Hawks versus doves

“Kishore—who?” That’s what many irritably snap when gently pressed to pay equal attention to other significant issues than the impeach President Aquino brawl.

Kishore Mabubani is dean the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He was Singapore’s former ambassador to the United Nations for Singapore.  And what he has to say about China’s doves versus hawks will affect our grandchildren. Excerpts:

“China is on the verge of destroying a geopolitical miracle,” Mabubhani writes.  In just three decades, China rose to become No. 2 world economic power. It did so, without disrupting the world order.

Suddenly, three decades of careful management of its external challenges have been upset by three years of assertive and occasionally reckless actions—threatening all.

Meet the hawks versus doves conflict within China.

The hawks are mostly young officers of the People’s Liberation Army. They argue that China should confront those question its claim’s to most of the China Sea.

“The young officers are taking control of strategy, and it is like young officers in Japan in the 1930s,”  recalls  Prof. Huang Jing at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy  “They are thinking what they can do, not what they should do. This is very dangerous.”

This new posture partly explains an emerging Western media consensus that China has become an expansionist military power, threatening its neighbors and the world.

“Before this consensus is set in stone, we should remind ourselves what a large, complex society China is: Neither the country nor its government is monolithic.

“Given this internal debate, it would be unwise to rush to judgment,” Mabubhani cautions. China will not necessarily become more hostile. Western prophecies of a dangerous China could even prove self-fulfilling if they provoke a nationalist backlash.

Chinese are still haunted by humiliations endured in the two 19th-century Opium Wars. The surge of anti-China opinion journalism feeds the hawks’ assertion there is a “containment conspiracy” by the West.

When Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping ruled China, they paid scant attention to public opinion. Both made territorial concessions when they settled China’s border disputes with Russia and Vietnam.

“Today, no Chinese leader, not even President Xi Jinping, can make unilateral concessions of that kind.”

The “doves”, in contrast, use the current wave of criticism. They heft a  Pew Research Center survey that shows rising anxieties of Asian neighbors. Remember Deng’s advice that China adopt a low profile as it emerges as a world power.

China’s 2012 decision to block a joint statement on the South China Sea alienated the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Asean represents 600 million people and is now wary.  "China behavior unleashed a “tiger” of anti-China sentiment. That will be difficult to cage again."

It is unwise for China to defend the “nine-dash line” map of territorial claims. As the world’s largest trading power, China has far larger interests in maintaining open seas globally.  China can afford to be patient as its power grows. 

Its    leaders spend perhaps 90 percent of their time focused on internal issues.  President Xi and Prime Minister Li begun a campaign against corruption.   Obstacles stem from factional struggles within the Communist Party. Senior army figures, been “may be stoking external tensions to save themselves from internal investigations" Corruption is the one force that could ruin legitimacy of the Party. Success is far from guaranteed.

The need to shrink state-owned enterprises is a major challenge. Chinese university graduates yearly crest at seven million yearly. Many cannot find work. “This is a bigger issue than sovereignty over barren rocks in nearby seas.”

Chinese leaders wants to focus on domestic problems, “The world should let it”. The international community has a clear interest in the doves winning out over the hawks: What can we do to help the doves?