19/04/2020
- Faced with a backlash from the West over its handling of the early stages of the pandemic, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia
- Teams of experts and donations of medical supplies have been largely welcomed by China’s neighbours
Despite facing some criticism from the West, China’s Asian neighbours have welcomed its medical expertise and vital supplies. Photo: Xinhua
While China’s campaign to mend its international image in the wake of its handling of the
coronavirus health crisis has been met with scepticism and even a backlash from the US and its Western allies, Beijing has been quietly gaining ground in Asia.
Teams of experts have been sent to Cambodia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Pakistan and soon to Malaysia, to share their knowledge from the pandemic’s ground zero in central China.
Beijing has also donated or facilitated shipments of medical masks and ventilators to countries in need. And despite some of the equipment failing to meet Western quality standards, or being downright defective, the supplies have been largely welcomed in Asian countries.
China has also held a series of online “special meetings” with its Asian neighbours, most recently on Tuesday when Premier Li Keqiang discussed his country’s experiences in combating the disease and rebooting a stalled economy with the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Japan and South Korea.
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang speaks to Asean Plus Three leaders during a virtual summit on Tuesday. Photo: AP
Many Western politicians have publicly questioned Beijing’s role and its subsequent handling of the crisis but Asian leaders – including Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe – have been reluctant to blame the Chinese government, while also facing criticism at home for not closing their borders with China soon enough to prevent the spread of the virus.
An official from one Asian country said attention had shifted from the early stages of the outbreak – when disgruntled voices among the public were at their loudest – as people watched the virus continue its deadly spread through their homes and across the world.
“Now everybody just wants to get past the quarantine,” he said. “China has been very helpful to us. It’s also closer to us so it’s easier to get shipments from them. The [medical] supplies keep coming, which is what we need right now.”
The official said also that while the teams of experts sent by Beijing were mainly there to observe and offer advice, the gesture was still appreciated.
Another Asian official said the tardy response by Western governments in handling the outbreak had given China an advantage, despite its initial lack of transparency over the outbreak.
“The West is not doing a better job on this,” he said, adding that his government had taken cues from Beijing on the use of propaganda in shaping public opinion and boosting patriotic sentiment in a time of crisis.
“Because it happened in China first, it has given us time to observe what works in China and adopt [these measures] for our country,” the official said.
Experts in the region said that Beijing’s intensifying campaign of “mask diplomacy” to reverse the damage to its reputation had met with less resistance in Asia.
Why China’s ‘mask diplomacy’ is raising concern in the West
“Over the past two months or so, China, after getting the Covid-19 outbreak under control, has been using a very concerted effort to reshape the narrative, to pre-empt the narrative that China is liable for this global pandemic, that China has to compensate other countries,” said Richard Heydarian, a Manila-based academic and former policy adviser to the Philippine government.
“It doesn’t help that the US is in lockdown with its domestic crisis and that we have someone like President Trump who is more interested in playing the blame game rather than acting like a global leader,” he said.
Shahriman Lockman, a senior analyst with the foreign policy and security studies programme at Malaysia’s Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said that as the US had withdrawn into its own affairs as it struggled to contain the pandemic, China had found Southeast Asia a fertile ground for cultivating an image of itself as a provider.
China’s first-quarter GDP shrinks for the first time since 1976 as coronavirus cripples economy
Beijing’s highly publicised delegations tasking medical equipment and supplies had burnished that reputation, he said, adding that the Chinese government had also “quite successfully shaped general Southeast Asian perceptions of its handling of the pandemic, despite growing evidence that it could have acted more swiftly at the early stages of the outbreak in Wuhan”.
“Its capacity and will to build hospitals from scratch and put hundreds of millions of people on lockdown are being compared to the more indecisive and chaotic responses seen in the West, especially in Britain and the United States,” he said.
Coronavirus droplets may travel further than personal distancing guidelines
Lockman said Southeast Asian countries had also been careful to avoid getting caught in the middle of the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Washington as the two powers pointed fingers at each other over the origins of the new coronavirus.
“The squabble between China and the United States about the pandemic is precisely what Asean governments would go to great lengths to avoid because it is seen as an expression of Sino-US rivalry,” he said.
“Furthermore, the immense Chinese market is seen as providing an irreplaceable route towards Southeast Asia’s post-pandemic economic recovery.”
Aaron Connelly, a research fellow in Southeast Asian political change and foreign policy with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said Asian countries’ dependence on China had made them slow to blame China for the pandemic.
“Anecdotally, it seems to me that most Southeast Asian political and business elites have given Beijing a pass on the initial cover-up of Covid-19, and high marks for the domestic lockdown that followed,” he said.
“This may be motivated reasoning, because these elites are so dependent on Chinese trade and investment, and see little benefit in criticising China.”
China and Vietnam ‘likely to clash again’ as they build maritime militias
The cooperation with its neighbours as they grapple with the coronavirus had not slowed China’s military and research activities in the disputed areas of the
South China Sea – a point of contention that would continue to cloud relations in the region, experts said.
Earlier this month an encounter in the South China Sea with a Chinese coastguard vessel led to the sinking of a fishing boat from Vietnam, which this year assumed chairmanship of Asean.
And in a move that could spark fresh regional concerns, shipping data on Thursday showed a controversial Chinese government survey ship, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, had moved closer to Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone.
The survey ship was embroiled in a months-long stand-off last year with Vietnamese vessels within Hanoi’s exclusive economic zone and was spotted again on Tuesday 158km (98 miles) off the Vietnamese coast.
Source: SCMP
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08/04/2019
AMMAN, April 7 (Xinhua) — Li Chengwen, ambassador for China-Arab States Cooperation Forum Affairs of China’s Foreign Ministry, refuted on Sunday the criticism that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will create so-called “debt trap” for some participating countries.
“China is trying to find mechanisms to avoid the ‘debt trap,'” Li said during a session on the second day of the World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa 2019 held in the Dead Sea area of Jordan.
The Chinese envoy was responding to the criticism directed at the BRI by some people in the United States and Europe ahead of the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, due to be hosted by China later this month in Beijing.
The initiative, proposed by China in 2013, aims at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of the Silk Road to seek common development and prosperity.
As of July 2018, more than 100 countries and international organizations had signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with China, extending the initiative’s scope from the Eurasian continent to Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the South Pacific region.
Li pointed out that no participating country has complained of falling into the so-called “trap” of Chinese loans.
“The Belt and Road Initiative aims to increase the economic prosperity of a country. It does not aim at expanding the political and geographical authority of China in the world,” he said.
Many participants at the forum in Jordan agreed with Li’s comments.
“If you keep your interest first, you will not find China an unfair partner,” said Shandana Gulzar Khan, Pakistan’s parliamentary secretary for commerce. “But it depends on how well you do your homework.”
In Pakistan, a major BRI participating country, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor has created tens of thousands of jobs and revived the economy of an entire region, Khan noted.
Speaking at the session, He Wenping, a research fellow of the Institute of West-Asian and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, echoed Li’s remarks.
“The biggest worry on the ‘debt-trap diplomacy’ should come from China’s side, not from outside. It is tax payers’ money,” the Chinese professor said.
“China is not waving the ‘China First’ flag,” she said.
The upcoming Belt and Road forum to be held in Beijing later this month could be an opportunity to kickstart a “second phase” of the initiative, she added.
Source: Xinhua
Posted in Beijing, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China alert, China-Arab States Cooperation Forum Affairs of China's Foreign Ministry, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Chinese ambassador, Dead Sea, Europe, He Wenping, Institute of West-Asian and African Studies, Jordan, Li Chengwen, Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan, Pakistan's parliamentary secretary for commerce, research fellow, Shandana Gulzar Khan, Silk Road, Uncategorized, United States, World Economic Forum |
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06/03/2019
BEIJING, March 5 (Xinhua) — China will lower its defense budget growth rate to 7.5 percent in 2019, from last year’s 8.1 percent, according to a draft budget report submitted to the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) Tuesday.
The 2019 defense budget will be 1.19 trillion yuan (about 177.61 billion U.S. dollars), figures from the report show.
The rate marks the fourth straight year for the budgeted growth rate remaining single digit, following five consecutive years of double-digit increases.
China’s budgeted defense spending growth rate stood at 8.1 percent in 2018, 7 percent in 2017, and 7.6 percent in 2016.
“The Chinese government has always paid attention to controlling the scale of defense expenditure,” said He Lei, former deputy head of the Academy of Military Sciences.
Describing China’s defense budget increase as reasonable and appropriate, Zhang Yesui, spokesperson for the legislative session, said the rise aimed to “meet the country’s demand in safeguarding national security and military reform with Chinese characteristics.”
“China’s limited defense spending, which is for safeguarding its national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity, poses no threat to any other country,” Zhang said at a press conference Monday.
The expenditure has been mainly used for advancing defense and military reforms, supporting military training and diverse tasks, modernizing weapons and equipment, and improving welfare of service personnel, according to He, who is also a deputy to the NPC.
“The defense budget increase is appropriate against the backdrop of profound changes in the country’s overall strength, its security environment, and the global strategic situation,” He said.
China’s defense budget takes up a fairly small share of its GDP and national fiscal expenditure compared with other major countries, said He, noting that its military spending per capita and per soldier was also very low.
While the national defense spending in a number of major developed countries accounts for more than 2 percent of their GDP, the ratio was only about 1.3 percent for China in 2018.
The United States has increased its national defense expenditure for the fiscal year 2019 to 716 billion dollars, about four times the budget of China, the world’s second largest economy.
China’s military spending per capita is only about one-nineteenth of that of the United States.
“When it comes to whether a country poses a threat to other countries, the key is not that country’s national strength and armed forces, but the policies it adopts,” said Chen Zhou, research fellow with the Academy of Military Sciences.
“China has always been following the path of peaceful development and firmly adheres to a defense policy that is defensive in nature,” Chen said, noting that China’s development would not pose a threat to any other country.
He Lei highlighted China’s role in providing public security goods for the international community, saying the Chinese military had actively participated in UN peacekeeping missions, maintained security of marine passages, and engaged in international rescue and security cooperation.
“The growth in China’s defense spending is the growth of forces for world peace,” he noted.
Source: Xinhua
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