I read the following article some time ago. As there has been some related discussion on this thread, on China's impact on the global economy and hence the ramifications for the mining sector in Australia, I decided to post the lengthy article here.
The real 'China threat'
By Chalmers Johnson
I recall 40 years ago, when I was a new professor working in the field of Chinese and Japanese international relations, that Edwin O Reischauer once commented, "The great payoff from our victory of 1945 was a permanently disarmed Japan." Born in Japan and a Japanese historian at Harvard, Reischauer served as US ambassador to Tokyo in the administrations of presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Strange to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the administration of George W Bush, the United States has been doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.
Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-American conflict that the United States would almost surely lose. It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing - a possible confrontation between the world's fastest-growing industrial economy, China, and the world's second-most-productive, albeit declining, economy, Japan; a confrontation that the United States would have caused and in which it might well be consumed.
.......The major question for the 21st century is whether this fateful inability to adjust to changes in the global power structure can be overcome. Thus far the signs are negative. Can the United States and Japan, today's versions of rich, established powers, adjust to the re-emergence of China - the world's oldest continuously extant civilization - this time as a modern superpower? Or is China's ascendancy to be marked by yet another world war, when the pretensions of European civilization in its US and Japanese projections are finally put to rest? That is what is at stake.
China, Japan and the United States are the three most productive economies on Earth, but China is the fastest-growing (at an average rate of 9.5% per annum for more than two decades), whereas both the US and Japan are saddled with huge and mounting debts and, in the case of Japan, stagnant growth rates. China is today the world's sixth-largest economy (the US and Japan being first and second) and America's third-largest trading partner after Canada and Mexico. According to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) statisticians in their Factbook 2003, China is actually already the second-largest economy on Earth measured on a purchasing-power-parity basis - that is, in terms of what China actually produces rather than prices and exchange rates. The CIA calculates the United States' gross domestic product (GDP) - the total value of all goods and services produced within a country - for 2003 as US$10.4 trillion and China's as $5.7 trillion. This gives China's 1.3 billion people a per capita GDP of $4,385.
Between 1992 and 2003, Japan was China's largest trading partner, but in 2004 Japan fell to third place, behind the European Union and the United States. China's trade volume for 2004 was $1.2 trillion, third in the world after the US and Germany, and well ahead of Japan's $1.07 trillion. China's trade with the US grew some 34% in 2004....
The truly significant trade development of 2004 was the EU's emergence as China's biggest economic partner, suggesting the possibility of a Sino-European cooperative bloc confronting a less vital Japanese-American one. As the Financial Times observed, "Three years after its entry into the World Trade Organization [in 2001], China's influence in global commerce is no longer merely significant. It is crucial." For example, most Dell computers sold in the US are made in China, as are the digital-video-disc players of Japan's Funai Electric Co. Funai annually exports some 10 million DVD players and television sets from China to the United States, where they are sold primarily in Wal-Mart stores. China's trade with Europe in 2004 was worth $177.2 billion, with the United States $169.6 billion, and with Japan $167.8 billion.
China's growing economic weight in the world is widely recognized and applauded, but it is China's growth rates and their effect on the future global balance of power that the US and Japan, rightly or wrongly, fear. The CIA's National Intelligence Council forecasts that China's GDP will equal Britain's in 2005, Germany's in 2009, Japan's in 2017, and the United States' in 2042. But Shahid Javed Burki, former vice president of the World Bank's China Department and a former finance minister of Pakistan, predicts that by 2025 China will probably have a GDP of $25 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity and will have become the world's largest economy, followed by the United States at $20 trillion and India at about $13 trillion - and Burki's analysis is based on a conservative prediction of a 6% Chinese growth rate sustained over the next two decades. He foresees Japan's inevitable decline because its population will begin to shrink drastically after about 2010. Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs reports that the number of men in Japan already declined by 0.01% in 2004; and some demographers, it notes, anticipate that by the end of the century the country's population could shrink by nearly two-thirds, from 127.7 million today to 45 million, the same population it had in 1910.
By contrast, China's population is likely to stabilize at approximately 1.4 billion people and is heavily weighted toward males. (According to Howard French of the New York Times, in one large southern city the government-imposed one-child-per-family policy and the availability of sonograms have resulted in a ratio of 129 boys born for every 100 girls; 147 boys for every 100 girls for couples seeking second or third children. The 2000 census for the country as a whole put the reported sex ratio at birth at about 117 boys to 100 girls.) Chinese domestic economic growth is expected to continue for decades, reflecting the pent-up demand of its huge population, relatively low levels of personal debt, and a dynamic underground economy not recorded in official statistics. Most important, China's external debt is relatively small and easily covered by its reserves; whereas both the US and Japan are approximately $7 trillion in the red, which is worse for Japan, with less than half the US population and economic clout.
Ironically, part of Japan's debt is a product of its efforts to help prop up America's global imperial stance. For example, in the period since the end of the Cold War, Japan has subsidized America's military bases in Japan to the staggering tune of approximately $70 billion. Refusing to pay for its profligate consumption patterns and military expenditures through taxes on its own citizens, the United States is financing these outlays by going into debt to Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and India. This situation has become increasingly unstable as the US requires capital imports of at least $2 billion per day to pay for its governmental expenditures. Any decision by East Asian central banks to move significant parts of their foreign-exchange reserves out of the US dollar and into the euro or other currencies to protect themselves from dollar depreciation would produce the mother of all financial crises.
Japan still possesses the world's largest foreign-exchange reserves, which at the end of January stood at around $841 billion. But China sits on a $609.9 billion pile of dollars (as of the end of 2004), earned from its trade surpluses with the US. Meanwhile, the US government and Japanese followers of George W Bush insult China in every way they can, particularly over the status of China's breakaway province, the island of Taiwan. The distinguished economic analyst William Greider recently noted, "Any profligate debtor who insults his banker is unwise, to put it mildly ... American leadership has ... become increasingly delusional - I mean that literally - and blind to the adverse balance of power accumulating against it."
The Bush administration is unwisely threatening China by urging Japan to rearm and by promising Taiwan that, should China use force to prevent a Taiwanese declaration of independence, the US will go to war on its behalf. It is hard to imagine more shortsighted, irresponsible policies, but in light of the Bush administration's Alice in Wonderland war in Iraq, the acute anti-Americanism it has generated globally, and the politicization of America's intelligence services, it seems possible that the US and Japan might actually precipitate a war with China over Taiwan.
......America's intention is to turn Japan into what Washington neo-conservatives like to call the "Britain of the Far East" - and then use it as a proxy in checkmating North Korea and balancing China. On October 11, 2000, Michael Green, then a member of Armitage Associates, wrote, "We see the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain as a model for the [US-Japan] alliance." Japan has so far not resisted this US pressure since it complements a renewed nationalism among Japanese voters and a fear that a burgeoning capitalist China threatens Japan's established position as the leading economic power in East Asia. Japanese officials also claim that the country feels threatened by North Korea's developing nuclear and missile programs, although they know that the North Korean standoff could be resolved virtually overnight - if the Bush administration would cease trying to overthrow the Pyongyang regime and instead deliver on US trade promises (in return for North Korea's agreement to give up its nuclear-weapons program). Instead, on February 25, the State Department announced that "the US will refuse North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's demand for a guarantee of 'no hostile intent' to get Pyongyang back into negotiations over its nuclear-weapons programs". And on March 7, Bush nominated John Bolton to be US ambassador to the United Nations even though North Korea has refused to negotiate with him because of his insulting remarks about the country.
......Koizumi has appointed to his cabinets over the years hardline anti-Chinese, pro-Taiwanese politicians. Phil Deans, director of the Contemporary China Institute in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, observes, "There has been a remarkable growth of pro-Taiwan sentiment in Japan. There is not one pro-China figure in the Koizumi cabinet." Members of the latest Koizumi cabinet include Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono and Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura, both ardent militarists; Machimura is a member of the right-wing faction of former prime minister Yoshiro Mori, which supports an independent Taiwan and maintains extensive covert ties with Taiwanese leaders and businessmen.
Taiwan, it should be remembered, was a Japanese colony from 1895-1945. Unlike the harsh Japanese military rule over Korea from 1910-45, it experienced relatively benign governance by a civilian Japanese administration. The island, while bombed by the Allies, was not a battleground during World War II, although it was harshly occupied by the Chinese Nationalists (Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang) immediately after the war. Today, as a result, many Taiwanese speak Japanese and have a favorable view of Japan. Taiwan is virtually the only place in East Asia where Japanese are fully welcomed and liked.
......Meanwhile, Japan intends to upgrade its Defense Agency (Boeicho) into a ministry and possibly develop its own nuclear-weapons capability. Goading the Japanese government to assert itself militarily may well cause the country to go nuclear in order to "deter" China and North Korea, while freeing Japan from its dependency on the US "nuclear umbrella". Military analyst Richard Tanter notes that Japan already has "the undoubted capacity to satisfy all three core requirements for a usable nuclear weapon: a military nuclear device, a sufficiently accurate targeting system, and at least one adequate delivery system". Japan's combination of fully functioning fission and breeder reactors plus nuclear-fuel reprocessing facilities gives it the ability to build advanced thermonuclear weapons; its H-II and H-IIA rockets, in-flight refueling capacity for fighter bombers, and military-grade surveillance satellites assure that it could deliver its weapons accurately to regional targets. What it currently lacks are the platforms (such as submarines) for a secure retaliatory force in order to dissuade a nuclear adversary from launching a preemptive first strike.
.... Japan may talk a lot about the dangers of North Korea, but the real objective of its rearmament is China. This has become clear from the ways in which Japan has recently injected itself into the single most delicate and dangerous issue of East Asian international relations - the problem of Taiwan. Japan invaded China in 1931 and was its wartime tormentor thereafter as well as Taiwan's colonial overlord. Even then, however, Taiwan was viewed as a part of China, as the United States has long recognized. What remains to be resolved are the terms and timing of Taiwan's reintegration with the Chinese mainland. This process was deeply complicated by the fact that in 1987 Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists, who had retreated to Taiwan in 1949 at the end of the Chinese civil war (and were protected there by the US 7th Fleet ever after), finally ended martial law on the island. Taiwan has since matured into a vibrant democracy and the Taiwanese are now starting to display their own mixed opinions about their future.
In 2000, the Taiwanese people ended a long monopoly of power by the Nationalists and gave the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), headed by President Chen Shui-bian, an electoral victory. A native Taiwanese (as distinct from the large contingent of mainlanders who came to Taiwan in the baggage train of Chiang's defeated armies), Chen stands for an independent Taiwan, as does his party. By contrast, the Nationalists, together with a powerful mainlander splinter party, the People First Party headed by James Soong (Song Chuyu), hope to see an eventual peaceful unification of Taiwan with China. On March 7, the Bush administration complicated these delicate relations by nominating John Bolton to be the US ambassador to the United Nations. He is an avowed advocate of Taiwanese independence and was once a paid consultant to the Taiwanese government.
Last May, in a very close and contested election, Chen Shui-bian was re-elected, and on May 20, the notorious right-wing Japanese politician Shintaro Ishihara attended his inauguration in Taipei. (Ishihara believes that Japan's 1937 Rape of Nanking was "a lie made up by the Chinese".) Though Chen won with only 50.1% of the vote, this was still a sizable increase over his 33.9% in 2000, when the opposition was divided. The Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately appointed Koh Se-kai as its informal ambassador to Japan. Koh has lived in Japan for some 33 years and maintains extensive ties to senior political and academic figures there. China responded that it would "completely annihilate" any moves toward Taiwanese independence - even if it meant scuttling the 2008 Beijing Olympics and good relations with the United States.
Contrary to the machinations of American neo-cons and Japanese rightists, however, the Taiwanese people have revealed themselves to be open to negotiating with China over the timing and terms of reintegration. On August 23, the Legislative Yuan (Taiwan's parliament) enacted changes in its voting rules to prevent Chen from amending the constitution to favor independence, as he had promised to do in his re-election campaign. This action drastically lowered the risk of conflict with China. Probably influencing the Legislative Yuan was the warning issued on August 22 by Singapore's new prime minister, Lee Hsien-loong: "If Taiwan goes for independence, Singapore will not recognize it. In fact, no Asian country will recognize it. China will fight. Win or lose, Taiwan will be devastated."
The next important development was parliamentary elections on December 11. President Chen called his campaign a referendum on his pro-independence policy and asked for a mandate to carry out his reforms. Instead he lost decisively. The opposition Nationalists and the People First Party won 114 seats in the 225-seat parliament, while Chen's DPP and its allies took only 101. (Ten seats went to independents.) The Nationalist leader, Lien Chan, whose party won 79 seats to the DPP's 89, said, "Today we saw extremely clearly that all the people want stability in this country."
Chen's failure to capture control of parliament also meant that a proposed purchase of $19.6 billion worth of arms from the United States was doomed. The deal included guided-missile destroyers, P-3 anti-submarine aircraft, diesel submarines, and advanced Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile systems. The Nationalists and James Soong's supporters regard the price as too high and mostly a financial sop to the Bush administration, which has been pushing the sale since 2001. They also believe the weapons would not improve Taiwan's security.
On December 27, mainland China issued its fifth Defense White Paper on the goals of the country's national defense efforts. As one longtime observer, Robert Bedeski, noted, "At first glance, the Defense White Paper is a hardline statement on territorial sovereignty and emphasizes China's determination not to tolerate any moves at secession, independence or separation. However, the next paragraph ... indicates a willingness to reduce tensions in the Taiwan Strait: so long as the Taiwan authorities accept the one-China principle and stop their separatist activities aimed at 'Taiwan independence', cross-strait talks can be held at any time on officially ending the state of hostility between the two sides."
..... If the United States and Japan left China and Taiwan to their own devices, it seems possible that they would work out a modus vivendi. Taiwan has already invested some $150 billion in the mainland, and the two economies are becoming more closely integrated every day. There also seems to be a growing recognition in Taiwan that it would be very difficult to live as an independent Chinese-speaking nation alongside a country with 1.3 billion people, 9.6 million square kilometers of territory, a rapidly growing $1.4 trillion economy, and aspirations to regional leadership in East Asia. Rather than declaring its independence, Taiwan might try to seek a status somewhat like that of French Canada - a kind of looser version of a Chinese Quebec under nominal central government control but maintaining separate institutions, laws and customs.
The mainland would be so relieved by this solution it would probably accept it, particularly if it could be achieved before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China fears that Taiwanese radicals want to declare independence a month or two before those Olympics, betting that China would not attack then because of its huge investment in the forthcoming Games. Most observers believe, however, that China would have no choice but to go to war because failure to do so would invite a domestic revolution against the Chinese Communist Party for violating the national integrity of China.
........ It has long been an article of neo-con faith that the US must do everything in its power to prevent the development of rival power centers, whether friendly or hostile. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this meant they turned their attention to China as one of the United States' probable next enemies. In 2001, having come to power, the neo-conservatives shifted much of the US's nuclear targeting from Russia to China. They also began regular high-level military talks with Taiwan over defense of the island, ordered a shift of US Army personnel and supplies to the Asia-Pacific region, and worked strenuously to promote the remilitarization of Japan.
On April 1, 2001, a US Navy EP-3E Aries II electronic spy plane collided with a Chinese jet fighter off the south China coast. The US aircraft was on a mission to provoke Chinese radar defenses and then record the transmissions and procedures the Chinese used in sending up interceptors. The Chinese jet went down and the pilot lost his life, while the US plane landed safely on Hainan Island and its crew of 24 spies was well treated by the Chinese authorities.
It soon became clear that China was not interested in a confrontation, since many of its most important investors have their headquarters in the United States. But it could not instantly return the crew of the spy plane without risking powerful domestic criticism for obsequiousness in the face of provocation. It therefore delayed for 11 days until it received a pro forma US apology for causing the death of a Chinese pilot on the edge of the country's territorial airspace and for making an unauthorized landing at a Chinese military airfield. Meanwhile, the US media had labeled the crew as "hostages", encouraged their relatives to tie yellow ribbons around neighborhood trees, hailed the president for doing "a first-rate job" to free them, and endlessly criticized China for its "state-controlled media". They carefully avoided mentioning that the United States enforces around the country a 200-mile aircraft-intercept zone that stretches far beyond territorial waters.
On April 25, 2001, during an interview on national television, President Bush was asked whether he would ever use "the full force of the American military" against China for the sake of Taiwan. He responded, "Whatever it takes to help Taiwan defend herself." This was US policy until September 11, 2001, when China enthusiastically joined the "war on terrorism" and Bush and his neo-cons became preoccupied with their "axis of evil" and making war on Iraq. The United States and China were also enjoying extremely close economic relations, which the big-business wing of the Republican Party did not want to jeopardize.
The Middle East thus trumped the neo-cons' Asia policy. While the Americans were distracted, China went about its economic business for almost four years, emerging as a powerhouse of Asia and a potential organizing node for Asian economies. Rapidly industrializing China also developed a voracious appetite for petroleum and other raw materials, which brought it into direct competition with the world's largest importers, the US and Japan.
By the summer of 2004, Bush strategists, distracted as they were by Iraq, again became alarmed over China's growing power and its potential to challenge US hegemony in East Asia. The Republican Party platform unveiled at its convention in New York in August proclaimed that "America will help Taiwan defend itself". During that summer, the US Navy also carried out exercises it dubbed "Operation Summer Pulse '04", which involved the simultaneous deployment at sea of seven of the United States' 12 carrier strike groups. A US carrier strike group includes an aircraft carrier (usually with nine or 10 squadrons of planes, a total of about 85 aircraft in all), a guided-missile cruiser, two guided-missile destroyers, an attack submarine, and a combination ammunition-oiler-supply ship. Deploying seven such armadas at the same time was unprecedented - and very expensive. Even though only three of the carrier strike groups were sent to the Pacific and no more than one was patrolling off Taiwan at a time, the Chinese became deeply alarmed that this marked the beginning of an attempted rerun of 19th-century gunboat diplomacy aimed at them.
This US show of force and Chen Shui-bian's polemics preceding the December elections also seemed to over-stimulate the Taiwanese. On October 26 in Beijing, then secretary of state Colin Powell tried to calm things down by declaring to the press, "Taiwan is not independent. It does not enjoy sovereignty as a nation, and that remains our policy, our firm policy ... We want to see both sides not take unilateral action that would prejudice an eventual outcome, a reunification that all parties are seeking."
Powell's statement seemed unequivocal enough, but significant doubts persisted about whether he had much influence within the Bush administration or whether he could speak for Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Early in 2005, Porter Goss, the new director of the CIA, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and Admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, all told Congress that China's military modernization was going ahead much faster than previously believed. They warned that the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review, the every-four-years formal assessment of US military policy, would take a much harsher view of the threat posed by China than the 2001 overview.
In this context, the Bush administration, perhaps influenced by the election of November 2 and the transition from Colin Powell's to Condoleezza Rice's State Department, played its most dangerous card. On February 19 in Washington, it signed a new military agreement with Japan. For the first time, Japan joined the US administration in identifying security in the Taiwan Strait as a "common strategic objective". Nothing could have been more alarming to China's leaders than the revelation that Japan had decisively ended six decades of official pacifism by claiming a right to intervene in the Taiwan Strait.
It is possible that, in the years to come, Taiwan itself may recede in importance to be replaced by even more direct Sino-Japanese confrontations. This would be an ominous development indeed, one that the United States would be responsible for having abetted but would certainly be unable to control. The kindling for a Sino-Japanese explosion has long been in place. After all, during World War II the Japanese killed approximately 23 million Chinese throughout East Asia - higher casualties than the staggering ones suffered by Russia at the hands of the Nazis - and yet Japan refuses to atone for or even acknowledge its historical war crimes. Quite the opposite, it continues to rewrite history, portraying itself as the liberator of Asia and a victim of European and US imperialism.
....... China and Iran already did a record $4 billion worth of two-way business in 2003. Projects included China's building of the first stage of Tehran's Metro rail system and a contract to build a second link worth $836 million. China will be the top contender to build four other planned lines, including a 30-kilometer track to the airport. In February 2003, Chery Automobile Co, the eighth-largest auto maker in China, opened its first overseas production plant in Iran. Today, it manufactures 30,000 Chery cars annually in northeastern Iran. Beijing is also negotiating to construct a 386-kilometer pipeline from Iran to the northern Caspian Sea to connect with the long-distance Kazakhstan to Xinjiang pipeline that it began building last October. The Kazakh pipeline has a capacity to deliver 10 million tons of oil to China per year. Despite US bluster and belligerence, Iran is anything but isolated in today's world.
The European Union is China's largest trading partner and China is the EU's second-largest trading partner (after the United States). Back in 1989, to protest the suppression of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the EU imposed a ban on military sales to China. The only other countries so treated are true international pariahs such as Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe. Even North Korea is not subject to a formal European arms embargo. Given that the Chinese leadership has changed several times since 1989 and as a gesture of goodwill, the EU has announced its intention to lift the embargo. Jacques Chirac, the French president, is one of the strongest proponents of the idea of replacing US hegemony with a "multipolar world". On a visit to Beijing in October, he said that China and France share "a common vision of the world" and that lifting the embargo will "mark a significant milestone: a moment when Europe had to make a choice between the strategic interests of America and China - and chose China".
In his trip to Western Europe in February, Bush repeatedly said, "There is deep concern in our country that a transfer of weapons would be a transfer of technology to China, which would change the balance of relations between China and Taiwan." In early February, the House of Representatives voted 411-3 in favor of a resolution condemning the potential EU move. The Europeans and Chinese contend that the Bush administration has vastly overstated its case, that no weapons capable of changing the balance of power are involved, and that the EU is not aiming to win massive new defense contracts from China but to strengthen mutual economic relations in general. Immediately after Bush's tour of Europe, the EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, arrived in Beijing for his first official visit. The purpose of his trip, he said, was to stress the need to create a new strategic partnership between China and Europe.
Washington has buttressed its hardline stance with the release of many new intelligence estimates depicting China as a formidable military threat. Whether this intelligence is politicized or not, it argues that China's military modernization is aimed precisely at countering the US Navy's carrier strike groups, which would assumedly be used in the Taiwan Strait in case of war. China is certainly building a large fleet of nuclear submarines and is an active participant in the EU's Galileo Project to produce a satellite navigation system not controlled by the US military. The Defense Department worries that Beijing might adapt the Galileo technology to anti-satellite purposes. US military analysts are also impressed by China's launch, on October 15, 2003, of a spacecraft containing a single astronaut who was successfully returned to Earth the following day. Only the former USSR and the United States had previously sent humans into outer space.
China already has 500-550 short-range ballistic missiles deployed opposite Taiwan and has 24 CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with a range of 13,000 kilometers to deter a US missile attack on the Chinese mainland. According to Richard Fisher, a researcher at the US-based Center for Security Policy, "The forces that China is putting in place right now will probably be more than sufficient to deal with a single American aircraft-carrier battle group." Arthur Lauder, a professor of international relations at the University of Pennsylvania, concurred. He said the Chinese military "is the only one being developed anywhere in the world today that is specifically configured to fight the United States of America".
The US obviously cannot wish away this capability, but it has no evidence that China is doing anything more than countering the threats coming from the Bush administration. It seeks to avoid war with Taiwan and the US by deterring them from separating Taiwan from China. For this reason, China's pro forma legislature, the National People's Congress, passed a law this month making secession from China illegal and authorizing the use of force in case a territory tried to leave the country.
The Japanese government, of course, backs the US position that China constitutes a military threat to the entire region. Interestingly enough, however, the Australian government of Prime Minister John Howard, a loyal ally of the United States when it comes to Iraq, has decided to defy Bush on the issue of lifting the European arms embargo. Australia places a high premium on good relations with China and is hoping to negotiate a free-trade agreement between the two countries. Canberra has therefore decided to support the EU in lifting the 15-year-old embargo. Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder both say, "It will happen."
The United States has long proclaimed that Latin America is part of its "sphere of influence", and because of that most foreign countries have to tread carefully in doing business there. However, in the search for fuel and minerals for its booming economy, China is openly courting many Latin American countries regardless of what Washington thinks. On November 15, President Hu Jintao ended a five-day visit to Brazil during which he signed more than a dozen accords aimed at expanding Brazil's sales to China and Chinese investment in Brazil. Under one agreement Brazil will export to China as much as $800 million annually in beef and poultry. In turn, China agreed with Brazil's state-controlled oil company to finance a $1.3 billion gas pipeline between Rio de Janeiro and Bahia once technical studies are completed. China and Brazil also entered into a "strategic partnership" with the objective of raising the value of bilateral trade from $10 billion in 2004 to $20 billion by 2007. President Hu said this partnership symbolized "a new international political order that favored developing countries".
In the weeks that followed, China signed important investment and trade agreements with Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Chile and Cuba. Of particular interest, in December, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela visited China and agreed to give it wide-ranging access to his country's oil reserves. Venezuela is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and normally sells about 60% of its output to the United States, but under the new agreements China will be allowed to operate 15 mature oilfields in eastern Venezuela. China will invest about $350 million to extract oil and another $60 million in natural-gas wells.
China is also working to integrate East Asia's smaller countries into some form of new economic and political community. Such an alignment, if it comes into being, will certainly erode US and Japanese influence in the area. In November, the 10 nations that make up ASEAN (Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), met in the Laotian capital Vientiane, joined by the leaders of China, Japan and South Korea. The United States was not invited and the Japanese officials seemed uncomfortable being there. The purpose was to plan for an East Asian summit meeting to be held next November to begin creating an "East Asia Community". Last December, the ASEAN countries and China also agreed to create a free-trade zone among themselves by 2010.
According to Edward Cody of the Washington Post, "Trade between China and the 10 ASEAN countries has increased about 20% a year since 1990, and the pace has picked up in the last several years." This trade hit $78.2 billion in 2003 and was reported to be about $100 billion by the end of 2004. As senior Japanese political commentator Yoichi Funabashi observed, "The ratio of intra-regional trade [in East Asia] to worldwide trade was nearly 52% in 2002. Though this figure is lower than the 62% in the EU, it tops the 46% of NAFTA [the North American Free Trade Agreement]. East Asia is thus becoming less dependent on the US in terms of trade."
China is the primary moving force behind these efforts. According to Funabashi, China's leadership plans to use the country's explosive economic growth and its ever more powerful links to regional trading partners to marginalize the United States and isolate Japan in East Asia. He argues that the United States underestimated how deeply distrusted it had become in the region thanks to its narrow-minded and ideological response to the East Asian financial crisis of 1997, which it largely caused. On November 30, Michael Reiss, the director of policy planning in the State Department, said in Tokyo, "The US, as a power in the Western Pacific, has an interest in East Asia. We would be unhappy about any plans to exclude the US from the framework of dialogue and cooperation in this region." But it is probably already too late for the Bush administration to do much more than delay the arrival of a China-dominated East Asian Community, particularly because of declining US economic and financial strength.
.....Why should China's emergence as a rich, successful country be to the disadvantage of either Japan or the United States? History teaches us that the least intelligent response to this development would be to try to stop it through military force. As a Hong Kong wisecrack has it, China has just had a couple of bad centuries and now it's back. The world needs to adjust peacefully to its legitimate claims - one of which is for other nations to stop militarizing the Taiwan problem - while checking unreasonable Chinese efforts to impose its will on the region. Unfortunately, the trend of events in East Asia suggests we may yet see a repetition of the last Sino-Japanese conflict, only this time the US is unlikely to be on the winning side.
(Source citations and other references for this article are available on the website of the Japan Policy Research Institute.)
Chalmers Johnson is president of the Japan Policy Research Institute. The first two books in his Blowback Trilogy - Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic - are now available in paperback. The third volume is being written.