International Relations | 05.02.2010

China's double identity complicates Beijing's growing international role

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: China's rise to power is not just economic but also political

At this year's Munich Security Conference, China for the first time has chosen to be a major player. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, a China expert explains the difficulties Beijing faces with a larger global role.

Gudrun Wacker is an expert on China's foreign and security policy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Deutsche Welle: For the first time China is present with a high-level delegation - including its foreign minister - at Munich's global Security Conference. What is the significance of China's decision to headline this meeting?

Gudrun Wacker: There can be no doubt that China is becoming more confident and is trying to openly play a bigger role on the world stage. This is also what the rest of the world expects from China because in the last 30 years the economic success has led to China's rise and this is now basically universally accepted. The problem is whether China is really ready to take on a leading role and to take responsibility also in the sense of sharing the burden and the cost of addressing the challenges that the world is facing.

This year the Chinese foreign minister is one of the main participants at the Munich Security Conference, last year China's premier called for a new economic world order at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Do you think Beijing has deliberately decided that it should use the forum of those big conferences for agenda-setting purposes?

It has outlined ist global agenda before. Hu Jintao delivered a speech to the UN General Assembly where he outlined what China believes to be the future of the world, the so-called harmonious world. So for some time now China has begun to make its own contributions on how the world should look in the future. It is trying to make a more cooperative and constructive contribution.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: China's late leader Deng Xiaoping advised the country to keep a low profileFor example, it is already of the five permanent members of the Security Council the biggest supplier of troops for peacekeeping operations with a UN mandate, so we see that it has already become more active on the practical level and it is now also gradually starting to contribute on the theoretical level and outline new rules or new principles for a world order which from the Chinese perspective is supposed to be fair and also addresses the needs of developing and emerging countries.

Due to its industrial output and increasing international business interests probably most people would still see China more as a global economic power house than a political super power. Do you think China now wants to be seen also as a major political player not only by the political elites but by the international public?

I think China is in a transition phase and it has a sort of double identity. It still sees itself as a developing country. Despite the economic success and the growth of China's gross domestic product if you look at the per capita numbers it is still a developing country. So on the one hand there is this identity of the developing country, on the other hand there is no doubt that China - due to its size and also due to the permanent seat in the Security Council, due to its interests that are now distributed around the globe in Africa, Latin America etc. - is also a regional power, if not a global power. And it very hesitantly, in a way, starts to play this role.

Officially there is still the dictum of Deng Xiaoping that they should keep a low profile. But if you become as big as China, it's really hard to have a low profile, because you are so big that you stick out whether you want it or not. And so the expectations from other countries, foremost the Western industrialized countries, but also the developing world, have been growing. But these expectations are of course sometimes contradictory, so the West wants something different than the developing countries want. And this is difficult for China, because it still has this double identity.

Could China's more public stance on global security issues also be a sign that the country is willing to play a bigger role in areas where it so far hasn't been active, like Afghanistan for example and do you think it is ready to take on that role?

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Beijing will think twice about military participation in Afghanistan I think it will be very cautious to play a bigger role in Afghanistan at least not in the direct military sense. You would need a new UN mandate for that. But China has of course certain interests in stability around its own borders and shares a short border with Afghanistan, but it also has a very deep interest in Pakistan which is a traditional ally. And since Afghanistan and Pakistan are treated now as one complex, there could be a bigger role for China to play in Pakistan, cooperating with the United States under the condition that it feels comfortable with the presence of the United States in this region.

Interview: Michael Knigge
Editor: Rob Mudge

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