China is fast emerging as a major power in the world of international trade and many countries, including Malta, are beginning to find themselves uncomfortably in its shadow. Some of them are positioning themselves to live with this reality. Although small, Malta has every interest to explore possibilities open to it in this development.

One such possibility is Malta’s potential to serve as a hub, serving Chinese exporters to the Mediterranean region. Our tourist sector and our English-language schools come readily in this equation.

Malta and China have different cultures, some as different as the relative size of the two countries.

Like all free people with a sense of national dignity, the people of these islands cherish their traditions and values, on which there is no room for compromise. At the same time, Malta cannot turn a blind eye to reality which is eloquent about unforgiving competition. This reality imposes its own imperatives, which apply to Malta and everyone else.

Awakening giant

The imperative is the quest for peace in freedom and the need for cooperation in pursuit of progress. By progress, one means improved living standards, the fight against disease, illiteracy, pollution and so on.

China is an awakening giant faced internally by some of these problems. Externally, it has the potential of disturbing the balance of world power for good or for bad.

Napoleon once compared China to a sleeping giant who will move the world when it wakes up.

Exotic, mysterious China has a resplendent past if one goes back to the Ming mandarinate of the l6th century. When Europe was infested with warring cities, China had an efficient government, presiding over its sprawling and united country. It knew the power of the pen and invented gunpowder as well as the compass. Errors and deliberate policy options isolated China and removed it for many years from the prosperity league table.

Modern China is a product of the past. Its history is unique. While nations and empires rise and fall, China endures. The l9th and 20th centuries were for China a time of shattering collision with the outside world and of tumultuous change within China itself. It would take a history stretching from the years of isolation to the opium wars, the “century of humiliation” that brought down the decaying imperial government and plunged China into a phase of warlordism, the Japanese invasion and civil war, Mao’s Long March and his defeat of Chiang Kai-Chek and the three decades that followed, encompassing the tug-of-war with the Soviet Union, the “great leap forward”, the cultural revolution and, finally, the emergence of China under a pragmatic leadership.

Today, China is a player in its own right in the world of power politics, and is rising fast in the order of nations.

Precipitous growth

We have seen China convulsed by Mao’s presence. Since his death, China has become less communist and more Chinese. Its present leaders think in global terms. They are also communists – Chinese communists. The emerging situation was correctly foreseen by Lee Kuan Yew, who commented to President Nixon in the l960s that “Mao is painting on a mosaic. Once Mao dies and the rains come, what he has

painted will wash away”.

With Mao out of the way, China’s leaders have embarked on a policy of precipitous economic growth. Its leaders are self-confident, realistic and tough-minded achievers. They have focused on security more than expansion, and are more interested in internal development than in foreign adventures.

But, although the “Gang of Four” and other dogmatics that championed the flame of ideological purity have receded into oblivion, China is still communist – at least at the very top.

For all these reasons, the uneasiness with China sometimes tends to go deep. As China displays stronger economic and military sinews, the unease will not be allayed. This is where today’s realities have to be carefully assessed. In foreign policy, China is not set on confrontation, although it insists on being recognised. What will determine the future of China is the political course it will adopt tomorrow: whether China will proceed further on the path of liberalisation or towards authoritarian retrenchment.

Single-party rule

For all its economic liberalisation and relative increase in social freedom, China remains at its core in the grips of a single-party political elite, fully in control of the State apparatus.

As China rapidly expands its economic base, spurred by an ongoing privatisation programme, and as its productive apparatus goes up the ladder of added value, China will have a greater stake in peace and stability in the world markets which supply it with raw materials and consume its output.

The hope in the “free” world is that a confident regime, possessing real legitimacy, will emerge. There are powerful people in modern China who understand that economic development depends on attracting more and more investment. In China, domestic tranquillity depends on rising living standards.

In this context, it is clear that for China to respect human rights and pursue the course of liberalisation is not a dream of starry-eyed western idealists, but a sine qua non, if China is to continue to flourish without hitches. There is room for positive new initiatives from China in this area. If they are forthcoming, they will constitute a defining signal.

Realistic view

It is not realistic, under present conditions, to expect communist dictatorship to be maintained in China, where economic change and ideological loss of face started what seems to be an irreversible problem. Once China has gained the respect it considers to be its due, is should increasingly be more at ease with itself and with the world.

Looking at China from the outside, that great country could no longer be ostracized or kept in deep-freeze outside the family of nations. As President Nixon once said: “There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.”

The free world should not abandon a policy of firm restraint in respect of human rights abuses in China. Meanwhile, Beijing seems to be fast coming round to the view that its interests can best be served by accepting the rules of international civility.

Malta has an obvious interest in the above and, as an autonomous member of the international community, as well as a state in sympathy with the people of China; the way Malta plays its cards may have a bearing, however minimal, on future Malta-China relationships.

It is in the mutual interest of both countries that this relation flourishes to bear fruit.

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