despite its close economic ties with Iran (China is a big buyer of its oil too), Beijing is not dismissing the possibility, suggested by Western governments, of further sanctions. Although China still publicly rejects ‘interference in other countries’ internal affairs’, in practice this taboo is gradually being lifted, and in a way that Western governments perceive as positive. Chinese officials now openly speak of the need ‘promote democracy’ in Myanmar – a remarkable rhetorical shift.
Beijing sees its security interests (except where Taiwan is concerned) as entwined with those of the West. It may be uneasy about its reliance on the US to protect critical shipping routes, but has not sought to challenge or usurp this role. Despite the rapid build-up of its military capability in recent years, China still appears reluctant to project this power far beyond its shores or to acquire much more than token means to do so.
China wants the Olympics to show off its arrival on the world stage as a major power, but it is anxious that this should not cause alarm, emphasising that its power is different from that of the US or the former Soviet Union. It talks increasingly of the importance of ‘soft power’, whereby its influence is projected by moral suasion rather than strong-arm tactics. Beijing’s unprecedented hosting in 2006 of an African summit – attended by most of the continent’s top leaders – was an attempt to display such soft power in action, as well as a logistical rehearsal for the games themselves. Such attempts can backfire, however: the summit may have helped China win friends in Africa, but it also highlighted its willingness to offer aid without asking questions about human rights, corruption and other concerns of Western donors.
The Olympic imperative
Where the crises in Sudan and Myanmar are concerned, the approach of the Olympics does appear to have played a part. China’s leaders are clearly fearful that the games will be overshadowed by calls for boycotts from activists, for whom Sudan and Myanmar are particularly urgent causes, seeking to link China with egregious human-rights abuses in pariah states. But China worries far less about the possibility of the kind of boycott faced by Moscow in 1980, shortly after its invasion of Afghanistan. No governments or athletes have threatened to stay away from Beijing. US President George W. Bush says he plans to attend, as will other foreign leaders. Nevertheless, China is deeply concerned about the image it projects at the games, which will be by far the biggest international event that the country has ever staged. The decision in February of Steven Spielberg, the US film director, to resign as an artistic adviser to the games because of what he said was China’s failure to do enough about the Darfur crisis is likely to compel China to attempt to prove such critics wrong.
The games may also have deterred China from an aggressive response to what it sees as provocative moves by Taiwan’s government to claim the island’s independence. But since at least 2005 it has appeared that Beijing has revised its thinking on cross-strait relations. While the Chinese military has continued its focus on preparing for conflict with Taiwan, President Hu Jintao now apparently prefers to eschew bellicose rhetoric and posturing, and does not appear convinced that a military solution to the issue would either be durable or in the Communist Party’s interests.
Leaders of Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party have tried to take advantage of what they see as China’s preoccupation with the games by initiating a series of symbolic gestures aimed at demonstrating the island’s independence. During presidential elections in March, Taiwan will hold a referendum on whether the island should try to join the UN in the name of Taiwan instead of its official title, Republic of China. In spite of US fears that this move could seriously anger China, Beijing’s response has been relatively mild. There is an important non-Olympic reason for this. China is betting that the opposition Kuomintang will win the presidential elections and usher in a new policy of cooperation with China.
Critics of China’s human-rights situation have been disappointed with progress in the build-up to the games, but there has been some change for the better. The foreign ministry, which has long been embarrassed by stringent restrictions on the activities of the foreign media in China, introduced new regulations in January 2007 that considerably relaxed these oft-violated rules. The new regulations are specifically linked to the hosting of the Olympics and are due to expire after they finish. But Chinese diplomats have indicated that they would like them to remain in place permanently.
This would be a considerable victory over conservative elements of the bureaucracy, who view the foreign media with deep suspicion and as a hindrance to China’s efforts to burnish its image abroad. Some local governments have resisted the new rules that allow foreign journalists to travel around the country, harassing those they have found pursuing sensitive stories. But it appears likely that, unless China suffers major embarrassment during the games as a result of foreign media exposure, liberal-minded officials in Beijing will prevail over the concerns of conservatives.
It is highly unlikely that Beijing’s Olympics will witness the same kind of political upheaval that preceded those of Seoul in 1988 or Mexico 20 years earlier. The party has effectively co-opted public opinion in its portrayal of the games as a demonstration of national pride. This makes it difficult for dissidents – or for the many thousands of Beijing residents whose lives have been severely disrupted by the arrival of the games – to criticise the Olympics without appearing unpatriotic. There will be attempts by some activists to take advantage of global attention on China during the games to air their grievances. But most of these will be dissidents based outside China itself.
This nationalist sentiment – while beneficial to the leadership’s attempts to maintain stability in the build-up to the games – could also counteract some of the gains that China hopes to make diplomatically. Amid the inevitably extravagant displays of patriotic pride, both the public and officials are likely to react angrily to any criticism of the games. If China were to finish above the US in the medals table there would naturally be further jubilant celebrations, even if Chinese officials have been trying hard to play down public expectations. While such sentiment is common to big sporting events anywhere, China’s neighbours will be highly sensitive to it. China’s emergence as a sporting power would also focus concerns in the US over the implications of its economic rise. In the build-up to the US presidential elections in November, these concerns will no doubt preoccupy Washington, along with public anxiety over bilateral trade and product safety in particular.
An Olympic legacy
After the games, China is unlikely to see any benefit in rolling back changes, for example by reverting to more passive behaviour in the face of international crises, or adopting more belligerent postures towards its neighbours. Within the next few weeks, Hu is due to pay the first visit by a Chinese head of state to Japan in a decade – a considerable warming of this often-tense relationship. Decisions by officials as to whether to tighten control over dissent or the media are likely to be shaped more by their assessment of threats to social stability than by the ebb and flow of international scrutiny of the regime.
Chinese officials like to repeat the notion, first put forward in 2005 by Robert Zoellick (then-US deputy secretary of state, now president of the World Bank), that their country should be a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in the world community. There is much in China’s external relations that still falls far short of this, and its understanding of the term remains at variance with that of the US. But the Olympics are part of an educative process for a rapidly emerging power that is on a steep learning curve diplomatically. The games will concentrate minds in Beijing on what further change is needed.
