China should rely on its new economic initiatives, not military intimidation, to build lasting relationships

It's puzzling to hear some Americans, such as CNN journalist-analyst Fareed Zakaria, say that China has no friends. If that is true, how come the Chinese mainland, along with France, the United States and Spain, is one of the most preferred destinations for international tourists? If the number of tourists visiting Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are included, China is by far the most favored tourist destination.

Just a year ago, China overtook the US to become the world's largest trading country. China is already the largest trading partner of 124 nations; the number for the US is 76. And 2014 figures show it has surpassed the US as the top destination for foreign direct investment.

Do these facts suggest China has no friends? If not, why do Western observers have the wrong idea? Actually, what Western observers mean by "China has no friends" is that "China has no allies bound by security treaties". But nobody can say China has no friends.

China was allies with the Soviet Union and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea during the Cold War. But since the end of the Cold War, China has followed a foreign policy of non-alignment.

Beijing strongly believes that since the Cold War is over, the concept of allies, which has its roots in the Cold War, should end, too. Yet for some Americans, the Cold War is still on.

That probably explains why the US still maintains hundreds of military bases and deploys about a quarter million military personnel at its overseas bases, including those built after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. The US has used these bases to launch wars on many countries, including a dozen in the Middle East since the 1980s.

In 1999, Washington, bypassing the United Nations, led NATO forces to carry out an 11-week bombing on Kosovo. Four years later, it used the so-called coalition of the willing to invade Iraq to topple then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein on the pretext that he had stocked weapons of mass destruction. And in 2011, it violated a UN resolution on a no-fly zone over Libya to help Western forces topple former Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi.

Ironically, last October, three years after the death of Gaddafi, some Western media outlets such as The Washington Post and The Guardian questioned whether Libya, now torn apart by civil war, would have been better if Gaddafi had still been in power.

Now, US President Barack Obama is trying to persuade Washington's European allies to send arms and equipment to forces loyal to the Ukrainian government to fortify fences against rebels, which instead of helping resolve the Ukraine crisis could deepen and complicate it further.

Under Obama's "pivot to Asia", the US has also been using its alliance with other countries to curb the rise of China, because many hawkish Americans fear Beijing could challenge the dominant position of Washington in the world. Chinese officials have described the US allies in the Asia-Pacific region a key component of the "pivot to Asia" strategy and a product of the Cold War.

This has prompted some Chinese scholars to suggest that China change its foreign policy and establish alliances with other countries to prevent the US from succeeding in its designs. And in fact, some people in the US have become paranoid fearing the establishment of a China-Russian alliance given the new geopolitics in the world today.

But rather than following the US' example of making allies and building military bases overseas, China should continue its current policy of giving the final shape to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, New Development Bank, Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road to permanently cut off the road back to the Cold War. That indeed is the best way of making and keeping China the best friends in the world.

The author, based in Washington, is deputy editor of China Daily USA. Contact the writer at chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily European Weekly 02/20/2015 page11)