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US President Barack Obama talks to Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Copenhagen. Photo: AFP
EARLY last decade, the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping announced his so-called 24-character plan for securing China's place in the world. ''Hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at maintaining a low profile, and never claim leadership,'' he declared.
The year 2009 will be remembered, according to analysts, as the moment when China's diplomatic quietness was abandoned and Beijing displayed a clout on the international stage to match its global economic weight; the year Deng's old maxims were renounced. And the lesson for Australia and the United States, as China's audacious diplomatic manoeuvring at Copenhagen has demonstrated, is that they will increasingly have to accept a world in which China is willing - and able - to assert interests at odds with the West.
''Until now it has been possible to say that China's economy has been growing but its political power has been lagging behind,'' says Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University and Lowy Institute visiting fellow. ''Not any more. 2009 has been the year in which China's growing political power has become an inescapable fact of international politics … The idea that we can dictate to China its position on issues is an anachronistic fancy. Copenhagen has been a demonstration of that.''
A dramatic show of China's willingness to exercise global political leadership occurred during the global financial crisis, says White, but its role was largely welcomed and encouraged by the West. Copenhagen, however, has demonstrated - to Western eyes - a less agreeable side to Chinese assertiveness.
Across the developed world, China's brazen stonewalling of attempts to reach a legally binding treaty on climate change was greeted by a stunned, angry and almost visceral response. Australian officials, led by Kevin Rudd, were understood to be irate; US President Barack Obama - who claims his greatest strength is his cool temper - was reportedly stood up by Wen Jiabao and barged in on a meeting the Chinese Premier was holding with other leaders.
The British Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, showed even less restraint, accusing China of ''hijacking'' the summit.
''The last two weeks at times have presented a farcical picture to the public,'' he wrote in The Guardian. ''This was a chaotic process dogged by procedural games … We cannot again allow negotiations on real points of substance to be hijacked in this way.''
Dr Malcolm Cook, the Lowy Institute's program director for East Asia, says that for the first time the world is experiencing the emergence of global powers China and India, which are also developing nations. The results, especially for middle-power states such as Australia, can be unpredictable and frustrating.
''In the past, large powers were relatively rich, like-minded states,'' says Cook. ''That is not the case any more … This was clearly a case of the big boys getting into a room together to cut a deal. That is a big change for Australia. The world is moving towards less of a role for middle powers even though the results have major implications for us.''
The economies of Australia - whose largest trading partner is China - and the US, which owes, on some estimates, more than $US1 trillion ($A1.1 trillion) to China in public debt, are highly dependent on continued Chinese growth. But Western leaders have sometimes been reluctant to accept - at least publicly - the political consequences.
''The way China became central to the management of the financial crisis showed the sheer political weight it now has internationally,'' says White. ''The response to the global financial crisis was seen as the positive side. But now in Copenhagen is being seen as the negative side.''
White says Rudd, as a strategist and Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, understands that China ''won't necessarily play by our rules'' but that the Prime Minister, as a politician, has been unwilling to publicly acknowledge that Australia will for the first time in its history no longer be allied to the most powerful player in the region.
''This should be Rudd's moment,'' he says. ''Australia needs leadership in explaining the brute fact of China's power. I don't think Rudd has been doing a very good job of this. He worries about being too close to China. He has been unable to explain what living with a powerful China will be like … Just because China is more willing to use its power does not mean it is threatening.
''China is deeply committed to order. China values order very highly - in some ways as highly as the US.''
Rudd's reluctance to accept - at least publicly - that US dominance in the region is likely to wane was on stark display earlier this year during the release of the Government's much-awaited 20-year security blueprint. The defence white paper candidly envisaged a future for the region in which ''other powers rise, and the primacy of the United States is increasingly tested''.
But Rudd has pointedly refused to envision such a future. ''No other power would have the military, economic or strategic capacity to challenge US global primacy over the period covered by this white paper,'' he said at the press conference in May to release the white paper.
Rudd was also less willing to publicly chide China's role at Copenhagen, though he was understood to be furious. In his first press conference yesterday since returning from the summit, he acknowledged ''resistance'' from developing countries but refused to endorse Britain's claims that China hijacked the summit.
''The negotiations among many countries proceeded very effectively - and with various other countries, did not proceed effectively,'' he said. ''We had some resistance from various developing countries against that. The important thing, however, is that the alternatives at the end of the day were this - the complete collapse of negotiations, and no deal whatsoever, or the deal that we were able to deliver, which provides three specific breakthroughs for the future.''
China's military spending and strength remain far behind the US, but its strategic influence is clearly expanding. The Copenhagen summit showed that China is not merely prepared to abandon Deng's calls for a low profile on the global stage, but is able to muster considerable support among other developing nations.
Leslie Gelb, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior US defence official, says China has begun to challenge US policy at international forums by positing itself as the leader of poorer renegade nations and adopting a ''spoiler role''.
''China is emerging both as the number two power in the world and as the number one spoiler of multilateral action - from global warming to sanctions against North Korea,'' he wrote this week on the US website, The Daily Beast.
''In addition to China's being stronger than it used to be, the United States is weaker than before and spread thin in military commitments and wars. In particular, America is weaker economically, the weakest it's been comparatively in almost 60 years. It hardly ever was in a position to dictate solutions even at the height of its powers, but today, even its clear position of primacy has been diluted.''
DESPITE Premier Wen's snub to President Obama, China's minimalist position at Copenhagen allowed both nations to claim the summit as a victory. Obama resisted signing the Kyoto protocol or lifting emission targets, but was able to secure an agreement to curb emissions from developing nations, a move he described as a ''meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough''.
In turn, Wen was able to return from the conference without committing to legally binding targets and was able to trumpet the role that Chinese diplomacy had played in forging an agreement. ''The communication process was open, transparent and highly efficient, which played a very important role in securing the outcome,'' he said. ''China always does that with the utmost sincerity and effort.''
The accusations that China hijacked the summit have been strongly denounced in Beijing. A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, yesterday hit back at Miliband's criticisms and accused Britain of seeking to avoid its obligations to developing nations. ''The statements from certain British politicians are plainly a political scheme,'' she said. ''Their objective is to shirk responsibilities that should be assumed towards developing countries, and to provoke discord among developing countries. This scheme will come to nothing.''
Cook says China's outlook - like any nation's - will remain self-interested and its diplomatic tactics will inevitably become more assertive as its power increases.
''What is coming under question is the standard view that Chinese diplomacy is quiet and is based on a charm offensive,'' he says. ''Replacing Wen with a vice-minister at the meeting with Obama was certainly either confidence of their new presence in the world or arrogance. It was a protocol sleight - the Chinese clearly would have understood the ramifications of it … But countries act in their own domestic interests … Anybody who expected China to take a leading role in finding a solution in Copenhagen was not being realistic.''
Clearly, China's diplomatic wrangling at Copenhagen marks a significant change in posture from Deng's calls to shun the global limelight. But his 24-character plan came almost 20 years ago in the wake of the massacre in Tiananmen Square and the fall of the Soviet empire. His call for China to tread softly on the world stage was, in part, a response to calls for Beijing to replace Moscow as the flag-bearer for international socialism. China wanted no such role.
Today, the results are plain: China houses a surging capitalist-style economy and spreads exports across the world - and it now emits more greenhouse gases than any other nation.
China flexes its muscles
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