China, which celebrated on October 1, the 50th anniversary of its existence as a Communist state, appears poised on the threshold of world power status. This transition confronts it with the complexities of global politics. That China would sagaciously and quietly don the new mantel is borne out by the saga of continuity and of change over the past 5,000 years. No other nation can match China in this respect. It has adjusted to change without giving up its essentially Chinese characteristics.

China has always been an introvert nation. It has therefore little history of external colonies. Its excessive pride in its cultural superiority was instrumental, many historians agree, in the construction of the Great Wall to keep the inferior foreigners off the great ‘middle kingdom’. It had a large army for its defense but not as large a navy. For, it considered below its dignity to go abroad to cross swords with foreign “barbarians”. Queen Victoria was addressed, for instance, in a letter by the Chinese monarch as “the barbarian queen of a barbarian people”. China lost the Opium War in 1840 primarily because it lacked the naval power to defeat the invading British armada.

One therefore finds it difficult to accept the thesis that whenever China had become strong it had put its belly down. The unilateral withdrawal of Chinese forces from the Indian territory it had occupied in the 1962 border war, is a recent example of China’s preference to remain in its own area. It did not occupy Hong Kong by force but waited till 1997 to take over the British colony peacefully. It is currently following the same policy in respect of Taiwan disproving some Western analysts’ contention that China tends to rely on force to settle international issues.

China would be entering the 21st century as a great power that will have to play a significant role in the new world order. It would no longer be possible for it to remain confined to its hermitage. It would have to engage the sole super-power in an international chess game particularly in Southeast Asia which is currently in the American economic orbit. But, this area also holds vast segments of expatriate Chinese who dominate the local economies.

During postings in Jakarta, Bangkok, and Colombo and extensive travels in Singapore and Malaysia, an inescapable impression gained was that the overseas Chinese entertain an intense pride in being of Chinese origin irrespective of their place of birth or its political affiliation. This pride, rather hubris, could be noticed even among the lowest and menial Chinese workers. There has therefore been little intermixture with other racial communities through marriage.

Obviously, these expatriate Chinese prefer trade with China. That naturally entails a conflict of commercial interests between the US and China. That also explains the reluctance of the US in supporting the entry of China as a developing state into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Such a membership would have given China a larger time frame to open its markets to member countries. The US, which has an adverse trade balance with China, wants it to open its markets for foreign goods before its admission to the WTO.

Although it has been recording exemplary growth rate of 10 to12 percent a year for over two decades –the highest in the world- China realizes that it has still a long way to go to catch up with the time lost before the 1949 revolution in an opium-induced complacence followed by a fierce civil war between Chang Kai-Shek and Mao Tse Tung.

Mao established his qualities of leadership in the 1934 Long March to avoid being surrounded by Chang’s army. This unparalleled military feat changed the course of China’s revolutionary struggle. Mao’s period (1949-76) was characterized chiefly by class struggle. It ended with the death in 1976 of the two great leaders -Mao and Chou En-lai. Major events of this period were: occupation of Tibet (1950) and crushing of an uprising there nine year later; the “hundred flowers” campaign in 1956 to encourage freedom of speech (a failed experiment); the Great Leap Forward, 1958, to reorganize society into communes for localized industrialization and collective farming (a disaster); successful nuclear test in 1964; President Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, the first high level contact brokered by Pakistan; and the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 which led to years of chaos.

Although some of Mao’s experiments proved counter-productive, the period witnessed noticeable social and economic progress and an increase in the standard of living.

The next great leader who emerged on the scene was Deng Xiaoping, 1978-97. His two-decade rule brought a sea change in the economy of the country. For, he chose economic construction as the principal task for China and discarded Mao’s stress on class struggle. But, Deng wasted no time in finding faults with earlier policies. Matter of fact his slogan of “strong country and rich society” had also been the rallying cry among the reformers of the post opium war period. He reduced defense expenditure to invest the savings into socio-economic projects.

When he gave the call in 1982 to quadruple the 1980 level of GDP by 2,000, it electrified the Chinese imagination. The people achieved it by 1997 and chalked out a plan to double the 2000 level by 2010. Their goal now is to achieve the status of a medium level developed country by the middle of the 21st century when China will celebrate its first century.

The Chinese have already attained much to celebrate. Today China is the world’s largest producer of food grains, meat, cotton, peanuts, steel, coal, cement, fertilizers and even TV sets. It is the second largest producer of electricity. Over the past 50 years, it has doubled the per capita output of grain and tripled the output of cotton. Per capital annual consumption expenditure went up from $10.00 in 1950 to $400.00 in 1998 –a 40-fold increase. The GNP has risen to one trillion dollars –seventh largest in the world. Among social indicators, death rate has been reduced from 30 to 6.5 per thousand, life expectancy has grown from 35 to 71 years, and illiteracy will end in 2,000.

When Deng Xioping introduced modernization in Chinese economy taking it closer to a capitalist system, the Chinese society had the inner strength and resilience to undergo the transition smoothly. Then, the Chinese leaders brought in the change gradually instead of the sudden and shocking methods of Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The crackdown in 1989 in Tiananmen Square might have been in pursuance of this policy of gradualism. Political freedom without economic betterment would have proved a prescription for chaos and turmoil as it did in the Soviet Union.

Pakistan has enjoyed exemplary relations with both China and the US. As already mentioned, it played the role of a bridge between the two, facilitating President Nixon’s visit to China. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the astonishing advance of China, India’s bid for a nuclear power status in the comity of nations, and the US tilt towards India as a counter to China, a new pattern has emerged in international relations affecting South Asia.

Right now Pakistan’s position is quite vulnerable owing mainly to its fragile economy. It is being dictated to even on purely internal matters by the US State Department. The fall-out on Pakistan of the Taliban extremism, the US zeroing in on Osama bin Laden, the sectarian riots, the concentration of powers in the hands of the Prime Minister, his brother and their kitchen cabinet, suspected disenchantment in the armed forces with the civil administration, opposition’s agitational politics, are factors calling for far-sighted decisions on matters affecting relations with neighbors, particularly with China. Successive governments since 1963 have maintained very close, “all-weather” friendship with China. The current leadership would be therefore well advised to have a nation-wide discussion before any deviation is even considered under pressure from any quarter.