Political and Military Analysis on China

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On February 17, Xi Jinping wrapped up his first official visit to the United States as China's vice president. Followed intensely by media in China, the U.S. and the rest of the world, the five-day visit impressed the spectators and pundits alike.

Xi spent a lengthy amount of time with his counterpart, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and his conversations with Biden as well as U.S. President Barack Obama were described by White House and Chinese officials as direct and interactive, going beyond formalities and protocol and covering major political, economic and security issues in the U.S.-China relationship.

In addition, Xi met with people in almost the full spectrum of the American society, ranging from senior government officials, business leaders, academia, old friends who received him during his first ever visit to the U.S. 27 years ago, to prominent figures in the sports and entertainment industry. This provided ample opportunities for Xi and his interlocutors to share their thoughts on a multitude of political and cultural ties between the two countries.

Xi's messages on the Sino-U.S. relations are clear and strong.

A relationship too big to fail

Xi's visit came on the 40th anniversary of former U.S. President Richard Nixon's historic China trip, a beginning of the end to decades of estrangement between the two countries. Forty years ago, China and the U.S. began to join hands to confront the Soviet Union, a threat that brought them together. Since the end of the Cold War, the two countries found out that the significance of the bilateral tie was not gone with the demise of their mutual foe. In just two decades, we have witnessed the evolution of the Sino-U.S. relationship into the single most important bilateral tie around the globe.

As Xi stated during his talks with U.S. leaders, China and the U.S. hold extensive and important common interests; their cooperation benefits both, and confrontation can only be hurtful. Maintaining this relationship not only serves the fundamental interests of the two countries but also helps to promote peace, stability and prosperity of Asia Pacific and the world at large – and neither nation can afford to backtrack. Xi's visit highlights the need for the two countries to understand that their relationship is "too big to fail."

A relationship generally strong but has weaknesses

Within the four decades after establishing diplomatic ties and especially since the turn of the new century, the China-U.S. relationship has also grown into the world's most complex. The two countries have enjoyed ever growing and robust economic and trade exchanges as well as close cooperation on regional and global issues. Their relationship appears strong and elastic.

But we have seen low ebbs in the flow of the bilateral relations and occasional suspensions in important exchanges and cooperation. These were the moments when the U.S. deviates from the principles enshrined in the joint Sino-U.S. communiqués guiding their relations, and makes moves that violate China's core interests concerning Taiwan, Tibet and so on. Xi stated that a constructive partnership between China and the U.S. will be ensured only when there is mutual respect for the core interests. The two countries need to build a strong, sustained, stable relationship that requires that the U.S. heed China's core national interests and concerns over Taiwan, Tibet and other issues.

A relationship with an inflated trust deficit

And that brings us to another resounding theme of Xi's cross-country tour in the U.S. Xi stressed on many occasions during his visit the importance of building strategic trust between China and the U.S. In his words: "The stronger the mutual trust is, the greater the room for cooperation."

There is a theory that conflicts between an emerging power such as China and an established superpower such as America are inevitable. China pursues peaceful development, but its rise and defense of its own core interests are often seen by some Americans as an assertion of a newly found power, therefore a challenge to American regional and world hegemony. The U.S. does not accept second place in the global hierarchy, and any perceived challenge to its leadership is met with such moves as its continued embargos on substantial military exchanges with China, strident restrictions on high-tech exports to China and strategic realignment in the Asia Pacific region. These actions, in addition to its continued arms sales to Taiwan, have led many in China to conclude that the U.S. means to "contain China's rise."

Suspicion often festers, while a win-win partnership generates a more positive cycle. The two countries should not be deterred by the challenges in building up their mutual trust. Persistent efforts, no matter how big or small, should be taken to allay concerns of each other.

History-changing diplomatic visits, such as the one by Nixon 40 years ago, were once-in-a-lifetime occurrences. It would be too much to expect a few hours of meetings between leaders and with average citizens could reduce the two countries' trust deficit overnight. What we need now is consistent and meaningful steps to deepen understanding, boost mutual trust, expand cooperation and promote friendship between the Chinese and the Americans, and to build toward a future that benefits both peoples and the whole world. In this sense, I call Xi's U.S. visit a success.

Cybersecurity and U.S.-China Relations
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There is perhaps no relationship as significant to the future of world politics as that between the U.S. and China. No other two nations play such dominant roles in critical global issues from peace and security to finance, trade, and the environment. How these two powers manage their relationship will likely be a key determinant of not only their own political and economic futures, but also wider global stability and prosperity.


Can China Defend a “Core Interest” in the South China Sea?

China's Energy and Security Relations with Russia: Hopes, Frustrations and Uncertainties


The leaders of China and Russia like to speak in public of the strategic partnership between the two countries, based on mutual interests and trust. In reality, the two cornerstones of the relationship—arms sales and energy cooperation—are crumbling. China has not placed a significant order for Russian arms since 2005 and buys only a fraction of its energy imports from Russia.

This timely report illuminates the current status of China’s security and energy relations with Russia. The authors describe a relationship that is complex and at times fraught with distrust, and which, although potentially promising, is increasingly marred by uncertainties.

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The dominant stereotype of Chinese foreign policy in the Middle East is "amoral oil grubbing mercantilists who never met a dictator they didn't like".

Perhaps.

But the job of an amoral, oil-grubbing mercantilist has been made much more complicated and challenging as tensions rise in the
region and heightened demands are placed on the People's Republic of China (PRC).

Saudi Arabia, China's largest oil supplier, expects China's support in its campaign against Iran.

Iran turns to China for help in breaking the sanctions blockade that threatens its oil exports, its access to the global financial system, and its domestic economy.

The United States, the European Union, Turkey, the Gulf States and a big chunk of the Arab League excoriate China for seconding Russia's veto of an anti-Bashar al-Assad resolution in the United Nations Security Council.

However, contrary to its image as an opportunistic and reactive player in the Middle East, China has not only dug in its heels on Syria; it has stepped up with a diplomatic initiative of its own.

China also voted against the non-binding Syria resolution drafted for the UN General Assembly by Saudi Arabia, the oil baron that is generally regarded as calling the tune for China on Middle Eastern issues.

On February 23, China also announced it would not attend the "Friends of Syria" aka "Enemies of Assad" meeting in Tunisia this Friday designed to further delegitimize and isolate Assad to pave the way for his ouster, putting it at odds with the West, the Gulf nations, and much of the Arab League.

China had already dispatched Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun to Syria and the Middle East to lobby for Russia's and China's (and Assad's) preferred solution to the crisis: channeling political and opposition activity into votes on a referendum on a new Syrian constitution on February 26, and parliamentary elections four months down the road.

Chinese diplomats have also reached out to the Arab League to argue that the PRC's stance is in line with the league's policy on Syria.

China took the extra step of decoupling its position from Russia's, presenting itself as an honest broker and not an Assad partisan, and reaching out further into the ranks of Syria's opposition to publicize its contacts with Haitham Manna of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change.

Chinese papers are full of articles asserting the "principled stand" and "responsibility" of China's Syria policy, one that will "withstand the test of history". [1]

The interesting question is why the PRC is getting out in front on this issue, instead of letting Russia, Syria's long-time ally and arms supplier, carry the ball.

Syria means virtually nothing to China in terms of oil or trade. Assad's fall would discommode China's friend and energy supplier Iran but would also please China's friend and energy partner Saudi Arabia.

So why not simply reprise China's acquiescence on Libya, stand aside, and deliver a final adieu to Assad as he and his regime vanish into the meat-grinder of domestic and sectarian anger, international sanctions, and Gulf-funded subversion and destabilization?

The back-of-the-envelope explanation is that Russia and China were burned by the Security Council's humanitarian resolution on Libya, which turned into a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led free for all against Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

However, an abstention on the Syrian resolution, whether or not Russia decided to veto, would have allowed China to have burnished its rather tarnished West-friendly humanitarian credentials while reasserting its abhorrence of foreign interference.
It appears that China has decided it is time to stake out its own position in the Middle East as a great power with its own significant and legitimate interests in the region, instead of trying to shoehorn itself into whatever diplomatic coalition the United States or Russia invokes to deal with the latest crisis.

Yes, China as "responsible stakeholder" appears ready to take the Middle Eastern stage.

The Chinese move is an ironic and predictable counter-point to America's "strategic pivot" into East Asia.

The Barack Obama administration has openly announced its desire to shed the incubus of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (and quietly signaled that the last thing it wants is to go for a Middle East conflict trifecta with a third war against Iran) and seek its future in the Pacific.

This presents an opportunity for China to fill the leadership vacuum, at least in part, and stake its claim to the Middle East as a crucial fulcrum of the PRC's own Pacific Century future.

The PRC claims two qualifications as a force to be reckoned with in the Middle East.

First, and most obviously, it is the biggest importer of Middle East energy. China and the other Asian importers have a far bigger stake in the stability of the region than the United States.

Second, and less intuitively, the PRC believes that its model of authoritarian rule underpinned by economic development offers the best model for a stable and peaceful Middle East.

Partisans of democracy and Western values will respond with a derisive snort at this idea, especially after the intoxicating spectacle of the Arab Spring.

However, with the apparent exception of happy little Tunisia, the revolutionary upheavals in Libya and Egypt have brought with them enough bloodshed and division to make a lot of people nostalgic for the days when a strong man mediated and suppressed at his discretion the political aspirations of various ethnicities, races, confessions, tribes and classes.

A lot of these nostalgic people, it can be imagined, inhabitant presidential palaces - or just plain palaces - east of Suez and west of the Indus.

Virtually all of the states in the Middle East, including Israel, are either authoritarian or employ a type of managed democracy to keep a lid on things. In fact, they resemble the PRC, which itself struggles to impose unpopular Han dominance on restive populations in Tibet and Xinjiang.

Therefore, China can present itself as a more natural and sympathetic partner to rulers in the Middle East than the United States, which shocked Saudi Arabia in particular with its abandonment of Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak as the revolutionary agitation reached its climax.

Tellingly, the Chinese media have been virtually silent on the Saudi-directed crackdown on Shi'ite democracy protesters in Bahrain and its suppression of Shi'ite demonstrations inside the kingdom itself, a piece of forbearance that Saudi Arabia perhaps appreciates as much as America's embarrassed silence over the issue.

The first crisis in which China has the opportunity to test-drive its Middle East strategy is Syria.

Though to Western observers it may appear utterly quixotic for the PRC to promote a peaceful political resolution through a referendum and elections conducted by the Assad regime, given the bitterness engendered by the one-year crackdown and the chorus of Western and Arab derision and condemnation, the Chinese hand is not as weak as it appears.

Minorities' fears of sectarian bloodletting, even if self-servingly encouraged by the Assad regime, are genuine. The liberal, democratic, non-sectarian peaceful uprising has been overshadowed by a resistance that is rural, Sunni, conservative, armed and, in some manifestations, alarmingly sectarian, and which has largely stalled without penetrating the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo.

Formal armed intervention on behalf of the Syrian opposition is off the table, largely because of deep-seated doubts about the Syrian National Council, which looks like a stalking horse for the Muslim Brotherhood filled with bickering exiles with little presence inside the country.

Tellingly, the "Friends of Syria" conference scheduled for Friday is expected not to anoint the Syrian National Council as its only friend, merely describing it as "a" (as opposed to "the sole") legitimate voice of the Syrian people.

Simply imploding the Assad regime to spite Iran would appear to be easy, but has not happened.

Turkey is already providing safe havens for the Free Syrian Army, but apparently has not unleashed it. Western Iraq is aboil with doctrinaire Sunni militants happy to stick it to the Alawite regime, and Qatar has allegedly already laid the groundwork for underemployed Libyan militants to find profitable occupation fighting alongside the opposition in Syria, but utter bloody chaos has yet to erupt.

The fact that Aleppo and Damascus have only been ravaged by two car bombs is perhaps a sign of Wahabbist restraint, and may have been taken by the PRC as a sign that the Gulf Cooperation Council's commitment to overthrowing Assad is not absolute.

By the brutal calculus of authoritarian regimes, the Syrian government has shown restraint in its military suppression of the populist revolt and has not completely forfeited its domestic legitimacy. Seven thousand dead over 12 months is no Hama. Assad's uncle Rifaat (now residing in a $10 million mansion in London's Mayfair district and somehow beyond the reach of world justice) killed approximately 30,000 over a few weeks as he besieged, assaulted and purged the Muslim Brotherhood stronghold in 1982.

By Chinese standards, 7,000 dead is, if not a bloody blip, something along the magnitude of the show of state force inflicted on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing and other cities in 1989.

Just as the ruling group in Beijing considers the Tiananmen incident the key act in an authoritarian drama that kept the PRC from sliding into political chaos, and established the political foundation for 20 years of high-speed growth, the Ba'athists apparently regard Hama as the cornerstone of three decades of national stability.

In fact, 30,000 killed apparently doesn't even disqualify one from eligibility as a potential leader of Syria.

Al-Arabiya, the English-language voice of conservative Saudi opinion, interviewed Rifaat al-Assad in his luxurious digs. Rifaat, who has assumed leadership of a Syrian opposition group, the National Democratic Council, generously shared his view on the Syrian problem:

"The solution would be that the Arab states guarantee Bashar al-Assad's security so he can resign and be replaced by someone with financial backing who can look after Bashar's people after his resignation," he argued.

"It should be someone from the family ... me, or someone else," he said. [2]

Perhaps Bashar al-Assad will extract the lesson that the slaughter needs to get into five-digit figures before he is considered genuine leadership timber by the demanding standards of the Middle East.

In a situation in which the opposition political movement has stalled, the situation is degenerating into an armed conflict, and the great powers are apparently unwilling to hurry things along militarily, Chinese support of Assad's referendum and election plan is not unreasonable.

But there are difficulties, the greatest of which is that the door to reconciliation is in danger of swinging shut permanently as the government tries to squelch the defiant opposition and make a defendable case for itself as the indispensable guarantor of Syria's stability and unity.

Significant swaths of the Syrian countryside and many towns are apparently de facto out of government control. The government, which still possesses an overwhelming and relatively loyal military force, appears to have made the decision that trying to reassert government control is either too difficult or too polarizing, and is letting the local opposition run things, at least for now.

Probably the Assad regime is hoping to get some political wind at its back so it can move back into these villages under the banner of reconciliation or stability as part of the referendum/election process, and not a simple reconquest.

Then there is Homs or, more accurately, the Baba Amro district of Homs, which has turned into a symbol of resistance, armed and otherwise, to Assad's rule.

Assad's Western and domestic opponents have put the onus on Russia and China for enabling the Homs assault by their veto of the UN Security Council resolution, a toothless text that would have called for Assad to step down.

However, the significance of the veto was not that it allowed Assad to give free rein to his insatiable blood lust for slaughtering his own citizens, as the West would have it.

The true significance of the veto was the message that Russia and China had endorsed Assad as a viable political actor, primarily within Syria, and his domestic opponents, including those holding out in Baba Amro, should think twice before basing their political strategy on the idea that he would be out of the picture shortly thanks to foreign pressure.

It is difficult to determine exactly what the government's objectives are for Baba Amro. Hopefully, they are not simply wholesale massacre through indiscriminate shelling.

Recent reports indicate that the government, after a prolonged and brutal softening-up, has decided to encircle the district, send in the tanks, and demonstrate to the fragmented opposition that "resistance is futile", at least the armed resistance that seems to depend on the expectation of some combination of foreign support and intervention to stymie Assad and advance its interest.

Whatever the plan is, the Chinese government is probably wishing that the Assad regime would get on with it and remove the humanitarian relief of Homs from the "Friends of Syria" diplomatic agenda.

The difference in coverage of Homs between the Western and Chinese media is striking.

Even before the deaths of journalists Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik, the agony of Homs has been the subject of wall-to-wall coverage in the West. A Google News search for "Homs" yields over 6,000 stories.

Even as the siege grinds on and horrific reports and footage fill the Western media space, Chinese media coverage seems to echo the old saw about the tree falling in the forest, as in "if a mortar shell falls in Homs and it isn't reported, maybe nothing important is happening".

Chinese references to Homs are usually along the following lines:

Libyan websites disclosed the death of three Libyan Islamists at the Baba Amro neighborhood in Homs last Monday. Other websites cited similar cases about the killing of a number of fundamentalists who came in from Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan to fight in Syria.

Even foreign press have reported the killing of five Wahabbi terrorists in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani, including the Kuwaiti Fuad Khaled, better known as Abu Hozaifa, during clashes with security men.

Media reports also said that no less than 1,000 gunmen from al-Qaeda have infiltrated into Syria and most of them stationed in Damascus suburbs and the central city of Homs. [3]

The message that Syria and China hope the domestic opposition will extract from Homs in the next few weeks is that, in the absence of meaningful foreign support, armed resistance has reached a dead end; it is time for moderates to abandon hope in the local militia or the gunmen of the FSA and turn to a political settlement.

To Syria's foreign detractors, the message will be that the genie of armed resistance has been stuffed back into the bottle thanks to "Hama Lite"; and the nations that live in Syria's neighborhood might reconsider their implacable opposition to Assad's continued survival.

In particular, China would need to make its vaunted good offices available in the matter of getting Saudi Arabia to overlook its hatred for all things Assad, perhaps by serving as guarantor that Syria would no longer funnel aid to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

China is playing a dubious hand.

After one year of a brutal crackdown, that on top of decades of bullying and torture by Syria's security apparatus, even members of the moderate opposition will probably be disinclined to put their future in the hands of the Ba'ath and the new constitution.

Internationally, Assad has been officially designated the current Monster of the Century and the intangible psychic benefits and real political and strategic advantages of terminally ostracizing his regime, no matter what it means for Syrian society, will probably be too tempting to ignore.

However, if Assad can manage the Baba Amro endgame and put Homs behind him, and gets some of the genuine opposition to participate in the summer elections, perhaps China will offer Syria a much-needed economic boost: supporting the war and sanction-crippled economy and, through it, Assad's regime by a program of aid and investment that will defy the sanctions regime that will undoubtedly continue to dog the regime.

If Assad can survive through the long, hot summer of 2012, China will count it as a victory for its approach to the Middle East - and a rebuke to American pretensions to moral and diplomatic leadership in the region.

It's a long shot, as Global Times, China's voice of brawny nationalism, acknowledged:

China has chosen a difficult role as a mediator. If neither the West nor the Arab League cooperates, the Syrian opposition can hardly heed the appeals of China. The chance of a prompt and peaceful settlement is slim. ...

It's unnecessary for China to see a quick effect. The time for the opposition to agree to a compromise is yet to arrive. But if the Assad administration continues to hang on, chances of a peaceful negotiation will grow. ...

Any progress made by Chinese efforts to promote a peaceful settlement will mark a significant diplomatic achievement. China will not become deeply involved in the way the US has become with the Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. The West will not allow that to happen, either. What China wants is for the principle of settling a crisis through peaceful channels to be understood and supported. [4]

Yes, the West might not be ready to have China play a leading role in the Middle East. But China can afford to be patient ... especially since the consequences of any miscalculation and failure will be borne by the citizens of small and distant Syria.

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Beijing is gearing up its efforts to achieve unification with Taiwan only a few weeks after Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang (KMT), the mainland's favorite candidate, won re-election as Taiwanese president.

Since conditions are not ripe for opening cross-strait talks on political issues, Beijing is launching an aggressive campaign - bypassing the Taiwanese government - to implement another strategic goal of "placing the hope [of unification] on Taiwanese people", or winning the hearts and minds of Taiwanese people in various social sectors by directly offering them money-making opportunities.

In one of its new approaches, Beijing aims at those sectors of Taiwanese society that believe cross-strait business ties have benefited only the north of the island and the rich. It has established the "Pingtan Comprehensive Experimental Zone" on a cluster of islands belonging to Fujian province and targeting central Taiwan, just across the Taiwan Strait.

Pingtan island, the scene of large-scale war games against Taiwan in the mid-1990s by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), is now referred to as a "Little Taiwan" and seeks to attract small, medium-sized and family-owned Taiwanese enterprises to set up business operations.

Those Taiwanese willing to move will find a long list of preferential treatments and US$40 billion-worth of brand-new infrastructure that includes several ports of over 200,000 tonne capacity and 18 square kilometers that will also accommodate a cross-strait financial service center for banks, insurers and securities.

Tax benefits are to be offered and bank loans generously granted, while Taiwanese professional qualification certificates will be accepted. Taiwanese lawyers and doctors will be allowed to operate freely. Exclusively for Taiwanese investors in Pingtan, the mainland's strict restrictions on imports of certain products, such as steel, are to be eased, which will give them an edge over their foreign competitors in the mainland.

To make the bait even more irresistible, both the mainland currency, the yuan, and the New Taiwan Dollar will circulate next to each other in the zone.

New roll-on, roll-off passenger ferries have been awaiting the starter's gun at Pingtan, ready to make the trip to the central Taiwanese city of Taichung in two-and-a-half hours - about the same time it takes a car drive from Taichung to the Taiwanese capital of Taipei on a good day.

Fujian governor Su Shulin announced in mid-February a plan to jointly develop Pingtan. All Taiwanese municipalities, counties and institutions are welcome to participate. Around 1,000 Taiwanese professionals will be hired within the next five years, to be offered annual incomes of between US$30,000 and US$300,000. In addition, around 1,000 Taiwanese with agricultural expertise may hired.

Eventually, the Pingtan Comprehensive Experimental Zone, together with Taichung, is envisaged as a cross-strait free-trade zone. Once established, Taiwanese people, ships and cargo could enter Pingtan freely and from there the huge mainland market. The status of Taichung - Taiwan's third-largest city - would be lifted significantly, which is undoubtedly an important factor in the Chinese strategy as the area is generally assessed as being amongst Taiwan's key electoral battlegrounds.

Another Beijing initiatives - this one aimed at Taiwanese small entrepreneurs from throughout the island - is to come into effect some time later this year. Under a new rule, Taiwanese citizens as natural persons or families may register certain types of small businesses in a number of mainland cities and provinces as "individual industrial and commercial households".

As the move is most likely meant as a pilot project that will eventually be extended, it could be an attractive offer to many Taiwanese, facing negative growth in real wages and relatively high unemployment at home, given that wages have risen much faster in the mainland coastal provinces than in Taiwan and are expected to catch up with those on the island within in a few years.

Mother China is gradually also refining plans for those who cannot move across the Taiwan Strait, such as farmers and fishermen. Since Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008, and particularly since Taipei and Beijing signed the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) in 2010, mainland delegations have roamed Taiwan's south - the home turf of the opposition anti-unification Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) - trying to soften the attitude of locals by large-scale procurements. Beijing has recently been fine-tuning this approach.

Assessing that before the presidential and legislative elections held in January, much of the profits earned through the export of farm and fishery products to the mainland were pocketed by intermediaries, which meant mainland money failed to buy votes away from the DPP, Beijing now engages farmers and fishermen directly.

Zheng Lizhong, deputy chairman of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait and the mainland's No 2 negotiator, recently toured the area and forged closer relationships with the ordinary people there, effectively bypassing intermediary agents and also the government in Taipei as well as local administrations. Zheng reportedly even stayed overnight at humble countryside homes.

Young educated Taiwanese are being tempted by long-term visits to the mainland's top cities where they can stay with selected families, part of Beijing's intention to make a greater effort in encouraging study in the mainland.

Taiwan's United Daily News in an editorial named the mainland strategy as "Penetrating into the island, into the households, into the hearts of people". The newspaper didn't fail to identify the dilemma the Taiwanese government finds itself in: "Can you really stop Beijing building Pingtan? Can you really oppose Beijing buying Taiwanese produce?"

President Ma is well aware that Beijing has begun to actively undermine Taipei's power over the island, Chen In-Chin, a professor at Taiwan's National Central University's Graduate Institute of Law and Government, told Asia Times Online.

"Beijing takes very seriously that many Taiwanese think Ma's cross-strait policies only benefit the rich. It has hence changed its approach to a practical one. That it now gets directly in touch with the Taiwanese population makes Ma very nervous," Chen said.

According to Chen, in order to escape such a frighteningly tight Chinese embrace, it has all along been Ma's strategy to gain more international space and sign free-trade agreements (FTA) with industrialized countries while at the same time keeping the cross-strait situation peaceful by acknowledging that the mainland and Taiwan both belong to China.

"Of course, Ma sees that ECFA, Pingtan and their likes are merely tools for unification in the eyes of Beijing. That's why he wants to pull the United States as a balancing power into the game. But now it becomes very clear that he cannot take the international hurdles."

As an example of the weakness of Ma's efforts to secure improved international ties, Chen singled out Taipei's relations with Singapore. The two sides started FTA talks well before the presidential election, but once Ma was re-elected, this FTA bubble seemed to burst.

Taiwan's representative to Singapore, Vanessa Shih, was recalled in mid-February, supposedly because she was caught by the Singaporean government displaying the Republic of China (ROC), or Taiwanese, flag in public and singing the ROC anthem, which if true would amount to a considerable faux-pax, given Taiwan's diplomatic situation.

Chen believes this story is a pretense.

"Beijing made it look as if it consents to Ma signing an FTA with Singapore because it wanted to help him get reelected. But since he won, they see no more need for such compromises. Behind the Vanessa Shih controversy stands China, of course," he said.

One of the very few moves left in Taipei's bag of tricks that could potentially delay unification indefinitely by making the Taiwanese export-reliant economy less dependent on mainland China is Taiwan becoming a member of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Ma has on many occasions stated that within a decade he wants Taiwan to join the multilateral trade bloc that will likely be comprised of US, Japan, Australia, Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam. He has promised that Taiwan's first free-trade zone will be set up in the southern port city of Kaohsiung by that time.

While Beijing is certain to oppose Taiwanese TPP membership as it would provide the island with about the only real alternative to putting all eggs into the mainland basket, Washington says Taiwan is welcome but must first get rid of import restrictions on US beef. Those were initially imposed in relation to incidents of mad cow disease in the United States and were later renewed over the use of ractopamine; this lean meat enhancer is banned in Taiwan, the European Union and mainland China but is allowed in the US, Canada and a number of other countries.

For the sake of satisfying the Americans, Ma's cabinet has been pushing for an end to the beef import ban, but as the DPP, the staunchly pro-independence Taiwan Solidarity Union, the island's farmers and civic groups, and even parts of Ma's own KMT are all up in arms against the use of ractopamine, it is hard to see how Washington's demand will be met.

Professor Chen dismissed the notion that Beijing secretly pushes Taiwanese farmers to work against scrapping the ractopamine ban in order to ruin Taiwan's chances of joining the TPP. He also pointed out that as the DPP has effectively lacked a leadership since its election loss, what is currently seen and heard of the party represents individual opinions rather than a clear party line.

Chen then singled out what he believes is the crux of the problem. He holds that it is Ma's personality that brought Taiwan into the precarious situation in the first place.

"Ma knows that the TPP is vital. Yet his political will isn't strong enough to challenge Beijing. In [South] Korea, there are also many conflicting opinions and intense domestic tension over FTAs. But a Ma Ying-jeou is not a [Korean President] Lee Myung-bak," Chen said.

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Having adopted a policy of reform and opening up for approximately three decades, China is now coming to a crucial crossroads where a further step in deepening the structural reform both economically and politically is decisive and imminent.

Yesterday Spokesman of Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Zhao Qizheng said the timing for deepened structural reform has arrived.

Zhao wisely buttressed his point by quoting China's prestigious late reformer Deng Xiaoping. He told a huge flock of media in the CPPCC's press conference, a day ahead of the opening of the political advisory body's two-week-long session this year, that the reform would surely be carried forward, despite a future that won't be free of risk.

"Twenty years ago, Mr. Deng Xiaoping said that, the further we press ahead with reform, the stronger our capacity will be to handle and resist risks," Zhao said.

"At this moment, by reviewing of the speech made by Mr. Deng Xiaoping during his southern tour and history of reform and opening up from the early 1990s to now, we realized that this is the time to deepen reform and we will commit to this effort."

Yet the question that might go beyond whether China needs to restructure is how it will achieve such a change.

Economists, statesmen and average citizens may all be well aware of the challenges, such as the constant widening income disparity, a population that ages before becoming wealthy and monopolized inefficiency, are simultaneously complicating the undertaking. China's renowned economist Wu Jinglian warned when giving an interview with The New York Times, that China should avoid the path of becoming trapped in crony capitalism.

Zhao stressed in yesterday's press conference that both China's economic and political reforms should be taken out under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and implemented within the framework of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Yet discussions are still present even when the principal lines are clearly stated. The World Bank's recent publication, titled "China 2030," which provided advice on the reform of China's state-owned enterprises, enraged a certain number of scholars and netizens, who believe the report was meant to poison China by privatizing state assets.

While briefly browsing the report's abstract, Zhao said he didn't find any word that definitely refers to privatization, though his search possibly indicated research on the topic done before the press conference.

"This report is a cooperative project between the World Bank and the State Council Development Research Center," said Zhao. He believes that the fury triggered among scholars and netizens might be caused from the fear of a drain on state assets. But he highlighted that ownership diversification is completely different from privatization.

"This report did mention the ownership diversification of SOEs in China. They said because SOEs in China have a lot of resources, they are obliged to take on more social responsibilities," said Zhao.

"Actually the ownership diversification of SOEs has been an important policy to China since the 15th CPC National Congress. Ownership diversification is not stated as privatization."

World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick said last month in Beijing that the timing for this report is important.

According to Zoellick, a consensus was reached among World Bank and governmental officials in China that "it's better to undertake structural reforms while the economy is growing well."

However, an inseparable part is political structural reform.

"In fact, in China, political structural reform and economic structural reform cannot be separated from each other," said Zhao. "The members of the CPPCC have many discussions on political structural reform, but it is up to the central committee of the CPC and State Council to decide the actual policies they will make on political structural reform."

As a CPPCC member, he declined to specify any detailed discussions on political reform.

Yet he did not shun away from the incident of former Chongqing Vice Mayor Wang Lijun. "According to my knowledge, Mr. Wang Lijun is currently under investigation by relevant departments," Zhao said. However, he denied most of the media's speculation and said that the media had a wild imagination.

"These reports look like puzzle pieces to us, because of a lack of information," he said, "Therefore, these reports are not accurate and some of them are even absurd." He said Wang's incident is an isolated case and recommended no excessive speculation.

Wang was spotted leaving the United States Consulate in southwest China last month and was later rumored to be enjoying "vacation-style" treatment.

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The Influence and Illusion of China’s New Left


The 2008 global financial crisis was a wake-up call for China’s leadership about the potential limits of the free market system to achieve optimum development policy outcomes. The 30-year consensus among China’s leadership has been that economic policy should be primarily market-centric and efficiency-first. However, there is now a growing divergence of opinion among Chinese intellectuals on whether China should continue this fundamental course.

A rare public honest look at China's fragile strategic situation.

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Ambiguity about the extent of China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea has been a key source of concern in this dispute. In the 1990s, China issued a series of domestic laws detailing its maritime claims under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, including 12 nautical mile territorial seas and 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zones (EEZ). Nevertheless, Chinese maps continue to contain a “nine-dashed line” around the South China Sea. The line first appeared on an official map produced by the Republic of China in 1947. After 1949, China continued to use the line on its official maps, but never defined what the line included or excluded.

In a recent press conference, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs appeared to take an important step towards clarifying China’s claims in the South China Sea – and suggesting what the line might not mean.

First, the spokesperson, Hong Lei, distinguished between disputes over “territorial sovereignty of the islands and reefs of the Spratly Islands” and disputes over maritime demarcation. This affirms past statements, including a note to the United Nations in May 2011, that China will advance maritime claims that are consistent and compliant with UNCLOS. Under UNCLOS, states may only claim maritime rights such as an EEZ from land features like a nation’s coastline or its islands.

Second, and more importantly, the spokesperson further stated that “No country including China has claimed sovereignty over the entire South China Sea.” By making such a statement, this phrase suggests that the “nine-dashed line” doesn’t represent a claim to maritime rights (such as historic rights), much less a claim to sovereignty over the water space enclose by the line. More likely, the line indicates a claim to the islands, reefs and other features that lie inside.

To be sure, China could advance a large claim to maritime rights in the South China Sea from the islands and other features in the Spratly Islands. Although UNCLOS only permits states to claim a 200 nautical mile EEZ from islands that can sustain permanent human habitation, sovereignty over a single island can generate an EEZ of approximately 125,000 nautical miles.

Nevertheless, even articulation of a large but UNCLOS-compliant claim would offer several advantages in terms of dispute resolution. It would clarify where China’s EEZ claims from islands in the South China Sea overlap with the claims of littoral states from their coastlines. As a result, disputed and undisputed areas would be clearly identified. It would also allow states to invoke the dispute settlement mechanisms of UNCLOS, Part XV, which would a negotiated settlement to overlapping claims.

Of course, this recent statement doesn’t represent a full and complete definition of the nine-dashed line. Nevertheless, it does at least rule out one possible definition and provide an opportunity for other states to press China to further clarify its position.