By Adrienne Mong/NBC News File

China's keeping mum on the leaked US diplomatic cables.

By Adrienne Mong and Bo Gu

As fascinating as the leaked U.S. diplomatic cables may be to China-watchers, the latest batch of documents should be treated cautiously.

The cables, mostly based on South Korean sources, suggest China is fed up with its northern neighbor.  Among the more startling revelations: that China “would be comfortable with a reunified Korea controlled by Seoul and anchored to the U.S. in a ‘benign alliance’ as long as Korea was not hostile towards China” and that North Korea “had little value to China as a buffer state.”

“The majority of the cables which talk about China-North Korea relationship seem to emanate from Seoul as opposed to Beijing, so I think they say a lot of about what South Korean diplomats really would wishfully hope for a Chinese position,” said Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt, North East Asia Project Director and China Adviser at the International Crisis Group.

Only one side of the story 
Moreover, the leaked documents might only capture one dimension of a complex policymaking process in China.

“These are cables between diplomats, and foreign ministries have certainly a very important role in making foreign policies, but they are hardly the only actors,” said Kleine-Ahlbrandt.  “Particularly in the Chinese contexts, in addition to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, you have on North Korea other factors that are equally important, such as the Communist Party’s International Liaison Department, the People’s Liberation Army.”

At a regularly scheduled press briefing, Beijing refused to comment on the substance or content of the WikiLeaks cables, only saying that it hoped the U.S. would “properly handle” the situation and that China “did not want to see any disturbance to China-U.S. relations.”

As with many other governments implicated in the cables, the Chinese central government has gone into damage control. Which also means controlling the information.

Controlling the content 
The leaks have dominated headlines in some major Chinese news outlets, and two popular Web portals have published special reports. But for most Chinese citizens who do not speak English, what they see in domestic news is extremely limited.

Netease.com, one of China’s biggest Web portals, translated a great deal of the newly released documents in its special report.  Readers can easily learn about Moammar Gadhafi’s fear of heights, Hillary Clinton’s order for spying on U.N. officials, Azerbaijan’s first lady’s frequent plastic surgeries, or even the Saudi king’s suggestion on planting microchips on criminal suspects.

But there’s absolutely no information on the China-related cables -- on the Politburo’s hacking of Google or North Korea or Tibet issues.

In fact, Netease’s special report posts a map that illustrates the amount of cables released from all over the world, clearly indicating 3,297 came out of Beijing -- a bigger number than most of the other cities sourced in the diplomatic cables. But in the thousands of comments left by the website’s readers, nobody raises the one obvious question: why is there nothing about China?

WikiLeaks is already blocked in China. It’s a common strategy the government adopts whenever there is information they don’t want citizens to see -- although most of the time not everything is censored, and only official news coverage on the sensitive subject by Xinhua or CCTV is permitted.

Instead, Chinese media coverage of the leaks concerning U.S. military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan has created an anti-America forum for segments of the Chinese online community.

“Assange should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize because he’s a fighter protecting the spirit of freedom. He liberated the whole world from the American dictator’s rule on truth,” was a comment first left on another popular Web portal, Sina.com; it was soon reposted many times.

“The Iraq war was illegal itself. What WikiLeaks has released on the war is righteous and enables more people to know the ordeal Iraqi people are suffering under this illegal war. This could end the Iraqi war sooner and bring another anti-terror war supported by the whole world,” reads another comment on QQ.com, a popular Website favored by Chinese youth.

Ordinary Chinese perhaps unfazed 
To some critics, the lack of enthusiasm in finding out what may have been leaked about China is unsurprising. “There are a couple of reasons behind this,” said Bei Feng, a Hong Kong based Internet observer in a phone interview with NBC. “First, the government probably has ordered a ban on the leaks on China. Secondly, there’s not too much information translated into Chinese.”

Bei argues that altogether the leaks are probably “not a big shock for the Chinese people. What we have learned from WikiLeaks falls into our common knowledge of what we think of the government. People don’t think it’s strange that China would want to back the Korean peninsula’s reunification or abandon North Korea, and people think it’s completely normal for China to buy off a country like Kyrgyzstan. Google, yeah, we’ve all assumed like that before, so nothing is making any big impact on the people here at all.”

But the coming release of new U.S. diplomatic cables on China has Bei on alert. “As more content is translated, we need to see whether there’ll be more impact. For example, if there’s any new information on the student protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or if there’s any corruption related to the second generation of Communist officials. This is the kind of content that touches on the most sensitive areas for Chinese, and people care about that more.” 

In August 2006, a Chinese businessman from the bustling commodity town of Yiwu in Zhejiang Province decided to set up a commercial centre in a sleepy Swedish town.

It was a big concept: to set up a trading centre in Kalmar, a former Baltic port, from which all of Europe could be reached. 

How big? In effect, to recreate Yiwu in Sweden.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Yiwu, this city of just under two million, is home to China’s premier and largest wholesale commodities market.  With more than 70,000 stalls hawking 10 million different low-end products made in China, it was described by writer Peter Hessler as the kind of place where, “if you spend one minute at each shop, eight hours a day, you’ll leave two months later.”

Kalmar, on the southeastern tip of Sweden with 60,000 inhabitants, was one of the country’s most important cities…about 300-600 years ago.  Once a key trading port for the Baltic region, it’s also one of Sweden’s oldest cities.  In fact, it was here that the Scandinavian union of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark was established under a single monarch in 1397.  Sadly, it hasn’t kept up with the times and like many other third-tier European cities struggles with high unemployment and a shrinking population.

So it was no surprise that the city of Kalmar leapt at the opportunity presented by Chinese businessman Luo Jinxing – to build a wholesale centre for Chinese traders hawking their low-cost goods to retailers from across all of Europe.

Three days after Luo walked into the Kalmar municipal office and pitched his idea, local officials approved his proposal in exchange for nearly two million US dollars.

From then followed a comedy of horrors – perhaps predictable to anyone who’s ever done business with the Chinese – all thoroughly documented by Ronja Yu in her wonderfully perceptive film, “The Chinese Are Coming.”  (The film recently played at Nordox 2010 in Beijing and is in competition at the world’s largest documentary film festival, IDFA.)

A CHINESE COWBOY

“This film is about when a Chinese cowboy entrepreneur goes west and knocks at the door of the western world,” said Yu, who in 1989 moved from Beijing to Sweden, where she studied documentary filmmaking.

Yu said she read about the Sweden-China Commodity Wholesale Market and thought it was “interesting and huge.”  She contacted Luo and met him in Hangzhou, where his company is based.

“He was happy for my interest for the project and the meeting ended with [me] following his first construction workers’ trip from Shanghai to Sweden,” Yu wrote me from France, where she’s traveling at the moment.  “He also took me to the meetings with the local [Kalmar] government.”

Yu’s easy access is clearly evident in the documentary, which captures some priceless moments illustrating the pitfalls when cultures clash in the relentless march towards globalization.

They include the arrival of that first group of thirty-odd Chinese laborers and four huge rice cookers (all the better and cheaper to feed them); the local authority’s attempts to enforce Sweden’s strict labor safety standards at the building site (one Chinese worker, in response to demands that they wear work boots lest they step on rusty nails, chortles, “Nails?  We have all have eyes!”); and the bored expression on the faces of a Swedish delegation watching Chinese go-go girls at an Yiwu exposition.

The challenges of trying to build a project this size at Chinese speed prove to be too great.  As a Chinese colleague of Luo observes at the beginning of the film, Sweden’s rules are rather strict, and it’s impossible him to work around them. 

By the time the Yiwu native holds an opening ceremony, the centre is still just a shell.  When it is finally completed, Chinese wholesalers turn up, filling the booths with their cheap wares, but no retailers come.  Luo has overestimated Kalmar’s reach into the European market.  The Swedish Chinatown, as it turns out, is barely a China-strip.

TELLING STORIES

The Chinese do not come, after all.

“There is fear in the western world [about] Chinese development and how it’ll affect the world,” observed Yu.  “So I joke a little bit with this fear in the title.”

The Beijing native, who travels regularly back to China, is fascinated by her native homeland’s dizzying economic rise.  “I enjoy being both the outsider and the insider to this big country,” she said.  “There are endless stories there still waiting to be told.”

For that reason, Yu would rather stay in Europe.  “I myself love China, but I won’t go living there until the country has woken up from its deep capitalism coma.”

Luo’s Kalmar business, Fanerdun, meanwhile declared bankruptcy in 2009.

BEIJING – Lost in all the drama along the Korean peninsula was the news earlier this week that American nuclear power company, Westinghouse, had handed to China more than 75,000 documents related to the construction of their third generation AP1000 nuclear power reactors.
 
The move is a prelude to the planned sale of four nuclear reactors to an energy-hungry China that in recent weeks has shown increasing strains in its energy producing capacity. When completed, the Westinghouse reactors sale will represent over 30 per cent of Beijing’s planned nuclear power plant construction for the near future.
 
China currently has 23 reactors under construction and a further 120 proposed.
 
The move is a curious one, however, as it comes at a time when western companies from energy to biotech have been complaining about the technology transfers demanded by China in exchange for successful contract bids.
 
Chief amongst the western companies’ concerns are intellectual property protection and a recent trend which sees China attempting to nurture “National Champions” in key industries, often at the cost of foreign business interests.
 
Jack Allen, president of Westinghouse for Asia, did not seem overly concerned about being pushed out of China’s nuclear market in the near future, telling the Financial Times, “We don’t expect that we will walk away at the completion of these units and not participate in the [nuclear] program, but there are no guarantees.”
 
Those sentiments were echoed by Rajesh Panjwani, a Hong Kong-based analyst who said, “In a lot of other industries we have seen this strategy not work very well because China has emerged as a competitor. But for nuclear we don’t know how much time China will take to master the technology and emerge as a competitor.”
 
Indeed, this strategy of allowing transfer of critical technology to China and banking on its companies’ inability to master the skills and adapt the equipment to their needs has failed miserably, most notably in the railway industry.
 
Just this past week, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. put out a statement noting that years of unabated technology transfers to China by a host of major western train manufacturers including Bombardier Inc. and Siemans AG had helped create Chinese rail companies that could now compete abroad using their technology at a much lower cost base.
 
China argues that while the trains they are now attempting to export worldwide, including California, are based on technology acquired from abroad, their trains have simply been “re-innovated” and stand on the “shoulders of past pioneers.”
 
Foreign railway executives will almost certainly attempt to protect their intellectual property from being re-exported abroad under the name of a domestic Chinese rail company, but they will face an uphill court battle and will need to tread a very fine line, lest they also anger the Chinese government and jeopardize their own future sales on the mainland.
 
Westinghouse’s gambit that the Chinese will be slow to adapt to the technology and safety requirements of their plants might prove correct in the foreseeable future. However, if recent history has shown us anything, it’s that the company may very well have sold off decades of research and development and its future in the China market in exchange for a couple years of excellent profit.
 
Just call it the real “China Price.”

Saurabh Das / AP

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama greets people as he arrives to receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi, India, Tuesday.

BEIJING – Amid rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, a tragic stampede in Cambodia that killed more than 350 people, and continuing complaints about censorship in China after last week’s Shanghai fire, the news that the Dalai Lama wants to give up his ceremonial duties was buried in Asian press round-ups. 

Although the duties themselves are exactly as they appear – ceremonial and therefore of no great substance – the move indicated yet again that Tibet’s spiritual leader is preparing his people for life after he is gone.

“It means that he’s continuing a decades-long attempt to try to make his exile administration more democratic and less dependent on him,” said Robbie Barnett, a Tibet scholar at Columbia University. 

The 75-year-old Dalai Lama is the leader of the Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) branch of Tibetan Buddhism.  He led Tibet’s government until he fled his homeland in 1959, nine years after the Chinese People’s Liberation Army marched into the region. Then he became the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, northern India.

In recent years, the Dalai Lama has looked to reduce his political leadership role.  One of his spokesmen was quoted by The Associated Press as saying he has considered himself semi-retired since 2001, when a Tibetan prime minister was elected.

The duties the Dalai Lama is seeking to give up include addressing the Tibetan parliament-in-exile and signing resolutions.  He’s expected to bring up the issue at the parliament’s next session in March.

“What’s interesting here is that he’s becoming more specific in terms of when this might happen and what this retirement might mean,” Barnett said.

Beijing does not recognize the government-in-exile and maintains Tibet is a part of the People’s Republic of China, an assertion disputed by many Tibetans.  Furthermore, Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of pursuing Tibetan independence, whereas he claims he is interested in securing autonomy for the former kingdom.

As such, the Chinese leadership will be happy to see the back of the Dalai Lama, but it’s just possible his stepping down as leader of the Tibetan people will create – not solve – problems for Beijing.

The exiled Tibetan community “does have fracture lines,” said Barnett.  “Because people come from different regions of Tibet and different schools of religion, and now there are differences between very religious and very secular groups.”

Without the current Dalai Lama to unify the community, senior members of the Tibetan exile community are concerned about their future.

“Does [China] really want a fractured Tibet exile population?”  Barnett asked.  “A fractured community is sure to produce pockets of violence and much more anger and to make it that much harder for anyone to negotiate with.”

In a statement released tonight over Tuesday’s skirmish between North and South Korea, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said, “China pays great attention to the event.  We feel grieved and regretful about the casualties and property losses, and feel worried about its development.” 

A muted response, especially in stark contrast to Washington’s condemnation, but analysts here say Beijing’s concerns should not be underestimated.

Maintaining peace and stability in the region – as clichéd or obvious as it might sound – is paramount to the Chinese central government. 

“The two pillars which supported China’s political and economic transformation of the three decades over the past has been maintaining stability at home and keeping peace in the world,” said Victor Gao, an international relations expert based in Beijing.  “Therefore China has a deep abhorrence to any destabilizing act by any country in this part of the world.”

And news that the U.S. and South Korea will hold another round of joint military and naval exercises is especially alarming for Beijing, according to Chinese political analysts.  “The more such exercises there are, the more probably you will create tensions and maybe one side like North Korea will overreact,” said Gao.

China can't read Pyongyang's tea leaves either
Just as Beijing’s concerns shouldn’t be underestimated, nor should its ability to rein in Pyongyang be overestimated.

As North Korea’s staunchest ally and main economic supporter, China is widely regarded as the only power able to keep its smaller neighbor in check.

“North Korea is very independent.  It has its own way of doing things and it has its own perception of risks and threats, which may be very different from China’s,” said Gao.

“China can’t restrain North Korea for the same reason the U.S. can’t control Israel, for example,” argued Professor Yan Xuetong, an international security expert at Tsinghua University. “North Korea and Israel can make military decisions that are beyond the control of China or the U.S.”

The best solution as far as Beijing is concerned, according to most analysts, is to work diplomatically within the six-party framework – a solution Washington finds untenable.

Regardless, there is one area in which both China and the U.S. seem to be in agreement. 

Analysts in Beijing admit that what’s happening in their northern neighbor remains a mystery to the Chinese just as it does to everyone else.

“I don’t think [North Korea] is even very transparent to China,” said Gao.

With additional reporting from Eric Baculinao.

BEIJING – Covering the news in China, one quickly becomes acquainted with the names and deeds of a slew of human rights activists here who walk a very fine line between legally advocating for social justice and operating outside the ambiguous, but all-encompassing boundaries set by the government.

Admittedly, before today I’d never heard of Cheng Jianping, the 46-year old activist who was sentenced to a year in a forced labor camp for “disrupting the social order” by retweeting a satirical message.

Where people like Liu Xiaobo, Ai Weiwei, Gao Zhisheng and most recently, Zhao Lianhai have made headlines with their stance on issues ranging from democracy in China to greater transparency on food regulation, Cheng has toiled in relative anonymity – often without the support system that often grows around activists who gain notoriety.

Originally a businesswoman based out of China’s industrial hub of Zhejiang province, Cheng began her career in activism in 2006 after the alleged brutal rape and murder in Hubei of Gao Yingying. Government officials quickly ruled it a suicide and claimed Gao had leapt to her death from the roof of the hotel she worked at, but various bruises and cuts on her wrists and face suggested foul play.

The speed at which the government mobilized to shut down media coverage and gloss over critical bits of evidence – namely Gao’s underwear, which had sperm found on it by forensics experts – implied a well-connected assailant.

Jolted into action by the brutality alleged and the local government’s implicit cooperation in the cover-up, Cheng left her job and turned to popular Chinese messaging service, QQ, to call attention to Gao’s case and to organize netizens who were willing to provide legal or financial assistance to the family.

Through her QQ groups, Cheng made and distributed videos explaining Gao’s case, collected donations and organized signature drives. However, the case never gained enough traction and Gao’s father was even thrown in jail for a year after he spoke out against the government’s handling of the case.

In an interview she conducted earlier this year, Cheng noted that the Gao Yingying case was a seminal moment in her life, “This campaign completely changed my values of life. I realize the root of all this country’s tragedy was the system – a system without supervision.”

In the years since the Gao Yingying case, Cheng Jianping has been involved in a number of other campaigns:

* In 2006, Cheng organized support online for another young female employee who was raped and murdered in Sichuan.

* In 2007, she campaigned for villagers who protested and rioted over tightened enforcement of birth control policies as well as provided assistance to the now infamous “Nailhouse” family of Chongqing.

* She helped form the “Blue Ribbon Campaign,” an online movement to bring awareness to over 1,500 children who were rescued after being enslaved at brick kilns in Shanxi.

* She organized the “Zhejiang Yellow Ribbon New Year Card Campaign,” a drive to send Chinese New Year greeting cards to imprisoned dissidents across China.

Though few have acknowledged it, Cheng helped pioneer the internet activism and awareness that we are now seeing manifest itself in everything from unfair murder cases to coverage of embarrassing city fires.

It’s probably little consolation to Cheng now as she now serves her year in a labor camp, but in a bitter twist of irony, her detention finally allows her to receive the credit she deserves.

NBC News' Gu Bo contributed to this report.

Netease

Young job candidates in the southwestern city of Chongqing were found drunkenly passed out on a popular square on November 8th, 2010 after a “liquid lunch” with a potential employer

BEIJING - In college I once attended a career week event nicknamed, “Don’t Order the Spaghetti,” which was supposed to educate us soon-to-be graduates on how to approach a business lunch with a potential employer.

None of it would have prepared me for the binge drinking round of the interview process.

In a story put out by Netease (Click here for rest of gallery) last week, 4 young men – 2 of whom are due to graduate from university next year – in China’s southwestern metropolis of Chongqing were found passed out drunk on a popular city square after a boozy lunch with their leader-to-be.

Following their second round of interviews, the company manager invited the four interviewees out for lunch, where the men pulled out all the stops to impress their potential boss to be:

Eager to impress the boss, they competed in drinking more alcohol. In the end they were wasted. At first, they just sat on the ground chatting, but soon three of them lied down and passed out. The fourth guy leaned against a telephone pole, standing unsteadily, occasionally muttered some words out his mouth [sic] and shivered non-stop.

No news yet on whether any of them got the job.

China has a long history of heavy work drinking and “liquid lunches” that has been a source of embarrassment in recent years. Just last year, a senior police officer in the southern city of Shenzhen was declared a revolutionary hero after he “died in the line of duty” binge drinking at a banquet with government officials.

Don’t expect a similar hero’s return for these poor boys from their families.

Thanks to China Hush for the link.

BEIJING – Cold weather did not cool the anger that erupted outside a Beijing court Wednesday when people learned that Zhao Lianhai, a former journalist and a 38-year-old father, was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison under the charge of “causing a serious disturbance” for organizing parents of children sickened by tainted milk. 

“I’m innocent!” Zhao angrily roared when his sentence was delivered in a Beijing court Tuesday. He began ripping off his inmate uniform right away, but was quickly tackled by police and dragged away, leaving behind his weeping wife and his mother.

Courtesy Zhao Lianhai

Zhao Lianhai, center, with his 5-year-old son who was sickened by melamine tainted milk, and two other parents of victims on the Sept.11, 2009, the one-year one year anniversary of the start of the milk scandal.

Two years ago the nation was shocked by a food safety scandal that hit infants across China. A chemical called melamine was deliberately added to baby milk formula to boost protein levels in order to pass quality checks. Tons of tainted milk formula was sold and fed to babies who later developed kidney stones.

The official death toll was six and nearly 300,000 children became ill from the tainted milk powder, although many suspect the real figure was much higher.
 
It was in September 2008, one month after Beijing’s glamorous Olympic Games, when Zhao, a Beijing native, discovered his 3-year-old son had a stone in his left kidney.
 
Sanlu, one of China’s largest dairy products company, went bankrupt after the scandal, and its board chairwoman was sentenced to life in prison. Two melamine dealers were executed. In December 2008, 22 dairy product companies involved in the scandal offered lump sum cash compensation to parents of the melamine milk babies:  $30,000 for a death, $4,500 for the seriously injured and $300 dollars for the slightly injured.

For the majority of the parents, $300 was too meager and therefore unacceptable. They feared there would be long-term organ damage and requested a more thorough compensation plan.

Adrienne Mong/ NBC News

Most babies in China are fed formula early on.

Zhao took the lead in organizing the parents of sickened children and initiated a website that included an online discussion group named “Home of the Kidney Stone Babies."  But soon his site was shut down, and Zhao found himself being followed by police when he and other parents went out to meet with the media and when he went to court seeking justice.
 
“The government is cracking down on the melamine victims, because they don’t want them to jeopardize the so-called social stability," says Peng Jian, Zhao’s lawyer, in a phone interview with NBC News. “What the parents did was legal and normal. They went to the dairy company and the court to hold slogans to protest, which is totally understandable. They did not disturb any social order in public venues.” 

Zhou was detained by police in November 2009 for “inciting social disorder.” He was promised a less severe sentence if he pleaded guilty, but he refused. 

“If it’s a crime to defend our rights, I have to say, then that is encouraging unscrupulous merchants to continue making a profit from harming others. How twisted this already sick society will become,” Zhao said in a self-defense speech in March of this year. 

"What we now really worry is that he said he’s going on a hunger strike indefinitely," Li Xuemei, Zhao’s wife told NBC News in a weary tone after his sentence was delivered.

She does not have a job at the moment. She and Zhao’s two children, a 5-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter, are depending on donations from sympathetic supporters. (Under certain conditions, couples are given leniency on China’s one-child policy). 

By Eric Baculinao, NBC News Beijing Bureau Chief

BEIJING – Defying Western criticism and sanctions, Myanmar’s military junta proceeded with Sunday’s controversial elections that once again drew attention to the clashing strategies of the United States and China towards the poor, but strategically important, Southeast Asian nation.

(Note: The ruling junta changed the country’s name to Myanmar in 1989. While the United Nations has adopted the new name, some journalists and countries, such as the United States, continue to use its old one Burma.)

With President Barack Obama virtually within hearing distance in India, Myanmar’s generals effectively delivered the message that America’s lack of engagement, focus on human rights and consequent inability to influence events in the country may only draw the country deeper into the strategic embrace of its giant neighbor.

“Some analysts noted that a peaceful power reshuffle is in China’s interests,” said Guo Qiang of the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party-run newspaper.

The elections, which China has supported, are seen as critical to institutionalizing and stabilizing military-led rule in Myanmar, and securing China’s strategic gains in the county.

And of these strategic gains, none is more powerful a symbol of China’s growing dominance as the mammoth $2.5 billion Trans-Myanmar oil and gas pipelines project, which has far-reaching economic, military and geo-political consequences.

‘Neither free nor fair’
Obama decried the Nov. 7 elections as “based on a fundamentally flawed process” that was “anything but free and fair.” In addition, overwhelming evidence pointed to the regime’s intention of silencing and sidelining the pro-democracy opposition forces, with their leader Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi still under house arrest.

But the election was “a step forward,” according to the China’s Global Times, which warned against “following the West blindly” in opposing Myanmar’s step-by-step process of political change. 

Earlier, a Chinese government spokesman stressed hopes for Myanmar’s “domestic stability” and “continued progress in democracy” with smooth elections.

Before the elections, the U.S. supported plans for an international probe into possible war crimes by Myanmar’s military rulers arising from their human rights records, deemed to be among the worst in the world, but two months of China high-level lobbying at the United Nations effectively killed the initiative.

(Amnesty International says that the country’s 50 million “live in poverty and suffer ongoing human rights violations.” Click here for more on the human rights situation in the country according to Amnesty International).

Indeed, China sees its interests served internationally by promoting friendly relations with its neighbors, regardless of these neighbors’ domestic policies.  

“It is in China’s own interests to maintain good relations, regardless of who is in control of the country,” said current affairs commentator Victor Zhikai Gao.

Trans-Myanmar lifeline
For many critics, China’s own interests are best exemplified by its breakthrough agreement with Myanmar’s junta – the construction of the oil and gas pipelines that will provide strategic shortcut from the shores of the Bay of Bengal to the strategic rear area of China’s landlocked Southwest.

Planners expect the project, which will cut through the heart of Myanmar, to be operational in 2013 and guarantee Myanmar’s rulers nearly $30 billion for 30 years from the sale of natural gas alone.
 
With a designed capacity for 22 million tons of oil and 12 billion cubic meters of gas annually, the project will at last help deal with the so-called Malacca Dilemma, which has engrossed China’s strategic planners since President Hu Jintao raised the issue in late-2003.

The 550-mile long Malacca Strait connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans, is one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes and is crucial for China’s trade and security. Between 70 and 80 percent of China’s oil imports from the Middle East and Africa must pass through this congested lane that can easily be blockaded in the event of conflict. Recent disputes with the United States over the South China Sea issues, has certainly added to China’s sense of vulnerability.
 
In two years’ time, China’s oil tankers from the Middle East and Africa will be able to unload their cargo at Myanmar’s deep sea ports along its western coast.  From there, the fuel will be delivered to refineries in Southwest China, avoiding the Malacca Strait and saving nearly 2,000 sea miles and one week of transport time.

And down the road, critics warn that Myanmar’s coastlines could provide China with naval access in the proximity of strategic water passages that connect with the Pacific and Indian oceans. 

“The pipeline in Myanmar will be a plausible reason for China to send its advanced submarines…or consider protecting its interests in Myanmar under nuclear umbrella,” warned Mizzima news agency, a Burmese opposition group based in India.
 
Myanmar as ‘province of China’?
Critics of the projects say they will serve China and Myanmar’s elite well, but do little for average Burmese citizens.

China’s projects “will not bring any benefits to the local communities,” argued Wong Aung, international coordinator for the Shwe Gas Movement opposition group. The military regime will only continue to “systematically abuse its people” and “use the earnings to keep themselves further entrenched in power,” he told NBC News.

He also warned of potential environmental problems, citing an investigative report accusing the Swiss-American firm Transocean of subcontracting for drilling work in an offshore field in Myanmar – in possible violation of American sanctions. Transocean operated the Deepwater Horizon rig in the center of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.

Transocean denied the charges.

“No Transocean affiliate that is subject to the U.S. ban has ever done business in Myanmar,” Managing Director Lou Colasuonno told NBC News.

 “Safety is a core value of Transocean,” he further said, noting that there had been seven consecutive years without a single lost time incident or environmental event before the Gulf oil spill in April.
 
But probably the most vocal critic of the state of affairs in Myanmar comes from the United States itself.
 
Sen. Jim Webb, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations East Asia subcommitee, called on the Obama administration to pursue a more active engagement policy towards Myanmar’s military junta.

“We are in a situation where if we do not push some sort of constructive engagement, Myanmar is going to basically become a province of China,” Webb told a group of defense reporters in Washington last week.

By Eric Baculinao, NBC News Beijing Bureau Chief

 BEIJING – It seems like a perfect diplomatic dichotomy.

Philippe Wojazer / Reuters

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomes China's President Hu Jintao as he arrives at the Elysee Palace in Paris on Thursday for the start of a three-day visit in France.

While President Barack Obama is setting off to Asia to expand America’s partnerships and alliances, China’s President Hu Jintao is on his own journey to expand China’s financial and business clout in Europe.
 
The simultaneous maneuvers come amid a crescendo of warnings in China’s state-controlled media that America is executing a new “containment” policy that seeks to use diplomatic, economic and military tools to curb China’s development, notwithstanding official denials from the United States.
 
“The U.S. wants to contain China through making use of the contradictions between China and some Asia countries and interfering in Asian affairs,” warned a recent commentary in the 21st Century Business Herald.

In light of the divergent trips and a surge in diplomatic spates over everything from currency valuation to rare earth minerals, China analysts weighed in on what may lie ahead for the rivalry between the world’s two economic superpowers.

China on lookout for more friends
While Obama will visit India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan – but not China – and attend two international summits, Hu is visiting France and Portugal at a difficult juncture for those Eurozone countries.

On Thursday, Hu inked billions of dollars worth of business deals during his state visit to France and was greeted with full military honors by President Nicolas Sarkozy. The deals included $14 billion for Airbus planes, which could seriously erode Boeing’s lead in the China market, as well as telecom and nuclear investments. 

Hu heads to Portugal Saturday where he will reportedly offer to buy government bonds that will be “conducive” to economic recovery and growth, according to one Chinese official. Portugal is faced with the danger of a Greek-style debt crisis.
 
For China to court Europe is a natural thing, according to Francois Godement, senior policy fellow of the European Council of Foreign Relations.  “It’s China’s first market and it also needs to hedge some of its resources, too much is invested in dollars,” he told NBC News.
 
By investing in European public debt, which commands higher interest rate, China is “indirectly helping to maintain the unity of the Eurozone,” Godement added. “In the process, China will also represent to these countries – Greece, Spain, Italy and perhaps Portugal – that its support is also political, and requires some payback.”

“It’s time to help the Europeans, especially because the Eurozone is going through some difficulties,” said Victor Zhikai Gao, director of the China Association of International Studies and former interpreter for the late leader Deng Xiaoping, who led China in opening up to a market-based economy.
 
“China certainly wants to be friends with Europe,” Gao said in a telephone interview from London. “China is always concerned about not having as many friends as possible in this world.” 
 
Nurturing U.S.-China ties
China also wants to be friends with the U.S., according to Gao, but the relations will need “nurturing, care and incentives.”

“China’s economy will likely quadruple again in the coming two decades, meaning it will overtake and become bigger than the U.S.” Gao predicted. “How the U.S. comes to terms with the prospect of China growing and overtaking the U.S. is a major issue.” He noted that since World War II there has never been as much of a possibility that another country could overtake the U.S. as the world’s superpower as now.

Gao argued that China’s ascendancy could be a boon for the U.S., if they work together.

“If the U.S. and China can view each other as friends and partners, then there will be no insurmountable difficulties in this world,” he said, citing the global issues of terrorism, extremism, fundamentalism, nuclear  proliferation and anti-Americanism as requiring China-U.S. cooperation.
 
“But if the U.S. views China with suspicion and tries to ‘contain’ China, then not only will ‘containment’ not succeed but the real enemies of the U.S. will congratulate themselves,” he argued.

When asked about how China views U.S. involvement in the region, Gao said that China has never denied that the U.S. has legitimate interests in that part of the world.
 
“What China objects to is the projection of U.S. forces to interfere in China’s internal affairs, like on Taiwan,” he explained.
 
“It is true that China has territorial disputes with Southeast Asia countries – Vietnam, Japan, India – but it is much better to let the countries involved sort things out,” he suggested. “If the U.S. sides with some countries, the U.S. creates disincentives for improved relations between the U.S. and China.”

“The better strategy is to incentivize China and leverage China’s potential,” he added.
 
‘Pessimistic on balance’
For Richard Betts, director of the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University in New York, the issue of “containment” is a strategic choice.
 
“If other powers like the USA want to keep China from developing a stronger strategic role in East Asia as it becomes wealthier, that will amount to ‘containment,’” he said.
 
Asked about the prospects of a U.S.-China confrontation, Betts conceded he was “pessimistic on balance …  An optimistic outcome is quite possible, but it will not be the natural default option.”
 
“To avoid confrontation, one of three possibilities will have to” play out, he added: “ China’s rise falters and the country suffers a reversal of fortunes and does not rise to superpower status; China rises but gives up the normal ambitions of a great power to control events that affect its interests; or other countries, especially the USA, Japan, Russia and India, concede China’s dominance in East Asia and do not contest its preferences for resolving the status of Taiwan or the Spratly and Diaoyu/Senkaku islands.”
 
“Any of these options is possible, but none seems likely at the moment,” he said.
 
“The West cannot have its cake and eat it too, meaning have amicable relations with China but simultaneously keep China in a subordinate position in the balance of power and block China from resolving disputes in its favor,” Betts added.

Time will tell how the various diplomatic dances play out.