The China Card

John Nerry and Manuel L. Quezon III
9/19/07

ON June 15, 2007, I wrote a blog entry titled “New Asian alliance,” pointing in turn, to an article by Brahma Chellaney, a professor of Strategic Studies at New Delhi University, titled Playing the new Great Game in Asia and beyond. The article said a new exploratory alliance, had emerged in our region:

A nifty new enterprise to discuss security dangers in the Asia-Pacific and evolve a coordinated approach — the Quadrilateral Initiative — has kicked off with an unpublicized first meeting. U.S., Japanese, Indian and Australian officials, at the rank of assistant secretary of state, quietly met recently on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) gathering in Manila.

The emerging four-power alliance was aimed at China. Writing in the Asia Sentinel, Gavin Pao took a look at where that exploratory alliance is, at present: Strategic Chess: Do four-power military exercises and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreshadow a new sphere of conflict? In it, the author writes that a massive naval exercise took place at the same time as the APEC Summit. Participants in the exercise were members of the Quadrilateral Initiative -referred to in the article as the Quad Alliance- which has its own security focus, the Malacca Strait. That focus, in turn, represents a threat to Chinese interests:

All four Quad countries are keen to ensure that the Malacca Strait between Malaysia and Indonesia, the world’s busiest waterway, is kept free of threats. Roughly 30 percent of the world’s cargo trade passes through the strait and the need to ensure safe passage is certainly paramount. The strategic importance of the strait as a conduit for oil imports is sacrosanct to a number of countries, including China, Japan and South Korea.

However, with the Quad exercises being conducted with a heavy arsenal that included aircraft and submarines, it is clear that potential threats posed unconventional forces, like terrorists or pirates, have hardly been accorded first priority. Moreover, effective patrolling of the strait can be enforced primarily through close coordination between Malaysian, Singaporean, American and Indonesian intelligence agencies, without any need for substantial Indian or Japanese involvement.

The irony regarding the argument for protecting the Malacca Strait is that controlling it through a forum in which China is not involved effectively hangs a psychological noose over China’s head. Roughly 60 percent of China’s foreign trade and 75 percent of its oil imports also pass through the Malacca Strait, and it explains why China has been so aggressive in creating new transport outlets for itself away from the coast.

The story goes on to discuss how the various members of the Quad Alliance are responding to China, with Australia cozying it up with Beijing and other countries being more ambivalent. And how Beijing sees its prospects:

China, meanwhile, remains confident in its backyard, with much of the region under its sway. While ASEAN countries still look to the US as the region’s ultimate guarantor of security, Beijing has played a skillful diplomatic game in Southeast Asia, according the region top priority during a time when the United States has tended to take ASEAN for granted, as symbolized by Condoleeza Rice skipping several key ASEAN summits. Philippine President Gloria Arroyo even referred to China as a “big brother” at an ASEAN summit this year.

In contrast, if you look at my July 26, 2007 entry on the debate on where American commitment to Philippine security really stood, Filipino officials, like their Asean counterparts, get mixed and usually not very encouraging messages from the USA. American think tanks, on the other hand, are quite aware of the ebb and flow of American prestige vis-a-vis China in the Philippines, and have tried to influence official policy. But they’ve failed.

A reason may be that the Bush administration has nailed America’s future to Iraq: the American historian (and blogger) David Kaiser says the US faces a Turning Point so significant it represents the fourth great crisis of American national life:

The fourth great crisis of our national life is upon us. The first (1774-1794) created our republic; the second (1857-68, or 1857-72 in the South) preserved it; and the third (1929-45) made us a leading world power. Ever since Strauss and Howe published The Fourth Turning at the end of 1996, their readers have been speculating about when the crisis would come, and what it would be about. President Bush’s speech last Thursday, in my opinion, answered those questions. We now know the issue that the next ten years will decide: the nature of the United States’ role in the world in general and the Middle East in particular. We shall either emerge, for good or ill, as the world’s remaining imperial power living in a long-term garrison state, or we shall step back and begin to allow the world to take care of itself again.

There seems little place in this American crisis, for South East Asia. Which brings us to the Philippines and the administration’s “China card.”

Back in October, 2005, I’d pointed out in my blog (see IV, 2) that one political card the administration was playing, was the “China card.” This was most obviously played on July 8, 2005 when both Secretary Romulo and Speaker de Venecia (de Venecia, particularly insistently) said China supported the President.

This was at a time when the United States seemed ambivalent, at best, about the administration and was even suspected of maneuvering to kick the President out. China maintained an official posture of enthusiastic support for the President, and began giving token aid to the AFP, which traditionally, has been totally dependent on American assistance and thus, susceptible to American pressure. That assistance remains small, but China continues to increase it, little by little, as well as aggressively pursuing commercial contacts and official assistance, as demonstrated by the ZTE deal.

The President hasn’t been shy about singing the praises of China, just as China sees potential in Philippine investments to help supply raw materials. And of course it may be as simple as this: it’s easier, more pleasant, even more dignified, to do business with the Chinese than say, Europeans and Americans with their rhetoric about “transparency” and “honesty,” which the targets of Western preachiness tend to view as sanctimonious pap.

Our country and government is neither China’s biggest market or even a very large factor in the Chinese scheme of things. But influence is gained one small and big government at a time; what makes us important, in a sense, is if the UK and Japan served as super carriers for the projection of American power in Europe and Asia, the Philippines served as an escort carrier (when the bases existed) or escort destroyer (today) for the projection of American influence. In turn, Philippine governments tried to extract concessions from the US with varying levels of success.

Geopolitics is also domestic politics. China wants to be a Superpower, America wants to remain the only one, the Philippines, like Japan and indeed, also the rest of Asean, likes cozying up to America to counteract China, but China proves more attentive and generous than America… Domestically, the President has used China as a foil to America, and America seems to have resigned itself to realizing it needs the President, for now…

But think of this. The ZTE deal triggered a protest from the US Ambassador. The same deal has also reminded Filipino businessmen that contrary to their belief, up to this point, that the virtue of the President was she played politics ruthlessly, but unlike Estrada (and of course, Marcos) she intended to keep her hands off business, and in particular, big business. But the ZTE deal has intruded into the turf of big local players (PLDT and Globe, for one, the telecoms giants who could have profited from a national broad band scheme), as well as American business interests. So their hackles have been raised.

The easiest thing to do would be for the President to scrap the deal. But the Chinese have invested; if testimony is to be believed, money has exchanged hands. It becomes, then, a question of face. Face is something that is priceless; and if face is lost, the consequences go beyond dollars and cents.

This, then, is the dilemma of the government. Just as it’s begun to enjoy its cozy relationship with China, domestic politics has taken on an international dimension.