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British Foreign Policy towards China: Short-sightedness Disguised as ‘Pragmatism’?

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Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the celebrations for Chinese New Year in London, 2020 (Image credit: AFP)

When COVID-19 is the product of a breach of human rights within China itself, ignoring human rights in a post-COVID world order is frankly naïve and hardly “pragmatic”.

In his 1941 State of Union address, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined the Four Fundamental Freedoms that every person in the world is entitled to enjoy: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. These four principles would later serve as the foundation upon which the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights was formed, ushering in a new era in which the human rights violations of states became a matter of concern that permeates far beyond its own sovereign territories. Contemporary human rights were borne out of a pragmatic concern that our ideals and principles at a certain level become a personal matter; since without human rights, there can be no human security.

The end of the Cold War would put an end to ideological conflict over the value of fundamental freedoms. Today, our post-Cold War world order lacks such kind of predictability and, thus, more uncertainty with regards to the international order can be expected. Moreover, in a post-COVID-19 world and amid a crumbling Pax Americana under Trump, the traditional state advocates of human rights are now MIA. This is an erosion of the liberal world order which is eating itself from within, with President Trump projecting an image of the USA is quite the opposite of most of its traditional ideals. Across the Atlantic, Brexit has further distorted unity both in the Anglosphere and within Europe.

Indeed, some seem more concerned about the economic damage that COVID-19 will bring if we do not appease Xi Jinping’s China, citing Realpolitik as a justification. In this regard, Professor Kerry Brown argues that given Brexit, the UK should reconsider its stance towards the Hong Kong crisis, given the country’s weak economic relations with China. One can disagree with this assertion since the notion of China as a ‘successful capitalist nation’ leaves the causes and consequences behind this success undefined. That is not to say that relations with Australia and New Zealand are not anything positive, but we have to consider fostering free trade relations across the D-10 member states, as well as with the EU. As for China, the scrapping of the Green GDP Initiative in 2007 is an example. The initiative would have reduced the data on China’s real GDP growth to zero. Indeed, Green GDP took into account environmental degradation, socioeconomic inequalities, and loss of biodiversity in China’s real GDP growth. The environment being hardly a significant concern for the cold realism of the status quo international relations and diplomacy is of course no surprise to anyone.

But that clearly misses the point of what we are faced with during the COVID-19 crisis. Ideally, this pandemic will serve as a tipping point and a shift away from business-as-usual in dealings with China. Arguably, it was the country’s repression of the fundamental freedoms (primarily freedom of speech) of its own scientists and academics that lays at the root of the current crisis. Never has there been a more urgent time to stress the significance of human rights than in this time of Corona. Indeed, our quality of life can only flourish when our fundamental freedoms are respected.

To do so, we ought to do away with this perception that our idealist concerns can never overlap with our pragmatic ones. That is not to disregard China’s ability to be one of the most powerful economies in the world without civil and political liberation as illegitimate. But the staggering boom of China’s economy over the past couple of decades simultaneously led to the accumulation of enormous amounts of inequalities, on top of excessive environmental pollution and abuse. This abuse of nature also notably contributed to the ongoing pandemic. Even with these factors aside, the political economies of our free societies are not designed to compete with state capitalism.

British foreign policy is becoming more inconsistent by the day, whilst China’s policies remain consistently expansionist.

The formation of a Democratic 10 (D-10) and the potential intake of British National (Overseas), or BN(O), passport holders from Hong Kong (combined with potential ‘burden-sharing’ agreement amongst the Five-Eyes) is of course considerably an improvement from its initial blasé stance. But the latter fails to address the rights of the remaining Hong Kongers, and most importantly, should not be a panacea to the growing Chinese aggression in its blatant disregard for international norms. That is not to argue that this development has not been provoked by the Trump Administration, but my point is that this can be a recurring theme not just for Hong Kong but in any part of the world. If so, should our response be the same? The recent decision to merge the Department for International Development (DFID) with the Foreign Office is another example of how not to respond. Though a little premature to say, this could lessen the UK’s room of maneuverability and upset future British diplomacy. In so doing, it could also render the idea of “Global Britain” an oxymoron, given China’s usage of COVID to increase its influence in Africa, for instance. British foreign policy is becoming more inconsistent by the day, whilst China’s policies remain consistently expansionist.

However, China’s new National Security Legislation (NSL) for Hong Kong is more of a distraction from Xi Jinping’s party-state’s own mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak in China itself, which has evidently hurt his standing amongst the elites of his own party. Those pragmatists who justify the incentive for us to appease President Xi in order to safeguard the financial repercussions of Brexit and of COVID-19 are too short-sighted. Those who are truly pragmatic will consider the long-term implications of our free societies and our very own public health and economic welfare; spurring our foreign policies towards China on to become more sophisticated and paying more close attention to human rights.

Over the past year, we have seen the relentless resistance of the people of Hong Kong against the Chinese state’s incursions. The more active approach that has now been taken towards creating a D-10 should extend to Hong Kong as well. If not, the crisis there is bound to produce refugee flows and further destabilise an already volatile region. This would be miscalculation at a time when Western influence in Southeast Asia is still lagging behind that of China. At the same time, a Cold War with China must remain off the table. The real pragmatic solutions should lie somewhere in between. There should be more craftsmanship put into our foreign policies. China’s declaration of its NSL in Hong Kong is clearly against the Basic Law that governs the city. Insofar as China lacks territorial legitimacy (at least until 2047) and the British by a supermajority in Hong Kong hold political legitimacy, there is little reason why this cannot be an advantage to British foreign policy. Commercial interests count too in the picture.

Despite our current obsession not to exacerbate the status quo, it is clear that we would not have arrived here in the first place if we had been standing up against Beijing’s disrespect for fundamental human rights. The country’s blatant disrespect for these rights emanates far beyond its sovereign territory. Previously, we in the West have considered that the effects of China’s unique form of governance (which is firmly opposed to human rights) was confined to its national borders. Yet, this pandemic has aptly demonstrated the far-reaching impact of China’s illiberalism at home. As such, Western policies ought to revise their hitherto assumptions and economic relationship vis-à-vis the CCP regime. So too must we reconsider our assumption that China’s diplomacy will be more scrupulous given Deng Xiaoping’s guiding philosophy of ‘hide your strength and bide your time’. Clearly, this time has now passed. China’s new position in the world order means that it can afford more knee-jerk reactions such as what we have in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and now COVID-19.

This is significant despite the facts that while Donald Trump may not be re-elected in November and that Asia’s future will still considerably depend on Western financial institutions and trade relations. The lack of a cohesive strategy in the European and Anglosphere will mean that our intergovernmental organisations such as the United Nations will be more vulnerable to be dictated by China and Russia. How can we, coming from free, liberal societies, protect our own fundamental freedoms if we are not taking proactive steps in maintaining a world order that is now presenting to be getting less liberal and orderly?

Surely bargaining our fundamental freedoms for the sake of what is likely to end up as imbalanced trade relations with authoritarian regimes clearly is not what our forefathers have lost their lives for. At present, the ball remains in Britain’s court and we still get to call much of the shots even without the leverage of the EU. Through the D-10, one can be hopeful that the EU can still continue to render a force of unity and perhaps learn that referendums can seriously backfire. It is not to say that illiberalism anywhere will always affect us – it really depends on the power and reach of the country we are dealing with. While human rights may not be at the forefront of foreign policy-making, what we have now with COVID-19 is already a net financial loss. Realpolitik should seek to include human rights in its approach given the reciprocal implications on our fundamental freedoms, national security, and economic prosperity. It is unclear whether the British government realises this.

Sri Lanka between China and the West: Balancing on a Foreign Policy Tightrope

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by Shakthi De Silva

Hambantota port, victim of China’s debt-trap diplomacy? (Image credit: AFP)

After purportedly falling victim to China’s ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, the island of Sri Lanka took the international limelight in July 2017. Many observers referred to the Sri Lankan Government’s decision to hand over the strategically located Hambantota Port on a 99-year lease as indicative of a malicious plan to indebt countries to China. Scholarship discussed the case as depicting the seemingly nefarious nature of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative and in many narratives, the island was portrayed as having no agency – a small power which ‘suffers what they must’ in Thucydides’ words.

The 2015 ousting of Pro-China President Mahinda Rajapakse by a former minister of his own party – Maithripala Sirisena – ostensibly signalled a shift in the country’s foreign policy. The optimism of such a ‘foreign policy reset’ was overshadowed by the outcome of the 2019 Presidential election which resulted in Gotabhaya Rajapakse’s victory. Western scholars ruefully reasoned that Sri Lanka would shift overtly towards China under Gotabaya Rajapakse, having witnessed a Pro-China foreign policy during the tenure of his elder brother – Mahinda Rajapakse (2005-2015).

This conjecture has not been borne out by facts. A few days after the election, Gotabaya welcomed Dr. S. Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister – the first Foreign Minister to meet and personally congratulate him on his victory. Rajapakse also chose India as the first country to visit as head of state and after meeting Prime Minister Modi received a $400 million line of credit to fund several development projects on the island. Since then, he met with Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs as well as welcomed the U.S Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia, Alice G. Wells in the same week.

Complying with the much-iterated policy of ‘Non-alignment and Mutual Friendship and Trust among Nations’ was a core tenet of Gotabaya’s election manifesto. In several public pronouncements after the election, President Gotabaya expressed his desire to adopt a balanced approach in his foreign policy; welcoming investments from and striving “to maintain friendly relations” with all parties. As China and the United States expand their presence in the Indian Ocean, what must they keep in mind when they engage with the new Sri Lankan administration?

Rationalising the Sino-Sri Lankan relationship

Western powers should take note of the fact that Sri Lanka has been in dire need of investments to kick start its economy since the end of its internal armed conflict in 2009. Foreign direct investments (including foreign loans received by companies registered with the country’s Board of Investment) during the first half of 2019 amounted to $501 million – significantly lower than most neighboring Asian countries.

A World Bank report detailing the projected GDP growth of South Asian countries ranked Sri Lanka just above the bottom, with a real GDP growth rate of less than 3% for 2019.  Since the island reached upper-middle-income status, it has had to borrow on commercial terms; thereby intensifying its debt crisis. In such circumstances, policymakers are attuned to attract as much investment as possible to spur an economy that has consistently lagged behind other regional powers. In so doing, China emerges as an attractive partner and, thus, increased its investment in Sri Lanka from $ 178.5 million in 2012 to $ 579 million by 2017. Although the United States is the largest source of foreign direct investment in the Indo-Pacific, its cumulative foreign direct investment inflows to Sri Lanka between 2013 and 2018 amounted to only $134 million. The economic rationale behind the close Sino-Sri Lankan relationship is clear to see.

Secondly, Western narratives portraying Sri Lanka’s predicament as a manifestation of Chinese ‘predatory lending’, ‘checkbook diplomacy’, or ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ hardly resonates with the local public. Numerous studies by Sri Lankan economists have uncovered how Sri Lanka’s debt crisis is not ‘wholly’ or even ‘largely’ caused by China. In fact, a much larger percentage of Sri Lanka’s external debt are loans raised through external sovereign bonds and foreign currency financial facilities. Locals are also prone to blame Sri Lankan politicians, particularly members of the United National Party, for finalizing the 99-year lease agreement of the Hambantota port.

Moreover, the West must also understand that Sri Lankans do not generally perceive China’s presence in the Indian Ocean as pernicious to the island’s security. Despite establishing a base in Djibouti, China’s engagement in the Indian Ocean has been relatively limited and benign, owing to the fact that Beijing’s primary security interests reside in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. In consequence, the island welcomes China’s presence in the region and has sought ways in which the two economies can closely integrate so that the island can benefit from China’s rise. Furthermore, the substantial quantities of medical supplies delivered by China after the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus exhibit Beijing’s desire to cultivate an image as a friendly benefactor.

Beijing’s support during the final phases of the internal armed conflict in Sri Lanka is another major factor driving the local public’s relative lack of apprehension towards Chinese activities in the region. Political engagement between the two countries has been robust. As of 2018, Sri Lanka had nine ‘sister-city agreements’ with China and 2013 saw the inking of a comprehensive cooperative partnership between the two countries. One report also suggested that between 2000 and 2017 there were 130 political visits between Sri Lankan and Chinese governmental leaders. This year also marks the 63rd anniversary of the inauguration of diplomatic relations with China.

Intensified allegations from the West against the state armed forces have also pushed President Gotabhaya to declare his intention of withdrawing from international institutions if they continue to press for transitional justice or demand for impartial investigations into the last stages of the war. For example, in his speech at the 2020 National Ranaviru Day commemorations, he emphatically stated: ‘In a small country like ours where our war heroes have sacrificed so much, I will not allow anyone to exert undue pressure on them or harass them.’ Therefore, continued pressure from the West on the human rights front will only push Rajapakse towards China – an outcome which the West nor Rajapakse are necessarily inclined to welcome.

However, this does not imply that Rajapakse will be beholden to Beijing. A pro-China policy stance is not an indelible position for most countries. Beijing would be wise to understand that a pro-China foreign policy can change if the leader is replaced by an alternative candidate in a democratic election or when the local ‘pro-China’ elite has a change of heart. To continue its robust relationship with Sri Lanka, it would be advisable for Beijing to enhance investments while also promoting people-to-people ties, particularly in the sectors of professional training and higher education

A pawn on the chessboard of great power politics?

Sri Lanka’s location has often been lauded as its most important asset but policymakers cannot solely avail on ‘strategic location’ if they wish to position the island as the hub of the Indian Ocean. In this complex and fluid environment, strategic astuteness has become a necessity for policymakers. Sri Lanka’s favorable location needs to be matched by a stable and coherent foreign policy as well as structural reforms to promote the island’s investment and business climate.

As great power presence in the Indian Ocean is unlikely to dissipate in the near future, misreading the landscape can prove costly for Sri Lanka. The island will witness increased presence and engagement with regional and extra-regional powers, which may create a situation where the island’s leadership might have to choose between one party over another. Local policymakers need to have hard-headed assessments of contemporary geopolitics, conduct unsentimental audits of the benefits and negative implications of diverse forms of engagement with regional and extra-regional powers, and resist a situation where Sri Lanka’s policy choices are constrained by external powers.

As China’s economy has entered a phase of gradual slowing down, Rajapakse would do best to remember that there are limits to what China can offer economically in the long run and therefore, diversifying ties with other regional and extra-regional powers would be in the island’s best interest.

 Mr. Shakthi De Silva currently serves as an Assistant Lecturer at the Department of International Relations, University of Colombo. His previous work has appeared on the South Asian Survey (SAGE), Journal of the Indian Ocean Region (Taylor & Francis), and the Diplomat Magazine. 

The Maoist Way of Guerilla Warfare and the Broader Challenge Presented by China

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by Tom Harper

Long Live Chairman Mao! Long, Long Live! (Image credit: Chineseposter.net)

In the eyes of the modern world, Maoism is a relic of a more ideologically divided world and of a China that no longer exists.  Nevertheless, the ideas and strategies of Mao continue to have a direct and indirect influence upon a diverse array of actors, ranging from the insurgent movements of the post-colonial world to post-Cold War Chinese foreign policy strategies. Here, followers of the strategies devised by Mao and his German-educated strategist, Zhu De, are inspired by their combination of Marxist ideology and the maxims from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.  They applied these strategies to a China described by Mao as ‘half colonial, half feudal’[1], far removed from Marx’s original prognosis.

Prior to Mao’s leadership, China’s communist movement followed a strategy more in keeping with those of the Russian Bolsheviks, with cadres going to the Soviet Union for study.  The most prominent of these were known as the ‘Twenty-Eight Bolsheviks’, who were guided by advisors from the Soviet Comintern.  As a result of several strategic blunders in their rebellion against the nationalist KMT under Chiang Kai shek, which concluded in the Long March to Yan’an, Mao and Zhu were in a position to apply these strategies.

Mao and Zhu’s strategies were characterised by three main phases.  The first phase involved sending party cadres to the rural, isolated areas of China, which were often ignored by the KMT, which drew its support from the smaller urban class.  Unlike the Bolsheviks’ focus on the industrial proletariat, Mao saw the Chinese peasantry, which made up around eighty per cent of China’s population, as the driving force of communism in China.  To do so, these cadres sought to mobilise popular support through measures such as land reforms. These proved to be succesfull with a Chinese peasantry that had long been exploited by the feudal land-owning classes[2]. Over time, the communists were increasingly viewed as more capable administrators than the KMT, with the Chinese peasantry seeing the latter as corrupt and inefficient[3].

Through these measures, the Chinese communists had effectively created a parallel government in China’s agrarian provinces, in a manner similar to the earlier Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan[4].  This made the KMT increasingly irrelevant to the lives of the Chinese peasantry which undermined Chiang Kai-shek’s rule.

The military aspects of Mao and Zhu’s strategies came in the second and third phases of these strategies.  The former involved utilising guerrilla tactics against stronger opponents, such as the KMT and the Japanese, to build support, and to acquire resources while the latter came in defeating the KMT through conventional warfare.  In doing so, the CPC was able to preserve their forces while the KMT bore the brunt of the Japanese invasion.  As a result, the CPC was better placed for the continuation of the Chinese Civil War after Japan’s surrender. In returning to Sun Tzu, Mao and Zhu used the maxim that ‘supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting’ to defeat a conventionally stronger opponent.  It was this maxim that had wider consequences as the new communist government sought to export its vision to the post-colonial world.

To China’s communist rulers, the largely agrarian post-colonial nations resembled pre-revolutionary China, which made it ripe for their efforts to replicate their earlier successes[5].  This came through assistance to the numerous anti-colonial movements battling the European colonial powers that had been damaged by the Second World War.  China’s bid to become the vanguard of communism in the developing world clashed with those of the Soviet Union, which also sought to promote its own vision of communism.  This became more pronounced with the Sino-Soviet Split of 1963 and there were often clashes between rival communist movements supported by Beijing and Moscow, such as the Angolan Civil War, where the Maoist UNITA battled the Soviet-backed MPLA.

It was the conflicts of the post-colonial world that drew attention to Maoist strategies from those who sought to combat it.  The earliest example of this was the French officer, David Galula, who witnessed the first phase of these strategies as a prisoner of the Chinese communists. After his release, Galula attempted to deploy these strategies against the anti-colonial movements throughout France’s overseas territories in a bid to deprive these movements of their local support.

While France failed to retain its colonies, Galula’s Maoist-inspired strategies caught the attention of American counter-insurgency planners who found themselves in the midst of the Vietnam War.  Like the Chinese communists before them, the National Liberation Front built support by mobilising the Vietnamese peasantry dissatisfied with the corrupt rule of the American-backed South Vietnamese government.  This influence was particularly notable in the Strategic Hamlets programme which replicated Galula’s earlier efforts in Algeria.

The Vietnam War was a case of where Maoist strategies influenced both insurgent movements and those who sought to combat them.  Ultimately, the Vietnamese communists were able to prevail over their stronger American foe by destroying its will to fight, as demonstrated by the fallout from the Tet Offensive in 1968.  Nevertheless, it was this pattern that would continue even after the Cold War.

With the end of the Cold War, Maoist strategies continued to maintain a degree of influence, the most visible of this being the groups within the developing world that still identified themselves with Mao’s ideas.  The most successful implementation of this was the overthrow of Nepal’s feudal monarchy by the Nepalese Communist Party in a manner eerily reminiscent of China’s own revolution, which once again came through the mobilisation of the Nepalese peasantry.

Maoist strategies also found a new audience in the midst of the War on Terror.  Just as these strategies had influenced Galula’s theories on counter-insurgency, American strategists, such as David Petraeus, invoked Mao and Zhu’s theories to justify the study of the non-military dimensions of warfare with the irregular conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.  This continued the influence of these strategies on both insurgent movements and their opponents.

The most unexpected manifestation of Maoist strategies has been in Chinese foreign policy itself.  During the Cold War observers, such as John Cooley, warned that China’s strategies in Africa were aimed at expelling the United States from the continent.  In so doing, these attempts would turn Africa into a ‘major revolutionary outpost’ in a Sino-centric world where the US was largely irrelevant[6].  Cooley’s warnings are eerily reminiscent of later fears of Chinese influence in Africa and echoed the first phase of Mao’s strategies applied on a greater scale.

Ironically, this would come to pass, not through Chinese moves, but rather through the disinterest in Africa in the post-Cold War era[7].  As a result, China exploited this development to capture hearts and minds in the developing world, which had often been ignored by the major powers.  As a result, China has become an integral feature of the economic landscape of these nations, which has made it more relevant to the governance of these nations.  It is this template which China has deployed to the wider world.

In addition, China has also built a parallel international order, through institutions such as the BRI, SCO and AIIB.  These institutions shadow more established American led bodies, such as the IMF and NATO, which has seen the emergence of two competing forms of global governance just as China had been fought over by two rival governments.  From this, one can infer that Chinese strategies do not seek to overthrow American hegemony, as it has often been accused of doing, but rather seeks to render it irrelevant to global governance[8].

Whether it be the low-intensity guerrilla conflicts throughout the developing world or the globe-spanning machinations of Great Powers, Mao and Zhu’s strategies retain a significant influence.  This has become especially notable with China’s wider challenge, since it follows a strategic culture that is very different to those of the Great Powers that came before it.  Therefore, an understanding of this is an imperative in crafting a more effective response to Chinese strategies.

[1] Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare (New York: Dover Publications Inc, 2005), p. 68

[2] Erik Durschmied, Beware the Dragon: China: 1,000 Years of Bloodshed ( London: Andre Deutsch, 2008) p. 223

[3] Rana Mitter, The War Years, 1937-1949 in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) p. 175

[4] Jonathan D. Spence God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (London: WW Norton and Company, 1996) p. 173

[5] Julia Lovell Maoism: A Global History (London, Bodley Head, 2019) p. 138

[6] Lovell, 2019, p. 186

[7] Joshua Eisenmann, Eisenman, Joshua (2012) China-Africa Trade Patterns: Causes and Consequences, Journal of Contemporary China, 21:77, p.45

[8] Tom Harper, China’s Eurasia: The Belt and the Road Initiative and the Creation of a New Eurasian Power, Chinese Journal of Global Governance, 5.2, October 2019, p. 103

Tom Harper is a doctoral researcher in politics and international relations from the University of Surrey. His research interest is Chinese foreign policy in the developing world and has been published in the Cambridge Journal of Eurasian Studies as well as in the Conversation, the Asia Times and the Independent and has been interviewed by the China Daily and the Gazeta Do Povo. His articles have been translated into Arabic, French, Japanese, and Spanish. He can also speak Mandarin Chinese and Japanese

Strife Series on Human Rights, Security, and Diplomacy in the Asia Pacific – Introduction

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by Anna Tan

(Image Credit: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

 

Editorial 

In recent years, the world has seen a rising number of civil protests and movements globally. The eruption of the Hong Kong crisis in mid-2019, where mainstream political dialogues reached a new level of fixation on the increasingly looming authoritarian power of China that pervades well beyond its mainland territories, shook many of us. The rise of China has been overwhelmingly redefining the overall regional security of the Asia Pacific, and how that development influences the shift in the nature of international relations is undoubtedly dependent on the alliance of the Asian countries with the West, especially with the United States.

Reflecting on Müllerson’s theory on the relationship of intrastate human rights and international security[1}, it is indisputable that China under Xi Jinping’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a very strong authoritarian state, and its overtly aggressive policies against Hong Kong’s mass civil resistance not just made headlines for an incredibly sustained period of time throughout the year, but also threatens the international stability by means of possible similar aggressions. It threatens liberal democratic values that are upheld by many free and democratic nations from across the world, especially in a time where American influence has been on a rapid decline since the assumption of the Trump administration. In the Asia Pacific, while nations such as Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea face new challenges in manoeuvring through the changing dynamics of international security now jeopardised by the “America first” policy of the United States, other countries such as Myanmar welcome the rising Chinese hegemony. Why and how does this happen?

This Strife Series explores the interplay between human rights and security through diplomatic exchanges in the Asia Pacific. The series analyses how in some countries, addressing human rights, democratic freedom and maintaining status quo national and/or regional security seem to be mutually exclusive at times instead of being mutually reinforcing, despite sharing the common factor of China’s domineering economic leverage.

Publications:

In the first article (12/2019) “China’s Turbulent Year: 2019”, Professor Kerry Brown analyses how China’s aggression in response to the Hong Kong protests and its draconian policies to the Uighur population in Xinjiang have both comparable ‘tit-for-tat’ elements that the Chinese leadership may not have thought through carefully, but will have detrimental consequences to the international opinion on China’s usually very cautious and deliberate efforts on maintaining its diplomatic image.

In the second article (01/2020) “China, Myanmar, War Crimes and the Issue of National Sovereignty”, Anna Tan looks at how Myanmar under Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership, has strangely shifted from being a Western ally during the landmark victories of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the 2015 elections to an even stronger adherence to China’s orbit than ever before. She describes how the Sino-Burmese relations have evolved dramatically under the light of the Rohingya conflict in Rakhine and Myanmar’s subsequent genocide trial at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

The third article (03/2020) “Taiwan Elections: Continuity, Change and the Cross-Strait Conundrum”, Evita Liagka explores what the victories of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) under the leadership of Tsai Ing-wen could mean for the future of Taiwan and its cross-strait relations. She points out that the China-Hong Kong crisis came in a convenient timing for DPP’s mobilisation of garnering greater support than ever before and since the public consensus on maintaining the status quo international diplomatic status of Taiwan has remained largely unchanged, we might not see a drastic shift in DPP’s policies from its previous term. However, KMT’s recent decision to swerve away from its pro-China stances might pose newer challenges for Taiwan in the years ahead.

The final articles are contributed by Yeseul Woo, analysing North Asia’s security issues from the perspective of South Korea.

  • In Part 1 (02/2020) “South Korea’s Dangerous Silence on Human Rights Abuses in North Korea”, Yeseul Woo argues why the US lack of sponsorship in the UN Security Council meeting on the discussion of North Korea’s human rights issues should not mean that South Korea should remain silent. Ms Woo explains why, in fact, South Korea’s silence justified by the importance of the nuclear security framework would actually be counterproductive in regional security in the long run.
  • In Part 2 (03/2020) “The First Tech War? Why the Korea-Japan Tensions are about US-China Competition on AI”, Ms Woo further explains that South Korea’s silence on North Korea’s human rights issues for the sake of North Asia’s nuclear security (described in Part 1) is actually the result of the deterioration of Korea-Japan relations which has led to South Korea withdrawing from the GSOMIA pact. Though Seoul retracted its decision last minute, Ms Woo argues that the tensions between Seoul and Tokyo are less about the debate surrounding comfort women and wartime forced labour, and is actually influenced by the US-China competition on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in nuclear surveillance technology.
  1. Müllerson, R. (1997). “Human Rights Diplomacy.” Routledge.

Anna Tan is a postgraduate student for MSc Global Affairs at King’s College London. Her research is focused on how Western human rights diplomacy affects democracy and authoritarianism in Asia Pacific. She has previously worked for UNDP Myanmar and the American Red Cross, and is a member of the Programme Committee of the Conflict, Security and Development (CSD) Conference 2020 hosted by the Department of War Studies and the Department of International Development (DID). Anna holds a BSc in Neuroscience. You can follow her on Twitter: @AnnaTanGTW.

 

Turning the Tables: China’s Approach to COVID-19

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by Francesca Ghiretti & Lorenzo Mariani

China’s Xi Jinping gets tested during a rare appearance amid the Coronavirus outbreak (Image credit: BBC)

It seems plausible to argue that COVID-19 will accompany us for most of 2020. Given the little information we have about the new coronavirus, the scientific community is cautious in forecasting the duration and extent of the coronavirus epidemic that is raging across the world at present. Although over a hundred countries already recorded cases of contagion, many still focus on China. Interestingly enough, the country has changed from being the centre of the epidemic into the first success story in the fight against the virus, now offering support to the other affected countries. Recently, as a sign of victory against the epidemic and with the aim of reviving the hearts of Chinese citizens, Xi Jinping visited the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the place of origin of COVID-19. In the meantime, commentators continue to wonder what the impact of the virus and of the consequent extraordinary measures taken to counter the virus outbreak will have on China’s governance.

As mentioned in numerous other analyses, the economic impact of the epidemic is of particular concern to international observers. Weakened by the trade war with the United States and by a moderate but steady decline in its growth, the Chinese economy has already begun to feel the effects of the government’s quarantine measures imposed on its citizens and businesses. If already at the end of 2019 the six per cent growth forecast for 2020 seemed excessive, now it seems impossible.

Furthermore, given the importance of Chinese production in global value chains, the world economy will also be affected by the closure of the factories and the Chinese economy’s slowdown. The apparent improvement of the situation in China has now prompted Beijing to loosen quarantine measures and reopen some plants with the aim of restarting the economy. Despite the government’s exhortation to return to their jobs, many Chinese workers remain reticent about the idea of ​​resuming normal work routine as well as public life, to which must be added the fact that some key production areas, such as the province of Hubei, still remain in lockdown.

The fallout of the epidemic on Chinese society is also important. Of major concern is what Beijing will decide to do in the future with the control measures introduced in the midst of the Coronavirus emergency. Over the past few months, in fact, the central government has found in the new technological solutions developed by the main companies in the country a valid ally in the fight against the virus: from the cameras that in addition to detecting the body temperature carry out facial recognition even with masks, to the applications that monitor the potential contact of people with infected citizens. In the eyes of several international observers, the extensive collection of data that today has helped China to contain the epidemic could tomorrow be used to further limit the privacy of Chinese citizens.

On a political level, the central government is unlikely to be affected by drastic repercussions despite the many speculations of the past few weeks which spoke of a possible stability crisis of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Presidency of Xi Jinping due to COVID-19. Although it is true that many, especially in the most affected areas, have criticised the work of the government and the lack of transparency of information, judging from the online response of Chinese users, most of them genuinely adhere to the line presented by the state media. After all, in China the opacity and the distortion of the news are certainly not new, and it should be noted that the majority of citizens who have not been directly affected by the health crisis have not developed a sense of dissatisfaction with the party such as to lead to political claims of the aforesaid scope.

The containment of criticism in the domestic environment was obviously facilitated by the Party’s communication machine, which was set in motion at full capacity already in the first days of the health crisis and which is now helping the government to recover internal consensus and international support. Much of the initial energy was spent primarily to prevent any blame and negligence from falling on the central government. To pay the costs, as it very often happens in China, was, therefore, the local government of the province of Hubei, guilty of not having contained and managed the infection. In a second phase, the communication of the Chinese press organs concentrated its efforts in promoting a national cohesion campaign under the leadership of the Party which culminated in Xi Jinping’s visit to Wuhan where the President met the population and, albeit via connection. remote, even the sick.

Finally, over the past few days, the main attention of the Chinese media has focused on the rest of the world and especially on the United States, accused of having chosen to adopt a “selfish” attitude during a time of global crisis. Proposing itself once again in antithesis to the US policies of closures, China is now seeking to recover the ground that it lost over the past few months. An attempt to revive its image as a responsible nation, ready to collaborate multilaterally for the good of the international community and to send out support to its partners in case of need. In this regard, emblematic is the case of the alleged preferential treatment reserved to Italy in the reception of medical supplies from China, often described as the result of the special relationship that exists between the two countries.

It is still too early to know for sure what the consequences of this health crisis will be on China’s internal politics and international ambitions. What seems clear is that Xi appears to have endured one of the most demanding tests since he took power in 2012. Furthermore, it clearly surfaces the idea that if in the coming months Beijing will be able to play its cards well, then China, and with it the Chinese Communist Party, could even emerge from this crisis stronger than before.

This article was originally published by the Rome-based Istituto Affari Internazionali

Francesca Ghiretti is a PhD candidate at King’s College London where she has been awarded the Leverhulme Scholarship as part of the project ‘Interrogating Visions of a Post-Western World: Interdisciplinary and Interregional Perspectives on the Future in a Changing International Order’. Her thesis is about Chinese FDI in the EU. Francesca is also a Research Fellow in the Asia department at Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome and a geopolitical consultant at CQS, a London-based hedge fund.

Lorenzo Mariani is Research Fellow in the field of Asian studies at the Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome where he collaborates mainly on research projects dealing with Chinese domestic and foreign affairs, and Inter-Korean relations. Since 2017, he has been Korea Foundation Fellow. He graduated in International Relations at the University of Bologna and earned a Master’s double degree in China Studies from Zhejiang University and University of Turin. During his academic career, he was an exchange student at Peking University (Beijing) and at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (Seoul).