China’s Limited Influence

By IAN BREMMER

Many people around the world believe that China’s rise to the role of dominant global player is inevitable.
A Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year found that in 23 of 39 countries surveyed, a majority of respondents said China is already, or will soon become, the “world’s leading superpower.”
Even in America, just 47 percent told Pew they believe the United States will remain in that role, and the survey was conducted before Washington’s recent shutdown hardened opinions about America’s political dysfunction.
But although China’s economic influence is growing — it is now the lead trade partner for 124 countries, compared to just 76 for the United States — its power to influence other nations is slight.
It has achieved little of what policymakers call “capture,” a condition in which economic or security dependence of one country on another allows the more powerful to drive the other’s policy making.
Only in countries like North Korea, Cambodia and Laos does China have that kind of heft; in North Korea, for example, China provides 90 percent of the country’s energy and 80 percent of its consumer goods.
But these are not the sorts of allies that help an emerging power extend its influence.
Based on the size of their commercial relationships with China as a share of their overall economies, the governments next closest to “China capture” are Pakistan and Myanmar.
But Beijing’s reluctance to undermine improving relations with India or to become more deeply implicated in Pakistan’s chaotic domestic politics will prevent a closer embrace.
Myanmar is moving away from China on its own.
Its recent political and economic opening signals an effort to better diversify its international partners to avoid too deep a dependence on Beijing.
There are other countries where China wields extraordinary economic influence (Sudan, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo) or political clout (Iran, Syria and Venezuela).
The former are too corrupt for many Western governments to do business with, and lousy relations with the United States force the latter to look for powerful friends.
Russia needs a deep-pocketed customer for its oil and gas, but commercial and political competition with China in the former Soviet states that lie between them, and traditional Russian paranoia over Chinese emigration into sparsely populated Siberia, will prevent a full embrace.
In fact, the economic vulnerability and political brittleness in these countries might one day compound weaknesses inside China.
As party officials undertake the reforms needed to create a dynamic economy driven by Chinese consumer purchasing power, reliance on commercial and political ties with basket-case countries can be a dangerous thing.
That’s because such countries pull partners into their crises, where security and economic risks outweigh any possible benefit from the relationship.
China wants a stable Korean peninsula, but Pyongyang’s unpredictable bluster often creates the opposite.
Over time, China’s trade and investment relations with key trading partners that hold strategic value like Germany, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia might allow Beijing greater influence in their policy making decisions.
That kind of clout would lead to direct political and economic benefits: China would win access to commodities, profit-making opportunities for its companies and an increase in its international political leverage vis-à-vis the United States and Europe.
Germany in particular could give China a stable foothold into European markets and a means of better aligning European economic policy with Chinese preferences; countries like Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia provide China with much much-needed commodities.
China is already second only to the United States as Germany’s leading non-European export market.
It replaced the United States as Brazil’s largest trade partner in 2009.
In the Middle East, China is fast becoming the No. 1 source of energy demand for nearly every producer in the region and investing heavily in regional infrastructure to support supply routes.
Yet, all these countries have reasons to limit their dependence on China, the United States or any other single power.
Even in China’s backyard, emerging powers like Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam will continue to forge new economic ties with Beijing, but they still hope an expanded U.S. presence in Asia will help them hedge against too great a reliance on China’s good will.
In today’s media-driven world, soft power is another crucial element of superpower influence.
Yet, beyond the inaccessibility of China’s language for most foreigners and their indifference to its social trends, China’s political and economic systems have little appeal in other countries.
Its state capitalist economic model attracts political leaders looking to build wealth and micromanage markets, but it offers little for ordinary citizens.
War-weary Americans and their distracted political leaders are less interested in responsibilities overseas, creating a vacuum of international leadership.
But for better and for worse, neither China nor anyone else appears ready and able to fill America’s superpower shoes.

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Vietnam’s Confucius Institute Distraction

The controversy in Vietnam over China’s establishment of a Confucius Institute is misplaced, argues one blogger.

By Huynh Thuc Vy

China's propaganda tool and fifth column

When Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, meeting with his Chinese counterpart Li Keqiang, announced the decision to establish the first Confucius Institute, at Hanoi University, Vietnam, the news stirred considerable controversy among Vietnamese intellectuals.
Any move by the Vietnam’s communist government that smacks of dependency on China is likely to prompt protest. 

However, setting up a Confucius Institute, with its overtones of cultural hegemony, may only be distracting the Vietnamese public from more substantial concerns.
Confucius Institutes are educational and cultural institutions run by the Chinese government. They operate with the following objectives: encourage Chinese language learning, popularize Confucianism, and promote cultural exchange between China and other countries.

These three objectives actually serve one larger goal: building China’s “soft power.” 

Despite the controversy, it is not the institutes themselves that are the concern, nor even China’s soft power initiatives in general. 

Rather, the bigger worry is the hard power that China has demonstrated to a passive Vietnamese government in recent decades. 

Soft power should be considered in that context.
Take language learning – in this case, Chinese – for young Vietnamese. In fact, this should be encouraged. 

With tens of thousands of Chinese now living in Vietnam and comprehensive relations between the two communist countries lasting many years, Chinese language skills means jobs for Vietnamese. 

There is a natural incentive to learn the language, with or without a Confucius Institute.
Promoting Confucianism? Vietnam already has it. 

With 2,000 years of Confucianism in Vietnam, there seems little to gain by promoting it. 

Indeed, Vietnam continues to grapple with some of the less positive repercussions of the philosophy, such as an inert mindset. 

What it ought to be doing now is introducing the democratic thinking and creative culture of the West, just as Japan did starting from the late 19th century. 

That aside, there seems little to worry about in two governments trying to pour more Confucian water into a glass that is already full.
As for bilateral cultural exchange, given Vietnam’s political dependence on China, this too has already been taking place for some time, and has been mostly a one-way street for China. 

The concern here is not so much education and culture, but the broader political, economic and social dependence of Vietnam on China. 

The West doesn’t worry about Chinese soft power, because although a behemoth, China is known to have critical issues to deal with at home. 

But Vietnam’s government has left the doors wide open for China to impose whatever it sees fit. 

A Confucius Institute is just one more small brush stroke in a large picture that has been ugly for a long time.
Let’s review some of the practical upshots of Chin’s involvement in Vietnam. 

For instance, China and Hong Kong were given 50-year leases over nearly 200,000 hectares of upstream forests belonging to ten border provinces. 

More than 90% of projects involving electricity, mining, oil, metals or chemicals in Vietnam are run by China through the engineering, procurement and construction contracts. 

Tens of thousands of Chinese manual laborers have entered Vietnam, displacing local workers.
Vietnam has also become an importer of outdated technologies, low-quality products and poisonous chemicals from China. 

The Paracel and Spratly islands are in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone but are now under Chinese control. 

Chinese magazines, movies, cultural and political documents flood the Vietnam market.
In the presence of all this, what is one Confucius Institute? 

And a Vietnamese government already so dependent on its comrades in China on the ideology-based comrades from PRC to the extent it can offer only a feeble protest when its own fishermen are shot at by Chinese would hardly complain about a Confucius Institute anyway.
No, the controversy surrounding the establishment of a the Confucius Institute really only serves to distract public opinion from scandals, such as newborn babies dying after being injected with low quality vaccines, the eviction of farmers to free land for developers, and the continued abuses of human rights by security forces.
The Vietnamese government has been adapt at distracting the public for its advantage. 

The establishment of Confucius Institute is very likely another example.

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China’s paltry response to Typhoon Haiyan illustrates the limits of its soft power

By Heather Timmons

The giant head of Xi Jinping looms over protestors in Geneva.

The world’s rich and poor nations alike have pledged millions of dollars in aid to the storm ravaged Philippines—but China so far has offered a paltry $100,000.
The amount would be low even if China were a much smaller or poorer nation: Malaysia, population 29 million, has pledged $1 million in cash, as well as food aid; New Zealand, population 4.4 million, has pledged another $1 million. 

But when the $100,000 is coming from the second-largest, fastest-growing economy in the world, it’s so jarring that even a Chinese state-owned newspaper editorial made the case this week for “humanitarian aid”:
"China, as a responsible power, should participate in relief operations to assist a disaster-stricken neighboring country, no matter whether it’s friendly or not. China’s international image is of vital importance to its interests. If it snubs Manila this time, China will suffer great losses."
China’s Communist Party has often pledged to grow the country’s “soft power,” the ability to sway other nations based on an appealing image rather than economics or force.
It’s a push that spawned President Xi Jinping’s recent “mild posture and language” tour of Southeast Asia and premier Li Keqiang’s light banter with the prime minister of Thailand. 

China’s state-run media are now running English-language Twitter accounts (never mind that Twitter is blocked in China) and have loosened up their programming to include Western foreigner-bait like interviews with The Killers. 

This summer, China introduced the mother of all panda-cam aggregation sites and a new panda cub photo-op record with 14 cubs.
But the tight-fisted gift to the Philippines, as islands lie in ruin and bodies rot on the streets, is a reminder of China’s less-than-gracious treatment of its neighbors: China issues passports with maps that assert its claims to the Spratly islands in the South China Sea, forcing other Southeast Asian countries to tacitly acknowledge the claim when they allow Chinese citizens to visit. 

In August, China rejected any multilateral approach to resolving territorial claims like the islands.
Harvard professor Joseph Nye, the man who coined the phrase “soft power” 30 years ago, wrote last year that Bejing’s soft power push was failing. 

Despite an Olympics that broadcast China’s talented population, fast-growing economy and mind-boggling infrastructure and organization, the country’s brutal treatment of human-rights activists and dissidents had spoiled the picture, he said.
Since then, China has embarked on a crackdown on internet communication, threatening to jail or fine anyone who spread untrue information on the internet. 

In one instance, a teenage boy was detained after asking a question about a police investigation. 

The country has detained dozens of activists, critics, and social media voices in “a repressive drive” that “attacks the very freedoms that Human Rights Council members are supposed to protect,” Human Rights Watch said in August.
According to a Pew survey released in July, the majority of respondents in 26 out of 38 countries polled said they believed China acts unilaterally in global affairs and either considers others interests marginally or not at all. 

China’s paltry aid to the Philippines is likely to reinforce that image.

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This Video Of Chinese Street Food Made From 'Gutter Oil' Is The Most Disgusting Thing You Will See All Day

By Mamta Badkar

The next time you consider eating Chinese street food you might think twice.
The use of gutter oil it turns out is pretty common. 

This refers to a process of pulling waste oil from sewers, grease traps, waste from slaughterhouses, reprocessing it and then selling it as cooking oil.
These screenshots from a Radio Free Asia (RFA) video via Max Fisher at The Washington Post show a woman in Shenzhen pulling slop from a gutter.

The slop then ends up in "processing" plants where it is processed with other animal fat through filtration or boiling.

The oil eventually make its way to "street vendors and hole-in-the-wall restaurants" that use it as "recycled cooking oil." 

Watch the entire video below:

Gutter oil is reported to account for one-tenth of cooking oil in China, according to experts cited by RFA. Besides being downright disgusting, the oil is also said to contain carcinogens and other toxins.
China has long battled food safety concerns. 

But in a country where cooking oil is at a premium, it will likely be a while before officials can effectively crack down on the practice.

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Cockroaches: the new miracle cure for China's ailments

Cockroach farming is booming in China as the country looks for new, cheaper medicines for its rapidly ageing population
By Malcolm Moore, Qufu

The correct way to eat a cockroach, at least in this corner of northern China, is to fry it not once but twice in a wok of smoking hot oil.
"The second time makes the shell crispy and the inside succulent," said 43-year-old Wang Fuming, as he tipped a bowl of freshly harvested bugs, one or two of their legs still twitching, into the sizzling pan.

Mr Wang is the leading cockroach farmer in Shandong province, with more than 22 million of the insects living in a series of nondescript, concrete bunkers in the suburbs of Jinan.
After cooking, Mr Wang gently ladled them onto a plate, their bodies plumped with the oil and their wings slightly spread, before sprinkling a packet of instant noodle powder – pickled cabbage flavour – over the dish.
"It would be better if we had some chilli," he apologised.
The cockroach, whose innards resemble cottage cheese, has an earthy taste, with a slight twinge of ammonia. 

But they have become popular in China not for their taste, but for their medicinal benefits.
"They really are a miracle drug," said Liu Yusheng, a professor at the Shandong Agricultural University and the head of Shandong province's Insect Association. 

"They can cure a number of ailments and they work much faster than other medicine."

Sacks of dead cockroachs waiting to be shipped
Prof Liu said a cream made from powdered cockroaches is in use in some Chinese hospitals as a treatment for burns and in Korea for cosmetic facial masks.
Meanwhile, a syrup invented by a pharmaceutical company in Sichuan promises to cure gastroenteritis, duodenal ulcers and pulmonary tuberculosis.
"China has the problem of an ageing population," explained Prof Liu. 

"So we are trying to find new medicines for older people, and these are generally cheaper than Western medicine. Also we have a tradition of eating bugs here in Shandong."
For a decade, Mr Wang farmed another type of insect, Eupolyphaga Sinensis, which is also used in "Traditional" Chinese Medicine.
But in the past two years, the demand for cockroaches has soared, and Mr Wang has switched his entire production to Periplaneta americana, or the American cockroach, a copper-coloured insect that grows to just over an inch and a half.
"These are not the same ones you see in your home, those are German cockroaches," he said. 

"There are hundreds of species of cockroaches, but only this one has any medicinal value. It is native to Guangdong province."

Intrepid Telegraph reporter Malcolm Moore samples a fried cockroach

Inside his bunkers are hundreds of nests, bolted together from concrete roof tiles, that line the shelves of dark corridors.
The doorways are lined with mesh, but some cockroaches have clustered on the low ceilings overhead and the air is heavy with a fetid stink. 

"That is just how they smell," Mr Wang shrugged.
Last month was harvest time across Shandong. 

As farmers elsewhere in the province picked apples and cut corn, Mr Wang reaped huge sackfuls of roaches.
"We kill them before they reach four months old, because then their wings are fully grown and they can fly," he said. 

"They are very easy to kill, we take large vats of boiling water into the corridors and dunk the nests into them."
His entire output is sold to pharmaceutical companies, he said, and the price has risen strongly. 

Since 2011, he has quintupled production, to more than 100 tons a year, and he has eight workers.
Outside his farm, another man is waiting to be shown around. 

Since this spring, Mr Wang has had 100 enquiries from would-be cockroach farmers and has helped to build 30 other farms.
"Oh, the money is good," said Xiao Zhongwu, a wiry 49-year-old who has a smaller set of farms in the countryside near Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius. 

"I have a trucking business too, transporting marble, paper and farm products for local companies. But that brings in pocket money: it is cockroaches that bring in the big money."

Mr Xiao said he had invested £160,000 in building a series of small farms, their windows taped over with plastic sheeting to stop the cockroaches from escaping.
But, he said, he earns at least £30,000 a year from the insects, and up to £90,000 in a good year. 

"The pharmaceutical companies set the price, but I stockpile my cockroaches when the supply is plentiful to wait for when the demand picks up."
Mr Xiao feeds his cockroaches a "special formula" of mashed up vegetables and waste to produce the high levels of amino acids that his buyers demand.
But, he said, farming the bugs is very simple. 

"Just keep them warm and they are happy."
Until now, the industry, while booming, has remained mostly under the radar. 

But in August, a million cockroaches escaped from a farm in Jiangsu province, making headlines in the Chinese media.
Wang Pengsheng, a 38-year-old former engineer, said he had bought the plot of land to raise the insects after six months of research into the industry. 

He bought more than 80kg of eggs for £10,000 and set up his farm.
But while he was out inspecting the goats and pigs he was raising elsewhere, the local government deemed his building illegal and knocked it down.
"When I came back in the evening, everything was gone, reduced to rubble," he said. 

"Afterwards, a team of exterminators came around to try to kill all the escaped cockroaches."
Mr Wang said he was determined to start again. 

"The problem is that the government has been under pressure from people saying the cockroaches are pests and they should not let me rebuild."
In Jinan, the other Mr Wang said he had heard of the misfortune suffered by his namesake. 

But, he added, he has not had any recent break outs from his farm. 

"In the beginning a few got away. But since we covered all the windows and doors with mesh, they have been well trapped," he said.

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