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Western governments have failed to understand how fundamentally China's growing power will reshape global politics, leading American foreign affairs analyst Parag Khanna told the Fabian 'Change the World' conference.
Saturday, 19th January
'The implication is that we China can be pulled into our world and 'integrated'. This is not how global geopolitics works – the whole global order will have to be reshaped", warned Khanna, Fellow of the New America Foundation and a foreign policy advisor to the Barack Obama presidential campaign.
Panellists debating 'Power shift: what does the rise of Asia mean for us?' warned against thinking about Asia's rise as a unified phenomenon, stressing the competition and rivalry between China and India, including in their relations with the west.
'China and India are in competition within Asia. Overall there is huge suspicion; whatever one does with one country, the other will try to counterbalance that. So we've got a long way to go before 'Asia' can play a global role", said Neena Gill MEP.
"Within Asia, there is the rise of a coherent trading zone. But you cannot say that China and India together are reshaping the world order – or together doing anything; the hard facts are that China's role in the world is far stronger than India. In Asia, there is China, and then there's everyone else", said Khanna.
"What is remarkable is the way that the US financial system is being rescued is by incoming investment from China and the Far East", said debate chair, Roger Liddle. Will Hutton said that the lesson of this investment was that trade openness was vastly beneficial for the EU and US. Gill said the challenge was to create new partnerships with Asia: 'many partners are coming and investing in Europe and the UK; we need to look at how we restructure our economy in response'.
But Will Hutton of The Observer wanted to see a greater British emphasis on the relationship with democratic India, and questioned the sustainability of Chinese growth over the next twenty years, describing the 'huge claims that Gordon Brown has been making' as 'vastly overstated'.
Hutton perceived signs of "a stuttering, but discernible Asian Enlightenment taking place". There is pressure, he argued, not just towards democracy, but also towards "an independent judiciary and accountancy, statistics you can trust, vibrancy of public debate, free trade unions – it's the whole panoply of things that constitute a viable democracy."
According to Hutton, "British foreign policy in Asia should be reclaiming this agenda from US foreign policy and the disastrous consequences of intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. It means that we should be much closer to India, and much more cautious in our approach to China', said Hutton, criticising the downplaying of political reform in the Prime Minister's trip: "It would have been a good thing if Gordon Brown could have said even the weasel words that Nicholas Sarkozy managed to say", said Hutton.
Other panel members also wanted to see British and EU policy place a greater emphasis on democratisation and governance.Neena Gill warned that the EU needed to make greater efforts to speak with one voice, so that efforts by one country would not be immediately undermined by others.
Mary Kaldor of the LSE said that recognising that democracy can not be imposed from above would give liberals a chance to distinguish themselves from neoconservatives. "Experience shows that the actual process of democratisation is a very dangerous moment: it can go towards democracy, or it can degenerate into new wars", she warned.
Kaldor said that some saw the debate about India and China as simply re-running the earlier debate about American decline and the rise of Japan missed the fact that 'we now live in a fundamentally transformed world, in which military capacity has become much less dominant' and where non-state actors are much more important: "As Iraq shows, what military power can do is create chaos, be incredibly destructive, but what it cannot do is create order", she said.
On climate change, Gill argued that "Europe has to take the lead, and start setting the example. But it is not good enough for India and China to wait for Europe to take the lead on climate change; it is Bangladesh that will be wiped out as a result of climate change". For Hutton, the key was persuading the Chinese Communist party of the need to take action to control carbon emissions, in its own interests as well as those of the global environment.
Neena Gill also stressed that the West has to carry on putting welfare and development issues on the agenda. "Many donors now question whether we should be giving aid to China and India, the people who suffer are those in rural areas who have no basic shelter, no health facilities and no resources in schools", she said.
But Gill also saw China's influence in Africa as a barrier to the European approach of seeking to promote governance and multilateral values: "The only real tool we had was giving economic aid, but now states are saying we don't need you, because we can go to China – and the trouble here is that China is less interested in issues of democracy and civil rights."
Speaking from the floor, Paul Hilder of Avaaz remarked that "it's easy to find oneself thrown on the defensive when you see the words, 'Asia rising', but we have an imperative to act, because two-thirds of the world's population lives in these states, and they are very poor, and very unfree".
The panel debate 'Power shift: What does Asia rising mean for us?' took place at Change the World, the Fabian new year conference 2008, with Will Hutton (The Observer and The Work Foundation); Mary Kaldor (LSE); Parag Khanna (New America Foundation); Neena Gill MEP (President, European Parliament Delegation for Relations with India), and chaired by Roger Liddle (Policy Network).
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