China's Groove

The idea of The People’s Republic of China (PRC, alternately Zhong Renmin Gonghegou) fleshing out an economic strategy to benefit its neighbors and the world at large as written by Michael Spence (China’s international growth agenda, World View, PDI, June 22, 2015) sounds vastly irreconcilable with how China handled a number of things.

We start with China’s provocative stance regarding territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

It could be remembered that the US mediated the Scarborough Standoff between the Philippines and China in 2012 where it recommended withdrawal of forces locked in a deadly game of chicken. Only the Philippines withdrew however, in the process losing its grip on its claim. The Philippines now finds it hard to retake what it lost with effective occupation still the rule of thumb in any claim dispute. The biggest lost is Chinese forces driving away hapless Filipino fisher folks from their traditional fishing grounds in a show of control, consequently exacerbating our poverty position.

No doubt, the Chinese issued a challenge against all counter claimants in the Spratley Islands, extending even to the Pivot to Asia strategy of the US, with its mammoth land reclamation called ‘the great wall of sand’ in the Mischief reef. While Mr. Spence paints a picture of China as a sovereign merely ensuring unrestricted trade routes via the modern day ‘silk roads’ (maritime and overland) supposed beneficial to its neighbors and to the world, its actions, however, definitely say otherwise. As far as can be seen, the maritime component of the Silk Road is almost at total Chinese control with the effective occupation of the Paracel islands and the ‘great wall of sand in place. There already exist restrictive policies in the use of areas in the immediate vicinity of those controlled by China. As for the overland component, China and Russia already built a railway system that connects China with Europe.

As for the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), it would rival the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for sure and there are suspicions that the race for financial dominance might lead to less than stringent rules for environment protection and safeguard of habitat. For one, there's the unmitigated pollution in China and another, the substandard products under the 'knock off' variety that China has continuously churned out, remember milk made of melanin and now rice made of plastic resins.

All these actions: the sealing of important trade routes and casting a global financial net, indicate a Chinese bid for a new world order with them at the helm. 

On one hand, we count as a point, the Chinese slashing their poverty by as much as 60% in 30 years with an unprecedented economic growth. But then, the growth experienced came as a result of western corporate greed. Left on their own, the Chinese economic advancement originates from their capacity for ‘knock-offs’. With the saturation of this technology, it lost its capability for expansion; for providing more jobs. What then happens to the 20% under their poverty line which translates to over 260m people? And in the event of the occurrence of a Kondratieff cycle, that stipulates a long haul recession after successive growth decades, how many will fall back under their poverty line?

Most regard the specter of China’s influence in geopolitics and world trade like a dark cloud against freedom and the protection of the environment. I don’t know the end game but there are other more horrible prospects such as the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square on a global scale. I can’t imagine a benevolent China.