CHINA’S dilemma in Asia is how to balance the peaceful rise it says it wants with its desire for more regional influence. In its continuing effort to achieve both, on July 3rd Xi Jinping, the country’s president, arrived in South Korea for a state visit. It came several days after Mr Xi had repeated his call for a new security framework in Asia. He was speaking at a conference in Beijing to mark the 60th anniversary of the excitingly named “Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence”, the basis of China’s policy of non-interference. The president does not seem to be unduly troubled by any tension between his words and China’s recent actions. “The notion of dominating international affairs belongs to a different age, and such an attempt is doomed to failure,” he said without apparent irony.The leaders of Vietnam and the Philippines might have something to say about that, since it is exactly what they think China has been doing in recent months. It is embroiled in a standoff with both countries over competing claims to islands and reefs in the South China Sea.Away from such dangerous shoals, one vehicle Mr Xi has chosen for increasing China’s influence is a group of 26 mostly Asian countries called the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). CICA’s aims are fuzzy. Its main purpose appears to be to provide an alternative to more established...
from The Economist: China http://ift.tt/1orKHfm
No comments:
Post a Comment