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Jethro Makumbe Correspondent
There is an increasing bunch of assumers and cynics that have a strong feeling that an increasingly assertive China would use its influence to pivot abusive regimes to nourish its own self-interests, threaten war and become adamant to peremptory norms or what should be global goals on issues such as human rights and public health. At international level, states are governed by the principle of sovereign power that regards all states as sovereign and independent states.
State interests are inescapably put first as in the international politics there are no permanent friends but permanent interests, thus there’s no great fuss for China to be selfish at times.
Yes it’s true that China has its own unique way of handling its interactions with international partners.
After all, the US has no right to court partners for China; neither does the US has the power to change the sovereign conscience of China. Who said everything American or West is the best? Maybe to the Chinese everything West is worst or wasteful, we may never know.
It will be a judgemental fallacy for anybody to assume that China might be a destabilising force in the world had it become the super power.
China is not like its jingoistic counterpart, the US. The short 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war was the last international armed conflict entered into by China and it did not even effect border changes. Now, compare that to a long and sinuous catalogue of American interventions since 1918; America has fought wars more than boxer Floyd Mayweather, its pugnacity and timeless bellicosity justifies its colossal military budget. The relationship between a country’s level of democracy and its inclination for making war is unsubstantiated — as comparative background analysis of both the US and China denotes.
China is impenetrably more integrated and interwoven into the international system than any other state, the US included.
The US merchandise exports accounted for 8 percent of its GDP in 1918, the same number was 26 percent for China in 2010, more than three times as high.
More than 50 percent of Chinese exports are produced by foreign enterprises. China’s overseas investments amount to more than $3 trillion in foreign reserves only, most of which held in securities. Because of China’s close entanglement in the world economy, military spending has remained a consistently low priority for the country’s political leadership. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, China of 2015 accounts for only about 8 percent of the world’s military expenditure — less than half the US’s margin in 1929 and one-fifth of America’s share today.
China has no intention of building arsenals, but rather become the world’s El Dorado whilst the US expends its energies in being the world’s military heavyweight champion. A military Mayweather of its time.
US and its western allies are still haunted by the ghost of the Soviet system whose leadership was a dedicated autocracy and had persistent dreams for a complete annihilation of America and everything it represents.
The Soviet Union indeed gave the US sleepless nights and hellish nightmares, but it would be a costly mistake to draw an analogy of China of today and Soviet Union after World War Two.
The Soviet Union communist belief system has been since abandoned by Chinese policymakers and channelled their focus on integrating China into the international system.
Nikita Khrushchev’s fist-banging braggadocio and his eventual doomsday remains a reference point for change for today’s China. China is indeed a spring with birdsong madam Rachel Carson, wherever you’re, Hades or hell.
The people of China are ready to take over, and the world waits to embrace China as it methodically advances to ensconce itself at the zenith of international economic Babel.
America will soon receive a rude awakening from her noxious slumber. China has reached every corner of the world, rich and poor. Even to a troubled Polisario goat farmer in Saharawi and a herd boy in Gokwe-Nembudziya, you can still hear the same high-pitched tones of a China mobile phone as the boys communicate the whereabouts of their animals.
Jethro Makumbe is a political, social and economic analyst
Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter