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China's rise challenges more than economies

By Chin Jin - posted Wednesday, 7 March 2012


Australia established formal diplomatic relationship with the People's Republic of China in 1972. For the past 40 years, the development of this bilateral relationship has been much more complicated than many initially perceived, evolving into a relationship reaching far beyond economic cooperation. We should analyze Australian-Chinese relationship by means of 'dual identity approach'.

After 40 years of evolution, current Australian-Chinese relations have become one of the most important bilateral relationship for both nations. Its gradual development has become an essential force toward the stability of the Asia-Pacific region and thus to global security.

However, due to the differences in political systems and fundamental values between the two nations, the bilateral relationship has not been plain sailing nor free of disputes.

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China has always been concerned about the development of the US-Australia alliance. It publicly paid attention to Australia's support to America's missile defense program, as well as the recent US-Australian agreement on the establishment of a US military base in Darwin. In a word, the development of Australian-Chinese relations has been largely influenced by Chinese-American relations.

Australia will rely on America for security, and rely on China to keep its prosperity. Australians are familiar with their most important partners in the past, namely Britain and the US, with whom they share the same fundamental values, cultural background, language and historical experience. China's presence makes a totally different scenario.

How to face this challenge will be a test of people's wisdom. The key to this issue is how to understand the 'Chinese challenge', what will be China's future effects on Australia, what possible stances Australia will take when facing a rising China, and how to project into the future.

Because there are so many common interests and only few common values shared between Australia and China, Australia is ambivalent when it comes to its own policy towards China. On the one hand, China's rise is seen as an opportunity. Australia supports such a rise and hopes to establish a constructive relationship with China. On the other hand, Australia is concerned about the possibility that China will become a regional hegemonic power which disregards the "norms" expected by Western nations.

A rising China is being more and more strongly felt by Australians. The newspapers in Australia have China-related coverage almost every day. The urban centres of Sydney and Melbourne are more and more' Asianised'. We often meet Chinese on the streets, either Chinese Australians or tourists and international students from China. China has become the largest trading partner of Australia as well as the largest source of international students, making the continuous growth of Chinese economy a prime mover of the Australian mining boom.

Now we are witnessing a historic change, albeit it still at its embryonic stage (and we cannot accurately predict its influences). According to a prediction of Goldman Sachs, the three largest economies in the world by 2050 will be China, the US, and India, followed by Brazil, Mexico, Russia and Indonesia. Only two European nations, namely Britain and Germany, will linger on as the ninth and the tenth largest economies. If these kinds of predictions come true, then over the next forty years, the world will become fundamentally different from what we know today.

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Just take 'globalisation' as an example. It is the perception of most of the Western nations that the process of globalisation is a process of ' Westernisation' for the entire world, which includes market liberalisation, acceptance of Western capitals, privatisation, legal jurisprudence, human rights systems and democratic regulations. To achieve this long term goal, Western nations have already exerted a great deal of political effort. At the same time, the combined effects of competition, market dynamics, technology and other contributing factors have spewed a mushrooming of monotone characteristics across the metropolitan centres of developing nations. These characteristics include skyscrapers, motorways, computers, mobile phones, etc.

Globalisation is far more than a one-way process to Western ideals. It is very complicated. The US may be the most influential player on the field at the moment, exerting powerful pressure over several rounds of global trade negotiations.

According to the mainstream views in the West, the rise of China will not create any fundamental change to the world. The rise of China will inevitably trigger changes to its relationships with its neighbors as well as the global situation. The rise of China will construct new regional orders, which are more multi-polar, more fluid and challenging. This kind of regional order will be less affected by the values and methodologies of the West.

But why should we assume that the underlying factor of China's influence is economic rather than political?

It is an international rule of thumb that a rising power will use economic muscle to pursue political, cultural and military goals, and it is the essence of a hegemonic power, which China clearly envisages as its goal. Do not assume that China will automatically become a Western style nation. That is just a wishful fantasy of the West.

China has been exerting increasing influence over the world using its massive growing economic clout. The Confucius Institute is ostensibly a way of Chinese cultural export to the West, but it really serves as a gradual indoctrination of current Chinese political system. The Chinese regime exploits the Western freedom of speech loop hole to procure media space to broadcast a favourable spin on current affairs, to permeate and indoctrinate Chinese nationals living in the West.

The view that China's global influences will mainly be economic is obsolete. China's politics and culture will also create huge influences. What may be the most shocking to the West is that China's rise will be cultural, political, ethical, plus more, rather than purely economic, and the influence of a rising China will far exceed that of a rising America in the past.

This raises a big question for us: Will China accept the international order as it is now, or will it change the fundamentals of the system in the long run?

Australia needs to maintain a good relationship with China to sustain reciprocal economic development. But it must also retain our fundamental values of human rights and commercial ethics. Australia will coexist with a rapidly rising China in the Asia-Pacific, and the challenges are foreseeable and unavoidable. Despite our inability to predict the future, the golden rule must be: if human lives are not directed by ethically correct ideas and notions, our development will be off track, thus endangering our earth.

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About the Author

Dr Chin Jin is a maverick, activist, campaigner, essayist, freelancer, researcher and organizer with the vision to foresee a new post-Chinese Communist regime era that will present more cooperatively, more constructively and more appropriately to the Asia Pacific region and even the world.

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All articles by Chin Jin

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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