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UK and other nations are keen to benefit from China's economic power and seem prepared to push aside human rights concern.
David Cameron plays table tennis on his recent three-day visit to China. Photograph: Chinafotopress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images
This week it was David Cameron playing table tennis, Joe Biden touting democracy, and Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych escaping a little domestic trouble. This weekend it is French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault talking nuclear power. Next week there will be Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop.
Welcome to Beijing, the must-visit destination for world leaders who need cash or clout. Rarely a week goes by without some leading dignitary passing through. African leaders come seeking investment or offering land deals. Europeans swing by eager for access to Chinese markets (Angela Merkel is almost a regular in Beijing, and Vladimir Putin's first overseas visit after his return to the presidency last year was Beijing).
The principal reason is obvious: the world's second-largest economy is primed to invest abroad, and western nations are in no position to wave it away.
But the promised land has a dark side – for many western leaders, China's economic allure has eclipsed its unscrupulous politics. They know that criticizing China's treatment of dissidents, its repressive ethnic policies and its increasing aggression abroad will carry an economic price. They're afraid of getting burned.
"I think China obviously uses its growing economic power to send a clear message, or signal, to foreign leaders," said Jingdong Yuan, an expert in international affairs at Sydney university's centre for internationalsecurity studies. "The Chinese government might close some doors, or make things more difficult if they see foreign leaders deliberately challenge their interests."
Analysts have criticized Cameron's three-day trip to Beijing, which ended Wednesday, as little more than an extended apology for meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in 2012, causing Beijing to freeze inter-ministerial Sino-UK ties. During the trip, he played table tennis with Chinese schoolchildren, traipsed along Shanghai's bund with a prominent entrepreneur, and opened an account on Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblog.
Yet what Cameron neglected to do is arguably more significant. He did not criticize China for its recent unilateral declaration of administrative control over a swath of airspace in the east China sea, bringing territorial disputes with Japan to a boil. He did not mention China's human rights record, its environmental degradation, or the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, whom he met with in 2012.
Biden, who left Beijing on Thursday night, did tackle a few tough issues: in meetings with China's president Xi Jinping and premier Li Keqiang, he emphasized that Washington has a "firm position and expectations" on the country's behavior in the east China sea. He strongly criticized China for withholding visas from foreign journalists as retaliation for critical coverage, and encouraged a group of US visa applicants to "challenge the government," espousing the rejection of orthodoxy as a traditional American value.
"The Americans still say what they want, regarding human rights in China and Tibet, but western European leaders have been quite effectively intimidated – China has succeeded in teaching them a so-called lesson," said Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese politics at Claremont McKenna College in California. "No leader who dares to have a meeting with the Dalai Lama can escape punishment by Beijing."
Cameron arrived in China with more 130 businesspeople, the UK's largest trade delegation, and signed a raft of deals. He pushed for an EU-China free trade agreement and Chinese investment in a British high-speed rail project. He signed a £45m deal to export pig semen to China, to improve the quality of the country's pork.
Yet the outcomes of such vaunted trade deals are often unclear, said Pei – on official visits, both sides' top priorities are ultimately image-related. European leaders want to prove that they're leveraging China's economic resources for benefits at home. Chinese leaders wants to show domestic audiences that they occupy the high ground over western, democratic societies.
"I think Chinese leaders are smart enough to know that they're not going to change the suspicion, the ideological hostility towards China in the West," he said. "But they're going to squeeze every bit of PR out of these visits that they can."
Jonathan Holslag, a research fellow at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, said that since president Xi and premier Li took the reins last autumn, they have proven far more straightforward than their predecessors. Western politicians have been cowed.
"I think the Chinese have learned to play the game very well – and it's not a game of real power, it's a game of protocol, and it's a game of pretense," he said. "This creates a sort of vicious cycle. The Chinese pretend to be powerful, we position ourselves as weaker than we really are, and this allows the Chinese to push harder."
China: the must-visit destination for cash-seeking world leaders | World news | theguardian.com
David Cameron plays table tennis on his recent three-day visit to China. Photograph: Chinafotopress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images
This week it was David Cameron playing table tennis, Joe Biden touting democracy, and Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych escaping a little domestic trouble. This weekend it is French prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault talking nuclear power. Next week there will be Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop.
Welcome to Beijing, the must-visit destination for world leaders who need cash or clout. Rarely a week goes by without some leading dignitary passing through. African leaders come seeking investment or offering land deals. Europeans swing by eager for access to Chinese markets (Angela Merkel is almost a regular in Beijing, and Vladimir Putin's first overseas visit after his return to the presidency last year was Beijing).
The principal reason is obvious: the world's second-largest economy is primed to invest abroad, and western nations are in no position to wave it away.
But the promised land has a dark side – for many western leaders, China's economic allure has eclipsed its unscrupulous politics. They know that criticizing China's treatment of dissidents, its repressive ethnic policies and its increasing aggression abroad will carry an economic price. They're afraid of getting burned.
"I think China obviously uses its growing economic power to send a clear message, or signal, to foreign leaders," said Jingdong Yuan, an expert in international affairs at Sydney university's centre for internationalsecurity studies. "The Chinese government might close some doors, or make things more difficult if they see foreign leaders deliberately challenge their interests."
Analysts have criticized Cameron's three-day trip to Beijing, which ended Wednesday, as little more than an extended apology for meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama in 2012, causing Beijing to freeze inter-ministerial Sino-UK ties. During the trip, he played table tennis with Chinese schoolchildren, traipsed along Shanghai's bund with a prominent entrepreneur, and opened an account on Sina Weibo, China's most popular microblog.
Yet what Cameron neglected to do is arguably more significant. He did not criticize China for its recent unilateral declaration of administrative control over a swath of airspace in the east China sea, bringing territorial disputes with Japan to a boil. He did not mention China's human rights record, its environmental degradation, or the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, whom he met with in 2012.
Biden, who left Beijing on Thursday night, did tackle a few tough issues: in meetings with China's president Xi Jinping and premier Li Keqiang, he emphasized that Washington has a "firm position and expectations" on the country's behavior in the east China sea. He strongly criticized China for withholding visas from foreign journalists as retaliation for critical coverage, and encouraged a group of US visa applicants to "challenge the government," espousing the rejection of orthodoxy as a traditional American value.
"The Americans still say what they want, regarding human rights in China and Tibet, but western European leaders have been quite effectively intimidated – China has succeeded in teaching them a so-called lesson," said Minxin Pei, an expert on Chinese politics at Claremont McKenna College in California. "No leader who dares to have a meeting with the Dalai Lama can escape punishment by Beijing."
Cameron arrived in China with more 130 businesspeople, the UK's largest trade delegation, and signed a raft of deals. He pushed for an EU-China free trade agreement and Chinese investment in a British high-speed rail project. He signed a £45m deal to export pig semen to China, to improve the quality of the country's pork.
Yet the outcomes of such vaunted trade deals are often unclear, said Pei – on official visits, both sides' top priorities are ultimately image-related. European leaders want to prove that they're leveraging China's economic resources for benefits at home. Chinese leaders wants to show domestic audiences that they occupy the high ground over western, democratic societies.
"I think Chinese leaders are smart enough to know that they're not going to change the suspicion, the ideological hostility towards China in the West," he said. "But they're going to squeeze every bit of PR out of these visits that they can."
Jonathan Holslag, a research fellow at the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies, said that since president Xi and premier Li took the reins last autumn, they have proven far more straightforward than their predecessors. Western politicians have been cowed.
"I think the Chinese have learned to play the game very well – and it's not a game of real power, it's a game of protocol, and it's a game of pretense," he said. "This creates a sort of vicious cycle. The Chinese pretend to be powerful, we position ourselves as weaker than we really are, and this allows the Chinese to push harder."
China: the must-visit destination for cash-seeking world leaders | World news | theguardian.com
