Wen Jinbao's visit to India: US-China cold war in the offing ?

The visit of China's Prime Minister Wen Jinbao to New Delhi has been declared "historic" and its implications may have an impact on shaping the world order in the 21st century. Two economic giants in Asia-- China and India -- are rising on their feet and with the growing independence of Europe from shackles of the US, a counter-weight to the supremacy of the US looms large in the coming decades.

Once Napoleon said about China: " There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep, for when he awakens he will shake the world". Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India wrote in his book "The Discovery of India" (1946) that America, Russia, China and India would be great powers in the world.

A conference was held in the second week of April in Washington, based around a new book titled "China's Rise in Asia" , in which the author, Robert Sutter, argues that the term "China Rising" is dangerously misleading because it implies a zero-sum game, where, if China is rising, America must be declining.

Another American author Charles Kupchan in his book "The End of the America Era" (2002) predicted the end of America's superpower status and drew a new map of the world. He wrote: "Combine the rise of Europe and Asia with a declining and prickly internationalism in the US, it becomes clear that America's unipolar moment is not long for this world. American dominance and its political appetite for projecting its power globally have peaked, and both will be dissipating over the course of coming decades."

The above paragraphs are intended to demonstrate that the nation that has most to lose than other states against China's great awakening is the US.

A strategic competitor for the US
President Bush took office in 2001 promising to take a harder line towards all Communist countries ( China, Cuba and North Korea). His former National Security Adviser, now Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, an academic on Russia's Communism, was known to be behind the US policy considering China as a "strategic competitor", reversing the Clinton administration's policy as a "strategic partner".

In April of that year, the Bush administration had to eat a "humble pie" when one of its surveillance (spy) planes strayed in Chinese airspace and had to land after a dog-fight into a Chinese island and agreed to the Chinese demands of inspecting the plane and of access to any equipment on board. The US warning "Do not touch the plane" was totally ignored by the Chinese authorities. The plane was released after the Chinese inspected it inside and had access to the equipments on board.

In fact China's the then President Jiang Zemin did not bother "hue and cry" of Washington and took a 12-day trip to South America. The calmness and insouciance of Chinese leaders to demands of the Bush administration to release the plane untampered revealed China's new confidence against the superpower -- the US.

The Bush administration probably for the first time realised that they could not dictate a situation with China and found that they were not in the driver's seat and could only wait for Chinese response.

After 9/11, although the focus has diminished on China, it seems that the Bush administration now has turned its attention to China and from Beijing's view, it is not the sort of attention it enjoys.

The US is adopting a harder line toward China. It opposes sale of arms to China by the European Union. Furthermore, observers believe that the US has been using two of the great powers in Asia -- India and Japan -- as an attempt at strategic containment of China.

Like the US, Japan appears not to be prepared psychologically to lose its supreme economic place in Asia. China's economy is half of the world's GDP and its foreign reserves are heading past US$750 billion dollars. Its overall trade is returning surplus, thanks to the lifting of textile quotas which have seen exports to the US surge by 60 per cent or more since January.

In the coming decades, China will surpass the economy of Japan and the US. After sustaining 8 per cent inflation-adjusted average economic growth for 25 years -- with annual peaks thought to be up to 15 per cent -- it is destined to be the biggest economy in the world in future.

US' strategic move to contain China
Japan and India are being used by the US to contain China's influence. Both countries are being lured by the Bush administration to engage in military cooperation with the US. It seems that the diplomacy of the 70s by the Nixon administration is again being played by the neo-conservatives of the Bush administration.

During the Cold War, America's strategy was to contain the Soviet Union and Nixon's rapprochement with China in the 70s gave the Russians a feeling of encirclement. No analogy is perfect but it appears at present India is being cast in the role of China of the 70s.

As Japan feels threatened economically and militarily by China, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has been a passionate advocate of US alliance ( they don't call it military alliance publicly). Japan has decisively moved to side with the US against China by enlarging the scope of its alliance with the US explicitly to include the Taiwan Strait. It simply means that if China invades Taiwan, in the event of its declaring independence, the US and Japan would be involved to protect Taiwan. Beijing sees the move as an aggressive act in its internal affairs.

The US Secretary of State visited India last March and made unprecedented offers of arms sales and cooperation in once-taboo areas such as nuclear technology. She reportedly told the Prime Minister Dr. Singh that it was now America's policy to "help India become a major world power in the 21st century".

India would be allowed to buy the next generation of advanced combat aircraft from the US which would provide India edge over both China and Pakistan. The strength of cooperation between India and the US is demonstrated by the fact that President Bush is scheduled to visit India later this year.

China's strategic move to counter US
China feels encircled by the US strategic move. China has not been watching idly the growing alliance in defence among the US, India and Japan. How to stall the growing alliance between India and the US is of importance to China. Observers believe that China has a three-pronged strategy.

First, it has launched charm offensive and the visit of China's Prime Minister to India is one of such steps. China's Premier declared the visit as "historic" moment and agreed on principles of settling the border dispute. He said: "The flower of India-China has bloomed again today. India, China are brothers. We want to elevate the strategic relationship". India's Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh offered similar sentiment: " India and China can together reshape the world order". The two countries announced to work on a number of joint initiatives and as many as nine agreements have been concluded.

In the statements, two phrases employed by the leaders are of immense significance. One is China's desire to elevate "strategic" relationship with India and India's aspiration to "reshape" the world order.

This implies that both China and India are on the same boat because they do not feel comfortable with the existing unipolar world, where the US is the lone superpower and dictates the world order. Therefore by cultivating with India, China hopes to keep India from moving into the US embrace. China is reportedly lending support to India's bid for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

Second, China's new charm is economic. China can invest in other countries, sell high technology and in return other countries can sell their products to China. That is why China is focusing on free trade agreements with South East Asian nations. This initiative will provide a substantial foothold of China in the 10-ASEAN countries. Malaysia and Indonesia are very strategically located because of the Malacca Straits, through which all the oil and products are shipped to Japan.

With regard to Japan, China is playing a hard line. The recent demonstrations against the Japanese interests in China for glossing over Japan's past atrocities in China in their school text -books and the tension generated by Japan's move for oil exploration over the disputed island are only symptoms of a deep growing mistrust between China and Japan, partly engineered by the US policy. China reportedly opposes Japan securing a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Its opposition, being a veto-carrying permanent member of the Council, against Japan seems to be end of Japan's attempt to become a permanent member.

Third, China reversed its earlier policy and now supports multilatera-lism and the UN. This means that international rules must be adhered to by all states, big and small, powerful and weak. This is obviously directed partly against the US which went to war in Iraq without explicit approval of the UN. It will be interesting to see how China reacts to the reforms of the UN, suggested by the UN Secretary General and also by the US Secretary of State.

Conclusion
As China is emerging a global power, it seems both the US and Japan do not know how to handle this unpalatable fact. Initially they were in a denial mode that China would emerge a global power so soon. Now both have realised that China's rise is unstoppable and the old game of balance of power is being played in Asia-Pacific region.

It seems that a cold war between the US and China is under way as both countries are seeking to draw into its sphere of influence as many countries as possible, especially those of the Asia-Pacific region. Pragmatic China sees that if India moves away from the US and cooperates with China, it will definitely shift the geographical distribution of global power to Asia and force a restructuring of Western-dominated international bodies including the UN, World Bank, IMF and WTO.

Barrister Harun ur Rashid is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.