Dynamics among Nations by Root Hilton L.;

Author:Root, Hilton L.; [Root, Hilton L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 3339699
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

Does China Challenge the Global Legitimacy of Liberalism?

Introduction

One of the key questions of growing global interconnectedness is whether systems remain stable as their parts are altered. How, for example, will changes occurring in what were once peripheral states in Asia or in the Middle East affect the system of international relations?

China’s behavior mattered little when it operated in relative isolation. This is no longer the case. Since the early 1990s, one of the fastest-growing features of global trade shifts has been China’s economic interdependence with other countries of the former periphery. China’s ascendency is already creating fissures in the liberal international regime. Its expanding commercial network is transforming into a political and intellectual network that transfers its model of developmental authoritarianism to trade partners. Will China redefine system-level rules, changing not just the strategy of the players but also the behavior of the system of international relations?

China’s relations with other nations are conducted under strict cover of secrecy. The government does not make public the amount, designation, or results of its overseas assistance or investment budget, and any Chinese citizen who inquires into the effects of Chinese overseas assistance is committing a felony.

A leak has occurred in China’s efforts to prevent information diffusion about its overseas investment, revealed in its dealings with Sri Lanka, a small country of 21 million people in one of the most densely populated corners of the world. A democracy since its independence in 1948, Sri Lanka has a long pro-Western history of parliamentary debate, a well-organized opposition party, an independent media, and an articulate, internationally educated, and well-traveled middle class, unlike most of China’s developing world partners.

China’s growing presence there provides an opportunity to explore microscopically what happens when a systemically important country emerges that does not share Western ideals, and gives a perspective on some large questions about two key aspects of China’s challenge to liberal internationalist agendas. The first concerns its ability to alter the regulatory role of international institutions on such issues as the rule of law and its relationship with the polity, the limits to state sovereignty, the international community’s rights to humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect. The second concerns the possibility that China may construct an alternative international regime.

To observe these larger trends, this chapter examines the origins of populist opposition to Western models of development in Sri Lanka exemplified by the “sons of the soil” movement. During in the Tamil war, the West, pushing for settlement, spurned Sri Lanka’s requests for the weapons with which to gain a total victory. Sri Lankan leaders turned instead to China and found a willing arms supplier. China’s rapid transition to a full-fledged supplier of loans and its use of direct “secret aid” have engendered the top-down flow of rewards, and leveraged anti-Western populist resentment into a rejection of the Western discourse of good governance. There are implications both for international liberalism as a global norm-setter and for global development policy.

Geopolitical Divergence

Sri Lankan

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