BBC World:Of Deference and Defiance: Vietnam’s historically ambivalent attitude towards China.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/vietnamese/world/2009/10/091027_china_vietnam_commentary.shtml

I'm starting to think this blog should be entitled, India, Vietnam and the World.



A CRACKDOWN ON CYBERSPACE’S NATIONALISTS:

There was a time in Vietnam when only the arrests of pro-democracy activists or important figures of the Catholic Church dominated the headlines. Now a new, more unlikely group has joined the serried ranks of those persecuted by Vietnam’s authoritarian regime. Over the past few months a growing number of nationalists critical of Hanoi’s perceived softness towards Beijing have been bearing the brunt of the latest state-led crackdown on journalists and bloggers. With more than 21 million internet users in a country of 87 million inhabitants and an estimated 3 to 4 million blogs, the Vietnamese state is finding it increasingly arduous to police the internet, which has become a major medium of expression for those critical of its policies. Over the past year and a half China has been at the centre of a number of fierce online discussions, and has attracted the ire of Vietnam’s army of online patriots, whether it be due to its upped naval assertiveness around the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands, or to the controversial decision by Nguyen Tam Dung’s government in 2007 to allow the Chinese company Chinalco to exploit Vietnam’s Central Highlands’ massive reserves of bauxite ore. This decision has given way over the past year to a barrage of criticisms from all sorts of individuals and groups, from the revered war hero General Vo Nguyen Giap to leaders of the Buddhist and Catholic religious communities. Attention has been drawn to China’s disastrous track record in terms of environmental degradation, and to the fact that Chinalco, like many other Chinese multinationals, imports everything “from its workers to the toilet seats they use”, thus rendering little service to local communities. Most interestingly, the announcement that US aluminum giant Alcon was also planning to mine two sites in the Dak Nong province of the Central Highlands garnered hardly any attention. Amongst other issues of concern raised by Vietnamese bloggers was the continued heavy damming by China of the Mekong River, which is the lifeblood of large swathes of Vietnam’s south but which originates in China.
Whereas in the past, the Party actively encouraged grassroots nationalism, it would seem now that for segments of the Vietnamese leadership, the blogosphere’s increasingly strident Sinophobia has become more of a diplomatic liability than a strength to draw upon. The recent clampdown appears to be spearheaded by a shadowy military intelligence organization called GD II (General Department II), or, in Vietnamese, Tong Cuc II.
General Department II, reportedly first founded in the early 1980s, is now run by arch-conservative and China sympathizer Vice Defense Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh, and has become the favoured weapon of the Conservative faction in its struggle for power prior to the XIth Party Congress, due to take place in 2011.



POLITICAL JOCKEYING AMONGST THE PARTY LEADERSHIP PRIOR TO THE XIth CONGRESS:

The XIth Congress is of major importance as it will determine key leadership positions and the political power structure for years to come. In the absence of genuine ideological disputes, Hanoi’s China policy seems to have now become the principal dividing line in-between the liberal and conservative factions. GD II’s repression of nationalist bloggers, say most experts, can be interpreted as a demonstration of power by the conservatives, who, with the recent elevation of their leader To Ruy Ha to the Politburo, appear to be gaining a certain ascendancy. It is of course, extremely difficult for anyone outside of the Party leadership to predict the course that Vietnam’s byzantine and opaque factional in-fighting will take. It is well known however, that Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung’s liberal economic policies have irked a fair number of the more traditional-minded Party members, who fear that economic liberalization will gradually lead to a desire for greater political freedom, thus putting the Party’s hold over society in jeopardy. Although Tan Dung can still draw on the younger, less ideological members of the party that are resolutely in favour of his outwards looking economic reforms, Vietnam’s recent financial woes have also made it ever more reliant on its northern neighbour for investments. Indeed, there are persistent but as yet unconfirmed rumours that this spring, as Vietnam teetered on the brink of a currency crisis and fiscal collapse, it resorted to asking China for a financial bailout package. This growing dependence on Beijing has thus been savvily instrumentalized by the conservative fringe to their political advantage. Already ugly rumours, presumably launched by GD II, have started to surface, accusing Prime Minister Dung of embezzlement in the government-tendered Chinalco bauxite project. This would not be the first time that GD II has been used by the China faction to interfere in party politics before a national Congress. Indeed, this recent swell of rumours bears strong resemblances with the smear campaign that GD II was also suspected of triggering before the 10th national Congress, in 2006, known as the ‘T-4 Scandal’, which accused several current and prior Communist leaders of being on the CIA’s payroll. Amongst those accused was the General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had already drawn attention to GD II’s troublesome habit of political meddling in 2004 after it was discovered that a wire-tapping section of the organization had been used to spy on political rivals. The rising influence of GD II is a troubling development, and has fostered fears among some members of the Party leadership that if military intelligence services are not reined in sooner or later, Vietnam could be heading towards a configuration similar to that of Pakistan, where segments of the ISI, Pakistan’s notoriously powerful military intelligence agency, have formed alternative power structures that follow their own private agendas. For the time being, however, and despite a law on National Security adopted by the National Assembly in 2004 defining the responsibilities and limitations of security agencies, GD II does not seem to have been successfully restrained.

VIETNAM’S SEEMINGLY SCHIZOID CHINA POLICY:

This recent bout of labyrinthine politicking has only added to the complexity of Vietnam’s relationship towards China, which to the outsider can sometimes appear unfathomable, if not downright schizoid in nature.
Indeed, the same year that GD II’s grunts were swooping down on nationalist bloggers, the VPA finalized a 1.8 billion dollar deal with Russia for six state of the art Kilo Class submarines. With an annual defense budget estimated by Jane’s Intelligence Review to be at barely 3.6 billion dollars, the purchase of the flotilla is a substantial investment, and is a clear sign to Beijing that Hanoi is intent on developing an effective sea denial strategy in order to protect its maritime territorial claims. Veteran Vietnam watcher Carlyle Thayer has defined Vietnam’s China policy in the following terms; “Vietnam is not pursuing a balance of power strategy in relation to China’s rise. Nor is Vietnam bandwagoning with China in an effort to ward off possible coercion or to gain economic advantage.” Vietnam’s leadership, he claims, are “pursuing a mix of engagement, omni-enmeshment and hedging strategies towards China”.
While this may seem at first glance to be both impossibly multi-faceted and strategically nonsensical, one could argue that this ambivalence towards China, which oscillates in-between deference and defiance, is hardly a recent development. It is in fact historically ingrained in Vietnam’s strategic perception of its neighbour.




PARALLELS AND LESSONS DRAWN FROM HISTORY:

In his book entitled China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry, published in 2006, American Professor Brantly Womack states that “The Sino-Vietnamese relationship presents an interesting case of a long-term asymmetric relationship that has moved through a full gamut of possible variations.” Indeed, Vietnamese identity is unique in that it has formed itself both through and in opposition to Chinese influence. After Vietnam was forcibly incorporated into the Han Empire in 111 BC, it was occupied by China for almost a thousand years, until it finally achieved its independence at the sunset of the Tang Dynasty in 939 AD. For the next 900 years, Vietnam enjoyed an almost uninterrupted period of self-rule, accepting grudgingly to enter into a tributary relationship with China, but successfully repelling waves of numerically superior invading armies during the Yuan and Ming dynasty eras.
Inevitably, during the thousand years of Chinese rule, Vietnam was influenced by its occupiers. Chinese agricultural practices and military methods of organization were adopted and much of the Vietnamese language’s political, literary and military vocabulary to this day comes from Chinese. While the process of Sinicization or Hanwa was intensive among the Vietnamese aristocracy and elites (even after the departure of the Chinese, the Chinese civil service examination system remained the official method of selection of government officials, and young Vietnamese aristocrats were schooled in Confucian classics), the peasantry remained wedded to its traditional ways, and unlike the nobility, refused to abandon Buddhism in favour of Confucianism.
One could almost draw a parallel with current events unfolding in Vietnam : segments of the new aristocracy (i.e. the party elite) are tilting towards China, whereas the common people, represented by the country’s ever more numerous bloggers and cyberactivists are the staunch defenders of Vietnamese national identity and interests.



When it comes to evaluating the cultural imprint left on Vietnam’s diplomacy with China, it has been claimed that the Sino-Vietnamese relationship is rooted in the Confucian concept of pupil-teacher, and that if tensions have occasionally flared in-between the two states over the past forty years it is due to the fact that as Vietnam consolidated itself as a modern nation after the Indo-China war, it has sought to replace the traditionally demeaning tutelary relationship with a more equal one. This was no easy task, as Brantly Womack explains; “With such a neighbour, Vietnam is caught in a standing dilemma. It needs peace with China more than China needs peace with it, but if it allows China to push it around, to move the boundary stone, it loses its national substance and autonomy.”

It is this seemingly imponderable dilemma that Vietnam’s leadership will therefore have to overcome in the following years. One thing is certain however; by cracking down on its nationalist bloggers and journalists, the Party runs the risk of exacerbating the historical divide in-between the Vietnamese peasantry and elites with regard to China, and in so doing, of depriving itself from what Ho Chi Minh once called Vietnam’s most potent “secret weapon”- its people’s fierce patriotism.

India's Soft Power Advantage.

The meteoric rise of both India and China must have become the most discussed geopolitical trend of the past decade. And now, at a time when most economies are still floundering in the wake of the global economic crisis and both Asian states project almost insolent growth rates of 7 to 8 % for the coming fiscal year; at a time when a steady stream of media reports indicate an upsurge in Sino-Indian border tensions along the Himalayas, it appears ever more obvious that the XXIst century will be increasingly defined not only by how Delhi and Beijing interact with the rest of the world, but also by how they choose to interact with each other.

All too often, India and China are somewhat summarily lumped together as Asia’s “rising powers”. In reality, however, India and China are at two very different stages in their development and are quite simply not yet boxing in the same category. In terms of pure hard, conventional military power, China is leagues ahead of its transhimalayan neighbor. This is due, in no small part to the fact that India’s steadily growing military budget, which accounted for 26.8 billion dollars in 2008-2009, is still nowhere near that of the PRC, which some Pentagon analysts estimate to be close to 140 billion dollars.
(China is notoriously opaque when it comes to the detailing of its military budget) Diplomatically speaking, China is a permanent member of the UNSC, India, despite all its lobbying in favor of a reform of the Security Council, is not. Finally, in terms of economic power, China which reaps the rewards of a 20 years head start over India in the domain of economic liberalization, can boast a GDP, which, at 4.2 trillion dollars, is about three times and a half that of India (1.2 trillion dollars).

There is however one area where the playing field is more level: Soft Power.
Soft power is frequently simply conflated with economic power. If that was the case, Beijing would once again be far ahead. In reality though, as Joseph Nye famously pointed out, a nation’s soft power is far more than a simple panorama of its achievements in terms of exports, FTAs and sustained growth rates. Soft power, he says, is “the influence and attractiveness a nation acquires when others are drawn to its culture and ideas.” In the information world we live in, the “image branding” of nations, as well as their “likeability factor” have acquired greater significance, especially so for two states that are not only countries, but also civilizational states struggling to let the rest of the world come to terms with their relatively recent rise.

While both states are acutely aware of the importance of soft power and cultural attractivity, India seems to hold a sizeable advantage in that, unlike China, it needs to do little to render its culture appealing to the rest of the world. The process is natural, almost organic. This is consistent with India’s long history as both a birthplace of ideas, and of peaceful cultural diffusion. Whereas China invaded and occupied Vietnam for more than a thousand years, India spread Buddhism and the Hindu concept of sacred kingship to Southeast Asia not by sword and flame, but via trade and itinerant missionaries. The fact that ancient India never engaged in long-term occupation or widespread forcible conversion in Southeast Asia is not without significance. The peaceful propagation of Buddhism is a multi-millennia old bond that India shares with the rest of the Asian continent that acts as a testament to the power of its civilizational pull. In stark contrast, Chinese Confucianism, deemed too elitist and Sino-centric, was only adopted by certain other countries’ leading classes (as in Vietnam) but never by their peasantry.



When it comes to defining India’s more modern ‘soft power’ Bollywood is often cited, and with reason, as a prime example. The glittering, flamboyant films churned out by Mumbai’s gargantuan film industry have long been popular in certain regions of the world such as the Middle East. Over the past decade, however, Bollywood has been making inroads elsewhere. One of the most popular current viral videos in India shows a man in the depths of Tajikistan passionately humming and singing a Bollywood theme song to his bemused Indian visitors-all in perfectly memorized Hindi. When the Indian TV soap opera ‘Kynunki Saas Bhi’ was dubbed in Dari and aired on Afghanistan’s Tolo TV it was such an astounding success that it became a national obsession. 90% of television-owning Afghan families would follow the show, sometimes incurring the wrath of mullahs who viewed it as being responsible for the desertion of mosques during evening prayers. In certain African countries, such as Senegal and Mali, villagers often trek out miles to the closest projection room just to be able to watch one of the latest Bollywood films. Little does it matter that they do not understand the dialogue or that it is set in a distant land; the themes of love, family and marriage they evoke are universal, and the sparkling opulence of the dances, costumes and songs have the gift of enchanting the minds of moviegoers far less jaded than those in the West.


(An Arab Cable TV advert advertising Bollywood films)

India’s cultural influence is not only being felt in the developing world, however. Books by Indian English-speaking writers such as Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh and Arundhati Roy have wooed critics across the world and become instant modern classics. Films by progressive female Indian directors such as Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta have revealed that Indian films are more than escapist fantasies, and can be simultaneously contemplative and entertaining. The triumph of Slumdog Millionnaire at last year’s Academy Awards was not only that of a slick, elegantly crafted melodrama, but also that of a certain depiction of contemporary India, warts and all, which nevertheless swayed the hearts of the jury.



This positive image of India is actively reinforced in the West by the increasingly affluent and politically self-confident Indian diaspora. This is particularly the case in the US, where families of Indian origin earn on average twice as much as their standard American counterparts, and where the Indian business lobby has gained such political clout that Hillary Clinton was derisively nicknamed the ‘Senator from Punjab’ during the 2008 election. In contrast, Chinese overseas communities, traditionally wealthy in Southeast Asia, do not fare as well in the West. While the average revenue of a Chinese American family is above that of their White American counterparts, the Chinese community registers very strong income disparities, and its members tend to be overqualified for their jobs. They also have not, as yet, manifested the same political activism in Congress as their South Asian counterparts.
In Great Britain, curry has now replaced fish and chips as the national dish of choice, and it is said that curry houses in the UK now employ more people than the mining and shipbuilding industries combined. Mumbai has now become one of the fashion capitals of the world, and fashion aficionados of the world no longer only stalk the runways of Milan, Paris and New York.

All this seems to indicate that the flow of information in-between India and the world is no longer unidirectional, as in the past, when India would only attract pampered Western youths trawling the subcontinent in search of a hypothetical spiritual redemption. India is gradually regaining its place as a historical trendsetter, and the influence it is having on the rest of the world, and particularly on the West, is far more profound and extends beyond simple pop subculture.



What now of China? As the perfectly choreographed spectacles of the 2008 Olympics and the recent 60th anniversary of the PLA seem to display, no other country in the world devotes as much time and energy into projecting a positive image as China. Why then, does it not seem to be catching on?
Part of the reason may be that China’s cultural diplomacy, unlike India’s, is more didactic than dialectic, and focuses more on an officially sanctioned discourse than on an open exchange of ideas. Take China’s growing global network of Confucius Institutes, which are designed to provide instruction in Chinese language and culture, and which work to create partnerships in-between Chinese universities and foreign universities in their host countries. The Institutes also operate under the tutelage of the ‘Chinese Language Council’ a government body, which has issued strict guidelines stipulating that the Institutes, as well as their host universities, must comply with political directives on issues deemed by Beijing to be ‘sensitive’, such as the international status of Taiwan or Tibet, or any form of historical investigation pertaining to ethnic minorities.

All in all, Chinese public diplomacy has been highly selective in nature. If cultural diplomacy is, as some have claimed, a form of ‘elaborate storytelling to the world’, then China is only telling half the story. One interesting case study is that of the famous mariner Zheng He who plied the waters of the South China Sea and of the Indian Ocean, and maybe even beyond with a fleet of 28 000 men, and who is now being held up as an emblem of China’s great seafaring past, as well as a symbol of the PRC’s supposedly peaceful maritime intent. Conveniently left out of the historically sanctioned narrative is the fact that Zheng He’s expeditions, were not only economic and pacifist in nature, as it is claimed, but were also a political extension of the Imperial tributary system. When a ruler, such as the Sri Lankan king Alakeswara, refused to pay tribute and thus recognize himself as the Chinese Emperor’s vassal, he was promptly deposed and ferried back to the Ming Court in chains. (Another fact that is frequently glossed over is that Zheng He was a Hui Muslim, and could probably never have risen to such preeminence in today’s Han dominated China)
Even Chinese international blockbusters, such as ‘Hero’ or ‘House of Flying Daggers’, while entertaining and often beautifully shot, invariably deal with a recurring theme: the photogenic and ethnically Han heroes, battling through pristine landscapes, end up by sacrificing themselves for the good of the nation. This may explain why such films, which have known some success in Western movie theatres, leave audiences in the developing world cold. An African villager or Central Asian goat tender has little time for the lofty ideal of national self-preservation in the face of fissiparous tendencies. He wants to watch something he can relate to, and whistle a catchy tune on his way home.



The main reason underlying India’s Soft Power Advantage over China, however, is undoubtedly related to the nature of their respective regimes and societies. India’s tradition of tolerance for diversity and of religious syncretism, when combined with its pluralist democratic system, vibrant mass media, and English-speaking elite, render it an infinitely more inspiring model. China’s slightly Orwellian PR efforts cannot hide the deeply unattractive nature of its regime. Its soothing discourses on its harmonious society collapse in on themselves each time a blood-soaked repression of Tibetan or Uighur protestors is caught on film, and its insistence on its peaceful rise is put into doubt when reports surface of Chinese warships harassing US vessels in international waters. Beijing’s habit of nurturing close ties with unsavory regimes such as Sudan, Myanmar and North Korea does little to improve matters. Indeed, while China’s non-interference policy in the domestic affairs of human right trampling states may earn it some degree of appreciation abroad, of a state respectful of national sovereignty; it only adds to its image, particularly in democratic societies, of an unscrupulous, amoralistic entity.

This is something that China, for all its flawlessly orchestrated displays and declarations of good intent, is powerless to prevent. India, for its part, is far from perfect. Its relations with its neighbors in South Asia, who tend to view it as a regional bully, are deplorable, and in its quest for energy security and its need to hedge against either Pakistan or China it has been forced to cozy up to some pretty shady regimes as well, thus running the risk in the long term of casting a shadow over its shiny democratic visage. The Bollywood films that have elicited such an enthusiastic response abroad showcase all too often a clean, pale-skinned bourgeois India disconnected from everyday reality. But as far as Rising Asia’s PR war is concerned, for India the battle is already won.