THE deadline of March 31 has passed, and 52 countries are now on the list of would-be founders of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
The China-led bank was launched in October last year at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, a year after Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed a bank to offer funds for development projects during his official visit to Indonesia.
The initiative would promote regional inter-connectivity and economic integration, he said when delivering a speech at the Indonesian Parliament.
In the past few days leading up to the deadline, news of more countries hurrying to join the AIIB made headlines, especially when a few of them announced the decision at the recently concluded Boao Forum in Hainan province, which Xi officiated.
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Since World War II, the United States has been the most powerful state in world politics. Many analysts view a rising China as the most likely contender to end the American century. One recent book is even entitled “When China Rules the World.”
Most projections of Chinese power are based on the rapid growth rate of its GDP, and China may pass the United States in total economic size in the 2020s. But even then, it will be decades before it equals America in per capita income (a measure of the sophistication of an economy). China also has other significant power resources. In terms of basic resources, its territory is equal to that of the United States and its population is four times greater. It has the world’s largest army, more than 250 nuclear weapons, and modern capabilities in space and cyberspace. In soft power (the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than payment or coercion), China still lacks cultural industries able to compete with Hollywood; its universities are not top ranked; and it lacks the many non-governmental organizations that generate much of America’s soft or attractive power.
In the 1990s, I wrote that the rapid rise of China might cause the type of conflict predicted by Thucydides when he attributed the disastrous Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece to the rise in the power of Athens and the fear it created in Sparta. Today, I think that is unlikely, though some analysts flatly assert that China cannot rise peacefully. Many draw analogies to World War I, when Germany had surpassed Britain in industrial power. But we should also recall Thucydides’ other warning, that belief in the inevitability of conflict can become one of its main causes. Each side, believing it will end up at war with the other, makes reasonable military preparations which then are read by the other side as confirmation of its worst fears.
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Observers say US, now increasingly isolated, should rethink its negative position on bank
Countries are rushing to join the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank as the application deadline draws near, but the United States remains conspicuously absent.
Experts attending the annual Boao Forum for Asia in Boao, Hainan province, said the United States should reconsider its stance.
On Saturday alone, Russia, Brazil, the Netherlands and Denmark said they want to join AIIB as founding members. A day earlier, Georgia, Turkey and South Korea filed their applications.
Swedish officials at the Boao Forum also expressed interest, while the possibility grew that other northern European nations would follow.
As of Sunday, 42 countries had joined or applied to join the AIIB as founding members. They must wait two weeks before a final decision is made on April 12, the Finance Ministry said.
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Five years ago, Martin Jacques published When China Rules the World, followed by an extended paperback version in 2012. Perhaps only second to Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, published a year earlier, Jacques’ book became a symbol of the global hype around the decline of the West and the “rise of the rest”, which was fuelled by the financial crisis in the United States. China, as a ‘civilization-state’, Jacques repeated in interviews across the world, would rise on its own terms. Its impact would be not only economic but also cultural and political, leading to a global future of ‘contested modernity’. Martin Jacques’ TED talk, which summarizes the main arguments of his book, has been watched over 2 million times over the past years, becoming one of the most popular International Affairs-related presentations on the online platform. The book has been translated into eleven languages, and sold over a quarter of a million copies worldwide.
Why was When China Rules the World such a massive success? After all, the chapters that deal with the West’s, Japan’s and China’s history (2, 3 and 4) hardly reveal anything new and can safely be skipped by those familiar with the subject, even though he rightly criticizes historians who regard the rise of Europe as an endogenous phenomenon. More importantly, however, his gentle treatment of Mao is somewhat disturbing, as is his explicit admiration for China’s Communist Party. In addition, Jacques’ thoughts on the future of global order and the recreation of the tributary system are both shallow and ill-conceived.
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Napoleon Bonaparte once said of China, “Let her sleep, for when she wakes, she will shake the world.” A spate of articles and books has appeared on the rise of China and its possible domination of the world. The Middle Kingdom has received special attention because it is ideologically and culturally different from the West. Military strategists and geopolitical thinkers have their own concerns: the country’s leadership does not make its political ambitions clear, nor has the military been open about the degree of its expansion.
The United States still remains the sole superpower but with the rise of “the rest,” particularly China, the present structure of the world order will eventually be reconfigured. In reality, China is not rising but as Aaron Friedberg states, “it is returning to the position of regional pre-eminence that it once held.” Indeed, China dominated that region for centuries. Among those who argue that China will rule the world in the near future is Martin Jacques – a British journalist who is the author of When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New World Order.
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CHINA’S increasing involvement in the economy of The Bahamas is inevitably attracting controversy here. Having already invested heavily in Freeport (the harbour, container port, airport and hotels) and in New Providence (the huge Baha Mar project, new roads, a sports stadium, the British Colonial Hilton hotel), it now has plans for the redevelopment of downtown Nassau.
Then, the Prime Minister’s visit to Beijing in January – in order to discuss, among other issues, an air services agreement, opportunities for investment in sectors of the economy like tourism, financial services, agriculture and energy (including BEC), together with assistance in restructuring the country’s debt – has put the bilateral economic relationship under even greater scrutiny.
Not surprisingly, such growing involvement by the Chinese induces fear about a distant foreign country, which is still a communist state but has become an economic powerhouse, acquiring too much control of the affairs of a small nation already closely beholden in many ways to its giant and influential neighbour.
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Once again, Western media misunderstands China’s political system.
A recent commentary from The Sydney Morning Herald’s international editor, Peter Hartcher, described China (along with Islamic State and Russia) as “fascist,” sparking an angry response from China’s Foreign Ministry. Yet the piece likely sparked cheers among people with similar views. There’s no problem with being so straightforward, even as China celebrate the 70th anniversary of victory in the “World Anti-Fascist War.” But the logic behind this piece does not stand firm.
The article gives three defining characteristics of fascists to support its argument: authoritarianism, highly centralized power structures, and exalting the nation above the people.
Becoming authoritarian was not the inevitable path for China to stand as an independent, sovereign state after being forced open by the West. Why then is China’s political system this way? As Martin Jacques explains, China is a unique civilization-state, rather than a Western style nation-state. If people attempt to analyze China through a Western lens, there will always be problems. Criticizing China for its political reality, developmental model, and “non-cooperative” behavior is easy, but seeing and truly understanding the differences and divergences between civilizations is far more difficult — so much so that quite often people choose not to even try. Instead, they import a Western concept (in this case, fascism) to try and conceptualize a non-Western system.
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Deal could spark other similar negotiations: analysts
China and South Korea are inching closer to implementing a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with a draft agreement, the two countries announced on Wednesday, a move that experts said will help promote China’s similar negotiations with other countries and regions.
China and South Korea confirmed the draft agreement on Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced on its website on Wednesday, noting all FTA negotiations have been completed.
The English-language draft agreement will be translated into Chinese and Korean before being signed, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported on Wednesday.
The two governments have agreed to work toward signing the FTA in the first half of 2015, South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy was quoted as saying.
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China and South Korea are inching closer to implementing a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA) with a draft agreement, the two countries announced on Wednesday, a move that experts said will help promote China’s similar negotiations with other countries and regions.
China and South Korea confirmed the draft agreement on Wednesday, China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced on its website on Wednesday, noting all FTA negotiations have been completed.
The English-language draft agreement will be translated into Chinese and Korean before being signed, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported on Wednesday.
The two governments have agreed to work toward signing the FTA in the first half of 2015, South Korea’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy was quoted as saying.
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