Selina Ho is Assistant Professor in International Affairs and Co-Director of the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. She is an expert on Chinese politics and foreign policy. She is especially interested in how China wields power and influence via infrastructure and water disputes in Southeast Asia and South Asia. She is co-author of Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia.
She joins us to discuss China's domestic politics and foreign policy, as China approaches key meetings, the 20th Party Congress, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress.
David Austin: I'm going to just jump right in with a really big question to get started with. From speculated infighting and schisms at the top rung of the Communist Party in leadership decisions to geopolitical tensions rising, what does China's near future outlook look like in the international arena?
Selina Ho: Thanks, David. You actually asked a really important question because Chinese foreign policy is often driven by domestic politics and in this question that you asked, you actually pointed to one of the roots, one of the drivers of Chinese foreign policy, which is the factionalism, in-fighting, political manoeuvrings that happen at the top leadership level within the Chinese Communist Party. And I think that's a really important factor that we need to look at when we talk about Chinese foreign policy.
One of the key things that we should know is that there is a very important meeting coming up, which is the 20th Party Congress, before the year ends, and then two congresses, the National People's Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress in March next year. Now it's at this time that President Xi Jinping will be making a bid to have his third term in office as the head of the CCP and also as president of the People's Republic of China.
So, we'll see how that plays out because that has implications for Chinese foreign policy. But for the time being, in the near term from now till March next year, we should not expect huge changes in Chinese foreign policy. It will continue going on this same trajectory, a very nationalistic tone and a very aggressive tone. Xi and those around him will play up China's role as a great power, now that China has arrived at the international stage. It is no longer a rising power, but a risen power. And I think that's a key point that we should note that China is no longer rising, but has risen. We should expect China not to back down from any of its positions with respect to territories, with respect to great power rivalry, rivalry with the United States, with respect to Taiwan. That tone and substance in Chinese foreign policy will continue.
And we should not expect any changes because Xi Jinping will need to have that strong, robust foreign policy in order to shore up his credibility and legitimacy within his own party and with the Chinese people.
David Austin: There's been a lot of media speculation about the term China's “wolf warriors.” What do you think of this term “wolf warriors” and what does that imply for China's foreign policy?
Selina Ho: I think that the term “wolf warriors” is actually something that the media has used to describe the very strong rhetoric and very aggressive rhetoric that has been coming out from the Chinese foreign policy establishment since Xi Jinping took over, and perhaps even more obviously so in an aggressive tone in the last few years as the rivalry with the US accelerated.
I would say that the term is really sensationalistic. It is something that the media has used to describe Chinese diplomats rather than the way the Chinese described themselves.
But obviously the tone is very nationalistic. It is about that China has arrived. It is no longer a rising power. It's a risen power that seeks a place that should be commensurate with its power on the world stage, and which it feels that the United States is denying it of.
So, we have to be careful about how sensationalistic the term “wolf warriors” is, and to recognise that in essence, there has already been a change in tone and substance of Chinese foreign policy. But we also need to recognise something else that is happening within the Chinese foreign policy establishment, which is the difference between the “Reds” and the “Experts.” By Reds, I mean those who are ideologues, and by Experts, I mean the technocrats.
I believe there is a bit of a struggle within the ministry of foreign affairs between the “Reds” and the “Experts.” It would seem to me that in order for career advancement, you need to be “Red” in order to advance. Now, this “Red” and “Expert” thing is something that came from the Mao era. So, ideology has become important again, toeing the party line, supporting the hard-line stance in foreign policy. This is necessary for career advancement.
So, you see diplomats doing it for career advancement purposes. That's a dangerous trend, in my opinion, for foreign policy. And we need to be mindful and to be watchful of this trend that's happening.
David Austin: If “wolf warrior” is a media created term but you said that's not how they would describe themselves in China, what is the narrative in China? How do they describe the current posture of the diplomats and the ministry of foreign affairs?
Selina Ho: Yeah. So, the view within China is that the current international order, as it's reflected in international organisations like the IMF, is not reflective of China's status today. I would say it's sensationalistic, the Chinese will not call themselves “wolf warriors,” but I think what they're trying to say here is that, China needs to be recognised for its rightful place on the world stage, whether it is in international organisations or in the UN or in having a say in the international order.
China benefitted from the international order that's established by the United States, but the current international order does not work for China. So what China wants is to tweak it, tweak the international order, such that it reflects more accurately where China is standing today.
The “wolf warrior” term is not what the Chinese would call themselves, but it definitely is reflective of the nationalistic tone that reflects that China has arrived and that China is a risen power, and no longer just a rising power.
David Austin: Thank you for that background, I'm going to ask you now about Australia because Australia just had an election and a new government is in place. Do you see a shift in the tenor or tone or substance of Australia-China relations?
Selina Ho: I think that we can see from Senator Penny Wong's approach to the Chinese, that we are likely to see a change in tone, in the way that Australians approach the Chinese. We could see maybe perhaps improvement in communications, in diplomacy, in talking to each other. But I think the position of the current administration has already been locked in by the previous administration.
In the previous administration, Australia has chosen sides and it's clear that it has chosen to side with the United States for both internal and external reasons. For domestic reasons, because of the view that the Chinese have made inroads in Australian society and politics, to the extent that it is compromising Australian interest from within. That's the internal reason. The external reason obviously is Australia's alliance with the United States. And so, the previous administration has already chosen a side and I think there's very little that the current administration can do to undo that.
I don't think they want to undo that too, to undo that alignment that they have already established, choosing to side with the United States, but what we could expect to see perhaps is a change in tone and more olive branches to the Chinese side, a little bit more balance and hopefully, try to get some of the sanctions off.
But in real substance, I don't think we should expect any big shifts in Australian foreign policy with respect to China.
David Austin: Let's move on to the really big policy question that is on everyone's mind and that's Taiwan and the US-Taiwan policy, which seems to be speeding forward right now? What is your take on that? And what could we expect to see in the near future?
Selina Ho: I think that the United States is trying to grapple with its “One China” policy. It maintains its “One China” policy. But as you can see, the strategic ambiguity that is enshrined in the “One China” policy is becoming more difficult for the United States to maintain primarily because of its competition with China, and also for ideological reasons. If I may say about Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan which doesn't trouble me per se as to why she did it. She did it because she felt that the United States needed to stand up for Taiwan and also to give support to Taiwan.
I have no quarrel with that, but obviously there are risks and I will not elaborate on the risks because I think the risks have been highlighted.
What is happening, seems to be the beginnings of a fourth Taiwan Strait crisis.
The first two happened during the Cold War and the third one happened in the 1990s. This is the fourth one that seems to be emerging. The crisis is happening right now.
Now what troubles me about her visit was what she said in her op-ed for The Washington Post. And I quote, she said, "We cannot stand by as the CCP proceeds to threaten Taiwan and democracy itself." She continued, "as Russia wages, its premeditated illegal war against Ukraine, it is essential that America and our allies make clear that we never give in to autocrats."
Now there are two things that trouble me here. One is the analogy between Taiwan and Ukraine. If American policymakers think of Taiwan as equivalent to Ukraine, I think there could be troubling implications for the US's “One China” policy.
The two are different. Ukraine has had its independence since the Soviet Union collapsed. It has been recognised to be a sovereign state by Russia itself. So, it was definitely an illegal war. Now the situation with Taiwan is a little more complicated than that. There is that “One China policy,” meaning that most countries around the world have not recognised Taiwan as an independent country because of the “One China” policy.
So that is a key difference there. If the Chinese do attack and invade Taiwan the question of whether it's illegal is actually a big question mark. If you were to think about the “One China” policy, not that I am a proponent that China should do that, but I would like to just state out front that there is a difference between Ukraine and Taiwan.
So that's troubling for me because it seems to me that US policymakers do not see a difference. And so, the question, if there's no difference, what does this imply for the US's “One China” policy, and I can see why the Chinese are worried.
The second point about a statement that troubled me was the mention of democracies and autocracies. So again, ideology seems to be rearing its ugly head. Again, in terms of what we saw during the cold war ideological competition, ideological differences were one of the key characteristics of the old cold war.
I have been hesitant to call the current US-China rivalry as a new cold war, primarily because I did not see it as an ideological struggle, but more so of a struggle between an established power and that of a rising or risen power, in this case China. So, it was to me, a case of differences in national interest, and not so much of an ideological perspective because the Chinese do not necessarily think in ideological terms. And it does not necessarily have the intention to export its ideology to the rest of the world in the way that the Soviet Union did. And the way that Mao, Maoist China did in Southeast Asia.
What China is probably trying to do here is to ensure that its political system is accepted as part of the international system, that there can be varieties of political systems that coexist in the international system.
Obviously, we can debate about this because in the Chinese example, autocratic practices do encourage autocrats from other countries to think that they can do what the Chinese do, which is I think a very wrong assumption. The authoritarian system in China to a certain extent, allowed China to grow and to succeed primarily because they have capable leadership.
But with all autocratic systems, when you have a “bad emperor,” to quote some other scholars who have mentioned that, with autocratic systems, when you have a “bad emperor,” then what will happen is that you will see that corruption seeps in, rent-seeking predatory behaviour would sink in rather than so far, you know, Chinese leaders have always think about the good of the Chinese citizens, or at least they try.
But the safeguards are not there. The institutional safeguards are not there to correct wrongdoing. So, my point here is that I'm concerned about two things: that the rivalry between the US and China has taken an ideological turn and that for US policy makers, they have drawn conclusions from the war in Ukraine and apply it to Taiwan, which I think is the wrong lesson to pick up.
David Austin: The China-India relationship has also seen a lot of tensions lately. What's your current view of the China-India relationship, and what do you foresee happening in the near future?
Selina Ho: The border dispute between China and India is still unresolved, and it's going to be difficult to resolve, even in the long term. But we can see that India is trying to maintain its independent position. I hesitate to use a term neutrality or non-alignment because those terms have their own implications. But it's trying to maintain an independent foreign policy, independent from the United States. So, it has taken a neutral stance when it comes to the idea of the free and open India Pacific, which is that it has taken a stance that is different from that of the United States.
It sees the FOIP [free and open Indo-Pacific] as inclusive, and is willing to accommodate China in it. It has also taken a very independent stance from the United States when it comes to the Ukraine issue, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So, India has its own independent foreign policy, will exert that, and that in a way, gives it room to maintain a semblance of a normal relationship with China.
What I'm saying is that it will not go to the extent of Australia in taking sides and that it will, despite all the border disputes that are going on, the exchanges at economic level, at the political level are still ongoing between China and India.
There is a difference in that kind of nationalistic rhetoric and actual policies, which is that exchanges and communications are still going on between China and India.
David Austin: Now I would like to turn to the book that you co-authored:
Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia. Could you share two of the big takeaways from the many lessons that we could derive from the eight Asian nations and China's infrastructure initiatives?
Selina Ho: With my co-authors David Mike Lampton and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, we wrote this book. It was four to five years in the making, because it included field trips to about eight to nine countries. There are more than 200 plus interviews in the book.
So, one of the key takeaways I think from the book and which we want to emphasise is the agency that secondary states or smaller states have when dealing with a big power. It is clear in the book that while China has dominance in Southeast Asia, we wouldn't say that dominance is the same as exclusivity. Because the region does seek to diversify and uses whatever tools they can to diversify, to draw investments from the Japanese, from South Koreans, from Europeans and from the United States as well. Chinese dominance also does not mean that there is no resistance.
The smaller states do have agency and they do resist some of the initiatives from China that could impinge on their sovereignty. Well, obviously the extent of agency or secondary states is dependent on several things. One of them is whether you have state capacity, whether you have strong institutions, the rule of law, the other one is whether you are economically strong or not. I mean, obviously middle-income countries in Southeast Asia will be in a stronger position to resist Chinese dominance, as opposed to say the smaller economies of Laos and Cambodia, which are more reliant on China.
If you also have a stronger economy, you probably have the ability to diversify your reliance or overdependence. For example, Singapore has done a pretty good job in diversifying our economy. We are not overly dependent on China, and therefore we could actually resist certain initiatives from the Chinese that are constituted as dominance.
I think one of the key lessons is that secondary states do have agency, but it varies according to your ability and state capacity and the strength of the economy. The cohesion of your leadership. And also, like what is the size of the economy, the size of population, all these things matter.
The second lesson that I think we can take from the book is that China has tremendous capacity for infrastructure building and construction. The Pan-Asia Railway, which is the key subject of interest in
Rivers of Iron is a vision that was formulated as early as colonial times in Southeast Asia with the French and the Japanese, and then later Southeast Asian countries, ASEAN actually have this vision of a railway that runs from Southern China all the way down to Singapore and Malaysia.
But it was the Chinese when they finally arrived economically in the 1990s, early 2000s, when their economy grew, when they have acquired substantive technology, the technology and the money to actually fund such a project that we can see this plan being put into action. This vision of a Pan-Asian Railway is being put into action by these bilateral links that they're making through mainland Southeast Asia right down to Singapore. The China-Laos section of the railway has already been built. The part in Thailand is slowly being built. Nothing's happening yet on the Malaysia and Singapore front, but we should see some revivals of these initiatives later on after COVID.
We should never doubt China's ability to carry out these infrastructure initiatives, but having said that and, and an update to the book which I should also mention, the Chinese economy is actually in deep trouble right now. Its banking sector is suffering from debt.
That has a lot of implications for the BRI itself, the Belt and Road Initiative. Because if there's a debt crisis within the Chinese banking system, then the loans and investments that have been promised may not be realised. When observers look at the Belt and Road Initiative, one of the criticisms has been that China is using “debt trap diplomacy,” and I think that's a wrong term to use. And I think scholars have come up to say that; why that's a wrong term to use.
But primarily the one that to me is most convincing is what some economists have already spoken about, that if I owe the bank $100, that's my problem. But if I owe the bank $100 million that is the bank's problem.
So, in this case, it doesn't make sense to me why China would put its banking system under stress in order to entrap these smaller countries around its periphery. I think the risks are extremely high and the gains are, compared to risks, may not be worth it at all.
This is one thing that I should mention as a caveat in terms of whether China would succeed in infrastructure initiatives, because if its banking system sinks under this pressure of loans for overseas infrastructure projects, then we will see the BRI shrinking in size.
And its success may be called into question.
David Austin: Thank you so much for joining us
Selina Ho: Thank you, David.
Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia by David M. Lampton, Selina Ho, and Cheng-Chwee Kuik as well as Professor Ho's other works are
available on Amazon.com .