Richer and more confident, China is playing a higher-profile role in wrangling over global commerce, drawing criticism from US officials who once prodded Beijing to be more active in international trade talks.
This week in Geneva, China took an unexpectedly prominent part in pressing, along with India, for import safeguards to shield poor farmers. US officials blamed them for the collapse of global trade talks. China’s envoy countered by accusing the US of demanding too much.
Beijing’s unusually public stance reflects its status as an emerging power that is increasingly asserting itself on issues ranging from climate change to Africa, buoyed by the rapid expansion of the world’s fourth-largest economy.
“China is practicing a kind of major power diplomacy. It expects its interests to be respected,” said Joseph Cheng (鄭宇碩), chairman of the Contemporary China Research Center at City University of Hong Kong.
On trade, he said, “China intends to play a more active role as a Third World leader.”
The trade clash highlighted China’s unusual economic mix of competitive exporters and a vast, poor countryside that is home to millions of farming families crowded onto tiny, inefficient plots.
China has been a major beneficiary of trade liberalization, which helped to guarantee market access abroad for its goods. But the US, the EU and other trading partners say Beijing is violating its free-trade commitments by hampering foreign competition in its banking, finance and other industries.
But Beijing is reluctant to do anything that might hurt its countryside, which has missed out on China’s three-decade-old boom.
“We need to import a lot of food. But if the amount of imports is too big, it will cause unemployment among farmers and social instability,” said Shen Guobing (沈國兵), an associate professor at Fudan University’s Institute of World Economy in Shanghai.
“We have more bargaining power on the international stage than before,” Shen said. “It’s the good performance of our economy that supports our negotiators.”
China remained in the background in global affairs for two decades after its 1979 opening and the launch of economic reform.
But over the past decade, Beijing has stepped up its presence abroad with activities ranging from taking on a bigger role in UN peacekeeping to expanding political and commercial ties with Africa and Latin America.
China has pursued oil investments in Iran and Sudan, resisting foreign pressure to limit contact with their isolated governments.
The Geneva talks snagged on whether China, India and other countries should be allowed to impose higher tariffs to protect farmers against a sudden surge in imports or a drop in prices.
US and European negotiators rejected the proposed threshold to trigger such measures as too low. The US Representative to the WTO Susan Schwab criticized the measure as “blatant protectionism.”
The conflict was a bitter irony after Schwab and other US officials lobbied Beijing to help restart the global talks, urging China to act as a developing world champion of free trade.
In 2006, Schwab told former commerce minister Bo Xilai (薄熙來) “it’s time for China to speak up more” in the WTO.
Chinese Trade Minister Chen Deming (陳德銘) blamed Washington for the impasse, saying “once their interests were guaranteed, the Americans demanded a sky-high price,” Chinese business newspapers said on Wednesday.
It would be unfair to blame Beijing for the collapse of the talks, Cheng said.
“There was no game plan, no strategy, no serious effort on the part of the United States and European Union to get things done,” he said.
“There were no serious efforts to convince the Third World to accept the developed world’s package,” Cheng said.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique