The Chinese and those who led them continued to believe in their civilization’s … destiny. They believe they deserve a position of pre-eminence in world affairs. The job of the current leaders, in their own minds, is to recreate an empire.
When North Americans and Europeans worry about the rise of China, they usually express misgivings about its strength and vitality in trade and manufacturing. Donald Trump’s claim that “China is laughing at us” expressed the belief that Beijing had tricked Westerners into making over- generous trade concessions. But Asians have a different and more pressing concern. They’re troubled, and in some cases terrified, by Chinese imperialism. For years Beijing has been persistently and ingeniously enlarging the Chinese footprint in the region.
The key strategy is simple. Chinese officials choose a protruding rock in the Pacific Ocean, build an artificial island on it, then claim it as Chinese territory — even though the location seems closer to some other state than China.
A map suggests, for instance, that the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea exist close to the Philippines and quite a lot farther away from China. On seven of the Spratly Islands, China has built a platform, usually big enough to hold a helicopter base, a dock or a radar installation. Once that occurs, China claims the region as part of its territorial waters.
The system might be called Conquest by Construction. It’s never before been deployed on such a scale. It appears that China will exploit the area if valuable oil and gas deposits are identified.
Four of the 10 member states in ASEAN ( Association of Southeast Asian Nations) have outstanding territorial claims against China — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
In 2013 the Philippines took China to arbitration under the UN Convention on the Laws of the Sea. The tribunal ruled that the sovereign rights of the Philippines had been violated. China, having boycotted the meetings, declared the ruling “ill- founded” and refused to be bound by it. It was as if China had a special entitlement to ignore international negotiations while pursuing its destiny. It has objected to U.S. ships using the area to assert the right to freedom of navigation within international waters.
Growing its territory by incremental expropriation must be a substantial, long- range project of the Chinese government, but it’s never exactly announced as such. Nor does China defend it when others criticize it. China just blithely goes ahead and treats the region around the artificial islands as its own. Since it’s now governed by China, the waterway around it can be supervised by Chinese ships as if it everyone believes it’s always been Chinese.
President Xi Jinping is often blamed or credited for what’s been called the territory grab. There are those who see him developing it as his personal legacy, putting him in a class with Mao Zedong’s revolution and Deng Xiaoping’s pivot toward capitalism. Certainly Xi has been pushing it. But the assumptions behind this behaviour were born long before the beginning of Xi’s presidency in 2012.
Howard W. French makes a plausible case for historic beliefs affecting current Chinese policy in his recent book, Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China’s Push for Global Power. French sees China’s current strategy growing out of a myth deeply embedded in the leaders of today. Modern leaders, he argues, believe they are reviving the greatness of a long-ago China.
“It is scarcely appreciated in the West today,” French writes, “that the ‘ international system’ we so readily take for granted is actually a recent creation. It took shape between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth centuries, and started to be cobbled together at the precise moment that China was being subjugated by others.”
So, at a crucial moment in history, China was unable to realize its own deserved status in the world. That was true of many societies, but the Chinese were different. Unlike other peoples robbed and then thrown into chaos by European imperialism, the Chinese and those who led them continued to believe in their civilization’s birthright and destiny. They believe they deserve a position of pre- eminence in world affairs. The job of the current leaders, in their own minds, is to recreate an empire — even though, as French acknowledges, the empire is partly imaginary.
Those who embrace this concept of history must regard the Europeans and North Americans as temporary interlopers, doomed to be set aside eventually when China achieves its proper place.
This must encourage feelings of superiority in Chinese officials when they brush aside the feelings of other Asians. Canada has experienced that same sense of superiority by diplomats from Beijing who resent even the mention of something so trivial as human rights in China. Business success has made it possible for China to develop an up- to- date military machine that in turns makes it possible for China to be as powerful as it has always wanted to be. When the West deals with China, we are dealing with people who believe firmly in the inevitable glories of their future.
THE SYSTEM MIGHT BE CALLED CONQUEST BY CONSTRUCTION.