Les citoyens et les entreprises d’Europe devraient s’intéresser davantage à l’Asie

L’Europe a pris du temps pour reconnaître les conséquences de la montée de la Chine. L’UE n’a pas de politique stratégique en Asie orientale et ses « partenariats stratégiques » avec la Chine, la Corée du Sud, l’Inde et le Japon sont vides de substance. Il est grand temps que l’UE augmente l’intérêt de ses citoyens et surtout de ses entreprises pour l’Asie, écrit Krishnan Srinivasan.

Krishnan Srinivasan est un ancien ministre indien des affaires étrangères et un chercheur au Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) à Uppsala.

Many dire predictions about China’s rise have proved wrong – China is overheating, over-cooling, facing a middle-income trap; manufacturing is slowing, corruption is all-pervasive, investment in fixed assets is too high, consumer demand is down, there is excess capacity in products like steel, real estate is a bubble, there are bad loans everywhere and runaway inflation looms.

China’s weaknesses are apparent: domestic red tape, economic institutions are weak and business costs high. The economy is protected by domestic barriers, entrenched insider elites, the public sector and state monopolies. Export-driven growth and top-down decision making may not yield good results indefinitely.

China is still a poor country, with about 6% of the population in absolute poverty and its per capita income around where Japan was in 1963.The top 10% own 56% of national income, and its Gini coefficient of inequality is well above the United Nations warning level.

There are 200,000 disturbances large and small each year on local issues, unrest due to inflation, centrifugal tendencies in Tibet and Xinjiang, debt burdened banks and public sector.

 So China has serious, even existential, political and economic transitions and demographic and environmental challenges to navigate.

The country has risen in extraordinary circumstances. It has risen with remarkable speed, despite lack of international understanding or sympathy. It has had little say in international organisations. It has no cultural or soft-power outreach and all its neighbours are wary of it.

China’s economy is slowing because of reduced exports, slow investment growth, rising labour costs, its strengthening currency, and its manufacturing sector losing some competitive edge. There is mounting local government debt, and bad loans in state banks because the economy has been addicted to government controls and state credit.

President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang seem alive to the problems, (delete-but they will move the country to greater power status) and

given the successful handling of a possible impending financial crisis, China will move towards great power status. China will consume more, import more, innovate more, invest more abroad for technology and brand names, and move into the knowledge economy. The percentage of intra-East Asian regional trade will exceed the European Union’s to become the highest in the world.

The subliminal message in China’s actions is that China wants to dominate the world, whether in trade, education, technology, military matters and eventually politics.

Domestically, the received wisdom is that economic freedom must spill over into political freedom; as income and education rise, human rights, property rights and civil liberties should follow.  

China could defy this historical logic because the Communist Party sees economic growth as an endorsement and not as a threat. The Party shows no sign of relinquishing power; quite the contrary – it recently circulated a warning about foreign values that were designed to ‘westernise and disintegrate’.

Europe has been slow to recognize the implications of China’s rise. It should make its citizens, and especially its business community, Asia-literate.

It should give space gracefully to emerging Asia in regard to quota and voting rights in international financial organizations. It should regard China’s rise not only as an economic and commercial opportunity but as a strategic event.

Europe has no strategic policy in East Asia and its ‘strategic partnerships’ with China, Japan, India and South Korea are void of substance.

Despite the USA’s obvious reluctance to see Europe engaged in geo-political issues in East Asia, the EU should bring some its vaunted qualities like diplomacy, best practice and persuasion to bear in the region.

To appear ‘less American’ it will win credit in Asia and create a space in the strategic theatre, but with Europe in its present disarray, this may be asking for too much too soon.