A wise decision for China to stay away from the Chadian Civil War

By China Watcher

Some of the Western journalists have been promoting the cause of the Darfur Crisis by linking it to the Beijing Olympics whereby the host is reported to possess an influential role on the Sudanese government, and a case in which it has not put its position to greater use. Even some celebrities have readily termed the soon-to-be held Olympics as a “genocide” one because of China’s non interference stand. There are western non government bodies who also accused China of supplying weapons to the Sudanese government to commit the “mass human killings”.

Yesterday, a writer who contributed articles to the International Herald Tribune, went a bit further by criticizing China, once again, for not attempting to do anything to restore peace in the Chadian fight between the forces loyal to President Idriss Déby of Chad and the rebels supported by the Sudanese government.

The author mentioned that China which has a growing commercial oil interests in both countries (Chad and Sudan) should have use her influential role to persuade the Sudanese government to stop aiding the rebels to overthrow the present government of Chad or nudging the two parties to a political settlement. He opined that the lack of democratic content in China’s foreign policy is closely aligned to the lack of democracy in domestic politics. Due to the practicality and the questionable success of such an effort, he is at least smart enough not to call or support a boycott of the Beijing Olympics. In fact, we can see that all these added pressures have a greater objective, which is, to change China to respect Western human rights values (which he termed as universal) and to promote a greater democracy within China.

First, it has always been China’s consistent foreign policy of not interfering in the politics and the administration of independent and sovereign nations like Chad and Sudan. Sad to say, it is not true for most Western nations and more particularly and more recently, the US, a superpower who uses false justification of Weapons of Mass Destruction to invade an independent country and all this heinous acts coming from a so-called democratic country.

Second, it is all the more important that China should not attempt to interfere in the affairs of the two northern African nations where it had relatively good diplomatic relations. Diplomatic links with Chad was only cemented in August 2006, less than 2 years, and as such, it is crucial to take a neutral stance or risk losing the recognized status to Taiwan, a legacy of the civil war from 1945 to 1949.

Third, the foreign policy of truly independent nation is mostly decided by the ruling administration of the country’s concerned. Even in democratic and developing NIC countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and most other elected governments in the Asian region except Japan choose not to interfere in the affairs of other independent countries which we perceived as part of the cherished values of Asia. It is not surprised to note that China is holding strongly to these Asian values of respect and soft suasion in its diplomatic policies unlike the Western style of openness and criticisms to the extent of antagonizing and provoking its known “friends”. Even if China is a democratic country with elected representatives in the future, I doubt it will share such western values of interference and intervention to maintain its investments and assets in civil strife countries.

Fourth, China is respected by most Third World countries and Africa because those countries believe that the policy of non interference and the “real” economic assistance is certainly a better alternative than the colonial exploitation of the Western powers in the last two centuries. Thus, China continued to follow this consistent policy to win many friends and allies in a world dominated by the rich democratic nations.

Fifth, China will not succumb that easily to Western pressures of changing its independent position and if China would change to a more people elected government it will practice and follow its own standards and style and definitely not Western style which itself has a lot of drawbacks.

In conclusion it is a wise decision on the part of the Chinese to stay out of Chadian politics and left the rival parties to resolve themselves, after all, under the capitalist’s economics theory there is such a thing as an equilibrium position which is more stable and lasting without outside interference.