What China Wants

As China moves towards great power status, the BBC's former Beijing correspondent Carrie Gracie reports on what this change will mean for the world - and whether we should be worried.

One major development is China's rapid remilitarisation. Defence spending is running well ahead of growth in the economy. Robert Kaplan, who teaches at the US Naval Academy, tells the programme that China's focussed military spending is aimed at constraining American warships off China's coastal waters.

But any hostile intent is rejected by Sha Zu Kang, China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. In a robust interview, he says that Beijing's military build-up is only for self-defence and tells the US to "shut up." He strongly reiterates China's determination to regain Taiwan, saying "one inch of territory is more valuable than the life of our people."

Meanwhile China's economic growth is powering demand for more natural resources, especially oil. The government has taken a strategic approach, targeting potential providers with aid and infrastructure projects, particularly in Africa.

There are concerns, however, that this has helped prop up regimes like those of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and weakened international pressure over Darfur on Sudan, which provides 7% of China's oil. Senegalese journalist Adama Gaye says although these deals look attractive in the short term to African leaders, he fears China will abandon Africa once it has used its natural resources.

And China is increasingly getting its way around the globe through the deployment of "soft power" - aid, trade and the promotion of a political model which puts development before democracy. Jing Huang, of the Brookings Institution in Washington, says this is the most potent threat from China to the West: "What it really challenges is a value system. Who we are and what we want to be."

Adapted from BBC news, August 2006

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