08:33
Tieng Anh Vui
ACUTELY conscious that the emergence of new powers on the world stage has more often than not led to war, China’s leaders make much of their plans for a “peaceful rise”. But they often have an odd way of showing it. Take China’s declaration on November 23rd of an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) above a stretch of the East China Sea that includes the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands, which it disputes with Japan. This was bound to create alarm in China’s own neighbourhood and tension in its relations with the incumbent superpower. So it calls into question the priority China really places on maintaining peace; or, perhaps, its skill in managing its rise without sparking conflict.
The declaration seemed contrary to at least three stated foreign-policy aims. First, China claims to aspire to a “new type of great-power relationship” with America. But the invocation of an ADIZ—elsewhere in the world a relic of the cold war—was almost bound to prompt some old-fashioned muscle-flexing in response. America quickly reaffirmed that, although it takes no position on who owns the islands, they are covered by its mutual-defence treaty with Japan. Nor did it take America long to test the threat contained in the ADIZ declaration of unspecified measures against aircraft entering the zone without following its procedures. On November 26th two American B-52 bombers based in Guam crossed the new zone without informing China. An American aircraft-carrier group was already in the area, ready for a joint exercise with Japan, simulating a defence of the country from attack.
All this came just ahead of a planned visit to China, Japan and South Korea in early December by America’s vice-president, Joe Biden, intended to reassure both China and America’s allies about America’s strategic “pivot” to Asia. Mr Biden is said to have a good rapport with Xi Jinping, China’s leader. Just as well.
Second, the ADIZ has done great damage to China’s fairly successful recent efforts to reassure its neighbours of the benevolence of its intentions. China and South Korea, for example, have been getting on well lately—helped in part by shared resentment of what they see as Japan’s refusal to confront the evils of its wartime past, and its intractability over territorial disputes. Yet the ADIZ, which also encroaches on areas claimed by South Korea, prompted the government in Seoul to express regret too. And it created a bone of contention with Taiwan, with which relations have steadily improved in recent years.
Both Mr Xi and Li Keqiang, the prime minister, made well-received tours in South-East Asia in October, drawing attention to their reliable presence at a time when Barack Obama had cancelled a trip. China’s importance as an economic partner overshadowed the disputes it has with four regional countries over the South China Sea. But the ADIZ to the north suggests it is only a matter of time before China feels able to enforce one there as well. That China’s new aircraft-carrier and other warships were this week headed for exercises in the South China Sea was a reminder that China claims almost the entire sea and is ready to bully rivals—notably, of late, the Philippines—that stand up to it.
Third, and most broadly, the assertiveness over the specks in the East China Sea makes a mockery of the 35-year-old policy adopted by Deng Xiaoping of “strategic patience” or “hiding one’s brilliance”—which implied concentrating on developing the economy before throwing China’s weight around. Yet more than ever, China needs a stable global environment. A Communist Party central-committee meeting earlier in November promised a series of ambitious but high-risk economic reforms.
So it is possible that the announcement of the ADIZ was a blunder, an ill-considered overreaction to Japan’s threat to shoot down unmanned aircraft entering its airspace. Chinese foreign policy has sometimes seemed unco-ordinated and oddly insensitive to the consequences of assertive nationalism. But in this case all the relevant arms of party and government were surely on board. And at the party meeting, Mr Xi seemed to have consolidated his own power over decision-making with the announcement of a new national-security council to take charge of the management of internal and external threats. Even so, China may have miscalculated in some ways: in including South Korean-claimed airspace, for example, or in including aircraft not just approaching China, but merely crossing its ADIZ; or perhaps in thinking that such a zone was enforceable at all.
Yet the ADIZ dovetails with China’s long-term strategy for the islands. Since Japan’s government “nationalised” three of them (buying them from a private owner) in September 2012, China has stepped up incursions in the sea and air around them. Having contested Japanese sovereignty over the islands for decades, it has set out to undermine Japan’s claim to exercise administrative control. The ADIZ is a natural extension of this.
On the way up
The aim is to cow Japan, knowing that its government is under pressure from business to improve ties with the country’s biggest market, and believing that, as China rises inexorably, Japan is in long-term decline. China also hopes, some Chinese scholars suggest, to raise the diplomatic and military cost to America of its alliance with Japan, partly by provoking Japan into belligerence of its own. Then America might exert pressure on its ally to meet China’s demand, which is deceptively reasonable: for Japan to concede that the status of the islands is disputed.
An even more fundamental explanation of China’s apparently reckless behaviour is that nothing in its commitment to a peaceful rise is meant to trump the safeguarding of its national sovereignty. Mr Xi emerged from the party’s meeting appearing all-powerful. But no Chinese leader can afford to look weak on an issue, such as the disputed islands, that China has framed as one of its own sovereignty. He will find it hard to back down.
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