Op-Ed Contributors

Debate: China's role

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-02-21 07:35

China is now officially the world's second largest economy. So should it play a greater role in world affairs? Or should it concentrate on solving its domestic problems first? A professor and a journalist express their views.

Qiao Xinsheng

A world to win and little to lose

After China officially overtook Japan as the world's second largest economy, some countries have made a greater clamor that Beijing must undertake more international responsibilities.

Some Chinese scholars believe that China's development is inseparable from that of the world, and global prosperity and stability cannot be realized without Beijing's contribution.

But, as a responsible power, China should first handle its domestic affairs properly and reduce poverty at home. Second, it should fulfill its obligations to the Charter of the United Nations and the 300-plus international conventions it has signed. Third, it has to help solve the problems concerning world peace and development. And fourth, it should address the common challenges facing humanity as a whole.

Frankly speaking, the responsibilities mentioned above are common to all UN members, not unique to China as a rising power. In fact, in recent years China has not only reduced poverty drastically at home, but also made huge contributions to the global fight against poverty. For example, food and other material assistance provided by China to countries in Africa has played a crucial role in alleviating humanitarian disaster.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China carries a special mission to defend the Charter of the UN. Whenever a war or conflict has broken out in any part of the world, China, under the guidance of the basic principles of the UN Charter, has mediated truce and promoted peaceful solution.

To resolve burning issues in the region, China has participated in regional economic cooperation, promoted regional economic development and made efforts to create favorable conditions for the conflicting parties to hold talks. To deal with issues such as climate change, terrorism, extremism, separatism, infectious diseases and transnational crime, China not only joins hands with other countries to set up regional cooperative organizations, but also takes preventive measures against potential trouble.

As is well known, the world political and economic system, led by the United States since the end of World War II, is an unbalanced order. For instance, the Bretton Woods system, initiated by the US in 1944, has established an international financial order with the US dollar as the reserve and settlement currency. The system has not only consolidated US domination over the world, but also kidnapped other countries' financial systems.

To cite an example, when the US unilaterally terminated convertibility of the dollar to gold, the whole world fell into a financial crisis. Another example is the effect of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) dominated by the US. Though GATT was said to promote fair trade and international trade growth by cutting tariffs, it in fact favored developed countries to get raw materials from and dump industrial goods on developing countries.

After the developing countries became the world's factories, the US turned GATT into the World Trade Organization (WTO) to cement its dominance in world trade by emphasizing service trade and protection of intellectual property rights.

Though the UN Security Council has established the principle of reaching consensus through consultation, the US, as the only superpower, prefers taking unilateral action to deal with international issues and regional conflicts. This has created latent danger for the world's peaceful development.

China should not be satisfied only by conducting its own business well under the existing unfair international political and economic order. It should strive as much as possible to change the unfair global political, economic and military order.

The spread of poverty and outbreak of wars have their roots in the unfair international order, established by several industrialized countries after World War II. It is because of this unfair order that the developed countries gradually marginalized the developing countries, reduced them to the lower chain of economic development and exploited them economically. The developed countries can use the international monetary system, which they still control, to shift their financial crises to the rest of the world.

It is thus time that China joined hands with other UN members to change this order and make substantive contribution to world peace and development. Besides energetically calling for changes in WTO rules and a thorough reform of the International Monetary Fund's voting system, China should advocate the formation of a UN peacemaking force, setting up of isolation zones in hot spots of conflicts and providing the necessities for local people's survival and development to permanently resolve the issues left over by Western developed countries.

On the whole, China must play a model role in resolving international disputes and defusing potential crises, which could otherwise lead to conflicts.

The author is a professor of law at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, Hubei province.