Australian premier Kevin Rudd challenged today's China by citing its past and questioning its official terminology, writes Tony Kinsella.
THE RELATIVELY smooth passage of the Olympic torch through Canberra last Thursday makes several statements, some quite significant. The authorities had learned from the messy and chaotic experiences in London and Paris, and the broad boulevards of Australia lend themselves to crowd control.
The Australians insisted that their police be in charge, effectively sidelining the twitchy Chinese torch guards who are reportedly drawn from that country's crack Flying Dragons and Sword of Southern China special forces. Such forces are not renowned for their crowd-handling skills, and those of the Peoples' Liberation Army probably less so than most. The main tension was between pro-Chinese and pro-Tibetan demonstrators, rather than between torch-bearers and protesters.
Canberra probably owes the leeway it had in handling the torch to the incisive foreign policy of Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd. On April 9th last, Rudd delivered an exceptional speech at one of China's leading academic venues, Peking University.
As a new prime minister, and former diplomat, Kevin Rudd could have been forgiven for using smooth platitudes. He chose instead to courteously, yet learnedly, challenge today's China by citing its past and questioning its official terminology.
He reminded his audience that 2008 is the 110th anniversary of China's Hundred Days Reform movement, a failed attempt by the old empire to modernise itself rather as its Japanese neighbour had just done. He also recalled that one of the university's better know alumni was Lu Xun (1881-1936), a Chinese literary hero, a principled dissenter and an unyielding critic of authoritarianism.
The message that top-down radical reform does not always succeed, and that all societies benefit from challenging intellectuals - however awkward they may be, was not lost on his audience.
Perhaps his most telling thrust came with his reflections on the role and meaning of friendship. Mao Zedong once defined Beijing's approach to foreign relations by saying: "The first and foremost question of the revolution is: who is our friend and who is our foe?"
The more common Chinese word for friendship, "youyi" apparently carries distinct overtones of blinkered loyalty and mutually beneficial back-scratching. Rudd chose another term, "zhengyou", which carries connotations that a true friend is one who quietly tells you unpleasant truths you need to hear.
As a "zhengyou", the Australian prime minister, welcomed China as "a responsible global stakeholder" and pointed out some of the duties such a status imposed, not least in terms of addressing the Tibetan question through constructive dialogue in addition to deploying troops and dispensing largesse.
Rudd's speech was well received with laughter and applause, and the official Xinhua news agency reported that: "Eyes lit up when [Rudd] used this expression . . . it means friendship based on speaking the truth, speaking responsibly. It is evident that to be a 'zhengyou' the first thing one needs is the magnanimity of pluralism."
Rudd's careful and cordial criticisms were made considerably more palatable by being delivered in fluent Mandarin, avoiding some of the unfortunate distortions that pepper many official translations from Chinese.
The Xinjiang first secretary Wang Lequan was reported as having called for Tibetan protesters to be "battered resolutely" at a press conference in early March last. A translation using terms like "stopped", "arrested", or "dissuaded" would have sounded so much better.
Could the Chinese government's English-language media ever stop using Little Red Book terms like "splittism"? Separatism sounds so much less aggressive, not to mention less Monty Pythonesque!
Rudd as the new leader of a major Pacific nation predominantly peopled with European migrants, spoke two days after China and New Zealand had signed a free trade agreement. These were neighbourly signposts to our common future. The news from Beijing last Friday that contacts with representatives of the Dalai Lama were in the pipeline offers another.
China was no cuddly Asian version of a Nordic democracy when Beijing handsomely beat Istanbul and Paris to host the 2008 Olympic games, but this 3,500-year-old polity must move, however cautiously, towards its own version of democracy.
Although it is probably some distance away from Paraguay's historic vote on April 20th when the alliance led by Fernando Lugo ended 61 years of one-party rule, this also has something to say about our new planetary order.
Asuncion's ascension concludes the transition to largely centre-left democratic governments for Latin America's 800 million-odd inhabitants. In days of yore no Washington administration would have calmly accepted such a transition. This absence of Yankee subversion, never mind intervention, speaks volumes about the relative decline of US power, and Washington's almost exclusive focus on its Iraq mess. We are part of the slightly more than 20 per cent of the world's population who live in the developed world.
Almost half of the planet's six billion inhabitants are to be found in the emerging Asia/Pacific economies. These economies provide the locomotive for global growth, with much of that power coming from domestic demand and inter-Asian trade.
India is the world's largest democracy, with Indonesia not far behind. It is difficult to find a term to describe today's China. It is most certainly neither communist nor democratic.
Authoritarian and autocratic are perhaps more appropriate labels. It is also a society in full metamorphosis, with a culture that prizes order. This is a heady cocktail which can make it both nervous and unpredictable.
Russia's incoming president Dmitry Medvedev has pointed out that "no non-democratic state has ever become truly prosperous". Speaking at an economic forum last February, he went further to pledge that "One of the key elements of our work in the next four years will be ensuring the independence of our legal system."
We would do well to remember that the economic transformations of our societies drove our transitions from monarchy to democracy. Wealthier, property-owning Chinese, will create an independent legal system, but for such a system to work, the ability to select one's political leaders is vital.
Ask any Australian or Paraguayan.