What kind of neighbor is China?

This week I appeared on the BBC’s “World Have Your Say” program, conducted and aired on Google Hangouts. The theme of the discussion was as above, “What kind of neighbor is China?” The program sought to explore this question in the context of escalating regional tensions. Below is a 23 minute edited version.

I’m happy to have/discuss any comments. All the best, JL

Ways forward for Viet Nam in the Southeast Asian Sea

Viet Nam is a late-industrializing country of 90 million people brimming with potential. Long one of East Asia’s poorest economies, Vietnam over the last two decades has benefited from rapid economic growth, sharp declines in poverty, and rapid, sustained increases in its external trade. Despite a recent dip in economic performance and ongoing concerns about its institutional deficits, Vietnam’s prospects retain considerable promise.

Nor is the country isolated as it was in the past. As recently as twenty years ago, Viet Nam’s diplomatic ties were severely underdeveloped; whereas today, the country has ties with over one hundred countries and has taken increasingly prominent roles in regional and international organizations. With the country’s particular mix of comparative advantages, not least its location at the intersection of large scale East Asian trade routes, a brighter, more prosperous future for Viet Nam would appear within reach.

There is, however, considerable uncertainty about the country’s future. On the domestic front, there are no shortages of pressing challenges. Most of these relate to governance and leadership challenges and the need for greater transparency and accountability in its government. Social inequalities are also on the rise, and with them perceptions of inequity. Somewhat optimistically though not naively, I do believe many these domestic challenges can and must be resolved soon, though admittedly the speed and scope of any changes will depend mainly on the political courage and imagination of the country’s present and future leaders and the vigorous growth of Viet Nam’s emerging civil society.

What is profoundly less clear is how Viet Nam, together with East Asia and the world, will deal with key regional challenges and, in particular the increasingly expansionary and even imperialistic behavior of Beijing that has once again ignited regional tensions.

No country in the world is as experienced as Viet Nam is in coping with China. Indeed, for Vietnamese, maintaining stable and minimally friendly relations with Beijing poses formidable and unremitting challenges. Managing these ties is difficult in the best of times. On the one hand there is the need to deal with an aggressive neighbor in sensitive but self-respecting, without unduly compromising national sovereignty and interests. On the other, there is a need to manage national impulses. For Viet Nam, strength and unflinching bravery in the face of external threats occupies a sacred place in the national imagination. Without such a disposition and resolve there would simply be no Vietnam.

Let us be clear, Viet Nam needs and stands to benefit from a stable and peaceful relationship with its northern neighbor. But what is Hanoi to do when demands from across the border grow untenable? When Beijing’s disposition and conduct contravene international law and infringe on sovereignty and states’ rights in such a brazen way?
This is precisely the uncomfortable position that Viet Nam’s leadership faces today; a position which, whatever its precise origins, must now be confronted and addressed.

In the last two weeks Chinese authorities (on Hainan and in Beijing) have announced their intent to enforce invalid sovereignty claims over virtually the entirety of the Southeast Asian Sea. The areas covered by these bogus claims include disputed islands and rock features, parts of neighboring countries’ 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zone, and international waters. The announcement that all non-Chinese fishing vessels would need to seek Chinese authorities’ permission to operate in international waters is inherently illegitimate. And if enforced, analysts point out, would amount to state-sanctioned piracy. Beijing’s implicit rejection of disputes over islands and features is highly regrettable as well as illegal.

Beijing’s illegitimate claim

In the best of possible worlds, Beijing would step back from its outsized claims and work toward a multi-lateral agreement in a spirit of friendship, cooperation, and regional prosperity. Yet at present it appears unlikely that any one state could persuade Beijing to be more reasonable and law-abiding in its approach. A concerted effort is needed, despite Beijing’s insistence that only bilateral negotiations will do. In this instance, bilateral negotiations will not do. The very community is at stake.

Finally we come back to Hanoi. What are Vietnam’s leaders to do, confronted as they were with unreasonable claims from without and mounting demands from their population to speak out? In the past, Viet Nam has been left to deal with its aggressive neighbor alone, through secret negotiations and arm-twisting. Yet one gets the sense that the age of secrecy and intimidation has past. Given the institutional similarities and communist heritage of the two states, there has been a tendency for Hanoi (in particular) to imagine that the two countries’ share a common ideological basis. And yet in the external relations between these two countries it seems ideology does not count for much.

At last year’s Shangri-La forum in Singapore, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung spoke eloquently to regional leaders about the need for an era of ‘strategic trust,’ To skeptics and those outside East Asia, the notion of ‘strategic trust’ might seem hopelessly vague, empty rhetoric tantamount to a nothing more than a call for ‘good neighborliness.’ If anything, the term ‘strategic trust’ reflects the Vietnamese’ and indeed the world’s perceived need to be sensitive and face-saving but non-apologetic amid escalating regional tensions. To wit, such a posture can be contrasted with Beijing’s emerging doctrine of “strategic uncertainty,” to quote the words of Kurt Campbell, the United States’ Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

In respects, it would appear regional leaders would not be themselves be capable of responding to the current crisis. At some point, ordinary citizens must speak out in the interests of responsible foreign policies based on the principles of sustainability and community. This is precisely the point made in a petition to the United Nations now circulating among Vietnamese and people around the world, calling on the world body to promote a just solution to Viet Nam and China’s maritime disputes, and which has garnered 10,000 signatures within days.

The tensions unfolding in the Southeast Asia Sea are the result of Beijing’s clear and profoundly worrying tendency toward primitive accumulation. If this is what Beijing means by peaceful rise we all have reason to worry. Assertions of sovereignty over international waters cannot be treated strictly as a bilateral concern. Nor can patent disregard for international law in the approach to regional disputes. It is necessary for Beijing to recognize that its behavior adversely interests of all countries in the Asia-pacific region. And that behind its smaller neighbors stands a community of nations.

Could Beijing be compelled to face a multilateral forum if East Asian countries join forces to take China to the international court – as a sort of community class action? One possibility, suggested by perceptive observers and supporters of Viet Nam’s case is that they trade in their almost indefensible or ‘non-policy’ that claims “undisputable sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel islands,” and that “all foreign activities in these areas without Vietnamese acceptance are illegal and invalid” for a clearer policy that can generate broad support from other claimants in Southeast Asia, and from non-claimant countries in Southeast Asia and beyond, perhaps laying the foundation for a common policy for SEA countries and the region.* Another step is to bring the whole case to the Arbitration Tribunal of UNCLOS, from which Beijing has threatened to quit.

Viet Nam is a coastal nation that has born the full brunt of imperial power and competition. If we have learned anything from the 20th Century one would hope it would include the need to avoid imperial behavior. Hanoi’s acquisition of six Kilo Class submarines from Russia and its intent to arm Viet Nam’s long coast with Russian military technology is understandable. But it is certainly not the bright future Vietnamese young people and their elders long for.  What can be done?

Some have suggested Hanoi should make it clear to Beijing that it would not go into military alliance with other countries detrimental to Beijing’s legitimate interests, but that it would be willing to support and join alliances to protect its own legitimate interests, including the peaceful use of international maritime territory in in the Southeast Asia Sea. Such a stance asserts fundamental illegitimacy of Beijing’s claims while also signaling due appropriate sensitivity.

The road ahead is unclear. But if anything thing is clear it is that Viet Nam cannot afford to deal with Beijing alone as it has in the past. To do so effectively, Viet Nam must put forward its case in the courts of international law and make its case known in sphere of global public opinion; allow people’s diplomacy to take its course. Modest but real signs of progress in such areas as human rights would certainly help in this regard. Hanoi can  welcome patriotic sentiment and national unity while providing judicious counsel of the need to avoid the sorts of fascistic nationalism seen in other countries. Viet Nam is not China and its interests will be served poorly by wistful, introverted inaction. Hanoi’s future relations to Beijing should resemble those Seoul’s rather than those of Pyongyang.

JL

 

The Rise and Survival of Nguyen Tan Dung: A New Era in Vietnamese Politics

Vietnam retains a one-party political system in which basic freedoms are systematically curtailed. And yet politics in the country have suddenly become fluid, animated by the intensifying and unprecedentedly open competition that has emerged within and around the Communist Party of Vietnam. Vietnam, it seems, has entered a qualitatively new stage in its political development, one in which the country’s politics are more transparent, uncertain, and interesting than that to which we have long been accustomed.

Some of the most striking manifestations of these developments are found at the commanding heights of the party. Here, the twisting political fortune and enigmatic personae of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung provides a particularly interesting illustration of Vietnam’s changing political scene.

The prime minister’s unfolding career is at once fascinating and consequential. Appointed to his post with considerable fanfare and a reform billing, Dung’s tenure has been defined largely by his seemingly weak stewardship of the economy. Even as Dung himself is but one player in an economy beset with institutional weaknesses.

Vietnam’s recent economic slowdown, though owing in part to the global recession and corresponding dips in foreign direct investment, has had much more to do with the country’s institutional deficits. These include unhealthy doses of patronage, a dire lack of transparency, and self-interested political fragmentation. Vietnam’s longstanding leadership vacuum has not helped matters. And Dung’s leadership in economic affairs could certainly be questioned. On his watch, Vietnam’s economy has been buffeted by a spate of multi-billion dollar scandals involving state enterprises and threatened by an accumulating mountain of bad debt.

At critical junctures, the prime minister has expressed contrition for his alleged shortcomings. Yet his faults must be viewed within a broader perspective. For all his shortcomings, Dung acts within the institutional constraints of the party, one whose power and pathologies pervade the economy itself.

Critics of Dung, including advocates of real political reform operating within and outside the party and government, have highlighted the prime minister’s ties to ill-gotten wealth. They have emphasized his allegedly self-serving political ties to police and military agencies. And they have bemoaned his apparent failures with respect to such critical issues as human rights and constitutional reforms. Staying ahead in party politics, these critics and skeptics assume, is what matters to Dung, rather than real reforms. Indeed, there has been speculation in some quarters that the prime minister is intent on positioning himself to assume the post of president when his term as prime minister expires in 2016, a post that Vietnam’s revised constitution has invested with greater powers, combining leadership of the party, state, and in some respects the military along the lines of the current Chinese model.

Even within the party, Dung remains controversial, as is reflected in a number of testing moments. Dung’s reappointment as prime minister in 2011 was hard-fought given his underwhelming performance so that his reappointment was at times in real doubt. At the close of 2012, the prime minister was nearly pushed from power by his own Politburo comrades only to be “saved” in spectacular fashion by dissension within the ranks of the Central Committee, which invited the entire Politburo to reflect on its collective shortcomings.

Finally, last spring, when the party-controlled National Assembly held confidence votes on the performance of ministers and officials, it was Dung who garnered the most disparate pattern of favorable and unfavorable ratings.  All of these trials might be expected to have severely weakened Dung’s stature. Yet the opposite seems to have occurred, particularly in the recent past.

Over the past several months, Dung has reasserted himself as Vietnam’s most formidable and intellectually spirited leader, and he has done so both on the international and domestic fronts. At last June’s Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Dung gave what was perhaps the most effective speech in Vietnamese diplomatic history, communicating in exceedingly clear terms Vietnam’s perspectives on regional security and on the need for regional powers to act responsibly.

More important still have been Dung’s victories in recent party and government elite personnel decisions. Here Dung has not only survived Politburo power plays, but he has pulled maneuvers of his own by blocking the appointment of rivals’ favorites while at the same time installing a number of “rising stars” widely seen as his allies. Take, for example, the former education minister, deputy prime minister, and politburo member Nguyen Thien Nhan’s recent reassignment to head the Vietnam Fatherland Front, an umbrella organization of mass organizations. Initial speculation that the reposting amounted to a demotion for Nhan has swiftly given way to the sense that Dung had masterfully maneuvered Nhan to clear the path for bringing additional allies into the Politburo and government with an eye on the next party congress in 2016.

What are we to make of Dung? While he has spoken clearly of the need for reforms, his time in government has not seen meaningful reforms materialize. And does this even matter? Is Vietnam’s political system simply too fragmented and patrimonial for any single political leader to make a critical leadership difference? Given its location, ample supplies of low-wage labor, and people’s astonishing work ethic, Vietnam remains full of potential. Yet the country continues to be dragged down by largely self-inflicted wounds. Vietnam’s party and state have ample supplies of bright and talented people. Still the state machinery lacks the leadership necessary to overcome its own feudalistic paralysis.

Is Dung the man to change this? Don’t count him out. In recent days, pessimism regarding Dung’s promise has faded in dramatic fashion largely owing to the prime minister’s 2014 New Year’s message. In it, Dung delivered a powerful, substantive, and persuasive case for the need for reforms. His speech was unprecedented in its intellectual force and clarity. Among other things, it called for greater democracy, accountability, and transparency, as well as the need for a more competent, disciplined, and market-regarding state.

In his speech, Dung made repeated references to Ho Chi Minh — mandatory in Vietnamese politics. Clearly, however, it is Dung’s energetic reform message and commensurate actions that Vietnam most needs. In Vietnam’s politics, the collective demands of intra-party consensus have long trumped individual initiative and in this way have tended to discourage and suffocate reform-minded leaders. More recently, interest group politics has produced a debilitating political stalemate. In this context, the survival and ascendance of Dung provides a most intriguing development.

Dr. Jonathan D. London is a professor at the City University of Hong Kong where he is Core Member of the Southeast Asia Research Centre and Programme Leader for the Master of Science in Development Studies. London is editor of Politics in Contemporary Viet Nam (Palgrave 2014) and numerous scholarly articles and book chapters.

The above article was written for the cogitASIA Policy Blog, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington D.C.