China changes the equation

Asia File

Surely, China has a great sense of timing. The launch of Shenzhou V, carrying the first Chinese astronaut into space, came just days before US President George W Bush's trip to Asia for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bangkok.

It sent out a message that even Bush couldn't have missed "" a new superpower was rising in Asia and ought to be taken seriously. Suddenly, China appeared to the world in a very different light. The fastest-growing economy in the world also emerged as a nascent technological giant.

The propaganda value of the timing was not lost. The day before Shenzhou V's October 15 launch, the New York Times came out with an elaborate scientific report on the space flight, complete with meticulous diagrams; a story suggesting that China's foreign currency reserves would exceed $ 400 billion in 2003; an analysis that China's tourism would grow 22 per cent a year through 2013, turning it into one of the world's greatest tourism economies; a feature on the bustling Pudong area of Shanghai, noting that as many as 2,000 new buildings of all sizes had been approved for construction; and an editorial that declared: "Beijing is finally coming close to fulfilling its ambition of being one of the modern world's great powers."

When was the last time that a country, other than Iraq and Afghanistan for very different reasons, got such a build-up in the American media? More importantly, media adulation of China is now beginning to influence decision-making America as well, and that's what must be the most pleasing to the Chinese leadership.

There are two things that have struck American observers and bred a new respect for China: the relative openness of its space programme and the thoroughness of its technological preparations. "It's extremely surprising how much China has revealed," said Phillip S Clark, a top expert on the Chinese space programme.

"This is full throttle compared to what they used to do." For the first time, it was possible to follow on the Internet what the Chinese were doing without having to go through demystifying exercises and that pleased a lot of people.

The Chinese manned flight came at the end of a $ 2.18 billion research and development programme spread over a decade, when China constantly improved the technology it had initially received from the former Soviet Union and later from American companies like Hughes.

There has been no major launching failures of Chinese space rockets since 1996 and some observers expect China's space efforts to eclipse those of Russia and the European Space Agency within a decade.

That's a nice compliment indeed. Time magazine has called the Chinese feat "a great leap skyward" and everybody expects some more space fireworks between now and 2008, when Beijing hosts the summer Olympics. A space station is probably next, a Hubble-like space telescope after that, and, down the road, a Chinese on the moon.

Is China asserting its case for being considered a power equal to the US? Beijing doesn't put it exactly this way, but Americans are already bracing up for a new kind of space competition.

As an analyst at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University has pointed out, the Chinese have a "very comprehensive" space programme and the US would be foolish to take it lightly.

But not all Americans are apprehensive. Some have called for cooperating with the Chinese on building a permanent human presence on the moon.

Others, more down to earth, see a great business opportunity in using low-priced "" and now proven reliable "" Chinese launchers to put commercial satellites into orbit. That, some analysts believe, may have been the reason why the Chinese are peddling their space hardware on their many websites.

As a New York Times report pointed out, "the bottom line is that China is now entering the astronaut game with some notable high cards as well as the world's fastest growing economy," and, the paper said editorially, "an economically resurgent China is certain to increase its influence over the coming decade."

This has already been in evidence. As President Bush was shouting "terror, terror" from the ramparts of APEC in Bangkok, Chinese President Hu Jintao was flashing his mystic smile. He had reason to be happy. He was among friends who treated him not as an arm-twisting adversary but as a valuable economic partner trying to please, assist, and accommodate its neighbours.

Last year, for the first time, China replaced the US as Japan's biggest source of imports while Japanese exports to China surged by as high as 39.3 per cent. And China has now become South Korea's leading trading partner.

Clearly, the equation has started to change and we are confronting a source and a market so huge that we have got to learn to live with it.