By William Choong, Senior Writer
THE British defence analyst was the typical British don - stiff upper lip, unflappable and the picture of calm. At a recent seminar on Asia-Pacific security, however, he lost his cool.
An academic from Beijing University had stated that People's Liberation Army officers were portraying military build-ups in South-east Asian countries as threatening to China's interests. (Under Chatham House rules, both cannot be named.)
Visibly irritated, the British academic replied: 'Time and time again this year, my colleagues and I have heard from our Chinese interlocutors that China is portraying South-east Asian military build-ups as destabilising... This is a fantastic inversion of reality.'
The British professor was merely expressing a common occurrence in international relations. As political scientist Richard Ned Lebow states in Between Peace And War, a country's policymakers imprisoned by their own self-image can convince themselves that others see them as they see themselves.
This is occurring in China's interactions with its Asian neighbours today. China sees itself as benign. It has conducted a charm offensive in Asia, touting its 'peaceful rise' and the aspiration that its navy and other Asian navies share a 'harmonious ocean'. It has doled out billions of aid to Asean countries and takes seriously its participation in various Asian and Asean-related fora.
Speaking to The Straits Times in her first interview with the foreign press last year, China's Ambassador to Asean Xue Hanqin argued that Asean countries were comfortable with China's military and economic emergence. Concerns about China 'did not exist', she added.
The problem, however, is that other countries do not always see China as Beijing sees itself. Recently, for example, countries in the region were concerned when China declared its 'indisputable sovereignty' over the disputed South China Sea. To top things off, Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi reportedly said in Hanoi that 'China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact'.
China's diatribes were not only aimed at small countries. Reacting to naval exercises held recently by the United States and South Korea in the Yellow Sea,
Major-General Luo Yuan, the deputy secretary-general of the Academy of Military Sciences, accused the US of pushing its security boundary to the Yellow and South China seas. If this continued, he added, China would have to 'hurt' the US in return.
This disconnect between China's self-image and other countries' image of China has triggered concrete actions across the region.
Vietnam, once Washington's arch foe, hosted the super-carrier USS George Washington last month in a not-so-subtle signal directed at China. In a Defence White Paper last year, Australia called for a massive naval build-up - a move seen as a pre-emptive response to China's naval build-up. Recently, some newspaper reports suggested that Japan will increase its submarine fleet for the first time since 1976, to counter North Korea and China.
Does this mean, as one Chinese airforce officer argues, that regional countries are forming an 'Asian Nato' against China? Not quite.
Gone is the 1990s debate, predominately in the US, about the 'containment' of China. Today, Asian countries engage China in all kinds of fora, while at the same time keeping the powder dry. As the late British strategist Gerald Segal opined presciently in a 1996 article, 'constrainment' - a mix of engagement and containment - is the way to go.
And is the US angling for an 'attack' on China, as Mr Yang suggested after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a multilateral approach to the South China Sea dispute? Again, not really.
The fact is that US President Barack Obama is becoming a 'Pacific president' deeply engaged in Asian affairs. Also, China's fierce rhetoric has led to growing scepticism - and perhaps coordinated action - among Asean countries. At a recent Asean Regional Forum meeting in Hanoi, 12 of the 27 countries participating - including the US - spoke in favour of a new approach to the South China Sea. This prompted Mr Yang to suspect some form of orchestration.
This state of affairs behooves Beijing to do three things. First, it should launch a fresh charm offensive and sign the Code of Conduct with Asean to formally enforce peaceful settlement of the South China Sea issue. A 2002 Declaration of Code of Conduct (DOC) was only voluntary and not legally binding. And as Professor Shen Dingli, executive dean of Fudan University's Institute of International Studies, argues, China should abide by the 2002 DOC, and settle the issue at the International Court of Justice.
Lastly, China needs to at least recognise concerns voiced by some of its Asian neighbours about its military build-up, instead of burying such concerns under lofty rhetoric about China's 'peaceful rise'. Beijing should explain in detail what the acquisitions of, say, nuclear-armed submarines, and even an aircraft carrier, are for.
Speaking in Hanoi recently, Mr Yang asked rhetorically whether the expression of one's 'core interests' was a 'form of coercion'. The answer has to be 'yes'. After all, international politics is all about perception and the actions taken thereof.
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