China's balancing acts

Chinese borders have seen an unusual increase of tension during the last week. Well, the unusual is not the tension; it is the increase in many fronts at the same time.

With the warrant from the ICC of The Hague over Sudanese president al-Bashir, came also a complicated gambling for the Asian giant. The business with the African country play an important role in China’s economy, but it implies a risky game involving Human Rights. Just in case everything goes wrong, Beijing announced this week a new deal with Iraq to be provided of oil.

Closer to home, North Korea has lightened up a few alarms. This time it wasn’t the worrying about Pyongyang’s nuclear program, but the increasing troubles with their southern neighbors. The trigger has been this time the joint war games that every year Seoul does with the USA. After the shut down of the direct communications between the two countries, it followed an increase in the rethoric of war, including soldier mobilizations and plans of defence. At the end it won’t reach to anything real serious, but for now China and Russia have already asked to both parties to take it easy and slow down the war machine.

The fact of North Korea testing a long range missile and launching a satellite doesn’t help, and worries both the US and Russia, this one asking for a space free of weapons.

Precisely with the USA China had another encounter during this week. The Department of Defense protested last Wednesday because a few Chinese boats shadowed an American unarmed ship, with civil contratists on board and in international waters. Apparently, a few rapid small boats and an intelligence slip approached the American slip -and a destroyer- with a provocative attitude. It is not clear if the provocative attitude was that the Chinese sailors lost their clothes and were doing obscene signs in their underwear to the Americans or it was something else.

Truth about the incident is not so clear. What the DoD is not telling us is that probably those ships were looking for submarines instead of mapping the sea bottom, as it was stated at the beginning. They have the equipment for that, and they are used for that. At the end, it seems that both Chinese and Americans are willing to shut down the incident for the greater good. The classical “I don’t show your dirt if you don’t show mine”.

Inside China, problems haven’t ended. To the risk of deflation and the corruption, this week joined the party the recurrent problem of Tibet, with protesters all over the world asking for the end of the occupation, lasting now for 50 years. Washington maybe accepted to shut up with the sea incident, but they won’t do it with this. And, obviously, Beijing didn’t like it. The banning of foreigners in the area didn’t help the image of China abroad. It appeared as an oppressor of Human Rights. And balancing acts with Human Rights is a risky gamble that China shouldn’t play.



Photo: Gopal Chitrakar/Reuters
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