China: contributor, not a freeloader
- By Shen Dingli
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E-mail China.org.cn, December 29, 2014
Taking American tourism for example, in 2012 there were one million Chinese tourists who visited America, spending $7,000 per person on average. Compared with all Chinese visiting abroad in 2012, some 70 million, only 1.4% of them had a chance to tour America at that time. Two years ago, compared with a Chinese population of 1.3 billion, only 7 out of 10,000 Chinese would have had such an opportunity. This has pressed President Obama to call for a 40% increase in the issuance of Chinese visas in two years. By now, the U.S. has already issued 1.4 million visas in China in one year, when all Chinese visiting abroad will surpass 100 million in 2014.
Third, China's riding of the globalization train has not only benefited the U.S., but also the world. Among all P5 countries, China is now dispatching the most peacekeepers under the United Nations mandate. Lately, China has started to send combatant troops in the UN uniform, running higher risks. Chinese navy ships not only joined in America's 2014 RIMPAC exercises, but also served the UN mission to dismantle Syrian chemical weapons and to protect the sea lane of commercial communication in the Gulf of Eden, with permit of Somalia government.
Chinese contributions to world peace and security are abundant. On the anti-terror front, China works with the U.S. and other governments to share political will and intelligence resources amongst each other, as well as to create financial and physical barriers for terror groups. On the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction, China joins the international community to demand that the DPRK and Iran end their respective nuclear weapons programs or suspicious nuclear programs, and impose relevant sanctions along the UNSC line. In conducting such international cooperation, China certainly pays some cost as for a while it has reduced oil imports from Iran.
On the economic and financial area, when the U.S. and the world were stricken by a financial "tsunami" in 2008, China joined the rest of the world by increasing its domestic spending so as to revitalize its own market. In addition to borrowing the over $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds and setting up the Strategic and Economic Dialogue to institutionally advance China-US cooperation and dispel challenges they face, Beijing has enthusiastically embraced the newly established G20 and played an active role in strengthening international financial institutions and economic sustainability. Since 2011, China has proposed establishing an SCO Development Bank, BRICS Development, and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. These shall contribute to Asian and world development, especially for those underdeveloped and emerging markets.
Understandably, President Obama would complain that China has not acted more proactively in the international system that China has benefited. However, there are two reasons for this that have not been explored. The first is that not all of the world order has been healthy enough for China to benefit and contribute. For instance, the U.S. launched a "pre-emptive" strike in 2003 against Iraq, which has generated great damage to both Iraq and the United States. China would not support America to challenge the world order by launching a war against another country without solid evidence and UN mandate. Given how much Iraqi governance was weakened, now the region is plagued by ISIS, and China has not blocked efforts in the UN for the U.S. to intervene. It is a damage the U.S. has generated and America has to be responsible. It is unreasonable to expect China to send its armed forces to Iraq to quell the disturbance.
The other reason is that China is still under development as measured by per capita income. Therefore, mainland China is not capable of unifying Taiwan, which is under American protection, and Beijing has deep suspicion of the United States. Naturally, China would have reservations over supporting the world order that America has made and dominated. It will take time for the U.S. to relieve China's legitimate concerns and garner Beijing's more wholehearted endorsement of a world order that is fair and balanced, rather than being a so called freeloader.
The author is a professor and Vice Dean at the Institute of International Studies, Fudan University. He is also the founder and director of China's first non-government-based Program on Arms Control and Regional Security at Fudan University.
This article was first published at Chinausfocus.com To see the original version please visit http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/china-contributor-not-a-freeloader/
