Date: July 9, 2010, 09:30~10:30

Venue: Orchid Room, Westin Chosun Seoul

 

Chaesung Chun

 

Now we will start, the second day, fourth session, it’s a wrap-up and conclusion, so we have three speakers including me. We’ll start now and try to finish by 11:30. And then we will have lunch from twelve with General Sharp of the USFK. So this is a wrap-up session, but I don’t think three speakers will wrap-up all the wonderful discussions we had yesterday. So I guess the speakers will give some thoughts on two subjects that we dealt with yesterday. The three speakers are representatives of core institutions of the ASI. First, let me introduce Professor Qingguo Jia, even though you know him very well. Professor Qingguo Jia is a professor and associate dean of the Schools of International Studies of Peking University. He has taught at the University of Vermont, Brown University, University of California San Diego, University of Sydney, Australia, as well as Peking University. He is also a member of the standing committee and the foreign affairs committee of the national committee of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference, and a member of the standing committee of the central committee of China democratic lead. Please welcome Professor Jia.

 

Qingguo Jia

 

Thank you very much. It’s a great honor to have this opportunity to address this distinguished group of people. I’m speaking on behalf of the center of international strategic studies of Peking University. My boss is not here, so I’m free. During the past day and a half, I’ve been sitting in the sessions, I’ve learned a lot by listening to the presentations, briefings, and also the discussions. We have talked about various issues concerning global and regional order after the international economic crisis. And also the East Asian community. Member institutions have given briefing on what they have done in the past year. I’m very impressed with the quality of the presentations and discussions. I’m also happy to learn how much has been accomplished by various institutions in materializing their perspective MASI programs. Indeed, we have a lot to celebrate. Congratulations.

 

In the rest of my time, I’d like to share with you some of my thoughts in regard to the subject matter in discussion, in this conference, and how we may go about it. One of the common themes of the conference, it appears, is how the rise of China has affected the international and regional order, and the chance to create East Asian community, especially against the background of global financial crisis. We all agree that the rise of China has affected regional order and the global order to some extent. What we find difficult to agree on is how and to what extent it has affected the orders at the regional and the global level. Some say that impact is positive, now the Chinese government suddenly belongs to this group, and a lot of other people in and outside China share this view. Some say it’s negative, and China does not lack critics home and abroad. And some say the impact is great. So some argue that it’s time for G-2. We spent a lot of talking about G-2. I’m still puzzled by the concept. It appears to me, most of the major countries do not say G-2. Some people say that China has been shy by not saying G-2, or China has been calculating by not accepting G-2. But the reality is, China does not believe in G-2 for various reasons. And, of course, some people say that the impact is not so great; it’s too early to talk about G-2, or even talk about substantial varying role that is appropriate to the size of China and actual power of China. So the impact has not been that great.

 

I guess the more fruitful way to explore this issue is to identify a few criteria for us to measure the impact of the rise of China on regional and global order. The first criteria we may use is the nature of order. When we talk about international order, we must mean one aspect of it, the nature of international order. We are talking about stability, prosperity, progressiveness and justice. There are the things associated with the nature of international order. If we want to evaluate the impact of the rise of China on international order or regional order, these are the themes that we should look at how the rise of China affected the nature of the order. Second criteria we may use to measure the impact is the mechanism of decision-making. Let me put it this way. The way decisions are made, here we can talk about the level of participation, other decisions made by one country in a dictatorial way or in a consulted way, or in a democratic way. This might be the part of the international order we need to look at. The third aspect of the criteria is the type of cooperation, whether it is bilateral, or mainly bilateral or multilateral or mainly multilateral. I think this is another aspect of international order we need to look at. The fourth aspect is the depth of cooperation. Here we are talking about the degree of institutionalization. Do we have a secretariat for these multilateral efforts? Do we have a constitution, other decisions binding? These are things we may need to look at. The fifth aspect we may look at when we talk about international order is leadership. Who is taking the leadership, or the quality of the leadership? The sixth aspect is the direction of development, whether it’s moving in a positive direction or a negative direction. And, of course, probably another aspect to it is the variation between regional and global level, impact at different levels, how that may be different.

 

With these criteria, if we use these criteria, we can find probably the following. I don’t know if it requires further exploration. First, the rise of China has not caused significant damage to regional stability, prosperity, progressiveness, and justice. On the contrary, it has enhanced some of these virtues. For example, China’s handling of its border problems over the past decades. China concluded quite a number of border treaties, agreements with its neighbors. Of course we have border disputes, but most of China’s land border problems, and even some of the naval border problems are being addressed. China used to have border problems with most of the countries along its borders.

 

Now it doesn’t have many. So by signing treaties and agreements, China has demonstrated that it does not want territorially expansionist power. China’s policy in the six-party talks has, in a way, demonstrated China’s preference for stability in the region. China’s ASEAN FTA is a way China finds to promote economic prosperity. And China’s economic relationships with most of its partners, major states, have been very fruitful. China seems, of course, we have trade disputes, RNB issue, but most of China’s trading partners do not have significant problems with trade or economic relations themselves, they just want to improve it. And also China is increasing efforts to deal with such problems as environmental pollution, climate change, transmitted diseases, transnational crimes, and more recently, increasing protection of labor rights. So all these things have shown that China has made efforts to enhance regional cooperation, regional stability, and regional prosperity over the years. Even China’s position on the Cheonan incident, you know, South Korea and the world probably look at China for taking a position because somehow, they believe that China’s decision in this may be useful. So on the first criteria, China made some contributions.

 

And also, in the second place, when it comes to international decision-making, the rise of China has led to greater consultation and consensus building in regional affairs. One of the things that China has been arguing repeatedly, and probably to the frustration of some people who want to get this done, is let’s talk, have dialogues, negotiate, six-party talks, China has been more patient than some of the great powers, maybe to their frustration to some extent. And China’s participation in ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum), you know, China’s support of ASEAN’s way to deal with regional matters in favor of consensus building, and also China, Japan, South Korea summit, again is more like a place where you get to know each other and then to establish trust and understanding rather than to address sudden specific problems right away. China believes in dialogues, confidence building, ultimately to get things done on the basis of that. So China favors greater consultation and consensus as a mechanism for decision making...(Continued)

 

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Speaker

Mely Caballero-Anthony

Chaesung Chun

Qingguo Jia

 

Prepared by the Asia Security Initiative Research Center at the East Asia Institute. The East Asia institute, an Asia Security Initiative core institution, acknowledges the MacArthur Foundation for its generous grant and continued support. The East Asia Institute takes no institutional position on policy issues and has no affiliation with the Korean government.