China presents itself as a schizophrenic power: a developing country on select international issues, but in other matters a rising superpower with new muscular confidence that supposedly is in the same league as the United States.
At the recent Copenhagen climate-change summit, China was the former: It loudly emphasized its membership in the developing world and quietly used poor countries, especially from Africa, to raise procedural obstacles in the negotiations.
Make no mistake: China, the world’s largest polluter whose carbon emissions are growing at the fastest rate, was the principal target at Copenhagen. But China cleverly deflected pressure by hiding behind small, poor countries and forging a negotiating alliance with India and two other major developing countries, Brazil and South Africa, who together are known as the BASIC bloc.
China escaped without making a binding commitment on carbon-emissions cuts, at least for now. But carbon-light India, with per-capita emissions just 26 percent of the world average, undercut its interest by getting bracketed with the world’s largest polluter.
Let’s be clear: On climate change, trade liberalization, currency and related issues, China — despite its emergence as a financial and trade Goliath — defines itself as a developing country and expediently seeks to join hands with poor nations so it can shield practices like manipulating the value of its currency, the renminbi, maintaining an abnormally high trade surplus, restricting goods manufactured by foreign companies in China from entering its markets, and continuing to bring on line two new coal-fired power plants every week.
But on political and security issues, it sees itself as without a peer in Asia, and is greatly enthused by the idea of a U.S-China “Group of Two.”
