IN RECENT months, China's international image has taken a bit of a beating.
 

It began last December when Beijing blocked an international climate change deal, frustrating the United States and Europe. Then earlier this year, China was more than usually strident in its opposition to a US arms sales deal with Taiwan. Other niggling issues have led Western commentators to pile on the invective, calling China "cocky" and saying it was "bursting with hubris", among other things. References have been made to Germany's rise as a great power in the 20th century and the two world wars that resulted.
 

Closer to home in Asia, China finds countries in South-east Asia becoming more inclined to hedge their relations with their giant neighbour by developing their ties with the US and other emerging powers, such as India.
 

As China's rise has thrust it onto the centre stage of the global community, it is finding a world more than a little fearful and anxious about its intentions.

So perhaps it should be no surprise that a new think-tank has been set up to brainstorm ways to ensure that China's rise – into a modernised, medium-level developed country by 2050 – is peaceful and smooth.
 

The brainchild of one of the country's policy formulators, Mr Zheng Bijian, the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy is so new that its office bearers did not yet have cards in its name when they were here last week. But its key actors have been busy pushing their ideas already, beginning last September with a forum on cooperation on clean energy between China and the US.
 

Its executive vice-chairman Wu Jianmin, a veteran diplomat, addressed the FutureChina Global Forum here last week, and spoke of some of his ideas for the think-tank. He expanded on them in a separate interview with The Straits Times.

A key idea is to build a series of communities of interests based on the concept of "peaceful rise". First articulated in public by Mr Zheng in 2003 to counter international fears over China's growing economic and political might, it has since been taken up by Chinese leaders, including President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
 

Also known as "peaceful development", the concept is based on three "nos": no expansion – that is, China would not follow in the expansionist footsteps of the colonial powers; no hegemony; and no alliances. The doctrine asserts that China can thrive economically only in a peaceful environment and should serve as a catalyst for global peace.
 

"People everywhere talk about China's rise. We'd like to emphasise 'peaceful'," said Mr Wu.
 

He identified three key issues that China has to address. The first concerns the fear, apprehension and suspicion that the rise of a country with a population 1.3 billion has generated internationally, and how to dispel these feelings.
 

The second is resources and environment: A resource-poor country, China's competition with other countries for resources can cause friction. Indeed, many are critical of what they see as China's resource grab. Meantime, 30 years of unbridled growth have degraded the country's environment.
 

The last challenge is societal: growing income disparities causing social discontent and threatening social stability.
 

Internationally, the strategy for building communities of interests involves identifying common interests and then building cooperation and interdependence in these areas.

Thus, in the case of the US, the think- tank is hoping to work on new areas of complementarity – for example, combining US innovations with Chinese investments. It is with this in mind that the China-US Strategic Forum on Clean Energy Cooperation was held last year. As a measure of the seriousness with which Beijing is taking this, Premier Wen met the US delegates to the forum while Vice-Premier Li Keqiang spoke at it.
 

With China's neighbour and rival, Japan, Mr Wu said that Beijing would seek cooperation on energy efficiency, clean energy and the environment. This would involve technology transfer, but Tokyo would have an incentive to participate in such transfers as Beijing's failure to tackle pollution would also adversely affect Japan. Mr Wu also identified finance as another area for cooperation with Tokyo, possibly in developing an Asian currency unit.
 

With South-east Asia, Mr Wu suggested the possibility of setting up a fund to build infrastructure – roads, railways, ports and airports, telecommunications – to provide impetus for growth. This is not a new idea. China last year proposed such a fund to the tune of US$10 billion (S$13.8 billion).

To reduce friction from the competition for resources, such as in Africa, China is already looking at cooperation with France for exploitation of resources on the continent.
 

China has been criticised in recent years for not being proactive enough in taking on a role that matches its influence in the world. So if the idea of building communities of common interests gets off the ground, it is a step in the right direction.

But there will also be demands that it tackle specific bilateral issues – such as the border issue with India – and that it be a responsible stakeholder in broader issues such as climate change.
 

The Chinese government needs to not just shed its passivity, but also to embrace global leadership in a way that does not threaten the existing international system. In doing so, it will have to manage the expectations of its people, whose nationalistic sentiments tend to flare up in reaction to slights, real or imagined, accompanied with demand for hard-line action from their government.

 

Courtesy of The Straits Times, 27 July 2010.