The initial reaction from the Chinese leadership to the sight of packed airplanes smashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Center was shock, expressed in a letter from president Jiang Zemin to his counterpart, George W. Bush. After that subsided, it was replaced by concern that an angry United States would lash out militarily against Afghanistan and Pakistan, causing instability along China’s sensitive southwestern border.
It took only a little longer for Beijing to realize that America’s fury – and Mr. Bush’s decision to devote much of his country’s military and economic might to his project of reshaping the Middle East – presented an enormous opportunity for a budding superpower looking to take its place on the world stage.
Before Sept. 11, 2001, China was a secondary player, even in Beijing’s own backyard. When it tried to assert itself – as it did in 1996 by firing ballistic missiles over Taiwan in a ham-fisted attempt to influence presidential elections there – it was quickly forced to back down by Washington and its warships.
Ten years later, U.S. President Barack Obama – his military overstretched elsewhere, his government some $1.5-trillion in debt to Beijing, partly as a result of having to pay for the wars of the past decade – is left trying to convince Asians that his country is still willing and able to play its old role as the region’s policeman. Many now say the United States is in the process of being eclipsed by China, with its full coffers and growing military strength, as Asia’s dominant power.
The view from Beijing
“I think Sept. 11 was a tragedy for the U.S. and the whole world,” begins Yuan Peng, director of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, taking much the same line as Mr. Jiang did in his Sept. 12, 2001, letter to Mr. Bush. But then he turns to the consequences for his own country. “It made the U.S. start focusing on the Middle East rather than Asia-Pacific, which made China’s international environment less intensive than we expected, which was a good opportunity for China.”
While running for office in 2000, Mr. Bush said he saw China as a “strategic competitor” rather than a “strategic partner,” the term his predecessor Bill Clinton preferred. The more adversarial assessment was backed up by a Pentagon study Mr. Bush commissioned shortly after assuming the presidency. But after Sept. 11, he reverted to the partner language, realizing he needed Beijing’s acquiescence, if not support, for the wars he planned to launch in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Among the benefits to China: the black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us language of the day allowed the ruling Communist Party to cast its long-standing confrontation with Muslim separatists in the western province of Xinjiang as a “terrorist” problem.
“Before Sept. 11, nobody noticed there were groups of a terrorist nature in Xinjiang, like the East Turkestan Movement,” said Mr. Yuan, whose institute is seen as affiliated with China’s Ministry of State Security. “[Afterwards] people in Washington gradually noticed they were part of the terrorist group, and that in China we have the same concerns as the U.S.”
The United States made several mistakes in the after of Sept. 11 that facilitated China’s rise, Mr. Yuan observes, the Iraq war first and foremost.
And China?
“From the Chinese side, I don’t see any big mistakes. We seized the opportunity to improve our economy and improve our relations with our neighbours and improve our relations with the U.S.”
The view from Tokyo
If there was a moment that crystallized Beijing’s new heft in East Asia – and the corresponding loss of influence by Washington and its allies – it was the September, 2010, showdown between Japan and China over a smattering of uninhabited islets known as the Senkaku in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese. A quarrel over the fate of a Chinese fishing captain who rammed two Japanese patrol boats in the disputed waters escalated into a test of wills. First China called the Japanese ambassador on the carpet no less than five times. Then Beijing cancelled all government-to-government contacts and told Chinese tourists to avoid visiting Japan.
