As President of Seychelles in 1976, James R Mancham, established diplomatic relations bewten Seychelles and the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) abandoning his long established friendship with Taiwan. On the occasion of the forth coming State visit by the President Hu Jintao of modern China, the state controlled Seychelles Nation sent a series of questions to the former President. Now, it appears, Nation will not publish his response in its entirety. In the interest of history and in view of the fact that Mancham is not just an elder statesman but also an international one, we have decided to reprint his answers in its entirety.
MANCHAM PONDERS THE CHINA FACTOR
1) SEYCHELLES NATION: Mr Mancham, as the Former President and Seychelles first Foreign Affairs Minister, what were the circumstances which led to the establishment of diplomatic relations with China in 1976?
JAMES R. MANCHAM: I am grateful to you for pointing out that when Seychelles became independent, I was not only the Head of State but I had also retained the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. In that capacity, it was my responsibility to decide whether as an independent Republic, the Seychelles should entertain diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China or the Republic of China as Taiwan styled herself. Well, the People’s Republic of China is a continent wide country whose land area is close in terms of square miles to that of the United States. It has a population of over 1.3 billion people which constitute almost one-fourth of humanity. By 1976, although still authoritarian and formally communist, after many years of being a closed Nation, the People’s Republic of China was bursting back on the world scene with unparalleled vigour. It was clearly apparent that once China would have effected certain internal changes in outlook and policy that she was destined to play an important role in global leadership. Realism alone therefore dictated that whatever sympathy one had for Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China represented the China of the future.
2) S.N.: Mr Mancham, knowing that your sympathy lie more towards Western countries, you must therefore have some very good reasons to prefer entertaining a good relationship with China rather than the province of Taiwan?
JRM: I find it rather naïve on your part to suggest that you know where my sympathy lies with respect to global politics. It is true that in the sixties I had developed very warm ties with Taiwan having been invited there together with the late Mauritian Leader, Gaetan Duval, when we had the opportunity to meet with an aging President Chiang Kai-shek at his holiday resort on Sun Moon Lake. Those where the days of the Cold War and as an emerging political leader with a British colonial education, I had a certain picture of life and politics on the main land which swayed my sympathy towards Taiwan. But then great changes were about to take place in China. Eventually the leadership in Beijing condemned the disastrous Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward in which more than 30 million Chinese died. Today China aims at building “a socialist market” rather than the then envisaged “planned communist economy”. China has seen to the dismantlement of 26,000 rural communes. Hundreds of millions of peasants are again farming plots on long leases held by their ancestors. China wants its state-owned enterprises to compete as autonomous companies free to set prices as they choose in an open economy. Even the hard core communist have declared that the class war is over. They now claim to represent not just the worker and peasant masses but entrepreneurs and business leaders who have been welcomed in their ranks. China has joined the World Trade Organization and is seen as a judicious member of the UN Security Council having used its veto only twice for matters of “immediate concern”. It is manifest, therefore, that the China of today is not the same as the China of the sixties.
3) S.N: How would you describe the relations between Seychelles and China today?
JRM: The relationship at the moment is a very healthy one. China over the years since our independence has been extremely generous towards the Republic of Seychelles. But there is no free meal anywhere in the world. Last year I wrote a leading article in the Seychelles Review entitled “Seychelles in the Web of Global Politics” which projected the geo-strategic dimension of our archipelago. At the moment our Government can claim to have “excellent relation” with China but she can also allow herself to make the same claim vis-à-vis USA, Europe, India, Russia, Japan and others. So long, therefore, as China’s relationship with these other powerful nations remain on a steady amicable course, it could be business as normal for the Government of the Republic of Seychelles. But what if these relationships where to become sour and confrontational, which way will Seychelles sway? This is the unanswered and worrying question. When we became an independent nation in 1976, I proclaimed the policy of “Friend to all and Enemy to none” but this did not seem to have worked out.
Seychelles today is facing a very serious forex problem. China has over recent years accumulated a very massive reserve estimated at US$1 trillion. If China was ready to play the game of “A friend in need is a friend indeed”, she would certainly acquire a privileged and influential position second to none in our small but strategic country.
(4) S.N: As a person who is full of political experiences, how would you describe China’s present relations with Africa?
JRM: China has no “colonial baggage” to carry with respect to its development of political and economic ties with Africa. China has immensely benefited from the process of globalization which has so far had mostly negative effects on the economy of many African nations with the net result that many Africans today are poorer than they were at the time of independence though their countries are potentially rich in natural resources. China needs these resources to sustain its economic growth and energy requirements. And Africa needs China’s investments and commodities. These factors provide an excellent backbone for the promotion of a relationship based on reciprocity and mutual interest.
However, China’s commitment to non-intervention means that it doesn’t enquire into the internal affairs of others. When all these African leaders including our own President Michel, met in Beijing, President Hu promised to double aid to the continent by 2009, train 15,000 professionals and provide scholarships to 4,000 students and help Africa’s health care and farming sectors. But as a 2005 report by US Council on Foreign Relations noted, “China’s aid and investments are attractive to African Leaders precisely because they come with no conditionality related to governance, fiscal probity, or other concerns of Western donors.” When in 2004 an international monetary loan to Angola was held up because of suspected corruption, China overnight came up with US$2 billion in credit. There is here certainly an area of great concerns to those who are interested in promoting “democracy” in the world generally and in Africa in particular.
(5) S.N.: How do you see China’s position in the world today?
JRM: No longer an inwardly focused Nation, China has over recent years expanded its influence abroad and is acting on the international diplomatic stage with a new found confidence anchored in its growing economic might. What does China want from the rest of the world and how will its power shaped in the 21st Century is the question on everybody’s mind.
China is the new factor in global politics. No global architecture can be constructed without it. By the end of 2006, it will have more than US$1 trillion of foreign exchange reserves. The United States could not be running an annual current-account deficit of US$800 billion without consistent selling pressure on the dollar if Chinese purchases of United States Treasury bills and bonds were not so high. China is the world’s second largest importer of oil. Before 2010, it will be the world’s largest exporter of goods. It is comfortably the world’s second largest military power with the Pentagon believing that China’s defence expenditure is up to three times more than the US$30 billion officially declared. The Pentagon’s four-yearly defence review stated that the scale of China’s military build-up has already put ‘regional military balances at risk’ and that China is the power most likely to field disruptive technologies, that could over time off-set traditional U.S. military advantages.
The problem is that the new great power which China represents today remains formally a communist power. Deng Xiaoping – China’s great pro-market reformer did not build contemporary China out of nothing; he built on foundations left by Mao and always aimed to preserve the primacy of the Communist Party. This poses a profound problem for China, the United States and the rest of the world. It makes China a difficult partner internationally because there is an objective clash of interest on the importance of what we know as “democracy”, the rule of law and human rights and how they should be represented in the world’s architecture. Meanwhile, there is a perception that at home China is confronting an ideological crisis regarding how far they can develop a pluralist market economy without pluralist political institutions. There appears to be a growing issue of legitimacy. If it no longer rules as the democratic dictatorship of peasants and workers because the class war is over, why does it not hold itself accountable to people in competitive elections?
At the moment, there is an obvious shifting of the balance of power in North-East Asia. This zone is entering uncharted territory as economic changes in the region are likely to drive a strategic transformation. The reason is that the factors which kept peace and stability in the region since the end of World War II cannot be assumed to keep doing so in the future.
Today, we have several relatively evenly-matched major industrial states – the U.S., Japan, China, India and possibly Russia – but no one truly able to manage this new strategic system. The U.S. might have been expected to manage this system, as it has done for the past 60 years. But American regional primacy is now on the wane; it depended on either force or consent. But in 2007, America is no longer sufficiently strong to impose its primacy by force and China is too strong to accept U.S. primacy by consent. One might think that America’s extensive commercial dealings with Asia would provide it with sufficient clout, but the reality is that America needs China as much as China needs America.
We may prefer to assume that globalization and the worldwide trends toward regional integration have banished the old patterns of international politics. After all, how can the old ways continue when economic growth and power depend on cooperation? But to conclude that, we would have to ignore the continued evidence of humankind’s age-old failings – fear, pride and greed, the old engines of war. In Asia, these can combine into a very potent form of nationalism. And balance of power politics, as was applied in Europe as early as 1815, has never been tried in Asia. APEC and the ASEAN East Asian Summit are small steps in that direction, but not the basis of durable peace themselves.
In light of the above, there are a series of inter-related questions: For America, will it agree to share leadership of Asia with the region’s other major powers, accepting and respecting their interests? We cannot assume yes, because historically the U.S. has never consistently acted as a member of a strategic system of equal states. The U.S. asks China to become a “responsible stakeholder” in the region, but is not that what every nation in Asia should be? More specifically, can the U.S. come to treat China as a respected equal in order to maintain future peace and stability in Asia?
For China, we must ask whether it can accord Japan an equal place in the region as Japan becomes a more normal power? Moreover, will China obstruct Korean reunification in order to maintain North Korea as a buffer state or economic satellite, or would China permit only a reunification in which Korea’s ties with the U.S. and Japan are severely proscribed? Would China permit Pacific Island States to maintain their economic and political ties with the U.S. and Japan, or compel them to submit to a Chinese sphere of influence? Finally, in this age of “soft” as well as “hard” power, how can the U.S., Japan, Russia, India, ASEAN and other Asian states work together to assure that China’s regional role is on the whole positive and contributes to enduring peace and stability?
China’s remarkable transformation over recent years is a complex and fascinating story which could have many different outcomes. China could fulfill its own sense of destiny and become the next great superpower or it could succumb to internal strife, as it has many times in its long history. What happens to China and what happens within China, will affect all of us one way or another.
(6) S.N.: Your father was the first Chairperson of China-Seychelles Association. Now, 30 years later could you comment?
JRM: First, two corrections (i) my father was Chairperson of the Seychelles-Chinese Association and (ii) we are now speaking of 1947 – some 60 years ago when I was only 7 years old. Well, at that time, the British Government had appointed Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke as the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Seychelles. Before that, Sir Selwyn had been Director of Medical Services in Hong Kong when the Japanese conquered it during the Second World War. Sir Selwyn dedicated himself to helping those in captivity until he himself was imprisoned in solitary confinement for 19 months – suffering appalling deprivations. He emerged from prison with a lot of esteem and affection for the Chinese people he had come to know. Soon after his arrival in Seychelles, in July 1947, he befriended my father, Richard Mancham, whose father was Chinese and who at that time was the acting Chairman of the Victoria District Council. Sir Selwyn encouraged him to form the Seychelles-Chinese Association to give more social cohesion to the Chinese community in Seychelles so that they could in return contribute more effectively to different social welfare programmes which he had initiated. The story of that time is well documented in “Footprints”, the memoirs of Sir Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke, published in 1975 by Sino-America publishing company of Hong Kong. Well, a lot of waters have gone under China’s bridge since Dr. Sun Yat Sen attempted to reunify China’s provinces and as for my late father, he was always convinced that in a peaceful world, the proud and ingenious Chinese people with their vast civilization would have a very prominent role to play.
