From the South China Morning Post, 1 Mrch 2016 -
You don’t have to be a saint to be a
great and effective leader, but you do have to be audacious. So when an
audacious leader comes along that a good many admirers suspect to be a saint, you
probably have got something special in front of you. May we presume this, for
the moment at least, of Francis?
The
restless Pope: After the papal visit to Mexico, about which presidential
candidate Donald Trump (audacious, but no saint) had something negative to say,
Vatican sources floated the thought that perhaps Francis might soon visit China.
In his observations
about a country with more than 21% of the globe’s population (but only 12 mainland
million are Catholic), the pope will emphasize the positive: “For me, China has always been a
reference point of greatness. A great country. But more than a country, a great
culture, with an inexhaustible wisdom.”
Yet, for noodle-brain
elements here in the States, Francis’s diplomatic charm offensive may come
across as classic kowtowing – an unseemly, un-audacious genuflection to the
rising power of politically-Communist China. But effective diplomacy,
especially when in public light, usually requires a premeditated emphasis on the
positive (the negative comes later, behind closed doors). What's more, a
posture of kowtowing can be potent when the target of the ‘kow’ is known to be susceptible
to the ‘tow’ – as throughout the history of China.
So the
Pope’s kowtow diplomacy toward the PRC is smart stuff. What he wants is to be
able to improve the condition of his Catholics in their spiritual development;
so he not only dreams of a semi-normal relationship between the Vatican and
Beijing, he also envisions his Church and the Chinese state working in polite respectful
parallel on the appointment of mainland Bishops. Such accords would hardly undermine Beijing’s national
security and would certainly boast China’s global image.
Diplomacy takes patience; you could
come up short this year but come out long the year after. “Dialogue does not
mean that we end up with a compromise, half the cake for you and the other half
for me,” the pope has adroitly explained. “Dialogue means: Look, we have got to
this point, I may or may not agree, but let us walk together; this is what it
means to build. And the cake stays whole, walking together.” If China’s President Xi Jinping and the
Pontiff are able to crack the Catholic mainland problem, they will take the
cake – and maybe a joint Nobel Peace Prize as well.
Far from all international issues are cakewalks, of course. The South
China Sea continues to boil and bubble like a perfect storm, where almost all boats
are taking on trouble. China has moved too quickly to reclaim old littoral
territory and manufacture new ones, scaring the daylights out of lesser area powers.
Even Communist Vietnam is now playing both sides of the diplomatic street – ‘kowtow’-ing
to Washington! The South China Sea policy of the U.S. is little better. Its knee-jerk
pushback against China’s reclamation campaign might make sense were we still in
the last century when America ruled the world and China was still asleep.
But that was
then, and this is now. Long-time
Asia-watcher and global economist Kenneth Courtis, chairman of Starfort Investment Holdings
and managing partner of Courtis Global & Associates, is coruscating: “We
note from history that a rising power, to be integrated into the system,
changes perforce the balance of power ex-ante. However, the status quo
powers seldom, if ever accept such change willingly ... virtually always to
their regret later. This is precisely what is occurring today.”
America will fall on its
face over its ‘pivot’ to Asia, if it is based on the premise that China must
rise no more and must be made to lose face. With the clarity of great scholarship,
Professor Graham Allison and Harvard’s Belfer Center research team have laid
down the markers of catastrophe for status quo powers that blindly oppose
rather than cleverly adjust to rising powers.
And why pick on China? Americans
might recall from its Asian experience last century that it was not China that
launched a surprise attack on America; but it was China that worked as our ally
in the second global war. The U.S. has had a serious – and disastrous - military
problem with Communist China only during the Korean War, when UN/US forces
brainlessly pushed toward the Chinese border. That triggered a massive ground counterattack from insecure Beijing,
easily spooked when barbarian foreign forces are at its gate.
The overly advertised
U.S. pushback in the South China Sea is less than ship-shape and might even re-activate
China’s insecurities. Flaunting our naval capabilities in East Asian waters
(and inviting the likes of CNN along to show all the world) is to shove the
ghost of General Douglas MacArthur into China’s face. One hopes our well-educated Pacific commanders will reflect
on history and curb their confrontational enthusiasm.
Not all the world’s
geopolitical fish worth frying bob within the dark depths of the South China
Sea. Last week at the United Nations, China stood with the U.S. and others on
the Security Council to pile yet more sanctions on erstwhile ally North Korea
for its unwelcome nuclear weapon testing. Sino-U.S. cooperation of this kind
could prove the wave of the future if both sides avoid assuming they can
continue to live in the past. China
knows it does not want to return to a condition of poverty. And the U.S., which
sometimes doesn’t seem to know what it wants, might wish to formulate policy
around this pithy, pointed remark from the Pope: “… [China is] a great culture, with an inexhaustible wisdom.” With an attitude like that, Francis
will get some good things done with Beijing, while the U.S., with all its
military might, splashes around pointlessly in the South China Sea.
Columnist Tom Plate,
Loyola Marymount University's Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific
Studies, is author of the 'Giants of Asia' series.
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