BEIJING: Deep anxiety over US hegemony and its impact on international relations in the future has led China to assume a more vocal stance against the idea of US-led military action in Iraq in recent days.
Concerns about a threat coming from the US “neo- imperialistic” policies that could in the future target China are running through the country’s state-run publications, indicating that Beijing is uneasy about the change of political dynamics in the aftermath of a US-led anti-Iraq campaign.
The Chinese leadership’s toughened stance on the Iraq standoff is also evident in pronouncements by Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan that are less vague than before.
China has long said it opposes any military action, especially outside the range of the United Nations, if any chance of a political solution remains. But Beijing, whose trade relationship with Washington is crucial to its economy, has skirted the issue whether it would use its veto-yielding power in the UN Security Council to block a new resolution paving the way to war.
In recent days however, top leaders have made clear that China does not want war under any circumstances. The most accentuated comment was made by outgoing President Jiang, who has staked his legacy on promoting friendly ties with the United States.
Seizing an opportunity just days before he is expected to hand over his presidency to new Communist Party chief Hu Jintao, Jiang told British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a telephone conversation over the weekend that military force would not solve the world’s problems.
“War is to no one’s advantage,” the foreign ministry quoted Jiang as saying. “Whatever the cost, it is in everybody’s interest to take as much time as is needed.”
Signed commentaries in some major media outlets in recent days show that Beijing is worried more about Washington’s “unilateral and obstinate attacking posture” than about the actual event of a war in Iraq.
Wang Yizhou of the World Economics and Politics Research Institute, under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warned of the “accelerated roar of the superpower’s war machine”, which is out to dominate the world through targeting countries and governments that represent obstacles to Washington’s ambitions”.
“Just like the former Yugoslavia was regarded as a stumbling block to NATO’s (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s) eastward enlargement in the age of Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam’s Iraq is now seen as a thorn in the flesh for the United States to control this geographical hub (of the Gulf),” Wang said in the People’s Daily Online.
Wang described the United States as an “arrogant” sole superpower “with a despotic air in today’s world, one that could abuse its absolute power to alter the international status quo.
Similar warnings rang in a signed commentary published by the English-language China Daily on Monday. “A US unilateral stance would result in the world descending into anarchy due to the lack of international rule of law,” said its author, Hu Xuan.
As a country that sticks to a non-interventionist foreign policy, China is particularly suspicious about a pre-emptive strike without direct provocation. Although China appears unlikely to use its veto power in the Security Council, Beijing is genuinely worried about Washington’s “hegemonistic expansionism” and its impact on China.
As China forbids most public protests, there have been none of the large-scale demonstrations seen in Europe, Australia and other places.
However, Beijing did not prevent a group of self- declared “New Left Nationalists” from launching a nationwide signature campaign that condemns the United States for using force against Iraq.
A petition signed by 506 well-known intellectuals was presented last month to the US Embassy officials in Beijing and reported by Xinhua News Agency.
The petition invoked China’s tradition of fighting imperialism and condemned the “hi-tech slaughter of defenceless Iraqi people to be conducted in full view of the world”.
“We call upon peace-loving Chinese to stand against the war in the best anti-imperialist tradition and join the rising tide of the anti-war movement,” the petition said.
But state media has also made a point of distinguishing between “anti-war” and “anti-American” sentiments in the general public.
Zhu Xueqin, a history scholar from the Shanghai University, criticised the open letter for jumping on the bandwagon of the anti-war movement to vent out anti-US sentiments.
“Because of their strong anti-American feelings, the authors of the petition have gone that far as to omit any criticism and even give their sympathy to a dictator like Saddam Hussein,” Zhu wrote in the Guangzhou-based Southern Weekend.
Even if Beijing’s hardened stance on Iraq and on the administration of US President George W Bush does not result in a head-on confrontation with the United States at the Security Council this week, Beijing is gearing up to accelerate the development of a world-class military arsenal to meet its security concerns.
Fang Ning, a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, argued that a strong army is the only guarantee that China can counter the “hegemonic ambitions” of the United States. —Dawn/InterPress News Service.
