China’s Charm Offensive III: Shortcomings, Limits And Dangers

Amid enormous growth and capable leadership, China’s re-emergence as a great power after centuries of discord has raised hopes and fears across Asia and around the world. It has judiciously marshaled its resources and capabilities to achieve its goals and advance its interests. Yet there are obvious shortcomings and limits to what China can achieve, ranging from the brevity of the free ride it is enjoying within the international system and the eventual eruption of populist outrage in many a country China is doing business in.

Joshua Kurlantzick achieves a rare balance in writing “China’s Charm Offensive” in that he portrays multiple viewpoints of China’s rise and use of soft power, from negative connotations related to key Chinese mercantile policies to promising aspects of Chinese aid and investment that fills gaps in international development schemes like roads and bridges. He is clear about China’s challenges in deploying its soft power, both in the short term and in the less certain out years.

Its best to frame these challenges as questions, because the messy triangle of Chinese interests, local, national, and global public opinion (often influenced by the activities of NGO’s and other advocacy groups) and American policies can inflame tenuous matters into worst-case scenarios or manage to seize opportunity from the clutches of disaster. No outcome is written in stone nor “bound” to happen.

Could Chinese influence “prove disastrous in other countries- an obstacle overseas to environmental protection, to better labor policies, to corporate governance?….

…could China essentially wind up exporting its own domestic weaknesses?”

Certainly, China’s abysmal record on all these matters draws real concern amid the potential for its effect on other developing nations. Kurlantizick tackles the issue by visiting the small Peruvian town of San Juan de Marcona, where lax safety standards and horrible working conditions at a Chinese owned mine led to constant strikes, local disillusionment with the Chinese and the importation of Chinese workers in response, thus setting up a classic exploitive relationship where China takes and takes, but offers little to nothing in return to the locals or even the nation. Such activities continue in Zambia and elsewhere, which breed seething anti-Chinese sentiment.

Could China’s aid policies hinder development and security?

Kurlantzick relates recent events in Cambodia that are ominous for what current Chinese use of soft power (in the expanded definition of the term; their economic prowess and assets) could promise for the future. The following occurred when the World Bank threatened to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars of assistance to Cambodia because of its deteriorating human rights record and allegedly rampant corruption;

“Five or ten years ago, Cambodia would have had to comply with the World Bank and the donor’s demands. Not now… On a visit to Cambodia in April 2006 Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promised Phnom Penh $600 million worth of loans and grants. Meanwhile, the World Bank did not cut Cambodia off, perhaps because it feared that it would then have no influence in the country.”

Similar events unfolded in Laos, Angola and elsewhere, as he describes throughout the book. Its not just the rogue regimes (North Korea, Sudan, Zimbabwe) that China backs, as this is obvious to everyone, but corrupt and greedy elites across the developing world, including nominal US allies in Thailand, the Philippines and Nigeria. Their misrule with Chinese support, if not adjusted by wiser Chinese policies that look beyond resource needs and open markets, could, indeed already has, generate a furious backlash against Chinese business and political interests in the countries.

Could growing Chinese assertiveness ultimately alienate their neighbors and others while annulling much of their soft power?

“China could further alienate other nations if it seems to be using multilateral institutions as a cover, without jettisoning Beijing’s own more aggressive, even military aims. …. Any Chinese decision that appears arrogant or targeted towards Chinese domination of the region will cause a backlash.”

Kurlantzick takes care to mention often the importance of multilateral institutions in Asia, writing “if China drops its rhetoric of “win-win” relationships and makes more aggressive, unilateral demands, it could provoke a backlash in Asia, which is relying on multilateral institutions to refrain China from regional dominance.” This represents an ample opportunity for the US to contribute a greater degree of stability to the region by taking regional multilateral institutions far more seriously.

Will China’s trade relations ultimately limit its soft power?

“If China builds the kind of trade surpluses with the developing world that it enjoys with the United States, it could stoke local resentment. Eventually Beijing could wind up looking little different to people in Asia or Africa or Latin America than the old colonial powers, who mined and dug up their colonies, doing little to improve the capacity of the locals on the ground.”

Finding a way past mercantile policies will be China’s challenge for the ensuing decades, rife with potential missteps that could derail Chinese goals. Kurlantzick identifies the prevailing tactic of its neighbors who play China off the US- and vice versa- in order to keep a prevailing balance. The limits of soft power here are notable because no matter how low it seems the US position or image in Asia may be, there will be ample opportunity for the US to rebound because of the static dynamic of regional relations.