Memorandum by Professor Flemming Christiansen,
Chair in Chinese Studies, University of Leeds
Among the major difficulties of making meaningful
statements about the European Union and China is (a) the
huge diversity of players and interests involved, (b) the many
linkages between Europeans and Chinese and between European member
states, regions and entities and the Chinese state at diverse
levels, its regions and businesses and civil society organisations,
and (c) the diverse logics governing them. Given the need to calibrate
a shared European Union vision and policy towards China there
is a huge onus on the major member states, the European Commission,
the parliamentarians both in the European and the national parliaments,
as well as in particular government departments, businesses and
civil society concerned with China to find common ground where
little existed before. It is to be hoped that this "Inquiry
into the European Union and China" will be an important step
towards creating an even more dynamic and meaningful interaction
with China than we have witnessed so far. Yet, it may be too ambitious
to wish to embrace the wide range on collaborations and other
interactions with China and to regard the two sides as clearly
defined entities, so all one may realistically hope for is that
European political discourse in relation to China undergoes a
reality check. That, so to say, obsolete perceptions be discarded,
and understanding already amply available be recognised and drawn
into a shared understanding of China among European decision makers.
In the following, my remarks on specific issues point
at some areas that may be of use in this process.
1. China's economic, social and political
reforms since the late 1970s have been highly significant and
have helped restructure China's global involvement. Among the
outcomes of the reforms, China has emerged as a developmental
state with a particular structure. The "reform and opening
up" (gaige kaifang) of the 1980s and 1990s, it is worth recalling,
used "market mechanisms" (shichang jizhi) and a "socialist
market economy" (shehuizhuyi shichang jingji) to regulate
resource flows at micro-levels, while the economic reforms in
terms of the deployment of major resources, institutional change,
devolution of powers and so on were incremental, centrally
planned processes, based on sophisticated structures of decision
making. As a result, 30 years after, China strategically
controls core state-owned corporations in raw materials, finance,
energy, transport and telecommunications, several of which are
globally active; the state also regulates a vast, competitive,
and expanding market economy of large and medium-sized companies
that are Chinese-, foreign- or jointly owned and represent various
levels of private and public investment; in particular at city-levels
it encourages local, strategic public-corporate partnerships in
housing, real estate development, local transport and so on; at
local levels, an undergrowth of semi- and informal enterprises,
privately or collectively owned, and often controlled by local
town and township governments or village committees in patterns
of so-called local state corporatism help generate wealth and
employment. Farming, in most parts of China, is small-scale and
economically barely or not at all viable, often relying on the
incomes from other sectors to be possible. This pattern of the
economy has proven very attractive to business in Hong Kong and
Taiwan, involving these regions heavily in the overall economic
growth by providing cheap labour, markets, and good business environments.
Grain production and grain trade are devolved and decentralised,
but demand and supply are strategically regulated through intervention
funds at provincial level and granary stocks able to cushion even
very severe fluctuations. The perception of China as ruthlessly
pursuing neo-liberal economic agendas is exaggerated. While, for
example, the reform of state-owned enterprises was not smooth,
the processes and institutional frameworks used, as well as the
social outcomes were rooted in cybernetic (planned process) thinking
and forms of political control that allowed the deployment of
multiple resources in coordination and had little to do with belief
in the efficiency of private interest and free markets. Even so,
the single-minded pursuit of growth in a socialist economic system
can lead to great social injustices, and these did occur.
2. Serious social problems arising from
the development in the 1980s and 1990s, in particular the immense
gap widening between rural and urban areas, and the reliance on
cheap rural migrant workers as "second-class citizens"
for urban development set in motion a new set of policies in 2003.
In the recent years a raft of measures have been brought in place
to avoid social injustices, new poverty, poor labour conditions,
and to ensure more equality of rights, and these are having a
significant effect. The co-incidence of the effects in China of
the new, rights-enhancing Labour Contract Law and the financial
crisis in 2008-09 has, ironically, led to mass redundancies
of migrant workers, many of whom seem to have been thrown back
into informality and have often returned to villages, where there
are less viable labour opportunities. The likely effect is that
informal industries and labour relations will this be displaced
to villages in more remote regions. The improvement of social
and economic conditions and rights is thus an ongoing and evolving
process.
3. These economic dynamics have to a large
degree been premised on international demand for manufacturing
products, and the recent economic downturn has, in spite of substantial
resilience in the Chinese economy, caused many localised social
problems; even so, the financial packages announced by Chinese
authorities are poised to alleviate some of these outcomes.
4. Chinese food security is precariously
balanced, as China feeds 21% of the global population on 7% of
the arable area. China has in recent years been a moderate importer
of grain (and a large importer of soybean); the Chinese balancing
act is premised on a system of production contracts, minimum producer
prices, input-factor subsidies, intervention funds and intervention
stock. The 2008 global grain crisis was one of those events,
where China's "protectionism" buffered against much
more grave global effects, and where the role of a planned, moderate
importer was to prefer to a fully liberal global market.
5. China's role as a major producer of manufactured
goods, the need for increasing living standards that comes with
a more formalised economy, and the current drive to develop rural
infrastructure, rural health care, rural nine year compulsory
education, as well as rural social insurance schemes, are all
premised on continued economic growth. China will therefore continue
to provide an open investment environment, which is increasingly
tuned to the requirements of European (and North American) investors,
providing higher levels of services, a well-educated workforce,
and more competitive facilities for research and development,
while the informal, sweatshop based production is increasingly
squeezed out.
6. In keeping with these development priorities,
China's need to develop energy resources and procure raw materials
for continued manufacturing will continue to grow. Its engagements
in mining and energy prospecting in South America, Africa and
Central Asia are well-known, and these will of course also increasingly
translate into a larger security role (most recently in the anti-piracy
activities off the coast of Somalia). Even if a large literature
is emerging on this topic, very little detailed research has been
conducted on the ways in which Chinese companies and individuals,
as well as the Chinese state, are engaged in trading with and
development of those areas. Most of the negative judgements that
have been voiced about China's engagement in Africa are, when
reduced to their real substance, merely based on the effects of
the terms of trade between Africa and EU/USA. The terminology
of colonialist "scramble" seems to fit oddly with the,
prima facie, even-handed deals, the parity of interests
in corporate context, and the risks Chinese traders are taking
in Africa. More is needed to understand the nature of Chinese
collaboration in parts of Africa regarded as highly controversial
due to issues of governance and human rights; originators of such
moral claims, in any case, tend to make them quite selectively
as a matter of expediency.
7. The EU's policies towards China promoting
rule of law and various sets of rights, freedoms and forms of
political expression have in China been embraced with a great
interest, and they have been highly useful during in particular
the 1990s and early 2000s to put on the agenda some of the major
growth-induced social injustices that have since 2003 become
a major field of innovative policy making in China. In particular,
these policies have helped about a large growth in local and international
NGOs dealing with community level governance, best practice, citizens'
advice, and have been part of designs of local elections and village
levels, policies on community organisations, and so on. The dialogues
have been helped by various initiatives, like EU investments in
academic infrastructure in China, and one can say that there is
a great potential for further academic and research collaboration.
Among the issues to address is the rather bi-polar nature of collaboration,
the lack of understanding of the wider Chinese context by many
European participants, and the often slogan-like and limited depth
of EU statements on the issues. More European research on social,
political and economic developments in China, combined with much
more intense research collaboration is needed in order to develop
better communication and mutual understanding on underlying issues.
Furthermore, schemes that would involve, for example, pairing
of European parliamentarians and Chinese National People's Congress
delegates in longer-term series of collegial meetings and/or workshops
on focused issues of social and political issues may be a helpful
and creative way of achieving a better basis for dialogue; issues
like climate change, environmental protection, world heritage
protection, global human rights discourse, as well as international
labour markets and migration would seem appropriate as a framework,
dealing with some of the major challenges that face us all.
8. EU relations with China need to consider
the core issues that are necessary for ensuring peace and prosperity.
There is no doubt that the EU can facilitate much better commercial,
civil-society, cultural and personal-level interaction with China,
but considering the tasks at hand, it would seem that EU could
benefit particularly from (a) developing joint projects in research
and development for low-energy housing, energy-efficient transport,
and renewable energy exploitation; (b) establishing joint advanced
research facilities for advanced technology and global social
development; and (c) establishing joint financial bodies or interfaces
that can deal with global strategic investments in environmental
protection and sustainable infrastructure. China is one of the
few states in the world that has the capacity to play a leading
role in developing such facilities, joining together with the
experience of the European Union in facilitating large strategic
projects, such a partnership would be of immense global value.
Given the huge Chinese research and manufacturing resources, as
well as the core role of China's growing consumer market and industrial
development, China must be an integral part in global collaboration
in these areas, a collaboration that can only evolve through much
more dynamic and less confrontational modes of collaboration.
9. China's foreign policy principles, shaped
historically in the last 200 years and keenly informed by
the colonial experience and later the Cold War, have served it
well. British, Russian and Japanese interest in territories declared
to be under Chinese "suzerainty", the Opium Wars (and
the unequal treaties arising from these), the Treaty of Versailles
(among other things ceding the previously German concession in
Qingdao to the Japanese), plus the "Far East Clauses"
of the Yalta Agreement, are significant origins of a policy that
is intolerant of foreign interference and sees territorial integrity
as a prime task of the state. Actually, given the low threshold
demanded by the Chinese leadership in terms of Hong Kong, Macau,
and Taiwan, it is hard to see how these "questions"
affect other states; and in a situation where political authority
over these areas is exercised prudently, and where no legal plebiscite
has challenged the existing status, most external misgivings about
the status seems vacuous. It is a matter for the peoples in the
regions concerned to decide on their fortunes, and not for foreign
intervention. As for Tibet and Xinjiang, their status and role
are of course of some concern. Issues dating back to Victorian
and Czarist times, where ethnicity, language and religion play
a prominent role, and where all sorts of interests are mixed together
in a complex picture ought to instil caution among experienced
politicians of Europe. Having had a share of intractable problems
like the North Irish troubles, Basque separatism, Balkan wars,
and the unrest among young Muslims and maghrebians in North English
cities and French banlieues, it should be very obvious to most
responsible Europeans that young angry monks attacking shops and
public property in Lhasa in 2008 in the hope to get television
exposure is only part of a much larger, deeper and more complex
problem that the Chinese state cannot run away from. Strong sense
of ethnic belonging, socio-economic change and economic development
do not always go easily together. For the monks, cited as feeling
strangers in "their own city", are not that different
from the Parisian maghrebians who feel that they are made to feel
unwanted in the streets where they, their parents and sometimes
even grandparents have lived since the 1950 or 1960s. Taking
side easily in such conflicts or even questioning sovereignty
on that basis is irresponsible; it would be much more positive
if Europe could play a role by much better understanding the underlying
issues and act helpfully and more discreetly to help bring peace
and collaboration to these regions and their peoples. Under all
circumstances, given all EU member states' de facto recognition
(be it stated or implicit) of China's sovereignty, occasional
(and often populist, media-centred) posturing by European politicians
on such issues is highly counterproductive, and jeopardises European
credibility in negotiations with China that address substantive
issues. There is very good reason for the European Union to substantially
support further research on ethnicity, nationalism, religion,
and cultures of East and Central Asia with aims to (a) understand
the complexities and political realities that involve major branches
of Islam, several types of Buddhism, as well as other new and
old religious movements in relation to both nation states and
ethnic groups, and (b) how major regional powers, including for
example Russia, India, China, Japan, Iran and Pakistan deal with
and influence these forces. In so doing, there is a need for dissociating
EU security discourse from narrow focus on hotspots like Afghanistan
and Iraq, and to seek a much deeper, longer-term perspective,
based on more detailed and circumspect and dispassionate research
on the societies and cultures of the wider region.
10. In closing, I wish to emphasise that
there is a deeply engrained trend in public discourse on China
that harks back to the Cold War, a use of jargon that is out of
tune with realities in China. In media reporting and sound bites
by many politicians the prevalent simplistic and superficial judgements
are a cause for great concern, as they stand is so stark contrast
with lived reality in China and evidence that is amply available,
that the large Chinese populations living in Europe are deeply
embarrassed. In China web-sites like "anti-CNN.com"
and a large opposition of extreme nationalists have an easy time
lampooning bigotry, prejudice, ignorance and anti-Chinese racism
committed by European politicians, commentators and media, using
these as evidence of "Western" insincerity, irresponsibility
and fickle character. While there is no doubt that there are issues
to be addressed in Chinese society and politics, as there are
in all countries of the world, it is clear that the European Union
and politicians in the member countries must take a lead in basing
their views on China on as good and solid a footing of evidence
and experience as when they address any other political issues,
like those in the USA, Canada, Australia or amongst EU member
States, and that they do so with exactly the same care and awareness
of consequences as in any other context. After all, few European
Politicians would express concern about the Washington or Canberra
regimes, or for that matter express rash opinions on the legitimacy
of Quebec's status in Canada, without an expectation to be challenged.
If we want the global partnership that will achieve a common good
for the world, certainly the first step is to engage in dialogue
based on knowledge, and step back from obsolete ideas and prejudice.
17 April 2009
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