17 - 23 January 2002
Issue No.569
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 17 - 23 January 2002 Issue No.569 |
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Perils and opportunities
Ibrahim Nafie, in China, examines a unique response to some universal riddles
With over a fifth the world's population in an area the size of the Middle East, the earth's centre of gravity must be located somewhere in the vicinity of Beijing. The Forbidden City, from which emperors ruled for millennia, holds a special appeal to Egyptians, who know the value of an ancient civilisation. The Egyptian and Chinese peoples also share a strong bond in modern history. President Nasser's meeting with Zhou Enlai ushered in the Third World liberation movement, and since then the two countries have been connected by an important cultural and strategic relationship. Finally, I have always been a great admirer of the breathtaking success of the Chinese economic and social modernisation programme, set in motion at the Chinese Communist Party Congress of 1978. Therefore, I did not think twice before accepting the kind invitation to Al-Ahram to spend a week in China preparatory to President Mubarak's visit to Beijing next week.
This invitation called to mind a similar Al- Ahram visit to China in 1998. At the time, the economic crisis that was snowballing in southeast Asia had raised the spectre of worldwide recession, and its political effects ricocheted throughout the region, most tangibly in Indonesia. Pakistan and India had shocked the world with their nuclear tests, which reverberated ominously in nearby China. In short, the global economic and strategic situation, especially around China, appeared bleak.
I will never forget the meeting I had with Prime Minister Zhu Rongji that July, when the Asian economic crisis was at its nadir and the economic growth rates of most Asian economies had plunged below zero. Rongji told me sadly that the crisis had severely stung his country's economy; he feared the national growth rate would fall below eight per cent. Indeed, at the end of the year I checked the figures and found his prediction correct. China's economic growth rate for 1998 was 7.8 per cent -- the highest in the world, during the worst economic crisis of the 1990s. By the end of the decade, moreover, Asia had emerged from the economic and political quagmire. Asian economies had recuperated on foundations more conducive to sustained development, and governments had moved closer to democracy. The world had also managed to accommodate to the need, however unpleasant, to coexist with the two new members of the world's nuclear club.
The 1990s, with the changes the end of the Cold War and the IT revolution brought about, did not usher in the "end of history." Early in the new millennium, history delivered another blow. Four months after the stunning and gruesome events of 11 September, the international community resembles a room full of gamblers after a powerful gust of wind. All their cards blown away, they have been dealt an entirely new hand, which they have to play quickly. But leaders in Beijing are contemplating their new cards with aplomb. To them, "crisis" means not only danger, but also opportunity.
China and the US, by virtue of their size, capacities and, perhaps, history, have a complex relationship; and, because they are both major world powers, theirs is a competitive relationship. Sometimes their rivalry can bring them to loggerheads. On the other hand, they are committed to relations based on mutual economic and strategic dependency, so however intense their rivalry, they have worked consistently to safeguard stability in eastern Asia. Their rational handling of the incident of the American spy plane last April is a case in point, as is their record of sustained, energetic economic relations. The US is one of China's foremost trading partners and a major investor in China's economic development experience.
However, 11 September changed the world. In the aftermath, the US launched a battle on international terrorism, which had reached unprecedented proportions. Because of Afghanistan's proximity to China and the Taliban's attempts to incite its Muslim minority, China had its reasons for supporting this battle.
The blow to the US economy was also a severe blow to China, which has a greater trade surplus with the US than it does with any other nation. Indeed, Chinese economic growth has become in no small measure dependent upon the extraordinary capacity of the US market to absorb Chinese products. Moreover, as is always the case, recession in the US economy drags down the entire global economy. For a nation such as China, global recession spells disaster.
If China had no major reservations to joining the international coalition against terrorism, or to the ousting of the Taliban and the destruction of Al-Qa'eda's infrastructure, it is now faced with the problem of a massive US military presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, adding to a similar military presence in Japan, the China Sea, the Gulf and the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Moreover, the process of "rebuilding Afghanistan" has brought the other members of NATO into the region -- as though NATO, originally formed to defend Europe, had extended its boundaries eastward to Central Asia, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, to strike out against terrorism, reconstruct nations and overturn the previous strategic balance. Meanwhile, Israel in the Middle East and India in the Asian subcontinent are taking advantage of the current climate to settle outstanding scores in Palestine and Kashmir, with the US, Russia and other great powers on hand to put in their oars.
The world, in short, is in a precarious state, and in these shifting sands China is alert to both perils and opportunities. The Al-Ahram team has gone in search of answers to the questions that confront the Chinese, and the rest of the world, at this juncture.
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