China may long regret miserly typhoon aid offer

If I were Aquino, I’d tell China to keep its money; maybe Xi could use it to hire a public-relations firm. 

By William Pesek

US soft power in action

As hundreds of thousands of Filipinos struggled to find food, water, shelter and the bodies of loved ones in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, China quickly dipped into its world-leading $3.7 trillion of currency reserves and came up with … all of $100,000.
That was Beijing’s first miserly offer of aid to the storm-tossed Philippines. 

By Thursday, an international outcry over China’s stinginess shamed it into upping its pledge to a modest $1.6 million worth of relief materials such as tents and blankets. 

But the damage was already done.
“It’s very hard to call for de-Americanization and then leave your wallet at home when there’s a human disaster the scale of the typhoon in the Philippines,” says Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group in New York. 

“Yes, China is a poor country. Yes, they have troubled relations with the Philippines. But this sits badly with anyone thinking about China’s rise in the region.” 

If he were advising President Xi Jinping, Bremmer says, “I’d push for major humanitarian aid to the Philippines.”
Instead the bulk of that aid is coming from elsewhere: more than $28 million from Australia, $20 million from the United States, $17 million from the European Union, $16 million from the United Kingdom, $10 million from Japan, $5 million from South Korea, $4 million from the Vatican, $2 million from Indonesia, and huge amounts from official agencies — the United Nations alone started a $300 million aid appeal.
China was clearly stung by the critical news coverage. 

South Korean figure skater Kim Yu-na herself gave $100,000 — enough to buy nine bottles of a 2006 Romanee-Conti. 

Even the new Chinese offer is rather paltry. 

New Zealand’s $167 billion economy is a rounding error compared with China’s $8.4 trillion one. 

Yet officials in Wellington have coughed up $1.7 million, even more than the People’s Republic.
Why the insultingly small sum for a geopolitically vital nation of 106 million people that by many measures is much poorer than China? 

Manila’s close ties with Washington have always worried China. 

But this is personal. 

Philippine President Benigno Aquino refuses to bow to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, and enraged Beijing by daring to challenge its maritime claims before a U.N.-endorsed tribunal. 

Aquino also demands that China treat the Philippines, one of Asia’s oldest democracies, as an equal, not a subordinate.
Nations hold grudges, of course. 

But China’s actions last week dramatically undercut what had been a very deliberate and strenuous — and supposedly successful — recent charm offensive. 

After U.S. President Barack Obama skipped out on a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders last month, Xi and Premier Li Keqiang gleefully toured Southeast Asian capitals, handing out investment deals to show how generous China could be with its neighbors, how eager it was for friendly relations.
The Philippines crisis offered an opportunity for China to show it had developed into a mature, cooperative nation and to win goodwill across the region. 

As a matter of fact, on Friday, Chinese and U.S. troops will even train together for the first time in Hawaii, as part of a drill in which the two nations cooperate in a humanitarian relief operation in a third country. 

Why not jump in and seek to cooperate in the enormous international rescue effort in the Philippines?
Instead, officials in Beijing find themselves evading awkward questions about their miserliness. 

Perhaps trying to save a smidgen of face, Beijing first upped its offering to $200,000 through the Red Cross. That was still less than half of the $450,000 the Philippines gave China after the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. 

Even now, China’s total offer is far less than the $4.88 million donated to Pakistan after an earthquake there two months ago.
China’s normally quiescent state-run media worried about the fallout. 

“China’s international image is of vital importance to its interests,” the usually gung-ho Global Times said in an editorial Tuesday. 

“If it snubs Manila this time, China will suffer great losses.”
One reason China’s efforts to develop its soft power have failed is the utilitarian way Beijing approaches the rest of the world. 

Instead of using culture, adept diplomacy and trashy movies to seduce other countries, China hands out cold, hard cash. 

All the investment poured into railways in Indonesia, tunnels in Brazil, power grids in Cambodia, hydroelectric projects in Laos, bridges in Vietnam, roads in Zambia, factories in Malaysia, airports in Myanmar, and mining rigs in Uzbekistan comes with a high cost. 

In return, China demands complete docility. 

That’s the message being sent to the Philippines now.
Arvind Subramanian, author of the 2011 book “Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance,” says China is going to be a “peculiar kind of superpower,” one whose attraction is more materialistic than heartfelt.

“It won’t have the soft power the U.S. has — people wanting to come, people wanting to live, people wanting to emulate it,” he told me in Hong Kong last week. 

“That soft power is lacking, but it will not impede China.”
I’m not so sure. 

If I were Aquino, I’d tell China to keep its money; maybe Xi could use it to hire a public-relations firm. 

As badly as the Philippines needs the help, so does China’s image.

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The Pivot Starts Now

In the wake of Typhoon Haiyan, the United States has gained some ground at China's expense.
BY PATRICK M. CRONIN

Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines on Nov. 8, killing thousands, affecting millions, and leaving hundreds of thousands of Filipinos desperate for help. 

A natural disaster of that magnitude requires a massive relief effort, and the United States took the lead: dispatching the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, distributing food and water, and maneuvering rescuers and supplies to remote areas. 

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) pledged more than $22 million in assistance.
U.S. allies soon followed. 

Japan offered $30 million in emergency relief, along with roughly 1,000 soldiers to help deliver the aid, on top of ongoing assistance programs, such as $20 million through the Asian Development Bank. 

Australia pledged $10 million, South Korea $5 million, and when Britain's carrier the HMS Illustrious arrives on Nov. 24, it will begin delivering some $30 million in relief supplies. 

But China, the region's rising power, is noteworthy for its stinginess. 

Beijing originally pledged $100,000, increasing that to a still-paltry $1.6 million on Nov. 14.
Since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the rebalance to Asia in late 2011, many in the region have doubted America's ability to sustain the level of its operations in the Pacific. 

In October, for example, President Barack Obama's absence from two prominent Asian meetings due to the crisis in Washington over the government shutdown allowed Beijing to steal the spotlight. 

But when it comes to global crises, including natural disasters, it is still the United States -- even war wary, reputationally challenged, fiscally indebted, and politically gridlocked -- that takes the leading role. 

The response to Haiyan could be a turning point for the United States in Asia: an opportunity to re-up the pivot, and to pour cold water on the narrative of a dominant China.
That's not to say China isn't trying to play a more assertive role in the region. 

Since taking office in November 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping has focused on maintaining order and economic growth at home while reducing external conflicts that could impede China's rise. 

Xi and his colleagues envision their country eventually supplanting the United States as the world's largest economy and sharing -- at a minimum -- responsibility for the Asia-Pacific region. 

China is emphasizing its periphery, particularly mainland Southeast Asia; in October, Xi announced plans to create and fund an "Asian infrastructure bank."
But China still fails at building soft power in the region. 

In early November, Chinese scholars and even officials emphasized to my colleagues the tiered levels of Chinese friends and partners. 

Countries that support China diplomatically or bring wealth to China, they said, are given preferential treatment -- almost like international relations as one big fundraising tribute. 

Because tensions are high with Japan over disputed islands in the East China Sea, and with the Philippines over disputed territory in the South China Sea, Beijing withholds cooperation and support from those two nations, instead doling out rewards to those countries most willing to work closely with China. 

Although this approach sometimes mutes regional criticism, it tends to fail at persuading neighbors that a more potent China will look after their interests.
And this is where the U.S. rebalancing, or "pivot" to Asia comes in. 

The region has generally viewed the pivot in military terms, as a reassurance of U.S. presence in Asia, and as a counterweight to Chinese pressure and coercion. 

But as the distribution of world power continues to shift from West to East, the United States can also use the pivot to help build an inclusive, rules-based order in Asia. 

An open trading regime must be part of that. 

But to foster China's potential as a force for good, the United States and its allies need to integrate China into this order.
Instituting a common response to humanitarian disasters is a good place for China and the United States to start. 

Holding back assistance to neighbors because they defend their core national interests against a more powerful neighbor who occupies a disputed area -- as China does with the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea -- goes against international norms. 

If the United States can protect universal rights such as freedom of the seas and promote more effective regional security cooperation, it will continue to be a great power that is welcome throughout the region.
China appears eager to cooperate with the United States on disaster relief. 

The two sides have shared detailed lessons learned in responding to domestic disasters, including Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake that killed roughly 87,000 people. 

In June, the two countries cooperated with an Asian-wide humanitarian assistance and military medicine exercise, allowing China to showcase its photogenic military hospital ship, dubbed the "The Peace Ark." 

Unfortunately, that ship remains docked in a Chinese port. 

Adding to the irony, on Nov. 12, Chinese and U.S. troops participated in a joint humanitarian aid and disaster relief exercise in Hawaii, the exact time the Philippines needed urgent support.

China under Xi wants a "new type of great power relationship" with the United States -- an invitation to further push China to cooperate on disaster relief.
This pays dividends for the United States domestically, as well. 

U.S. leadership in helping those in desperate need around the world is a forceful riposte to declinists, who ignore America's enduring and exceptional global role. 

Bipartisan support for U.S. humanitarian efforts is a hopeful instance of policymakers pulling together to achieve greatness.
Obama is seeking more than $4.1 billion for the fiscal year 2014 for humanitarian assistance. 

Humanitarian aid should not be used as a political tool, but that doesn't deny the reputational advantages of doing good and the hits from sitting idle during a crisis. 

It's a lesson China is learning right now.

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China’s Revealing Typhoon Haiyan Response

By Daniel Baltrusaitis

In response to the tragedy that has unfolded over the past days in the Philippines, a number of countries have rushed to contribute to the recovery efforts. 

Altruism is its own reward, of course, but the aid ultimately gives these countries influence with the Philippine people and government. 

The recovery efforts have been rapid, albeit not rapid enough for those devastated by the disaster. 

One nation, however, has been notably absent: China.
China's foreign ministry announced that the country would provide $100,000 in cash and “humanitarian emergency relief assistance” to the Philippines, an absurdly paltry amount in comparison to the aid provided by other nations. 

For instance, the United Arab Emirates, home to approximately 700,000 Philippine nationals, has pledged $10 million, while regional powers Australia and the Republic of Korea have pledged $10 million and $5 million respectively. 

The United States has deployed a team of about 90 Marines and sailors as part of the first wave of promised U.S. military assistance amounting to $20 million.
As well as meeting the human needs of this tragedy, this disaster relief assistance is a remarkably effective — and inexpensive — investment in the future. 

Joseph Nye, Harvard Professor and former Assistant Secretary of Defense, coined the term “soft power” to describe this investment.

According to Nye, soft power is the process of attraction, which allows a state to attain its desired outcomes by co-opting people rather than coercing them through “hard power” actions such as military action or economic sanctions. 

Soft power events such as disaster relief are an important component of foreign policy because of the lasting goodwill that results from the support. 

The massive U.S. relief effort in response to the 2004 earthquake and tsunami built American goodwill in Indonesia and long-term ally Thailand. 

According to Jonah Blank, a senior political scientist at the non-profit, non-partisan RAND Corporation and a former policy director for South and Southeast Asia on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the tsunami relief effort may rank as one of the most concrete reasons Southeast Asian nations trust rather than fear the U.S. refocus on the Pacific Rim in its strategy of "Asian rebalancing."
China has recognized the effect of soft power in influencing other nations. 

In 2007, Hu Jintao, then General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, enjoined the Party leadership to increase its soft power. 

Since 2004 the Communist government has embarked on an aggressive campaign to champion Chinese language and culture by establishing a series of non-profit government funded Confucius Institutes. 

According to Nye, a rising power like China should use soft power to made its growing economic and military might appear less frightening to its neighbors. 

A smart strategy employing soft power should lesson the concerns of Chinese expansion and make balancing coalitions less effective.
Luckily the Chinese government has missed two important lessons regarding soft power. 

The first is that soft power is more effectively developed through civil society. Everything from universities and foundations to pop culture provide a strong attractive force for other societies and cultures. The least effective instrument of soft power is the government. Government attempts at building soft power are rarely credible. 

The second lesson is that disaster relief is probably the most effective method to give a “soft edge” to military force. China has repeatedly demonstrated its commitment to contesting territorial claims on the Scarborough Shoal by deploying naval, coast guard, and China marine surveillance vessels to the area. The lack of disaster assistance is telling of Chinese long-term intentions.

The current snub is a reflection of China’s dissatisfaction with a recent appeal by the Philippine government to a United Nations Arbitral Tribunal to resolve the dispute over the Scarborough Shoal. 

It is the first time that Beijing has been taken to a U.N. tribunal and China is fuming because a loss in arbitration could seriously affect its ambitions in the South China Sea, encouraging other countries to counter Chinese territorial claims through U.N. action. 

China insists that territorial disputes over islands in the South China Sea should be settled through bilateral negotiation, mainly because of its unmatched hard power in the region.
Typhoon Haiyan has given Beijing an opportunity to show that it can be a responsible regional leader, showing a softer side to its ambitions in Southeast Asia.

Unfortunately it is failing miserably. 

The Chinese state-run Global Times newspaper said in an editorial on Tuesday, “China’s international image is of vital importance to its interests. If it snubs Manila this time, China will suffer great losses.” 

The editorial is prescient in its prediction. 

Haiyan has shown that China’s ambitions are hard power related. 

Southeast Asia and the U.S. have a right to be concerned.

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Report: Chinese Censorship Expanding Abroad

Four ways China uses to influence media outlets: direct action by Chinese officials to punish overseas outlets that fail to heed Chinese restrictions, economic incentives to induce self-censorship among media, indirect pressure applied through proxies like other foreign governments or advertisers, and finally cyberattacks and physical assaults.

By Paul Mozur

China Central Television headquarters in Beijing.

Chinese censorship, far from a merely domestic concern, is increasingly spilling over the country’s borders.
That’s the takeaway from a new study from the Center for International Media Assistance (pdf) that traces the Chinese government’s influence on Western media within and outside of China, as well as Chinese-language media and other outlets in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.
“With more than half of China’s population now accessing the Internet and some political content going viral despite domestic censors’ efforts, the CCP’s (Chinese Communist Party) nervousness of overseas news trickling in has increased,” wrote Sarah Cook, author of the study and an analyst for Freedom House.
The Center for International Media Assistance is part of the National Endowment for Democracy, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting democracy funded by the U.S government. 

Freedom House is an independent democracy and human rights advocacy group.

The study breaks down four ways China uses pressure to influence media outlets outside of China: direct action by Chinese officials to punish overseas outlets that fail to heed Chinese restrictions, economic incentives to induce self-censorship among media, indirect pressure applied through proxies like other foreign governments or advertisers, and finally cyberattacks and physical assaults that the report says are not conclusively traceable to Chinese authorities.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a faxed request for comment on the report.
Concerned it is losing the soft-power battle to the U.S. and frustrated with what it believes is an anti-China bias in foreign media, Beijing has grown increasingly eager to improve the country’s image abroad in recent years, partly by doing more to control or influence the way it is portrayed in the media. 

As a result, the government has spent lavishly on an effort to expand the reach of its official media organizations, including by launching an American branch of state broadcaster CCTV that aims to mimic the success of Al-Jazeera.

At the same time, it has increased restrictions on foreign media inside the country.
Referring to Western media, the report chronicles difficulties faced by journalists in getting visas to report in China, cyberattacks that have hit organizations that carry reports critical of China and the blockage of foreign news sites in China. 

The Wall Street Journal reported in January that it, along with the New York Times, was subject to attacks by Chinese hackers.
The report also looks at Chinese influence in overseas Chinese media as well as in developing countries across Southeast and South Asia, Latin America and Africa. 

In one section, it notes the 2010 arrest of two Vietnamese citizens for using shortwave radio to transmit a broadcast from a radio network run by the banned Falun Gong religious movement into China.

It also references a separate report (pdf) from the Center for International Media Assistance that describes direct Chinese government aid to state-run media in Africa and Latin America, training programs that bring journalists from countries in those regions to China on free trips, and the multi-billion dollar expansion of China’s state-run media groups globally.
Pressure from the Chinese government on Chinese language media in both Hong Kong and Taiwan, as well as in other countries has also increased, according to the report.
But China isn’t only using strong-arm tactics in its to burnish its own image. 

Interestingly, while the report urges Taiwan to strengthen rules against heavy investment in local media from China or those with heavy Chinese interests, it also says that pressure against Taiwan independence groups has slackened somewhat in part because the resulting bad publicity is seen as counterproductive for China’s goal of eventual unification.
Overreach from Beijing has also occasionally been counterproductive in the U.S. 

In 2012, in an incident not mentioned in the report, Chinese diplomats asked an Oregon city to force a Taiwanese-American businessman to take down a mural he painted on a private building advocating independence for Tibet and Taiwan. 

The town’s mayor rebuffed the request, citing the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, eliciting cheers from many on Twitter and in articles online.
The report encouraged all media outlets to be transparent about pressures faced from China, and took governments to task for not doing enough to protect journalists working in the country.
“Foreign governments should respond vociferously to assaults and visa delays of foreign correspondents holding their citizenship,” the report says, adding that foreign governments should use diplomatic options to signal that visa delays for foreign correspondents are unacceptable.
“To date, the response from Western governments to growing harassment of international media in China has often been timid,” it adds.

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A Chill, Ill Wind Blows Across China

By Elizabeth C. Economy

I have to give Beijing credit.

When the Chinese leaders put Wang Qishan in charge of the anti-corruption effort, they knew what they were doing. 

Widely believed to be one of the most competent of the new leadership, he has ensured that no policy arena has as much energy behind it as his anti-corruption campaign. 

Other priorities such as building a social welfare net, protecting the environment, and reforming the economy are still in the familiar planning and blueprint stages. 

Wang, in contrast, has spearheaded campaigns against multinationals, Chinese companies, individual Chinese officials and businesspeople. 

Scarcely a week goes by when one corruption case or another does not make Chinese headlines.
Alongside the anti-corruption campaign, a crackdown against Chinese netizens is also in full-swing. Nominally designed to limit online rumor-mongering—people may be charged with defamation if their rumors are read by 5,000 users or forwarded more than 500 times—the crackdown has landed squarely on the shoulders of some of China’s most popular, politically outspoken businessmen bloggers: venture capitalist Wang Gongquan has been detained on charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb order in public places”; Chinese-American investor Charles Xue was arrested on prostitution charges; and billionaire real estate investor Pan Shiyi has not been arrested or detained but appeared on television to say that it was important for those with large followings to “tweet responsibly.” 

Each of these prominent business personalities has boasted well over a million Weibo followers at one time or another.
Beijing’s strategy—while widely heralded by the official Chinese media—seems like one destined for short-term gain but long-term pain. 

First, by accusing and arresting people before the judicial system has been reformed, the Chinese leadership runs the risk of undermining much of the purpose of the anti-corruption campaign—restoring the legitimacy of the Communist Party. 

People are already suspicious about why certain officials and businesspeople are being targeted while others are not. 

Moreover, as attacks are levied against leading bloggers, the anti-rumor campaign begins to look like an effort not to push forward on the rule of law but rather to reintroduce fear among intellectuals and other reformers à la the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the 1950s, which targeted those whose voiced independent opinions.
Limiting the voices of public intellectuals also will hamper the Party’s objective of spurring creativity and innovation within Chinese cultural, social, and economic life. 

If there is no questioning, there is no change and no progress. 

Had it not been for Pan Shiyi leading the netizen charge for greater transparency in Chinese air quality statistics, the Chinese public would likely still be waiting to understand why official blue sky days are not actually blue. 

And as my colleague Adam Segal remarked, the crackdown against outspoken liberal business leaders is reminiscent of Putin’s message to the oligarchs: get with the program or get out. 

The danger, of course, is that in fact, they will get out—leaving China without much needed intellectual, creative, and financial firepower.
And then there is the ever-present effort by Beijing to exert its soft power. 

No matter how often Chinese officials hear it, they seem unwilling to accept that soft power begins at home, with the values, culture and opportunities the Chinese people, themselves, experience. 

If these fail to attract the rest of the outside world—and who is going to be attracted to a regime that silences its best and brightest—no amount of Chinese media blather will compensate.

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