October 27, 2003	Monday	Sha’aban 30, 1424

BANGKOK: It was meant to be US President George W. Bush’s big moment in Asia, but by the time he finished his six-country tour last week, there were unmistakable signs that the world’s most powerful man had been undone by regional heavyweight China.

Two events captured this best: one in Australia and the other in Thailand. In Australia, Bush was given a reminder about an emerging pattern in the region — that countries will shower Chinese President Hu Jintao with the same respect as they would the leader of the United States.

On Friday, Hu became the first head of an Asian country to address the Australian parliament. The confidence with which Beijing currently views itself was reflected in the comment by Hu that Australia had a role as a regional peacekeeper.

“We are ready to be your long-term and stable cooperation partner, dedicated to closer cooperation based on equality and mutual benefit,” Hu said in his address to the federal legislature on the second day of his four-day tour of Australia.

That came a day after Bush had addressed the same body to thank Canberra for backing the United States in its invasion of Iraq and its ‘war against terrorism’.

However, what occurred in Thailand shortly before Hu’s Australia visit was even more revealing of China’s sense of place in Asia, and the determined wall of confidence it is building to stay its ground.

Bush, who joined Hu and leaders from 19 Pacific Rim economies for a meeting on trade in the region, failed to make the expected headway on China’s policy of pegging the yuan to the US dollar.

This failure was all the more acute given the rhetoric flowing from Washington as Bush rode into town. Media reports gave the impression that the US president would use his meeting with Hu to apply pressure for change.

The United States has been calling on China to free its currency, which has been locked it at 8.28 yuan to the dollar since 1994. By doing so, US critics say, China has enjoyed an unfair edge in the global economy, including taking away manufacturing jobs from the United States.

But Hu, in an artful display of diplomacy, struck before his encounter with Bush. During an address to business leaders here for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which ran from Oct 14 to 21, he said that China was not contemplating any change in the country’s currency rate system.

There was little the US president could do after that, since Hu had drawn a line in the sand. “Bush was outmanoeuvred,” wrote William Pesek Jr in a commentary for Bloomberg News. “The battle (between Bush and Hu) was lost before it even began.”

Such moments add to what has clearly become China’s October revelation — a tapestry of achievements throughout the month that has helped add new standing to Beijing.

Already, the impact of China’s moves sending ripples through the region. “There is a new respect for China emerging throughout Asia,” Panitan Wattanayagorn, an international relations specialist at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University, told IPS. “The recent events, including China’s performance at APEC, have clearly contributed to this regional shift.”

By not yielding to the US agenda on the yuan, Beijing has shown the region that “it is confident and comfortable in handing international pressure,” he adds. “This new sophistication in China’s foreign policy was also evident in the press conference Hu had with the international media at the end of APEC.”

The significant highs Beijing chalked up before APEC was China’s first space mission on Oct 15. That made China only the third country in the world to have sent a manned rocket into outer space, marking its entry into an exclusive club that so far only had the United States and Russia.

“It left other countries like Japan, South Korea and India, which are keen to compete in space technology, with something serious to ponder,” the ‘Bangkok Post’ newspaper commented in an editorial soon after. “This is especially the case as China managed this achievement alone, using rockets and the spacecraft of its own manufacture.”

As noteworthy were Beijing’s achievements at the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in early October. During that summit in the Indonesian tourist resort of Bali, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao signed a variety of agreements with ASEAN.

They included a treaty of solidarity that committed Beijing to look at the ASEAN grouping as a friend instead of foe, since the ASEAN Treaty of Amity of Cooperation rules out the use of force to settle disputes. This turn prompted some analysts to declare it was a deepening of the strategic alliance China was building with its southern neighbours.

ASEAN countries are already gearing up for the new economic reality in the region: a free trade area that will unite China and ASEAN’s members — Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam — to become the world’s largest economic entity of its kind.

The importance of such economic bonds has not been lost on China, which is currently enjoying a phenomenal spell of economic growth — 8.2 per cent in the first half of this year, as against 7.2 per cent in 2002. Premier Wen challenged ASEAN leaders at the Bali summit to achieve $100 billion worth of trade with China by 2005.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.