China’s Passive-Aggressive Diplomacy
Beijing’s hectoring of Seoul sends a ‘with-us-or-against-us’ message to smaller countries
North Korea tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile last week. Photo: Reuters
By Andrew Browne
Aug. 30, 2016 3:42 a.m. ET
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SHANGHAI—Could South Korea have a more compelling reason to build a missile shield?
It lives in trepidation of nuclear attack. A hostile and erratic North Korea has threatened several times to consume Seoul in a “sea of fire.” Just this month, Pyongyang successfully launched a missile from a submarine, having conducted five nuclear tests to improve its warheads.
Yet Beijing has castigated South Korea’s decision to deploy what’s called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, a U.S. antiballistic-missile system, viewing it as part of a wider American plot to encircle China. Rolling it out on China’s doorstep, says the Chinese ambassador to Seoul, could destroy bilateral relations “in an instant.” Thus the South Korean government is apparently faced with an unpalatable choice: It can either take steps to protect its own people from nuclear Armageddon, or preserve cordial relations with its giant neighbor and largest trading partner, but not both.
It’s a black and white, with-us-or-against-us approach, an example of what one of the region’s top diplomats, Singapore’s ambassador-at-large Bilahari Kausikan, calls China’s passive-aggressive diplomacy in East Asia.
As Mr. Kausikan described it in a public lecture earlier this year, China’s strategy involves setting up false dilemmas for countries in the region.
The message to smaller countries is plain. If they stand up for themselves—especially when they do so in cooperation with America—they place at risk the benefits of Chinese trade, investment and aid. This is how China seeks to convince its neighbors that they have no option but to defer to its wishes. Ultimately, what China wants is regional pre-eminence.
The subtle pressure isn’t anything like Russian President Vladimir Putin’s crude belligerence in Europe, even though China has rapidly built up one of the world’s most powerful militaries. This is more about mind games than war games, inducing a way of thinking in which regional politicians accept the inevitability of a Chinese-dominated region—and make their choices accordingly.
Chinese diplomats employ a plaintiff vocabulary that plays on guilt. Uncooperative governments often stand accused of “hurting the feelings” of more than 1.3 billion Chinese people.
Said Mr. Kausikan, in his speech: “This aims to simultaneously make you feel bad—you must be a truly obnoxious human being to hurt the feelings of so many people—and is a not-so-subtle warning about getting on the wrong side of a big country.”
Singapore is a particular target of this kind of emotional blackmail; with an ethnic Chinese majority population, Beijing expects that the city-state will naturally fall into line behind China. It doesn’t.
Others in Southeast Asia have been intimidated into silence. The Philippines, which just won a landmark legal challenge to China’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea at an international tribunal in The Hague, now seems ready to set aside that verdict and do a deal with Beijing in return for investments.
One country that agonizes long and hard over the regional dichotomy—the quest for security on the one hand and, on the other, the desire for commercial advantage that flows from China—is Australia, which is highly dependent on exports to China of iron ore. Canberra stresses the U.S. alliance; influential mining magnates and prominent academics argue for an accommodation with China. Some suggest a grand bargain that will concede swaths of East Asia to Chinese influence.
The regional angst isn’t helped by U.S. domestic politics in an election year; American voters are deeply skeptical about free trade, and their hostility is reflected in the policy platforms of both presidential candidates.
China hasn’t suggested specific retaliation against South Korea if it deploys the missile shield. But the implication of its displeasure unsettles South Korean authorities. China uses trade as a diplomatic weapon. During a standoff with Japan in 2010, when a Chinese fishing boat collided with a Japanese coast guard vessel, China choked off exports of rare earth vital to Japanese high-tech manufacturers. After Seoul announced plans for the shield, China blocked the visas of young South Korean K-pop stars.
Passive aggressiveness is embedded in the Chinese foreign-policy DNA. Traditionally, China liked to think of itself as a benevolent empire, dispensing riches to its neighbors along with the benefits of its glorious civilization. There was a catch, though: Those neighbors had to first recognize China’s place of superiority in the regional hierarchy.
History has moved on. China is still the regional giant, but it’s just one among sovereign equals. In an interconnected regional economy, it’s absurd to think of trade as a gift from the modern Chinese emperor.
As Mr. Kausikan argues, for China’s neighbors to accept a choice between security and prosperity is to prematurely close off options for a new East Asian balance. China, he adds, “needs the region as much as the region needs China.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-pass ... 1472542960
