(story to be published in tomorrow’s issue, April 3)
Since the end of the Cold War and the reshuffle in planetary arrangements of power and order/disorder, most analysts expect the next millennium to deliver a strategic configuration not with one superpower as today (the USA), but at least two or three, with China and possibly India claiming their global strategic interests. The immense demographic potential, accompanied by fast economic and technological development (especially in acquisitions of top military technology), are only several factors that are indicative of such progress. The fundamental problem in a state’s bid to move to superpower status, however, is in stating, arguing and assuming its global interests. On how a power manages regional problems largely depends how credible and trustworthy will be its claim that its own vision of international relations can be adapted to various contexts globally. In these terms, it becomes apparent that, at least in the short and medium term, India will be unable to assume global interests because regionally it is in a permanent “nuclear scented” friction with Pakistan over the Kashmir region. Today, India is an exporter of insecurity and instability in Asia and throughout the world, instead of a stability force. As to the other power expected to become the United States’ competitor as a superpower in the next century and millennium, China, things are not exactly rosy, as the recent elections in Taiwan and the straining of tension between the two states can always degenerate into a conflict. The peaceful absorption of Hong-Kong by China in 1997 and of the Macao harbour in December 1999 have prompted some analysts to believe that the Greater China will also “swallow” Taiwan without indigestion. The famous principle “one country, two systems” that worked for Hong-Kong and Macao, fails to work for Taiwan, for the simple reason that unification with China must be preceded by a referendum among the Taiwanese and not by accords with Britain (in the Hong-Kong case) or Portugal (Macao). And the election as Taiwan president of Chen-Shui-bian and of the Democratic Progress Party, radical promoters of the idea “One China – Two sovereign governments,” going as far as de jure sovereignty, has been a test of the Taiwanese people’s willingness to postpone the prospect of total absorption into China. The maximal alert state during the elections, which remained afterwards as Chinese military forces were amassed in the vicinity of Taiwan, confirms the deep political and military tension between the sides. In fact, today’s tensions are merely the tip of the iceberg in a long history of the Chinese Army deployments and manoeuvres designed to intimidate Taiwan, which only put off a potential unification, culminating in the July 1999 statement of the former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui, who said Taiwan would only deal with China as an equal. Taiwan’s claims to formal sovereignty are to some extent justified, primarily because, unlike China, it enjoys a democratic political regime and a flourishing economy. To date, Taiwan is the seventh largest export market for the United States and its thirteenth-largest trade partner. In spite of its furious economic progress, China will not be able to keep up such a pace in the long term because of the impediments posed by the authoritarian political system. The political unknowns will be resolved in 2002, when the 16th Congress of the Chinese communist Party will replace the current leader, Jiang Zemin. Another comparison, GDP per capita, shows a stark contrast between China’s $790 and Taiwan’s $13,832, which justifies the latter’s claims to membership in the World Trade Organisation and the UN. A major dilemma in the conflict taking shape now is how the USA will play referee in this new problem, with relations between China and the United States essentially unchanged since Nixon’s opening policy in 1971, aside from cosmetic changes that came with the economic opening of the Clinton administration and the diplomatic coldness following the Yugoslavian war. The United States can be expected to back Taiwan, for the simple reason that unlike China, it has managed to develop a market economy based on democratic and not authoritarian principles.