Is China beginning to become a superpower?

Why does China — the world’s second largest economy — behave like the neighborhood bully, specifically towards the Philippines and Vietnam with which it has maritime disputes, and arrogantly claim “undisputable sovereignty” over 90% of the South China Sea?

Could this situation have been foreseen 40 years ago, when it was still a very poor country?  What has been happening between then and now?

Let’s review a speech delivered on April 10, 1974 by Deng Xiaoping, then China’s executive vice premier, before the UN General Assembly special session on the problems of raw materials and development.  He depicted China’s status at that time thus:

“China is a socialist country and a developing country as well. China belongs to the Third World. Consistently following Chairman Mao’s teachings, the Chinese government and people firmly support all oppressed peoples and oppressed nations in their struggles to win or defend national independence, develop their national economies, oppose capitalism, imperialism and hegemony.  This is our bounden international duty.”

The five principles that guided China in both its political and economic relations with other countries were then cited by Deng: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

“We are opposed to the establishment of hegemony and spheres of influence by any country in any part of the world in violation of these principles,” he elaborated. “We support the permanent sovereignty of the developing countries over their natural resources as well as their exercise of it.”

Developing countries may have differences with each other, Deng said, but these “can very well be resolved, and should be resolved, through consultations among the parties concerned.”  He emphasized that China’s cooperation in this regard “is a cooperation based on true equality.” 

Deng devoted a big part of his speech denouncing the US and the Soviet Union as the world’s two bitterly contending superpowers.  He defined a superpower as “an imperialist country which everywhere subjects other countries to its aggression, interference, control, subversion or plunder, and strives for world hegemony.”

Calling the US and the SU as the “biggest international exploiters and oppressors,” Deng said the duo “exploit other countries economically, plundering their wealth and grabbing their resources.” They attempted to bring the developing countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America under their control, he added, “at the same time bullying developed countries that (were) not their match in strength.”

“Wherever they contend, turbulence occurs. So long as (US) imperialism and (Soviet) social-imperialism exist, there definitely will be no tranquility in the world,” Deng stressed, concluding: “It is entirely right and proper for the developing countries to terminate imperialist economic monopoly and plunder… and take all necessary measures to protect their economic resources and other rights and interests.”

On the Soviet Union Deng heaped his rancor, saying:

“A socialist country that is true to its name ought to follow the principle of internationalism, sincerely render support and assistance to oppressed countries and nations and help them develop their national economy. But this superpower is doing exactly the opposite.  This is additional proof that it is socialism in words and imperialism in deeds.”

Deng followed up with these categorical statements:

“China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one.”         

“If capitalism is restored in a big socialist country, it will inevitably become a superpower.”

He pointed out that the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and the campaign of criticism carried out against Lin Piao and Confucius were aimed at preventing capitalist restoration and “ensuring that socialist China will never change her color and will always stand for the oppressed peoples and oppressed nations.”

Pursuing the logic of his second statement, Deng declared:

“If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant of the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the peoples of the world should identify her as social imperialist, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.”

Today, undoubtedly capitalism has been restored extensively in China, the biggest former socialist state.

And the irony of it all: Deng Xiaoping is indisputably hailed – by China’s leaders and the barons of the capitalist/imperialist system alike – for having engineered the capitalist restoration.  He did so after becoming the “paramount leader” of both the Communist Party of China and the government after Mao’s death in 1978.

The fact is, during the Cultural Revolution Deng was denounced and stripped of power for being the “No. 2 person in authority taking the capitalist road” (next to Liu Shiaoqi).  After rebounding into the center of power, he proved. by his acts, that the label was true.

So now, with capitalism restored (albeit with “Chinese characteristics”), will China become a superpower soon -- as Deng said it “inevitably” would? Is its bullying behavior in the South China Sea (and in the East China Sea against Japan) the prelude to such transformation?

A further and more important question: can the peoples of the world count on the Chinese people to oppose and overthrow this social-imperialist superpower in the making?

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