By Tao Wenzhao
A big question is haunting top US decision-makers and their
peers in some other countries: Will China's rapid development pose
a challenge to the international system?
Their worry is groundless because the course of China's reform
and opening up in the past two and a half decades and a half is a
process of integration into the international system.
Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of the country's reform and
opening up, once observed that no country could achieve
modernization in seclusion. It follows that China must be open to
the rest of the world, including international organizations.
First and foremost, China, the only developing country among the
five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, has
been faithfully playing its role in the UN, the largest and most
widely represented international organization.
In September 2005, President Hu
Jintao, in his attendance of the ceremony marking the 60th
anniversary of the UN, reiterated China's support for strengthening
the UN Security Council's role in maintaining world peace and
reinforcing international security, called for building a
harmonious international community and announced China's five
important measures in helping speed up the growth of developing
countries. All this won wide acclaim from the international
community.
Starting from 1988, China has been taking an active part in the
United Nations peace-keeping undertakings. China's first
"blue-helmet" contingent was organized in 1992, made up by 47
military observers and a 400-person engineering brigade, and was
sent to Cambodia to carry out the UN's peace-keeping mission.
In January 2002, China decided to elevate its involvement in UN
peace-keeping missions to a higher grade. Now, Chinese peacekeepers
are seen actively involved in peace-keeping tasks from Central
America to the South Pacific region.
China is a nuclear power and also an important member of the
world's non-proliferation system. The country, from the moment it
possessed a nuclear arsenal, declared that it would never use
nuclear weapons first under any circumstances and has stuck to the
principle ever since.
In addition, China is a signatory of the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and supports the treaty's
indefinite extension. The country has also signed the Comprehensive
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and become a full member of the Nuclear
Suppliers Group in 2004.
China signed the chemical and bio weapons ban treaties and
pledged its full compliance with the principles and parameters of
the Missile Technology Control Regime as early as 1992. The country
also demonstrated its willingness to be a full member of the
regime. Besides this, China has formulated whole sets of rules and
regulations with respect to the control of export of sensitive
materials, technologies and equipment involving nuclear-related
items, biology, chemicals and missiles. These rules and regulations
are basically compatible with international conventions and have
been rigorously enforced.
China entered the World Trade Organization at the end of 2001
after 13 years of gruelling negotiations and is now effectively
implementing its WTO commitments.
In the field of human rights, China has signed the Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights Treaty and the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights.
With regard to environmental protection, China is the member of
Kyoto Protocol and a series of environmental-protection
organizations. The Chinese Government has made it clear that the
growth mode for the Chinese economy will be put on an energy-saving
and environment-friendly basis.
In view of this, the conclusion can be drawn that China is an
active player in the international system.
Also, China is the beneficiary of the mechanisms of the current
international system.
Economic globalization has been picking up speed since the end
of the Cold War in the early 1990s. And the Chinese Government has
committed the country to this process.
This has ensured the rapid growth of the Chinese economy.
China's foreign trade, for example, doubled in 2004 since the
country's WTO entry at the end of 2001. Meanwhile, China has been
one of the biggest recipients of foreign direct investment (FDI) in
the world. Sharp growth in foreign trade and huge amounts of FDI
pouring in have combined to inject vitality into the Chinese
economy, powering it further ahead.
Globalization is a process in which the world's resources are
rationally distributed and the world's industrial structure is
realigned. China enjoys its own advantage with its low-cost labor
force, which has been brought into full play over the past two and
a half decades. As a result, labor-intensive industries have moved
to China quickly. This has helped the employment situation in the
country and pushed the economy ahead.
It is certainly important that high-tech and innovation factors
should be emphasized in future development. Labor-intensive
industries, however, will remain a vitally important factor in
propelling China's economy for a fairly long time to come.
In sum, China's economic progress has been in keeping with the
process of globalization and we can safely state that China is a
beneficiary from this process.
Being the beneficiary of the current international system, how
can China be expected to challenge it and try to topple it?
Instead, the country will defend it and help improve it.
China is the world's largest developing country and the economy
is huge. The country's integration into the international system is
bound to bring some impacts on the system. All developments and
events so far, however, point to the fact that China's influences
on the current international system have been positive. Or in other
words, the relationship between China and the international system
is one of benign interaction.
The author is a researcher from the Institute of American
Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
(China Daily February 23, 2006)
