The Long March Forward
Christine Ernst speaks with Malcolm Cook, East Asia Program Director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, about what the Olympics meant for China and the world.
Malcolm Cook, East Asia Program Director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy.
China is slowly closing in on the United States. Like an experienced long-distance runner, it has plenty of energy reserved for the final sprint. And when China finally catches up to its long-time rival, the ensuing battle will shake the very foundations of the global order. A resurgent China would seek to recapture lost territory, export the authoritarian model and avenge centuries of humiliation inflicted upon it by the West.
Or so China alarmists would suggest. To Dr Malcolm Cook, this dire prediction more closely resembles a “bad Hollywood movie” than a realistic forecast.
Cook is the Director of the East Asia Program at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, Australia’s pre-eminent foreign policy think-tank. His scholarly training stands him in good stead. For however much I try to snatch some sensationalist sound bites about China’s growing economic and military muscle, this levelheaded analyst refuses to bite.
“Many have identified the Beijing Olympics as signalling the dawning of a new era of Chinese ascendancy.”
I ask him, for instance, whether Australia will ever be forced to “choose” between a rising China and our traditional ally in the Pacific, the United States.
“Ah, the nightmare scenario! Taiwan is usually held up as the flash point,” he remarks.
Cook reasons that “it really depends on the trajectory of U.S.-China relations”. Over the last two decades, “both Beijing and Washington have worked very hard to make sure they don’t have to choose to see each other only as rivals”. Officials in both capitals were relieved to see Ma Ying-jeou, a supporter of the ‘One China’ policy, win Taiwan’s presidential election in March.
The recent Olympic Games have made China’s increasing clout impossible to ignore. Many have identified the Beijing Olympics as signalling the dawning of a new era of Chinese ascendancy. Basking in the kudos that follows from 51 gold medals and a superbly orchestrated series of ceremonies and competitions, China is now in a position to truly assert itself on the global stage.
The opening ceremony in Beijing featured some 14,000 performers and was attended by over 80 world leaders. In Cook’s view, what was most interesting about the opening ceremony was not who was present, but those figures who were strikingly absent. One character in particular was a surprising no-show.
“The Chinese Communist Party ‘is reclaiming China’s longstanding imperial history’.”
“Mao Zedong played almost no role in the opening ceremony. There was no focus on the Long March that led to the Communist Party taking over from the Guomindang.” Instead, the ceremony celebrated four great inventions from ancient China: papermaking, movable type printing, the compass and gunpowder.
The Chinese Communist Party “is reclaiming China’s longstanding imperial history”, Cook explains. While China is certainly not repudiating Mao’s legacy, it is “placing that as a short part of Chinese history within this much longer discourse that goes back 5,000 years”.
Cook contends that, “without a doubt, ideological mobilisers are used less and less in China today, with more of a focus on material benefits, nationalism and national pride”.
With nationalism at such a high, it is hardly surprising that many Chinese reacted strongly to external criticism during the Games. During the torch relay, the tenacity of pro-Tibetan demonstrators was matched only by the determination of those who turned out to support the Chinese cause. Tensions reached critical levels in France, where pro-Tibetan protestors attempted to wrest the torch from the hands of a young, disabled torchbearer.
Western media coverage of the Games was another point of conflict. As Cook recalls, “the sense of mistreatment by the Western media” was “clearly deeply felt” within China.
The foreign media certainly pulled few punches. The organisers of the opening ceremony barely had time to toast their own success before stories of scandal began to emerge. The press feasted on revelations of faked fireworks, lip-syncing lead singers and a parade of ‘indigenous’ children that turned out to be composed of members of the Han ethnic majority.
“The organisers of the opening ceremony barely had time to toast their own success before stories of scandal began to emerge.”
According to Cook, however, the Chinese could hardly have expected an easy ride.
“The fact that [the foreign media] went to China and wrote negative political stories isn’t a surprise.” Negative coverage, he explains, is part of the price one pays for hosting an event of that magnitude.
China ... slowly closing in on the US.
The natural tendency of the press to be critical was compounded by the blundered treatment of foreign journalists in China. Having allegedly promised to give the visitors unfettered internet access, China was accused of reneging on the deal by restricting access to certain sites. “Beijing partially created the problems that they then reacted to,” Cook concludes. “The international public relations management of the run-up to the Olympics … was where the Chinese organisers probably fell the shortest.”
“Without a doubt, the International Olympic Committee and the Beijing organisers at the beginning made some very big claims.” This, he says, “set a very high bar that was probably never going to be reached”.
Accepting that the Olympics were no panacea for China’s myriad social and political problems, the question remains: did the Olympics bring any lasting change to China?
It’s really a matter of perspective.
China’s political leadership, for instance, might well say, “we’ve done all these things that are quite new for us”. As Cook reminds us, “there were a huge number of foreign journalists that were given much more freedom … They did set up those protest parks for the first time ever.” Of course, as Cook is quick to acknowledge, this new freedom was not absolute. The protest parks were, in practice, merely symbolic.
“The international public relations management of the run-up to the Olympics … was where the Chinese organisers probably fell the shortest.”
This fact was not lost on the Western media. “If you look at it from the outside, where the freedom you expect is the same that the journalists had when they covered the Sydney Olympics, then you can quite easily see how that wasn’t reached.”
Viewed objectively, China has without a doubt undergone radical change over the past two decades.
In fact, Cook explains, “many feared that the change was so fast that the political and economic and social systems may not have been able to keep up with it”.
If anything is likely to stall change in the future, it will be where that change comes into conflict with the interests of those in power.
“Up until now, the social change … has all been in line with the interests of the Communist Party of China in staying in power. However, the further set of steps to having a fully open and competitive political party system, that may not be in the interests of the Communist Party of China,” Cook quips.
As for whether a stronger China is something to be feared, Cook’s words are reassuring.
“We often see China as some superpower, a great power, and then assume that if you’re a great power, you have these global ambitions.”
“Do I see China acting as an aggressive competitor or adversary to Australia or our traditional strategic partners? So far, I would say no.” In fact, he suggests that, “as we become more deeply engaged with China, the worry about a weaker China comes to be more important. If they stop buying as much from us as they do now, that would be a serious blow.”
China selected the phrase ‘One World, One Dream’ as the official motto of the Beijing Games. In the sober realm of realpolitik, analysts are right to be sceptical about the prospects of global harmony. But in an environment where states are increasingly interdependent, a more integrated, cooperative world is not entirely implausible.
At any rate, this idealistic mantra is infinitely preferable to the far more adversarial alternative supplied by Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee: “Faster, Stronger, Higher.”
