Voici ici un très bon article concernant les enjeux politiques de l'emergence de la chine.
By Gideon Rachman
Being an “enemy of China” is a disconcerting experience. About 10 years ago I inadvertently slipped into this role, when I wrote a cover story for The Economist headlined: “Containing China”.
The Chinese were irked by this use of “cold war vocabulary”. On a trip to Beijing at the time, I struggled to justify my unhelpful attitude – a task that was made more difficult by the fact that many of the officials I met seemed unable to grasp the distinction between the words “contain” and “destroy”. I remember struggling to illustrate the difference at an official banquet, with the aid of a glass of water. The glass, I pointed out, contained the liquid – but it did not attack it. My audience looked sceptical.
Ten years later, I have returned to Beijing – having cleverly assumed a new identity as a columnist for the Financial Times. The fuss seems to have died down. In the intervening years, the Chinese economy has probably doubled in size and the Beijing skyline has been transformed beyond recognition.
But, strangely enough, the big strategic questions about China’s emergence as a great power remain pretty much the same. Will China have a “peaceful rise”, as its officials insist? Or will growing Chinese power and ambition one day bring the country into conflict with the US or Japan? How serious is China’s threat to use force to prevent Taiwanese independence? And how long can the Communist party rule?
The big questions remain open. But that is not to say that nothing has changed. The past decade has seen at least three major developments that demonstrate China’s burgeoning global power. The first is the way that China is displacing Japan as the diplomatic and economic focus of Asia. The second is the growing power of the Chinese military. The third is the fact that China is now developing global strategic interests.
China’s global reach has just been graphically demonstrated by an eight-nation tour of Africa by Hu Jintao, China’s president. The trip signalled his determination to secure the mineral and energy resources his country needs. China also recently demonstrated its growing military sophistication by shooting down one of its own space satellites. China’s new clout within Asia was demonstrated last year, when Japan discovered that only one Asian country, tiny Singapore, was willing to come out in strong support of Japan’s bid for permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council. The rest stayed silent, in deference to China’s hostility to Japan.
All of these developments are open to both benign and malign interpretations. China’s missile test could simply be seen as the kind of thing that countries do, as they upgrade their military capabilities. More generally, China’s military build-up could be nothing more than a reflection of the country’s growing wealth.
But there is also a much darker way of looking at the missile test. It might be a deliberate signal to the US that – in any future conflict over Taiwan – China could take out the satellite intelligence that is crucial to the US military.
America would have to fight blind. Some military analysts believe that China’s military build-up – which includes a huge increase in ballistic missiles capable of hitting Taiwan – has already tipped the odds towards China in any future conflict across the Taiwan Straits.
China’s actions in Africa are similarly ambiguous. The positive side is that the Chinese are bringing trade and investment to the world’s poorest continent. The negative side is that Beijing is happy to do business with some of Africa’s nastiest governments, including Sudan. It has done almost nothing to pressure Khartoum over Darfur – and yet, China is the largest arms supplier to the Sudanese government and its biggest overseas oil project is in Sudan.
China’s growing clout within Asia is also open to both an optimistic and a pessimistic interpretation.
Japan has been openly worried since the anti-Japanese riots in China in 2005. But most other Asian countries seem reasonably relaxed. The rapid growth of China’s economy is seen as a big opportunity and Beijing has taken pains to try to negotiate solutions to its various border disputes – although as one senior Vietnamese politician puts it: “With China as a neighbour, you always need to sleep with one eye open.”
The big exception to this rule is Taiwan. Chinese rhetoric on this issue remains startlingly blunt. The group of Americans and Europeans with whom I visited Beijing last week were informed by a senior Chinese official – “In a sentence: Taiwan independence means war.”
Two years ago a Chinese general spoke openly to foreign journalists about using nuclear weapons on “hundreds” of US cities in the event of conflict. This sounds terrifying. But the Chinese have been rattling sabres over Taiwan for decades. If anything, some of the heat has gone out of the issue recently. President George W.Bush has openly discouraged the Taiwanese from pursuing formal independence; and President Hu has sounded less impatient about taking over Taiwan than previous Chinese leaders.
Americans still find it hard to be relaxed about the rise of China – and understandably so. The rise of a new world power has often led to war in centuries past. China is an authoritarian government that can sound very bellicose. But the Chinese challenge remains a long-term one.
In the meantime, the US has more pressing issues to worry about. It was noticeable in Beijing last week that the Americans in my group – think-tankers from the Brookings Institution and former government officials – found it hard to stay focused exclusively on China. The conversations on the bus or in the bar fairly swiftly turned to Iraq – with Iran and the US presidential election as sub-themes.
When President Bush came to power, he made China policy a top priority. But the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks changed all that. America’s pre-occupation with the Middle East is a huge opportunity for Beijing. It can pursue its military build-up and extend its diplomatic reach without encountering any real opposition. China is already competing hard with the US across a range of fronts – from the pursuit of energy resources to the establishment of diplomatic networks. If and when the US finally lifts its gaze from the Middle East, it will find itself facing a much better placed and more formidable China.
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