APPENDIX 21
Memorandum submitted by Dr Frank Pieke,
St Cross College
It is with great pleasure that I reply to your
call for submissions to the Committee's inquiry into "the
role and policies of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in relation
to the People's Republic of China". Many things could be
said about the UK's engagement of China, but here I would like
to focus on an aspect that I suspect is less frequently raised
in discussions around China's international relations and national
politics.
In the last 10 years, it has become commonplace
to raise both the issue of China's size and diversity and of Greater
China, but rarely have these two been connected. Through my own
research projects on local elites in the PRC and on the new Chinese
migration from China to the PRC I have increasingly become aware
of the many connections between these two seemingly disparate
phenomena. Domestically, China's administrative system is currently
being streamlined and professionalised, gradually putting an end
to the more extreme forms of local independence that threatened
to pull China apart about 10 years ago. The impact of administrative
centralisation has gradually levelled the playing field across
China for local and external economic actors, yet local governments
and regions have been allowed to retain a great deal of autonomy
in charting their own course of economic and social development.
A key outcome of this will be that the more
affluent areas have both the opportunity and the autonomy to invest
and trade beyond their own local area, gradually exploring and
creating markets (both of production factors and finished products)
of regional and even national size. China thus is in the process
of creating a new and unique blend of localism and economic integration
that may prove even more dynamic and competitive than what we
have witnessed thus far.
These processes also have international implications.
As local entrepreneurs and governments gradually explore opportunities
farther afield, they equally naturally cross China's internal
and international boundaries. In my own work in China and Europe
I have encountered several examples of seemingly diminutive villages
or modest peasant entrepreneurs aggressively exploring both domestic
and foreign markets for their products and investment opportunities.
Partly in conjunction with this process, an ever larger flow of
emigrants leave China each year, creating a Chinese world, a field
of operations that is distinctly Chinese nature that extends far
beyond China's boundaries, and is only partially integrated with
the economic and social structures of the "host" societies.
The political implications of these interweaving
processes are complex. The national government of China is partially
successful in enlisting the expansive emigrants and entrepreneurs
for its own diplomatic agenda, yet at the same time is hostage
to the initiatives and vested interests of local governments,
some of whom for instance actively promote emigration as a means
of raising revenue.
The upshot of these developments—which
I have only been able to hint at here—is that for the UK
the Chinese national government should be only one of its Chinese
interlocutors. If the UK wishes to promote its own interests in
its relations with China, it will have to find ways to come to
terms with the paradox that China is both a strong centralised
bureaucratic state and a conglomerate of local governments who
all speak with their own voice. Identification of which local
areas in China are key to British interests and the creation of
a direct communications link with these areas in my view should
be the first step to come to terms with this complex reality.
Please do not hesitate to contact me in case
the Committee wishes me to expand on or clarify any of the issues
raised in this letter.
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