This moment was inevitable. Ever since China began to shuck off communism and turn itself into a global economic power, its leaders have followed the strategy of a “peaceful rise” — be modest, act prudently, don’t frighten the neighbors and certainly don’t galvanize any coalition against us. But in recent years, with the U.S. economic model having suffered an embarrassing self-inflicted shock, and the “Beijing Consensus” humming along, voices have emerged in China saying “the future belongs to us” and maybe we should let the world, or at least the ’hood, know that a little more affirmatively. For now, those voices come largely from retired generals and edgy bloggers — and the Chinese leadership has remained cautious. But a diplomatic spat this past summer has China’s neighbors, not to mention Washington, wondering for how long China will keep up the gentle giant act. With an estimated 70 million bloggers, China’s leaders are under constant pressure now to be more assertive by a populist- and nationalist-leaning blogosphere, which, in the absence of democratic elections, is becoming the de facto voice of the people.
The diplomatic fracas was a session of the regional forum of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or Asean, held July 23 in Hanoi. In attendance were foreign ministers of the 10 Asean members, as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi. According to one of the diplomats who sat in on the meeting, the Asean ministers took turns subtly but firmly cautioning China to back off from its decision to claim “indisputable sovereignty” over the whole resource-rich South China Sea, which stretches from Singapore to the Strait of Taiwan over to Vietnam and carries about half the world’s merchant cargo each year. Its seabed is also believed to hold major reserves of oil and gas, and lately China’s Navy has become more aggressive in seizing fishing boats alleged to have infringed on its sovereignty there. China also has been embroiled in maritime disputes with South Korea and Japan.
As one minister after another got up at the Asean meeting to assert claims in the South China Sea or argue that any territorial disputes must be resolved peacefully and in accordance with international law, the Chinese foreign minister grew increasingly agitated, according to a participant. And after Mrs. Clinton spoke and insisted that the South China Sea was an area where America had “a national interest” in “freedom of navigation,” the Chinese foreign minister asked for a brief adjournment and then weighed in.
Speaking without a text, Yang went on for 25 minutes, insisting that this was a bilateral issue, not one between China and Asean. He looked across the room at Mrs. Clinton through much of his stem-winder, which included the observation that “China is a big country” and most of the other Asean members “are small countries,” The Washington Post reported. The consensus in the room, the diplomat said, was that the Chinese minister was trying to intimidate the group and separate the territorial claimants from the nonclaimants so that there could be no Asean collective action and each country would have to negotiate with China separately.
As negative feedback from the Yang lecture rippled back to Beijing, China’s leaders seemed to play down the affair for fear that after a decade of declining U.S. influence in the region they were about to drive all their neighbors back into America’s embrace.
How much China’s leaders will be able to cool it, though, will depend, in part, on a third party: the Chinese blogosphere, where a whole generation of Chinese schooled by the government on the notion that the U.S. and the West want to keep China down, now have their own megaphones to denounce any Chinese official who compromises too much as “pro-American” or “a traitor.”
Interestingly, the U.S. Embassy in Beijing has begun to reach out to that same blogosphere — even inviting bloggers to travel in the car with the U.S. ambassador, Jon Huntsman, and interview him when he visits their Chinese province — to get America’s message out without filtering by China’s state-run media.
“China for the first time has a public sphere to discuss everything affecting Chinese citizens,” explained Hu Yong, a blogosphere expert at Peking University. “Under traditional media, only elite people had a voice, but the Internet changed that.” He added, “We now have a transnational media. It is the whole society talking, so people from various regions of China can discuss now when something happens in a remote village — and the news spreads everywhere.” But this Internet world “is more populist and nationalistic,” he continued. “Many years of education that our enemies are trying to keep us down has produced a whole generation of young people whose thinking is like this, and they now have a whole Internet to express it.”
Watch this space. The days when Nixon and Mao could manage this relationship in secret are long gone. There are a lot of unstable chemicals at work out here today, and so many more players with the power to inflame or calm U.S.-China relations. Or to paraphrase Princess Diana, there are three of us in this marriage.
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