Brian M Downing
China’s emergence as a global economic power is clear. How China will affect governments around the world, isn’t. Over the last decade, it has gone abroad and locked up critical oil and ore contracts and embarked upon numerous major construction projects such as railroads, pipelines, and port facilities. It has done so unencumbered by the laws, principles, and compunctions regarding human rights that have guided the US and EU, if only intermittently.
China presents itself to the developing world as indifferent to local practices. It assures local rulers that as a former victim of imperialism, it has no intention of imposing any value system upon them. Whether this position is honestly proffered or simply a pragmatic if not amoral approach to new extractive relations, it has helped China win contracts and secure its growth.
Two crises are emerging that will offer an idea as to how China will shape world politics: Sudan is nearing another round of civil war and Pakistan faces the adverse consequences of its military’s long dominance. China has a great deal of influence over both countries and observers are wondering if China’s growing power will be used solely for its economy and national security or also for more long-term stability in the world. They will get an answer presently, either by China’s actions or inactions.
The Sudan
A recent referendum held in South Sudan called for secession from the North, which it is hoped will end the civil wars that have broken out over many decades. The Arab-muslim North is evidently unwilling to abide by the referendum’s outcome and allow the black and Christian South to secede.
Northern troops are brutally intimidating people along the border and are poised to drive south. The North is supporting a pitiless guerrilla band in Uganda (the Lord’s Resistance Army) and may encourage it to strike into South Sudan. Furthermore, there are black Christian peoples above the North-South divide, who are already feeling Khartoum’s heavy hand. Another round of civil war looms, as does the prospect of ethnic cleansing along the boundary.
Sudan, as is well known, is an important supplier of oil to China. Indeed, China has developed Sudan’s fields, which are mostly in the South, and the refining and export infrastructure, which is exclusively in the North. China bestows various aid programs and is the principal source of arms and training for the Sudanese army and its associated militias, including the Janjaweed forces that caught world attention by their marauding in the Darfur region in western Sudan.
China, far more than any other entity, is able to settle the crisis, either by supporting the North in conquest or by prevailing upon it to accept secession. The latter would entail gaining the South’s assurance that it will not build a pipeline to Kenyan ports on the Arabian Sea, which of course would devastate the North’s economy.
The Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir has recently been in Beijing for consultations with President Hu Jintao. Afterwards the Chinese foreign ministry stated: “China will firmly pursue a friendly policy toward Sudan. No matter the changes in the international situation and Sudan’s internal situation, this policy will remain unchanged.” One might have hoped for more heartening words – or at least more forthright ones.
Pakistan
A more vexing and only seemingly less-pressing problem is posed by Pakistan. Its 175 million people, half of them under the age of twenty-two, are mostly desperately poor and ill-disposed toward their leaders, civilian or military, who strut and fret in Islamabad and Rawalpindi without bringing any positive results. Land ownership is highly concentrated in a political elite. Mullahs point ever more to this injustice – and to Deobandi militancy as the solution. Separatist movements operate in the Baloch area in the west and the Pashtun area in the northwest – over sixty percent of the country.
There is an even more pressing problem of rising militant groups. Some of them are tied to the issues of land reform and separatism within the country, while others – the more violent ones – are international in scope and strike throughout the region. Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Mohammed operate in Afghanistan and India. The Jundullah strikes in Baloch parts of Iran. Remnants of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan operate along the Af-Pak line and serve alongside al Qaeda.
Perhaps of most concern to China is the presence of Uighur fighters in al Qaeda along the Af-Pak line. They are tied to a separatist movement in China’s Xinjiang province, which is of considerable worry to Beijing. The region has a large Turkic Muslim population that is chaffing under Han hegemony and building ties with Turkic peoples in Central Asia. Xinjiang contains promising oil fields and is the eastern terminus for the China National Petroleum Company’s now completed pipeline from oil fields in Kazakhstan.
All of these, along with the Taliban, enjoy safe havens in Pakistan and receive support from the Pakistani military. Obsessed with the Kashmir issue and losses to India, the generals have supported if not created a number of violent groups to do their bidding and bolster their prominent though flagging sense of honor.
Pressure and rewards from the US have failed to detach the Pakistani generals from their client groups. It is increasingly evident, both in and out of Pakistan, that should the military disown its numerous fervent creations, they would quickly turn their deadly skills against Pakistan.
The generals have ignored US pressure to break with militants, confident that in the event of an aid curtailment they will always have support from China – a confidence that China has done little to discourage, until recently. China has cooled to the idea of establishing a naval base in southwestern Pakistan. The country is in such disarray that it may no longer be seen as a reliable business or geopolitical partner. Nonetheless, China may be Pakistan’s last chance to avoid self-destruction.
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China has a great deal of influence in Sudan, the US quite little. China’s influence in Pakistan grows as its civilian politicians defer or lose critical parts of government to the military and its generals grow increasingly defiant of the US. The emerging crises in these two countries are, whether Beijing likes it or not, falling into its hands.
Dealing with the two crises would not require China to suddenly break with its preference for authoritarian government, both at home and with its partners in the developing world. That is not in the offing. The crisis in Sudan calls for brokering an amicable divorce – or helping to crush the South. The crisis in Pakistan calls for bringing about some form of responsible government – or remaining aligned with a failing state and its network of militant groups throughout South and Central Asia.
The world is watching China as the US steps back from the overcommitment to global matters that began in the heady days after WW2, extended through the cold war, and persisted well after the Soviet Union fell. Paradoxically, and perhaps galling to China, the US’s reliance on military force in recent years will make the world look for an emerging power to act more subtly and peaceably, lest it be seen as simply another hegemon whose prestige and products will be tarnished by its use of power.
Copyright 2011 Brian M Downing