China’s cynicism offensive in Asia
AT NEGOTIATIONS last month in Jakarta on a deal to ease tensions in the South China Sea, the leader of the Chinese delegation opened by quoting Henry Kissinger: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy,” he told his counterparts, “but it is fatal to be its friend.”
Kissinger’s words, at the height of the Vietnam war, were taken out of context—he was warning America against turning on its allies in Asia, lest it come to be seen as unreliable, rather than suggesting that it had a perfidious streak. But that will be little consolation to countries such as the Philippines, which depend upon America to defend them in the South China Sea.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Chinese diplomats have been keen to highlight America’s missteps. There are two lines of attack. To America’s allies they argue that Mr Trump cannot be trusted. For countries of the global south they have a different message. “If every country emphasised its own interests and worshipped the status of its own power,” Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, said on March 7th, “the world would regress to the law of the jungle, where small and weak countries would be the first to suffer.”
The irony of Mr Wang’s critique has not been lost on diplomats from small states in Asia, who remember his predecessor saying, in a discussion over the South China Sea, that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that’s just a fact.”
Facing new tariffs from Mr Trump and the risk of an America more hostile on issues such as Taiwan, you might expect China to be wooing Asian countries just now. A charm offensive like that which China launched more than 20 years ago under President Jiang Zemin would seek to tidy up ties, not least by resolving several territorial disputes, and build up a reservoir of goodwill in anticipation of tensions with America.
Yet charm has been oddly absent from Chinese diplomacy in recent weeks. Instead, China seems to see this as a moment of vulnerability for many American allies and partners, during which it has adjusted its rhetoric to exploit distress at Mr Trump’s words and actions. It has resisted concessions or new diplomatic and development initiatives of the sort offered under previous charm offensives.
Consider China’s relations with India. These have improved following an agreement in October that resolved a four-year military stand-off over their disputed border in the Himalayas. But Indian officials note that this progress predated Mr Trump’s win. Moreover, since the border agreement, Chinese authorities have approved the construction of the world’s largest hydro-electric dam on a river in Tibet that flows into India, and are reported to have offered stealth fighter jets to Pakistan, India’s historic rival.
Likewise, consider relations between China and Australia, an American ally. These have slowly improved since the election of a Labor government in May 2022. Australian wine, one of the last goods subject to punitive Chinese tariffs, began flowing again in December. The two countries resumed their defence dialogue in February after a hiatus of six years. But the unexpected appearance, the same month, of a Chinese navy flotilla conducting live-fire exercises off Australia’s coast has triggered renewed doubts about Chinese intentions.
One exception may be Japan, whose business, military and party leaders have noticed a new warmth coming from their Chinese counterparts. On March 22nd the foreign ministers of Japan, China and South Korea will meet in Tokyo, a confab that China has often avoided in order to signal unhappiness with its neighbours. But so far the only sign of a tangible concession has been a hint that China may soon relax restrictions on Japanese seafood imports.
China’s failure to seize the initiative probably reflects a lack of flexibility and creativity in its diplomacy. That decades-old problem has grown more acute as Xi Jinping, its leader, has centralised decision-making, downgraded the foreign ministry and taken a more muscular approach to the world.
But the reluctance of Chinese diplomats to take advantage of the moment is also born out of pragmatism. China should “maintain continuity in its foreign policy and stability in its behaviour” to make the most of America’s disruptive diplomacy, wrote one scholar in a party journal. That is less Kissinger than Napoleon, who is credited with saying: “Never interrupt your adversary when he is making a mistake.” ■