World Tribune.com: Elsewhere on the world stage, a 'rising' power is on the move

So there is a gentle rattling of the U.S., caged for the moment in Iraq, and new attempts at alliances or arrangements. Much noise does not bare close analysis because like all human activity, geopolitics, too, can be folly, and short-lived. But as so often happens in human events, only time will tell.

Item: A self-intoxicated Chinese leadership – reading glowing analyses of Western commentators – is forcing its “rising”. Ignoring Deng Xiaoping’s injunction to keep their heads down until modernization kicked in, President Hu JinTao [who never left his country nor had contact with a single foreigner until he reached his present exalted post] is strutting the world stage. [If three trips to backward regions of Africa can be called “the grand tour”!] His ostensive purpose, other than presenting China as a world power, is to secure his economy’s need for oil by tossing large amounts of cash at local kleptocrats for proprietary interests at exaggerated prices. In Beijing it apparently has occurred to few highups security for those fossil fuel assets lies with the U.S. world fleets guaranteeing passage at Suez, the Gulf of Aden, Hormuz, Malacca, the Lombok Strait, and, yes, even the Strait of Taiwan.

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Item: But Hu has just concluded a long-awaited and trumpeted visit to Moscow. It appears less happened than met the eye. Beijing and Moscow did conclude a paper space agreement to collaborate including a trip to Mars. But were I president of the Martian Chamber of Commerce, I would not put vast sums into a welcoming committee. Atmospherics for the meeting were bad: for whatever reason [and one has to question whether President Vladimir Putin’s moves are all that coordinated], the Russians chose to do some rounding up of illegal Chinese immigrants. There is growing local anxiety, if not in Moscow, about large numbers of “traders” settling into Siberia and the Maritime Provinces which Chinese maps still show as old Imperial China. [ “Chinese” are now the second largest non-Russian ethnic group in official Russian demography.] Chinese complaints about quality and delivery times [and the fact India gets access to later state of the art technology] on military sales were not addressed. Unresolved was Moscow’s coy dance around whether a trans-Siberian oil pipeline – negotiated almost a decade ago by the Chinese – is to be built to the Pacific permitting marketing all along the Rim. The Japanese have offered to finance this replacement for the original China-only conduit. Coordinated Russian-Chinese UN diplomacyopposing U.S.-European pressure to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program took a hit when midway through the visit, Moscow reversed course by cutting off technological transfers to the reactor it was building for Tehran, at the center of the controversy. China did promise some $8 billion in new credits to finance Russian exports but that, too, paled in comparison to some $25 billion in additional immediate revenues Moscow would tote up from the international oil price gouging as a result of the intensifying Iran crisis [to which it is making a large contribution].

Item: Meanwhile, China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao will turn up in April in Japan – the first visit by a high level Beijing official in seven years – to seal the 180-degree turnabout toward “the hairy little dwarfs in the Eastern Sea”. Beijing chose the voluntary withdrawal by former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his replacement by a more conservative Shinto Abe as the pretext for turning off their propaganda and diplomatic offensive against Tokyo. Abe did make the vassals’ kowtow in a visit to Beijing – the Chinese had not welcomed Koizumi – but he has stepped up military collaboration with the U.S., is moving toward revising the “no war” MacArthur Constitution, refused to promise not to go to the controversial Yaskukuni Shrine, initiated a Tokyo-proposal for a conference of Chinese and Japanese scholars on the embittered modern history, picked up the Japanese proposal to jointly develop East China Sea natural gas, etc., etc. All these were seen by Beijing as stumbling blocs between Asia’s two most important powers until someone in the Forbidden Center finally realized it was counterproductive, driving Tokyo into a tighter and tighter embrace with Washington. Wen is unlikely to accomplish much, but he would be expected to do nothing to interrupt the steady flow of investment and its accompanying technology from Japanese companies.

Item: Despite all the talk of the growing economic dominance of China in world trade and particularly in the East Asian area, the Japanese – in part as a result of the Koizumi Revolution aiming at liberalization – are increasing their drive as the world’s second economy toward technology and expanded trade. New bilateral free trade agreements with Asian partners [and one being concluded with Australia] are moving ahead of Beijing’s grandiose announcements. While Beijing announces new uses for its huge $1 trillion plus reserves – already borrowed for everything from backing its currency to bailing out bankrupt banks and State Owned Enterprises [SOEs] – the Japanese have consolidated their financial structure [despite its huge current accounts deficit] to create a half dozen megabanks ready to challenge New York and The City’s older denizens. While Chinese businessmen continue to steal R&D through little or no effort to respect foreign intellectual property, Japanese technological breakthroughs are becoming standard fare in the world research community. Iraq still holds the spotlight but it is important to remember the world is moving on outside that all consuming controversy for American politics and the world media.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com and East-Asia-Intel.com.