20 - 26 September 2001
Issue No.552
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 20 - 26 September 2001 Issue No.552 |
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From Shanghai to New York
As terrorism shakes the United States, China is moving rapidly towards stability and prosperity. Mohamed Sid-Ahmed comments
The visit of a delegation from the Egyptian Council for Foreign Relations to China at the invitation of the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs, which coincided with the terrorist attacks on America, was an eye- opening experience in more ways than one. Although the purpose of the visit was to discuss means of fostering Sino-Egyptian relations, our delegation also took part in an international seminar organised by our host under the title "China and the World in the 21st Century." The seminar was a showcase for the amazing headway China has made in the last two decades and a celebration of its emerging status as a major league player on the world stage. I think I speak not only for myself but for the other members of the Egyptian delegation -- indeed, for all the foreign participants at the seminar -- when I say that our visit to China was a revelation, even a shock, which turned all our preconceptions on their heads. We saw for ourselves how China is enjoying a remarkable economic boom, social stability and an ever-accelerating pace of development, in deep contrast with another big surprise: namely, the sudden exposure of the vulnerability of America's institutions in face of a devastating terrorist blow that exposed New York and Washington to a human tragedy of unparalleled scale.
But let us begin with the first surprise, which is the promotion of China, with its population of one and a third billion, to the status of top-ranking state. I must admit I was not aware of the progress China has achieved in its recent past and if I had not seen it with my own eyes I would not have believed it possible. We visited Shanghai which, with its soaring skyline, is a glittering city comparable to Tokyo and New York. We were told that what is true of Shanghai is also true of many other coastal towns. While some parts of China are developing more rapidly than others and a gigantic effort is required to develop the country's vast heartland, the Chinese leadership, which is pouring billions into infrastructural reform in the big cities in preparation for the 2008 Olympics, is also giving top priority to developing its inland regions. But what is perhaps more amazing than the Chinese miracle is the fact that it has not received its due in the media, although in the age of the information revolution it is extremely difficult to keep such a story under wraps. How to explain that China's spectacular modernisation drive has not received the attention it deserves? Are we facing a conspiracy of silence here, a deliberate attempt by certain global powers to downplay China's equal partner status and cast it in the role of an enemy that must be invented to justify military mobilisation after the collapse of the bipolar world order? This is an issue that needs to be carefully looked into.
As I wrote in an earlier article, my previous visit to China took place in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, a cataclysmic episode in China's modern history that was still being described at the time as the correct revolutionary path. Today it is described in very different terms as a "mistake," a misguided decision on the part of Mao Zedong, who overrated the threat of the so-called "capitalist- roaders" and slipped into a counter-revolutionary path. The Chinese leadership still pays homage to Mao as the father and architect of the Chinese Revolution. An enormous picture of Mao dominates Tiananmen Square in central Beijing and his Little Red Book is still on sale in the bookshops. But he is no longer the object of a personality cult and the officials we spoke to were openly critical of what they referred to as his "mistakes and deviations." According to them, it was thanks to Deng Xiao Peng that the correct path was restored.
It is not easy to predict in what direction China is heading. The leadership now openly admits that over-exaggerating enmity to the "capitalist-roaders" during the Cultural Revolution triggered a counter- revolution, total chaos and seriously harmed the revolutionary experiment. What is striking is that what has been achieved in the last two decades is praised by even outright conservatives like former Tory Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine, a participant at the Beijing seminar, "as an achievement without parallel in human history." We heard Chinese leaders describe the path China has chosen as a "third way," that is, neither traditional capitalism nor traditional socialism, but a special type of socialism with Chinese characteristics, a formula that opposes hegemonism in all its forms. They claim that China's Third Way is more authentic than Tony Blair's, even if it was the latter who coined the expression.
Is China's Third Way, which is unequivocally opposed to the Soviet Union's socialist experiment, equally opposed to the capitalist experiments in the West? To what extent is the United States opposed to China's current policies? Former US President Bill Clinton went to great lengths to normalise US relations with China, but no similar effort has so far been made by George W Bush. In any case, this last week has witnessed the emergence of an enemy to the US and, for that matter, to the West as a whole, that can no longer be regarded as marginal, accidental or regional, but must be seen as one of the basic component elements of the present world order.
The last day of the Beijing seminar was largely given over to discussing the far-reaching implications of this new reality. I took the floor to say that while the prevailing view is that we are now living in a unipolar world order, in actual fact the world is still sharply divided into two poles. The new bipolarity is very different from the one obtaining during the Cold War, when both poles operated within the legitimacy of the world system. Today this applies to only one of the poles, which is headed by the United States and includes most of the world's states. The other pole stands outside the legitimacy of the world system and includes forces in active rebellion against it. That is the pole of global terrorism. Those responsible for the carnage visited on New York and Washington must be mercilessly hunted down and brought to justice. But it would be short-sighted to believe that terrorism can be eliminated by violent means alone. A concerted effort must be made to address the factors that breed terrorism if we are to put an end to this scourge. I ended my intervention by calling for a general reappraisal of world order with a view to removing the elements of inequality, lack of justice and discrimination that encourage global terrorism.
My words seem to have struck a chord, and I was surprised at the number of participants, including Americans and other Westerners, who sought me out to tell me they agreed with my analysis of the situation. I was also interviewed by a number of media representatives, which provided me with an opportunity to develop my thinking further. I warned that no part of humankind should be left in a state of despair or made to feel that they are deprived of their most basic rights. All people must be made to realise that human solidarity is essential for the survival of the human race as a whole. Terrorist acts are an expression of despair by people who feel they have nothing to lose, people so alienated by what they see as a callous disregard of their humanity that they react by striking out at others, even innocent civilians, and even at the cost of their own lives.
A war against terrorism therefore cannot be waged along the lines of a conventional war between states, but along totally different lines. It is a war against individuals and groups who have spread into many states which cannot be held directly accountable for their conduct. The war against terrorism is a war against despair, and it cannot achieve its ends if its sole objective is to exact revenge, because reprisal and counter-reprisal is a vicious circle that can only further aggravate an already untenable situation. Hence President Mubarak's call for an international conference to fight terrorism, and not a global alliance, which is more likely to divide humankind than to unite it in the face of this scourge.
An important lesson to be drawn from the Chinese experiments is that, although China has still to overcome a number of major problems, notably the issue of Taiwan and the question of uneven development of its provinces, there is a tangible sense of confidence and optimism in the country, at both the official and popular levels. This is in stark contrast to the mood of pessimism pervading the Arab world as it faces its own major problems, notably the issue of Palestine and the failure to achieve effective Arab solidarity. The difference is that the Chinese have successfully deployed their many assets in the service of a coherent vision of their place in the world, while the Arabs have yet to formulate such a vision and not remain at the mercy of contingencies beyond their control.
The Chinese leadership has vigorously condemned the terrorist acts against America. So have the Arab leaders. But China is better placed than the Arabs to assert that terrorism will not be eradicated as long as the reasons for terrorism have not been removed. China is currently taken up with the problems of the Far East, the Arabs by those of the Middle East. The coming war against terrorism that Bush is determined to wage, even if it entails civilian casualties, will introduce a new global game with entirely different rules. This is an opportunity for greater Sino-Arab rapprochement, a rapprochement the Arabs, as the main victims of such a war, have every interest in developing.
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