Willy Lam reports on the recent G20 and China’s rise to superpower status.

Commentaries that the just-held G20 Meeting was in fact a G2 affair between the United States and China are certainly overblown. Yet there is no denying that the London conclave was a landmark that heralded the People’s Republic of China’s acquisition of quasisuperpower status – and that henceforward, Beijing will be aggressively projecting both hard and soft power round the globe.

This is despite the fact that Beijing’s most eye catching proposal – replacing the US dollar with Special Drawing Rights of the IMF as a new world currency in which countries hold their reserves – was not seriously discussed at the global summit. There was more recognition of China’s position as the leader of the developing world – including the four BRICs powerhouses. In key photo sessions, President Hu Jintao was seated next to Queen Elizabeth II, as well as the host, Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Moreover, China, with the help of Russia and Brazil, won the argument that more weight be given to the voices of developing states at the IMF, and that after two years, both the IMF and the World Bank would consider appointing candidates from outside the US and Europe to be their presidents.

Another result of the G20 meeting, establishing a supra-national regulatory authority to monitor the operations of multinational financial companies such as hedge funds, also reflects Beijing’s criticism that it was Washington’s failure to oversee its bankers and fund managers that precipitated the global financial tsunami in the first place. President Hu also scored points during his meetings with world leaders on the sidelines of the G20 summit. His first tête-à-tête with President Barack Obama reflected the new realities of what many consider “the most important bilateral relationship in the world.”

The focus was on economic cooperation: Obama reassured Beijing that the US would rein in protectionism while Hu dropped strong hints that his government would go on purchasing US government bonds. Obama said nothing about Tibet, human rights, or Beijing’s alleged manipulation of the renminbi. Beijing was also successful in re-establishing its “strategic partnership” – apparently on China’s terms – with France during a meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy in London.

Bilateral relationship had been frozen since Sarkozy met the Dalai Lama late last year. On the eve of the Hu-Sarkozy mini-summit, Paris issued a statement to the effect that it was opposed to Tibetan independence. In March, the Hu administration was able to put pressure on South Africa not to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama. The leader of the exiled Tibetan movement and Nobel laureate was originally scheduled to appear in a meeting on world peace to take place in Johannesburg.

Beijing’s new-found ability to isolate the Dalai Lama seems a triumph for what Chinese diplomats and scholars call the country’s Red Line diplomacy. This means the Chinese leadership will draw “red lines” around areas and issues deemed vital to China’s core interests – and which foreign powers will not be allowed to touch. Regarding the Dalai Lama, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said last month that Beijing was “firmly opposed to any country making official contact with the Dalai Lama or providing support or a platform for his secessionist activities.”

The flexing of China’s diplomatic muscle has also coincided with the confirmation by Defence Minister Liang Guanglie that the nation was going ahead with building one or more aircraft carriers. While meeting his Japanese counterpart Yasukazu Hamada last month, General Liang said that “among the big nations only China does not have an aircraft carrier. China cannot be without an aircraft carrier forever.” At the same time, the People’s Liberation Army’s world-class engineers are putting out ever-more sophisticated submarines, missiles, spaceships.

Irrespective of how individual nations might be responding to China’s “quasi-superpower diplomacy,” China’s – and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership’s – much elevated global profile has satisfied many of their citizens’ sense of patriotic pride. A recent article by the official China News Service pointed out that “the focus of attention at the G20 meeting has boiled down to the G2 – the wrangling between the US and China.” Official commentators have also made much of the suggestion that henceforward, the world would have to abide by a kind of Pax Americhina – or Chinamerica.

Diplomatic analysts have noted, however, that the Hu leadership’s new-found assertiveness could backfire – and even invite more countries in the Asia-Pacific Region to join in the “anti-China containment policy” that is purportedly being spearheaded by Washington. Sovereignty disputes between China on the one hand, and Japan and the Philippines on the other, have flared up since the New Year over islets in the East and South China Seas. Confrontation between American “spy” vessels and Chinese ships in the same area has also escalated. It remains to be seen whether Beijing’s hardball diplomatic and military posture can win support among nations and peoples who want to see the end of a US-dominated, “unipolar” world order.

The other possibility, however, is that the CCP administration’s aggressive moves could further stoke a “China Threat theory” that is already spreading among many of the Middle Kingdom’s nervous neighbours. ■