Political Stability of China and Russia - Essay Example

Comparative Politics: China and Russia 2009 Introduction Although economically, Russia is now far less stable than Communist China, in the face of global financial crisis the political stability of the two countries, two of the largest world markets, are shouldering varied effects. Outline of Approach This paper would attempt a comparative study on the political stability of these two countries stressing on the situations effecting their decisions and politics. It would try to establish the idea that stability (or instability) comes out of a lively change and that in both the countries dynamic, social, economic and political changes have been continuing for the last two decades causing chaos and control, divisions and unity at the same time. In such changing situations, breakup and unsteadiness may also show contrasting side- effects, like harmony and unity. The paper would like to find out the how such contrasts are finally kept in equilibrium in the two countries. Global recession: Impact on Russia and China at present The falling oil price might cause a major reduction of the GDP of Russia in 2009. The deficiency in long-term internal credit has pushed many Russian companies to borrow from abroad making them exposed to the failing exchange rate. Compared to Russia, China is better equipped to cope with the global slump, less vulnerable to the deteriorating exchange rate with their foreign exchange reserves of some 2 trillion dollars. In spite of this, both Russia and China have now become now politically volatile as an effect of the global slump and old gripes that are now surfacing up and Russia, as incidents in Vladivostok in recent years show, is less geared to hold suppress such unrests back. Neo-Nazi groups1 stepping up hate crimes in Vladivostok. Hitler’s birthday is observed all over Russia by these Neo-Nazi groups with a rise in race related violence. A young South Korean student was physically attacked by a group of seven young Russian in one of the central Vladivostok’s streets in 2007 in the evening. The victim said was returning to the dormitory from local gym. He reported to Vladivostok police who rounded the area to catch the goons but was unsuccessful. Police, later revealed that many such incidents had occurred in that area over that week. Compared to Russia China is far and more competent to tackle such incidents albeit grave social unrests could also imperil the state model of China (Coping with, 2009, Racism in Russia, 2007) Between terrorism and US intervention At a summit meeting in Kazakhstan of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a group of China, Russia and four Central Asian republics in 2005, a unique statement was issued asking the United States to set a time limit for removing its armed bases in Central Asia. Even as the statement supported Bush administration’s pledge of the “war on terror, the declaration stated: “Considering that the active phase of the military anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan has finished, member states ... consider it essential that the relevant participants in the anti-terrorist coalition set deadlines for the temporary use” of military bases in the region”. A representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin told that even though they didn’t press the US to pull out right away, it was “important for the SCO members to know when [US] troops will go home”. Using Washington’s own official policy The SCO stated that the US-led joint forces have brought peace and democracy to the war- ravaged Afghanistan to contend that the American forces are no longer required in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan where U.S airbases were established for the US attack on Afghanistan in 2001. Even in 2009, US president, Barrack Obama, declared winning the war in Afghanistan a tactical priority and promised to send an extra 17,000 troops to Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban's spring attack. However, Kyrgyzstan’s parliament recently voted to throw the United States out of its last armed airbase in central Asia, ruining US attempts to provide troops in nearby Afghanistan (Chan, 2005, Harding, 2009). The SCO (once known as the “Shanghai Five”) a group formed by China, Russia, and the former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan in 1996 was later joined by Uzbekistan in 2001 with the aim to make a “strategic partnership” between China and Russia to develop economic support in exploiting Central Asia’s rich oil and gas reserves. . They made their permanent headquarter in Beijing. All the member-states of the SCO at first approved the US attack of Afghanistan and stayed away from conflicts with Washington to utilize the “war on terror” for their own interests. Moscow employed it to suppress Muslim autonomy in Chechnya2, as Beijing defended an onslaught against separatist in its Central Asian, Muslim- inhabited province of Xinjiang. The authorities in these regions took advantage of the rhetoric of “War against terror” to suppress social strife and political conflict (Chan, 2005, Harding, 2009). Russia/China: Victim to their political legacy . Both Russia and China thus became a helpless victim of their own political shortcomings that gave rise to separatism and ethnic strives in these two countries. China has got some apparent similarities to Russia — totalitarianism, jingoism, protests. The post-Deng3 political regimes of China (from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao) resolutely committed to economic growth and openness to the outside world. Reports in the U.S. State Department's 2007 Human Rights Practices min China noted long-lasting abuses of human rights breaking globally set norms, originating both from the authorities' bias against revolt and the lack of legal defenses for fundamental human rights leading to capricious and long imprisonment, torture, and abuse of prisoners with harshly curbed freedom of speech, the press, meeting, union, religion, privacy, labor rights, and forced birth limitation(Diplomacy, state.gov). The story of ethnic trouble is now overriding China’s far-western province of Xinjiang which even the country’s state-controlled newspapers could hardly hold back. The clashes between Han Chinese and Muslim Uyghurs went off in the provincial capital of Urumqi on July 5th,2009. It was extensively reported-- symbolic of the deep changes taking place in this society, where the communist officials are no longer in total control(Bezlova ,Asia Media Forum). To Chinese political leadership, the city, all the same is a niche for those who want to make a Uighur homeland near the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and a few principally Muslim countries with “stan.” (Jacobs, 2009). Russia/China: Role of U.S. in their political instability Over the past few years, Washington’s presence in Central Asia was becoming a headache for Russia and China. The U.S presence attack of Afghanistan was read by many as a cloaked war in the name of wiping out terrorism, the true aim of which was to fulfill strategic ambitions to install forces into the Central Asian territories of the erstwhile Soviet Union and to dominate over the oil-rich area. In March 2005, another “revolution” in Kyrgyzstan ended in the set up of a new government which was a mediator between the US and Russia, both Washington and Moscow later implicitly supported the Uzbek government that teamed up closely with the US, when it cruelly held back an uprising(with protests over the court cases of 23 local entrepreneurs accused of Islamic militancy and seditions) in the city of Andijian (Chan,2005) of Uzbekistan, apparently to end a revolt by Islamist militants, albeit the hundreds of victims -- probably not less than 750 -- were mainly vulnerable civilians, including children. Russia and China have strongly backed the Uzbeck regime’s stance, ignoring that the poor economic policies and political precincts added to a possible grave Islamist opposition, U.S. policy focusing entirely on a strong safekeeping relationship, paying least attention to human rights, political changes or opening the economy, thus inescapably defying such objectives and saying that they were in the region to prevent growth of Terrorism (Andijon Uprising, crisisgroup.org, Chan, 2005) As the geo-political clashes developed, the SCO growingly came to be seen in Russia as means to buttress its influence over the Central Asian republics and to build a closer relationship with China, to counter the US. Sergei Markedonov, a research scholar at Russia’s Institute of Political and Military Analysis, told the Moscow-based RIA Novosti newspaper that the recent political unrest in Central Asia indicated that Russia, together with China, needed to work as “a regional policeman”. China also has specific strategic interests in Central Asia, it has financed a in Central Asia to Xinjiang province for a substitute source of oil supplies from the Middle East, a plan that could be ruined by US control in the region, or US- encouraged political volatility, and also could encourage ethnic strife in Xinjiang (Chan, 2005). China /Russia: Shape of politics According to Bobo Lo, the director of the Russia and China programs at the Centre for European Reform, the Chinese don’t have much to expect from Russia. They know that historically and tactically it is immensely pro-West. That doesn't mean that Russia looks only to the West for its main aims and ambitions. Yet Russia is part of European civilization, most of its people living lives in the European part and the centers of political and economic power have had been always there, even under the erstwhile Soviet Union. The Russian elite's interests lie in the West. Perhaps they want a good relationship with China, but this is not their main concern and never would it be. It is true that customarily, the Russians felt very endangered by China. But a section now considers that the sense of feeling threatened is changing, if not vanishing. Lo finds the interpretation viewing the China threat in terms of historical grumble due to the "unequal treaties" of the 1860s to be all rubbish. The real threat, according to him, lies in China's steady rise that eventually leads to Russia's steady unimportance in regional and international affairs. The Chinese do not want to attack Russia militarily, as they would lose, the penalty too dreadful. If one asks the Russians how they find the Chinese, they would speak about them much more positively than some years ago. China now is the first among countries with whom Russia is said to have cordial relations. Conversely, if Russian people are asked whether they are for Chinese workers coming in to compensate Russia's labor scarcity, they would obstinately say “no”. Political rivalry, causing political imbalance in the two countries also stems from such social psyche, thinks Lo. According to him, Russia and China have very contrasting goals in Central Asia. Russia wants to re affirm its regional leadership there, China, however, seeking to be one of three strategic chiefs in the region, along with the United States and Russia. Moscow and Beijing are eager to put out any rivalry in Central Asia, albeit such enmity exists. China had no role in Central Asia for two hundred years bur still is keen to enter in the game and in a way not affronting others, principally states like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. How, would they do it? Probably by acting under the veil of pan-regionalism-- the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement for them is the obvious choice, making China look like a good local citizen. China's main concern is not Central Asia, but the United States and the Asia-Pacific region. Its major aim being peace and stability in Central Asia by developing its associations with regional elites. Beijing considers that totalitarian or semi- dictatorial regimes are steadier than democratic ones, and are sturdily committed to abolish chauvinism. A peaceful Central Asia would help to wash down separatism in China, like the Uighurs of Xinjiang (Lo, in an interview, Open Democracy, 2008). Where would we see democracy first, in China or in Russia? The answer to such an immense world concern is definitely quite difficult to predict. Lo thinks that for all the dictatorial tendencies that one finds in Russia in recent years, it still is more democratic and pluralist than China. While China's economy will go on freeing up, its political and social growth will be a very sluggish. The western media, according to Lo, do not give the Chinese leadership enough recognition for the recent which is logical, as according to western standards, China looks like a cruel and bunged political system, whereas Russia appears relatively open. But as foe either country becoming democratic in the western sense, one should take Russia and not China, more keenly. Even though both Russia and China are two big communist empires of 20th century, it is wrong to see them as the same brand of repressive regimes. China and Russia are very different from each other, albeit they both resist outer intrusion by the jingoistic attitudes as they believe in the dominance of the nation-state, but the Chinese leadership does not want the West to get in they way, to make judgments about human rights, as this could eat into their authority—something they feel uncomfortable just like the Russians (Lo, in an interview, Open Democracy, 2008). . Works Cited Foot Notes: (1) Frost’s Mediations, http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/neonazism1.html (2) Russia 'ends Chechnya operation', BBC New, 16 April 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8001495.stm (3) Chechnya [Russia] (2003, http://www.freedomhouse.org/modules/mod_call_dsp_country-fiw.cfm?year=2003&country=2593 (4) Reforms 1980-88, The People’s Republic of China http://www.chaos.umd.edu/history/prc5.html (5) Gittings, John, The Changing Face of China, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005 Russia/China: Coping with Crisis, Oxford Analytica, www.oxan.com Michlig, Georgia J., Racism in Russia overshadows WWII remembrance, Vladivostok News, May 04, 2007 retrieved from http://vn.vladnews.ru/issue567/Vladivostok_by_Brail/Racism_in_Russia_overshadows_WWII_remembrance Chan, John, Russia and China call for closure of US bases in Central Asia, 30 July 2005, retrieved from, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/base-j30.shtml Diplomacy in Action, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/18902.htm Harding, Luke , Kyrgyzstan parliament votes to close key US airbase, 19 February 2009, guardian.co.uk, Bezlova , Antoaneta , News of Ethnic Strife Skirts Chinese Censors ,Asia Media Forum, http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47680 Jacobs, Andrew, Fears Ethnic Strife Could Agitate Uighur Oasis, July 22, 2009, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/world/asia/23kashgar.html Uzbekistan: The Andijon Uprising, Asia Briefing N°38 , 2005 , retrieved fromhttp://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3469 Lo, Bobo in an interview, with )Open democracy , retrieved from http://www.opendemocracy.net/russia/article/Russian-fears-of-China-not-based-in-reality 20 - 05 - 2008 Read More