Lonely China woos its neighbours

President Xi Jinping meets Hamid Ansari, centre, and Thein Sein, right, in Beijing on Saturday. Photo: AP

Analysis

Greg Earl

China might be an economic giant but its latest combination of bilateral visits only underline how it is still a lonely superpower.

At the weekend President Xi Jinping rolled out the welcome mat for Indian vice-president Hamid Ansari and Myanmar President Thein Sein. Later this week he travels to South Korea for his fourth meeting with President Park Geun-hye, but the first in South Korea.

These visits underline how China is trying to rebuild ties with neighbours after a year in which it has sparked widespread nervousness across Asia with maritime boundary claims.

India has a new tough-minded Prime Minister in Narendra Modi, who is still poised between the economic benefits of a better China relationship and traditional Hindu nationalist reserve driven by long-term strategic rivalry.

Myanmar was once a reclusive client state but has made a dramatic bid for a more independent status with its democratic reforms, which have drawn widespread Western diplomatic and financial support.

And South Korea is more economically exposed to China than Australia but seems to be more able to flaunt its US defence ties with less Beijing criticism than Australia.

China Foreign Affairs University professor Su Hao says the Chinese government is trying to create a "Beijing way" with new regional institutions and a role model for maintaining strong economic growth in a diverse developing country.

"Change ourselves, influence the world," he says is the government's pitch. "If we can make China rich, make China stable, then the Asia Pacific will be better."

A globe-travelling Chinese academic, Zha Daojiong of Peking University, interviewed during a visit to Beijing last week, underlined how China was trying to woo its neighbours with the role model of the Shanghai free-trade zone.

"The Americans are talking [in the Trans-Pacific Partnership], we are doing in Shanghai " he said.

But China's unusual lack of firm allies for a rising superpower was underlined at the weekend when one of is longest and closest friends, North Korea, launched missiles in apparent anger over Xi's visit to South Korea's new leader ahead of North Korea's Kim Jong-un.

China deserves credit for apparently taking more serious action to rein in Pyongyang's antics and this is the real basis for a much closer relationship with South Korea to which Australia needs to pay close attention.

But the Chinese government's decision to release new official maps which upgrade its claims in the South China Sea and in India's north east before the weekend visits shows it has a lot to learn about charm offensives.

Greg Earl travelled to Beijing with assistance from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

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