Beware of China, says former diplomat

KOTTAYAM: Developing countries like India need to be cautious about China not only because of issues like border conflict, but also in the context of its behaviour in multilateral forums, former diplomat TP Sreenivasan said here on Friday.Sreenivasan, who is also the vice-chairman of the Kerala State Higher Education Council, said this while inaugurating a one-day colloquium on ‘China and the Emerging World Order: Is Peaceful Rise Possible?’ organised by the K P S Menon Chair for Diplomatic Studies, School of International Relations and Politics (SIRP), Mahatma Gandhi University, in association with DC Books, Kottayam.According to Sreenivasan, the prevailing notion that China is the champion of developing countries is contestable given its double face on crucial global issues.The latest case is the Durban smmit on global climate change wherein the Chinese position amounted to hiding behind India. A similar situation exists on the question of the expansion of the UN Security Council.While supporting expansion, it does not appear to be favouring the entry of India, he said.Rajan Gurukkal, Vice-Chancellor, said that the increasing spatialisation within the country in the name of faster industrialisation has resulted in serious social dislocations which might not help a peaceful rise of China possible in the years to come.T V Paul, director of the McGill University Centre for International Peace and Security Studies (CIPSS), Canada, and the honorary professor at the K P S Menon Chair for Diplomatic Studies, said the rise of China is occurring without an active balance of power coalition being formed against it. China has been rapidly emerging as the lead economic power and it is also modernising its military.Although China has touted its policy as ‘peaceful rise’ it is unclear why affected regional states in Asia-Pacific have not yet formed active balancing coalitions in response to it, he said.They have instead increased economic interdependence with China and included it in many regional institutional frameworks.Even the most affected states, India and the US, have pursued a hedging strategy by forming only a limited strategic dialogue in response to China’s rise, he said.Paul observed that the essential basis of the ‘peaceful rise’ strategy of China is not to upset the international order too strongly, but to use economic instruments to achieve global power status.