A “Hadith” (saying) attributed to the Prophet, peace be upon him, encourages Muslims to seek knowledge “even if it is in China”. Fourteen centuries later, China has become a favorite destination for Muslim political leaders and businessmen. During the past five years or so Beijing has been the only major capital to be visited by leaders form almost all Muslim countries.
These Muslim visitors, however, are not coming to China in search of science. They know that China, for all its recent technological achievements, including the launching of a manned spaceship, is far behind the United States, the European Union and Japan as far as science is concerned. The chief goal of Muslim visitors is to find out whether or not China could emerge as a political and economic counterweight to the United States, a power with which most Muslim states maintain at best ambiguous and at worst tense relations.
Seen from the Muslim world, the US appears to be too powerful, and at times too arrogant, to want, or even need, allies. The idea is that you can be an ally and partner of someone of more or less your own size in terms of economic and military power.
China is also regarded as a more attractive partner than other potential candidates such a Japan, India and Brazil. Japan seems to be stuck in an endless economic freeze and is, in any case, reluctant to develop a political profile. India is plagued by its dispute with Muslim Pakistan over Kashmir and the constant threat of sectarian riots involving Hindus and Muslims. Brazil, which enjoyed special attention in the Muslim world in the 1980s, is now regarded as a sick giant that is unlikely to become a fully developed industrial power anytime soon.
What about Russia? Well, the days of the Soviet Union when Moscow was the automatic alternative to Washington have long elapsed. Seen from the Muslim world, Russia appears as a rudderless ship caught in an endless storm with no destination in sight.
The only certainty is that Chechens continue to be killed aboard that ship. And Chechens are Muslims.
That leaves China with its claim of having the world’s highest rates of economic growth for the past decade.
Some Muslim rulers are also impressed by the Chinese political system. They, too, run regimes that are, in effect, one-party systems of one form or another.
The Chinese model, in which unbridled capitalism is combined with an iron grip on the political process, is particularly attractive to many Muslim regimes. (In Iran, for example, supporters of the Chinese model grouped around former President Hashemi Rafsanjani present themselves as the only “realistic alternative” to what they see as President Muhammad Khatami’s emulation of Mikhail Gorbachev’s experience in the now defunct USSR.)
Muslim leaders also appreciate the fact that when dealing with China they can focus on the ruling elite and not bother about the media, human rights groups, political parties, trade unions and other similar “ troublemakers”. The fact that private lawsuits could be filed against them in the US, that their assets could be frozen, that they could be denied visas, searched when arriving at an American airport, and receive a visit from the FBI in their hotel rooms, has persuaded some Muslim political leaders that the American system is simply too complicated and subject to too many pressures to permit the shaping and application of a normal foreign policy by any administration in Washington.
China is of special interest to oil-exporting Arab states, anxious to diversify their markets and thus reduce dependence on the United States and the European Union.
On paper at least the Arab attention seems justified. If official statistics and projections are to be trusted, China is slated to replace the United States as the world’s largest importer of crude oil by the time Beijing hosts the 2002 summer Olympics. With a population heading for the staggering 1.3 billion mark by the end of the decade, China’s potential as a market cannot be overestimated. Visitors to China’s eastern and southern provinces, where the economic boom is concentrated, are certain to be impressed. Shanghai is the largest building site the world has ever seen. Canton and Beijing have been transformed into almost prosperous cities, at least by Asian standards.
There is no doubt that China has a good story to tell. But how much of it is true? No one has the answer.
Some businessmen and economic experts in Beijing regard the official claims about high growth rates as “rather fanciful”. But even if such claims were justified China would still have a long way to go before it achieves the status of a major economic power. Assuming that China maintains annual growth rates of 10 percent or higher, it could rise to account for some three percent of the global GDP within the next decade or so. It would then have to wait until the year 2020 to see its economy rise to the size of Japan’s today.
China’s thirst for oil is real. But even then the Arab exporters must guard against exaggerated hopes. Beijing is looking to Kazakhstan and the Caspian Basin as is prime source of imported crude over the next three decades. An 8000-miles pipeline linking Kazakh field to China is already under construction. China also hopes to tap its own domestic resources the size of which remains a state secret.
There are other points that should be taken into account by the Muslims when evolving a policy based on strategic alliance with China. For all its apparent solidity the Chinese political system remains highly fragile. The new middle class that is spearheading the economic “miracle” is unlikely to remain as docile as it is today. The supposedly “new leadership”, really not new at all, does not seem to have any strategy apart from a forlorn hope to maintain the monopoly of power for a Communist Party that is beginning to splinter.
The need to create modern jobs for over 700 million peasants, likely to be uprooted within the next three decades, also casts some gloom on Chinese prospects. There are also ethnic tensions, seething beneath the surface. The Muslims who once formed a majority in Xinjiang (East Turkestan) remain restive, and the problem of Tibet will not simply go away. There are also tensions in Manchuria and Inner Mongolia while the Taiwan issue could still lead to a war with incalculable consequences.
Many Muslim societies today are more open, freer, and culturally more dynamic than China in this period of transition. Adopting the so-called “Chinese model”, even if this were possible, would be a step backward for many Muslim countries.
Muslim societies should learn to compete with more open and freer societies rather than looking to societies where authoritarianism can produce transient successes but is bound to lead to disaster. From the 1950s to the 1970s, many Muslim intellectuals, obsessed with that illusory “historic shortcut”, looked to the Soviet Union as a model. We know what happened to them and their “ model”. The idea of a Chinese “shortcut” could prove to be as disastrous.
The idea of having a look at China as a potential partner is a sound one. But it should not be used as the basis for political pipe dreams that thicken ignorance rather than then “ knowledge” that the Prophet was talking about.
Arab News Opinion 10 January 2003
