A lot has been written about the West’s attempts to promote democracy during and since the end of the Cold War. Many leaders in democratic countries seek to put pressure on autocratic regimes (with notable exceptions, of course), and hundreds of NGOs work around the world attempt to sow the seeds of democracy, training judges, monitoring elections, helping opposition groups and strengthening civil society. Liberal optimists believe the world is on its way towards universal democracy. According to them, autocrats in Beijing, Pyongyang, Ryad and Havana are on the wrong side of history and it is only a question of time until they, too, will succumb to the irresistible push of societies around the globe to assert their political rights. 

And yet, a smaller group of analysts points out that recent gains for democracy around the world tell us little about the future. Quite to contrary, they point out that we witness a ‘democratic regression’ and a ‘freedom recession’, with many so-called democracies being stuck in a semi-democratic state and democratic rights being curtailed around the world. The Economist worried about a world of “phoney democracies” back in 2000. 

While such claims are contested, it is worth noting that, quite soon, the world’s largest economy will be that of a non-democratic country — for the first time in several centuries. This matters because, as Narizny points out in a recent article, powerful actors are disproportionally more capable of influencing other countries. At the time same, Shambaugh believes that even being the world’s no.1 economy, China will never be as influential as the United States has been over the past decade, largely because it has no soft power. I disagree and believe that despite its lack of democracy (which arguably reduces its attractiveness), China will be capable of influencing others in ways we cannot yet imagine. How, then, will policy makers in Beijing seek to influence the world? Will they seek to autocratize other countries, or slow down the spread of democracy around the world?  

Since many democracies have an interest in the spread of democracy, it may seem clear that autocracies will try, for their part, to promote autocracy. Yet before coming to premature conclusions, one should ask: Does China care about the state of global democracy? Are  autocratic regimes any more likely to be friendly with China than democratic ones? Probably not. Given China’s economic importance, Western calls on China to democratize are increasingly tame and subtle, more political theatre for domestic audiences than an attempt to seriously disturb or influence policy makers in Beijing. What is more, the prospect of a democratic transition in China – with all the political and economic instability this may imply – is likely to cause more panic than joy among leaders in Europe and the United States. 

Some may argue that the success of democracy abroad may increase domestic pressure in China to follow the trend – and that, as a consequence, China will try to undermine prevent the spread of democracy. Yet censors in China quite successfully kept information about the Arab Spring away from the Chinese population, and fear of information flowing into China and causing a stir are likely to be limited. 

Yet what about Sudan, Zimbabwe and North Korea, countries that — to some degree — have benefitted from Chinese largesse? Aren’t they proof that China is an avid autocracy promoter? Not really. After all, many more autocratic human-rights abusing regimes around the world – such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Mubarak’s Egypt, just to name a few – have largely survived due to the United States’ active help. The same goes for Western development aid: The largest recipient over the past decade has been non-democratic Ethiopia. China’s growing presence in Africa and the regions is unlikely to have a stronger (or worse) effect on democracy than that of established powers. The true culprit of Mugabe’s continued reign in Zimbabwe is South Africa, not China. 

In addition, while exporting democracy may be part of the United States’ guiding purpose in foreign affairs (and the Soviet Union’s during the Cold War), China may simply have no interest in exporting any ideology. Even at the height of Mao’s rule, when China gave up to 5% of its GDP to developing countries in the form of development aid, it rarely sought to impose any specific political regime. 

Peter Burnell argues in a paper that there are some inter-governmental organizations that “declare an express intent of trying to stem and reverse the democratic tide through collective action of mutual support and self-defence” such as the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement and Commonwealth of Independent States. Yet saying that these institutions’ overall purpose is to prevent democratization would be a stretch. China may support, as mentioned above, some autocrats around the world, but not in a systematic fashion. 

It is therefore entirely unclear whether the rise of autocratic China may affect the global state of democracy. We simply do not know enough about Beijing’s future intentions. If global order is to truly take on a multipolar structure, Western influence – particularly in Africa – may diminish notably, yet deducing that this is bad for democracy would be premature and simplistic. China’s continued economic success may convince some leaders that Beijing’s political model offers an interesting alternative to democracy, yet it is far from clear whether their citizens will agree. For now, the specter of Chinese autocracy promotion does not seem to loom large. 

Read also: 

Brazil and the democratization of foreign policy

IBSA: Where do we go from here?

South Africa’s BRICS membership: A win-win situation?

Xi Jinping, China’s perennially grinning leader, is fully aware that the world’s largest economy in waiting has to leave Deng’s model of cheap labor, capital and focus on export markets behind. Wages are increasing, capital is becoming too expense, and domestic demand will have to pick up in order to keep economic growth as high as it used to be over the past decades. For the first time since the 70s, many argue, playing it safe means undertaking some more substantial economic reforms. 

For the four days of closed-door talks that started last week and involved the Central Committee of China’s ruling Communist Party, optimists had hoped for important reforms in the area of finance, taxation, land, state assets, social welfare, innovation, foreign investment and even political governance.

Yet profound reform à la Deng is unlikely. Many reforms face strong resistance from powerful interest groups such as local governments or state-owned monopolies, which are seen as the main obstacle to modernizing China’s system. Xi Jinping may be an unusually powerful President, but that does not necessarily mean he is strong enough to win the internal power struggle. Alternatively, he may prefer to wait for the economic situation to worsen to increase his leverage. In any case, many observers tend to overestimate Xi’s capacity to influence the Communist Party: Unlike Deng, Xi is no revolutionary hero and former right-hand man of Mao. Also, China in 1978 was an economic disaster, with far fewer status-quo oriented actors than today. Change seemed far more natural back then than it does now. 

Most likely, the new reforms (whose real impact will only be known years from now) will seek to slowly liberalize market forces to be the determining factor in setting the price of energy, capital and land. Reforming the latter may make it possible for farmers to sell their land and move to the cities – which, in turn, may increase the rural populations’ role as consumers. 

And yet, any reform always carries the risk of producing unintended effects. Reorienting the world’s second largest economy from an investment-led one to a consumer nation is bound to transform Chinese society in ways nobody can adequately predict at this point. Mikhail Gorbachev, loved abroad but disliked at home, is a powerful example of the perils of too much reform. Xi is by definition unable to push through reforms that may threaten the Communist Party’s monopoly. 

Yet ill-conceived reforms could also spell economic disaster — not just for China, but also for those 160 countries that have China as their most important trading partner, including most emerging powers. Given all that, Xi is likely to tread carefully – and cross the river by feeling the stones.

Read also: 

Book review: “The Party: The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers” by Richard McGregor

Book review: “The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa” by Deborah Brautigam

Can Brazil learn to manipulate China?

Picture credit: Reuters (http://www.scmp.com/sites/default/ files/styles/980w/public/2013/04/ 23/usa_sin109_35189443.jpgitok=LeDBo20F)

http://www.infomoney.com.br/mercados/noticia/3199077/transicao-hegemonia-mundial-dos-eua-para-china-comecou-destaca-professor

Por Lara Rizério | 15h26 | 24-02-2014

SÃO PAULO - Muito se fala sobre a diminuição da influência da maior economia mundial, os Estados Unidos, sobre os países menos desenvolvidos. Porém, essa tendência, que ainda parece estar em fase de consolidação - uma vez que o gigante ainda exerce um grande papel sobre a geopolítica mundial -, já se transformou em realidade para muitas nações, que possuem uma nova referência.

E esta referência é a China, que caminha cada vez mais para se tornar cada vez mais influente no quadro político-econômico global, o que aponta para um movimento de transição da influência de Washington para Pequim, a capital chinesa. É o que destaca Oliver Stuenkel, professor adjunto de Relações Internacionais da FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas).

Oliver Stuenkel é graduado pela Universidade de Valência, na Espanha, fez seu Mestrado em Políticas Públicas na Kennedy School of Government de Harvard, e Doutorado em Ciência Política na Alemanha. Em entrevista para o podcast da Rio Bravo Investimentos, Stuenkel detalha a crescente influência dos chineses na África, onde muitos líderes já enxergam o gigante asiático como modelo econômico. O professor destacou ainda a influência da internet que, ao invés de fazer o regime chinês mudar, foi "domada por ele".

O economista ainda destacou os temores com a questão Síria e os paralelos já traçados por alguns entre o ano de 2014 e 1914, quando teve início a Primeira Guerra Mundial. Confira a entrevista completa:

Rio Bravo - Muito se tem falado de paralelos que existem entre 1914, o ano em que começou a Primeira Guerra, e 2014. Que paralelos são esses, exatamente?

Oliver Stuenkel - Na verdade são muitos. Primeiro é que em 1914 a gente tinha uma potência importante que era o Reino Unido, que concentrava o poder econômico e militar da época e que tinha desenhado e controlava as regras da ordem da época. Ao mesmo tempo, tinha uma potência emergente, a Alemanha, que não estava satisfeita com a Ordem Internacional, não aceitava a Inglaterra nessa posição central, e que crescia mais rapidamente do que Reino Unido e, em termos militares, investia muito na sua capacidade, que aos poucos ameaçava a liderança britânica. Historicamente, transições de poder têm altíssimo risco de conflito, porque o sistema internacional geralmente é controlado pela potência mais forte. Então, essa potência dita as regras e normas e a nova potência geralmente tem o interesse de mudar essas regras e se impor também, e isso pode levar, como muitas vezes levou, historicamente, a um conflito.

De fato, existem evidências históricas de que os Estados Unidos quando superaram a Inglaterra como principal potência, tinham planos de acelerar essa transição de poder por meios militares, invadido, por exemplo, o Canadá, ou seja, atacando alguns outros países, enfraquecendo a Inglaterra, caso a Inglaterra não aceitasse o novo líder dos Estados Unidos. Mas, de fato, a Inglaterra aceitou essa liderança. Agora a gente está em uma situação parecida, porque a ordem ainda é controlado pelos Estados Unidos, que dita as regras e normas claramente, todos os conceitos, ideias que nós temos sobre a Ordem Internacional foram feitas, criadas e sustentada pelos Estados Unidos. De fato, há uma ordem americana na qual vivemos que foi criada depois da Segunda Guerra Mundial.

Só que a China aos poucos está crescendo tanto e não está plenamente satisfeita com essas regras, quer atuar de maneira mais independente e, pela primeira vez agora em 100 anos, a gente vai ter de novo uma transição de poder, porque a China superará a economia americana e ninguém sabe em que medida a China continua aceitando essa regras dos Estados Unidos, que já não ocupam esse lugar importante. Isso é um grande dilema, porque por um lado a China tem muitos benefícios da ordem atual, livre comércio, proteção militar dos Estados Unidos, que assegura a segurança das vias marítimas, por exemplo, e ao mesmo tempo a China não está afim de permanecer dentro de uma ordem controlado pelos Estados Unidos.

RB - Mas em relação a comparação específica do ano, 1914 e 2014, há eventos que já aconteceram essa ano que mostram algum paralelismo?

OS - Não, na verdade, é mais estrutural mesmo que a gente tem essa paralela da potência emergente e da hegemônica que está em declínio. Claramente, a Inglaterra estava em declínio e os Estados Unidos hoje não crescem mais tão rapidamente, mas a gente tem uma série de outras paralelas. Uma, por exemplo, é a importância do nacionalismo, que quando a gente olha a história da Europa daquele ano, a gente vê que o nacionalismo levou os líderes a tomar decisões muito erradas ao se calcular e isso dificultou o processo de frear esse processo que parecia quase inevitável, todos os países entrando no conflito. Então, isso a gente também vê na China, onde o nacionalismo é utilizado como uma arma para se impor na região.

RB - Vamos falar da China. A ascensão da China e suas aspirações regionais vão gerar muita volatilidade?

OS - A gente tem que lembrar de uma coisa: a partir de agora a China representa o principal polo econômico na economia mundial. Então, qualquer instabilidade política na região da China pode, gravemente, afetar a economia global. A China estabeleceu uma chamada zona de identificação de defesa aérea e aumentou essa zona. Agora essa zona inclui uma série de ilhas que pertencem oficialmente ao Japão. A China também disse que essas ilhas na verdade fazem parte da China. Então, existe lá um potencial conflito e quando a China anunciou essa zona os Estados Unidos entraram com aviões nessa zona para mostrar que de fato isso é um ato ilegal, mesmo assim, em uma situação de tensão, isso pode ser visto como uma agressão militar americana contra a China. Então, mesma essa possibilidade aumenta o risco político, aumenta o risco para investidores, então o fato da gente ter um deslocamento de um centro econômico mundial de uma zona pacífica dos Estados Unidos e Europa para uma região de um possível conflito, sim aumenta claramente a volatilidade.

RB – Vamos falar dessas ilhas. Colocando na balança todo o comércio que China tem com os EUA, toda a relação de capitalismo que existe os dois países, e, colocando de outro lado essas ilhas, que podem, e tem um sentido simbólico para a China, a primeira coisa não pesa mais que a segunda?

OS - Foi exatamente isso que todo mundo pensava há 100 anos. Existe um livro que se chama " A Grande Ilusão da Época", que mostrava um pouco que a elite global pensava que um conflito entre a Inglaterra e a Alemanha era impensável, porque eram os dois países mais integrados comercialmente. Ou seja, o comércio, as elites econômicas dependiam um do outro. Os filhos da liderança política alemã estudavam em universidades britânicas, ou seja, havia uma conexão cultural muito forte. Da mesma maneira também existe um comércio muito forte entre a China e os Estados Unidos, entra a China e o Japão, mas a história nesse sentido nos ensina que o comércio não é garantia que possa assim assegurar que não aja um conflito. É justamente nisso onde o nacionalismo entra. Um conflito em uma guerra pode ser, sobretudo em um país autocrático como a China, utilizado como um pretexto para desviar a atenção pública, que está focada, por exemplo, em corrupção, em problemas ambientais, em crescimento baixo.

Então, existe uma possibilidade em um cenário real de que a China, em algum momento, para fortalecer o nacionalismo, unir o povo e reduzir a crítica ao governo, de fato, lançar um pequeno conflito, que depois pode virar algo muito maior. É inacreditável quantas vezes eu conversei com pessoas intelectuais da China, com pessoas com ótima formação e etc. que falavam que, de fato, é inaceitável para a China ceder essas ilhas ao Japão e também lembrando que o fato de ceder essas ilhas para o Japão pode causar outras rebeliões, em outras regiões da China como o Tibete, como Xingjian, que de fato pode pôr em perigo todo a grande narrativa da união territorial da China.

RB - A China está no meio de uma desaceleração do crescimento. Como é que o crescimento econômico na China se relaciona com a estabilidade do regime lá?

OS - O governo chinês, o partido comunista, concentra todo o poder político e o cidadão chinês, neste momento, não tem nenhum direito político porque o consenso é que o sistema político autocrático atual é a melhor maneira de assegurar um alto crescimento econômico. Isso quer dizer que um cidadão chinês aceita a legitimidade do partido comunista só se, de fato, esse partido consegue entregar esse autocrescimeto que tem tirado milhões e milhões de pessoas da pobreza. Ou seja, a gente viu o maior programa de redução de pobreza na história da China, com mais de 110 milhões de pessoas entrando na classe média.

RB - Não nos dão liberdade, mas nos alimentam.

OS - Exatamente! E nos alimentam muito bem, ou seja, realmente houve uma transformação inédita da sociedade chinesa ao longo das últimas décadas. Agora, se o crescimento chinês ficar mais baixo, a gente está falando mais ou menos de uns cinco ou seis por cento eu acredito que haverá muito mais protesto, muito mais vontade do povo de desafiar essa legitimidade porque acredita que o partido não consegue mais assegurar o autocrescimento. Isso claramente pode levar a instabilidade política e a China tem esse histórico, de muitos protestos e isso afetará claramente ao desempenho econômico do país.

RB - É possível para o regime, sabendo dessas tensões, fazer a engenharia de um crescimento maior, mesmo que com mais inflação?

OS - Existem vários projetos e tentativas do governo mostrar que controla a situação. Eu acho que não, em relação a sua pergunta em relação à inflação, eu acho que a moeda chinesa é vista também como um símbolo de poder e cada vez mais a China tentará institucionalizar o yuan como moeda global.

A gente vê que agora, em alguns países africanos, a moeda chinesa já é a moeda oficial. A gente viu no Zimbábue, por exemplo, que adotou na semana passada o yuan como uma das moedas oficiais, então a China tentará aos poucos convencer outros países a adotar a moeda de câmbio. Então, eu acho que não. Acho que o partido tentará, por meio de reformas, manter alta a competitividade da economia chinesa e também de fortalecer o consumo interno, porque a China já não é aquela potência das últimas décadas que só consegue crescer exportando.

RB - Fale um pouco sobre a influência da China na África. A gente ouve falar aqui e ali, mas você pode dar um quadro mais consolidado?

OS - A África tem sido um continente um pouco esquecido pelas grandes potências nos anos 90. Os Estado Unidos, por exemplo, enxergavam a África não como uma oportunidade, mas como um país que precisava de ajuda. Então, toda a maneira como a Europa e os Estados Unidos enxergavam a África era para o meio desse filtro de que é uma região pobre que precisa de ajuda. Isso é, claramente, percebido pelos líderes africanos e a China percebeu isso. Enxergou que a África, hoje em dia, é a última fronteira na economia global e, de fato, na última década é o continente que mais cresceu. Alguns países crescem a taxas anuais de mais de 10%, como a Angola, por exemplo. E a China começou a investir no continente de maneira sistemática, tanto que hoje a maioria dos países africanos têm a China como principal parceiro comercial.

RB - Mas o viés principal desse investimento é busca de garantia de fornecimento de matéria prima?

OS - Principalmente sim, mas a gente deve lembrar que a Europa e os Estados Unidos também utilizavam a África assim. Em alguns países, até os investimentos chineses são mais diversificados. Na Nigéria, por exemplo, onde a Europa tem uma longa história de investir em petróleo e recursos naturais, a China hoje em dia controla setores como o de telecomunicação. Então, isso mostra que a imagem que a gente tem da China na África nem sempre é correta. Nem sempre a China apenas entra na África para roubar os recursos naturais mas, de fato, a China, cada vez mais, tenta mostrar aos cidadãos africanos de que sua influência é positiva, porque em vários países a gente viu protestos contra a China, e como a China se interessa pelo desenvolvimento, pela parceira a longo prazo entende, claramente, que uma presença sem aprovação pública é insustentável.

Agora, uma coisa muito interessante é que cada vez mais líderes africanos enxergam a China como modelo econômico e social e não mais os Estados Unidos. Então, na África, pela primeira vez, a gente vê sociedades inteiras começam a se reorientar e já não olham os Estados Unidos como uma sociedade modelo. Qualquer país em desenvolvimento queria, no fundo, ficar mais parecido com os Estados Unidos, mais parecidos com países europeus, e agora a gente tem vários presidentes que dizem claramente: "Nosso modelo é a China porque a China cresce mais rapidamente, consegue implementar projetos de infraestrutura com muito mais rapidez." Então, a gente vê lá não só uma mudança econômica, mas também uma mudança na liderança sociocultural também.

RB - Que países tem dito isso mais abertamente?

OS - Ruanda, por exemplo, é um país que se desenvolveu rapidamente nos últimos anos, que não é um país democrático, quer dizer, que não tem uma democracia muito vibrante, porque tem um presidente com tendências autocráticas. Mas é claro que olhando, por exemplo, um país como a China e comparando isso com um país como a Índia, todos os observadores enxergam que a China consegue, de fato, implementar, por exemplo, projetos de infraestrutura com muito mais facilidade do que a Índia, por exemplo, porque, como país democrático, precisa consultar representantes dos moradores, é possível entrar na justiça contra o Estado, o que atrasa o projeto. A gente vê o mesmo aqui no Brasil, não é? Então, isso é uma preocupação muito importante, porque isso tem também implicações importantes para o futuro da democracia. A gente, pela primeira vez, vai ter uma país como principal economia do mundo que não é uma democracia. Isso pode fazer com que líderes de países africanos, e também líderes em outras regiões do mundo, considerarem que o modelo chinês é algo mais desejável do que o modelo americano.

RB - Você mencionou Ruanda. Qual é a lista dos países na África, hoje, onde a China exerce maior influência?

OS - A África já tem um grupo muito grande de países onde a China é o principal ator. A gente tem como grande exemplo o Sudão, que é um dos principais fornecedores de petróleo. A China teve uma grande papel em proteger o líder, o presidente do Sudão, Al-Bashir, durante o genocídio que aconteceu no Sudão.

A China, protegendo esse líder que a comunidade internacional tentou isolar, o país sofreu sanções internacionais, mas conseguiu se manter por causa da ajuda chinesa. Isso é um exemplo. Outro exemplo: África do Sul e, como consequência, alguns anos atrás, o Dalai Lama tentou visitar a África do Sul para participar de uma conferência de paz, para encontrar com seu grande amigo Nelson Mandela, e o governo sul-africano não deu visto para o Dalai Lama por pressão chinesa. Então, esses são pequenos exemplos que a gente já vê uma...

RB - Pequenos grandes exemplos.

OS - Pequenos grandes exemplos, mas são coisas do dia a dia na qual, por exemplo, quase nenhum país africano, hoje em dia, reconhece Taiwan, porque isso também pode... Nenhum líder pode receber o Dalai Lama porque ele representa uma ameaça. Então, são muitos países. Eu diria que, a longo prazo, todos os países africanos terão uma relação política e econômica mais importante com a China do que com os Estados Unidos.

RB - Vamos falar sobre a internet e a China. Como é que a internet tem mudado a política interna na China, se é que tem?

OS - Interessante é notar que dez anos atrás, quando a internet começou a chegar nos países em desenvolvimento, e começou de fato criar uma comunidade global que deixava as pessoas de países diferentes se comunicarem e etc., havia uma crença de que a internet poderia ser utilizada como ferramenta para expandir a zona da paz, para promover a liberdade, a democracia, a liberdade de expressão, a imprensa livre e o debate livre, porque a internet não respeita fronteiras, achava-se até essa época. Não se precisa mais de um visto, por exemplo, para conversar com pessoas de outros países pela internet. Então, como consequência, a internet também foi vista como uma possibilidade de democratizar a China, de informar a sociedade chinesa sobre a situação no mundo, de realmente enfraquecer a capacidade que o Estado chinês tinha de isolar os próprios cidadãos.

O que a gente vê agora é que a China, de fato, conseguiu controlar a internet. A internet não conseguiu controlar a China, porque a China emprega mais de 100 mil pessoas que passam o dia inteiro “surfando” na Internet, olhando sites, bloqueando sites, atualizando... Mais de 100 mil pessoas sendo empregadas pelo governo chinês apenas na questão de apagar sites da internet dentro da China. Ou seja, que passam o dia inteiro checando informações que estão sendo publicadas.

RB - O seu blog sobre política externa, um chinês consegue ler?

OS - Não consegue ler. Conseguia ler até eu resenhar um livro sobre a história do partido comunista que é proibido na China.

RB - É proibido fazer resenhas sobre o partido?

OS - O livro é proibido porque contém partes críticas. Não é um partido democrático. Fala de brigas dentro do partido, e a imagem que o partido comunista quer dar ao cidadão é que só existe uma opinião, não existe briga interna no partido, que é tudo um processo harmônico e democrático. No mesmo dia em que eu publiquei a resenha, de fato, o site saiu do ar. Isso é algo natural. Isso é interessante como a China conseguiu se manter. A gente tinha essa expectativa de que com a globalização tecnológica a China ia se democratizar e se adaptar a essa nova realidade, mas, de fato, não foi o que aconteceu.

RB - Na questão síria, há a Rússia, que impede que os EUA obtenham um consenso na comunidade internacional para uma ação mais decisiva contra o regime Assad. A minha pergunta é: o Presidente Putin representa hoje um problema para a paz e para a governança global?

OS - Por um lado, claramente, a posição russa não tem sido muito construtiva na questão de como solucionar o conflito na Síria. Ao mesmo tempo, a gente precisa tomar cuidado, porque o plano americano de intervir na Síria, fortalecer os rebeldes e de derrubar o governo Assad implica em um risco muito grande porque, de fato, os Estados Unidos invadiram o Iraque, também um país muito fraturado, pulverizado e com muitos grupos que não conseguem estabelecer um consenso nacional sem um ditador.

Então eu acho que existia naquela época, nos dias antes da intervenção, uma pergunta muito importante que os Estados Unidos nunca conseguiu responder de maneira satisfatória: o que havia depois? Os Estados Unidos intervêm, satisfazem, talvez, uma demanda internacional e depois o que vai acontecer? A gente vê agora, por exemplo, 10 anos depois da intervenção americana no Iraque, que o país não é um país democrático, não é um país pacífico e iraquianos morrem todos os dias em ataques terroristas. Então, não se sabe, claramente, se, de fato, a intervenção russa teve um impacto negativo ou positivo.

RB - Mas isso aí parece que leva um corolário, que seria o seguinte: se a comunidade internacional não sabe o que colocar no lugar, é melhor deixar o ditador de plantão lá.

OS - Bom, não temos uma boa solução, não é? A saída do ditador Assad é desejável simplesmente porque ele é o principal responsável pela morte de mais de 100 mil pessoas. Ao mesmo tempo, existe também a possibilidade de que a gente precise reconhecer que, caso o Assad saia do poder, a Síria pode virar um país muito mais radical, governado por radicais que tem como visão estabelecer um governo parecido com aquele que governou o Afeganistão na época do Talibã, que também não é desejável.

Então, realmente, e infelizmente, agora a gente não tem uma possibilidade, ou uma saída perfeita. A minha expectativa é que o Assad seguirá no poder, que ele será crucial, por incrível que pareça, no processo de paz e que isso fortalecerá muito a posição estratégica do Irã e Rússia na região que conseguiram apoiar e manter um dos principais aliados na região, apesar de que um ou dois atrás tudo indicava que ele tinha que sair do poder e tinha seus dias contados.

RB - E, com certeza, os republicanos vão estar falando disso daqui a dois anos em uma campanha eleitoral, dizendo que o Obama fracassou.

OS - Exatamente.

RB - O novo presidente do Irã [Hassan Rohani] tem tido toda uma retórica de paz e amor. As grandes potências estão comprando essa retórica? E você, acredita?

OS - É interessante que o presidente iraniano utilizou o encontro em Davos como plataforma para apresentar a nova narrativa de que o Irã gostaria de se integrar na comunidade internacional como um ator responsável, que procura a paz, a resolução pacífica das tensões e conflitos, etc. Isso é um passo importante, mas ele é só um primeiro passo. Ao mesmo tempo, eu acredito que existe uma pressão pública no Irã. Faz um tempo que passei algumas semanas no país em 2007, mas, já naquela época, sentia também um cansaço entre a população iraniana que sofre muito com as sanções econômicas. Então, eu acho que existe uma vontade política real no governo iraniano de se reintegrar na comunidade internacional. Agora, ao mesmo tempo, é difícil prever em que medida os Estados Unidos aceitarão essa reintegração e se eles aceitarão que o Irá manterá capacidade, pelo menos, de desenvolver a tecnologia nuclear, não é?

A grande estratégia americana ao longo das últimas décadas tem sido de evitar, sempre, ascensão de uma potência hegemônica regional. O Irã tem um chance real de virar essa potência hegemônica regional se ele se reintegrar na economia global. É o principal país da região que pode exercer muita influência no oriente médio, o que é um problema para o principal aliado dos Estado Unidos, que é a Arábia Saudita. Então, não só é uma questão, vamos dizer, da atividade nuclear do Irã, mas também uma questão de se os Estados Unidos consegue se adaptar a essa nova realidade de uma Irã integrado.

RB - É possível que a tensão que havia sob o presidente anterior [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad fosse apenas uma questão de estilo, porque ele era um populista, que ele era um boquirroto e isso exacerbou tensões que, na verdade, os aiatolás são menos extremistas do que ele?

OS - Sim, teve um papel muito importante, sobretudo porque piorou muito a relação entre Irã e Israel, que é um principal aliado americano também, e que exerce uma grande influência sobre a atuação americana no Oriente Médio. Então, sim, o estilo é importante. Acho que não é só o estilo, o governo iraniano terá que fazer concessões reais agora. Não é só uma mudança de estilo. Precisa fazer concessões comprováveis, tangíveis e reais para convencer, não só os Estados Unidos, mas também a comunidade internacional de que o país, de novo, deveria fazer parte da comunidade internacional.

http://www.infomoney.com.br/mercados/noticia/3199077/transicao-hegemonia-mundial-dos-eua-para-china-comecou-destaca-professor

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The possibility of excluding Russia from the G8 is currently being discussed, among Western powers, as a low-cost yet highly symbolic move to isolate and punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. In this context, several analysts have wondered how China will react to Russia's recent move. After all, to truly isolate Russia, China would have to align with the United States and Europe and condemn Moscow.

Alan Alexandroff, a professor of international affairs at the University of Toronto, recently expressed his hope that China and other emerging powers would support the West's strategy of isolating Russia: 

.. how should the BRICS react to Russia’s aggressive behavior? Surely intervention of the sort underway by Russia can’t possibly match the ideals of countries like Brazil, or India or South Africa, or even a China. These are countries that defend national sovereignty at all costs and insist, insistently, on non interference in the domestic affairs of other countries. (...) In particular with Brazil hosting the next BRICS summit, we need to hear from President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil whether Russia’s participation should be suspended.

Yet Beijing's perspective is likely to be different.

As Lu Yu writes for Xinhua (probably reflecting China's official position),

Based on the fact that Russia and Ukraine have deep cultural, historical and economic connections, it is time for Western powers to abandon their Cold War thinking, stop trying to exclude Russia from the political crisis they failed to mediate, and respect Russia's unique role in mapping out the future of Ukraine.

Notably, Lu's article contains no criticism for Russia’s decision to send its armed forces to Crimea:

It is quite understandable when Putin said his country retained the right to protect its interests and Russian-speakers living in Ukraine. (...) The United States and European countries must work with, not against, Russia to tackle the Ukraine crisis.

TIME argued that Russia's intervention was putting China in "an awkward spot". In a way, this is true. Openly supporting Russia's occupation, a clear violation of international law, would contradict China's long-cherished principle of non-intervention, and could provide an argument for separatists in Tibet and Xinjiang.

Yet why would China, unlike any other great power, not bend its principles in favor of realpolitik?  Criticizing Moscow would not only imperil a crucial strategic partnership, but also implicitly approve of the West's support of the revolution in Kiev. As an unsigned (i.e. reflecting China's official position) op-ed in China's Global Times bluntly puts it,

The evolution of the Ukrainian situation shows us clearly that in the international political arena, principles are decided by power. Without its support and blessing, no principle can prevail.

In the end, China is unlikely to take a clear stand. In essence, that is a victory for Vladimir Putin, as Beijing will not actively go along with the West. China will, together with Russia, veto any strong resolution against Moscow in the UNSC. It will make sure that President Putin continues to be invited to the yearly BRICS Summits (should Brazil, South Africa or India suggest Russia's exclusion). China is thus likely to be an important element in reducing the effectiveness of Western attempts to isolate Russia.

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Photo credit: AFP

http://www.brasilpost.com.br/oliver-stuenkel/supremacia-militar-americana-versus-lideranca-chinesa_b_5256745.html

Em algum momento da segunda metade do século 19, os Estados Unidos tornaram-se a maior economia do mundo, ultrapassando a Grã-Bretanha. No entanto, demorou meio século, até 1945, para os Estados Unidos assumirem a liderança global de uma forma sistemática. Considerando estes 50 anos de atraso, muitos podem achar desnecessários os debates frenéticos sobre quando a economia chinesa vai se tornar a maior do mundo (a maioria dos cidadãos norte-americanos acha que a China já ultrapassou os Estados Unidos de qualquer maneira). Na manhã seguinte após a China ultrapassar os Estados Unidos, o mundo provavelmente vai parecer o mesmo. Afinal de contas, o poder militar da China continuará a ser muito inferior à dos Estados Unidos, e não há nenhum sinal de que esta lacuna será preenchida nas próximas décadas. Como Robert Ross aponta em um artigo recente na revista Foreign Affairs:

Nos últimos dez anos, a Marinha do Exército de Libertação Popular não adquiriu quaisquer novos navios ou aeronaves que poderiam aumentar significativamente a sua capacidade de desafiar a superioridade marítima dos EUA. A principal ferramenta da China para combater a Marinha dos EUA e impedir uma intervenção norte-americana em conflitos da Ásia continua a ser uma frota de submarinos diesel que têm estado em serviço desde meados dos anos 1990.

Apesar dos cortes no orçamento militar dos EUA, a disparidade entre o poder militar dos Estados Unidos e da China vai, portanto, não diminuir, mas aumentar. Isso vai se tornar cada vez mais visível enquanto os Estados Unidos estão aumentando sua presença militar na vizinhança da China, como parte do seu "pivot asiático".

Isso levanta a interessante questão sobre se os Estados Unidos poderiam, de fato, manter a sua supremacia militar global por muito tempo depois de a China se transformar na maior economia do mundo. Em 2040, por exemplo, a economia da China poderia ser - supondo um contínuo crescimento elevado - quase duas vezes maior que a dos Estados Unidos. A Índia - até então o país mais populoso do mundo - poderia começar a desafiar a posição dos Estados Unidos como a segunda maior economia do mundo. De acordo com Hans Rosling, a economia da Índia já será muito maior do que a economia dos EUA em 2047.

Tal previsão pode ser contestada por dois lados: primeiro, alguns argumentam que potências emergentes nunca aceitariam a continuidade da supremacia militar dos EUA em uma economia mundial liderada pela China e Índia. Em segundo lugar, pode-se duvidar que os Estados Unidos estariam dispostos a bancar o fornecimento de segurança global em uma economia mundial que ele não mais domina.

Ambos os argumentos são difíceis de refutar. De um ponto de vista racional, potências emergentes deveriam ficar contentes com a vontade contínua dos Estados Unidos de garantir a segurança global. Em vez de construirem exércitos caros, eles poderiam se concentrar na redução da pobreza, educação e na construção de seus sistemas de infra-estrutura. No entanto, o nacionalismo poderia impedi-los de seguir o modelo alemão ou japonês de evitar responsabilidades de segurança. O segundo argumento é igualmente potente - os eleitores norte-americanos poderiam se recusar a financiar as maiores forças armadas do mundo após a China e a Índia se estabelecerem como primeira e segunda maiores economias do mundo.

Apesar destes dois desafios, há pouca chance de os EUA deixarem de desempenhar o papel que vêm desempenhando na segurança global nos últimos 60 anos. A ordem global em 2040 irá, assim, adotar uma estrutura sem precedentes: a supremacia militar dos EUA em uma economia mundial liderada pela China.

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http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/the-us-should-celebrate-its-decline/

The Upside of Down argues that the U.S. is declining — and that’s a good thing, especially for Washington.

By Oliver Stuenkel
June 25, 2014

Charles Kenny. The Upside of Down. Why the Rise of the Rest is Good for the West. Basic Books, 2014. 256 pages.

“Being number one has its advantages, to be sure, but increasingly, we need other countries to step up — and it shouldn’t frighten us when they do.”

The debate about the future of global order is dominated by U.S. scholars who believe the United States’ leadership is set to endure (such as Robert Kagan’s The World America Made, Bruce Jones’ Still Ours To Lead) and U.S. declinists (such as Ann Lee’s What the U.S. Can Learn from China and Stephen Leeb’s Red Alert). Kagan and Jones believe that China’s rise will not threaten U.S. global leadership. The declinists (often called pessimists by critics) believe that unipolarity is soon coming to an end or has already ended.

Kenny’s book The Upside of Down does not easily fit into any of these categories. The author early on says that relative decline is inevitable — it is not a matter of choice, as proponents of a muscular foreign policy (such as Kagan) would argue. “It is important to recognize that policies to ‘regain US dominance’ are destined to fail,” he writes. The rise of the rest is not only well under way, he says, it is also desirable. Kenny argues that the United States should embrace, not resist, a world in which “the rest” catch up with the West. The author is aware that this may sound counterintuitive:

International relations theory is too often presented in purely relative terms. The realist position effectively proposes that every country is solely out to be top of the pile. That’s impossible for the vast majority, of course, and dumb even for the few for whom it is plausible. This isn’t a zero-sum competition, and foreign policy thinking that treats the world that way is immensely counterproductive.

Kenny’s comment that the United States could learn from Britain, which is quite relaxed about its decline, is not likely to go down well with foreign policy makers in Washington, D.C. His argument is obvious, but rarely made: The lives of U.S. citizens would not necessarily be negatively affected if the United States were merely one of several poles in a multipolar system. As he writes in a recent op-ed promoting his book:

…the link between the absolute size of your economy and pretty much any measure that truly matters is incredibly weak. Whenever China takes over the top spot, it will still lag far behind the world’s leading countries on indicators reflecting quality of life.

If the U.S. plays its cards right, the rise of China and India is terrific news — their rise will lift all boats, including that of the United States’ economy. Between 1990 and 2012, the proportion of U.S. exports going to emerging countries more than doubled, and it will soon rise even further.

Interestingly, Kenny writes that “there is absolutely no reason why the twenty-first century should not be an ‘American Century’ — if by that is meant America retaining or even enhancing its global reputation as a country to be emulated.” That raises an important question — is the United States admired for its education, civil rights, and openness, or rather because of its sheer economic and military superiority? Kenny says hard power does not matter at all. That sounds somewhat improbable. After all, it is precisely U.S. economic and military dominance that has allowed it, over the past six decades, to shape the world according to its interests and disseminate U.S. values, ideas and culture. It seems highly questionable at best that the United States can remain the world’s most attractive society once China has overtaken it. For a country that has become worryingly accustomed to ruling the world, anything but being in charge is likely to be quite catastrophic.

Finally, Kenny’s ‘happy relative decline’ proposition raises important questions about who will provide global public goods in the future. Who will provide maritime security, and who will provide security guarantees to countries like Japan? Kenny hardly mentions how U.S. decline will affect the dilemmas of security competition. Put differently, who will fill the void the United States will leave behind in geopolitics? Still, The Upside of Down is a great read full of interesting data, and a great contribution to the debate about the future of global order.

Oliver Stuenkel is Professor of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, Brazil.

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"What does China think?", Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations asked in 2008 in his book with that same title. Clearly, the world was desperate to find out, and Leonard's analysis was translated into 15 languages. No country is as important yet so little understood as China. The situation in Brazil is a classic example: China turned into Brazil's most important trading partner in 2009, yet Brazil lacks the necessary knowledge about China that it has about other key partners, such as Argentina and the United States. Only a very limited number of Brazilian diplomats is fluent in Chinese, and there are no internationally leading China experts based at Brazilian universities. The public discussion about the implications of China's rise and its impact on Brazil remains superficial, reducing Brazil's capacity to constructively engage China.

However, over the past five years, both government and universities have started to catch up. The Brazilian embassy in Beijing has grown considerably and is now seen as a prestigious posting among Brazilian diplomats. Universities have set up new exchange programs with Chinese universities, and more and more Brazilian students are learning Chinese or study China in their masters and doctoral theses.

A good example is Ruichen Zheng, a graduate student in international affairs at the University of São Paulo (USP), who recently concluded her dissertation analyzing the role of Brazil in the Chinese academic debate. In order to understand what Chinese academics think and write about Brazil, she examined China's ten leading academic journals in international affairs over the past decade.

As one would expect, her research shows that the most frequent topics of analysis are Chinese foreign policy, Asia (particularly Japan) and the United States. Russia and India, two important neighbors, are somewhat less important, as is the European Union. Further down the list come Africa, the Middle East and finally Latin America. This supports the realist argument that great powers are the decisive actors in international affairs, and therefore deserve to be scrutinized much more closely than smaller actors.

What is more surprising, however, is that despite Brazil's far more visible role in global affairs, the growing importance of China-Brazil ties and common BRICS membership, the number of articles by Chinese academics that deal with Brazil has not grown at all. Just like 2003, Brazil remained, by 2012, a largely irrelevant niche topic. Over 90% of the few articles dealing with Brazil were published in the same journal, further evidence of how little interest editors of the leading mainstream journals have in Brazil. The author concludes that "Brazil, the first developing country with which China established a strategic partnership, and today its greatest trading partner in Latin America, is not a relevant topic in the academic discussion in China." Assessing the content of the few articles that did focus on Brazil, Ruichen Zheng affirms that most are descriptive and that there are "no divergent opinions" on the subject.

These results raise a series of important policy-related questions. Why do so few Chinese academics care about Brazil? Is this lack of interest limited to academia, or is the situation similar among Chinese policy makers? How does this lack of attention affect China's views on and policy vis-à-vis Brazil? What sources do Chinese policy makers consult when learning about their most important partner in Latin America? Do Chinese decision-makers have any idea about how Brazilian domestic public opinion, sometimes hostile against China's growing influence, constrains Brazilian negotiators?

In her analysis, Ruichen Zheng affirms that the language barrier makes studying Brazil difficult. After all, she writes, regional studies strongly depend on solid language skills to follow the domestic debates. The reader is likely to wonder whether the relatively low number of articles by Brazilian scholars published in international journals in English further aggravates the situation.

Perhaps to placate the worried Brazilian readership, the author ends her analysis on a hopeful note, writing that she expects a growing number of Chinese scholars to analyze Brazil as economic ties grow stronger still. She may have a point. After all, academia is often slow to adapt to new realities, and it may indeed take a few more years before the graduate students who decided to focus on Brazil begin to teach at Chinese universities and write in the leading journals. Still, for the time being, Brazil will remain a niche topic in Chinese academia.

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Book review: “Why the Rise of the Rest Is Good for the West” by Charles Kenny

Why the West still rules

Who was the greatest beneficiary of geopolitical events in 2014? While it will take time to grasp the consequences of the two key developments - the Ukrainian Crisis and the rise of ISIS in Iraq and Syria - it seems likely that China will emerge as one of the great winners of recent dynamics. Indeed, seen from Bejing, it is hard to imagine a more benign script than that which has unfolded over the past ten months.

Renewed instability in Iraq and Syria effectively curtailed the United States' attempts to pay less attention to the Middle East and focus on the most potent long-term threat to US hegemony: the rise of China. While a renewed US troop deployment in the Middle East seems unlikely, President Obama still finds himself in the unenviable position of coordinating the West's response to the Islamic State (IS), which is, the US government readily concedes, a "long-term effort." In the US foreign policy debate, the discussion about the rise of China has been once more eclipsed by debates about the Middle East. The same is true of the Ukrainian Crisis and Russia's frayed relations with the West, which occupies far more space during think tank debates in Washington, DC and policy op-eds in US newspapers than ideas related to China.

China is set to benefit for two reasons. First of all, current dynamics assure that the United States pays only limited attention to China's rise and increasingly global projection, allowing Beijing to remain under the radar for more time. Secondly, Western attempts to isolate countries such as Russia drive the new pariahs into the Chinese orbit without generating any significant cost for Beijing. As a consequence, Beijing has little interest in helping resolve the trouble in Ukraine. Never before has Russia been as strategically dependent on China as it is today.

This is the major argument of a new interesting policy paper about China's global strategy, published by the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics), a Berlin-based think tank that focuses on China. According to the authors, China is slowly building a "parallel structure" that will eventually challenge Western order. Yet contrary to many other China alarmists who unrealistically expect China to destroy existing structures in the near future, the paper makes a more subtle and detailed argument: Policy makers in Beijing will continue to invest in Western-dominated structures and push for their reform. Yet at the same time, they will quietly expand networks in many different areas, ready to engage those who do feel today's institution fail to satisfy their needs, or those who seek to increase autonomy from the United States.

China's strategy, the authors assert, is not aggressive. Most of the structures it sets up are complementary or parallel to existing ones, rarely challenging them head-on. They include initiatives in the realms of finance, currency, infra-structure, diplomatic dialogue, trade and investment and security (see image below).

One of the main goals of establishing parallel structures is to slowly enhance strategic autonomy and reduce China's dependence on Western-controlled structures -- for example by strengthening the role of China's currency and establishing a China-centric global payment system. Yet conscious of its limitations, China continues to actively support existing structures, making it harder for the West to accuse China of undermining current order.

The list of Chinese-led initiatives is impressive and shows that China is the only non-Western power with a global project - contrasting the other BRICS countries, which harbor global ambitions but lack the diplomatic clout to implement them. And yet, several projects the authors list are in their early infancy and far from operational. The BRICS Development Bank so far exists on paper only, and the BRICS Contingency Reserve Agreement (金砖国家应急储备基金) and the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) are embedded within the IMF system. In the same way, it is uncertain whether the Nicaragua Canal (尼加拉瓜運河), will ever be completed (construction is scheduled to begin in December 2014).

Still, the authors are correct to point out that in some regions of the world, such as in parts of Africa, Latin America and Central Asia, several of China-led structures are already at work at the same time, enhancing their impact (e.g. in the fields of infrastructure, investment and currency swaps). While it is difficult to imagine how the Bo'ao Forum for Asia (博鳌亚洲论坛) will ever become more influential than the yearly World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, China is likely to be more successful when it comes to offering tangible benefits such as easy credit to finance infrastructure, a proposition particularly attractive in the Global South.

The authors are cautious enough not to make any specific predictions about the speed at which the China-centric institutions will supplant Western-led institutions, or whether this will happen at all. Rather, they point out that global instability (producing pariah regimes in need of China's support) and institutional inertia (slowing down necessary reform to provide more space for emerging powers) are likely to benefit China as they reduce the legitimacy of existing structures.

However, provided that it continues growing economically, China will expand its influence either way, either within existing but reformed structures that grant it more autonomy and decision-making power, or within China-centric institutions tailored according to its strategic needs - or both. As a consequence, China has no interest in actively destabilizing existing structures or aggressively promote alternatives.

The implications for Brazilian foreign policy are clear: Brazil must maintain strong ties with both traditional structures and actively participate in new institutions led by China. An either-or strategy is certainly bound to fail. Fully relying on established organizations such as the World Bank and the IMF is risky because their reach is likely to weaken in the coming decades. At the same time, focusing on new institutions created by China alone would be unwise because many of them will take years to be fully operational, and their success is far from assured. Engaging in both traditional and new structures is thus the only viable choice - in 2015, Brazil's President should therefore accept the invitations to speak in both Davos and Bo'ao.

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What do Chinese academics think about Brazil? Not much, apparently

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Why China will back Russia on Ukraine

Will China be able to maintain high growth over the coming decades? Fewer questions will have a greater impact on the future of global order.

Continued Chinese growth around 6% per year or more over the next twenty years would inevitably bring about dramatic changes in global order, increasing China's material interests around the world and allowing it to invest heavily in its military, increase foreign aid and globalize its currency.

Lower economic growth in China (say, of 3% per year), on the other hand, would reduce China's capacity to enhance its international projection and diminish -- in the eyes of many-- the urgency of the need for reform of global structures. If economic growth rates in China were similar to those of the United States, the entire emerging power-narrative could temporarily vanish from the international debate, given that no other rising power has ever achieved similarly impressive and constant growth figures as China. In fact, three of the five BRICS countries may grow slower than the United States in 2015, so the grouping's dynamic credentials are increasingly dependent on China. 

In a notable new paper entitled "Asiaphoria Meets Regression to the Mean", Lant Pritchett and Larry Summers, two leading U.S. economists, argue that "there are substantial reasons that China and India may grow much less rapidly than is currently anticipated." According to the authors, official forecasts usually miss discontinuities by merely extrapolating past growth figures. They write

history teaches that abnormally rapid growth is rarely persistent, even though economic forecasts invariably extrapolate recent growth. Indeed, regression to the mean is the empirically most salient feature of economic growth.

Summers and Pritchett also suggest that democratic reform could significantly reduce growth, citing examples of other countries that grew slower immediately after democratizing.

This echoes a decade-old paper by John Whalley and Xian Xin, also published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, which predicted that growth rates in China were unlikely to remain as high for a long time.

Contesting such a negative outlook, several analysts predict that current economic reforms undertaken by President Xi Jinping will actually improve China's outlook. For example, Yukon Huang, a China specialist at the Carnegie Endowment and a former World Bank director for China, writes that

rigorous implementation of these reforms will alter market incentives so that annual gross domestic product growth in the coming years could rise to 8-plus %.

He predicts that the liberalizing third plenum package will successfully correct the policies that had driven up debt levels and strengthen drivers of productivity so that growth will be more sustainable. Crucially, they will also reduce the rural-urban divide, often seen as a potential source of political tension. In the same way, Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD, expects China to continue growing above 7%, even while the Communist Party will overhaul China's industrial model, combat corruption, and increase labor productivity.

Adequately predicting the odds of Chinese continued long-term growth is of great importance for policy makers all over the world, as it will affect the degree of change global order will undergo in the coming years. The same is true for the likelihood for political instability in China, which could profoundly affects its economy.

All this points to the necessity for countries to build up a strong diplomatic presence in China which allows them to obtain first-hand information, rather than rely on economic reports written by US-based analysts - many of whom are tied to the US government. Only then can they confidently attempt to predict in how far China's rise will continue to dominate global affairs - and plan their international strategy accordingly.

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Why the anti-BRICS hype is overblown

Quem foi o maior beneficiário dos eventos geopolíticos em 2014? Enquanto é cedo para compreender as consequências dos dois acontecimentos chave - a crise ucraniana e a ascensão do Estado Islâmico no Iraque e na Síria -, parece provável que a China irá emergir como um dos grandes vencedores da dinâmica recente. De fato, visto de Pequim, é difícil imaginar um cenário mais benigno do que aquele que se desenrolou ao longo dos últimos 10 meses.

O novo período de instabilidade no Iraque e na Síria efetivamente limitou as tentativas dos Estados Unidos para prestar menos atenção ao Oriente Médio e se concentrar na ameaça de longo prazo mais potente a hegemonia dos Estados Unidos: a ascensão da China. Enquanto um novo envio de tropas dos EUA para o Oriente Médio parece improvável, o presidente Obama ainda está na posição pouco invejável de coordenar a resposta do Ocidente para o Estado Islâmico, que o governo dos EUA admite ser um "esforço de longo prazo." No debate sobre a política externa dos Estados Unidos, a discussão sobre a ascensão da China foi mais uma vez ofuscada por debates sobre o Oriente Médio. O mesmo é verdade para a crise da Ucrânia e as relações desgastadas da Rússia com o Ocidente, que ocupa muito mais espaço nos debates de think tanks em Washington do que ideias relacionadas à China.

A China deverá se beneficiar por duas razões. Primeiro, a atual dinâmica assegura que os Estados Unidos prestem pouca atenção na ascensão da China e sua projeção cada vez mais global; permitindo que Pequim permaneça fora do radar por mais tempo. Em segundo lugar, as tentativas dos EUA de isolar países como a Rússia leva os novos párias à órbita chinesa sem gerar qualquer custo significativo para Pequim. Como consequência, Pequim tem pouco interesse em ajudar a resolver o problema na Ucrânia. Nunca antes a Rússia foi tão dependente da China como é hoje.

Este é o principal argumento de um novo policy paper sobre a estratégia global da China, publicado pelo Instituto de Estudos Chineses Mercator (Merics), um think tank em Berlim. Segundo os autores, a China está lentamente construindo uma "estrutura paralela" que acabará por desafiar a ordem ocidental. No entanto, ao contrário do que muitos outros alarmistas que irrealisticamente predizem que a China destruirá as estruturas existentes em um futuro próximo, o trabalho faz um argumento mais sutil e detalhado: a China continuará a investir em estruturas existentes dominadas pelo Ocidente e tentará reformá-las. Mas, ao mesmo tempo, o país calmamente expandirá suas redes em diversas áreas, pronto para colaborar com aqueles que sentem que as instituições de hoje não conseguem satisfazer as suas necessidades, ou aqueles que procuram aumentar a autonomia em relação aos Estados Unidos.

A estratégia da China, afirmam os autores, não é agressiva. A maioria das estruturas que cria são complementares ou paralelas às que já existem, raramente desafiando-as de frente. São iniciativas que incluem os domínios das finanças, moeda, infraestrutura, o diálogo diplomático, comércio e investimento e segurança (ver imagem abaixo).

Um dos principais objetivos da criação de estruturas paralelas é aumentar lentamente a autonomia estratégica e reduzir a dependência da China das estruturas existentes. Por exemplo, reforçando o papel da moeda chinesa e estabelecendo um sistema de pagamento global sinocêntrico. No entanto, consciente de suas limitações, a China continua a apoiar ativamente as estruturas existentes, tornando mais difícil para o Ocidente acusar os chineses de minar a ordem vigente.

A lista de iniciativas chinesas é impressionante, e mostra que a China é a única potência não-ocidental com um projeto global. contrastando com os outros países do BRICS, que nutrem ambições globais, mas não têm a influência diplomática para implementá-las. No entanto, vários projetos da lista dos autores são incipientes ou longe de serem operacionalizados. O Banco de Desenvolvimento BRICS até agora existe apenas no papel, e o Acordo de Reservas de Contingência (CRA) dos BRICS (金砖 国家 应急 储备 基金) e a Iniciativa Chiang Mai Multilateralização (CMIM) estão inseridos no sistema do FMI. Da mesma forma, é incerto se o Canal de Nicarágua (尼加拉瓜 運河) será concluído (a construção está prevista para começar em dezembro de 2014).

Ainda assim, os autores estão corretos em apontar que em algumas regiões do mundo, como em partes da África, América Latina e Ásia Central, várias estruturas dirigidas pela China já estão atuando de maneira institucionalizada e, ao mesmo tempo, reforçando o seu impacto (por exemplo, nas áreas de infraestrutura, investimento e swaps de moeda). É difícil imaginar se o Fórum Bo'ao para a Ásia (博鳌 亚洲 论坛) um dia se tornará mais influente do que o Fórum Anual Econômico Mundial (WEF) em Davos. Porém, é provável que a China seja mais bem sucedida quando se trata de oferecer benefícios tangíveis, como o crédito fácil para financiar infraestrutura, especialmente no Sul Global.

Os autores são cautelosos e não articulam previsões específicas sobre a velocidade com que as instituições sinocêntricas irão suplantar as instituições tradicionais, ou se isso vai acontecer. Em vez disso, eles apontam que a instabilidade global (produzindo regimes párias que precisam de apoio da China) e a inércia institucional (que adia reformas necessárias para proporcionar mais espaço para potências emergentes) são suscetíveis de beneficiar a China, e já diminuem a legitimidade das estruturas existentes.

Desde que continue a crescer economicamente, a China vai expandir sua influência de qualquer forma. Seja dentro das estruturas existentes e reformadas, que concedem mais autonomia e poder de decisão, ou nas novas instituições criadas de acordo com suas necessidades estratégicas - ou ambos. Como consequência, a China não tem interesse ou necessidade em desestabilizar ativamente as estruturas existentes ou de agressivamente promover alternativas.

As implicações para a política externa brasileira são claras: o Brasil deve manter laços fortes com as estruturas tradicionais e participar ativamente de novas instituições lideradas pela China. Confiar plenamente nas organizações estabelecidas, como o Banco Mundial e o FMI é uma estratégia pouco inteligente, além de arriscada. Afinal, é provável que estas instituições se enfraqueçam nas próximas décadas. . Ao mesmo tempo, focar apenas nas instituições criadas pela China seria imprudente, porque muitas delas levarão anos para serem totalmente operacionais, e seu sucesso está longe de ser assegurado. Portanto, engajar-se em ambas as estruturas, tradicionais e novas, é a única opção viável. Em 2015, o presidente do Brasil deve, portanto, aceitar os convites para falar não só em Davos, mas também em Bo'ao.

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An often overlooked commonality between BRICS countries is their contested claim for regional leadership. Indeed, the regional ambitions articulated -- at differing degree of specificity and coherence -- in Brasília, Moscow, Beijing and Delhi are generally received with indifference, skepticism or outright fear in neighboring capitals. It is no coincidence that countries such as Argentina and Pakistan are the most vocal critics of their respective bigger neighbor's quest to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In the same way, China's and Russia's regional leadership claims generate apprehension by  neighbors such as Japan and Kazakhstan, respectively.

Each BRICS country's difficulty is three-fold. First, they need to develop a cohesive and compelling vision of what they want their region to look like - how to improve transport links, how to promote democracy or political stability, which regional institutions to establish, and how the region should relate to the rest of the world. Second, they need to convince neighbors that the implementation of such a project generates positive results for the entire region, and that fears of regional bullying are unwarranted. Finally, they need to muster the diplomatic and financial muscle to turn their vision into reality - after all, infrastructure projects (roads, ports, etc.) to connect the region tend to be costly and complex. Over the past decades, none of the BRICS has been particularly successful in addressing the three concerns, largely due to internal development challenges.

Yet more recently, China has arguably been the most active and capable backing up its leadership claim with an actual vision. After Xi Jinping articulated a vision for China's ties with Central Asia last year during a  visit to Kazakhstan, he now announced an initial $40 billion for a "Silk Road fund" to invest in infrastructure and industrial and financial cooperation, seeking to "break the connectivity bottleneck" in Asia. Xi made the pledge when he met with leaders of Bangladesh, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Tajikistan. The Fund is nothing less than the first step towards a regional system of mutually beneficial political  and economic relations with China at the center: As the President argued, linking Asian countries is

not merely about building roads and bridges or making linear connection of different places. More importantly, it should be a three-way combination of infrastructure, institutions and people-to-people exchanges and a five-way progress in policy communication, infrastructure connectivity, trade link, capital flow and understanding among peoples.

Of course, China's dream of a sinocentric Asia predates Xi. A direct train to Duisburg in Germany left Chongqing in 2011. A map of the envisioned Silk Road published by Xinhua depicts two routes: one through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Iran en route to Austria; and a maritime route from Chinese to Antwerp in Belgium. While the latter is set to benefit China's eastern coastal regions, the landroutes are also seen as a tool to enhance economic development in the poorer, landlocked western provinces of China.

Shannon Tiezzi shows how the Chinese media is meticulously covering China's regional project. She writes that

Xinhua’s recently unveiled an updated, interactive map depicting the extent of two Silk Road projects. A quick comparison to Xinhua’s earlier version of the map reveals a number of new “stops” that have been added in the past six months, including Moscow, Russia; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Colombo, Sri Lanka. And Beijing is still expanding its list of potential partners: in his recent visit to China, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani indicated his country’s willingness to be part of the project.

Given how expensive and durable the construction of train and road links is, Xi's large-scale investments in the region may tie neighbors into a sinocentric Asia for decades, significantly reducing their governments' capacity or incentives to oppose China. As Kerry Brown, Director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, has recently argued,

There are obligations being created here, dependencies and commitments, that many who are included in the Silk Road idea might need to seriously consider.

China's Silk Road Fund can be seen as part of a larger effort to establish a series of complementary or parallel structures in the region that may at some point challenge existing institutions such as the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank. It may also be seen as a threat by Russia and India, who will rightly interpret China's efforts as a challenge to their own attempts to assume regional leadership. Still, while China's economic power provides it with far more room for maneuver in the region, the other BRICS countries should certainly keep the case of China's Silk Road project in mind as they articulate their own regional strategies.

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Liu Jieyi, Permanent Representative of the People’s Republic of China to the UN

Review: Garwood-Gowers, Andrew (2014) China’s "Responsible Protection" concept : re-interpreting the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and military intervention for humanitarian purposes. Asian Journal of International Law.

The global discussion about the prevention of mass atrocities and the responsibility to protect (R2P) is often wrongly understood in the context of a West vs. Rest dynamic. The US and Europe, according to this view, tend to be quick to adopt resolutions criticizing governments of countries where atrocities occur, and often recommend military intervention, while the BRICS, led by Russia and China, are categorically opposed to both critical resolutions or intervention. The situation in Syria, according to this narrative, shows that we are witnessing a return to the days of Rwanda and Kosovo, in which there is a stark choice between inaction in the face of large-scale killings and action outlawed by the U.N. Charter.

Yet that view fails to take into account that the BRICS have officially endorsed R2P ten years ago, and since then emerging powers have played an important part in the process of turning R2P into a global norm. Both Russia and China, often seen as the most irresponsible stakeholders, have voted in favor of resolutions including R2P in the vast majority of cases. As tragic as Russia's and China's vetoing against Syria-related resolutions is (which, it must be noted, did not include the use of military force), it would be wrong to argue that the deadlock over Syria symbolizes the "new normal". Even after NATO's  controversial interpretation of resolution 1973 regarding Libya, Russia and China routinely support resolutions that mention the responsibility to protect of governments all over the world (even though mostly pillar I and II). It is also often forgotten that Beijing has supported several UNSC resolutions on Syria, including those mandating the UN Observer Mission, the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, and most recently a humanitarian aid access plan.

A recent semiofficial Chinese initiative - called Responsible Protection (RP) - powerfully shows that the discussion in China about the prevention of mass atrocities is far more sophisticated and advanced than is often thought. As an interesting journal article by Andrew Garwood-Gowers about RP explains, the concept originally appeared in a 2012 newspaper opinion piece by Ruan Zongze, the vice-president of the China Institute for International Studies (CIIS), which is the official think-tank of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An expanded account of the idea – explicitly framed as an example of China contributing “its public goods to the international community” - was published later that year. Since then, the author contends, RP has gained more prominence among Chinese decision-makers.

The similarities to Brazil's concept of the "responsibility while protecting" (RwP) are striking. Similarly to RwP, RP indicates that China does recognize, in principle, the need for non-consensual military intervention under R2P's third pillar, albeit under a more restrictive set of conditions than Western powers tend to follow. In that sense, both RwP and RP are contributions which advance and complement R2P’s third pillar, rather than attempting to replace the current version of R2P.

Garwood-Gowers writes that "RP continues RwP’s push towards “fleshing out” the normative content of what is currently a largely indeterminate third pillar." Indeed, in the September 2013 UNGA informal interactive dialogue on R2P, China indicated that it “supports discussions at the United Nations to discuss RwP by Brazil." The author's analysis includes a useful table in which he compares RwP to RP, looking at key principles such as just cause, right intention, last resort and monitoring mechanisms, among others.

Just like the RwP proposal developed by Antonio Patriota in 2011, which states that “[e]nhanced Security Council procedures are needed to monitor and assess the manner in which resolutions are interpreted and implemented to ensure responsibility while protecting”, the Chinese proposal calls for the establishment of "mechanisms of supervision, outcome evaluation and post factum accountability”. Even though China's proposal is less specific about how such a supervision should look like, its inclusion is remarkable considering that China is a member of the P-5, and capable of undertaking military interventions in the future.

Responsible Protection, albeit not yet launched officially by the Chinese government, shows that the concerns raised in Brazil's RwP concept are set to play an important role in the global discussion about the prevention of mass atrocities in the coming years. The issues China's concept raises are highly complex and unlikely to find much initial support among NATO countries. Yet given that both Brazil’s RwP and China’s RP have made guidelines a central part of their proposals for advancing the discussion about R2P’s third pillar, the issue of criteria must be taken seriously by Western powers. Garwood-Gowers is right to argue that a recent RP conference in Beijing was a positive first step in this direction which suggests that China is genuinely interested in engaging constructively in the debate over R2P’s third pillar.

Brazilian policy makers may ask why did not China support Brazil more openly when it went out on a limb by launching its RwP idea, thus seeking to advance the global debate. One possible answer is that the idea may not have matured enough in the internal Chinese discussion. As Brazil realized in 2011, officially endorsing a new concept carries the risk of initially being criticized from all sides. Unlike France, which currently spends considerable time and energy to promote the idea of the Responsibility not to Veto (RN2V) in case of mass atrocities, China may not regard norm entrepreneurship in this field as a foreign policy priority at this point.

Still, policy makers from around the world should recognize RP as an important and welcome contribution by China, and as an opportunity to engage with an actor that will inevitably play a key role in mass atrocity prevention in the coming decades. The deployment of the first Chinese infantry battalion to take part in a UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan and China's offer to help the Iraqi government in its fight against the Islamic State underline a trend of China's more systematic international engagement.

The author's suggestion that Beijing could introduce RP at the 7th BRICS Summit in Russia is excellent, and its inclusion in the final declaration would mark an important step in advancing the discussion. In the process, Brazil's experience with initially promoting RwP could be of great usefulness to policymakers in Beijing.

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What does China think about R2P?

The BRICS and the Future of R2P: Was Syria or Libya the Exception?

Is R2P a Western idea?

BRICS and the ‘Responsibility while Protecting’ concept (The Hindu)

A photograph portrait Cixi sent to US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, thanking him for his good wishes for her 70th birthday.

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Book review: Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang. London: Vintage Digital (2013), 528 pages. R$ 26,80 (ebook, www.amazon.com.br)

The Manchu Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) is generally thought of as a conservative figure in Chinese history, incapable of defending China's interests in the second half of the 19th century, when China lost its position as the world's largest economy.

Against this broad consensus, Jung Chang has written a lively biography that depicts Cixi as quite the opposite. Chang argues that Cixi, the most important woman in Chinese history, "brought a medieval empire into the modern age." Under Cixi's rule, China built the first railroads (the Beijing-Canton railroad remains a key artery in today's economy), installed telegraphs, introduced electricity, steam boats, modern mining, newspapers, established the state bank and promoted  freedom of religion.

The constitutional system Cixi initiated, Chang writes, included modern laws—commercial, civil, criminal, and judicial, and the establishment of law schools. In the early 20th century, she allowed women to appear in public, abolished foot-binding, lifted the ban on Han-Manchu intermarriage, and decreed that girls should be educated. Indeed, Cixi is depicted as unusually wise for her time and age. The author writes that "instinctively she seems to have known that a government needs dissenting voices", turning her into a some sort of Chinese counterpart of India's sage Mughal Emperor Akbar, who promoted religious tolerance during his long reign in the 16th and 17th century.

Contrary to her predecessor, Cixi believed that trade with the West would strengthen China. In a courageous move, the employed a large number of foreigners in the civil service to modernize the administrative structures. She also tried to introduce science into China's school system, a move that required hiring Western teachers. She promoted Hsu Chi-she, the first scholar to argue that China was just one of many countries, and not the center of the world. Unprecedented in China, she urged her temporary successor, Emperor Guangxu, to learn English. All that against a conservative establishment that continuously plotted against her and sought to remove foreigners from Chinese territory.

The book cites the diaries of the first Chinese officials who traveled to the West in the 19th century, the majority of whom was deeply impressed by democracy and the technological progress they saw. "If we are able to do what they are doing, there is no question that we, too, can be rich and strong," one wrote. Cixi tried to use these accounts to convince China's elite that change was necessary. It was under her that Chinese diplomacy emerged. Interestingly enough, an early diplomatic challenge -- aside from the rise of Japan -- was to help improve the conditions of Chinese slaves in Cuba and Peru.

Throughout the book, Chang's admiration for Cixi strikes the reader as somewhat exaggerated. "Never small-minded, she would invariably focus on the bigger picture", the author writes. Yet at the same time, she books described in detail how, after not feeling sufficiently revered, the Empress issued a decree that all her advisors would have to kneel in her presence - not exactly a sign of open-mindedness (even though the ended the practice in the later part of her reign). When a palace eunuch made a remark that offended her, she had him strangled to death. When she discovered a plan to assassinate her, she not only had the plotters beheaded, but also two innocent people, to avoid that the case turned public. 

Chang may be right in her claim that Cixi was the first Chinese leader who embraced modernity and sought to learn from the West -- yet one may also argue that there was little else the Empress could do. After all, it was under her that Western modernity was forced upon the Chinese, and she promoted adaptation only when she realized that continued isolation would have led to China's disintegration. Japan, by comparison, embraced change much more whole-heartedly, and, as a consequence, was able to defeat China militarily later on, despite Japan's much smaller size.

Chang's strength - her remarkable capacity to turn a lot of historical information into a highly readable account, accessible to a wide readership - is also the book's weakness. At times, her analysis suffers somewhat from an at times overly simplified style somewhat reminiscent of Isabelle Allende's tales, which depicts most individuals as either good or evil, and where goodness is always eventually rewarded. For example, Kang, a complex character and Cixi's main rival, is depicted rather crudely as a power-hungry plotter, yet he had many ideas about how to reform China.

Another problem is that the author depicts the West in an at times overly romanticized way. Chang reports how "one piece of information that made an impression on (the Empress) was the individual Chinese lives mattered to the Westerners." That sits oddly with England's ruthless promotion of the opium trade for commercial gain, which led the premature death of thousands of Chinese, and, decades later, with the bloody suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, thus assuring China's continued inferior status in international society.

The Empress was, without a doubt, a remarkable woman, and this book makes an important contribution to correcting her image as a cold-hearted despot who wrecked China. Cixi's influence was all the more remarkable because she did not, as a women, have formal power, and she was not allowed to leave the Forbidden City during the early years of her reign. She was never the official ruler of China, thus always battling those who questioned her legitimacy. Chang surely has a point when she argues that Chinese historians were reluctant to elevate a woman to the country's key reformers, thus highlighting the negative aspects of her time in power.

As China is about to turn into the world's largest economy, many commentators have recently pointed out that China had occupied the leading spot as late as 1870s. While that may be true -- largely due to the country's massive population -- Chang's book is a reminder of how poor and underdeveloped Chinese society was at the time, especially when compared to Western Europe or the United States. Even at the turn of the century, 99% of China's population was illiterate. Western military incursions met very little resistance, despite the fact that, contrary to India, China was a relatively centralized state. Even Cixi's military modernization program -- halted after incompetent Emperor Guangxu temporarily took over -- was insufficient for China to stand up to European powers which geared up to World War I.

Even though the book at times reads like a hagiography, Chang's book is a great contribution that makes Chinese history more accessible in the rest of the world, and one that corrects the way we think about Cixi's legacy. That is good news considering the flood of books currently being written about contemporary China, many of which provide no historical perspective. It may also be useful to those interested in the future of Chinese foreign policy. None of the other great powers of present and past, like the United States, France, Russia and the United Kingdom, were ever forced to accept such harsh treaties like the ones imposed on China during the "century of humiliation", leading to an inferiority complex the country was only able to shake off under Mao. This painful memory remains an important element of the way China relates to the rest of the world.

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Book review: “China Goes Global: The Partial Power” by David Shambaugh

Book review: “Taming American Power” by Stephen Walt

Book review: Restless Empire. China and the world since 1750. By Odd Arne Westad. Basic Books (2012), 528 pages. R$ 29,49 (ebook, www.amazon.com.br)

China and its society of both past and present, Odd Arne Westad argues in Restless Empire, are not as isolated from the rest of the world as most observers think. Quite to the contrary, China's history, the author argues, is profoundly marked by constant engagement with the outside world, and precisely that interaction has been the defining element in the creation of modern China. As a Chinese scholar wrote during the discussions about which political system the country should adopt after the fall of the Qing, "No characteristic of Chinese intellectual life .... is more prominent than foreign influence."

In his authoritative analysis, Westad described the history of the relationship between China and the rest of the world, going beyond mere interstate relations. Indeed, the author emphasizes the role of non-state actors - missionaries, traders, reformers, scholars, foreign government advisers, adventurers and migrants - who are the main protagonists of his book.

Far from describing China's history as that of an inward looking status-quo power, the author emphasizes the many expansionist wars that marked the country's history. "The dramatic Qing penetration of Central Asia", Westad writes, "is a story of intense conflict and, eventually, of genocide." (Until today, policy makers in Beijing struggle to control this "new frontier", Xinjiang, where the majority of the population is Muslim.) China also engaged the world in more peaceful ways. Over the past centuries, millions of Chinese have left the country in search of trade, adventure, or a better life for them. Since then, they continuously helped opening up Chinese society, by establishing international ties or by introducing new ideas and products. Westad writes that there is "no other country for which the diaspora and people in exile have played such a significant role in the reshaping of its fortunes."

Chinese who studied abroad in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century were decisive in modernizing the country by occupying leadership positions upon their return. Key figures such as Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping went to Europe as students, and were profoundly influenced by the experience. As late as 2002, a third of the members of China's Politburo had studied in the Soviet Union.

He also shows how the foreign-leased areas of China in the 19th and 20th century contributed to creating modern China, "providing the spaces in which the hybridity and fluidity of contemporary Chinese society were born." One of the book's most interesting parts describes how Japan, more than any country, shaped the way China attempted to adapt to modernity. Despite the traumatic defeat against a quickly modernizing Meiji Japan in 1894, the first time Qing China ever lost a war, Chinese reformers continued to admire Japan. If Japan, also a Confucian society, could adopt new ideas successfully, they argued, so could China. Indeed, reformers often presented Western ideas as Japanese ones, which made it easier for Chinese conservatives, often profoundly anti-Western, to accept and implement them. Later, after World War I, anti-Japanese sentiment in China became a key element of Chinese nationalism, a potent domestic force until today. And yet, Japanese nationalism -- and the racial concepts it included -- served as a model for Chinese nationalists.
 

Satirical drawing in the magazine Punch (29.9.1894), showing the victory of "small" Japan over "large" China.

To foreign observers, Chinese society may seem utterly opaque and resistant to outside influence. Yet the changes China has undergone over the past decades are remarkable and very much a product of broad and multi-faceted dialogue with the rest of the world. Thousands of foreign advisers played a key role in modernizing China throughout the second half of the nineteenth and all of the twentieth century - from Europe, Japan, or, after World War II, from the Soviet Union. In several instances, foreigners occupied key positions - like heading the nation's tax collection - showing a degree of openness unthinkable in the West. In the 1920s and 1930s, Eugene Chen, born in Trinidad in 1878, served as China's foreign minister, although he spoke no Chinese.

Interestingly enough, Jean Monnet, who would later become one of the founders of the European Union, worked in China for several years in the 1930s, as chairman of the Chinese government's committee to facilitate the availability of credit for companies that wanted to invest in China.

The impressive richness in detail, clear language and usefulness to make sense of today's China turn Restless Empire into a must-read for China scholars. It powerfully undermines the myth that China has been and remains relatively isolated from the world. Foreign ideas will continue to shape the way China develops: Today, millions of Chinese students study at leading universities around the world, and many of those who return will occupy positions of influence. Indeed, the case of China suggests that, sending students abroad is perhaps one of the most useful investments a government can make to promote long-term development.

After Mao's victory and the initial purge of anything foreign, the Communist Party began to heavily import ideas and concepts from the Soviet Union, in what was intended to become "the largest transfer of foreign knowledge into China ever": "From city planning to agricultural reform, from cultural institutions to labor camps, from nationalities policies to foreign policy, the new socialist state that the CCP wanted to build was to be modeled on the Soviet experience." Beijing and other major cities were refashioned in Soviet style. In return, Soviet aid to China became, in relative terms, history's biggest foreign assistance program in human history, which included, as so often in Chinese history since the mid-19th century, foreign government advisers and scholarships for Chinese students in the USSR.

As China was engulfed in Mao's madness of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, China briefly cut off all its ties with the rest of the world -- described in detail in the chapter "China Alone." Even Cuba, North Korea and North Vietnam openly criticized China, and the Soviet and East German embassies were besieged. Yet soon after Mao's death, China would again eagerly study foreign ideas -- this time, capitalism -- and engage with the rest of the world in an unprecedented way. Westad calls the final decades of the 20th century "America's decades in China": US-American influence was everywhere: "in the economy, politics, arts, and consumer patterns." After his visit to the United States in 1979, Deng told his colleagues that he could not sleep for several nights, thinking about how China might achieve such abundance. Today, China's capitalism is indeed unlike the European and Japanese type, with their safety nets, but similar to that of the United States, with an emphasis on mobility, opportunity and personal responsibility.

Restless Empire raises many questions about the role China may play once it turns into the world's greatest economy. China's definitions of modernity have varied dramatically over the past two centuries, but except for a brief period, they were always strongly influenced by either Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union or the United States. Still, the author insists that China never fully copied foreign models, but always developed hybrid ones. "China", he writes, "is on its way to developing distinct forms of modernity, connected to what has been happening elsewhere, but still separate, because it comes out of a very particular past." That may be an important observation to keep in mind as we seek to predict China's future role in global order.

Read also:

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The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

China’s Silk Road Fund: Towards a Sinocentric Asia

China’s parallel global order

Book Review: Soft Power and US Foreign Policy. By Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox (eds.) London: Routledge (2010), 256 pages. R$ 124, 35 (ebook, www.amazon.com.br)

A frequently discussed question in the context of ongoing multipolarization is whether soft power in the emerging world has risen commensurately to its hard power. Could China's soft power rival that of the United States once it becomes the world's largest economy?

In China Goes Global: The Partial Power (reviewed here), David Shambaugh says no, arguing that China has no friends and no soft power, and that its cultural products fail to set global trends like those of the United States.

The concept of soft power is one of the most notable innovations in the discipline of international relations since the end of the Cold War. It is one of the few ideas developed in academia that has successfully been adopted by policy makers around the world. One of the reasons of its success, paradoxically, is that the concept remains vague and that it means different things to different people. Many leading academics think it is not a serious concept (similar to Huntington's notorious Clash of Civilizations, which is little more than a catchy term). Indeed, while often mentioned in academic and policy debates, a relatively small number of academic articles and books exist that seek to make use of the concept in empirical or theoretical debates. Soft Power and US Foreign Policy, a book organized by Inderjeet Parmar and Michael Cox, is a rare example.

The term's frequent use often leads to confusion. For example, the fact that Iranian youth like to play US-American video games, or that Chinese adolescents wear Chicago Bulls shirts is often cited as proof of US soft power. Yet it is worth remembering Nye's original definition.

Power, Joe Nye often points out, is "the ability to affect others to get the outcomes one wants." Soft power, then, is the use of "attraction and persuasion rather than the use of coercion or force in foreign policy. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals and policies." Soft power is thus a country's ability to get what it wants by attracting and persuading others to adopt your goals. It involves "leading by example." In short, to have others want to support your goals. It differs from hard power, the ability to use the carrots and sticks of economic and military might to make others follow your will.

The young Iranian playing a Western video game is thus only an example of Western soft power if it can be shown that this would somehow increase the chances of Iran doing what the United States wants. Mere attraction without tangible follow-up action (such as calling on the Iranian government to stop opposing the United States) counts for little. One may like video games developed in the United States, but still criticize US policy in the Middle East. In the same way, lovers of samba music are not necessarily more likely to support Brazil's candidacy for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. The causal link between attraction and policy outcomes may sound intuitive, but it is extremely difficult to establish. We have little evidence of how it is supposed to work in practice. Still, Nye argues that having an attractive culture is more likely to help than hinder a country's national interest.

Yet even Nye himself is ambiguous about what counts as soft power and what does not. For example, he sometimes cites economic assistance as an example of soft power, even though it requires financial means, which, in turn, are an element of hard power. Rich countries can provide economic aid, poor countries cannot. Nye argues that soft power is intangible -- yet, as Zahran and Ramos point out in their excellent chapter, economic credibility, though intangible, very much depends on tangible sources. Even shrewd diplomacy, seemingly an intangible good, requires a global network of embassies, which requires cash to sustain.

Many observers wrote the BRICS' growing soft power during the first decade of the 21st century, yet it was largely a product of their fast economic growth -- i.e., an expression of their (real or expected) hard power. In the same way, many observers pointed to the West's declining soft power -- precisely because of its stagnant economy. The authors are also correct to point out that Nye blurs a complex relation between behaviors, resources and strategy when he adopts the term hard power as a synonym for command power and hard power resources, and soft power as a synonym for co-optation power and soft power resources.

Geiger's chapter is of some interest, yet feels somewhat out of place since it analyzes Nye's book The Power Game, a novel that is not really about soft power at all. Parmar's chapter provides interesting insight into the role of US-American foundations in promoting a positive image of the United States during the Cold War. In their entirety, the chapters that comprise Soft Power and US Foreign Policy provide a useful critique of Nye's concept, even though Zahran's and Layne's chapters stand out as they test the concept's theoretical coherence (even though Layne's analysis veers off into a more general critique of liberal internationalism).

Applying the idea of soft power to the case of China shows further limitations and contradictions of the idea. While the popularity of artists like Andy Warhol around the world is seen as an example of US soft power, few would say Ai Weiwei's popularity in the West is an example of Chinese soft power. Soft power, hence, seems to be limited to state actors who like to promote their image abroad, even though they are not the agents of that power. Many other examples (The Interview, Charlie Hebdo, etc.) show that the concept fails to withstand more rigorous scrutiny.

Christopher Layne presents the reader with a cautionary tale for all those who study the idea of soft power. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson was perhaps, on a global scale, the most popular US president in history. His speeches about self-determination and global peace inspired millions in Europe and the Global South. Across the European continent, he was greeted like a rock star, and hundreds of thousands lined the streets to greet him. He certainly possessed almost unlimited soft power, and yet, during the negotiations in Versailles, Wilson failed to have it his way. Clemenceau and Lloyd George, two seasoned political operators, were tenacious defenders of their nations' interests. Wilson's soft power seemed to be of little help.

Layne also rightly points out that, in essence, soft power seems to be about international legitimacy. That would explain why the United States lost, as Nye likes to point out, so much soft power when George W. Bush was president. US-American culture was as popular as ever around the world, but Bush pursued a more unilateral strategy many other countries did not agree with.

Several authors allude to the fact that, when Nye explains the role of soft power in the United States' effort to build post-World War II order, his ideas are strikingly US-centric. In this narrative, the cultural attractiveness of the United States convinced others to voluntarily hand the reigns of power to the United States. What is overlooked is that consolidating liberal order involved the stationing of US troops in the defeated Axis powers, massive economic aid, the threats and coercion against communists in France and Italy, and efforts, in Europe and elsewhere, to impose US political and economic preferences. It was, above all, US hard power that made its leadership possible. In the same way, US victory of the Cold War must be primarily attributed to a more efficient economic system, not its cultural attractiveness.

Soft power is thus not really a stand-alone concept, and could be interpreted as a sort of narrative to preserve American hegemony by legitimizing US dominance and reassuring other states that the US will not abuse its preponderant power. It may be this concept -- legitimacy through multilateralism and the broad acceptance of global norms -- which stands theoretical scrutiny much better than Nye's soft power. Given its emphasis on shared democratic values, soft power can also be read as an argument for liberal internationalism.

What does this all mean vis-à-vis the rise of China? First of all, as the above discussion shows, soft power remains so vague a concept that those who apply it to China will reach wildly differing conclusions. For any such analyses, it is therefore crucial to explain in great detail how the concept is defined.

Rather producing new insights about the rise of China, applying the idea of soft power to Asia's leading economy will show the concept's limitations. While Nye may initially have argued that soft and hard power are entirely independent from each other, a closer analysis shows that the two go together. If the Chinese economy continues to maintain its dynamism, its attractiveness is almost assured -- provided that it can maintain domestic political stability, avoid environmental disaster, abstain from engaging in regional wars, and not break too many international rules. In fact, the Chinese government's soft power strategy seems to have a much more moderate aim, as Shogo Suzuki explains in this chapter: to reduce global anxiety about the rise of China. Indeed, the Chinese government has eagerly embraced the concept of soft power, but its strategy amounts to little more than an old-fashioned propaganda campaign, or public and cultural diplomacy to improve China's image abroad -- hence, no real need for a new term.

Many of the arguments used by analysts (like Shambaugh) about why China’s soft power is limited – often made from a Western-centric perspective- are bound to weaken once its economic weight increases. It is true that China currently has few friends – but that will change if China is increasingly able to economically support a growing number of countries or provide them with security guarantees. In the same way, the alliances many states will entertain with the United States may weaken, as seen already in places like South Africa, Russia, Venezuela and Argentina.

And yet, China does face significant obstacles, several of which could be, to some degree associated to the realm of soft power. The lack of free speech in China will inevitably make it difficult for Chinese newspapers be seen as trustworthy and impartial abroad, reducing their influence in global affairs. It will also keep the world's leading minds from accepting offers from Chinese universities. Immigration to China is smaller as a result, greatly affecting China's capacity to attract innovative industries. More seriously, it will keep Chinese students and future elites isolated from international debates, making it more difficult for them to set the global agenda later on. All these aspects provide tough challenges for the Chinese government - yet bundling them together in an amorphous, ill-defined concept of soft power may not necessarily take the debate forward.

Read also:

Book review: “The future of Power” by Joseph Nye Jr.

Book review: “China Goes Global: The Partial Power” by David Shambaugh

The myth of inward-looking China

Book review: Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China. By Evan Osnos. Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 417 pages.  R$36,14 (ebook, www.amazon.com.br)

China, like any other non-democratic regime, poses a fundamental dilemma to scholars: How to be truthful without losing access to valuable sources in the Chinese government, academia and civil society? This is particularly important for those who have set their career on studying China. Mastering the Chinese language is a multiple-year effort, yet those who turn into personae non gratae will find it difficult to conduct field research, find positions as visiting faculty at Chinese universities, or interview Chinese policy makers. Most scholars are therefore cautious not to cross the "invisible line".

International correspondents who leave China after working there for years are, by contrast, in a privileged position: They no longer depend on the Chinese government's goodwill and are in a position to write an honest account about their time in the world's most populous nation. And indeed, Evan Osnos' Age of Ambition is remarkably candid about corruption, oppression and struggle in China. Indeed, his chapters about systemic corruption of absurd scale and waste of public resources are by far the most interesting part of the book.

The main narrative in Osnos's book is the transformation from collectivism to individualism in Chinese society. The swiftness of this change is dizzying and has made China, in many ways, far more individualistic and materialistic than many Western societies. Personal ambition is more explicit, and Osnos compares today's China to late 19th century America, when robber barons ruled an increasingly unequal and exploitative economy. The sense of urgency seems omnipresent. The author cites a Chinese tourist in Europe who marvels  at a car that stops at a crosswalk. "Drivers in China think 'I can't pause. Otherwise, I'll never get anywhere.'" The Chinese word for ambition, ye xin, literally it means “wild heart” and it has only recently shed its negative connotation. After all, open personal ambition, under the dark days of Mao, was considered undesirable.

Yet while the examples the provided are colorful, the overall impression they create is somewhat caricaturesque and makes the Chinese seem almost mindlessly active, and  almost nonhuman. For example, Osnos writes that sex was so taboo in the early 20th century that some couples struggled to have children "because they lacked a firm grasp of the mechanics." That is hardly plausible and makes the uninformed reader think of the Chinese as easily controllable robotic creatures. There is plenty of evidence of liberal mores both before and during Mao's rule. In the same way, the author seems to relish listing weird book titles that are popular in China -- yet a reciting the titles of cheap books sold at gas stations in rural parts of the United States or Europe would sound equally bizarre. In that way, and many others, China is more like the rest of us than Age of Ambitions seems to suggest.

The book's engaging style makes it an ideal introduction for those who have little previous knowledge of China. Those who know the country are likely to be somewhat disappointed, as Osnos spends much time dwelling on famous individuals, like Chen Guangcheng, whose trajectories are well-known to most China watchers. Also, regular readers of the New Yorker will recognize several sections, such as a chapter about Chinese tourists in Europe, or about a national outcry after a child was run over and nobody bothered to help.

Osnos emphasizes the tension between China's recent obsession with individualism and the desire to find a voice on the one hand, and government repression on the other. Children recite sentences like "I am unique" and "I am the greatest miracle of nature" in school, yet citizens can neither vote nor freely express themselves. One can tell how much the author enjoyed living in China -- he speaks Mandarin fluently and preferred living in a run-down apartment in a poorer part of Beijing rather than a quiet high-rise that provided little access to common citizens. Yet his overall judgement is unequivocal -- to his mind, the Chinese government is morally bankrupt. At the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, people had been discussing the topic, in code, calling it "the truth" -- zhenxiang. The censors picked up on it, and when people searched Weibo for anything on the topic, they received an emblematic warning: "In accordance with relevant laws, regulations and policies, search results for 'the truth' have not been displayed."

In addition to writing about torture, government censorship and hypocrisy (common citizens being publicly humiliated for adultery, while many party officials entertain mistresses and prostitutes), he details how the Communist Party no longer promotes the best and the brightest to top positions -- long seen as the seal of legitimacy. All this implicitly lends Age of Ambition a pre-revolutionary atmosphere. And yet, the Communist Party has so far held the upper hand, against all odds. As the Global Times, a party tabloid, asserts, "For 30 years Ai Weieis have emerged and fallen... the real social trend is that they will be eliminated."

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China’s Silk Road Fund: Towards a Sinocentric Asia

http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/the-us-should-celebrate-its-decline/

The Upside of Down argues that the U.S. is declining — and that’s a good thing, especially for Washington.

By Oliver Stuenkel
June 25, 2014

Charles Kenny. The Upside of Down. Why the Rise of the Rest is Good for the West. Basic Books, 2014. 256 pages.

“Being number one has its advantages, to be sure, but increasingly, we need other countries to step up — and it shouldn’t frighten us when they do.”

The debate about the future of global order is dominated by U.S. scholars who believe the United States’ leadership is set to endure (such as Robert Kagan’s The World America Made, Bruce Jones’ Still Ours To Lead) and U.S. declinists (such as Ann Lee’s What the U.S. Can Learn from China and Stephen Leeb’s Red Alert). Kagan and Jones believe that China’s rise will not threaten U.S. global leadership. The declinists (often called pessimists by critics) believe that unipolarity is soon coming to an end or has already ended.

Kenny’s book The Upside of Down does not easily fit into any of these categories. The author early on says that relative decline is inevitable — it is not a matter of choice, as proponents of a muscular foreign policy (such as Kagan) would argue. “It is important to recognize that policies to ‘regain US dominance’ are destined to fail,” he writes. The rise of the rest is not only well under way, he says, it is also desirable. Kenny argues that the United States should embrace, not resist, a world in which “the rest” catch up with the West. The author is aware that this may sound counterintuitive:

International relations theory is too often presented in purely relative terms. The realist position effectively proposes that every country is solely out to be top of the pile. That’s impossible for the vast majority, of course, and dumb even for the few for whom it is plausible. This isn’t a zero-sum competition, and foreign policy thinking that treats the world that way is immensely counterproductive.

Kenny’s comment that the United States could learn from Britain, which is quite relaxed about its decline, is not likely to go down well with foreign policy makers in Washington, D.C. His argument is obvious, but rarely made: The lives of U.S. citizens would not necessarily be negatively affected if the United States were merely one of several poles in a multipolar system. As he writes in a recent op-ed promoting his book:

…the link between the absolute size of your economy and pretty much any measure that truly matters is incredibly weak. Whenever China takes over the top spot, it will still lag far behind the world’s leading countries on indicators reflecting quality of life.

If the U.S. plays its cards right, the rise of China and India is terrific news — their rise will lift all boats, including that of the United States’ economy. Between 1990 and 2012, the proportion of U.S. exports going to emerging countries more than doubled, and it will soon rise even further.

Interestingly, Kenny writes that “there is absolutely no reason why the twenty-first century should not be an ‘American Century’ — if by that is meant America retaining or even enhancing its global reputation as a country to be emulated.” That raises an important question — is the United States admired for its education, civil rights, and openness, or rather because of its sheer economic and military superiority? Kenny says hard power does not matter at all. That sounds somewhat improbable. After all, it is precisely U.S. economic and military dominance that has allowed it, over the past six decades, to shape the world according to its interests and disseminate U.S. values, ideas and culture. It seems highly questionable at best that the United States can remain the world’s most attractive society once China has overtaken it. For a country that has become worryingly accustomed to ruling the world, anything but being in charge is likely to be quite catastrophic.

Finally, Kenny’s ‘happy relative decline’ proposition raises important questions about who will provide global public goods in the future. Who will provide maritime security, and who will provide security guarantees to countries like Japan? Kenny hardly mentions how U.S. decline will affect the dilemmas of security competition. Put differently, who will fill the void the United States will leave behind in geopolitics? Still, The Upside of Down is a great read full of interesting data, and a great contribution to the debate about the future of global order.

Oliver Stuenkel is Professor of International Relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, Brazil.

Read more:

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A photograph portrait Cixi sent to US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, thanking him for his good wishes for her 70th birthday.

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Book review: Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang. London: Vintage Digital (2013), 528 pages. R$ 26,80 (ebook, www.amazon.com.br)

The Manchu Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) is generally thought of as a conservative figure in Chinese history, incapable of defending China's interests in the second half of the 19th century, when China lost its position as the world's largest economy.

Against this broad consensus, Jung Chang has written a lively biography that depicts Cixi (pronounced "Tseshi") as quite the opposite. Chang argues that Cixi, the most important woman in Chinese history, "brought a medieval empire into the modern age." Under Cixi's rule, China built the first railroads (the Beijing-Canton railroad remains a key artery in today's economy), installed telegraphs, introduced electricity, steam boats, modern mining, newspapers, established the state bank and promoted  freedom of religion.

The constitutional system Cixi initiated, Chang writes, included modern laws—commercial, civil, criminal, and judicial, and the establishment of law schools. In the early 20th century, she allowed women to appear in public, abolished foot-binding, lifted the ban on Han-Manchu intermarriage, and decreed that girls should be educated. Indeed, Cixi is depicted as unusually wise for her time and age. The author writes that "instinctively she seems to have known that a government needs dissenting voices", turning her into a some sort of Chinese counterpart of India's sage Mughal Emperor Akbar, who promoted religious tolerance during his long reign in the 16th and 17th century.

Contrary to her predecessor, Cixi believed that trade with the West would strengthen China. In a courageous move, she employed a large number of foreigners in the civil service to modernize the administrative structures. She also tried to introduce science into China's school system, a move that required hiring Western teachers. She promoted Hsu Chi-she, the first scholar to argue that China was just one of many countries, and not the center of the world. Unprecedented in China, she urged her temporary successor, Emperor Guangxu, to learn English. All that against a conservative establishment that continuously plotted against her and sought to remove foreigners from Chinese territory.

The book cites the diaries of the first Chinese officials who traveled to the West in the 19th century, the majority of whom was deeply impressed by democracy and the technological progress they saw. "If we are able to do what they are doing, there is no question that we, too, can be rich and strong," one wrote. Cixi tried to use these accounts to convince China's elite that change was necessary. It was under her that Chinese diplomacy emerged. Interestingly enough, an early diplomatic challenge -- aside from the rise of Japan -- was to help improve the conditions of Chinese slaves in Cuba and Peru.

Throughout the book, Chang's admiration for Cixi strikes the reader as somewhat exaggerated. "Never small-minded, she would invariably focus on the bigger picture", the author writes. Yet at the same time, the book described in detail how, after not feeling sufficiently revered, the Empress issued a decree that all her advisors would have to kneel in her presence - not exactly a sign of open-mindedness (even though she ended the practice in the later part of her reign). When a palace eunuch made a remark that offended her, she had him strangled to death. When she discovered a plan to assassinate her, she not only had the plotters beheaded, but also two innocent people, to avoid that the case turned public. 

Chang may be right in her claim that Cixi was the first Chinese leader who embraced modernity and sought to learn from the West -- yet one may also argue that there was little else the Empress could do. After all, it was under her that Western modernity was forced upon the Chinese, and she promoted adaptation only when she realized that continued isolation would have led to China's disintegration. Japan, by comparison, embraced change much more whole-heartedly, and, as a consequence, was able to defeat China militarily later on, despite Japan's much smaller size.

Chang's strength - her remarkable capacity to turn a lot of historical information into a highly readable account, accessible to a wide readership - is also the book's weakness. At times, her analysis suffers somewhat from an at times overly simplified style somewhat reminiscent of Isabelle Allende's tales, which depicts most individuals as either good or evil, and where goodness is always eventually rewarded. For example, Kang, a complex character and Cixi's main rival, is depicted rather crudely as a power-hungry plotter, yet he had many ideas about how to reform China.

Another problem is that the author depicts the West in an at times overly romanticized way. Chang reports how "one piece of information that made an impression on (the Empress) was the individual Chinese lives mattered to the Westerners." That sits oddly with England's ruthless promotion of the opium trade for commercial gain, which led the premature death of thousands of Chinese, and, decades later, with the bloody suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, thus assuring China's continued inferior status in international society.

The Empress was, without a doubt, a remarkable woman, and this book makes an important contribution to correcting her image as a cold-hearted despot who wrecked China. Cixi's influence was all the more remarkable because she did not, as a woman, have formal power, and she was not allowed to leave the Forbidden City during the early years of her reign. She was never the official ruler of China, thus always battling those who questioned her legitimacy. Chang surely has a point when she argues that Chinese historians were reluctant to elevate a woman to the country's key reformers, thus highlighting the negative aspects of her time in power.

As China is about to turn into the world's largest economy, many commentators have recently pointed out that China had occupied the leading spot as late as 1870s. While that may be true -- largely due to the country's massive population -- Chang's book is a reminder of how poor and underdeveloped Chinese society was at the time, especially when compared to Western Europe or the United States. Even at the turn of the century, 99% of China's population was illiterate. Western military incursions met very little resistance, despite the fact that, contrary to India, China was a relatively centralized state. Even Cixi's military modernization program -- halted after incompetent Emperor Guangxu temporarily took over -- was insufficient for China to stand up to European powers which geared up to World War I.

Even though the book at times reads like a hagiography, Chang's book is a great contribution that makes Chinese history more accessible to the rest of the world, and one that corrects the way we think about Cixi's legacy. That is good news considering the flood of books currently being written about contemporary China, many of which provide no historical perspective. It may also be useful to those interested in the future of Chinese foreign policy. None of the other great powers of present and past, like the United States, France, Russia and the United Kingdom, were ever forced to accept such harsh treaties like the ones imposed on China during the "century of humiliation", leading to an inferiority complex the country was only able to shake off under Mao. This painful memory remains an important element of the way China relates to the rest of the world.

Read also:

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China’s parallel global order

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Book review: “China Goes Global: The Partial Power” by David Shambaugh

Book review: “Taming American Power” by Stephen Walt

On March 26, the 2015 Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) will welcome policy makers, business leaders and journalists from around the world to Hainan Province. Modeled on the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, the first BFA meeting took place in 2002, and has since then turned into a key element of China's global public diplomacy strategy (it began as a joint project with other countries, but is now largely controlled by the Chinese government). Contrary to the many other Chinese initiatives that, in their entirety, could create a 'parallel order' -- such as the BRICS-led New Development Bank (NDB), the Silk Road Fund, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) -- the Boao Forum for Asia falls into the 'soft power' category of China's global strategy.

The Chinese political leadership clearly regards the event as a pillar of the country's foreign policy. The BFA's Secretary General is Long Yongtu, who negotiated China's entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Just like in 2013, Xi Jinping will give the keynote address of the 2015 edition of the event, this time themed "Asia's New Future: Toward a Community of Common Destiny". Among the participants have been not only political leaders from the region (more than 10 heads of government and state will address the opening session), but also business leaders like Bill Gates, George Soros or Ratan Tata, who is now member of the BFA's board. Last year, an additional regional BFA took place in Dubai, regarded as a strategic hub for Chinese investors. 

While the BFA's official focus is to strengthen economic integration in the region (involving numerous working groups and sector-specific discussions on the sidelines of the summit), the forum's scope has recently expanded, and today helps China set the agenda of the discussions in the region. Two years ago, the BFA began discussing Asia-US relations and food security, both of great importance to China. In 2014, debates included topics such as cyberspace and the role of the United States in the Asia-Pacific region.

BRICS leaders at the 2011 Boao Forum for Asia, which took place together with the second BRICS Summit

RT, a Russian state-funded television network, has somewhat triumphantly claimed that the BFA was on its way to rival the yearly Davos convention. Yet critics are right to point out that the Boao Forum for Asia still has a long way to go before it can challenge the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland. Contrary to the discussions in the Swiss ski resort, civil society is largely absent from the Chinese tropical island, as are discussions about human rights.

Rather than rivaling Davos, Chinese policy makers' strategy, for now, is more modest but no less astute: By hosting a vibrant regional forum, it can continuously strengthen its "framing power" -- its capacity to frame the debate and redefine ideas and concepts in ways that serves its national interest. That may involve subtle strategies such as omitting a certain topic and promoting another, or by convincing neighboring countries to use the BFA to discuss a specific issue, and not other platforms that involve the United States, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). These details may seem insignificant at first, but they are certain to enhance China's capacity to shape discussions in its own favor in the long term, just like the United States shrewdly decides to discuss issues in forums where it possesses the greatest leverage.

For example, in 2012, the West essentially succeeded in stopping the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) - dominated by developing countries - from further analyzing the global financial crisis. As a senior U.S. delegate declared in one of the last negotiating sessions in Doha, “We don’t want UNCTAD providing intellectual competition with the IMF and the World Bank.” In effect, the West said, “We do not want UNCTAD to discuss any of these issues, because UNCTAD is not competent to do so. They are for the G20 and IMF.”

The Boao Forum for Asia is thus a notable element of China's broader effort to engage internationally and slowly increase its autonomy on the global stage. Over the coming yeras, the BFA's list of participants will be a useful way to measure China's regional convening power, an important factor in a region that generally remains suspicious of Beijing's ambitions.

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China’s Silk Road Fund: Towards a Sinocentric Asia

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega and Wang Jing, president of HKND, the Chinese company that promises to build the Nicaragua Canal

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Whoever possesses the passage between the two oceans can consider himself the owner of the world.

                                                              Hernán Cortés, in a letter to Spain's King Carlos V

Nicaragua can become, better than Constantinople, the necessary route of the great commerce of the world.

                                                                                                                             Napoleon

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Two months ago, construction of the so-called Grand Interoceanic Canal (usually called Nicaragua Canal), has finally begun. If completed, the canal would be the largest civil-engineering and construction project in the history of mankind, spanning 276 kilometers across the Central American nation.

The idea of building a canal in Nicaragua is not new. As Jon Lee Anderson writes, Cornelius Vanderbilt, a U.S. tycoon, had taken a strong interest in the project.

Soon, the United States took up the idea of a canal, and U.S. Congress began trying to decide whether to build it in Panama or Nicaragua. In 1901, the Nicaraguan government gave the U.S. government exclusive rights to build a canal there. But before the issue went to a vote the chief of the powerful pro-Panama lobby mailed each U.S. senator a one-centavo Nicaraguan postage stamp, featuring an image of Lake Managua, luridly illuminated by an exploding volcano. Panama, which had no volcanoes in the canal zone, won by a margin of eight votes.

Complete humiliation for Nicaragua would follow in 1914, when, in exchange for 3 million US dollars, Nicaragua's President Emiliano Chamorro granted the U.S. government the exclusive right to build a Nicaraguan canal. The agreement essentially prevented Nicaragua from building a canal to compete with the Panama Canal. The treaty was only abolished in the 1970s. Since then, Nicaraguan leaders have dreamed of turning the canal into a reality, partly in the hope that it would promote development in the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

It would take the previously unknown businessman Wang Jing, with likely approval and support of the Chinese government, to revive the project. Wang's Hong Kong-listed company HKND now holds a 100-year-long concession over the canal's operation. The cost of the construction is officially estimated at forty billion dollars, even though experts believe the total cost will be closer to one hundred billion dollars. Even the feasibility studies conducted so far have cost several hundred million dollars, suggesting Wang's confidence. Wang has hired the China Railroad Construction Corporation, a company that has overseen the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China.

The project's financial viability is questionable, and its environmental consequences could be disastrous. The Nicaragua Canal could accommodate ships capable of carrying up to 25,000 containers, which may increasingly be the norm, thus successfully competing with the Panama Canal, which can only accommodate ships carrying 13,000 containers. Competition would reduce shipping prices and boost trade.

Yet China's objectives are more likely to be geopolitical. HKND is exempt from local taxes and commercial regulations, and has been granted hiring and land-expropriating powers. Along with the concession to build the canal, Wang now holds the rights to the build large seaports on both coasts, new airports, railroads and highways. He has also won contracts to build a new telecommunications network. The plan also includes a free trade zone. Notably, a recently approved reform overturned a constitutional stricture against foreign soldiers being garrisoned in Nicaragua, in theory paving the way for a Chinese military base -- even though such a step seems extremely unlikely in the short or medium-term, as Beijing has no interest in openly challenging the United States. 

Considering that it is not officially behind the project, and that the upfront cost was relatively small, the Chinese government could still step back from the project if political or logistical problems arose. It would thus be premature to regard the Nicaragua Canal project as part of a global version of what some analysts describe as the "string of pearls", a network of Chinese military and commercial facilities in the Indian Ocean.

Yet if Wang succeeds in building the canal, the geopolitical consequences for the region would be significant. The project will employ at least fifty thousand workers, many of whom will be Chinese. At a recent OAS Summit, US Secretary of State John Kerry famously told the region's leaders that the era of the Monroe Doctrine was over. And indeed, the US government has not commented much on China's plans in Nicaragua, beyond asking for more transparency. The creation of a massive Chinese footprint in Latin America, however would still alter regional dynamics far more than any of the previous partnerships China has set up with governments in the region.

Read also:

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Book review: “The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China” by David J. Silbey