A Chance for China to Put Best Foot Forward

After months of trying to intimidate perceived enemies in Hong Kong and Taiwan, China is expected to refocus this weekend on what has become the real heart of its diplomatic strategy for Asia: charm.

Chinese President Hu Jintao will host about 1,000 business and political luminaries from East Asia and beyond, including former President George H.W. Bush, on the southern island of Hainan. The Boao Forum for Asia -- now in its third year -- is patterned after the highly successful World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, but with one crucial difference.

Whereas the high-level networking in Davos unfolds in a tiny, politically neutral country, Boao has become a way for its large and increasingly influential host nation to showcase its political agenda. This year’s theme -- expanding regional economic cooperation -- is essential to China’s efforts to sustain its explosive growth and push forward its transformation into a capitalist economy.

With China’s trade with other countries in the region crossing the $300-billion mark last year and its import demands growing at a breathtaking pace, just about everyone is ready to listen. In sharp contrast to China’s huge trade surplus with the United States, this new engine of Asian growth last year bought far more goods from its regional partners than it sold to them.

Guan Zhisheng, an economist at Zhongshan University in the southern city of Guangzhou, said China was trying to build an effective supply chain premised on the integration of industries in several neighboring countries.

“We’re trying to expand the internal market of the region,” he said.

Against this backdrop, the Boao meeting is seen as one more sign that the once-reclusive China is fast emerging as a major political force in East Asia and beyond.

China is increasingly seen as a nation eager to work with its neighbors in shaping the region to their mutual benefit.

It has pushed free trade agreements, pledged to resolve long-simmering regional disputes peacefully and taken a more hands-on role in regional institutions such as the Asian Development Bank. And, its recent moves against Taiwan and Hong Kong notwithstanding, it has extended olive branches to historical adversaries in South and Central Asia.

“Assertiveness with a smile,” summed up Brahma Chellaney, professor of security studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.

China’s growing political clout appears to present no immediate challenge to U.S. interests in the region.

On issues ranging from terrorism to nuclear nonproliferation and the need for regional peace, stability and the free flow of trade, Beijing and Washington today find themselves sharing a remarkable degree of common ground. Just this week, Beijing has reportedly been busy nudging North Korea’s enigmatic leader, Kim Jong Il, to surrender his country’s nuclear weapons capabilities.

China’s role as the organizer of six-nation talks on the subject -- whose participants include the United States, Japan, Russia and both Koreas -- is also seen as part of its growing role as a diplomatic player in the region.

“They are working very hard to deliver an outcome the United States couldn’t deliver on its own,” said Peter Jennings, director of programs at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra. “They are doing things we never thought possible just a few years ago.”

But for Americans, there are also unsettling aspects to China’s emergence.

Those tracking developments in the region note that Beijing’s influence is building at a time the U.S. is largely preoccupied elsewhere in the world. Although aware of the development, Washington has yet to fully come to grips with its implications, analysts suggest.

“When the United States gets past its current preoccupation in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East and refocuses its diplomatic attention on a broader global basis, it will find a significantly changed Asia,” David Shambaugh, China policy program director at George Washington University, told delegates at a symposium on Asia-Pacific security in Washington on Thursday.

China’s political rise also comes as America’s actions in Iraq erode an inherent goodwill that the United States has enjoyed in the region for decades.

Despite Beijing’s attempts to win over its neighbors, countries that were once China’s adversaries are wary. The scars of World War II and a bubbling nationalism still complicate Sino-Japanese ties, despite the fact that China has overtaken the U.S. as Japan’s largest export market.

A senior Beijing official, for example, reportedly told a visiting Japanese official that Tokyo would not receive a multibillion-dollar contract to build a high-speed rail link between Beijing and Shanghai, mainly because Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has insisted on visiting a shrine that honors Japan’s war dead, including war criminals.

“Neighboring big countries are always rivals,” said Ikuo Kayahara, a retired major general and Asia security specialist at Takushoku University in Tokyo. “It’s fate.”

The scars of a brief but bitter border war and decades of mutual suspicion also have made many in India skeptical of China’s diplomatic charm offensive. In a telephone interview, Chellaney welcomed Beijing’s overtures but expressed concern. “China can very quickly go from assertiveness with a smile to assertiveness without a smile,” he said. “What concerns me is that China aspires to become a world power second to none.”

But Guan, the Zhongshan University economist, said such worries were unfounded.

“The U.S. and the rest of the world should understand that China is not just pursuing the competitive goal of being No. 1 in the world,” he said. “What we’re trying to do is become prosperous together.”

Marshall reported from Hong Kong and Magnier from Beijing. Researcher Hisako Ueno of The Times’ Tokyo Bureau contributed to this report.