Person: How do you see the relationship of china in regards to strengths and weaknesses with (A) Europe, (B) Middle East and (C) Africa?
Dr. Sutter: Europe, Middle East and Africa. Okay, china’s relations with Europe are not very good this days, they haven’t been good for some time and the trade relations is important but the European business community is pretty upset with china. Copenhagen was a low blow to a lot of people in Europe. And so the attitude towards china is quite mixed in Europe. Economically it’s very important but I think as in the image of the country and so forth is not particularly good. In relations with the particular government. Look what they did with Sarkozy, the French president, head of the European community, he said he was going to meet with the Dalai Lama; the Chinese got so upset about this that, like two weeks before the scheduled Beijing European union summit they cancelled it. They said you are not going to meet with us, you because of Sarkozy the president of the European Union said he was going to meet with the Dalai Lama, and he did go and meet with the Dalai Lama later.
And then the next year they sent the premier to mend fences in the region but he didn’t go to Paris. And still, they still were isolating Sarkozy. Yeah maybe he had it coming, I don’t know, but I mean the point is that when they do this kind of thing, it doesn’t give a good taste in the mouth of European leaders. They know they’re dealing with a country that’s…I mean it gets them leverage, China might have some leverage, but this is not, this doesn’t build friendship if you see what I mean. In the Middle East, China is improving its relationship a lot of ways, I don’t know too much about the Middle East. But China is in an awkward position in the Middle East strategically. If they are going to get I guess about half of their export of oil come from the Middle East, and they are going to need a lot more. A senior official of China noted in China media about four months ago, he said that for china to improve its, to advance its economy at certain level, they have to use four times the resources that the Americans would have to use for the similar advance. You are dealing with and then America say, you know we are not very good about using resources, very efficient. So this is extremely resource intensive economic development. There’s a need for oil and all this other things all over the world. But where is the oil? It’s in the Persian Gulf, that’s not the point, but at the end of the day it’s in the Persian Gulf, that’s where they’re really going to have to get it. And who controls the Persian Gulf?
Person: United States.
Dr. Sutter: Yeah, the United States. And so their energy security issue is significant. They can diversify, and they do diversify, but if they want to increase the amount of oil they are going to get, the Persian Gulf is the place. And so they are vulnerable in that. Now they are trying to improve relations with the big powers in the Middle East, and when you do that, how do you do it in the Middle East, how do you improve relations with Saudi Arabia and not make Iran angry, and how do you improve relations with Iran without making Saudi Arabia angry. This is a very delicate balance in the Middle East. And they have what we call outsiders rule, we don’t want to offend anybody policy. And it leads to a position which is influential but certainly not doing anything hard in this area. China’s influence in Africa, its footprint in Africa, it’s growing a lot. And this footprint is not something that’s really a China incorporated type of thing. People look at it; oh this is china doing this. Well when you look at it closely it’s all this state owned enterprises, but this government owned enterprises they are active in china and some private ones, it’s not like it’s a national state owned enterprise. There are some of those but there are also these provincial ones and town ones, and these companies are all vying to make money in Africa. And they are influential and important in that regard. But that’s not a bad thing seems to me, and it doesn’t give, I don’t think it leads to dominance that china has, there are many other countries that are involved in Africa economically. So it’s advancing their relationship, it’s making money, it’s getting the resources they need and it’s not particularly good at managing the relationship with the Europeans. They really have some problems with the Europeans. It has done a better job with African countries and with Middle Eastern countries.