To face up to the many challenges presented by China's rise, other countries should try to nudge China to become a responsible stakeholder that will work with them to maintain a peaceful international order, Chinese specialists said at a forum yesterday.
The forum, "The rise of China and the future of the Asia-Pacific Region," was co-hosted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and The Asia Foundation, and brought academics from around the region together to discuss the problems posed by China's rise.
Bates Gill, Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Center of Strategic and International Studies said, "Through a combination of pragmatic security policies, growing clout and increasing deft diplomacy, China has successfully established extremely productive and strengthened many other relationships throughout the Asia and around the globe."
PHOTO: FANG PIN-CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
Security diplomacy
Calling the strategy to establish partnership with other countries as China's "new security diplomacy," Gill said that the strategy presents significant challenges as well as opportunities for the international system, for regional security and for US interests.
He suggested the US and other key members of the international community intensify dialogue with China on objectionable and threatening issues, work with Beijing to expand the definition and response to transnational threats and encourage expanded Chinese support and participation in a variety of peacekeeping and nation-building operations.
Taking the issue of nonproliferation and arms control as an example, Gill said that it is possible to gain greater Chinese nonproliferation and arms control cooperation by taking seriously Chinese leaders' aspirations to open constructively to the outside world, improve their international image and gain concessions from such discussions.
From an economic angle, Ishihara Kyoichi, a professor of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Science at Kobe University in Japan, said that while China's economy has been growing rapidly for the past 25 years, its social integration has not advanced.
"Chinese society is split because of geopolitical and historical inequality and the expansion of income differentials after the onset of capitalism. People tend to pursue self-interests and neglect the public interest," he said.
To ensure peace and stability in the region, Ishihara said that surrounding countries should improve future economic cooperation with China.
"For example, the influence that Chinese growth has had on the Japanese economy in recent years is extremely strong -- the Japanese market is snowed under with agricultural products and clothes imported from China. Japan and China still have to develop technical and industrial cooperation for the future," Ishihara said.
Ishihara also encouraged Taiwan to enhance its interaction with China, which could possibly help to push a peaceful democratic transformation of China.
Recognition
Richard Hu, an associate professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Hong Kong, said that the Chinese government has recognized the necessity of convincing other countries that its rise will not have any negative consequences.
"As rise and threat are two sides of the same coin, the Chinese government has developed a kind of reassurance policy to manage other countries' perceptions of its rising," Hu said.
Given that the rise of China seems unstoppable, the international community has to accept it and ask it take more responsibility, Hu said.
Allen Choate, Vice President of The Asia Foundation, however, doubted whether international society can change China. "While there is lots of pressure on China to liberalize its political system, there is no evidence that its present political system can be restructured."
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