Vol. 78/No. 23      June 16, 2014

“China is feeling increasingly comfortable with the idea that it is Asia’s top power,” reported the Wall Street Journal June 1, “or at least should be treated as an equal of the U.S., and it is engaging in displays to show that the U.S. can do little or nothing to stop it despite America’s greater military firepower.”

Over the past couple of decades there’s been an explosive growth in China’s export of manufactured products and of capital invested in factories abroad. According to Thomson Reuters, China’s merchandise trade, which was less than one-third that of the U.S. in 2001, took over the top spot last year. Half of Australia’s trade is with China and more than 25 percent of Vietnam’s imports come from China, which is also New Zealand’s biggest trading partner. In Africa trade with China soared to $200 billion last year, including $44 billion in direct investment. This compares to $85 billion that U.S. companies traded with African countries. Over the past nine years China’s capital investments have soared from Africa to the Middle East to the U.S. to Southeast Asia.

At the same time, the massive, uneven and contradictory character of China’s rapid capitalist development has left it particularly vulnerable to the worldwide slowdown in capitalist production and trade.

China’s economic growth has enabled Beijing to finance a rapid modernization of its military, including the development of stealth warplanes, combat drones, initial steps toward a blue-water naval force and the world’s only ballistic anti-ship missiles, dubbed “carrier killers,” which have effectively begun to push U.S. forces a little further from China’s coastline.

The Barack Obama administration has responded with an “Asia pivot,” aimed at countering China’s growing influence and at maintaining pressure on North Korea. It shifts more U.S. military forces to the Pacific combined with efforts to strengthen trade and military ties with governments in the region. The former has not slowed Beijing’s military assertiveness and the latter has had limited success in driving a wedge between China and other nations whose economic ties with Beijing have grown.

The May 30-June 1 Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore was marked by sharp exchanges between top U.S. and Chinese officials. Defense Secretary Charles Hagel accused China of “intimidation and coercion” over its claims in the South China Sea — where Washington had, but no longer has, free rein — while Chinese Lt. Gen. Wang Guanzhong called Hagel’s speech “a provocative challenge against China.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping in a speech in Shanghai May 19 called for a new regional security alliance that includes China, Russia and Asian countries but not the U.S., according to Xinhua news agency.

President Obama’s late April trip to Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Malaysia failed to achieve its main objective: securing the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a trade pact for 12 nations that comprise 40 percent of the world’s economic output that excludes China.

While in Manila, Obama signed a 10-year military pact giving U.S. warships, planes and troops greater access to bases throughout the Philippines.

Similar pacts are in place with Singapore, from where U.S. military flights have expanded, and with Australia, where U.S. Marines are stationed in the northern part of the country. Pentagon officials are also seeking a “presence” in Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, reported the Financial Times.

Washington is also considering enhancing its anti-ballistic missile system aimed at North Korea by establishing ABM batteries in South Korea.

Vietnam-China dispute

On May 26 a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat about 20 miles from Beijing’s oil rig, reported Vietnam’s television network.

The Vietnamese government responded with anti-Chinese nationalist appeals, promoting rallies of several hundred May 10 in front of China’s embassy in Hanoi and its consulate in Ho Chi Minh City chanting, “Down with China.” Thousands of Vietnamese workers then took to the streets in industrial zones in south and central Vietnam in anti-Chinese riots, vandalizing Chinese and other foreign-owned factories and attacking Chinese people. Four Chinese workers were killed and more than 100 injured.

Alongside the reactionary anti-Chinese riots, workers protested low wages and poor work conditions that have accompanied the foreign capitalist investment. Some 10,000 workers demonstrated at the Taiwanese-owned Chutex Garment Factory north of Ho Chi Minh City May 13, reported the New York Times.

Fearing the action would deter foreign investment and touch off a fight for higher wages and other working-class demands, government officials sought to rein in the outburst. But more than 600 Chinese citizens fled to Cambodia and another 3,000 were evacuated from Vietnam, China’s state media reported May 18.

The people of Vietnam have a long history of struggles that defeated imperialist invasions and occupation: by Tokyo from 1940 until the end of World War II; by Paris, which had colonized Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the mid-1880s, until its defeat at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954; and by Washington in the 1960s and early ’70s.

At its height in 1969 U.S. imperialism had more than half a million troops occupying Vietnam and conducted massive aerial bombardments. The governments of China as well as the Soviet Union provided only token aid to the Vietnamese liberation forces. For the privileged ruling bureaucracies in Moscow and Beijing, the Vietnamese Revolution was no more than a bargaining chip as they sought to advance their own deals with U.S. imperialism.

Washington’s war to roll back the Vietnamese Revolution was defeated in 1975. Four years later Chinese troops invaded Vietnam — shortly after Vietnam’s troops toppled the murderous Beijing-allied Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. Some 10,000 Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed in repelling China’s invasion.

China has also clashed with Vietnam over islands in the South China Sea claimed by both governments. In 1974 China occupied the Paracel Islands, defeating U.S.-backed South Vietnamese forces there. Fourteen years later 64 Vietnamese sailors were killed in fighting over the Spratly Islands. In 2007 Chinese naval vessels fired on a Vietnamese fishing boat, killing one sailor.

Since 2003, Hanoi has established limited military-related ties with its old enemy in Washington as leverage in its more immediate conflicts with Beijing. We “would welcome increased port visits with Vietnam,” Seventh Fleet spokesman Commander William Marks told Reuters May 15.

Meanwhile, Tokyo seeks to strengthen its long-time military alliance with Washington, as it simultaneously takes steps to be more independent and self-reliant in use of its military power. On May 15 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for removing the constitutional ban to use Japan’s military abroad, imposed as a consequence of its defeat in World War II.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home